City Council - Regular Meeting

GOOD AFTERNOON, EVERYONE. WELCOME BACK FROM OUR SUMMER RECESS. WELCOME TO THE AUGUST 18TH CITY COUNCIL REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING. AS A REMINDER, WE ARE UTILIZING TEAMS FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS TO ALLOW FOR ONLINE PARTICIPATION. The city clerk will provide direction during the public comment portion. And just a heads up, the team's software side of that is lagging today, so just please allow some patience and the buffering to get through. If that happens, we may get lucky. And then I also apologize for the warmth in here. We're not doing hot yoga, but the air conditioner is having issues, but we are currently working on it. Madam City Clerk, can you please do roll call?

Councilmember Warren. Present. Councilmember DeForest. Here. Councilmember Stone. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday.

Here.

Mayor Lavelle.

Here.

Let the record reflect all members are present.

Thank you. At this time, we will do the Pledge of Allegiance and the invocation. The Pledge of Allegiance is going to be led by Councilwoman Warren, and the invocation will be led by Dr. Fred Schaefer from the United Church of the Valley.

If you are able, please stand, remove your hats, place your hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

Let us be in a spirit of prayer as we begin with a moment of silence. God, you are with us here in this place even now. For there is no place we can go that you are not. You are a God of all people. God of different faiths. But more than that, you are also the God of community. Small communities, large communities. And on this day, we thank you for the community of Murrieta. You brought us here to live, to play, to work. to thrive, to learn, to grow. And we thank you for all of those opportunities you give to us here in this place called home. We pray, oh God, today for those who would lead this city, the councilmen and councilwomen, the mayor, the city manager and attorneys and the administrative staff of this city. And I ask, O God, on this day that you would continue to grant them servant hearts. For your son Jesus, as he roamed this earth and taught, he taught as a servant leader. We pray that these leaders here would have that same kind of servant heart. Guide them today. Grant them wisdom, compassion, understanding. as they carry out the work of this city together. And this we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Thank you, sir.

Madam City Clerk, are there any changes to tonight's agenda?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. There has been a request that consent calendar item number 10 be removed indefinitely.

Okay. So with 10 being noted, I'd like to call for a motion and a second. A motion by Councilwoman Warren and a second by Dr. Lisa DeForest. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Thank you. Moving on to our city manager administrative update. Mr. Clifton, what's going on?

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor and Council. We have a number of updates for you this evening. First, I'd like to invite our Chief of Police, Matt Henry, up, or members of his team that are going to talk to you about the Blue Envelope Program. Following, we will have a presentation by Murrieta Fire and Rescue on the ACE accreditation. And then lastly, we'll have Hilder Sam, our PIO, come up and, as usual, tell us about all the fun things going on in Murrieta. So, first with our Police Department.

All right, so I have members of our community policing team here. I have Sergeant Matt Schmidt and Officer Travis Alexander, and they're going to kind of just give you guys a rundown of the Blue Envelope program. It's something that we've started over the last couple years. Great program, and I'm going to let them tell you all about it.

Good evening, the mayor city council city manager, my name is Matt Schmidt, I'm a sergeant at the myriad of police department. I currently oversee our community policing team as well as our community behavioral health assessment team. As I'm sure you're very aware the myriad of police department is always looking for different innovative ways to help connect with our community, especially if those ways help keep our police officers safe and the public safe. One of those programs is the Blue Envelope Program. At this time, I'd like to introduce Officer Travis Alexander, who's going to provide a brief overview of our program.

Good evening. Thank you for having me. A little bit about myself. I've been a police officer for approximately 12 years. I began my career with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. I lateraled over here. I've been here for about seven years now. I have worked patrol. our community policing team, and now our community behavioral health assessment team. I'd like to shed light on our Blue Envelope program, as I'm a part of our behavioral health assessment team. As we all know, traffic stops can be pretty stressful. It's something that happens in law enforcement. We want to ensure that our community is safe and comfortable, so the Blue Envelope program helps that. With the Blue Envelope program, how it works, You come out of the police department. We have a blue envelope for you. It gives you a list of instructions to help individuals with PTSD, anxiety, autism, any type of communication disorder. You come to the police department. You get this blue envelope. It'll give you instructions on what to do during a traffic stop. On the back, you can put your license, registration, proof of insurance. You put it all inside of the blue envelope. On the back, you have instructions a place for your emergency contact. So that way, during an emergency situation, we can call your emergency contact. At the police department, we have multiple items of merchandise, such as our blue envelope brochures, bracelets, keychains, buttons, stickers, and lanyards. Just more information. So the blue envelope program is so that law enforcement can make our community feel safe. It's easier for us to deescalate situations. Under Chief Henry's leadership, all of our officers are trained in deescalation, deescalating intense situations. Next. Lastly, this is our QR code. If you want more information on our Blue Envelope program, it'll take you to our department website. The Blue Envelope program for us is more than just a blue envelope. It's a way for us to connect with our community, earn the trust of them, and build better partnerships with our community.

So that is a very brief overview of the Blue Envelope Program. I would love to answer any questions about it if you guys have any questions.

Real quick, is this a state, federal, or a national program?

It's actually a national. However, they're not a nonprofit. But everything is provided to the police department, all of the materials, all of the actual blue envelopes, the stickers, lanyards. There is zero financial impact to the city.

Wow, and is it our parent company that runs this, or is it just the Blue Envelope Program?

It's just the Blue Envelope Program.

Wow, that's awesome. Thank you for doing this. Colleagues, do you have any questions? Oh, sorry. Ms. Warren, go ahead.

Thank you. I brought this forward to the chief and asked him if he would have a presentation on this, because I saw a presentation. I was quite enthralled. I was very happy to see this. It's my understanding that the Blue Envelope Program could also for a passenger in the car, not just always the driver. So if there's a passenger in the car that has a disability or has PTSD or something, you would know that because there usually is a sticker on the back of the car. Is that correct? So before you walk up, you might see that sticker to give you a little bit of an alert what might be in the car?

Correct. There is stickers. The unique thing about this program is that it solely rests with the people who pick up the materials. So they might have the sticker, they might have a lanyard, they might have a bracelet, or it could be all of those things all at once. But really the biggest part of this is the actual blue envelope. And we get the question of, well, is it specific? Do I have to have a very specific mental condition or medical condition? The answer is no. Really, it's whatever the person with the material believes that by providing that material to law enforcement, that they'll have a better understanding on how to communicate with anybody that's in the vehicle.

And I just thought it was important that the public knew about this and what a better place to do this so they can review this online when they want to. So thank you so very much. I really appreciate your efforts in bringing this to our public.

You're welcome.

Mayor Protham Holiday.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Can you share any statistics of how often you've run into people using these in the city?

Sure. Great question. There is no current matrix in place for that at all. We do know that people come to the police department and pick up the envelope. But because the police department, and I believe we shouldn't be in the business of tracking people that have any type of condition whatsoever, the officers don't report back to us just because they encounter somebody with that envelope. So there's really not a... a number that I can give you other than we are aware that people do come to our department and pick up the material.

One last comment. Maybe as this rolls out, if people don't know about it and you do notice anxiety or some type of uncomfortable feeling that's abnormal, you can offer this program to them or a flyer at the car.

Absolutely. So we know that that has been done. This program for the Marietta Police Department has actually been around for about a year and a half. Larger agencies, they've implemented this years ago. We also posted this last night on our social media pages, and the response already was very good comments.

That's awesome. Thank you guys very much for doing that.

You're welcome.

The other chief.

I think I have a clicker.

Let's give us a moment, Chief.

All right. Good evening, Mayor Lavelle and Council. Thank you for the opportunity tonight to present something that Chief Henry and myself are incredibly proud of, and that's the recent ACE accreditation of our dispatch center. Our dispatch center is shared by Murrieta Fire and Rescue and Murrieta Police Department, so it's a joint effort for us to train a group of dispatchers that have to be experts in everything. They have to be experts in law enforcement, and they have to be experts in in the fire department. And the fire department isn't just, as we know, responding to fires and rescues, it's responding to medical emergencies. Medical emergencies are very complicated, and when somebody calls 911 with a medical emergency, There didn't used to be a way to specialize the response that we send out to that medical emergency. About six years ago, we started putting a plan in place to bring pre-arrival medical directions to our dispatch center. So if somebody calls with a specific medical complaint, As our dispatchers are working through the process, they can start giving medical advice to the people based on national standards. We didn't have that before six years ago, so it was a lot of work that our dispatchers had to go through to get this. And I can tell you it's paying dividends in our community, and I'm going to get to that in a little bit. One of the things I do want to point out, though, is. Once again, like with the Blue Envelope Program, Murrieta Fire and Rescue and Murrieta PD try to be ahead of the curve and bring things to the public before it's mandated. And just this year, AB 645 was passed that requires all dispatch centers move to predetermined medical dispatch like we have already in place and have had for the past six years. So I want to start a little bit by telling you about, maybe, next slide please. What accreditation is. So accreditation, much like our fire department, we put ourselves through the highest level of national standards to measure our fire department against a high level of other fire departments. Accreditation for our dispatch is exactly the same thing. We do rigorous independent evaluations of them, and that is where we measure them against standards. And we don't do this ourself. We have an outside source that actually measures this. We get weekly reports talking about how long we spend on calls, how quickly we pick up calls, the information that we ask, and making sure that they follow through this algorithm that's built out through national standards to make sure our public is getting the most appropriate care. We used evidence-based performance standards. That's those spelled out specific instructions that our dispatchers are able to give. And we focus on that continuous improvement because building a system like this has to evolve. It has to evolve as our system evolves and it has to evolve as the medicine evolves alongside with it. So how we put this together is in 2020, we started a plan and that plan had to look like aligning the types of calls we run in this city with the type of 911 questions that we ask. And we use national standards to do that. And really, as they go through this process of somebody calling 911, what we had to do was distill down over a hundred, or excuse me, over a thousand possible pathways to get to a medical complaint. And as our dispatchers answer questions, they narrow down the type of treatment and pre-hospital treatment that the callers will start getting from 911 And then we had to build this training program and put it into place. This is more time on a 911 call, so our dispatchers aren't just answering a call and sending a fire engine. They're learning to ask specific questions that can make sure we send the appropriate response to those residents, so they're not getting less care than they need, or in some cases, more care than they need. And then we had to work through the process once we had achieved all of the goals we had to put ourselves through the accreditation process and our dispatch center did that in this year I'm happy to say that they were awarded accreditation. How it improves throughout our city. Is that as we talked about it improves patient outcomes and I'm going to get into those specifically but when that dispatcher is the first voice that somebody hears in an emergency. And when we can start getting them the care they need before our crews arrive on scene, we have better outcomes. That's starting CPR early. That's getting people laying down if they're feeling dizzy and the various things that our dispatchers start in the process. It's really training also our dispatchers to have a high professional standard. Our dispatchers can handle any call because they go through training every day. They don't just come to work and do their job. They learn what they need to do to excel in their job And this continuous improvement, it really builds a culture of excellence in our dispatch center. And again, that is delivered to the public every single day. When we look at what our dispatchers do throughout the course of a year, our dispatch center sitting right over here took 55,730 911 calls. That's how many times somebody picked up a phone when they were having the worst day of their life and called 911 for help from either our police department or our fire department. They used EMD protocols, that's emergency medical dispatch, over 6,000 times. And they gave CPR lifesaving instructions 146 times. If you go right below that, we had 27 active saves. That's 30% of all CPRs. walked away from that CPR. That's well above the national standard. And that is something that wouldn't happen if our dispatchers weren't there starting those pre-arrival instructions, telling our residents to start CPR and how to start CPR. So our crews have a great place to start when they get there. And then if you look, we had 73% of our calls are EMS responses. And That's over 10,000 patient encounters for Murrieta Fire and Rescue. And all of those people are firefighters as they're responding, have the information coming up on their screen, telling them the specifics that they're going to see when they get that, when they get to the scene. It gives them a head start on the call as well. So we're happy to say that the City of Murrieta is now only the 18th dispatch center in California to have this ACE accreditation and only the 379th in the nation. And when you look at those numbers, there's over 480 cities in California. We're one of 18 that has a dispatch center that is ACE accredited. So that is truly something for our dispatchers to be very proud of. It's not quite done yet. They actually get national recognition in Texas at the Navigator Conference in April 19th. So we will have a contingent of our dispatchers in our overhead there to celebrate this with them. But I want to say a strong thanks to all of our dispatchers in the audience for Chief Henry for assembling such a great dispatch team. This couldn't be done without the tremendous hard work from all of the dispatchers that do it day in and day out. So thank you very much to them and congratulations to our dispatch center.

Real quick, you had mentioned on that one slide that had these stats on it, it was 27 out of 30. You said 30% walked away, but that's 90% of this.

27 of the 146, which is 30%. Oh, got you. Got you. Sorry. Falls directly under.

I was trying to give you more credit.

Well, I wish we got 90%. That's great.

Thank you very much for the presentation, and congratulations.

And last but not least, Hilda Sammer, Public Information Officer, is going to tell us about some of the exciting things going on in Murrieta.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Honorable Counsel.

So as usual, there's a lot going on in Murrieta. We've had concerts in the park all summer long, and I hope everyone has had a chance to go check them out. In September, we are having one of the biggest events of the year, which is the State of the City. The biggest event. The biggest. Excuse me. September 30th, we hope that you join us for the State of the City right here at the Town Square Park and Amphitheater, where Mayor LaValle will deliver, along with his colleagues from the City Council, the State of the City address. It is sure to be a... Fun event.

It'll be very predictable.

Other than that, we also have a packed schedule. We have the Murrieta Night coming up at Storm Stadium this week on Thursday, the 20th. We hope that you join us. You can purchase tickets. They're only $16. You can scan that QR code on the screen, get tickets, and come out and see Mayor Lavelle again throw the first pitch. On September 11th, we'll have a 9-11 tribute ceremony right here at Town Square Park and Amphitheater. We are also having our bulky item drop-off and shredding event on Saturday, September 26th. Please make sure that you arrive early for that. It is a very popular event, and usually the line will go all around Jefferson and Kalmia, so please arrive early. Our concerts in the park are closing out with two last dates now in August, and we are adding 8-bit with a beer garden, which starts at 6 p.m. on the 22nd and the 29th, so please come join us. And I just wanted to let everyone know, if you're not aware, we have a lot of programs and events through our library and through our recreation division of CSD. Here on the slide there's just a few examples of all the programs and events that they throw and host and they're just, they're such a wonderful asset to our community and I do encourage everybody to follow Murrieta Library, Murrieta Parks and Rec on social media and then go to murrietaca.gov slash classes and sign up for whatever your heart desires. Last but not least, our Murrieta magazine is coming in September. We're very excited for this edition, and you can sign up for our monthly e-newsletter, More Murrieta, on murrietaca.gov slash connect. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Mayor. That concludes my announcements today. Thank you, Mr. Clinton. Moving on to Governing Body Commission and Committee Reports. and announcements. This is the time that you get to see where we have been and what we've been doing, representing you guys throughout the various committees we do, and then the events in the city if we're there. Starting off with Councilwoman Warren.

Thank you, Mayor. During our break, there was a couple of meetings. RCTC and RTA were dark during the month of July. However, since they start back up in August, so did the RCTC Budget Implementation Committee meeting started. There's no reportable action. And we also had our August 12th RCTC meeting, and there's no reportable action there either. Onto my governing body announcements. We may have been dark, but we were all very busy. I know that for a fact. I did have a meeting with staff and somebody who's interested in a OneCare Wellness Center potential for a new health care facility, which was very exciting. I attended another swearing in and promotion ceremony by our wonderful police department. There's a nonprofit in town called Hearts of Hootbeats Gala, and they had a big event that was for equine therapy, helping foster kids work with horses to have a purpose. And I was very happy to be able to do the blessing that night and represent our city. They bring in a lot of kids and veterans from our community through their programs. I'm very, very happy and very proud that the property behind some of the Knowles community is managed by the Natural Lands Management Group. And we had a meeting on July 13th, including Chief Molloy, Fire Marshal James Gillespie, and Chief of Community Risk Reduction Doug Strohschneider, to discuss non-maintained land behind the Knowles community that needs fire protection. We would never ask them to go down to dirt, but we do need them to thin it out, make it safer for our community back there. A lot of our seniors are disabled and should there be a fire, you know, with manufactured homes, those go up quite quickly. So we finally got a response back from them. They are moving forward through their grant process and they will be thinning that out coming this fall and getting rid of non-native plants and thinning out areas so that the Skipping a fire does not get to those homes as quickly as it could right now because it's a very big threat at this point. We all made filming, did filming for our parks make life better. A lot of us did that. As you can see, I was here, there, and everywhere. But we did have a very special retirement party for an employee, Jerry Shuler, who was 20 years with our CSD in our Marietta Senior Center. And I'll tell you, She is going to be missed dearly, and that was a hard goodbye for many of us. Over at the Reserve Park, Vintage Reserve Park, Exceptional Opportunities donated a new communication board for kids that do not have verbal skills, and Excel mounted the The board, at their cost, there was no cost to the city at all. The nonprofit paid for it. And while we were there, we had students come up, kids come up and look at it and point to things so they could verbalize things through this board and tell somebody what was going on. We're hoping that they'll do more of this and put them in every one of our parks. Everybody deserves to have fun at a park. And this is a great way to communicate information that they can't verbally speak about. The one thing I really did do during the break, because I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, it was so rewarding. It happened to be up in the Knowles community. We were painting two manufacturer homes for disabled seniors. I'm really great because I'm short, so I stayed low, but the lady that was painting above me got more in my hair and on my outfit than she did on the wall. Did not realize that that was happening until a big drip came down and landed on my arm. But lots of volunteers. Two manufactured homes were painted from the eaves all the way trim, everything. And those homes now are looking so nice. And I want to thank Habitat for coming to Marietta and helping our seniors out. That was a lot of fun. And I'm going to end with a... A day that I was very sad to attend, but a dear servant, volunteer in this community, Luann Jobgen, passed away, and her memorial service was last Friday. And if you ever went to a chamber event or where there were raffle tickets being sold, she was the lady with the big smile that sold you your tickets. And so she's going to be missed dearly, and she's served both Temecula and Marietta. You can always reach me at my email, and I thank you. That concludes my report.

