City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Welcome to the regular City Council meeting of June 16th. Madam City Clerk, can you please call roll for a quorum?

Council Member Warren.

Wait a minute. He's got my button covered up.

I'm here.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member DeForest. Here. Council Member Stone. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday.

Here.

Mayor Lavelle.

Here.

Let the record reflect all members are present.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk. I've asked Mr. Holliday to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. And please remain standing by the invocation from Pastor Zach Martin from the Bridge Church. I love Zach Martin.

Please stand if you're able and place your right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

I pledge allegiance to the Father,

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the privilege that it is to live in a wonderful community like the city of Murrieta. God, we bring this meeting before you and we ask for your wisdom that it be granted to our leaders. We recognize today that responsibility is what is given to us when we are placed in authority. And today we ask that we would not see authority as power, but rather responsibility for this wonderful city that you've entrusted to us. So I pray. that your wisdom would be given to us, that we would continue to live in a flourishing and prosperous community, that you would bless us, that you would bring us continual safety, continual blessing in all areas of this community. We honor you and thank you for this, again, privilege that we have to live here in Murrieta. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you.

Okay, kicking off today, we've got a few presentations. So first up, I'd like to call Christine Benet to have a presentation for the Summer Reading Challenge. Come on up.

Hi, good afternoon to both the City Council and members of our community. I'm Christine Baney, Teen Services Librarian at the Marietta Public Library, and I'm here with members of our Teen Advisory Council to tell everyone about this year's Summer Reading Challenge, Plant to Seed, Read.

The challenge is intended to encourage reading for recreation while maintaining and improving reading skills through the summer. Participants can register online or come to the library and register in person. Teen volunteers will help register participants and answer any questions you may have about the challenge.

Each age group's logs and reading incentives look a little different. Children ages 0 to 12 will have a prize wheel that they spin after logging five books, or two and a half hours of reading, up to five spins total. Teens ages 13 to 18 will log their books, and when they reach a special indicator on their log, they can come in and look into the library to get mystery prizes. If they read 15 books, they are entered into the grand prize drawing.

Finally, backed by popular demand, our adult participants will return book reviews to redeem up to four Plinko plays and their corresponding prizes. However, adults can continue to submit book reviews to enter weekly prize drawings.

The reading challenges and prizes are fun, but what really brings the community together are activities. This summer, adults can join in on an afternoon crafts, audiobook walking clubs, or if you're looking for something with a little less social activities, our silent book club. Children will have playtimes, plant bingo parties, Lego and chess clubs, and weekly creator space theme-based activities.

And for teens, well, this Teen Advisory Council wanted to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country's founding while also honoring the theme of this year's challenge, Plant a Seed, Read. We decided as a way to honor our history to focus on activities that teach a lost art. We will be discovering, we will be covering everything from writing in cursive to basket weaving. Plant the seed of self-growth and development with skills that are becoming less and less common.

So there isn't time to cover everything that the library has going on this summer. So please come in for yourself and see. You can also follow us on social media at the Myriad Public Library on all our platforms. Or you can check our website to see all of the exciting things that we have planned. Thank you so much for having us this afternoon.

Real quick, maybe I missed it, I'm sorry. When does this start, the teen reading program?

That's a great point, and I did not include that in our script. Glad it wasn't just me. Thank you for that glaring mistake. So it started last week, and it's going to go until July 17th, 18th, that Saturday.

And you can jump in any time?

You can jump in at any time.

Okay, thank you so much, you guys. Thank you. I think we're going to do a picture, right? Yes, please. My colleagues want to come down with us?

Come on up for the dice. Come on up, you guys. We're holding books or anything? I wish.

We didn't have any reflections.

I was hoping we'd hold a seat. I know.

We're all holding seats. Ready? One, two, three.

And next up for a presentation, we have Mr. Isaac Bravo. Why don't you come on up?

Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. Thank you. Tonight, I have the pleasure and honor of being able to introduce the next cohort of City Ambassadors. As backgrounds for the audience here, these members of the community joined three distinct academies for police, fire, and City Hall. They learned everything about City. The goal is to create members of the community which care, are able to share information, and inform other members of the community as to what happens here at City Hall. So I will ask them to come up one by one, so I'll name you off. First I have Catherine Kathy Beers. Jerry Brown. Holly Burkhart. Patricia Trisha Hatterley. Mr. Mark Johnson. Ms. Laura Juarez. Mr. Jason Jones. Mr. Marco Juarez. Mr. Andrew Andy Crow. Ms. Ali Popovich. Monica Tentman. John Tobin. And city council, it is my pleasure to present to you the 2026 cohort of city ambassadors.

We're going to do a picture as well. Which one of you has traffic as your topic? I'm kidding.

Do you want me to go on this side and kind of squeeze through it? Yeah, see if I can get the documents in the back.

All right, let's sprinkle in some crazy people with the normal people. And we're the crazies.

I'm going to guess sin should be in front, too.

And then John, if you want to get in the middle right there. Perfect.

I'd be happy to. Can you step just a little bit backwards?

Just a tiny bit. There you go. And you can turn. Perfect. All right. So we're all good.

Okay, next up.

More than a presentation, we have an actual proclamation today. This is Bonnie, the chairman of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Ms. Bonnie, can you come up and accept this? And I'll read this proclamation. And then we'll have council comment after if they want to. Lots of words here. Is this mine? Oh, yeah, you guys all come up.

I'll read fast so you guys are standing less.

Whereas on July 4th, 2026, the United States of America will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking a pivotal event in our nation's history. And whereas the historic anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect upon our nation's past, honor sacrifices and contributions of all Americans, and inspire future generations to uphold the ideals of democracy, liberty, and self-government that define the United States. And whereas the state of California traces its roots to the vision and westward expansion of the Revolutionary War generation and their descendants, whose efforts helped shape the growth and development of the United States following the Treaty of Paris of 1783. And whereas the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence provides an opportunity for communities throughout California to participate in educational and civic activities that deepen understanding our nation's history, celebrate the principles upon which the United States was founded, and strengthen appreciation for the enduring ideals that continue to shape both our nation and state. And whereas the members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Losueño Chapter, promote education and encourage patriotism through programs and initiatives that preserve American history and benefit the residents of the city of Marietta. and surrounding communities. Now, therefore, I, John Lovell, on behalf of the City Council and the City of Marietta, do hereby proclaim July 4th, 2026 as a day of commemoration, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America as an independent nation and encourage all residents and recognize this historic milestone. Signed by me and everyone up here. Thank you. You may have the floor to say a few words and everyone feel free if you need to.

Just a very few words. Mayor, members of the council, we thank you for recognizing this unique event in our country's history. Our founding fathers created an experiment in this form of government. They no longer wanted to live under tyranny or a royalty. They wanted to live in a country where they would be free and they could govern themselves. 250 years later, we are still living under this form of government, and hopefully we'll be able to celebrate another 250 years. Thank you.

I think if we'll go, we'll have council comments first, and then we'll go down for a picture. You guys want to say a few words? Go ahead and give me a head nods. If not, we'll go down. Okay, we're going down.

said it all in that great talk last night.

Okay, that's all the celebrating we're doing today. We're going to move on to the approval. I'm just kidding. We always celebrate. Moving to the approval of the agenda. Madam City Clerk, are there any changes to our agenda?

Seeing none, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, thank you. I'd like to call for a motion and a second for the approval of the agenda. I've got a motion by Councilman Warren. Is that it? And then a second by Councilman DeForest. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Thank you. Moving on to our administrative update. Mr. Justin Clifton, what do you have for us?

Thank you very much, Mayor and Council. We have a number of presentations this evening. First, it's been a little while since we've been able to present a check, a contribution to our children's library expansion. And so today we have one, and this one's really special because the library has lots of support, lots of stakeholders, parents and kids, but probably top of the list of people who are really dedicated to make sure the library has everything that it needs is a group that actually calls themselves the Friends of the Murrieta Library. And they've been supportive, of course, of operations and the general programs of the library for a long, long time, but today, they're also going to help make a contribution to this really important expansion. So I understand we have some representatives of the Friends here with us that would like to present their special check, and then I think we have some library staff members that would like to say a couple words after that.

Can you believe it, Mayor LaVelle and city council members? We are almost there. This is so exciting. But before I go any further, can you hear me? The friends would like to thank you all for inviting us to participate in the hard hat walkthrough. It was wonderful to see all that space. In addition to which, we're really pleased to see that you've maintained the Garden of Verses because as Cicero said, if you have a garden and if you have a library, what else do you need? You have everything you need. So what else do you need? I'm saying. Getting back on track, I'm here tonight, along with the Board of the Friends, to present this wonderful check for $120,000 to the Murrieta Library to be used for the furniture, fixtures, and equipment in the new children's reading room. You say to yourself, well, how does this little group of friends get it together and come up with this amount of money? Well, I'm going to tell you how.

Yes, we are.

Thank you for donations from Mike and Kim Pettigrews. Kim Summers and her husband. And lifetime members, Eleanor Newhart, Judy Call, and Lila Lawrence, and certainly the Temecula Valley Women's Club. But I have to tell you, it is through the dedication and hard work of the wonderful store volunteers who clean and sort and price and shelve. They literally do tons of books, of donated books. Since 1996, it used to be $1.3 million that we raised. Now we're well above that. Can I put a little commercial here? Members and ladies and gentlemen of the chamber, please, I invite you to visit our bookstores right here in the Marietta area. Our Town Square store is just next to the library. and our corner store is on Los Alamos at the 215 Freeway, sorry. It is through these two bookstores, which sell gently used books for about a dollar a piece, that we're able to provide this check. So you have to stop by and buy a book, or two or three, because we just voted this afternoon to provide another $65,500 to the library for their programs, their performers, and collections for the fiscal year 2019, right, 2026 and 27. And by the way, I just stopped at a stop sign on CalMEA, I'm Italian, CalMEA and Jefferson, and there it was. Thank you for allowing us to put our sign up that's on the marquee that says, Friends of the Marietta Library, bookstore, shop now or buy a book or something like that. It goes so fast, okay? Anyway, again, congratulations on a great undertaking of which the Friends of the Library are so proud to be a part. And thank you very much. And friends, where is, oh, here we go.

