City Council - Regular Meeting

okay good afternoon everyone the time is 4 0 1 and i will now call the march 10 2026 regular city council meeting to order madam clerk roll call please council members present and no bloom vice mayor absent okay now is the time for the invocation led by First Church of Christ Scientist, Newport Beach, Dr. Joan Bernard Bradley. Following that, we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance by Council Member Stapleton.

Will you bow your heads while we pray?

Dear, gracious, and loving Creator, Thank you for the abundant blessings that you have bestowed on this beautiful city of Newport Beach. We ask your blessings on this council meeting and on those elected to conduct its affairs. We acknowledge that you are the source of wisdom and guidance. Grant this council wisdom as they deliberate the issues on their agenda. Inspire them with a sense of what is just and right and the ability to work together in harmony even when there are conflicting perspectives. May their decisions reflect your justice and benefit all who live and work in this beloved community. And may your divine presence bring them joy in this work. In your most holy name, I pray. Amen.

All right, please join me as we salute the greatest symbol of freedom in the world. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

MOVING RIGHT INTO OUR FIRST STUDY SESSION ITEM, CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM EARLY LOOK. BEFORE I TURN THIS OVER TO THE CITY MANAGER, I'M GOING TO ASK COUNCIL MEMBERS TO NOTE ANY CONFLICTS OF INTEREST THAT THEY MAY HAVE REGARDING THE PROJECTS AND TO LEAVE THE ROOM DURING THE DISCUSSION IF ANY PROJECT WITH WHICH THEY HAVE A CONFLICT IS DISCUSSED. COUNCIL MEMBERS, DOES ANYONE HAVE ANYTHING TO ANNOUNCE? COUNCIL MEMBER WIGAN?

NONE.

Council member Mark to then come to a program that. Council member weather.

Council member Stapleton, yeah, bubble your base in a dock replacement vessel sewage pump out replacement conflict based on financial relationship with the client owns adjacent property and then also the Birch Street to Bristol Street to Jamboree Road Street improvements conflict based on interest in 4100 and 4110 MacArthur.

Mayor pretend long.

Thank you I have conflicts. Due to an interest in real property at 2 to 4 marine for the Balboa Island drainage pump station up on seawall permitting and sign and the bubble and tide valve replacement in addition to that I have an interest in real property at 417 and 5 on 30th Street with the bubble and concrete and road alley improvements as well as the Alito pavement rehabilitation.

AND I HAVE A CONFLICT WITH THE LANDSCAPE ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM ON PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY BASED ON MY INTEREST IN MY PERSONAL RESIDENCE. I WILL NOW TURN IT OVER TO SIMONE.

THANK YOU. GOOD EVENING TO YOU AND THE CITY COUNCIL. EVERY YEAR WE DISCUSS OUR BUDGET FOR THE UPCOMING FISCAL YEAR AND PART OF THAT BUDGET REVIEW PROCESS IS LOOKING AT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO TACKLE AND SPEND ON OUR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM. With me is Jim Houlihan. He's the Deputy Director of Public Works. He has a brief presentation on all the capital projects that we have planned going forward and into the future. We appreciate your comments and any changes to priorities throughout this study session. So I'll hand it over to Jim.