Thank you very much. Councilwoman DeForest, you're up.

Thank you, Mayor. It seems so long since we've been here. We're all a little rusty. So I just want to say that in the last six weeks, we've been dark. I've used staff to answer more emails than I have ever. We have answered emails, and I thank you, staff, for tree issues, golf course issues, traffic issues. open land, natural, and to quote our assistant city manager, urban forest issues. So thank you for all the help in the last six weeks and always, but with trying to answer all of our community emails and making sure that we're definitely connected to our community. Lots of things happened, and you can read through my list. I won't go through all of them, but some of the things I'd like to highlight is we did have our first meeting for the Equestrian Park Subcommittee at the Equestrian Center. My fellow council member, Ron Holliday, was also present. He brought his wife as well. We did tour the facility and looked at what we needed to talk about. We all have tasks to come back to our next meeting, and I know that we're going to do some great things with that equestrian center and clean it up like our community is asking us to do. So I normally would have attended the Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency and Animal Friends of the Valley, but they have been dark for the summer. Okay. I have met with many constituents about the Hayes Bridge project, and I am excited to say that is coming to an end, and that will be completed very shortly. I did have the pleasure of meeting with Mount San Jacinto's college president, Dr. Tawny Dotson, new fresh face to Mount San Jacinto and she is absolutely lovely. Comes to us with a lot of experience and I think she'll do great things for MSJC. I was honored at the Riverside Sheriff's Awards banquet in Palm Springs and chosen and and deeply honored to be their municipal elected of the year. I was taken back by that award and very honored to be there that night. Some of the pictures you see are the birthday bash, the awards, and of course the Hayes Bridge in construction mode. So, filmed at Town Square Park, like my colleague Councilwoman Warren talked about, for Parks Month. That was great fun. I got the Murrieta Town Square Park, which was so busy with people walking their dogs in the morning and just enjoying the beautiful day that it was that we could hardly get a moment to film. because there were so many people and many, many patients were there that morning too. So everybody was getting out and walking and getting exercise, which I love it. As our mayor has said, let's move it, right? So interesting thing happened was I got a phone call from a man that was very concerned. There were paratroopers landing in the old airport on our old airstrip right there in Copper Canyon. I don't know if he'd been watching too many sci-fi movies or something, but he was panicked that we were being invaded. So that was a phone call very fast to our city manager as what was happening, and I thank him for Just a group of Germans that had flown out of Paris airfield and they do it every couple of months So if you see that happening, it is not Exactly, but I did get a picture from him and I included that as well. So and But attended National Night Out with our amazing law enforcement of Murrieta PD. What a great event that was. I saw lots of volunteers, which I'm always so grateful for. They are the ones out there standing on the asphalt directing traffic. And so they were there in force, as well as our beautiful new mobile command station, which was there as well. So the community loved it. Of course, the dogs are always so popular. And I have to say I did miss Simpson, which was our emotional support dog. He has retired, so I wasn't sure if maybe in the plans was another one. So great, great, a lot of fun. So lots and lots of fun. So attended just this afternoon with Council Member Warren of the Hillside Ordinance. And that's always a whole bunch of fun. working on that hillside ordinance. Hopefully we'll get something to fruition soon, and then attended a waste management meeting as well. So you can always reach me at my email, or feel free to call me on my cell phone for a quicker response, or if you see paratroopers landing in Airstrip, right? So anyway, thank you so much, Mayor, and I greatly appreciate it.

Fun fact, the paratroopers that you mentioned They're part of a joint task force. They come here to train because of the Elsinore in Paris. Those guys go to my gym. They come in every three months and they, yeah, they made a mistake landing there, I assume, right? Yeah, I'll be sure to mention that. Councilwoman Stone, you're up.

Thank you, Mayor LaVelle. I attended the BIA Housing Summit. And I'm sure many of you in the audience would love to hear about that summit. It was very interesting to hear both sides of the aisle talk about our housing policies and what a debacle it is up in Sacramento. But as typical politicians, all they do is talk. And there are typically zero solutions. But what they all agreed upon, because we've been so outspoken about local control, the high density development that most of you probably in the audience are not happy with. And we've been dealing with this, well, I've been dealing with it since I was elected in 2020. But we have to be very strategic. about how we address these unfunded mandates that are affecting our schools, our hospitals, public safety, our roads. The fact that we have these unfunded mandates without the support of the state for the infrastructure. And so where does that support come from? It comes from you, the taxpaying citizens. So I wanna thank our city attorney who caught the ear of Mayor Pro Tem Ron Holiday and myself about moving forward with a constitutional amendment. And our council approved an ad hoc committee and Mayor Pro Tem and I are leading the state effort. With my partnership was to bring the California League of Cities to the table and another agency called SCAG. And the California League of Cities have heard us, and we have presented a resolution to the agency. Remind me which committee is first. No, no, no. The Housing Policy Committee. They have our resolution. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday and I will be presenting on a Zoom call in two weeks. We predict that they're going to approve the resolution that will go before all the cities that are members in the state of California at their convention in September. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday, his task is to contact every city in Northern California And my job is every city in Southern California. It's been tedious, but I've been in the office pounding the pavement. And I have spoken more than 30 cities. And ironically, one of the cities I spoke to was the mayor who's going to be the incoming chair of the California League of Cities. And so what does this mean? It means that we want to move forward with a ballot measure, probably in 2020 and 30, to force the state to have the cities at the table to address the unfunded mandates. Timing in politics is everything. We're seeing it from both sides of the aisle, and we believe that this is gonna get through the finish line. And in addition, There's a Southwest Leaders Elective Collaborative that Mayor Cindy Warren and I have been facilitating for the last two years. Another small piece of the pie to address traffic issues. Our overpasses that are adjacent to our freeways are controlled by Caltrans. So when we try to synchronize our lights, we can't because Caltrans will not sit at the table with us. So we reached out to Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, who authored AB 2307. We actually had to author legislation to force Caltrans to be at the table to deal with the city with regards to synchronizing our lights. I want you to know that it's gone through the entire process, and it's sitting on the desk of the governor right now for his signature. When that happens, we will move forward with a study that WRCOG will take the initiative of, and we predict by synchronizing our lights between Menifee, Canyon Lake, Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Marietta, Temecula, we could save travel time by using our surface streets by 10 minutes. instead of you getting on the crazy, congested freeways. So that's what I've been doing for the last few months. In addition, you'll see on the screen all the meetings that I have attended for the last six weeks. And you can contact me at lstone at marietac8.gov if you have any questions about the ballot initiative or AB 2307. So thank you so much, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Councilman Stone. You're just making it hotter in here, you know that, right? Mayor Brodsom-Holiday.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, Council Member Stone and I have been working very hard on this ballot initiative. I did attend RCA. They did have one meeting over the last two months. There was nothing to report out from that. And along with Council Member DeForest, we did start the work of the Equestrian Park Subcommittee. I look forward to some good things coming out of that. But the ballot initiative has a deadline because we have the Cal City's General Assembly meeting in September, and we have to contact all those other cities before then and make sure that they send the delegates to be able to vote for that. A couple of the key cities that I spoke with, this was before we divvied up Southern and Northern California, I spoke with the mayor of San Diego, who tends to be more on the liberal side. But again, this is not a partisan issue. And he was supportive of having, in fact, I just asked him a question, what do you think about the state's housing initiatives? And he said, well, it'd be nice to have a little more local control. I don't know a single city who would say no to that. So I'm very optimistic that we're going to be able to get something done. Whether it's a ballot initiative, this is going to form a working group to see what the best path is. I would guess if we ended up going with something on a ballot initiative and we got the signatures, the governor would then reach out to us and say, okay, what kind of legislation can we pass to get this done? Because it really shouldn't have to go to a vote of the people to implement some common sense. One size legislation does not fit all. In addition to that, I did go to a bunch of other things that my colleagues have mentioned. One I wanted to highlight that Chief Molloy mentioned, our dispatchers. We went to what they call the Saves and Babes. And that event was phenomenal. Dispatchers talk people through women giving birth and also the CPR, the 911 CPR, where they tell them what to do, how to do it. And we got to listen to some of those calls where we could hear that the person had been resuscitated. So it's truly an amazing event and to hear those calls for sure. Something my colleagues had mentioned is Council Member Stone threw us all onto the bus with a challenge with Temecula. and said, you know, whoever collects the most stuff for Milvet would win, and the loser between those two cities would have to pick up trash in the other city. Well, Temecula finally paid that off here a few weeks ago. Had a couple council members out there, some staff out there. We even had... Stu Stewart come to one of our concerts in the park because he couldn't make it the day that they were collecting the trash. So he came to a concert in the park, picked up the trash, and came back five minutes later. He goes, you guys don't have any trash in your park. So that was nice. Along with everything else that my colleagues mentioned, there was the military banner retirement, which is, since I'm a veteran, it's always something I enjoy. Went to the triple ribbon cutting at French Valley. They added three new facilities there. They have a thing for kids, an aviation section, and a pedestrian bridge, so people from those neighborhoods don't have to drive to the library. They can just walk across the bridge. Everything else you can see on my list, and I'm available by phone or email if you have any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Holliday. Usually, as usual, you know, I'm usually in pictures from multiple of my colleagues up here, so if you saw me in a picture, I was there. One thing I'll point out, again, kind of special over the last month was the Military Banner Retirement Ceremony. it was we had four up there and four of us had direct ties to the military so recently my daughter graduated boot camp of the army so that's really cool to be part of and really excited to see where that takes her in life so that that became extra special to me this year and other than just trying to stay out of the sun just glad to be back in chambers and and what i thought would be air conditioning today so uh we'll move on i had no uh committee report uh committees that

met during our absolute recess as well so moving on to public comments uh madam city clerk do we have any non-agenda public comments thank you mr mayor we do members of the public may participate in this meeting in person or remotely using microsoft teams or the telephone option provided on the meeting agenda if you wish to address the city council remotely please use the raise your hand feature as the public comment period for the item begins Please note that participant cameras and the chat features are disabled during the meeting. During each public comment period, I will call speakers in the following order. First, those present in the council chambers, followed by those participating remotely. If you are participating by telephone, I will call on you using the last four digits of your phone number. When I call your name or phone number, please unmute yourself before beginning your comments. For the record, all speakers are asked to state their name before beginning their comment. Speakers are limited to three minutes. At the conclusion of your three minutes, your microphone will be muted. Cam Thai.

Hi.

Hello.

Yeah. Welcome back.

Thank you. Welcome.

I don't know if you guys received this flyer. They put them around my house. They said they're going to develop 176 acres, develop more forward on the Wooden Wall, near the water tank, behind the water tank.

Yes, sir.

This guy used to look like a fire hazard. If some going out to burn everything up, look beautiful, right? And I come here, I welcome to, I favor for them to develop this area because this area is fire concern, see? And also I let you guys know, it's couple years ago, I come back, I come talk to you guys about a concern about a fire hazard around here, my friends, about 17 acres, and now they build up 162 units, beautiful. But on the first year I came here, to let you guys know, concerned about my poverty, on the rainy season, I developed a hill. The water blow up all the way down to my friend. My friend is seven foot high, not only one foot high. You can step it over, no problem there. I keep go to the Weirmore, complain about that. The city got to cancel meeting. and a couple of times, and I find all of them, on August, I catch them, and they said they could work with developer. See, this is almost six months, right? I keep continuing, crying, crying, crying all the time. My eyes teeing down, okay, thank you for Mariana and you guys coming out, give them citation, right? I came to talk to them, but on the other side, They keep talking to them, but I don't know when the development clean up all the mess. So I don't want to bring them back. My friend could be seven foot high. It's not a one foot high. Somebody step it over. All right, thank you. I'll let you guys know. Thank you very much.

Erin Harvey. And up next will be Renee Mohette.

Good afternoon, Council. Sorry, it takes me a little time to get down here these days. As a veteran, combat vet, I hardly can move anymore. I'm here as a citizen to our wonderful neighborhood over there near the high school. And there's been some complaints that we've seen over the internet. about the signs that have been put up in our neighborhood regarding the traffic that goes on during the school hours. As a homeowner, I moved there with those signs being there. I've had to put in fencing around my home. Over $11,000 worth of fencing that I did need to put just to keep the kids out of my house using it as a park and throwing rocks. I can't even get out of my driveway at times. And it's just, it's a major chill with another word in front of it. You know, our concerns are, you know, trifold, you know, do you have any military background and having health issues. I'm concerned if I need help. I've had one occasion, but it was in the middle of the evening. I'm scared that if I do need help in the future, that emergency facilities will not be able to come down the street and take care of me if I need it. Out of all the years, I've lived there over 14 years, and I've maybe seen one ticket handed out during that time period. I just don't think that law enforcement is doing their job to protect us from people parking in front of our driveways, in our driveways, up into our rocks and our gardens. It's just, it's crazy. I love my community. I'm a baseball coach here. And we brought up community early in the prayer. And to hear these vile things that are being put over the internet about us as a community, as citizens, attacking us, and it's just, it made me kind of giggle when I heard the prayer this morning about Community. We're all supposed to be community. And I just feel that this is a city issue.

Got five more seconds.

City issue that is bled into us against the community instead of the city taking charge and coming up with a plan. Okay. And I think we should have a forum for this later. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Renee Mohack. And up next is Marie Rana.

Hello.

I was going to say good afternoon, but it's almost evening, so good evening. My name is Renee. I live in the Myriad of Ranchos behind Thompson Middle School. I'm asking that you leave the current no parking restrictions in place. Our key issue is safety for the students and our neighbourhood. This debate has become, this is a public street. We have the right to park anywhere we want. Let's be honest, this debate is about convenience for parents. It's not about safety for our children. Two very vastly different issues. In the Murrieta Neighborhood Traffic Management Program on page five, it states the City of Murrieta's goals are to improve safety and to discourage traffic intrusion and shortcutting through residential neighborhoods. That's what it states. That is exactly what we have become, a shortcut for convenience. Our neighborhood has become a freeway. Parents actually park in black driveways, unloading at stop signs and actually parking in our driveways with their engine turned off as they wait for their kids, only to obstruct traffic to then pull out and pull U-turn in the middle of the street, dodging oncoming cars and many distracted children on phones and e-bikes. Or worse yet, every day, often driving while kids are encouraged to run into the street and hop into a slow rolling car. Let's be honest, that would never be allowed on the street behind us, Nighthawk. Why is it that they disregard the many streets surrounding our area that have signs to allow for safe pickup and drop off, but demand our dangerous corner of Dusty Trail and Hayes Avenue. Again, I mentioned convenience, not safety. Having signs are one thing, but to have them enforced as it is in many of the surrounding schools in our area is a whole other thing. Are we encouraging residents of Marietta to disregard signs throughout our city, surrounding our schools? I certainly would hope not. We're asking the council to weigh a parking convenience against a child safety and a neighbor's emergency access. I would ask that the council's decision include input from the local fire department and EMS on projected response time impact. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Marie Rano. Following will be Paul McRae.

Good evening.

My name is Marie Rano. I also live in the Ranchos. I'm here as a neighbor and a parent who cares deeply about the safety of our children. The neighborhood traffic management plan that the city prepared was developed to address real problems, unsafe traffic volume and speeding caused by short-cutting residential streets. I see the unsafe driving behavior every day. I've watched drivers double park, block crosswalks, excuse me, fail to yield to kids crossing, trespass and park in residential driveways, block driveways, and make dangerous U-turns while children are being dropped off and picked up for school. These parents put our kids and other parents who walk with their kids at risk. Keeping the no parking signs up is not about inconvenience, it's about preventing a tragedy. The signs create clear, enforceable rules that reduce conflict points, keep sight lines open at crosswalks, and allow emergency vehicles to pass. Removing the signs will greatly increase the already unsafe conditions and make a quiet neighborhood another drop-off and pick-up drive-through. I understand parents want convenience. I'm a parent, too. But convenience cannot come at the cost of a child's safety. It is important to recognize that those parents who choose to break the law and ignore parking restrictions undermine the safety efforts of the entire community and is a bad example to our children to disrespect authority. If we remove the signs, we'll be asking neighbors and enforcement officers to rely on the honest compliance of law-abiding parents in a situation where compliance has repeatedly failed. Tonight, I respectively ask the Council to do three things. Keep the no parking signs in place. the conditions have only become more unsafe over the years. Two, support targeted enforcement in education during peak school hours so rules are followed and drivers learn safer habits. And three, work with the school district on practical solutions like bringing back free or affordable buses and clear communication to parents about safe drop-off practices. Please prioritize our children's safety over short-term convenience. The signs are simple, proven tools that help protect the most vulnerable among us. Thank you for your time and listening to our community's concerns.

Paul McQuay. Paul McQuay, followed by Phillip O'Reilly. Mr. O'Reilly.