That's awesome. Are we doing a picture for this? Okay, right. Now, I have to ask, you didn't sell 120,000 books. Do you have a breakdown? 120,000 for one year?

Thank you.

So we do have a couple more things to discuss this evening. Yes, more news. You might have noticed when you sat down today, you had a shiny new copy of the 2025 annual report from the Myriad of Fire and Rescue. So I'd like to ask our Chief Malloy to come up, cover a little bit of what is inside and a little bit of the year in review, so to speak. So, Chief Malloy, the floor is yours.

Shiny new book with a shiny new haircut.

You know, once a month, whether you need it or not. Good afternoon, Mayor Lovell and council. Thank you for the opportunity tonight to tell the story of what your fire department has done in service to this community over the past year, 2025. We're a little late this year because we had a change in the middle of the year about how we record our data on a federal level. So it took us a little while to de-conflict all of that, but now we have it and we have everything here that we're going to present to you tonight. I want to start with a number, and that number is 13,815. That's the number of calls we had for service at Murrieta Fire and Rescue this year. That's over 13,000 times that a resident called 911 because they were having the worst day of their life. And our firefighters, the doors on our fire stations rolled up and we responded code three to help those people with whatever issue they were having. I put some lines on there because I think that number should be noted. that it's increasing. If you look from where we were in late 2021, so 21 through 25, we've had a 25% increase, almost 26% increase in our overall call volume going from just under 11,000 to almost 14,000 now over the past five years. This is rapid growth for sure. And if we look at what happened just over the past year, we had a 12% increase in call volume. So we went up by almost 1,000 calls last year. When we break down what those calls look like in service, 154 of those were fires. EMS was over 10,000 calls. And then the other, which is the kind of catch-all for everything that the fire department does with ringing alarms, hazmat incidents, good intense calls, cats in trees, things like that. These are the type of calls that we've also done. Snakes, that's all part of the good intent public service type calls. We have a lot of those in our city as well. If we break it down by units, you can see that our busiest units are our medic patrols, and the reason for that is simple. You saw that over 10,000 of our calls were medical aides, and we staff our medic patrols, the dual firefighter paramedics, so they can respond and absorb those medical aides all day long. By doing that, they allow our suppression apparatus, our fire engines, to stay in the stations as much as possible and be available to do suppression work, respond quickly to fires, respond quickly to rescues. But if we have two calls at the same time out of one of those stations, our fire engine does go because it also has paramedics on board and respond to those medical aids as well. You'll note that our third busiest apparatus is engine one. That's the west side of the city. Engine one does not have a medic patrol at it, so it's the next busiest unit that we have. And then you break it down by our fire stations. Fire station two is our busiest unit. That's right in the middle of the city. We'll cover that in a map. Fire station three is the south end hot springs. It's also a very busy unit. They serve the east side of the community as well. And then fire station four in the north end of the city. When we look at those, you can see them on the map there. You'll see station responses and unit responses. And what a unit response is, is our unit responses are always more than our incident numbers, because if we have a structure fire, that's going to take five units to respond to that. So we measure number of calls and then the number of times that our units respond to those incidents as well. We talked about EMS activity, and when we break that down, we can see some of the critical types of calls that we run. We had 146 cardiac arrests last year. 28 of those we intubated, which is where we stick a tube into somebody's throat and help them breathe. A really great number that we have in Murrieta is our return of spontaneous circulation, our ROSC number, is 30%. That's much higher than the national standard. So of those 146 cardiac arrests we had, 27 of those were saves. And I need you to understand what that means. Our firefighter paramedics arrived on scene to somebody that had no pulse. and they revived them to where they had a pulse, and they delivered at the hospital with a pulse. That's another day those people get to spend with their families. That's another day they get to spend with loved ones. So that's a tremendous number, and we can credit that to the advanced life skills training that we have in our fire department, our great nurse educator, and all of the work we do to make sure that those 10,000 medical aid calls are met with the highest level of care that we can bring to the community every single day. Fire suppression is another thing that we're very proud of in this community. We do not have a lot of fires. We have great fire prevention in our community, something that I'll say that helps keep our insurance down. 51 vegetation fires in the city limits, 54 structure fires, 21 rubbish fires, and we go through theirs. But what's really important is that 88.15%, and that's the property value saved in our community. So of those really structure fires, the damage that could have been caused, we saved 88% of it. When we look at the incident value, that is, the pre-incident value of those properties was over $52 million. And our property saved was over $46 million. We can quantify how much money having a fire department saved this city residents just in structure fires. So of those, because it's the one that we can actually track the value. So you see, we saved $46.2 million. We're going to have something later on in the agenda talking about the fire department's budget. I'd like to note that we saved more and property value than our entire budget for the fire department. I think that's a pretty worthy investment. And Mayor Lovell, I think this is another celebration we should have tonight, the value of homes we saved for this year. Just to cover our staffing levels, 65 sworn personnel, those are our firefighters and chief officers, and then we have 16 civilian personnel, our community risk reduction division, and then our fire administration. I just wanted to highlight all of the great staff members we have that work for the entire fire department. And then briefly to touch on some of the technology we brought forward in the same five-year period that we had up there, we're on the state-of-the-art radio system, first fire department in Riverside County to go to the same radio system that our police department is on. We use tablet command, which is instant command software, to make sure that we have complete situational awareness of where all of our units are, as well as the units from other departments and agencies that are helping us or we're helping them. Drone First Responder, I cannot give enough props to this program operated by Murrieta PD, and we're fortunate enough for them to let us use their resources, and we're already finding new and exciting ways that the fire department can use those to improve our operations. First Do is a software that we have where we're going around and we're mapping in detail all of the high-density areas of our city, and we're adding pre-plans and maps so our firefighters know before they get on scene exactly what Essentially, the fire blueprints for that site will look like when they get on scene. So we have that information ahead of time. Field maps is how we measure all of our defensible space in the city. And we can show live right now which properties in the very high fire severity zone are in or out of compliance with defensible space measures. And then something we're excited about just two months ago, we brought the cad cad where all our computer is touching Riverside County's computer for dispatch. So we're able to automatically move resources back and forth when we need help or the county needs help. We we've always had the system in place, but it required our dispatchers to pick up phones and call one another. Now we have our computers talking together so that cuts down the time and it makes sure that our residents get a quicker response than they have in the past. Something to note, I've been up here for, I think this is the third time I've had this slide on my presentation. Coming soon, that soon is this year, actually. We should be taking delivery of our tractor-drawn aerial in September, and then we hope to have it in operation by January of this year. So we thank you for your patience. We thank you for your commitment on this resource. And I think that when we started talking about this, it was theoretical about the changing vertical footprint of our city. And we've certainly realized that vertical footprint change over the past couple of years. So this apparatus can arrive soon enough for us. And with that, I end the presentation. There's a lot more in the book that you have before you. And for the public, we have a QR code there you can scan and you can get access to our 2025 annual report. It's about 40 pages, I believe, this year, give or take. And I will take any questions.

I'll look for head nods. I have one follow-up question. The increase in incident, I mean, not knowing the exact numbers, it seems to be growing faster than our actual population growth. Do you account that for just the aging population that's staying in Marietta? Easy. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things. And we're trying to track that as well. We don't have the popular, I don't believe we've had a 25% increase in the past five years in our population in the city. I don't think that's possible, yeah. But we have seen that in our call volume. So what does that look like? Is it access to healthcare? Is it access to health insurance? Is it the changing demands on our system? We have to monitor that. And that's something that we're challenged with is making sure that we are tracking why our calls are changing, the types of calls we have, and you go in the annual report, we track more than that medically as well. Like, what types of calls are we seeing now, and are there any measures we can do to do preventative care for people so they don't have to call 911 and work in cooperation with their hospitals as well?

I ask that from the lens of the hospitals. Like, we see the same thing. The population is growing, but also the trend of the utilization for the services in all the already constrained hospitals, everyone in this area, It's something everyone's paying attention to.

I would be interested to see if our call volume is trending the same as the emergency room admission rates.

It looks, I mean, we're about 30%. So thank you. I appreciate it very much. Yes, ma'am.

Can I just make a comment? Go ahead. Thank you. Chief, I know that you already know this story, but I want to share with my colleagues and staff in the community about how wonderful our firefighters are. So two weekends ago, I went to the East Coast to visit my son, who's in the military. And I had a babysitter for Danny Girl, my dog. A lot of you have seen Danny Girl around. Within 40 minutes of landing in Washington, D.C., I get a phone call from the babysitter. And this is a call you never want to get. And it was Chris Sanchez, a firefighter from Marietta Fire and Rescue on the other line. And the babysitter had taken a fall and they had to transport her. But just, it has nothing to do with me being a city council member. I know how wonderful our team is here in Marietta. They went into the garage, pulled out a crate, stored Danny in the crate, made sure that she had water. And I just want to say again, thank you to Chris and the B team for their efforts in addressing a critical situation and making sure that I knew that everything was okay. So again, the best of the best, Chief.

Okay. More good news? There is more. We are mostly or partly down the road of this report, but not quite there. Speaking of roads, though, a few important updates on road projects. And as you're somewhat accustomed, when we're talking road projects and the delays and things like that, it's often a mix of good news, bad news. So I'm going to start with some of the bad news. We've got a couple significant projects, the Murrieta Hot Springs Road widening project, which is from Margarita to Winchester Road, and also the Hot Springs Road turnpocket lane at Murrieta Plaza. Both of those projects are encountering numerous delays. Unfortunately, it's been a variety of things, some design and kind of construction related issues, some utility issues, but the bottom line is both are going to be extended well beyond their original anticipated completion. Whose district is that one? So with the road widening project.

I don't know.