Good evening, neighbors. My name is Philip O'Reilly. I took it upon myself to knock on almost a thousand doors in my community since we last spoke. I dropped off hundreds of flyers and had dozens of conversations with my neighbors. And if it's not apparent to those of the dais, there are two major issues on mine and my community's mind. The first is upfront and straightforward. Traffic and infrastructure are at the forefront of everyone's complaints, but the second might not be so transparent. You see, when we have a community that is compelled to even interact to the influence of advocacy, compelled to answer the door and have in-length conversations, there's a very real truth behind their involvement. A reaction of feeling unheard or unrepresented. A sentiment that is underlying symptom of a greater issue. An issue of fiscal responsibility and accountability. Questions of where is the city's tax money going and why? Is it being allocated properly? Do we feel represented in our tax dollars efforts? These are all questions my neighbors ask me. I spend countless hours of my own free time advocating for something I believe in, something I know is a direct benefit and upgrade to my community. Two roads are greater than one, after all. Much less the potential monuments and tax generators to further bolster our city and its future potential. And through it all, the response I got back from the dais was a few offhand comments on Facebook coupled with the uncertainty of what comes next. And yet, despite my efforts, much less the community's interaction on social media, not a single mention of this issue on our agenda here tonight. So if it's worth your effort to reply online, why not here? I understand fiscally times are hard and the world is chaotic, but what I devote my time to weekly is no small request or minor improvement. It is a major upgrade on a primary arterial route that's been in your general plans for 20 years that currently is relevant and advancing because of neighboring cities' efforts. You say it's not a priority and the city is incapable, and yet last we met there was talks of how can we increase the city's revenue, much less what to do with a secondary, and by your own words, unnecessary reserve pool of $15 million. So I ask you all at City Hall, not just these up for reelection, are you responding and are you responsibly planning? Are we responsibly spending? Are you representing all neighborhoods and not just those where your own interests lie? From where I see it, and I've got a pretty good view from my hilltop in West Marietta, there's still a lot left to be done in my community. West Merida has plenty of issues, not just Jefferson's road widening and the incoming traffic of 176 acres of new builds and apartments choking out Washington. I mean, come on, Jefferson and Kalmia is literally across the street from where we stand tonight at City Hall. So on behalf of my community, let's be respectful and responsible. I hope the city can reprioritize Jefferson's road widening and their CIP, or at least give some explanation or timeline for residents to understand how and when. If it's going to be the developer's responsibility, then just say that. I'm not asking for this on my timeline. I'm asking for this on a timeline. And as a last aside, Council Member Stone mentioned synchronizing lights for better traffic on our frontage streets. Jefferson Avenue's road widening being unscheduled is a direct hindrance to that deal as it's a primary arterial frontage street. But I digress. Thank you for your time. Have a beautiful evening.

Robert Fallin. And Mary holes. Sorry, ma'am. Roberts coming up. Sorry.

Hello, my name's Robert. Hi, Robert. I've owned and lived in Marietta since 1991. On my own accord, I stand on the sidewalk under the flock cameras holding this sign. In the two months that I've been doing it, tens of thousands of cars have passed me, and the positive responses are overwhelming. It's clear. We the people do not want to be dragnet spied on by the government. This is the one issue that has brought together all sides in opposition. Left, right, in between, Democrat, Republican. When I hear people, police, tasked with upholding the laws, defending things that are clearly against the law, it is really concerning. Rules for thee, but not for me. The Fourth Amendment is very clear. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrant shall be issued, but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched And the persons are things to be seized. See, I carry a pocket constitution with me, like Ron Paul. I hope you do too. I have the right to security, includes privacy in my person. This is my person. I take my person with me on the streets anywhere I go. Setting up a dragnet is illegal without a warrant by a judge specific to the person or situation. For police and city to defend breaking the law is mind-boggling, but not surprising. The founding fathers already had this debate in 1791. The conversation about it is over. There is no tears of scrutiny concerning the Constitution's protection. The Supreme Court ruled in Bruin in 2022, there shall not be any weighted public safety interests, an ironclad contract that spells out what the government cannot do. Remember all those red light cameras that we had in Marietta? Well, they're gone now. And we the people are demanding that the illegal flock, Axon, Motorola Solutions, both owned by a foreign government that has publicly called for America's demise, Israel, and any other name they come by are all gone. This is more than just being able to have safety amongst our community. There's people that are nefarious that are using these against other countries. Just think about that. Now they have a window on everything we're doing. Okay? Thank you for your time.

Paul McQuay. Anne Marais-Hautz. Yes, Paul. Is there a Paul here? Is there an Ann? Ann, does your last name start with an M? Yes. Come on up.

Hello, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Ann Marenholtz, and I am a homeowner in the Mary Ranchos. specifically Dusty Trail for 25 years. I'm one of the original homeowners that fought to put those signs up restricting and controlling the traffic during the morning, two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon when our kids are walking and riding the bicycles to and from school. We did this, we fought for this because of the safety of our kids, not in just our neighborhood but the surrounding neighborhoods. We have many, many kids walking and riding their bicycles. And now we have the e-bikes, which is another whole other issue we won't get into. But with the parents driving through the neighborhood, disregarding the speed limits, they fly through the neighborhood, and they're causing safety issues. They are double parking on the streets. They are parking in our driveways, blocking our driveways. and totally disregarding the safety of our kids. The kids, I would love to have you witness this in the afternoons during pickup. That's when it's the highest and the most dangerous. And just watch. And watch to see what these parents that are driving through do. Total disregard for the safety of the other kids. They are just getting in and getting out and picking up their kids. I've seen three-point U-turns, and I know it is legal to do a U-turn, but when they're trying a three-point turn in an SUV and there's kids and bicycles all over the place, you just want to cringe. Okay? It's about the safety. It's not about us being titled or anything like that. It's about the safety. And I hope... Council members, that you will uphold these signs, and I hope that Marriott Police will start enforcing these restrictions because it has not been done. And this is not only an inconvenience for parents, but it's an inconvenience for us that we are okay with. You know, two hours in the morning, we can't park in the street, we can't have contractors come in, they have to park in our driveways. But that's fine with us because it's about the safety and that's what we care about. So thank you.

Mr. Mayor, may I interject, please?

Sure.

Thank you. Obviously, we have a large group of residents here that are concerned. I think that their voices need to be heard. And if our chief and our captain that are here today would take the group into the foyer to have a conversation so their voices can be heard and these issues can be addressed, sir. Thank you.

Yeah. Chief, if you want to, I mean, all of you are welcome to speak. Don't misunderstand that. But if the message is consistent and clear, well, sorry.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, if we could just, we just have a couple more. A couple more on this one? On this item, is my understanding, and then a couple other non-agenda, if we could just get through that.

Okay, we'll wrap this one up then. Thank you. Ashley Porter.

Ashley Porter.

I feel like I should have gone first and maybe introduced this whole thing. So good afternoon, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Ashley Porter, and I'm here today as a concerned parent and community member asking the city to reconsider the no stopping standing or parking restrictions during school drop off and pick up hours in the neighborhoods surrounding our schools. In the neighborhood surrounding Thompson Middle School and Marietta Valley High School, these restrictions areas are along, I'm sorry, Chrism Trail, Hayes Avenue, Oregon Trail, and Dusty Trail. These signs were put in in 2003 when Marietta Valley High School was the only high school in Marietta and had a student population of approximately 4,228 students. Today, for the 26-27 school year, Merida Valley High School has approximately 2,174 students, more than 2,000 fewer students than when the restrictions were put in place. That's a significant change. If these restrictions were created more than 20 years ago to address the traffic and student population that existed at the time, then the city should reevaluate whether those same restrictions are still necessary today. We should not simply continue enforcing a decades-old restriction without looking at the current facts, current traffic patterns, and current needs of our schools and neighborhoods. I want to be clear. We all care about public safety. We want our children to get to and from school safely, and we want our neighborhoods to be safe. But these signs aren't solving the problem. Clearly, with their problems that they're having, it's still not working. We are seeing children jumping in and out of cars, like they said, while parents are trying to keep traffic moving, and cars are stopping briefly, pulling away quickly, trying to load and unload children whenever they can. That creates confusion, congestion, and potentially hazardous situations for students, parents, drivers, and pedestrians. I have kids in three different schools this year, one in Cole Canyon, where the neighborhood has allowed this. It's not crazy like this at all. People are parked. It's calm. They're not freaking out, trying to look over their shoulders if they're going to be caught. Yeah, again, they're not following the rules. I agree. But again, it's still not working. I believe our police officers have far more important public safety issues that deserve their time and attention rather than giving tickets to the mom just trying to get her kid to school on time from one school to the other school. There's no way I could drop off my child at 8.30 at Cole and get to 8.30 by Merida Valley High School. that's not possible for me to get her on time. So these neighborhoods and schools are part of the same community, and we should be working together. We should be on the same team, not putting families and residents against one another. So first, I want to ask you, the city council, to review the original justification and traffic engineering basis for these restrictions, including the conditions that existed that existed when the signs were installed in 2003, and compared those conditions with today's student population traffic patterns to determine whether restrictions of this scope are still necessary. Second, pause to reconsider enforcement while the city evaluates reasonable alternatives. And third, work with parents, residents, the school, and law enforcement on the solution that protects public safety without unnecessarily penalizing families, including creating safe, practical places for parents to pick up and drop off their children. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Denise Smith.

Good evening, my mayor and city council members. My name is Denise Smith. I have been a speech language pathologist for 20 years, and I'm the owner of Speak Up Speech Therapy, which is a mobile speech therapy practice providing services for children from age 2 to 18. I first had the idea of bringing a communication board to one of our Marietta parks because as a speech language pathologist, I work with children with many different communication needs. Some children communicate verbally, some use AAC devices, some use gestures or pictures. And some may just have difficulty communicating what they want or need, especially in a playground. But one thing I believe very strongly is that every child has something to say. Communication is so much more than spoken words. A child's ability to participate, connect, and be included shouldn't depend on whether they can communicate the same way as everyone else. That's what this communication board provides. It gives children another way to express themselves while they're at the park. They can point to pictures to communicate things like wanting to play, needing help, being thirsty, needing a break, or how they're feeling. And while it may look like a simple board, for a child who has difficulty communicating verbally, having access to those words really makes a huge difference. To me, this is also about inclusion. We talk so much about creating inclusive spaces for children with disabilities, but inclusion isn't simply inviting everyone into the same space. We also have to give children the tools they need to participate in that space. Thank you. And this project really took a community to make happen. I want to thank my friend Cheryl Stark, who's going to speak briefly. of exceptional opportunities. When I shared this idea with Cheryl, she immediately supported it, and through her connection, we brought the idea to the city. Exceptional opportunities also generated a generous amount. Thank you for the City of Murrieta for listening to us, working with us, and recognizing the value this could bring to families in our community. Thank you to Smarty Symbols for answering all of our questions and creating the board, and thank you for Excel Landscape for generously donating the cost of the installation. And I'm incredibly grateful that my company, Speak Up Speech Therapy, was able to be part of bringing this resource to our community. I hope this is only the beginning. I would love to see communication boards become something children can access at more parks and community spaces throughout Murrieta. Because ultimately, every child deserves not only to be included, but to be heard, understood, and given a way to communicate. And thank you so much for coming, seeing the board.

Thank you very much. Real quick, the aforementioned technical issues I thought we might have are actually happening. So for the online crew, the Facebook stream is currently not active. Please utilize our YouTube page to follow along instead. A link has been posted on our Facebook page to take you directly to the YouTube live stream. So there's that. And Mr. Holliday, did you have something to say or ask?

Yeah, I just wanted, from all the speakers, if the city manager could... It sounded like we were contemplating removing these signs. I have one speaker that said we should remove the signs. Do you know what the status of that is?

There has been no plan suggested by staff or anybody to reconsider what we have this evening. And what I think I've seen on social media is residents asking for the city council to consider removing signs and other residents asking you not to consider removing the signs. But there is no imminent plan of the city to take any action whatsoever on this item. These are just residents lobbying for what they'd like to see change or not change.

Some on one side, some on the other.

That's right.

The one speaker's comment that the population of the high school has changed dramatically, does that warrant taking a look at the traffic patterns and looking things with the school?

I don't know. That's certainly one variable, but to the extent that council were ever interested to revisit the topic, I think we would probably look at things holistically, including the history of how those signs were erected in the first place.

I'll bring that up under future agenda items. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, if we can complete public comments.

Let's do it.

Thank you. Cheryl Stark.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Cheryl Stark, and I'm here representing Exceptional Opportunities, a local nonprofit dedicated to empowering children and adults with special needs by creating opportunities for inclusion, independence, and meaningful experiences within our community. One of the ways we do this is by creating supportive activities that are accessible to individuals with a variety of needs. We also host adapted paddleboard days, Santa experiences, charter a boat to give participants an opportunity to experience deep-sea fishing and purchase adapted equipment such as rifting tricycles and adult adapted tricycles. These experiences and resources allow children and adults with special needs to participate in activities alongside their families and peers, sometimes would not otherwise be possible. Our goal is simple, to create opportunities where everyone has a chance to participate, connect, and belong. Before I talk about the project that Denise already spoke about, I really want to thank her for bringing this to my attention and including Exceptional Opportunities and myself. She is the driving force behind this communication board that was installed a couple weeks ago. I'm grateful that she invited Exceptional Opportunities to be a part of the adventure and help bringing her vision to the community. With Speak Up Speech Therapy and the City of Murrieta, we were able to purchase and donate a community communication board, which is now installed at Vintage Reserve Park. The idea behind the board is simple but powerful. Every child deserves a way to communicate and connect with others. For children who are non-speaking or have limited verbal communication, the board provides pictures, symbols, that they can point to in order to communicate their wants, needs, feelings, and ideas at the park. What we love most about this board is that it's not only for non-speaking children. Their verbal peers can use it as well. It creates opportunities for children with different communication abilities to interact, play, and build friendships together. We are grateful to the city for working with us and helping us make this project possible. Our hope is that the communication board helps make Vintage Reserve Park a place where every child has a voice and every child has an opportunity to be included. Denise and I look forward to continuing this partnership and helping purchase additional communication boards for the community in the future.

Thank you.

Kelly.

Good evening. My name is Kelly Cagle, and I live in the ranches. I understand why some parents would want more convenient drop-offs and pick-up options near the school. That's a completely reasonable thing to want, but I'm asking you to look closely at what removing these signs would actually mean for the safety of the kids, residents, and the whole street. First, the safety of the children themselves. This block sees a lot of foot and bike traffic during school hours. Kids walking to school, riding their e-bikes, crossing driveways, and so on. And I'll be honest with you, a lot of these kids are not riding carefully. They're weaving between cars, cutting people off, blowing through without checking the traffic. That's normal kid behavior over here. If we allow parking and drop off along this stretch, we are introducing cars backing up, doing U-turns and maneuvering right through the exact space where these kids are riding unpredictably. Second. Safe access for residents, those of us who live here still need to get in and out of our driveways every single day, including during the exact hours drop-offs and pickups would happen. Congested double parked cars make that difficult and dangerous, especially with kids nearby. Even with the signs being up, there is still a huge issue being able to come and go into our neighborhood due to high traffic and illegal parking. We don't get much support from our police department at all. I, on my cameras, showed three times last year that they showed up. Third, and maybe most important, emergency access. These signs weren't put up arbitrarily. There was a period when the restriction wasn't enforced and it created a real hazard. Cars lining both sides of the street narrowed access into the neighborhood to the point where emergency vehicles would have struggled to get through quickly. If there's a fire and medical emergency, anything time sensitive, minutes matter. We cannot risk recreating that bottleneck, especially at the exact time of day when the most people, including children, are out and about. Finally, I'd point out that providing a safe drop-off and pickup zone in the school is the school's responsibility, not something that should fall on a residential street. The school has its own property, its own parking lots, and the ability to design a proper loading zone with staff supervision. Pushing that responsibility onto a residential block, one that wasn't designed for that kind of traffic, shifts the burden and the risk onto homeowners. and kids who have no part in that decision. I have a flyer, I mean, I have a board, and I don't know if you can see it, but I have hundreds of minutes of incidents in our city. I live on the corner of Hayes and Dusty. I get all the traffic. We get no support. I have personally broken up fights in that street with kids that are taller than me, okay? We are getting no support over there. And I would love to submit this stuff to you. So I think you.

One last call for Paul McQuay.

Okay, Mr. Mayor, we're going to move on to remote. Yama Nawabi, please unmute yourself and go ahead and speak. You have three minutes.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes.

Yes.

Great, thank you for your time. I wanted to today echo Phil's sentiments who was up here earlier. We seem to have a disparity in terms of the funds that our city has and the level of service we're receiving for our parks and recreational facilities. It seems like the common theme in Marietta is that these facilities are in disrepair. From the playground near the fire station off Marietta Hot Springs, to the Cal Oaks pool, to the equestrian center, all of these facilities need to be maintained once they are built the quality of our parks and facilities has a lot to do with the perception of our city i conducted an online poll this past week on facebook and there was an overwhelming amount of support for a pool facility as well as an equestrian center and then some pretty silly ideas for for the other places um you know both of these facilities should exist and exist in a safe condition uh for a city that is connected by community we definitely need more community spaces that are usable during the summer our streets are constantly under construction and disrepair uh you know please we need faster timelines we need more competition and we need better oversight over these projects but thank you for getting them done i understand it's not easy I just want to leave with this thought. Efforts should go into our local community and change we can affect, not fighting Sacramento. There has been no fruit born out of these fights. Look at Huntington Beach, which is exponentially more resourced than our city. They have no win record. Instead of pointing fingers at the state, let's figure out constructive ways to lay out construction in a safe and planned manner as much as we can. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes public comments on non-agenda items.

Thank you. Moving on to the consent calendar. Are there any requests from the City Council to pull any consent items?

Sorry. Mr. Mayor, if it's okay, public comment is typically a place where people come in and give direction to council. It's certainly not a place for debate. We need to have an item agendized for that, but I did want to just do a couple of things to make sure our residents understand exactly what's going on and what's not. So one of those, thank you, Council Member Holliday, for clarifying that we don't currently have a proposal to reconsider Signs I know there was a request to visit with some of the residents which I know our police chief would be willing to do I just want to provide a little bit of context that we do hear about these issues at virtually every single school at drop-off location There have been some really significant changes some of those might include things like student population but one of them as we understand from the school district is is that it used to be very common for kids to walk or ride or find other ways to school. I don't know about the history of the bus service, but certainly there are more people driving cars to schools now. I have kids in our local schools. I experienced it firsthand. Our police department, I just want to say, number one, tries to allocate their resources as well as they can. to high priority needs. And as important as these are, it's also a very difficult situation because you do have the practicality of parents trying to get students to school and the practicality of neighbors wanting their neighborhood to be safe. And to be honest, if we tried to have a zero tolerance for any violation, you can't park incorrectly for a moment or anything like that, I really don't know that it's even tenable. I'm not making excuses, just trying to set some context that if we're gonna engage with the neighbors to understand that it's not for lack of really thoughtful effort to try to deal with these situations, but we really have, especially in the places where we have two schools co-located, a very unique challenge. The other thing, just to make sure our residents understand, we've had some comments on the Jefferson Road extension. And some of what we've heard in testimony and seen in written materials suggests that that project has been deprioritized or that it's changed. And I just want to emphasize That's actually inaccurate. That project has been in the same position virtually the entire time since we've heard public testimony advocating for the roadway. It is in our long-term general plan circulation element. That's a component of our general plan that really attempts to say what is circulation going to look like in the future. I know historically that there was a time when the city was interested to acquire property from the local landowners, including one who frequently gives testimony. At that time, the family was not interested to sell. So the city moved on to some other priorities. As this council knows, those priorities are often very long-term. lead time priorities. Things like preparing to widen Murrieta, Hot Springs, or accomplish an interchange at Keller Road and the interstate so that we can expand hospital services take many, many years, if not decades, to plan and complete. So we've been honest from the very beginning that this is in our circulation element. It is a priority, but it is below some of those other high-profile, very long lead, expensive priorities. priorities. We've talked about other things like building fire stations, etc. I don't know where the claim comes from that it was deprioritized. I think there may have been some confusion because when we had a recent conversation about capital plans, we looked at allocating current available funding among those projects that are at the top of that priority list. However, if you actually look on our consent agenda, by coincidence only, today, we have the receive and file from the priorities and capital improvements prioritization conversation, and it's still in the exact same place it always has been, which is at the bottom of our tier one priorities. So there is a plan to eventually plan, design, and complete that connection. We tend to not be able to respond immediately when, say, a private developer that sometimes says, I'm going to develop next year, sometimes it's a decade later, sometimes it's 20 years later. So pivoting really fast when there are opportunities, given that we've already invested in things like Murrieta Hot Springs and the interstate, and we're looking at a pool and a fire station and all these other things, that we can't do. What we can do is continue to stay the course and in due time REACH ALL OF THOSE PRIORITIES. AND THEN THE LAST THING IS FOR ANYBODY INTERESTED IN HOW THE CITY ALLOCATES FUNDINGS, IT'S ALL TRANSPARENT AND IT'S DONE IN THIS ROOM. WE HAVE A BUDGET UPDATE TONIGHT AND WE HAVE AT LEAST ONCE ANNUAL A PRIORITY SETTING CONVERSATION. THIS LAST 12 MONTHS TWO TIMES where we take the world of things that we think might be important to this community and attempt to say which ones are most important that get done first, and then which ones that are still important but need to wait for available resources will get done later. Those materials happen to be in tonight's agenda and available online, and we would encourage any residents to continue to engage in what they see as most important so that you can make those decisions with the best information possible.

That is all. Thank you. Thank you for that answer. Great clarity. Now moving on to the consent calendar. Are there any requests from the council to pull any consent items or just recuse themselves from voting? Madam City Clerk, are there any members of the public requesting to speak on a consent calendar item?

Seeing none.

I'd like to call for a motion and a second, please. A motion by Councilwoman DeForest and a second by Mayor Postum-Holiday. Let's vote.

Mr. Mayor, can we do roll call vote?

We can.

Councilmember Warren? Yes. Councilmember DeForest? Yes. Councilmember Stone? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday? Yes. Mayor LaValle? Yes. Let the record reflect that you all voted yes.

Thank you. Okay, moving on to our first discussion item, an approved professional services agreement with RSG for an annexation feasibility study. I THINK ALSO JUST FOR REFERENCE, I THINK CHIEF HENRY WENT OUT IN THE FOYER TO ADDRESS SOME OF THE TOPIC OF THE SIGNS. SO WHAT DO WE HAVE? HI, KRISTEN.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR LAVELLE, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL. Isaac Bravo, Management Analyst from the City Manager's Office, and myself will be presenting to you on item 17, which is a proposed action to award an agreement to RSG Inc. for an exploratory feasibility study for annexation in the northeast area of the city, on the northeast side of the city limits. So I'm going to kick off the presentation and provide some background, and then Isaac is going to get into some of the more specific aspects of the study. Whoa. Okay, here we go. So for several years, building a sixth fire station on the east side of the city has been identified by the city council as a tier one priority project. The purpose of building a sixth fire station would be to improve emergency response capabilities and emergency response times on the east side. side of our city, which would ultimately benefit many areas of our community. And a couple of years ago, the city had an opportunity to purchase land that would be well-suited to be a fire station on the northeast side of town. And last year, we closed escrow on that property, which is located near the intersection of Clinton Keith and Winchester. It's a little bit to the west of Winchester along Clinton Keith. It's very close to the city boundary with the county of Riverside. The fire department and our finance department estimate that the annual operating cost for the sixth fire station, based on what we know of cost to operate our other five fire stations, is about $5 million per year. That's in addition to the $15 to $20 million estimated cost of constructing the new fire station. So before we proceed with the process of hiring an architect, and preparing to design and construct the fire station, it is first really important to make sure that we're ready to take on the financial responsibility, the ongoing $5 million commitment to operate the new fire station. Right now, based upon our city's annual operating budget, we as staff do not feel that it's feasible for us to just easily absorb that $5 million cost into our operating budget. You know that each year we have to make difficult choices, about our budget. And so that would be difficult. But we do anticipate that that's something we'll be able to grow into. That's why we bought the property. And we're looking forward to that as additional development occurs, new sales tax, new property tax. That's where we're ultimately envision that we're headed and why that purchase was made. We've had some questions about how it would work in terms of if Cal Fire would you know, pay for the cost of the city responding into other areas, but the way that mutual aid arrangement works is there is no financial transaction. They provide service to respond to calls within the city limits if they're the one that would be the first to respond, and so too does the city provide service in Riverside County, again, without there being any financial payment to to either the city or the city to Riverside County. So again, over time, like I'm saying, we do expect that there will be future revenues, and at that point we would begin the process of planning for design of the new fire station, but we're just not at that point at this time. In considering the location where this property is located, and calls for service, one idea that surfaced was to look at the idea of annexing, specifically Spencer's Crossing, which is very near to where this fire station location is, to see if there would be a net positive revenue-wise if we were to consider annexing that area for those revenues to go then toward the cost of operating the future fire station six. So that's how we arrived at the concept of exploring this annexation feasibility. And I want to really emphasize that this is a very exploratory feasibility looking at seeing if this is something that would potentially work. So staff presented to you as part of the February 2026 goal setting workshop when we talked about the various tier one projects and what the next steps could be. We talked about a next step for the Fire Station One project being to look at this annexation And to embark on a study that would help us really understand not only the potential revenues associated with an annexation, but also what would be the other costs that would be incurred to the city in terms of all the other services that need to be provided and other obligations that the city would have as well. if it's going to be a city and what would need to be provided. So Isaac is going to explain that we subsequently embarked on the RFP process for this study and the mechanics of what would be proposed as part of that. So again, I want to emphasize that this is very exploratory at this stage, and it would be a first action in terms of learning what it would be as part of potentially annexation. So with that. Oh, I'll just also say there are a lot of other details that would need to be understood in terms of considering potential annexation as well and some of the other operating things.

Thank you, Kristen. So before we start, I want to make sure we're all on the same page. So what is being presented in front of you is the map of our land use that's adopted in our general plan. So every city has to adopt their general plan. This is so that we avoid any sort of sprawl. What you're looking at here is the zoning that has been adopted by the city council.

Can you put your mic a little closer? Sorry. No, it's okay.

So what you're looking at here is the zoning that has been adopted by the city council. And specifically, the area that we're looking at is the sphere of influence, which is at the north. east corner of the city, it is outlined by that red dashed line. It says Thompson Road, it's really McGillis and Clinton Keith, that's that road that delineates the city's boundary. And then begins the unincorporated area of the city of Marietta. The sphere of influence is adopted in the general plan, it is something that the city has kind of claimed and said this is where we plan on our future development if we want to continue to grow. Annexation is the process of taking that sphere of influence or parcels that are not incorporated within the city and incorporating into the city proper. They become our jurisdiction. LAFCO is the organization that approves the annexation, which is board members of local governments, including Riverside County, special districts such as Elsinore Valley Water, and other municipal local agencies that approve this. Most importantly tonight, when we're talking about a feasibility study, it is not the actual annexation document or approval. It is literally a study that's going to tell us what are our costs, what are our revenues, and how is this going to impact the city on a financial level? So like I said, We do have various scenarios that we're going to be looking at, and from those scenarios, the most important thing that we're going to be looking at is what are the impacts of absorbing approximately 14,000 people within this area into the city. It's not about just figuring out the revenue that we're going to be generating that could cover the cost of the fire station, but the impacts that are going to be on the other end, the roadways, the lights, the sidewalk, the ADA ramps, or lack of ADA ramps in the area, that the city would be taking over. All of these considerations are gonna be part of the study and will be presented to the city council for further consideration, whether we go forward with annexation or whether we off-ramp. This map here, specifically, The sphere of influence for the city, it's much more detailed. That star at the bottom is where the fire station will be located, then the parcel has been purchased. The area in blue to the west and south is the city proper and our actual jurisdiction. The hash line in red is the entire sphere of influence. Staff reached out to LAFCO to figure out would annexation of Spencer's Crossing be viable, which is the area that is highlighted in purple. They came back and said no, you need to take a much larger area because they have a policy of no islands. That is the area shown in yellow here. Because of that, we have three scenarios. We have the city preferred option, which is just the area highlighted in purple, Spencer's Crossing, the developed zone where homes exist at this time. The LAFCO high level, this is the recommended area, which they would pretty much push forward and approve. And then that gives us to consideration, should we annex the entire sphere of influence and be able to dictate development throughout the entire sphere? And so those three options are what's going to be presented and considered by the consultant. Again, there is no preferred option at this time. We're going to have a complete analysis of all three so that way we can have a true understanding of future developments and actual costs. So the consultant selection process started in May of 2026. It went through and we received proposals in July of 2026. The evaluation process included a written evaluation, interviews, and reference checks. RSG Inc. was determined to be the best overall firm to guide the city through this process. And what stood out to the interview committee was their familiarity with LAFCO, their project approach, and their understanding of what the city needed. We recommended a two-phased approach. which allows the city to have an off-ramp. So phase one is the feasibility study, which is just focused on would it be financially viable for the city to move forward with annexation. If the city council decides not to move forward, we do not move forward to phase two. We do not have to pay RSG anything additional above what they've provided us for the feasibility study. However, having them awarded in a contract formulated this way allows us to, if the council decides to move forward, we have somebody, a consultant, already on board that can get us through and help us through the LAFCO process. So the schedule. We expect that we'll have kickoffs in September of 2026. I want to say a special shout out to all the departments for making sure that their staff have been available through the processes and formulation of the RFP in getting us to this point. So the project kickoff would still be the majority of the departments. Moving forward through data collection through December of 2026, refining and making sure that we have all of the what ifs, maybe what happens, and then having council have their findings presented in February of 2027. So again, to be clear, what council's considering tonight is the award of that feasibility study not annexation or any sort of moving forward through the LAFCO process. It is just the award of the contract to RSG, which is staff's recommendation to authorize the transfer of funds of $91,000 to be able to cover those expenditures, approve the agreement with RSG, and authorize the city manager to sign the agreement. And with that, that concludes staff's presentation. RSG is available if you do have any questions for them.

Thank you very much. We're going to bring it back up, or bring it to council for questions, starting with Mr. Holliday.

Thank you, Chris and Isaac. Great presentation. I'd like to call Chief Malloy up to chat about mutual aid, automatic aid, all things... related to who we serve, where we serve, what it costs us, and what reimbursements we get, if any.

Absolutely. Can we go back to the map that showed the fire station? So there's a couple questions within that question. There are several types of agreements that the fire service operates under. The first and primary one that Murrieta Fire and Rescue has in place is an auto aid agreement with Riverside County Fire and Cal Fire, which we've had in place since 2023. We've had one previously, and we updated one to create complete boundary drops of our system. What this does is it allows the closest unit to respond to an emergency and the appropriate unit from the agency having jurisdiction. So if we have somebody across the street from Engine 83 off of Hunter Road, that's having a cardiac event, we can get engine 83 there before our station three would get up to that area. That area can take our station three with traffic over 11 to 12 minutes to get into that neighborhood. Thus station six being placed where it is to cut down that response time. That's an auto aid agreement. The way that it's written for us in Riverside County fire is that we have a 12 minute boundary. So the closest resource within 12 minutes outside of your boundary. So we don't get pulled. Our resources don't get pulled 35 minutes away from the city. They just get pulled for like, immediate boundary drop issues where you'll have a closer unit. This is netted engine 83 having more of an impact that's Riverside County fire engine 83. They come into our city far more than we go in to the county areas simply because they sit on the border of our city. Our fire station sent sit a little more central with in our perimeter so we can respond the edges that's the way we've designed our system over the past 7778 years. Fire Station 6 is going to be an exception because where it sits, it serves the portion of our city that we need it to very well, but it also uniquely will serve the Spencer's Crossing area as the first unit because of the auto aid agreement we have in place. So everything you see in the annex sphere, we're the closest fire station to that. Even with the new Cal Fire station over on the east side, further east, the Parois station, we still are serving this area quicker than anyone else from Riverside County can. just because of the proximity of our station to the area. So automatic aid agreement, no financials, no money transferred, it's just the closest unit serving the public in the public's time of need. Mutual aid agreements can be a little bit different. Mutual aid agreements we have to be consulted if we will send units. So we generally have that in place for special resources, hazmat units, rescue companies, anything like that. We can request a mutual aid response. We have mutual aid agreements in place already within our city that are not automatic. We have one with the city of Corona that has to do with hazmat units. We have one with Riverside County Fire that has to do with hazmat units. We have one with March Air Reserve Base where our units can go to theirs and theirs can come to ours. But we don't have a contingent border, so it has to be requested through mutual aid. And then we also have one with Canyon Lake in place. Mutual aid, as we have it, does not have any financials with it as well. So if we send an engine to Canyon Lake for a fire, we don't charge them for that. We get it back. If we have other specialty units, like if we use Riverside County's hazmat unit, there is a component of mutual aid called assistance by hire. Assistance by hire means that they will charge us for their time. And we have to agree to that assistance by hire, and we just basically pay for their crews the time that they're committed to our incidents. So that lives within that mutual aid. We rarely exercise that. The only time we really exercise that is on large-scale wildland fires that go multi-operational period, meaning more than a day, or any time that we have a hazmat unit that we're going to be using Riverside County's hazmat for several hours or Corona's hazmat for several hours. Those are units we don't have in our own city. It gets more complex as we go statewide with master mutual aid agreements, and there's reimbursement based into that, but that's not really the topic here. The topic here is when 911 is called from somebody that lives in one of these areas, is there any billing mechanism if you respond outside of our area? And the answer to that is no, we do not bill when we respond immediately outside of our area for an emergency.

And the reverse is true as well. As they respond in our area, we're not getting billed. Correct. Obviously, if we build Fire Station 6 where it is, that shift of them coming into our area is going to shift to where we're going to be going into their area a lot more.

Correct.

And I assume that part of that RFP is looking at that cost.

Yes, that's the level of service. We would need to have that studied, and it would be part of the feasibility study.

It's challenging. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate the answers. It's challenging. when you have an area that's still over 50% rural, and yet Spencer's Crossing, which a lot of people that have moved there think they're part of Murrieta already. I've heard that so many times, why live in Murrieta? I'm like, well, kinda not. And they wonder why the sheriff is showing up to their phone call versus Murrieta Police. Obviously Murrieta Fire could be showing up to their doorstep, which would further reinforce that they live in the city, but that's not the case either. But the unknown is challenging for a city to say, what revenue does that area bring? Whether it's the whole area, the part of the area, or our preferred area. Without doing the study, you don't know. You can guess. And I think it's a worthwhile effort to have numbers. I'm a numbers guy. Having no numbers makes me uncomfortable. So that's all the questions I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Warren.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report. I do want clarification questions more than anything. So the study is the first step in figuring it out, and this is what the questions that this study should bring back to us should include in my opinion. Rooftop property taxes, commercial income opportunities, what the area is currently paying for services such as a lighting district, community facility district, versus the expenses that it would cost the city to maintain and service the new area, public safety service calls, park maintenance, public work expense. Those are what the breakdown should be. But in order to get that information, we cannot take an educational guess. You feel that it is important to get a feasibility study in so that we have all the answers, income, expense, and see if it's even a viable situation. Am I understanding this correctly?

That is the goal of the feasibility study is to get all of that information to you so you can make the decision. It's a little bit different because we're looking at three different scenarios, right? Right. The whole sphere, there are areas that are not developed. Correct. And that has an opportunity for potential commercial zones. but we need to really key in and find out is it really gonna develop, is it not gonna really develop, and that's why there's a 10-year feasibility study that they'll do, and it'll project out for these three scenarios. But you're correct, it will get all that information to you.

Okay, and it would also tell us is if they are currently paying fees to the county or wherever they're paying the fees to, that that could also be more income for those public service calls in addition to just their property taxes. Is that correct? I mean the rooftop fee. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, that concludes my questions. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mayor. So... In 2021, with our previous city manager Kim Summers, when I was elected, we actually looked at this and had a meeting with Supervisor Washington about the feasibility of, I'm not sure if this was exactly the, but we did talk about the Spencer's Crossing area. And at that time, there wasn't enough commercial to offset the cost. and it was completely dropped at that time. Could you elaborate on how we could now revisit this with Justin?