It started in August 2025. It was expected to conclude this month in June of 2026. But the cumulative delays at this point are probably in the area of five to six months. So if things proceed more orderly at this point, we're anticipating completion by the end of the year or maybe just into the new year. For the turnpocket that was anticipated to be a smaller project, unfortunately, even the start of that project was delayed by at least a couple weeks. So notice to proceed was issued in June of 2025. Total cumulative delays, working delays for the project now is approaching 300. So we've had a number of challenges there. on that project. Some of the utility work too has just been a little bit complex. There have been some field modifications and corrections and things like that that have needed to be made. So that one also probably at least a couple of more months looking at early fall this year. Now, on the slightly better news, we've told you countless times over the last couple of years about some of our large, long and arduous journey to get some completed milestones with the Keller Road interchange. But I'm happy to announce this evening that we are now officially finished with our final environmental impact report and other kind of a pertinent discussion. documents, the final project report, a new connection report, all of these kind of layers that basically means we're through our environmental process finally. We've had to do a lot of things, you know, Bob and the public works engineering team, Kristen, we've had help from our elected officials, lobbying and engaged with the Federal Highways Administration, just lots and lots of all hands on deck. We've needed help with RCA and other environmental components, so everybody has contributed and it's a really important milestone the good news on top of that is that we had been progressing with design parallel with that environmental process so we are really close to 95% done with design which means there won't now be this really lengthy design process until we get to construction so there is still work in front of us including some land acquisition and things that will take some time but with those design plans being so close to ready We're anticipating bid and construction start of the project by 2027. So I'm finally cleared with environmental and moving forward to the fun part. That's it for road projects. Did I miss something? Okay, just making sure. Good news. I'd like to have Hilda Sam, our public information officer, come up and, as usual, tell us a little bit about the exciting things going on in Murrieta.

More fun.

City Council. So as we are near the end of our series of community safety forms that we've hosted in each district, the Murrieta Police Department and the respective council member have come together and hosted these really informative, helpful events for both residents and the police department and staff to to really learn about what initiatives are going on already, all the awesome work that PD is doing in our community. And we have our last one tomorrow, where Councilmember Warren, along with our police department, will have this conversation one more time. And so even if you're not a District 5 resident, we invite you to come join us and join the conversation. After that, our summer events are quickly approaching. We have our Father's Day car show, which is the 55th time that we're hosting that in the community. That's very exciting. It's on Saturday, June 20th. We invite everyone to come join us at Kellogg's Sports Park. And, of course, the 35th annual birthday bash on June 27th. Join us for a day of fun for the family, the firefighter hose down, of course, and some fireworks at the end. At the beginning of August, we'll have the annual National Night Out hosted by our police department right here at Town Square Park. And make sure that you mark your calendars for our Concerts in the Park series, which will also be hosted here at Town Square Park, starting July 11th, Saturday, from 6 to 8, every Saturday night, right here in the park. Bring a blanket, bring a picnic, or... Join us and use some of the vendors that will be out here. Free admission. We look forward to seeing everybody. And we'd like to invite you to stay connected with us, whether it's through email. We send out more Murrieta monthly newsletters. We also have our Murrieta magazine available online. You can request a physical copy. And, of course, stay connected by coming to our events. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. That concludes my report.

Thank you, Mr. Clifton. Moving on to governing body reports and commission report outs. This is where the public gets to know where we have been and what we've been doing. Starting with Council Member Warren.

From District 5. Yes, Marietta, Spring Roads, and the Pocket Lane, they're in my district. That's okay. I have nothing to do with them not getting done. I'll take all the credit when they are done. So I'll start out with on June the 10th, I went to the RCTC very big commission meeting. And there was so much that happened that I did put a summary on. So go to the website. You can read through all of that. But I did want to highlight something very important. And I want to make sure that everybody understands what the vote was. I am going to get to it right now. There it is. There was talk about a year ago about perhaps putting a measure on the ballot to increase the sales tax, the Measure A. That is not going to happen. The commission voted. Everybody was in Greens except for there was one no. And we are adopting an ordinance and expenditure plan to renew Measure A at the existing one-half cent transportation sales tax rate so that it does not sunset. I know that it's important that we alleviate traffic. I know that it is important that traffic moves on the freeways and side streets and road improvements and the alignment of 79. Without this sales tax moving forward as it is now, it will not increase. I felt it was important and I voted for this to go on the ballot to give the taxpayers the right to vote whether they wanted to keep this one half cent tax or not. If we want our improvements, if we want to get our roads moving, we're going to need this. So I think it's up to the voters to decide if they want it. So that's why I voted yes on it, and that will be on the ballot in November. I thought that was very important. What does that one half cent will give you? Finished projects that are already in the works, that are way over budget, such as the 15 freeway, two lanes, express lanes, going from the 91... All the way to at least Lake Elsinore and hopefully through Temecula. That's what this will help do. Do I want a free lane? Yes. But we cannot put out general purpose lanes anymore. Caltrans will not allow us to do it. So this is our only alternative. So this is our way of trying to get these projects through the finish line and a promise that they promised you many, many years ago. So I am holding their feet to the fire that we do that. So that's why it's going to be on the ballot And I wanted you to understand why that is going to be on there. So I'm going to say it again. There is no tax increase. It is a continuation of the half cent measure A tax with no sunset. So that will be on your ballot. Moving on to my governing body announcements. I did have the honor, along with Council Member Stone and Mayor Pro Tem Holliday, to attend the Marietta Police Department's awards ceremony. So exciting. There's a list of the officers and staff that were recognized. I tell you, we have the best of the best, not only in fire, but in police. And this city is safe because of our police, our fire department, and our staff that run this city. So we couldn't be more proud to recognize these outstanding people from the police department and its officers and civilians and volunteers. So hats off, Chief, to a great awards celebration. Attended the Professional Women's Roundtable General Meeting, Marietta Mesa High School Graduation Ceremony. Yes, I stayed to the end to see the hats go up in the air. Someone else did not. I'm not going to say anybody's name.

I guess we'll see.

You move seats to your car. I also had the honor, along with the rest of our team, to attend the Boys and Girls Club Oakview Ranch Grand Opening, which was really super fun. And what a great facility for the kids on the west side. And then today, we toured the new mobile command vehicle, which is state-of-the-art awesome. So if you ever get a chance to see it at one of our events, take a look, because it is amazing, the things we can do. And I wanted to end with, don't forget, tomorrow night, let's pack that multipurpose room at Buchanan Elementary School. It's going to be at 6 o'clock, our public safety forum. Be there. Let's ask questions. Let's get informed. And let's be a part of our community. Thank you. That concludes my report.

Thank you. And Councilwoman DeForest, you're up.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to defer some of my GBAs tonight, kind of go off the rails a little bit and take time to do some shout outs. So first and foremost, I'd like to give a shout out to the city clerk's office. The city clerk did a drive-through vote. That was absolutely amazing. I had patients talking about that. day that that was so convenient they could just drive through and vote and everybody was so friendly and it was not cool that day either but and I know they stayed out there till voting was closed at 8 o'clock and did an amazing job so shout out to the clerk's office for thinking a little different way to vote and making it much easier for them to actually drive through the park to vote so that was fantastic Also, just to piggyback a little bit on Councilwoman Warren, the Mobile Command, we got a tour today of Murrieta's brand new Mobile Command Center. Thank you, Chief Henry, for the tour. And it is absolutely state of the art. The camera system is phenomenal. And it's going to be a game changer if we need it, right? And so... The crazy thing is they even thought to put a dispatch facility so they could actually run two dispatchers in the back. So Murrieta, even in an emergency, is prepared. So I want to thank Congressman Darrell Issa. When I was mayor, we spoke several times on the phone to get that to come to Marietta and for us to earmark some money, and it worked. And so thank you to the congressman for the beautiful Mobile Command Center. And I know FIRE will be using that as well. And then thank you to our very own Brian Ambrose for being available, for caring and helping our homeless, and for actually making a difference to try to get our homeless housed. I saw him in action, was very fortunate the other night, and his caring and compassion for unhoused or our homeless population is amazing, and we are so lucky to have him setting precedents for our homeless outreach. So thank you, Brian. Also, thank you to Jeff Hitch and our own assistant city manager, Kristen Crane, for keeping me abreast of the Hayes Bridge. I don't even like to say that anymore. It's almost like Keller Road. So... Yeah, the pocket. Yes, we're all having flashbacks here And but I'm really excited Jeff gave me a little update as well as Kristen June 24th is a pre-construction meeting followed by delivery the end of June a celebration I'll be waiting down there when they deliver it. I'm sure a lot of other residents will be down there to Start of construction will be July 6 so after the holiday um hopefully that bridge will get put in very fast i'm sure jeff will be down there helping them set it and uh making sure they stay on track so i know the community has been reaching out almost on a daily basis to find out what's going on with the hayes bridge so um but that's all um i i thank our city staff for uh making this city what it is and we are so fortunate to live in the city of murrieta so thank you very much thank you very much councilman of course uh councilman stone you're up