Yeah, so we've talked a little bit about what makes this context unique. We've also done some kind of back of the napkin. What's really difficult is there are so many different layers of potential revenue sources and costs. So for instance, if we are located nearby, we may already be under mutual aid delivering services, but delivering services without a revenue offset. Our police department would not fit into that category because there's a pretty strict delineation there. Still, we support each other, but the calls would be likely going to Riverside County sheriffs if they originate from this area prior to any annexation. When you start to look a little deeper, you've got things like park services provided by districts. So if those districts provide, basically, and would provide after annexation, all of the amenities to take care of parks, then that's a cost obligation we wouldn't necessarily have. So now you start to look at, we might be providing fire services anyway. We might not have to invest anything in the park side. Now you start to look at things like road overlay, sidewalks, some of the other things that Isaac mentioned. It gets really complex, and as they say, the devil's in the details. So I think any high-level cursory review does show that there's some revenue potential, and as a general rule, Annexing only residential property in a state like California doesn't pencil long term because you don't have the commercial sales tax opportunities you're referencing. But when you account for those other more nuanced things, that we might be providing some services anyway, and some services might continue to be outside of our responsibility, Now it starts to shift things a little bit so that we at least feel like this deeper dive, which I don't think was done then, is warranted because there's just quite a bit of nuance there that causes us to question the general rules that without the commercial property, it's not viable.

Thank you for that. a couple of my questions and piggyback on Council Member Warren's, but it will look about the DIF fees that's been paid to the county. It'll take a deep dive onto that. And then valley-wide, so.

Yeah, the park maintenance just.

Right, so the parks are, you know, very busy, very used there, and provide a very important aspect to that community. And I know that parks are very expensive to upkeep, but we've seen what happened with Menefee when they decided they would like to have the park versus Valleywide have the park. So I don't want to go down that path with Valleywide. Will this also circumvent that? Will this have a discussion, a high-level administrative discussion with Valleywide on the feasibility of whether they would maintain responsibility? Because the number of parks that they have in a region is vitally important.

Right. So Yes, there will be discussions with all of the service providers, Riverside Sheriffs, Riverside Fire, Valleywide. RCA owns a few parcels there that are in the LAFCO recommended annexation that we would need to have discussions with RCA on. All of those conversations for each option need to be discussed, and as City Manager Clifton just mentioned, If it's more feasible for us to not incorporate the parks, but still move forward with annexation and it makes it feasible, that's what we're trying to get to. We're trying to get to a true cost, not the back of napkin that may have been done. Right.

And that's exactly what it was. It was the back of a napkin. Yeah, thank you for that. We don't have Fire Station 6, and we all have said that that's a priority, but we still have, with the diligent effort of our fire, been able to improve our ISO rating. We've been able to move forward with that. Is this something that in Fire Station 6, when we're looking at this, and we're looking at the call relationship, and this is probably for Chief, is... That's something you see changes if we don't have Fire Station 6 built out. Can you elaborate on that a little bit because of the traffic concerns or whatever you... Sure.

Our ISO wouldn't go down if we don't build Fire Station 6. And it will improve if we build Fire Station 6, but it's hard to say if we would get to a 1 from a 2. Getting to a 1 is very hard and has a lot of other things that we would have to do as a fire department to reach that. What this will do is, you know, we have an area here, the fire station, we know it's a tier one priority for a reason, and that's because this is an area of our city that we once didn't have a lot of traffic to get to, and so we could get there pretty quickly. Now, with Winchester Road and all of the development going on in the north, we have a massively growing population north of our city that's impacting how long it takes us to get to parts of our city that used to be easier to get to. There's no question that the addition of the fire station, where it is, is important for our city as it is built right now. With the proximity to Spencer's Crossing, it's going to provide those residents an opportunity also to have a fire station close to them because they don't right now. And with our auto aid agreement in place, I'm not going to say we're not going to run those calls even if we don't annex that area because I just don't think that's appropriate. for a fire engine to be next door to a house and not to run the medical aid next to it.

Thank you for that. My last question is, originally when we had this discussion with the supervisor, Cal Fire was going to be brought to the table to talk about a mutual aid paid agreement. Because that we would, if we didn't annex this area, that we would be the only fire station in that area running calls to that region. Is that still maybe a feasibility? Is the feasibility study going to look at that if we could have a relationship where we could actually have a pay for service for mutual aid?

In 2022, we were direct when we had a meeting with Supervisor Washington. He told then City Manager Summers to have me have that conversation with CAL FIRE. had that conversation with Cal Fire, there is no mechanism by which we would have a fee-for-service response in that area. Very few of those fee-for-service areas do exist. However, the reason those exist is essentially when they're in a pocket within a city that the county fire agency couldn't respond to or couldn't respond to without driving many miles through a city. That's not the case in this scenario. That option is not on the table.

Okay, thanks for elaborating on that. Absolutely. I know back history, things change. It's been five years approximately since that meeting, so I know a lot of things have changed. So thank you, that's all my questions. Thank you, Mayor.

Of course. Councilwoman Stone.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have one question. If we were to annex in the LAFCO proposed area, which the map's in front of me, Do we have to accept the zoning or are we allowed to rezone?

No, my understanding is that we're able to implement our own zoning. You can use the implemented zoning that Riverside has adopted as a base, but you are not required to issue the same zoning. So there's, you can adopt your own zoning.

That's really, really good news. So, yeah, I want two seconds. Go ahead. Will the feasibility study discuss the potential retail possibility of income coming in? They will address that as well.

Yes, that's specifically for the full sphere annexation. That should be something that's key for that. We've talked about this at a staff level. We want to make sure that as we're doing this, we're doing it right. So if we move forward with annexation, 10 years down the line, somebody's not saying, why did you guys annex this? Or why didn't you not annex this when you had the opportunity to? So that future commercial would be part of the consideration. And it could, but we also have to, cautious because we've been promised, yes, there could be development there, but we need to be realistic and we need to make sure all departments are involved in that to make sure that we're providing you the right information.

Fantastic. Mayor Pro Tem.

To piggyback on her question about the zoning, there's a state law that says you cannot down zone a single property in the state of California. Does that not apply on annexation?

So it's not that you're down zoning it. It's that you are now the jurisdiction that is in charge of the zoning. So your zoning, right, is what is going to be ultimately approved and adopted in that area. It's not that you're down zoning.

Even if the county had a more dense zoning, since we're coming in, we can zone it first time through anything we want.

You would be the jurisdiction that can adopt that zoning. So whatever zoning you start to implement, that's what you're going to adopt.

Great question.

Plot thickens. Councilman Warren.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Stone. That was one of my two questions left, so thank you very much for asking it. That's fine. My last question I had was, how many rooftops are there? You said 14,000 people. Is that 14,000 rooftops? How many homes are in that area currently?

I believe there are about 4,000 single-family units currently in Spencer's Crossing. If you multiply that by, I think it's 3.2, Riverside County you get to about the 14,000. Okay.

I just didn't know how many homes were in there Thank you very much. That includes my questions.

Thanks, Mary Okay, thank you. I don't have any questions. So we will move on and Call for public comments on this madam city clerk Seeing none except it looks like Oh Mr. Cassin Klein

Sorry, I wasn't planning on talking, but Laura, you raised a question that I think needs to be clarified. So I think if I understood your question about a fiscal impact analysis, a retail receipt analysis versus land use, how much commercial zoning do we have? And as I understand it, this is only the annexation study isn't going to talk about or analyze what our receipts may be based on the number of commercial acreage. So I just want to... want that question clarified so staff doesn't... As I'm sitting out there, I'm not understanding your question versus what you asked and what I understand the plan is going to study.

I understand the answer to my question, and that is, are we allowed to...

I'm not talking about that one. I'm sorry to interrupt. You asked about fiscal impact.

Right.

Right? Yes. Right. The analysis of that. So there's two... Where I'm sitting, there's two ways to look at it. In my experience in land development, there's two ways of doing it, right? When we come forward wanting to change zoning or something or bring a use, often cities will say, oh, give us a fiscal impact or a financial impact analysis, right? What is this project, what is Disneyland going to bring us in dollars and cents? Correct. Okay?

Yes.

The question and one of the questions that I emailed was, how much commercial land do we have zoned here and what is the potential capital sales tax revenue for that that may offset the expenses. So as I understood your question to staff on that, I have a question. Were you asking about the number of acres or were you asking is this study gonna talk about dollars and cents, a fiscal or a financial impact analysis?

Okay, so let me clarify. Can you go back to the map again?

We'll make sure it gets answered.

Come back up here. I'm not done with you yet.

Oh, my mom's looking down smiling at you right now. You're not the boss of me.

She absolutely is.

The company's here as well, right? Yeah.

Okay, so my question was the cream color, which is LAFCO, this is their proposed annexation. So in front of me, I'm looking at all this property. I'm assuming that through the county, this is all zoned however they have it. If we decide to annex this, do we have ownership now of rezoning all of this property? to accommodate The income, so if there's a lot of residential, can we rezone this to retail, commercial, which, as we all know, is a tax base for us? From my understanding, Isaac said yes. Based on what Ron's question was, he reiterated about the down zoning because he needed clarification. So am I missing something?

So no. So a couple of things.

Kazin, Kazin, real quick. I think Justin's going to decipher some of this.

Can you step in? I can answer her question with the map. Up to you guys.

But then again... Hold on, hold on. Can I just finish? I don't think he understands where I'm going with this.

Hold on, hold on. Justin, please.

Yeah, so I think I understand the discussion. And what we're doing is trying to estimate current and future revenues. So we can only identify assumptions for future development. Of course. We wouldn't want to do something like assume a larger amount of commercial than we could possibly accommodate. But you have to do two things to do that. You have to say what land might be available and well situated for commercial development. And then on average, because we don't know if that's a car dealership or an ice cream shop, how much might it generate? We can we can make some reasonable assumptions based on looking at the area and existing land uses so how much commercial land is available and then how much could it generate so that you might have a range of possible revenue over time and that's what I'm hoping that the study will identify

Got it. Okay. So the map that was in the staff report, right, of this annexation area shows the county zoning and how what the county called, I think there was MSC, which is, I don't know, something service commercial, right? If we could see that map, that might tell you how many acres or which pieces of property are currently zoned commercial. Ron is correct. There's no net loss, right? Housing law.

Yes.

But... We can talk about it.

Over ice cream.

Thank you. Isaac, would you have any comments on that question?

So I just want to clarify that the map that was included with the staff report should be this map. We don't include Riverside County zoning as part of the staff report. I also want to go back to something that you said, Council Member Stone. So, yes, the orange or the the. Beige zoning that LAFCO is proposing could be rezoned. However, there needs to be discussions with RCA, as we're aware that RCA owns several of those properties, and even though we could try and rezone them, they're still conservation areas. So realistically, where the commercial potential is going to be is going to be in that full annexation, but we definitely need to know if that doesn't materialize, if commercial doesn't happen, What would the burden be to the city? And is that acceptable for this council to move forward? And so that's what we will be presenting to you.

So thank you, Isaac, for the clarification. And I just want to thank Kristen and also Chief for your testimony here today. And thank you for answering my question.

You back up? Oh, now we're going to open up for comments. Mr. Holliday.

I'm now closing the public hearing first.

Thank you. I tapped it. Yeah, so all very good points. If you look on the map there, the section where Clinton Keith kind of goes diagonally through that big chunk of property, that is all owned by, I don't know if that map is up on your screen, that is all owned by RCA. Pardon? Below it and above it. And they own several other parcels in this annexation area. They just bought a parcel at the last meeting that's between Lee Lane and Clinton Keith Road that is one parcel right next to the city of Murrieta. So they're buying a lot of property in that area. Because I expected that at some point Clinton Keith was going to be a retail corridor. And when I found RCA on it, it's like, no, it's going to be Habitat. what you see, what you drive out there is what you're going to see forever. That's not going to change. And the thing that Marietta did, and Cass may be the only one that remembers this back in the day, when we incorporated, the city zoned about a third of the city as commercial and based a lot of financial projections on that zoning. And somewhere around, I was on this, I was chairman of the steering committee, and somewhere around, I'm going to say, 97, 98, they had a consultant come in to look at the feasibility of that property developing. And they said, you have over-zoned your city for commercial. It will never develop like that. So I'm thankful that you brought that up, that, yeah, we can look at things that are zoned commercial. I know there's stuff zoned commercial that's currently in both the purple and the beige color that has not developed yet. and may not in the next 10 years. And that certainly has to be an analysis that has to be done in kind of a worst case scenario, what do we do if? Now, there may be stuff further north of that that may develop commercial, and we could, if it's not zoned commercial, we could rezone it that way. But I think we need to be conservative on those zonings, because I'd rather, if it made sense financially, have the bar set low and we exceed it, then set the bar too high and we miss it. So I'm thankful that you're on the same page with that. But overall, we got to have the numbers to know, bottom line. Thank you. Okay.

Mayor Lovell? Yes. I apologize. There is somebody who is asking if they could speak for public comment. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay. Mr. Ingram? Hey.

Welcome to Marietta.

It's nice and hot in here. Did you guys forget to pay the air condition bill today, Justin? Okay. So... So I'm super supportive of Station Six. This is something we've been kicking around for a long time, and Council Member DeForest is absolutely correct that we did have this discussion. I think the things that we need to factor into this when you're looking at the feasibility study is one, sphere of influence of RCA, Absolutely important. We need to know if these are critical linkage or not, because this could be a problem for us down the road. Two, when you actually adopt this, the process that's going to take and what it's going to cost to actually make it conform with our general plan and that conversion, because there will be a cost associated with that. And then looking at the land that parallels the areas that you want to do the commercial, because I absolutely agree with Council Member Stone. What we're looking for is to generate revenue. Rooftops generate about $0.06 per dollar. Not to say that we don't need houses, but we also need revenue to sustain this in the future. Because if you do the numbers at $5 million a year, that's $13,800 a day that it's going to take to support that station. We need to make sure we can generate that revenue to support our department. So the things that I think that are critical, I think that looking at what RCA's influence is going to be on that and what it's going to take and what is it going to take with the process to have predictability with LAFCO. If other council members remember when we went through this with the council, we spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with LAFCO to get simple things passed, wheeling agreements, other things. What is the duration of this process and how long is it going to take? And I think that becomes essential so that that's factored in to expectation for future of this. Thank you for taking your time to listen to me. Thank you.

Any more?

That concludes public comments.

All right, cool. Thank you. Back up to council. Any closing comments, closing thoughts? You guys ready to annex this thing? I'm kidding, totally kidding. Totally kidding. I'd like to call for a motion, and I have a motion by Mr. Holliday, and a second, please, by Councilwoman DeForest. Let's vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Thank you very much. Next up, fiscal year 2026-27 budget update. Mr. Javier, how are you?

Good evening, honorable mayor, city council members, members of the public, Javier Carcomo, director of finance, and I would like to introduce to you for the first time our new finance manager, Tiffany Verduzco, who's joining us for tonight's presentation, as well as, as you know him, Mr. Tanner Benson, who is our financial analyst.

Excuse me, Javier, can you talk more into the mic, please?

Thank you. Yes. I'm gonna move closer, is that better? Perfect, thank you. Great, so this presentation for tonight will focus on several key areas. First, I will be providing an update. Usually what I do at the beginning of a fiscal year, I provide a very quick economic update and share some of the economic indicators that is impacting the economy in general. Also, we'll be discussing our major revenue sources, including sales tax and property tax, followed by proposed budget adjustments. We'll also be discussing personnel changes and the city's operating and sustainability reserves. And overall, the objective is to make sure that the adopted budget remains current and accurately reflects the city's financial positions based on known financial commitments that we have today. So before discussing the city's budget adjustments, I want to briefly provide some context regarding the broader economy. There are three primary economic indicators that I want to highlight, and those are inflation, the labor market, and the interest rates. While the economy has generally remained resilient, there are still areas of uncertainty that we need to monitor as we move throughout the fiscal year. So I'll start with inflation. Inflation has moderated significantly from the levels that we experienced back from 2021-22. However, the most recent data show here indicates inflation at approximately 3.4, which remains above Federal Reserve long-term objective of the 2%. The calendar year is not completed yet, so we're looking forward to see what the number looks like at the end of the calendar year. We also continue to see geopolitical events creating volatility in energy prices and the markets, which can affect our fuel costs and other operating costs. So while the inflationary pressures have eased for the last few years, we're not yet back to what will be considered a normal 2% environment for the Federal Reserve Bank. The labor market has shown some signs of moderation as well. The unemployment rate is at 4.2% as of June 2026. The chart on the left shows the monthly job creation over the last five years. which shows that generally has slowed down compared to the very strong levels that we saw early in 2002. Payroll increased by just 57,000 in the month of June. For the Federal Reserve Bank, the labor market provides a sign whether or not the economy is expanding or contracting at that level. The final economic indicator is interest rate. The Federal Reserve Committee left the federal funds rate unchanged during the last meeting and left it between 3.5 and 3.75. This is for the fifth consecutive meeting this last July. And that was kind of lining expectations at that time. Interest rate decisions continue to be driven primarily by inflation, labor market, at the labor market, gross domestic product, as well as the overall economic activity. Based on my discussion with the city's investment advisors, they believe that the Federal Reserve will probably hold the federal fund rates steady through the remainder of the fiscal year, sorry, calendar year, provided that actual and market-based measures of inflation remain contained. So with that, I'm gonna focus and change my presentation to our city's revenues performance during the last few years. I'll start off with the sales tax. This slide shows the city's historical sales tax performance, including Bradley Burn sales tax and the Measure T sales tax. For Bradley Burns, actual revenue increased from approximately $26.3 million in fiscal year 25 to an estimated $26.5 million in fiscal year 26. This is approximately a 1% increase year over year. For fiscal year 27, we're forecasting a somewhat aggressive approach, which is approximately 3%. The Measure T revenue graph shows a trend as well, increasing from approximately $28.3 million in fiscal year 25 to an estimated $29.1 million in fiscal year 26. This is an approximately 2.7% increase. So while we continue to monitor the economy and consumer activities, our current sales tax outlook remains positive, with a slightly increase year over year during the last couple years. Something I would like to note as part of this financial update, we're not proposing changes to our sales tax for fiscal year 27 yet. We would like to confirm how we end up the year for fiscal year 26 and then look at the data for the first three months into fiscal year 27 to determine whether or not we want to make any changes to the adopted budget for Bradley Burns and Measure T sales tax for fiscal year 27. Moving to property tax, this graph shows a continued steady growth in property tax, which is our second highest revenue source for the city. As shown here, property tax revenue increased from approximately $45.8 million in fiscal year 25. With the fiscal year 26 still an estimate number, we sell such receipts are in a delay a few months. Once we close fiscal year 26, we'll probably be able to provide that back, report back to you the final numbers, but we're projecting approximately $49 million in fiscal year 26, and 51.2 for fiscal year 27. At this point, again, same for sales tax, property tax. At this moment, we're not making a recommendation to make an update for fiscal year 27. Okay, so this slide summarizes the proposed budget adjustments for this, for our first budget update for fiscal year 27. On the revenue side, as I shared with you, there are no significant changes proposed to the city's major revenue sources. the adjustments that we're presenting to you is primarily involved reallocating investment earnings between the general fund and Measure T, reducing the police department grant reimbursement budget, adjusting the fleet allocation based on reassessment of fire vehicles cost. On the expenditure side, the largest adjustments are related to the salaries and benefits, including special compensations for the public safety groups. And we're also making a budget adjustment based on the calculated cost of living adjustment for the miscellaneous employee labor agreements. We're also making several operating budget adjustments to account for items that were omitted during the budget adoption process. We're also reallocating legal services budget based on historical expenditures. And lastly, we're updating our budget related to the insurance and the fleet replacement costs. Overall, these adjustments are intended to align the fiscal year 26-27 budget with current information, approved labor agreements, and known operating costs. With that, I'm going to turn over the presentation to Mr. Tanner Benson.