Thank you, Mayor. I attended the Police Department Awards Ceremony. Fantastic. Still believe that we're the best of the best, Chief. Great, great presentation. I attended the Marietta-Wildemar Chamber of Commerce Networking Breakfast. The speaker was amazing. Very interesting statistics happening with businesses and the legislation that's coming down the pipeline. I'd like to thank our chief and his entire team for representing the 4th District in our Public Safety Forum. And there was some information in that forum that I had no idea, so it was very educational for me as well. And the number one topic was e-bikes. I had shared on Facebook the e-bike story Public safety engagement, let's just say. And I gave kudos on Facebook to our police department for doing everything they can to mitigate illegal e-bikes that are on the streets. And that post on Facebook reached 35,000 people. and close to 100 comments. And as I talked about traffic at our last council meeting, the topic of conversation was very enlightening to see the response from the community. And same with the e-bikes. It was very interesting for people to offer their opinion, to offer their suggestions about what the City of Marietta should be doing to mitigate this issue. So I want to thank the community for their engagement. And I want to give a shout out to Bob Mailing. You know, I pick on you a lot. And I want you to know that... The other day, it was actually the night of our public safety forum. It started at 6 o'clock in about quarter till. I made my way over to the youth center, and I was going north on Whitewood. I had to make a left on Los Alamos. I went all the way to Lincoln and went on Cal Oaks. Bob, it was the first time ever that all the lights were synchronized. I want you to know, by the time I left my home and I got to the youth center, it took me three minutes. So listen, I know I pick on you a lot, but there is something to be said about synchronizing our lights. So kudos, kudos, kudos. I attended the JAGS opening ceremony fundraiser that's facilitated by our very own Councilwoman Cindy Warren. It was a beautiful morning, but I know that it got a little hot in the afternoon. But the players, the golfers, were very engaged and very excited, and I just wanted to say I'm just so proud of you, and thank you for giving back to our community. I met with Dr. Andrus, our superintendent, to discuss our e-bike policy because we have to partner with our Unified School District, our community pool, and a holiday project that I will be announcing in August. I also met with a constituent with regards to the Hillside Ordinance. And I also like to, I want to give a shout out to all of our council members Our former city manager, our current city manager, and our entire staff. When I was elected in 2020, it was very frustrating to hear that Keller Road was still in the environmental process 10 years. That is crucial for our city and our region. So people that need to get to our hospitals know where to exit the freeway because they don't. So 15 years later, it's finally out of the environmental process. So huge kudos, huge kudos to our staff and my colleagues for their determination to make sure that it came out of the environmental process, as our city manager stated, and now the next step. So I'm praying and hoping by the time I'm turned out in 2028 that we are going to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Keller Road. And that ends my governing body announcements, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you very much. And Mayor Pro Tem Holliday.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Most of mine have already been echoed by my colleagues. The Mayor of the Police Department awards ceremony, we do have the best of the best. Saw a couple of them out at the Jags golf tournament as well. for the MPO a always good to see them out there. Had a friend come in from out of town he lives in Texas and he came in and I took him to market nights the day he flew in and he had nothing but great praise to say about what market nights was all about and seen anything like it before the food there is phenomenal if you haven't been down there the vendors are amazing. It's definitely something that's not unique because there's market nights all over the place, but the fact that ours has done so well, I talk to the vendors all the time and ask them how it compares to other market nights, and they said ours is the best by far. So everyone that's involved in that is doing a great job. I did attend the grand opening of our second Boys and Girls Club in Murrieta, which I'm strangely proud that we have two in Murrieta. I'm not sure why. Over at Oakview Ranch, the facility is great. I don't know if everyone knows how it works, but these affordable housing projects have to compete for these tax credits and the funding that comes with it. And to compete, they build up a point system. So they have to be creative in what they provide what they're proposing to provide to be able to get enough points to be able to get the funding. And so like the Mon and Mos apartments, one of the things they did to get extra points was they provide to all the residents for free on-site tutors for all the kids in the afternoon. And that's how they got points to develop that project. For this project, the Oakview Ranch project, one of the things they did was partner with the Boys and Girls Club to provide them a place to have a Boys and Girls Club. And so whatever arrangements boys and girls club made out with with them to do that is right in the center of that complex of those kids have a place to go after school. So we're creating certainly not intention by the state, but they created a an actual benefit by having this competition that creates a better product for all cities when they have affordable housing some. Very pleased with that. And then I also attended the Myriad Chamber networking breakfast as well, as some of my colleagues. I'm gonna go off script here for a second, Chief Molloy, if you could come up to the podium for a second. I didn't realize this was our last chance before the 4th of July or close to it. I wanted to get the message out of what we've been talking about. Some residents brought it to our attention, something a city back in Illinois did. And so I brought it to the chief's attention and we're going to do a little pilot program this year with, so we have, we live in a very high fire severity zone in the city of Murrieta. That's not a surprise to anybody. But we also have issues with the 4th of July with not only worried about fire, but we have veterans and we have a whole plethora of animals throughout the city that are impacted by fireworks going off in neighborhoods. And so I wondered if you could expand a little bit on steps that you're taking this year that's been different from before.

Absolutely, thanks for the opportunity. For the past several years, Murrieta Fire and Murrieta PD, we patrol days before the 4th of July. We go out, we make community contact. All of our fire prevention officers are out, fire engines are out, Murrieta PD, upstaffs. And we do a lot of community engagement, but we can't make it to, we have over 120,000 people in the city. We just can't make it to everybody. So messaging's become very important. We've always done social media, but we're elevating that year, coordinating our social media through the entire city. In addition to that, we have these new digital billboards that we're going to be working with our city PIO to get fireworks messaging up on the billboards, letting people know about the dangers of fireworks and the impacts it has on our pets and our veterans and people that are impacted by not just the fire, but the noise of those. And then another thing we're doing is we're piloting yard signs so people that are more impacted by fireworks can post a yard sign in their yard and let their neighbors know, like, This impacts me in a way that it doesn't impact you. So we're working with specifically with the neighborhood group that brought this forward to us. We're going to put these yard signs out in their neighborhood and measure the impacts. And, you know, so that's we will see if we have a decreased call volume in that area and what impacts it has and continue canvassing and doing everything we've done. But we're trying to grow as the situation grows in the city.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Appreciate you taking the initiative from that contact. And we'll see what that neighborhood, you know, if the calls decrease in that neighborhood, then we'll expand it citywide. Find the money to buy some yard signs. And we can reuse them from year to year. So that's going to be interesting. It really worked for this small city. Not that small a city, but a small enough city that they put out the signs every year. I'm sure that your ER department sees a huge increase in people coming with fireworks. No fingers. Really. I mean, it happens. I know that ER volume goes way up on the 4th of July. So, anyhow, that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. I was gone last meeting, and I appreciate Mr. Holliday stepping in and orchestrating what. SEEM TO BE A NICE MEETING. SO THANK YOU FOR DOING THAT, AS ALWAYS. SO THAT LEADS ME BACK TO TWO MEETINGS OR ONE MONTH OF ACTIVITIES. I JUST HIGHLIGHTED A FEW THAT I DON'T HAVE PICTURES. WELL, I HAVE PICTURES, BUT THEY WEREN'T FROM MY PHONE. YOU GUYS ALREADY SAW THEM. ON THE THINGS I DID ATTEND, MEMORIAL DAY I'LL JUST TOUCH ON. IT WAS PROBABLY THE HIGHLIGHT OF ME SITTING IN THIS ROLE, BEING ABLE TO TALK ABOUT MEMORIAL DAY, AND PARTICULARLY WHAT I DO ON MEMORIAL DAY. AND IT'S A WORKOUT THAT CROSSFITS IN THE COUNTRY OR throughout the world do, and it's dedicated to a guy named Lieutenant Michael Murphy. And for 18 years now, I've done that workout, and I got to talk here to the city about that workout, that fallen soldier, you know, run right over to the gym and hang out with the other crowd of people I like to spend time with. So it's always special, but this year was really cool for me. So pleasure to do that and really honored. And then I was the only one that went to the Medical Leaders Lunch on June 5th. And I don't think that's ever happened, ever. I don't know what Lori was doing, but she wasn't there either. Just to call her out, anyway. um scott scott you know that he's always behind that program and he brings great great energy and uh you know it's it provides so much access and information to medical providers clinicians in the area that that maybe don't know what this area needs and you know the gaps they can help fill and getting them word out for a city that's rapidly growing, as we've already talked about a few times, and the growing need for medical services. So great. It's a great launch. If you guys don't go, you should, if you're in the medical industry or have something to offer or talk about, I think that's an email that goes out from the city or it's on our website. Anyway, thank you for continuing to do great work on that. And then I was on a phone call with Senator Ciarto and Cal Cities about Assembly Bill 1383. And to surmise the concept, it's going to be another cost on a population. retirement for some elements of a pension, I guess like a pension system or another layer of that, that is not really feasible. It kind of had some lengthy and I think unreachable goals financially that are burdensome. I mean, obviously we support public safety in every possible way we can. And we have, you know, locally in what we do here, we like to do everything and have that control on how we get to treat our public safety departments. And so had some interesting conversations on that. It's a double-edged sword, essentially, because more of anything, there's always a cost attached to it, and the cost has to come from somewhere. Nothing is free. It always goes to someone to pay for that. And this came at a very hefty price. I forget the exact number. But we have a lot of commitments we want to stick to now and we're going to stay committed to for our public safety. So this one was an interesting conversation. I think it's going to pass anyway. So we'll have to get creative on how we address this. But it's concerning. So just I think we know what's coming, but heads up. And then lastly, today, I got to go see the mobile command unit and the little drone room. That is the most impressive thing I have ever seen in my life physically. All I can say is the e-bike kids are in trouble. Man, this drone, if you've never seen Minority Report, it's not that crazy, but it's almost there. And the sheer safety element it's going to provide, for not having to get in pursuits, for just kind of waiting and being able to follow the kid or the person that's breaking the law without having to make them think they need to run and just hover and wait and be very patient so we can tactfully and safely make a response or the appropriate response to the situation we're trying to address. This might be the greatest thing since the bulletproof vest for you guys. And I... I'm so excited to see where this goes, but also a little terrified of the other side of the coin, if you watch the movie. But we'll stay on the responsible side of that. But I'm super excited just because it's going to make our already amazing police department and fire department even better in so many measurable ways. And I can't wait to see how that program unfolds. And thank you for everyone that's involved. And thank you for my colleagues. I think we unanimously UNANIMOUSLY SUPPORTED THAT PROGRAM FROM DAY ONE. SO I COULDN'T HAVE IMAGINED THE TECHNOLOGY WOULD BE THAT AMAZING.

SO THANK YOU POLICE DEPARTMENT, FIRE DEPARTMENT FOR PARTICIPATING IN THAT AND USING THE TOOLS THAT ARE AWESOME AND SAFE.

AND THAT'S ALL I GOT. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE TIME. AND LET'S CONTINUE ON THIS MEETING. MOVING ON TO PUBLIC COMMENTS. FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS EACH SPEAKER WILL BE LIMITED TO THREE MINUTES UNLESS PREVIOUSLY APPROVED. This is for non-agenda items. Madam City Clerk, do we have any public comments?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Bernita Lacey.