Thank you. I will be going over the updates to the general fund and measure T and then the citywide proposed changes. But first, since this is the start of a new fiscal year, we wanted to briefly go over the table on screen. The first column labeled adopted budget is the budget that was approved and adopted by the city council on June 3rd, 2025. The second column is labeled is labeled the amended budget. Over the course of a fiscal year, the operating budget gets updated through council action, either from a budget update like we have here, or from a council approved agenda report. The current amended budget on the table reflects the various updates to the adopted budget from approved agenda reports at this time. Next is our proposed adjustment column and the percentage change impact from the proposed adjustments. And finally, we have our last column labeled proposed amended budget. This column shows the effects of the proposed changes and shows what staff is proposing the new amended budget for fiscal year 2027 to be. For the general fund, now for the general fund, there is a proposed reduction of $1,261,000 in other miscellaneous revenues. The $1.2 million is a reallocation of interest income revenue that is being moved to measure T. During the prior fiscal year, staff was directed to show Measure T interest in Measure T rather than being grouped with the general fund. Thus, this is not a true reduction of overall revenue and is just a reallocation. The remaining reduction of $61,000 reflects a decrease in the budgeted revenues for county reimbursements based on the updated information from the county through the police department. For the general fund expenditures, our personnel costs are proposed to increase by $793,000. This is primarily due to updating personnel costs based on the newly agreed upon public safety MOUs and the non-public safety COLA update. For operations and maintenance, or O&M, we have a net proposed increase of $269,000. Some of the primary proposed adjustments are for adding budget for the city's annex building that was missed at the time of adoption, adding budget to various police department items, such as a budget for the Halloween event, Dark in the Park, the reallocation of budget for a contract originally budgeted in Measure T, and but paid out of the general fund and an increase to their training budget. And the final proposed adjustment in O&M is the reallocation of budget for our legal services based on historical needs and the addition of the new municipal services department budget, which also did not exist at the time of adoption. Finally, there is a proposed increase to the internal service allocations of $11,000. This increase is for the city's vehicle replacement program and is due to the receipt of updated fire vehicle costs. These proposed changes bring our general fund proposed revenue budget to $78.8 million and the proposed expenditure budget to $81.6 million, with an estimated use of unassigned fund balance of $2.8 million for the general fund. Now on to Measure T. As discussed with the general fund, there is a proposed increase of $1.2 million to the Measure T other miscellaneous revenue for the separation of Measure T interest revenue from the general fund. As previously mentioned, this is a reallocation of budget and not a true increase in revenue. Next onto the proposed changes to Measure T's expenditures. Similar to the general fund, the proposed increase in the personnel budget is due to the updated public safety MOUs and non-public safety COLA update. And the increase to O&M, operations and maintenance, or decrease of $80,000 to O&M is for the PD contract mentioned on the general fund slide, which is being moved from Measure T to the general fund. The proposed increase in the Measure T allocations of $24,000 are also for the internal service allocations for the city's vehicle replacement program due to the updated vehicle costs for fire vehicles. And finally, we have our transfers out for Measure T, which have a proposed increase of $696,000. Measure T transfers funds to other operating funds, namely the fire district, the community services district, and our library fund. These transfers are utilized to make up for when the expenditures in these departments exceed their revenues. These proposed changes bring our Measure T proposed revenue budget to $30.7 million, and the proposed expenditure budget to $29.6 million, with an estimated contribution to unassigned fund balance of approximately $1 million for Measure T. Next, I will be going over the remaining proposed adjustments that are outside of general fund and Measure T, as well as the proposed amended citywide budget. First, I will review the increases and decreases in expenditures. We have a net increase of $616,000 for personnel-related expenditures across the city-wide funds outside of General Fund and Measure T for the newly agreed-upon public safety labor agreements updated non-public safety COLA. We have an increase in expenditures for the reallocation of legal costs and the addition of the $20,000 for the new municipal services department. And we are adding $20,000, or we are proposing to add $20,000 to the vehicle replacement fund to account for change orders for the fire tiller truck. We do have some proposed decreases on the expenditure side. We have a net decrease of $927,000 in our risk management fund to align our insurance and liability accounts to actual billings and the anticipated claims. For the citywide revenues, we have a proposed increase to our vehicle replacement fund, the revenue side of the internal service charge of $34,000. This is the offset of the allocations for general fund and Measure T. And for our transfers in, we have a net increase of the $696,000 for fire, CSD, and library, which is the offset of our Measure T transfer out. Based on the proposed adjustments that Javier and I went over, The citywide net proposed revenue adjustment is a net decrease of $27,000, bringing our proposed citywide revenue budget to $202.7 million. The net citywide proposed expenditure adjustment is an increase of $964,000, which increases the proposed expenditure budget to $195.4 million. This brings our total citywide contribution to fund balance to approximately $7.3 million. I'll be handing the presentation back to Javier to go over the personnel changes and changes in unassigned fund balance.

Thank you, Tanner. So the staff regularly bring the schedule of authorized positions to city council for approval to reflect new position requests, position title reclassifications. The proposed update adds to an increase of two full-time equivalent positions for fiscal year 2026-27, bringing the city's total authorized positions to 481 positions. The proposed update includes four new positions, one position title reclassification, one promotion as part of a proposed organizational realignment. The update also reflects a reduction of two positions that were inadvertently included in a previously schedule of authorized positions. So we're rectifying that error during this update. The total FTE count also includes three new firefighter positions previously approved by the City Council on June 3rd, 2025 to support the scheduled arrival of the new tiller fire truck. Moving on to estimated fund balance, this slide provides a condensed overview of the estimated fund balances for the city's five major funds. The table shows the beginning fund balance, the amended revenue, the amended expenditure, as well as the capital outlay and contributions to reserve that were approved as part of the fiscal year 2025-26 budget adoption back in June of 25. The general fund is projected to have an estimated unassigned fund balance of approximately 25.3 million, while the measure T is projected at approximately 18.6. As a good finance person, I have to obviously provide a disclosure. So it is important to know that the fiscal year 2025-26, so that will be your first column, is still an estimated number. Those numbers will be finalized until we close fiscal year 26 audit. So, however, I believe that these estimates provide a reasonable representation of the city's current financial position for each of those funds. As part of a future agenda report, staff will present recommendations for how the unassigned fund balances can be strategically used to continue supporting the city council's goals and priorities. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tiffany for this.

Thank you, Javier. And good evening, Mayor and City Council. And welcome back. And so I will be providing our balances for the operating and sustainability reserves in the next couple of slides. But before we get into the numbers, I did want to provide a little bit of background on these funds. They are part of the city's fund balance and reserve policy, which helps promote sound fiscal sustainability management and supports long-term financial planning and the continuity of essential services for the Marietta community. Operating reserves consist of our five major funds with the targeted reserve balance of 30%. At the end of fiscal year 26 and at the beginning of fiscal year 27, the fund balance for the five major funds was $39 million. And as mentioned in the previous slides, effective June 3rd of 2025, as part of the biannual budget adoption, the city committed unassigned fund balance from General Fund and Measure T, totaling about 1.6 million, bringing the total operating reserve fund balance to 40.7 million. The sustainability reserve balance consists of funds allocated for economic contingency, and that includes for information technology services and repairs to citywide community service district and fire facilities, as well as pension rate stabilization and the continuity of operations. For fiscal year 27, the reserve balance was $35.4 million. That remains unchanged. And with the combination of the operating and sustainability reserve brings our total balance on reserves to $76.2 million. And just to remind City Council for future fiscal updates for fiscal year 27, we will be bringing our first quarter update is scheduled for around November 26th. For our fourth quarter on fiscal year 26, after we close our year end and receive our audited financials, that will be presented around December 26th. For our mid-year on fiscal year 27, that will be brought back to you around February or March. And for our third quarter update for fiscal year 27, will be brought back around May or June. And at the same time, staff will be working on the biannual budget adoption. That's gonna begin this calendar year, around November and December. and we plan on bringing the budget adoption workshop May of 27 with the goal of adopting in June of 27. And so for tonight's item and recommendation, staff requests to amend fiscal year 27 operating budget as defined in the fiscal year 27 proposed budget amendments and also to approve the updates scheduled in the authorized positions list. This concludes our presentation, and staff is available for any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. We're going to back up. We're bringing it to council for questions, starting with Councilwoman Warren.

Thank you, Mayor. Question. When do you anticipate the numbers coming in for the sales tax for June through June 30th?

So the June collections, we actually be getting that by the 21st of this month.

And are there any other outstanding revenues that you are still waiting on?

Yes, we still have probably some property tax allocations to come in. And certainly we still need to look at some of the year-end revenues that we have to reconcile as well.

Okay. I just wasn't curious that there's, the county seems to be taking their time on this.

Yeah, we have recently received three, four apportionment during the last month. And then so they're trying to finish it up as well.

Thank you. Those are the only questions. And thank you for your presentation. It was very well done. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Councilwoman DeForest.

Thank you, Mayor. First and foremost, I'd like to welcome you, Tiffany, to Murrieta. We're happy to have you. And you are in great company with Tanner and Javier, so thank you so much. You're joining a very strong team. I know they always say that Parks and Rec is the team of lots of fun, but, you know, I don't know. Finance can be so much fun as well, right? So I have a question. My question is slide 12. You talk about miscellaneous revenue for Measure T, and that looks like that, I don't understand when you said you were realignment of the interest. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Yes, absolutely. So at the beginning, when we adopted the budget, our investment earnings were budgeted under the general fund. And that includes the funds associated with general fund itself and also measure T. From an accounting perspective, we should be recording the revenue separately based on each of the funds' account balances. And then so what we're moving is the budget that we had originally allocated established the general fund part of that it's been reallocated to measure T so each fund can recognize their own investment earnings thank you for that that is my last question Thank You mayor of course and of course we have mr. holiday in the queue for a budget question I only have one question welcome Tiffany

Thank you both for the welcome. I appreciate it.

Yes. I'm the council member they warned you about. Over and over. Over and over. My question is on slide seven. Seven? Seven. So what percentage of sales tax do we get under Bradley Burns?

What percentage would we receive?

Yes.

In compared to prior year?

No, just in general. So sales tax 7.75%, which includes Measure A and some other stuff. What percentage of that 7.75% do we get? 1%. 1%. And Measure T is also 1%. 1%. So in looking at this chart, you have an estimated increase in the Bradley Burns sales tax from 26.5 to 27.3, but of much smaller percentage increase on Measure T, but they're both 1%.

The Measure T revenue for fiscal year 26 actually is gonna be a little bit higher than the Bradley Burns. so with bradley burns we are estimating about 26.5 million dollars with measure t we're estimating about 29 point almost 29.1 the the major differences between the although they're both one percent the major differences between the two is that uh the purchase of vehicles um uh associated with mr t so um When a residents of our city purchase a vehicle, regardless of where the vehicle is on any other city. It is required that they have to pay the 1% sell sucks back to the city of Marietta.

But my question is, is if you have a 3% increase from badly burned from 26 to 27. Why is the increase on major T so much smaller?

So the 27 is still a projection. So we aggressively estimated 3% actually for both fiscal year. So the original budgeted for fiscal year 26 under measure T was lower than the $29 million.

So the original increase for measure T was 3%, but because you adjusted it up on the actuals, closer to the actuals is why that percentage is different?

Correct, so we originally budgeted 3%. We're actually close to 2.75% of actual receipts.

Okay, thank you. That's the only question I had.

Wow, I have one question actually. I'm on slide 14. So this stood out really large to me when I saw it. The net decrease of 927,000 in risk management Please, I mean, that's like, we should celebrate, I assume. Like, how does the insurance drop?

Well, it's not necessarily that it dropped. It's our original estimate, which, again, our budget was adopted almost two years ago. Yeah. So our forecast two years ago, we had some information at that point in time. When we receive the actual invoices for fiscal year 27 for our insurance coverage, then we adjust our budget original estimate. We adjusted at that point in time. So we could say that we over budgeted by $927,000.

Okay, that's good. And I'll echo. Welcome, Tiffany. You do know you joined the greatest city in the country, correct? Okay. And then this man right here has every award that you possibly can get under his leadership. So you got a pretty cool boss there.

He mentioned that to me. Yeah.

He walked you down the hallway of awards.

I was pretty proud of our city just getting our first budget award upon my departure. And then I get here and he's like, yeah, we got three. That's awesome. Well, welcome. Which higher bar, but thank you.

Yeah. Okay. Any public comments?

Seeing none.

Okay. And any council comments? Probably not. Let's call for a motion. Mr. Holliday, and I have a second by Councilwoman DeForest. Let's vote.

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

Thank you. Welcome, Tiffany.

My bad.

Next up, another exciting topic, traffic. Discussion regarding traffic congestion requested by our very own Councilman Stone.

And Mr. Mayor, if you don't mind, I could just set this one up a little bit. We did get a request to revisit traffic congestion and I think review some of the programs that we've implemented. So what we're prepared to do, if it's the pleasure of Council Member Stone and the Council, is present a little bit, kind of a reminder of where we've been and some of our historic attempts to optimize synchronization and traffic flow. And then you know what we've done a little more recently with the pilot program. And then look to the future. and help council anticipate what are some of the efforts still underway to continue to optimize the system. So if that's good, we can start there and then take questions.

Okay. Good evening, Mayor Lavelle. Air conditioning is back on just in time to talk about traffic. Yeah. Excellent. Happy to join you tonight. I'm joined by Jeff Hitch, City Engineer, and Brian Stevenson, Consultant Traffic Engineer. We were to talk about what we talked and what we've done, as Justin alluded to, but we've completed since we talked to you last time. and since the request was made in May to come back and talk about traffic congestion. So I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Hitch as a brief presentation, and we're here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Bob. Good evening. Mayor Lovell, council members, we're here to talk about traffic. You guys wanna talk about traffic? All right, let's get into it. I guess I have to be able to figure out how to use this first. Right on. All right so as city manager clifton identified we're going to talk a little bit about where we've been kind of what we've what we're going to be looking at currently and things that we're going to be looking at in the future so obviously you'll remember the los alamos corridor pilot program that we recently completed we last updated this council on march third twenty twenty six. Again that was from madison avenue whitewood road. That program saw up to a 50% reduction in delays. I want to emphasize that's not a guaranteed element that's going to happen on all our corridors, That is something that we can try to accomplish as we go through trying to do resynchronization on some of our corridors. I don't have it on here, but I'm stealing from maybe where the future slide is going to get to. But the next major corridor that we plan to look at is going to be the Marietta Hot Springs Road corridor. For synchronization purposes we want to wait until we finish doing the CIP project that's currently under construction Obviously this wouldn't be a fair time to be trying to run that type of analysis But we will be analyzing that after the completion of that project So we're thinking maybe of doing some counts probably in the spring of 27 that would then be we would then be analyzing based on those counts and then seeing how we can do improvements to that corridor and We're not anticipating a 50% reduction in delays in that corridor, but some amount of reduction is obviously what we're always shooting for. And then we'll be looking at future corridors as time goes by. Other things that we've recently accomplished, we've added several always stops that have been installed around the community that you may have noticed. Los Alamos Road and Mason, Poinsettia Street and Nasturtium. I think is the way that's pronounced. And that's obviously up in the Mapleton neighborhood. The Hunter Road and Mockingbird Avenue. It's Hunter Road just west of Winchester. Those always stops were just installed, I think, just within the last month or two. So pretty recent. We are things that we're currently up to we're kind of sniffing around some roundabout locations and Some of these locations are items that have been brought up by this council. Some have been brought up by other members of the community as areas of concern. Whitewood Road and Daylily Drive is one location. There's been requests in the past about doing a traffic signal at that location to replace the current always stop. It's never met warrants for a traffic signal in our previous discussions. We'll continue to look at that. We are looking at a possibility of looking at a one-lane roundabout at that location. It's not something that we've done before. The picture you see in the top screen is an example of one. That's actually in the state of Georgia. There have been some of these installed actually down in San Diego. So we're kind of analyzing what those look like, what the maintenance would look like on these types of things and whether that would be suitable in this location. Whitewood Road and Mapleton Street is another good example of a location. It's currently just a side street stop only, but we've had people requesting all-way stops or a traffic signal at that location. And it hasn't met warrants in the past. We don't feel confident that it would meet warrants at this point. So again, something that we would look at as a potential for, in this case, maybe a two-lane roundabout. The picture of the exhibit below shows what an example of a multi-lane roundabout might look like. We don't have any of those currently in the city. I don't know if Temecula even has a two-lane roundabout down there. So these would be some new things that we would be looking at to determine the suitability of those types of things. We really like the concept of roundabouts as far as the safety that it provides. It eliminates broadside collisions, which is really important, especially on roads like Whitewood that have had some history of those types of collisions. Clinton Keith Road restriping I thought we'd bring that up We are going to be bringing forward to this council the award of our next pavement rehab project In September that rehab project is going to include restriping of Clinton Keith Road to six lanes I know that has been brought up by members of the public in the past to try to accomplish that and There is one stretch that we cannot achieve yet, but we may as well get the rest of the road set up for that while we're doing this pavement rehab project. So the one stretch that we won't be able to complete is the eastbound stretch between Mitchell and McIlwain. There is a project that has submitted improvement plans on that frontage that should be widening that road sufficient to allow that to be striped to six lanes when that project comes in. So should that project construct we believe that that will complete that element and then we'd have six lanes from spinning wheel all the way to to whitewood. Actually, all the way to winchester. Traffic. Other things that we're up to, looking at Jackson Avenue and Magellan. You may recall this, last we discussed this was actually all the way back in October of 24. There's been some back and forth discussion we've had with the community in that location. We do believe that community wants to bring this back to this council to rediscuss the opportunity to put on always stop at that location. So that is something that we plan to bring forward probably in September or October. So something to look forward to. The adaptive timing project, we're all familiar kind of generally with this project. We currently have 111 signals in town. This project would be updating traffic loops to allow for the adaptive timing to be operational on these. And of course, we require new controllers to be placed at each one of the traffic signal controllers. This would update all of our facilities to allow for adaptive timing to be implemented throughout the city. We're currently processing the NEPA documents. This project has a federal grant on it, and so it requires NEPA approval, as well as the right-of-way certification documents through Caltrans. We expect that to be completed by the end of the year, and then we'll be applying for submitting our request for authorization to proceed with construction. We expect that to be completed in spring of 27. This would have us through construction in summer or fall. Once we put that project together, we would be looking at probably key corridors and trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the adaptive timing once we get that installed and see what that looks like throughout the community. So those would be things to look forward to in 27 and 28, actually moving into that area. And then where we're going, other than, as we talked about, doing additional traffic monitoring synchronization, for example, on Hot Springs and other corridors. As Council Member Stone brought up in the meeting earlier today regarding Assembly Bill 2307, obviously it was authored by Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez and co-authored by Senator Kelly Ciardo. This project is going to authorize WRCOG to coordinate with Caltrans on a regional pilot program to sync traffic signal timing between local roads and state highways. It's a great goal of reducing traffic congestion, improving travel time, reliability, and lower vehicle emissions in an area like Southwest Riverside County that obviously has large growing population areas. So as of August of this year, it's passed the final hurdles and is headed to Gavin Newsom's desk for signature. So hopefully that will get signed and processed and we'll be moving forward with trying to help coordinate with the activities that go through there. The other item that I thought I'd bring up is WRCOG has a program they've brought to our attention that they're calling the Southwest Improvements for Faster Travel or SWIFT. Clever name. Its purpose is identifying congestion hotspots and then developing cost effective and easy to implement improvements. It's not doing major road improvements or things of that nature. It's identifying things that they can easily improve, and then they want to go through and try and benchmark the success on that. So it's something that we just had a couple of introductory meetings with WRCOG, and they're using Farron Pierce, the traffic consultant, to process that. So something that we're just starting to work with them on to see kind of how we can assist with that program help to do additional improvements in the corridor. That addresses everything that I plan to present here tonight about traffic. Interested if you have any questions for us here, and we'd be happy to talk traffic. We love talking traffic.

First up, Councilwoman Stone.

Thank you. Thank you. This was a great presentation. I know Mayor Pro Tem and I share Whitewood, and when you're going north on Whitewood, I think it's Daylily, the traffic is during school and then people coming home from work. It's backed up to, gosh, past day. Pass, yeah, pass Alta Marietta. And I know that we've talked about a lot, but if we can even do the roundabout, that would be absolutely amazing. When you do the restriping, when you're going south on Whitewood, when you go through Los Alamos, not the very first street, but the next one's Willowbend. Do you know where I'm talking about? That is really wide. And I've witnessed people that are turning in that subdivision. I actually live in the subdivision. If we could stripe to where people are going to be making that right-hand turn into the development, is that possible?

That would depend on if there's enough width to keep a bike lane there. So we need to make sure that we can still maintain four feet in between the right turn lane and the through lane. But we can certainly look at that.

So that section currently goes from two lanes to one. And so it's slowly winding down and people are jockeying for position.

There very well may be enough room for that. It's something we can take a look at.

If that lane could just continue to Willow Bend, then it would eliminate a lot of that traffic fighting for who's in first. Yes.

In addition, I've talked about how Whitewood is a throwaway from Menifee all the way to Merida Hot Springs. And just a FYI, that might be something that we might have to deal with down the road. So on the weekends especially, people cannot exit out of the subdivision from whatever the street is right after Los Alamos, really, truly all the way to Merida Hot Springs. It's pretty bad, especially on the weekends.

I think you see it's an alternative route for the 215. So at night, the 215 backs up all the way to the split at the 15 now. And in the morning, it's the same way in the opposite direction. So it's people who live in Menifee or live in French Valley realize that's an alternate route. Correct. We are being overrun by that traffic.

Oh, yes. So let's talk about the bitch. So this is the bitch. The bitch is that when you're going north on Whitewood and you're going to make a left and go east on Los Alamos. West, I'm sorry, west on Los Alamos. You know, I complimented you a few meetings ago that it took me like three minutes. But what I'm finding is where the shopping center is, where the Shell gas station and the overpass through Hancock, Not where Lincoln is, but right there. When you have the people coming from Menifee, making a right-hand turn, and then making a left-hand turn from Whitewood onto Los Alamos, that is where the congestion is just a debacle. I've noticed that making the left-hand turn going north on Whitewood to Los Alamos, the light only lasts three cars to go through. and then making the right hand turn, obviously, from Whitewood onto Los Alamos, especially in the morning. I don't know if there's something you can do with this little bit of an intersection, because once you get past Hancock, It's clear. By the time you go through Hancock, because of the long drive to Lincoln, by the time the cars get to Lincoln, it's already green, which is fantastic. But right, and then the overpass. We all know that Caltrans is responsible for that. But it's really, it's just a disaster.

We can definitely take a look at the signal timing for the left-hand turn northbound and westbound. Brian and Jerry Eldridge can take a look at that immediately. It is just a congested area with a lot of traffic signals and a short period of short distance. So it is nice to get past Hancock and then you're cruising west on until you get to Lincoln. But yeah, that section is obviously much less congested. So we can definitely look at that. That would be great.

In addition, people don't care about the red lights. They're going through them. And it's, I foresee a major accident happening because of the lack of patience that people have. So that is concerning to me as well. But great job. You know, I know that I'm constantly bitching about traffic and I hate traffic. It just irritates me. So again, I'm so appreciative of all that you are doing. So thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor.

You guys just want to attach the striping machine to the back of your Jeep? Don't you have your Tesla today? Yeah. Thank you very much, Councilman Stone. Mr. Holliday.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, great presentation. I'm appreciative that you guys are looking at alternatives to stop signs and traffic lights. I know that when you did the study on Mapleton and Whitewood... A stop sign was nowhere close to being warranted. Traffic light was getting close, and maybe four or five years later it might be close, but traffic signals, when we did that study, we included Poinsettia in Mapleton, and it was warranted for a traffic signal. Here we are four years later and there's no traffic signal there because it takes forever and it costs a lot of money. So I'm appreciative that you guys are looking for alternative ways to get things through there. And maybe instead of a signal at Poinsettia and Whitewood, maybe the roundabout's a better, cheaper solution. So I'm looking forward to that. Questions? You said you're bringing back to council to discuss the Jackson and Magellan. Did we talk to the Homeowners Association there? Did we talk about the alternative that Council suggested about getting rid of the trees that were impeding the vision?

We have had discussions with the Management Association, the Homeowners Association specifically, about the project. And I believe they already have gone out and done trimming of their vegetation through there. So they have complied, I believe, with what Council's request was back in 2014. I think just after additional discussion with them, I think they're still in favor of still having an always stop. That is what their residents want. And I think they want to have their own time to be able to express their concerns to this body.

And have we done a count to see if it warrants a stop sign there?

I believe the always stop was warranted. I think when we brought this to this council in 2024, I think we had determined that it met warrants at that time, not necessarily based on counts, but due to site distance.

And the fact that there's only one way out of that track, which don't tell the fire chief.

Well, they do have an emergency access for fire. Do you have emergency access for fire? It's just they don't have a secondary access. And when you have a condition where there is some question about suitability or visibility with the vegetation that's there, And even if you trim it down, it looks great for a while until the vegetation comes back.

Right. Okay. And my other question is the adaptive timing project. Are we putting in the adaptive timing controllers at the Caltrans signals?

No, we won't. I believe our controllers will be able to speak to their controllers. Do you want to speak to that, Brian?

Yeah, our controllers will be tied into the back of the cabinets there, so we'll be able to read their timing. So we'll be talking with them. They'll tell us. They typically agree to the timing that we request that they put into their controllers. But this way, we'll be able to check and make sure that the signals are actually functioning as we want them programmed. Whereas Councilmember Stone just brought up the Los Alamos westbound, that could possibly be Caltrans might have changed their timing. So we'll follow up with them too.

But their controllers, they already have newer controllers in their cabins.

Do they have the adaptive timing controllers installed already?

I'm not sure if they have an adaptive timing software for their controllers, but they do have newer controllers than the city uses right now.

So the point is we'll be able to communicate with their controllers? Yes. We'll have to investigate whether or not those adaptive can sync up with the Caltrans controllers. Right now, we're not really synced up really all that well with their controllers other than giving them the timing.

I mean, that's so crucial in all of our over-crossings, Los Alamos being probably the number one. I know I drive through there all the time, and a lot of times going westbound, the light that's green for the first off-ramp then becomes, the next one becomes red before you can get to it. And it's like, how do two signals that far apart can be that far out of time? It eludes me, but Caltrans eludes me as well. And the adaptive timing, having those at the over crossings, if they were R signals, would be hugely beneficial because sometimes things happen on a freeway that backs up traffic on the streets. And that's what the adaptive timing is for, is to kind of clear that mess out, right? Right. All right. Well, keep fighting with them. Thank you.

One other thing I'd point out, I think just on the roundabouts, Brian reminded me as we were kind of talking about, one of the options that we're actually exploring with these roundabouts is something called a quick build roundabout. And the concept behind it is it would be a cheaper alternative than all hard construction. So one of the examples I think I showed in one of the photos in the slide that was there, it had the parts of the roundabout that you see that are visible and raised are actually made up of of like a hard rubber type material, similar to the speed humps that you see that we have in town. It would be that same type of material. It would be cheaper to install, less expensive. It might be something we might even be able to try as a test case to see if something like this would work. These are the types of things that we're exploring to find things that are a little more economical for something that might provide a benefit to the community. If we like the concept of the roundabout but don't like the look of that, You pull it up and you put in a full roundabout that would be more costly. Or it'll also provide us an opportunity to evaluate it to see if maybe a roundabout's not going to be successful at daily, right? We may determine after we put it in that, geez, the all-way stop is better. Let's go back to that. So anyway, so those are different things that we're just evaluating. That's all.

Councilwoman Warren.

Thank you, Mayor. On the Jackson Avenue and Magellan Street, would that have to go back to the Traffic Commission or could that come back directly to us after further analysis?

I believe it would just go back to you. It can come back to us? The last place it came was here. And the Traffic Commission is an advisory body. Correct. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Traffic Commission recommended they always stop.

That's why I was wondering.

So I don't think there would be a need to bring it back to them to re-contemplate that. We could if you would prefer.

No, I think it should come back to us as soon as possible because it's not only the traffic coming out of the street, coming out of the residential area, it's the semi-trucks that are coming out the shopping center and the people coming around the corner do not see that truck and then all of a sudden they're right on top of them and so that is a that is a major concern over there so I'm be happy to see that come back that would be great and also the controllers with Caltrans I know at our meeting that we had with Caltrans with district great director he promised us that that they would tell you what the controllers were and all of their systems over our freeway passes, and that we could bring our controllers up to their standards, and that they would time them properly. Are we still on track with that?

We'll be doing similar things with the adaptive timing, but as Brian alluded to, the controllers would then be able to talk to each other, so it is the same brand of controller. It's just a matter of whether they have adaptive timing for their off-ramps. At least they can speak to each other, have the same hard body inside the actual controller, software-wise.

I don't think Mayor Pro Tem's been on hot springs lately, so if he thinks Los Alamos is bad, come down my way.

Thank you.

Okay, that's all the questions we have. Are there any public comments on this?

Mr. Casson-Klein.

Mike's been on, hold on. Did you do that on purpose? There we go.

At your direction? I guess, you know, I appreciate Clinton-Keith being striped, you know, to its ultimate, to the three lanes, and so one question is, is it both directions, but why are we not striping it beyond Mitchell when currently traffic utilizes, and I don't mean to have my back to you while I'm asking the questions, but Is it because of lane width? And, you know, what is the minimum lane width? I think we're at 12 feet. Is there an opportunity to get more capacity if we go to 11 foot lane widths in certain areas? Jefferson Avenue, something I've been talking about for years once again, especially southbound when you're coming off of Hot Springs and turning southbound to Jefferson Avenue with the Superior and... The other ready mix, when those trucks straddle what would be two and three lane, it holds up traffic where, you know, people want to make a right onto Guavar, those things. You know, why are we not, it's built out, so why aren't we striping it? Especially to Lori's point about weekend traffic trying to get to Wine Country and Pechanga and all that. you know, the freeway slammed and, you know, adding lanes increases capacity. Um, there are other opportunities as well. Madison Avenue, um, northbound Madison at Los Alamos. When someone doesn't straddle what would be a dedicated right to eastbound Los Alamos, people can get by there. But when somebody straddles it, traffic backs up into the curb cuts for Best Buy and Smart and Final. So I know this is more and more work, but If there's opportunities to stripe and we're talking about traffic. Why aren't we doing this particularly Jefferson Avenue? I mean, I've been talking about that longer than I've been talking about Clinton key. It just and I understand Bob's rationale for it going northbound. Some point it's going to choke, but I think that. What we did from Guava to Hot Springs demonstrates the benefit to that. So those are kind of the questions that I'm looking to answer. Is there opportunity to go to a minimum lane width other than ideal, which I believe is 11 feet? Why aren't we doing Jefferson Avenue? And are there other areas that maybe take time to study to where we can get some dedicated rights to alleviate some of this traffic on our northbound, southbound thoroughfares during a.m. and p.m. peak. So thank you.

Thank you.

But again, great job. I appreciate Clinton Keith very much. I've got to believe it's going to alleviate a lot of the a.m. peak traffic now that school is going on.

So thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Mainland, can you maybe opine on some of those questions, especially the Jefferson?

Yeah, I'm going to pass it on to Brian Stevenson, but currently we already utilize an 11 foot through lane. That's our requirement from our standards. We've gone from 12 feet down to 11 way back when we passed our circulation elements back in the, for arterial streets like Jefferson, they're already at 11 foot lane widths.

Wow.

The majority of the other questions about Madison Avenue, why is there not a dedicated right turn lane? Why is it back up when you're going north past Best Buy? We have to provide a bicycle lane. If you want to get rid of a bicycle lane to in turn to try to allow a right turn lane, bicycle people come after us and there's an accident there, we're liable. Brian, if you wanna talk a little bit about the actual capacity of Jefferson Avenue and the striping between two and three lanes. Sure.

The last time we were asked to look at Jefferson and evaluate striping the six lanes, we reviewed the traffic volumes along there, and it didn't warrant the six lanes. It's wide enough to do it. It was a cost thing. It would cost money for the design to install the loops in each of the lanes and then to do the striping. So at that time, it wasn't warranted.

When was that?

That would probably be within the last five or six years.

I think that probably is not, I'm just guessing, that's probably not true now. I don't know what needs to be done, Mr. Clifton. Can we reanalyze that? Can we recommit a study that would warrant that or look at that again?

Yeah, we have traffic counters on call that we can get the counts performed. Plus with the JPI project and the project across the street, when those two apartment complexes develop, traffic, LMC, traffic will increase.

Can we do a study also just taking into consideration the two housing development or apartment and just put the icing on the cake with the study? If it doesn't allow for the projections of the increased traffic.

Yeah, we can look at counts, and those developments include traffic analyses that project counts, and so you can kind of look at all that in total and decide if it makes sense to get out in front of it.

I may be missing, the last time I remember talking about the studies, they didn't project out. It was like the state of in the current, like the study was accounting for what was there and what was going to be, I guess, are we sure that it captures everything as a projection?