I was going to try to put my own timer on and keep a count on it, but... Good afternoon, mayors, city council members, and everyone present. I am Bernita Lacey. I'm a member of the NAACP. Our local branch is 1034. This is Dr. Cantina Barnes and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which was founded in 1909. The NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. There is a common misunderstanding of the NAACP that we are solely a black only organization. Rather, we are a civil rights organization founded by black and white activists who together addressed the problem of racism in the United States. And that was in the early 20th century. Our branch 1034, which is in Lake Elsinore, was founded in 1977. It represents the communities of Southwest Riverside County, which are Lake Elsinore, Corona, Norco, Cayenne Lake, Wildermar, Marietta, Temecula, Menifee, and Paris. Our mission is to achieve equity, political rights, and social inclusion by advancing policies and practices that expand human and civil rights, eliminate discrimination and accelerate the wellbeing, education and economic security of black people and all persons of color. So today I'm excited to be here to invite you all. We are excited to invite you all to our NAACP Juneteenth celebration, which will be held this Friday. June 19th. It will be held at the Diamond Stadium. And the time is from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. So we're excited. This is our second year that we'll be at the Diamond Stadium celebrating Juneteenth. And hopefully you will be able to send a city council representative to speak. to our organization, that would be great for us. And give you a little bit history of what the branch has been doing. Our branch has an Armed Services Veterans Affairs Committee. Okay, I'm almost out of time. We have been celebrating our Women's Day on Friday, which was the Women Veterans Day on Friday the 12th. We celebrated again this past Saturday at our

Monthly meeting the armies to and this is an army veteran Okay That concludes public comments, mr. Mayor Thank you very much moving on to our consent calendar are there any requests from our City Council to pull any items that for discussion due to a conflict.

Excuse me, Mayor?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, I would like to recuse myself from item number 13 as I own property within 1,000 foot of the project. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Going once, going twice, that's it. Okay, Justin, or Mr. Clifton, would you like to opine on anything?

I would just like to highlight a couple of the consent items. Firstly, items six and seven, which are successor, tentative agreements for successor MOUs for our two fire department bargaining units. So that's a general unit and the management unit. This has been a particularly difficult time for labor negotiations because the economy is just not as strong as it was a number of years ago. To give that a little bit of context, the four years after Measure T, the city was bringing in about $10 million average per year for four years. The number varied, but it averaged right about $10 million of new money each and every year. The four years since then, that slowed to about $2 million new dollars of our major revenue sources. So an 80% reduction in our revenue growth. And so needless to say, that impacts our ability to compensate our team members. And so I want to just recognize that this cycle of negotiations was difficult, always direct, always respectful, and just really, really appreciative of our team members in the fire department for understanding the circumstance we're in. We did reach a tentative agreement that I think strikes a good balance between taking care of some of our public safety units while also being mindful of our responsibility for appropriate financial stewardship. So just want to highlight that next consent item number 10, which is a construction contract amendment for some of the work being done at the library. for the children's room expansion. We have some work to do replacing all the flooring. Similarly, we're doing some concrete walkways and entryways for ADA improvements to address some flooding issues, a number of things that they just have too much impact to remain open. So we are planning a closure. It's unfortunately a two-week closure starting July 19th. We've really thought a lot about how do we minimize the impact to operations and But ultimately, there just aren't very good ways to replace carpet while you're in a building. Many of the shelves, the office furniture and everything needs to move from one side to the other and back. So we're doing this as quickly as we can. We're trying to minimize the disruption to programming. at the end of the day, it's going to take this approximately two weeks. I'm planning on reopening August 3rd. So more details in the agenda report and certainly for patrons that are concerned, we will have a lot more communication on that closure. But please do understand we're also stacking as much of that high-impact work during that two-week period as we can so that we can get some of that more disruptive, noisy work out of the way. Unfortunately, there's just no way around avoiding a little bit of the closure. So That's all from me.

Thank you very much for that additional detail. I'd like to call for a motion and a second for the approval of the consent calendar. I have a motion by Councilman DeForest and a second by Councilman Warren. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Thank you. All right. Our first public hearing for the day slash almost night. We're going to talk about Assembly Bill 2561, status of job vacancies. Buckle up, everyone.

Good afternoon, honorable mayor, council members, city staff, and members of the public. I'm Mike McGee, the city's human resources manager. and my co-presenter is Michelle Temes, Senior Human Resources Analyst. Today we are here to present a required annual report on the city's employment vacancies pursuant to the requirements of Assembly Bill 2561. As a reminder, the bill became effective January 1st of last year with the intent of identifying public sector vacancies as an issue of statewide concern. Compliance is administered and enforced by the state's Public Employment Relations Board. The bill requires an annual public hearing before the agency's legislative body prior to the adoption of the budget to report on the status of vacancies in the city, to identify the city's recruitment and retention efforts, and to identify the challenges to recruiting to fill any vacancies. In recognition to the full agenda this evening, we will move right to the status of the city's vacancies. The city currently has 472 authorized positions with an average 5.26% vacancy rate across all authorized positions. City departments with the highest number of current vacancies include the City Manager's Office, where there's ongoing recruitment, I think that's just been resolved. Community services recreation and recruitment is in progress there for seasonal hires. Fire administration to replace a recent departure, and that is also in process. And then a public works engineering recruitment that we're planning with public works engineering. The city is currently recruiting for the following positions. Audiovisual technician, police records supervisor as an internal only recruitment. Senior executive assistant, and I think that's been resolved. Development review coordinator, office assistant in the planning department, and a fire captain, which is an internal opportunity for their training assignment. Since our report last May, HR staff did not identify any specific classifications with consistent vacancies that resulted from recruitment or retention problems. Vacancies are within normal expectations and are commonly caused by retirements, promotions, interdepartmental appointments, or resignations due to family relocation or cost of living in California. As a result, staff is not recommending any changes to policies, procedures, or recruitment activities this year. But please note, this spring, the city will be negotiating the introduction of a recruitment policy based on the city's standard operating procedure with the city's general and supervisory labor groups. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Michelle to briefly review the city's recruitment data, review the city's ongoing recruitment efforts, and to identify challenges that can impact our recruiting efforts. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Mike. So as Mike stated,

I don't think you're Mike's on or just there you go.

So as Mike stated, I'm going to be speaking on the recruitment and retention and our numbers. So during this calendar year, 2025, the city has conducted 67 recruitments and received a total of 9587 applications. As a result of those recruitment efforts, we have hired 60 new employees. We've also promoted 59 internal employees, demonstrating a strong opportunity for career advancement within the organization. During the same time period, the city has experienced 42 employee separations. These are due to retirements, resignations, as well as terminations. Overall, these numbers reflect a healthy level of recruitment activity and continued organizational growth while maintaining internal promotional opportunities that exists for staff. Oops, just kidding. Going back. These ongoing recruitment efforts, the city continues to utilize a variety of recruitment strategies in order to attract candidates. The city's recruitment platforms include the city's website, government jobs, as well as LinkedIn. In addition, we utilize additional industry-specific recruitment resources for hard-to-fill vacancies. For example, during this recent year, for our building officer, sorry, building official recruitment, The position was advertised through both International Code Council and California Building Officials Association to reach qualified professionals. The city also participates in city and educational outreach efforts, including job fairs hosted by our Wildermere Marietta Chamber of Commerce and local colleges. These efforts help increase awareness of employment opportunities and strengthen the city's candidate pipeline. We'll also talk about the challenges of recruitment and retention. Like many public agencies, the city continues to face several recruitment and retention challenges. These challenges include limited financial resources, industry-specific staffing shortages, and the need to remain competitive in compensation offered by neighboring agencies and public sector. While recruitment and retention concerns arise, staff work with departments to develop solutions to address operational needs. For one example, we have a city dispatch over hire agreement. This program allows our police department to hire additional dispatchers when separations are anticipated. By proactively maintaining staffing levels, the city reduces the need for mandatory overtime and helps minimize burnout for existing dispatch personnel. In summary, based on our staff's review, the recruitment and retention data, there is no specific classifications that were identified as experiencing consistent or ongoing issues. Current vacancies are generally attributed to normal workforce movement, including retirements, promotions, interdepartmental appointments, and resignations resulting from personal circumstances such as family relocation and cost of living considerations. As a result, staff are not recommending any changes to the recruitment policies, procedures, or recruitment activities at this time. However, as Mike stated, in spring of this year, we anticipate negotiating and implementing a formal recruitment policy with the city's general and supervisory labor groups, The proposed policy will be based on the city's existing recruitment standards, operating procedures, and will be further formalized our current recruitment practices. This concludes our presentation. We'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. Looks like we got Mr. Holliday, and probably going to apologize for his World War I replica canteen commotion that happened earlier.

It wasn't me. Oh, was it you? No, it was not me.

Oh, it was metal, whatever it was. I'm kidding.

Go ahead. My question has less to do with your presentation, which was excellent, by the way. I wanted to ask some questions of why we need to do this. So what was the purpose of AB 2561?

The state legislature found that there was an impact when there's vacancies in the public sector and that those impacts fall to other people who are filling the roles, if you will, or picking up the work. And so that can slow down and create further impacts because people don't want to be left holding the only bag of work. And so oftentimes that will cause other people to move on. So they identified it. They mandated that this is something we have to do and we have to come and do this hearing to identify what the issues are. We don't have any issues in our city, and I'm happy to report that, but we are required to do it pursuant to the legislation.

And, of course, when they passed that piece of legislation, they didn't take into fact the impact that having to report it for a city that doesn't need it every single year has on our organization. That is correct, sir.

All right. Thank you. It's called government overreach, sir.

Yeah, if you looked up in the dictionary, opposite of hard to fill, it would be 9,587 applicants for 67 jobs. So I don't think we have that problem. So I agree. And thank you for the report. I know it's a requirement, but we appreciate you guys staying on top of it. I'm now going to open the public hearing. Madam City Clerk, are there any public testimony on this item?

Seeing none, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Any more council thoughts? Deliberation. Okay. I didn't think so. And I would like to close the public hearing now and call for a motion and a second to move this forward. I have a motion by Councilman Warren and a second by Mayor Prosim Holiday. Let's vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Thank you very much for your time. Have a good night. Next up, we have our adoption of the fiscal year 2026-27 from our Marietta Fire Department, Fire District Operating Budget. Who from staff is here? Oh, this.

Well, good evening, Mayor, council members, members of the public. I'm a finance director, and to my right is Tanner Benson, our financial analyst. And the main objective of this public hearing is primarily to complete an administrative requirement to adopt the fiscal year 2026-27 final operating budget for the Marietta Fire District. As a reminder, CITY COUNCIL RECEIVED A DETAILED BUDGET REPORT AND PRESENTATION FOR THE CITYWIDE OPERATING BUDGET WHICH INCLUDED THE FIRE DISTRICT FUND AT THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING ON JUNE 3, 2025. At that time, council approved the preliminary fiscal year 2026 as well as fiscal year 2027 fire district budget. Tonight, we are holding this public hearing prior to the adoption of the final budget for fiscal year 2027 so that we are in accordance with California Health Safety Code 13890, 13893, and 13895. So with that said, Tanner is going to briefly go over the budget for Fire District for both revenues and expenditures for fiscal year 26 and 27.

Thank you, Javier. For fiscal year 26-27, the proposed budget for the City of Marietta's Fire District is $29,249,491 for both revenues and expenditures. This is an increase of approximately 4% over the adopted budget for fiscal year 26, and it is a balanced budget for the next fiscal year. There are no substantial increases in the fire district revenue budget. Most increases range from 2% to 5%, as you see on the screen above. The most substantial increases in revenues are from property tax revenues increasing 5% or approximately $871,000. Other miscellaneous revenues are increasing by 2% or $27,000. This increase is related to slight increases in interest income and anticipated state reimbursements. And finally, charges for services is another larger increase. which is increasing by about 2%, which is for property and business inspections. We do also, on this slide, we do also want to highlight additional contributions to the fire district and its reserves to make it whole. An operating transfer from Measure T is necessary to balance the fire district budget for fiscal year 27, a budgeted transfer of approximately $6,000 6.48 million is needed. This is a 4% increase over fiscal year 26 or about $230,000. Measure T will also fund the increase in the district's operating reserve, increasing it from 29% to 30%. The increase totals $336,000 for fiscal year 27. The total operating reserve for the fire district will be $8,736,000. $907. Similar to revenues, the fire district expenditures are not seeing many substantial increases to the budget. The primary increases in expenditures are from the following. First is personnel costs, which are increasing approximately $861,000 or 4%, which is due to various factors such as estimated overtime workers comp and three additional authorized positions that were approved during the biennial budget process. Operations and maintenance, or O&M, is also increasing heading into fiscal year 27 by $96,000, mainly due to an increase in contract services and maintenance services. One-time expenditures are increasing by approximately $35,000 due to planned replacement for relighting equipment for five fire vehicles. And internal service charges are increasing by roughly 8% or $163,000 due to higher property and general liability costs. It also does take into account the three previously approved authorized positions. Our recommended action are to hold the public hearing and to adopt the proposed resolution to approve the fiscal year 26-27 final operating budget for the Marietta Fire Department. This concludes our presentation, and we are available for questions.

Thank you both for the presentation. There's no questions, but it sounds like there's one brewing. No questions? Oh, wow. Okay. No, I don't want you to ask a question if you didn't actually have one. Thank you very much. It looks like we actually have the most information that we've all held and we have no questions. Thank you. Now I'd like to open the public hearing. Does Ron feel okay? I don't know. I would like Madam City Clerk, is there any public testimony on this item?

Seeing none.

Okay, thank you. And back to council, which we probably have nothing else. And I will ask for a motion and a second. I'll close the public hearing first. Sorry. And now I'd like to ask for a motion and a second. And I have a motion by Councilman DeForest and a second by Mayor Pro Tem Holiday.

Let's vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0. Thanks, guys.

Come on down. Establishing a virtual participation policy pursuant to Senate Bill 707. Hello, Crystal.

Hello, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

I'm amazing. Thank you for asking. How are you?

Great, thanks. Happy to be here. So good evening, mayor and city council. As you know, my name is Kristen McDonald. I'm your city clerk. So today I'll be presenting the establishment of virtual participation policy as stated there. It will become effective July 1st. And this is required by all local agencies from the state of California, as you mentioned, to implement hybrid meetings. So before I go over the actual policy that we're discussing today and adopting, I just wanted to give a brief overview of what 707 is. It's actually pretty broad. And so I put there just some basic information. As I stated, hybrid meetings should be imposed by July 1st, 2026. There's remote participation requirements. So it's a two-way participation that could be TELEPHONIC OR AUDIOVISUAL. AND THERE'S LIMITED, IT'S LIMITED FOR THE LEGISLATIVE BODY AS IT HAS BEEN IN THE PAST AND THAT'S NOT NEW. THERE'S ALSO TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTION POLICY THAT IS REQUIRED AND THAT IS WHERE THE CITY ATTORNEY HAS HELPED ME COME UP WITH SOMETHING FOR YOU TODAY AND THAT WILL LEAD TO ADOPTION OF THIS RESOLUTION. It also covers accessibility. So there's a website meeting portal requirement that I'm required to do. I'm required to provide participation information. It has to be on the website. Captioning capabilities, they actually impose outreach on the city. And then lastly, there's translation and language access. So it's a public translation board. that is required of us and a census language threshold that all of these things, and this isn't all of it, but that's pretty much the gist of it. You'll see the checkoffs, those are what we've done so far, but I'm hoping to check off some more boxes today if this council, if it is the pleasure of this council. Well, okay. So, I can still hear you, you know. So why is city council action needed tonight? Well, it's a statutory requirement, basically. I put the language there for you in part, but basically a policy regarding disruption of telephonic or internet service. There needs to be a policy on if and when, or if that happens, hopefully not when it does happen. And so what the city attorney did was, gratefully, She established this policy just kind of as an all-encompassing. And what it does is it makes things consistent when it comes to in-person versus remote. And it satisfies the portion of the Brown Act amendments. So our virtual participation policy highlights, these are the highlights of the policy that is with you today under consideration. It basically just says, I administer the platform. I'm providing the meeting access. We established some procedures for public comments in person and virtual. The technical disruptions, that's the main part. That's the reason really why I'm here specifically today. Accessibility, as I mentioned, meeting information on the website and written public comments. We just kind of, Tiffany did a great job of actually covering all of this in that wonderful policy. And so that is what is before you today. So the technology disruptions, so this is basically what it says. It's really those four things. We have to recess if it is interrupted based off of technology. We have up to an hour to restore service, and that is city staff. That would be myself, of course, AV and IT maybe. And we are allowed to reconvene if it is restored. I have to do some sort of, notification once that's done. And if we actually cannot resolve it, then we would likely continue it. That's the gist of the disruption policy. Before I wrap up, I did want to state that I've been the city clerk for Murrieta for about five and a half years, and I'm very grateful for it. And I think that I have not only proven that I have a passion for transparency and accessibility and, of course, public participation, although I don't know where all the people are at today. Thank you for that. Yeah. But I did want to state for the record that, and I'm being as neutral as possible, but it does impose some things, right? It does introduce some administrative challenges. Technology, of course, things that we may or may not have already. Operationally, it affects how we run business here at the city, including the legislative body. So I do know that this council, I've been lucky, does share and support my goal of being accessible, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. But this is just something that we've got to move forward on, and I think that the intent is good. And so with that, here's our readiness. So what have we done already? We've identified roles and responsibilities. There's quite a few of us involved in this. We've tested some platforms already. We might have to come back to purchase something, but right now we're working with what we have. We've got some demonstrations from some vendors that have come out of the woodworks because of this new legislation. We've established a translation board that will be up front with our regular city hall postings. That is for the public to place their own translations, not for the city. We have the disruption policy prepared. And, of course, a participation guide will be posted as appropriate once this council adopts, if and when you do. Some impacts. It's going to take additional staff, administratively and operationally. We're going to have to do some training. It's a learning curve, so I'm asking for a grace period. Future language access obligations are on the horizon, possibly, based off of our percentage of the language. It's Spanish. Technology and software costs are a possibility. Accessibility compliance monitoring, that's something that I'll work with Mr. McGee on. And, of course, new requirements that did not dedicate any state funding. So those are some of the impacts, challenges we have that's also... That's our readiness, and we feel pretty good about it. We think that it will get us compliant. So with that, I'm asking this council to adopt a resolution, 26-4951, and I'm available, as well as the city attorney, to answer any questions.

Thank you. I'm relieved that Senator Durazo did this. You guys are already so amazing, so thank you for... Just being on top of everything. We have some questions from Council. Mr. Holliday, you're up.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Great job. Great presentation. I want to go to the, well, first I want to ask a couple things. We already have our meetings online currently.

Folks can view online. but they cannot participate.

Right. Yes. That's really the change is the two-way communication. Correct. Because we've been posting, we have a live feed of these meetings for years.

Yes, sir.

That's not new. So this is more about the two-way communication, which is the question I have is about the technology disruption. So if I'm understanding it correctly, that if... there's an internet outage, whatever the technology problem is. It could be outside of this building. It could be completely outside of our control. We have to cease doing business at that point until the two-way communication is restored. Is that correct?

That is correct.

And if we can't restore it, even if it's outside of our control, even if we still have audio-visual going out, if we can't restore that two-way commission, we have to to stop our entire meeting.

Madam City Attorney?

I was afraid you were going to say that.

If I could add, though, some agencies are going to use two methods to stream. So if there's like a hiccup with one, you have another one going and you can continue. So there are ways to try and have redundancies to prevent that from happening. But I don't know that we've ever had that problem with the internet down that stops the meeting from being broadcast.

So about two methods of streaming for two or three people watching.