Yes, we have approved traffic studies that we went back and forth with the developers for both projects. There's opening year projections for when they're at full build and all the traffic's there. So we have those volumes that we can add on top of the existing counts that we obtain and determine the volumes. Okay.

One other piece of context I might throw in, I think just relating to you know, how we kind of try to think through these processes is trying to restripe that whole stretch of Jefferson. Well, it sounds great, and it probably would be good for that area. You're probably looking at $200,000 worth of striping and loops that would have to be done and improved in that area. And that funding can be used at doing other roads in town, either through our slurry seal program or for additional asphalt overlay We're already stretched pretty thin on our pavement restoration program. And so what we typically prefer to do is try to wait till the next time Jefferson Avenue needs to be overlaid. I'm trying to think when we last overlaid this section of Jefferson Avenue. It probably would have been around 2012. Oh, wow.

So I guess I won't belabor the point, but just I think to Mr. Klein's point, I think what was true then is certainly not true now with regards to the population and the congestion on Jefferson. Jefferson is definitely. A VERY HEAVILY USED ROAD. FOR SURE NOW I TRAVEL EVERY DAY. BUT I'M JUST PUTTING IT OUT THERE AS A REQUEST. I THINK IT DOES MAKE A LOT OF SENSE. AND I KNOW WE'RE TRYING TO BE VERY CONSERVATIVE ON WHAT WE SPEND MONEY ON. TRAFFIC IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT I THINK WE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE TO SPEND MONEY ON AT THIS POINT TO KIND OF ALLEVIATE SOME HEADACHES IN THE COMMUNITY. THERE IS A PUBLIC COMMENT. IS IT ON THIS AGENDA ITEM?

Yes, we're still on public comment. Yes, so I have Yama Nawabi. Please unmute yourself.

Hello, this Teams thing is great. Thank you all for implementing this. Just in regards to the Clinton Key 3 striping, that area that's next to Vista Marietta, I just wanted to request that we look at how to safely allow children to get to and from school in that area in the bike lanes. As we all know, there's been a huge influx of e-bikes and unfortunately e-motos. But yeah, I think these kinds of things are important to reduce the overall amount of car traffic and to allow parents to feel safe about their kids biking to school. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes public comments, Mr. Mayor.

Okay. Councilman DeForest, did you have a comment?

Just a quick comment. I didn't see that the turnpocket into Sam's Club was on your traffic, so congratulations, and that is amazing. It was being used incredibly busy the other night even. Also, I was told that we could utilize flock cameras for doing traffic studies. Is that? Is that something that you guys are familiar with? I know that I had gone to a conference and a flock was there. Of course, I went up and spoke with them. We're putting a flock camera in where my office building is, and they were saying how the capacity for doing traffic studies at little to no cost, because we already have the cameras, would be something. Is that something you know about?

That's not something that we're familiar with. We've not... We've had discussions with FLOC as far as getting the encryption permits to install. We can certainly have a discussion with Captain Durant and who's administered that program.

Yeah, they are now releasing certain other services, mostly to perform traffic counts. So the more detailed analyses would still require some of what we typically do with that information in projecting and use of models and things like that. I do believe there's an added cost, and so it's nothing we've evaluated in detail yet.

I would also say that WRCOG currently utilizes your phone data That's what they sell. Big data sells that data to people like WR cognitive traffic counts. The only drawback is you can't do left-hand turn movements. You can't do things that are not just capacity flowing through some street. But yeah, there's big data out there that you can do traffic counts with. Everyone's got a phone in their pocket and everyone's being tracked with it. You mean it's not private?

Negative.

Thank you guys for...

I'm sorry, can I just like to add to that? With our adaptive project, when the new controllers are installed, we're adding a bunch of new loops. We'll be able to perform counts at those 110 or 111 signals for all approaches all day long.

Nice.

We won't know turning movements, but we'll know the approach volumes to each of those intersections.

That's fantastic. Thank you for all your hard work. Appreciate you.

Cool. Councilman Warren.

Last question, I've noticed that the reflective paint that we've been using for on our roads is deteriorating quicker and fading quicker. I'm especially looking at the off ramp for the Marietta Hot Springs onto from the 15 making a left hand turn where there is the broken line. You can hardly see that and with the winter coming up and you cannot see it at night at all and the rains coming. That we can't wait for you to restripe hot springs We have got to figure out a way to get those lanes clearly defined when people are turning left because their people are Pulling over to the lane next to them and shoving people over to the right as they turn left onto hot springs

I would say that those checkered stripes that you see out there in turn lanes, they get the majority of turning movements with the tires, so they wear out that much quicker. We'll just have to do those more often.

I think we should, because if we wait for it to be hot springs to get done, there will be nothing there, and then we're liable if there's an accident. So, thank you.

Duly noted. Okay. Looks like that's everything. No more comments. Really, consensus from us to you, I think you've heard it all, and I think everyone agrees that... Thanking you for what you've already done and hopefully we can get a lot a lot more benefit to these types of studies and efforts going forward in the future for the traffic. Problem that we all seem to have so thank you all thank you for your interest in time. Okay next up. To left councilman stone we has. proposed a Stuff the Bus program for fall of 2026 in partnership with Marietta Valley Unified School District and the Salvation Army. Staff or Lori, may we have a report please?

So let's talk about something fun for a change. I had met with the Marietta Unified School District and the Salvation Army for a program called Stuff the Bus. And this is a one-day proposed event on Friday, November the 13th. It will start at nine o'clock in the morning, and the school bus will go to all the, I believe the middle schools and the high schools. Not really sure about the middle schools, but definitely the high schools. Loma Linda Hospital may be a stopping point as well. SRCAR was considering, but they have pulled out due to a conflict. And then the bus will end up here at City Hall at the end of the evening. And the goal and the objective is to collect toys for underserved children in our community. In addition, we will be raising funds, collecting sponsorship money, and filling the gap of the ages in case some of the toys, for example, typically toddlers do very, very well where teenagers do not. And so the sponsorship money would fill that gap. The Salvation Army will accept all the toys and distribute all the toys. All we're doing is, I should say all I am doing is assisting the Marietta Unified School District and the Salvation Army. And the reason why we chose November 13th is because they will need time to prepare to work with congregations in the schools to identify the underserved kids in our community. and then making sure that these underserved children receive their toys and gifts by Christmas. There is zero money allocated from the Unified School District other than that they're gonna be providing the logistics and the bus, and all that we are doing is having a stop here at the end of December the day and then from here the toys will be delivered to a offsite planned space for Salvation Army because besides our program, they're also doing their toy drive as well. So they're looking for a huge space for that. And that's it.

That's easy. Any questions, council?

the question comes with force there's no staff involved and no money from the city there's no money from the city and the only staff is Hilder was kind enough to design the sponsorship opportunity flyer and she will also design the flyer that will go out to the community about the proposed event okay thank you

Okay, that's questions, comments. I have one comment. I'm supporting of this as long as you're not driving the bus.

Actually.

I think we have consent.

No.

No. It's a great idea. Yeah, I know. The Salvation Army is one of those organizations that just always does amazing things. Happy to be part of it and I'm glad we can be part of it and I'm glad the school districts also participating at the cost of $0 so.

Comments direction yeah I support it do we need consensus on support so is this an action item or just say a receiving file.

No, I do need consensus that we're moving forward as requested by Council Member Stone. Okay, so you want a motion then? I just need consensus. Okay.

You got one support with me with her not driving the bus. Ron, two, three, four, five, you're good.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. And the last. November 3rd, 2026, general election, municipal election, District One,

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this will be real quick, hopefully. We'll see. If you don't mind, I was just going to sit at the clerk station.

You can.

Thank you for that. So the reason why we're here is because, as you know, that we have a general municipal election coming up on November 3rd. And with that, it's Districts 1, 2, and 5 that are up. And at the close of the nomination period, which was August 7th, we only had one... candidate, a qualified candidate for District 1, and that is actually currently candidate John Lavelle. With that, what the Elections Code says is there are three options, but only two are applicable. One option is to go ahead and appoint Mr. Lavelle to the office, and it will be treated as if he was elected. Or you can hold the election if you would like, and we can just move forward as normal. I do have until August 20th. to notify the county. And so I'll need to do that rather quickly. If you decide not to hold the election, it would be a cost savings of approximately $50,000. And so with that, I am asking, I am recommending that the council adopt the resolution, which does appoint the nominee, which would be Mr. Lavelle to voting district one. And he will be appointed treat it as such as if he was elected and I can move forward with canceling the district one election. The second option is of course take no action and then we will hold the election as normal. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much.

You're very welcome.

We have a question from council. We have questions unfortunately. Councilwoman DeForest.

It's not a question. I'd just like to make a motion that we appoint Mayor John Lavelle and not hold an election. Are you really wanting to do that?

No take backs. I identify as elected. Mr. Ron Holiday.

I have a question for the clerk. Since he's been appointed twice, does that actually count for term limits? He's never been elected.

It's treated as if he has.

I'm just kidding.

I'm glad we're having fun at this time in the evening.

I actually have a serious question.

No.

Has anyone ever saved as much money as me with elections?

Oh, no.

And is there an award for this type of thing? No.

So Phil Pauly, who is with Eastern Municipal Water District. He's been an elected official for 20 years. This is his first time he's been challenged. So you lose.

I'm talking about Marietta only, so.

Well, he represents Marietta too, so sorry.

Thank you.

I'm calling for the question.

We have a motion by, wait, you have a question?

No, I said I'm calling for the question.

We have a motion for Councilman DeForest and a second by Mr. Holliday. Let's vote on my staying here.

And seeing no public comments. Oh, wait, you're giving us an option to say no?

No. I got you.

Motion carries unanimously, 5-0.

Next up, looks like a final track map notification.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Notice is hereby given of review, and it will be displayed shortly, an approval final map application for track map 39271. An application was filed by Century OWLHPBPLOGPLLC, a Delaware limited liability company, for tentative track map 39271. Number 39271 to subdivide 15.98 acres for condominium purposes for residential use, including 107 detached condominium units and 78 attached junior accessory dwelling units. Engineering staff has completed a review of the final map. Final track map 39271 conforms to the conditions of approval and the tentative trap map. All dedications and mitigation required in the conditions of approval have been offered and secured. And that concludes the notification, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you very much. Reconsideration, you're gonna take these next two?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, 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 City Council for reconsideration? Seeing none, Mr. Mayor, is that appropriate? Yes, yes. Okay, council member requests to add or withdraw items to future agendas. 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 requests from council?

I have a few. Councilwoman DeForest.

Thank you, Mayor, and reelected. Thank you. I'd like to look at a change at our schedule for these meetings. And maybe staff could look at those for us, possibly maybe closed first again, maybe at four o'clock, and then start our meetings at five. I think it'd be more advantageous for our community, and it might be a little bit better for us, because we seem to be quite long-winded on this motion.

I definitely support that. I'm having a hard time with these as well.

All right, and we've sat for five hours, so thank you for that. Yes, I appreciate it.

Yeah. Okay, so you have consensus there. I saw more on the list. Did they go away? Were you in there, right? Yeah. Councilwoman Stone?

Thank you, Mayor. In preparation for the consent item number 10, because I was not at the April 7th meeting with regards to the ad hoc committee meeting. There was some comments that were made that I need to address. And I would like five minutes at our next meeting to address some of the statements that were made.

Is that done here?

So let me say specifically what it was.

No, I just don't know if here's the right.

I'm going to lean on Madam City Attorney.

This is request items for future agendas, so if we want to do the request for five minutes, that's the time. Otherwise, under the GBR section, the council member could use their time for comments. Okay.

If needed, I'll give some of my time, too, if that's. That's needed.

Okay, so GBR is next month. I'm allowed to Make a statement. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor and Council Council or may approach him holiday Thank you.

Um follow-up up and stop sign thing. Thanks to council member Warren. She made a suggestion that maybe that issue be agendized for the traffic commission and at least to get the residents here, they can have their say, they can, Traffic Commission can get information from staff to review all what's been done and what can be done for those areas, maybe even have the school district as part of that, invite them to come to that Traffic Commission meeting. What are your thoughts, Mr. Mayor or Mr. Manager?

There's history there, so I just want to put that out there, lots of history. Oh, yeah. But you go ahead, Justin.

I first want to make sure I understand the request, and that is to address some of what we heard public comment on tonight regarding stop signs, or sorry, no parking signs, and to schedule that for a traffic commission meeting, or?

Start there first. Invite the school district to attend that. Let the residents have their say in front of both entities that can affect change. And then if it comes up to council from there, it comes up to us, but it may not have to.

Would a school board meeting be best for that one?

So it...

not from the perspective of dealing strictly with whether or not to keep no parking signs. That authority would clearly rest with this council. But for broader context on parking and school drop off and circulation issues, perhaps. I think the only thing I might suggest or request is that staff also maybe before it goes to traffic commission, take a look at this issue because as I mentioned a little bit earlier when it was still afternoon, we have similar issues everywhere. And so, as much as I think it's important to be responsive to this particular issue that's brought forward by these residents, I think maybe a little bit of a holistic view on where we have issues, how significant they are, the history of this request and any others that we might be able to discover as context so that you can decide, is it better to do this holistically? Is it better to address this as a one-off issue? And then maybe ask the question, if it goes to the traffic commission, what would that look like versus an alternative conversation, and just present options.

I trust your discussion.

Also, Chief Henry did speak to them in the hallway, so see what happened with that discussion, hopefully, then let that kind of guide where that goes.

I'll leave it in your hands.

And I'd like to add something for a future agenda, hopefully a soon agenda, but the Jefferson mega highway expansion for Mr. Philip O'Reilly's property, I'd like to clear the air on what is presumed, what has been said, what many times and maybe misunderstood. I want to formalize what we are doing, what is a priority, and what we are not doing at this point in time. Does anybody else want to have that conversation publicly? And I don't know if it's a back and forth or a presentation to the public, quote unquote, but I really, really would like to be extra, extra clear on what I think has been misunderstood greatly. Yes. Yeah, and maybe I'm just putting it out there now if I agree Justin did a great job. If Justin's great job quells the movement or the... Satisfy the misunderstanding. I'm happy to let this sunset, but I really would like to Have this option to present something if needed I I'm skeptical of the idea that the

energy behind advocacy for that road project will go away. And that's based on the fact that I think we've had no less than five or six conversations at the staff level, at least three that I know of at the council level, as well as attempts to clarify misunderstandings about where we're at and where we're going on numerous occasions. I don't know that I think if the goal is to get total agreement and alignment, we might fall short. If the goal is to publicly review where have we been, where are we at, and where are we going with that particular project, we can certainly do a deeper dive than what we've already done in our priority setting conversations where we're looking at lots and lots of projects.

Yeah, the goal is not to align. The goal, I guess, would be to educate with actual information that is true and concise, make a matter of fact kind of statement, and just give all the correct information in a very front-facing public setting. That's all. And this could be real quick, less than 10 minutes, I think, of like, hey, here's where we're at. This is what the general plan says. This is... where it sits. And again, this is just in preparation. I'd like to have this option to be able to do this.

I would suggest we do a presentation under the city manager's update versus an agenda item.

I like that. I'll take that. And I will not use it unless I feel like it's needed. So thank you for the support.

Do you actually feel better getting it off your chest?

I mean, time will tell. Thank you, and I think that's it. We are public comments for non-agendized closed session items.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Kasson-Klein.

Okay.

No, it's actually non-agendized. It's non-agenda, agendized, or closed session.

Free for all.

And 3 when the ranchos requested. The no parking signs I brought I know you were here I don't know if you were actively at attending or consistently attending and you may want to check with Kelly. I would be very cautious with you guys opening that up and would suggest that maybe you have just and bring that back as a presentation as well. because it was the residents that asked for the no parking signs because the school district had put a bunch of modulars in the parking lot where the kids parked and took away parking spaces and people were parking. And the city went to the expense of closing off Hayes at Nighthawk. There's two solutions, in my opinion, one temporary and one permanent. And one of them I had mentioned way back when. The temporary would be if you want civil war, to stoke the civil war over there that we got a piece of today, is we can put black plastic bags over the no parking and do a pilot program and let the kids start parking over there again and see what residents come out. Or we could suggest to those residents that it become a private gated community, which would require them to accept the responsibility for the roads and gate it, and then they could have their own. But This is kind of out of the ordinary for me to speak on this, but I would be very cautious opening that up, especially for two of you between now and November, and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. Klein. That concludes public comments. Thank you. Madam City Clerk, would you go over the closed session items, please?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The City Council will go into closed session, will conduct closed session pursuant to government code section 54956.92 and D3 because there is significant exposure to litigation in one case. Council will also conduct closed session pursuant to government code section 54956.92 because there is significant exposure to litigation in one case.

Okay, we're now recessed to closed session. We will be back, hopefully soon. Okay, it is 9.06. Welcome back. We are returning from closed session. Madam City Attorney, can you please report out on closed session?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The City Council met in closed session on two items. The first was to confer regarding anticipated litigation pursuant to Government Code Sections 549, 56.9, D2, and D3. The City Council was updated and asked questions and provided direction to staff. No reportable action. The second item was also anticipated litigation. This one was pursuant to government code section 54956.92, significant exposure to litigation in one case. Again, the council was updated, provided direction, asked questions, no reportable action. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we adjourn tonight, I just want to put something up on the screen, Crystal, if we have it. I can't see it. Oh. My neighbor, longtime legacy man of Marietta passed away, Mr. Dan Hollandsworth. So I'd like to take a quick moment of silence, and this is the funeral information if anybody would like to attend. If you know anything about Marietta's history, this man did so much here, and he will greatly be missed, but I'm eternally, and I'm sure we all will be eternally appreciative for the mark he left here in the city. So quick moment of silence. Thank you. Good night. We're adjourned.