Yeah. But my concern is if we are not allowed to continue the meeting, because I know it said the item can be continued, you'd have to continue the whole balance of the agenda if we weren't able to restore it in an hour. Correct. Correct. And there are time-sensitive things on agendas that sometimes can't be continued. What do we do with that?

You'd have to find a time when a quorum can come, and you wouldn't necessarily wait until your next regular meeting. You would have to probably call a special meeting if there's something time-sensitive, and maybe the next day.

Aren't there noticing requirements, or because it's continued, it doesn't have to be?

There are shorter time when it's a continued and calling a special meeting, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the rest of it, transparency and getting more people involved. And I'm sure you guys have talked about policies. If somebody's unruly online or saying things they shouldn't be saying, we can mute them or whatever. They can't just say whatever they want, right? Correct. Yeah, just like if they're here and they go crazy, we have rules for that. I'm not concerned about any of that. I'm concerned about this technology disruption where all of a sudden people have come here on an issue and they can't be heard because some technology disrupted. Let me ask this. If there's no one that wanted to speak on an item, even if the technology wasn't working, does that mean we can continue?

No. There are no exceptions.

There are no exceptions. It's over. Thank you.

Reset the router. Ms. Cindy Warren.

I think it had to. And just for clarification, we did have a technology issue at one of our recent planning commission meetings because residents were calling me asking why they could not see the meeting online. Is that not correct?

We did have issues. I think it had a little more to do with operating the technology and the technology itself, but it does prove that, you know, things do happen.

Correct. Okay. So just so that everybody understands this clearly, is there a cost associated with this? You talked about staff. We've talked about maybe new technology we have to get, perhaps a backup system. If we cancel a meeting or continue a meeting on, there's more staff time to do new postings and new notifications. Do we have a cost to this new bill that they're giving us?

It's immeasurable.

Yeah.

I don't have a specific cost right now.

But there will be a cost to this down the road. Okay. So, again, the state is mandating it with no financial backup and putting it on the back of our taxpayers for the cost of anything that we have to do to implement this new bill, correct? Yes. I'm just in awe over this type of thing. It just absolutely doesn't sit well with me, but there you have it. Thank you.

I think we've forgotten what state we're in. Tiffany, the two-way communication, we already do the live feed, is the only element missing out of that is that open gateway back to the open comments?

Right. Something like Zoom will be used to allow them to speak during.

Okay. Okay. I'm not surprised by this bill at all. So thank you for the presentation. Oh, you have a question. Okay.

Does it specify the technology we have to use? No. So it could be, I mean, does it have to be audio? Can it be messaging?

Yes, it needs to include video and audio. Yeah, it does, pardon me, it does stay audio, visual, or telephone.

Okay, so we can't use like Zoom chat or something. They'll have a rotary phone, it's fine.

And that would probably take longer to go back and forth if someone had to type in. Questions that would be acceptable zoom. No, I'm saying that would take longer.

Oh, yes Yeah, I'm just saying if looking at backup scenarios to not have to cancel entire meeting if this chat worked, but the Audio portion didn't for some reason if that was the hiccup.

I think that would be acceptable.

Okay. Good.

Thank you Mrs. Stone do you have a question mr. Mayor?

I'm madam city clerk. I With regards to the online public speaking, do they have to be a Marietta resident in order to give their opinion? Nope. No. So I want to just take Kratom, for example, which was, you know, a little bit of a controversial subject. And... So if we had a very controversial subject, anybody within the United States can call in and give their opinion. Yes.

Thank you.

I'd like to add.

I think you could set parameters. Sometimes the chair of the meeting, if they see that there's 50 people had a comment card, you can say things like, you know, if what you want to say is already being said, feel free to limit your comments to like, I agree with that speaker or to shorten the time per speaker or to say, you know, we're only going to have an hour and a half on this item or something like that. I don't think you have to give a thousand people if they show up on Kratom three minutes. So there, there, if that were to happen, we could address it.

Also, As we all know on social media, it's very easy to hide behind your phone and your computer and be disrespectful, downright rude. And Madam City Attorney, if for any reason we're finding that the phone calls are being made detrimental to the city or even a council member. I know that we have a policy that we have to stand down, but again, this gives them ammunition. And I don't think it's right that as council members that we cannot exercise our first amendment to defend our actions, defend the city. And so how do we do that?

I mean, the same way that you do now when someone's in person, you ask the chair to have the ability to comment. I mean, you should not get into a back-to-back, like a debate on something. But maybe after all the public speakers are done, you might ask to address something.

So if they give their three minutes, and let's just say, hypothetically, there is somebody that's very aggressive towards me. I want to be able to respond, so would our city clerk mute them, because they've already given their three minutes, and allow me my First Amendment rights to defend whatever it is, and then they're done?

Well, they only get three minutes, so it'll actually be easier to mute them online than if they were in person, because they will be done, and they will not get more time.

Okay, thank you.

Where are we at? Public comment. Question. Is there any public comments on this?

Seeing none.

Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? You, Lori, another. Okay, here we go.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Well, this is another unfunded mandate from the state of California, which I don't think that our legislature really gave much thought about the ramifications on staff, on council, and on the residents of the city of Marietta. It's frustrating. What our legislature is doing, imposing so many egregious bills that do not make sense to me. And I just really needed to be vocal about my opinion about this. And I want to thank you, our city clerk, for spending time with me. I know that you're going to be addressing many questions that I have with our city attorney. And hopefully she'll come back and address all my concerns publicly as I shared a few things here today. Because I wanted to open up this dialogue to show our residents and our staff and our council the potential of what could happen with the city of Marietta. So I want to thank you and your team. And I'm sorry that you have to impose this. And again, it's just another layer of a mandate that's imposed on us that I'm praying and hoping that we're not affected by this negatively. So thank you to you and your team, Crystal.

Mr. Holliday.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This starts next meeting. Yes, okay, so this will be in effect the next meeting While I have many many concerns about this legislation and what we're required to do. I'm not going to go into all of that now Because I don't like to exercise futile futile adventures, but I will say my biggest concern is And and what I'd like you and the city attorney to address not today obviously is We have an agenda item where people have taken the time out of their day to come down and speak on that issue. And because of a potential technology disruption for somebody who may not even live in the city, they don't get their time and they have to come back. And I think it's wrong to prioritize somebody that didn't spend the time to come down over the person that just randomly decided to click on their computer or to call in. So that would be my concern, is to try and figure out how to not impact those people that actually made an effort because it was that important to them. I'm all for transparency. I agree with councilmember stone. We did we got to make sure that we don't let this become detrimental to the city More communication. I know councilmember stone is always for more communication. So those issues I mean the facts unfunded mandate obviously we're used to but those issues we can deal with the thing I'm concerned about is is Not trampling over someone's rights for someone else if that makes sense. I That makes sense. So, anyhow, thank you.

That's noted, and I will talk to Tiffany.

Thank you much. My last comment before we, what? Oh, Tiffany.

I just wanted to clarify, if someone trying to speak, whether they live in our community or not, has problems on their end, that does not affect us, and they don't get to speak. The meeting stops if our transmission has a problem.

We're the ones liable for the disconnection.

If someone's trying to call in and we can't hear them or whatever, we can move on.

And if other people are calling in and we can hear them but not the one person, then we're good to go. If nobody can call in, then we have a problem.

Gotcha. Thank you for the presentation on this item. Just a reminder that voting matters, and this is why people who make this decision, they're not appointed, they're elected by all of the citizens of the state. Right? I think?

Yeah.

Senators and our assembly. Yes. At this time, I'd like to call for a motion and a second. Going once.

Maybe I need to ask another question.

No, no. I'll make a motion. You're going to make a motion? Yeah, I'll make a motion here.

What happens if we don't pass this?

I'm not sure that there are penalties stated in there, but there is an obligation to start following these new laws starting July 1st. So staff will have to implement it without there being an official adopted policy.

It would only hurt our staff.

I mean, it's not ideal. We like people to know what the rules are.

We have a motion by me and a second by Council Member DeForest. Let's vote. Let's go let alone even together.

Motion carries for one with Council Member Stone dissenting.

Thank you. And next and final for our agenda, is the consideration of Resolution 264952 to 264954, calling a general municipal election to be held on November 3rd. Crystal, what do you got for us?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this is, of course, a procedural item. You should be familiar with all of this. I've done this in past elections in 2022 and 2024. So here I am again for our 2026 election. And as Ron indicated, I'm very excited about it. So I have Kimberly here with me tonight sitting by my side. We're known as the dream team, so you're welcome. So tonight what we're going to do is we're going to go over, there are three main things here. It's reviewing the resolutions that are required by law to be adopted. We're going to touch base on the nomination period And we're just going to quickly touch on some outreach and education just for folks watching and for you as well. All right, before I get into it, that's the code right there that defines when we have our elections. And it's the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in each even-numbered year. So that would be November 3rd. And this will be for Districts 1, 2, and 5. I'm going to pass it on to Kimberly. She's going to go over all of the fun stuff.

All righty. So like Crystal said, my name is Kimberly Ramirez. I am the deputy city clerk. And this is actually part of my favorite time of the year. I love the election process. So this is fun for me. So to begin with, the first portion of our PowerPoint is that I will go over the resolutions that kind of make up our consolidation process. First one up is resolution number 26-4952. This is a procedural resolution that is required by the California Elections Code, and it does three main things. One, it calls the election. Two, it states that the city clerk is going to be the local elections official, which comes with some responsibilities, such as being the one to issuing and accept nomination papers, doing candidate verification and public noticing. And then third, it also provides the procedure in case of a tie vote to be solved by lot. Historically, Murrieta has opted to resolve tie votes by lot instead of holding a special runoff election. At this time, are there any questions from the city council regarding this specific reso? And then can I also get some confirmation that you would like to proceed by lot in case there is a tie vote?

Yes.

Yes.

Head nods.

Head nods.

Perfect. Thank you. Next one up is resolution number 26 dash 4953. This request formal consolidation with the county of Riverside and sets forth the offices that are going to be voted upon. One thing that I would like to highlight about this resolution is that even though the city clerk is our local elections official, our Tinoco, the registrar of voters, who is the county's election official, is going to administer our election. So what that means is he's going to be the one in charge of mailing out ballots. sending out the voting pamphlets, setting up the voting equipment, poll workers, canvassing, certifying, all that jazz. So what we do, we just certify and do the nomination paper process. So any questions on this resolution at this time?

Perfect.

And last but not least is the resolution number 26-4954, which goes over candidate statements. Candidate statements are optional, but do provide an opportunity for candidates to state their qualifications and provide their message to voters. The elections code provides that the candidate statement be no more than 200 words, but does provide an opportunity for the legislative body to increase it from 200 to 400 words, which the city of Murrieta has done since around 2014. And during tonight's motion, I am going to ask that you specify if you would like to do option A, which is 200 words, or option B, which is 400 words. And on the screen is the estimated cost for the candidate statements. 200 words is around $600. 400 is $800. And then there is also an option for digital candidate statements. So the candidate has the option to just distribute the digital candidate statement only, and this will not be included in the voter pamphlets.

Who pays for that?

The candidates. Okay.

The city does not pay anything at all. I think we have a question on this particular item by Councilman Stone.

Can you explain in layman terms what you mean by digital candidate statement?

So that means that once the candidate provides a candidate statement and it comes time, Instead of it being printed in that little booklet that the county provides to all registered voters, they'll just distribute it electronically via email to the emails that they have on file for the city of Marietta's district.

So are we saying 200 words, 400 words, or digital?

No, we're saying just 200 or 400. And then regardless of that, they have the option of sending it out Electronically only if they choose not to have it printed.

Okay, and that's an email only. Yes, and That's interesting That they're they're proposing that I can tell you that everything I get from the register of voters goes to my spam so Interesting But but So, yeah, so it's additional from the 600 and the 800 is another 260.

No.

No, so.

If they do the 200 word, they would just pay 600 and that's gonna be included electronically. But if they don't wanna spend the full $600, they do have the option of just sending it only through electronic distribution by the county.

The internet.

Interesting. Okay, thank you for answering my questions.

I think this is kind of a discussion for this part of it. Do you need to know our, I don't really have an opinion, I guess. If they're paying for it, I don't. Colleagues, what do you feel on this?

Well, I have a question. So if we choose the 400 and somebody only does 200 words, are they going to be charged 800?

I would say they probably will be. Because we have to give them an advance after this I have to send something to the county and I have to identify whether we're doing 200 or 400 and that will determine their costs So if we approve the 400 even if somebody was only gonna submit 200 it's gonna cost them a little more That's that's really the only decision that we have to make My thought is like if they're paying for it and they want to speak on an on a public election and

I don't want to restrict them. No, no, this is a candidate pays for this.

But if a candidate wanted to only do 200 words and we approve 400, they're paying more. That's my only point. We're enforcing this on every candidate, whether they would have done it or not.

You want 400? Talk to me.

Is it discussion?

This is discussion time, right? Okay. I mean, I don't know why we can't get it done in 200 words, people. There's no reason to spend the extra money, in my opinion. Okay, wait a minute.

It's hard for me to talk about this. I know it is. Because I'm coming from a different perspective than, you know, a candidate. Okay. I would say strategy-wise, I would go for the 400 word.

But you're only going to get anybody's attention for a nanosecond when they read it anyway. So, I mean, you know, I look at it that way.

What is our current policy? 400? 400. Last election, it was 400. 400, yeah. Yeah. I think it should stay. I think it should stay, too.

Stay the same. There's three.

Okay, fine. Four. And then I would like to note that in case that the candidates do end up overpaying, we do issue a refund in case it is cheaper. And then the opposite goes. If it does end up being more expensive, we do send out a bill.

Overpaying because they didn't count the words or it becomes cheaper? It comes from the county. Okay.

Which you did during our last time. Yes. Okay.

So I think there's consensus on the 400, keeping it the same as last time. And returning the money.

And returning the money. And just again, this is part of the administrative responsibilities of the local elections official. The three resolutions that we just discussed will be submitted over to the registrar voters by June 26th. in order for Murrieta to complete the consolidation process with the county. And if there are no further questions regarding those resos, I'm going to pass it over to our city clerk.

Thank you very much. Are there any public comments for this?

We're not there yet, Mr. Mayor. So no further comments on those three resolutions, correct?

Correct.

Okay, so we're just going to move on to the nomination period. I'm going to go as quickly as I can. So here's the nomination period. It's July 13th, 8 a.m. through August 7th. That's pursuant to the elections code, of course, which drives pretty much everything I do when it comes to the election. And so what I'll do is I'll be making appointments starting tomorrow for anybody who wants to come and pull papers and the nomination papers, of course. They can't start, they can't come see me until July 13th, but we're going to start making appointments starting tomorrow. I do get a lot of questions. Why can't you at least give them to me in advance or let me pull them early? And it's because of this code right here. The law does not allow that I do that. So that is the nomination period, July 13th. It ends August 7th. There is an extension of a nomination period. That's if the incumbent does not pull papers or file. so it would be extended to August 12th. The incumbent themselves is not entitled to this extension, and so that's only if the incumbent chooses not to file with me. These are the required qualifications to be a council member. It's pretty self-explanatory there. You must reside in, be a registered voter in, the district in which he or she seeks election at the time nomination papers are issued. That's pursuant to the code, so that, again, I'm going to reiterate, that's for Districts 1, 2, and 5. So, pulling nomination papers, I'm asking anybody who's interested to contact my office, schedule an appointment, expect 30 to 45 minutes. It has tended to run longer with those that have not had experience. I will officially Issue the nomination papers, and I will go over any additional filing requirements with the potential candidate at that time. I will then request that they file the nomination papers. You schedule an appointment, but I do accept walk-ins for that. And you expect the same amount of time. I'll confirm and review all paperwork. I'll issue an oath because that is pursuant to the law that's required when nomination papers are filed. And I will go over some more administrative information with the potential candidate. And then the signature verification process will begin. I did want to talk about some outreach here. So I've gotten some input on sign locations, campaign signs. That's been a little bit of a hot topic these days. And so I want to thank Cameron. He's with our GIS division. And what he created was a restricted sign location viewer. that's a nice little picture of what it looks like just on the onset. I don't have it live here. It's really something that will be introduced to potential candidates. I will be sharing this with the county and the school board as well. And it really identifies where you cannot place a sign, a campaign sign, and we're hoping that that will help navigate some of the issues we're having and that hopefully will assist code enforcement. So that is part of our ongoing efforts to assist candidates as much as we can. And the general outreach that we're doing, it's the, you know, I do our website. I have a webpage, and there's the website location there, muriatsca.gov forward slash elections. That's where you can find any information, any and all information, public notices, anything election-related. The outreach, I'll be holding some informational sessions. We will disperse that through social media. I'm working with our PIO, Hilder. She's going to assist me with a video series that we're really excited about. Signage, that's something I kind of just talked about right now. We also had a tentative vote by mail, which Councilmember DeForest graciously complimented us on. We tentatively intend to do that. It's based on scheduling and resources, of course. But it was a success, so we're hoping to do that again for November. So the recommendation is to adopt resolutions 4952, 4953, 4954. And of course, direct me to fulfill any administrative requirements in accordance with the law. And I'm available for any questions.

Okay, I think we took a detour in the middle of that. So now we're doing council questions on the entire presentation, not just that side street. Any council questions? Looks like Ms. Laurie Stone. No? Okay, never mind. Any public comments on this one?

Seeing none, but I am going to step away to run the voting system. Okay.

And then back to discussion. Any final words? Nope. And I'll call for a motion and a second.

I'm in the queue.

Oh, you're in the queue now? Yeah. Okay.

I just want to say thank you for doing the video that you're going to be doing. I think it's just another great layer of communicating and educating our community about signs. You know, a lot of them still don't understand right-of-ways and city properties, and by doing a visual, I think it's going to be really, really successful. So thank you for implementing that. You're welcome.

Thank you for that comment. And now I will ask for a motion and a second. And I have a motion from Councilwoman DeForest and a second from... It went away. It looks like Councilwoman Stone, maybe. There we go. And let's vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Thank you. Moving on to the last couple of few items for reconsideration. Madam City Clerk, can you take over, please?

Any council member who voted on the prevailing side of the original motion may move a reconsideration to consider new information or correct inadvertent errors on a non-public hearing item at the same or the next meeting. At this time, are there any requests from the City Council for reconsideration? Seeing none. If I may move on to council member requests. Now is the time for council member requests to add or withdraw items to future agendas. There will be no discussion on the request. A brief explanation of the request may be given. The merit of the items being requested may not be discussed or debated. Are there any council member requests? Seeing none. And for the record, there are no public comments at this time.

Thank you.

At this time, Madam City Clerk, would you please go over our closed session agenda that we're about to go into?

The city council will meet in closed session on three items. CS1 conference with the legal council on 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 54957.6 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, and finally the CS3. Conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. The City Council will conduct a closed session with the City Manager, Assistant City Manager, Deputy City Manager, Administrative Services Director, and City Attorney pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.95b to consider the following workers' compensation claims. Driscoll V, City of Marietta, WCAV, case number ADJ17758741.

You're going to read the next proclamation. We'll be back after closed session. Nothing. I like Lori a lot. We're welcome back from closed session. Madam City Attorney, can you please provide a report out of what we covered in closed session?

Thank you, Mayor. The City Council met in closed session on three items. The first was to confer with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation in one case pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.94. The city council was updated and asked questions. No reportable action. The second item was to confer with labor negotiators, labor negotiations with the MPOA, the MPMA, and the MFA, and MFMA. The City Council received updates from staff and asked questions, no reportable action. The final item was regarding existing litigation in the matter of Driscoll v. City of Murrieta. Again, the Council was updated and provided direction to staff, no reportable action. Thank you.

Madam City Attorney, for the record, all members of Council were present?

Yes. Thank you.

Do I need to say anything about Councilman LaForest not being here for closeout? She did.

Okay.

Never mind. Everyone's here. With that all said and done, I'd like to adjourn this meeting. You guys have a good evening.