Great. Again, Jim Houlihan. Thank you for having me here, Mayor Kleinman and council members. As Simone had mentioned, this is the early look and what we focus on primarily is the new money being proposed for projects for our CIP. And our our capital improvement program basically what it does is it's helps set priorities and appropriate funds. It's the basis for our planning and identifies potential conflicts helps develop and construct identified public improvements addresses the significant maintenance projects that we have and also risk helps respond to the changing priorities and conditions throughout the city. This year, or this coming year, 26-27, there are general fund allocations. Our baseline allocations in our CIP general fund is typically 6.5 million, and we're looking at an additional 1.4 million from our program balance that we have currently in our CIP general fund. And in addition 2.5 million baseline general fund investment in an additional million from our FM MP which is our facilities maintenance master plan general fund balance and lastly are a 2.3 million baseline general fund investment for Park Park maintenance master plan also our PM MP which we call that. So the current budget for the 2526 year is 112.3 million dollars of which 98 million is currently either in design or construction or completed. So quite a bit of that one 12 is inactive right is active right now. Our preliminary total for this coming year 2627 is 95 million of that 47.6 in new funding and 47.4 and re budget which is funding that occurred. In part prior years either just last year that maybe even prior year before that. Of that rebudget, here's a list of some of the significant projects. Balboa Yacht Basin, one of the large projects is coming forward. It's in design right now. We've just finished the dredging of that area, and we'll be getting into construction in approximately 8 to 12 months for that project. Another item here is lower Castaways Park that will be coming back to City Council for discussion in the next meeting The breakdown of the new funding It's shown here on general fund as I mentioned a total of 7.9 million different the various roadway funding we have from the state and county SB one gas tax measure him to those are all tax based state and county driven. Water, wastewater, 8.3 million. FMNP facilities finance plan, the FMNP I mentioned earlier, PMNP, 5.8 million. Tidelands, 2.7 million, neighborhood enhancement. is a balance that we have from prior years in our CIP. So we're looking to get that into play. And then the grants contributions and these items here, 11 million. The big number there is that 11 million. 10 million of that is actually a loan from the Orange County Water District that is going to their board Thursday, I believe, for discussion for our new water well. I'll talk about that in a sec. So I'm going to go through each section of our CIP. There's in total 45 new funded, actually they're not all new projects, some are rebudget and added new money, but 45 total programs or projects. The first section in our facilities, I'll just touch on one in each section. This one is the council chambers and community room AV upgrades. That one will be looking at the technology here, meeting new state standards and doing some refreshments as well. In that, we have PEG funds, which is public education and government funding, and it's specifically dedicated to that type of use, accessibility and such for public meetings and video and projection, that type of thing. So total in the facilities section, 5.1 million. under our streets and drainage section um first item shown here is the balboa island concrete road and alley improvements this is in tied to our undergrounding operation and this work specifically would be the south bay front and park avenue portions of park avenue but all of South Bayfront quite a large project. It's total project over six million dollars The undergrounding is taking more than half of it. The other half is coming from general fund neighborhood enhancement and our water fund We have some water lines that were put in years ago that the roadway was never repaired. So anyway, that's a large project and large contribution from these different funds and In a additionally from streets and drainage. Under landscape enhancement the Mesa drive trail. It's shown on the left hand side we're looking to extend that and very much like it is looking they're extending that all the way down to the park at the at the bottom of the hill so that's in design right now and we look to get into construction in the next 6, 8 months. San Miguel drive paving San Joaquin Hills Road Ophir Road large paving project that is well needed in that area. Additional street and drainage. We've got an intersection and roadway at Via Lido. So from Newport Boulevard to Via Malaga, we'll be grinding and overlaying that road. And then at the intersection of the Via Lido or the Lido Plaza area, you know village will be looking to move the crosswalk to the other side of the street to allow traffic to flow better through that intersection turning into the village and um right now the crosswalk is constant and uh to move it on the other side helps flow uh and and not the backup into newport boulevard so we'll be looking at working on that we're designing that right now Total for streets and drainage some $17.1 million. In the transportation section. The traffic signal rehab program will be focused on signals on Birch and some work also on San Miguel. So right coming forward in this coming year will be actually in construction on MacArthur, which is fully budgeted. So there's no new money. That's why it's not listed. But we'll be doing multiple signals on that roadway as well. Underwater quality and environmental one of the areas we're going to look to Improve is the trash interceptor. So we're going to look at doing some modifications to that in help um with the vegetation that's the biggest issue we're having today it takes a lot of work to get that vegetation out of that river and um the the the interceptors working it's when it gets into those big mats um we have to do a little more hand work so we're trying to figure out um different ways to maybe increase the power motor those type of things so We're dedicating the environmental liability fund which is tied to trash toward that those modifications will be working on that for next winter. In the parks, harbors, and beaches, we'll be working on the Bonita Creek Park athletic field turf replacement and also the lighting there as well. So a large area, we're going to increase the turf into the softball field. So that's a permanent turf field. And we'll leave the one closer to University as a natural brick dust and grass. Additionally, in the harbors and beaches section, we'll be working on some of the bulkheads and seawalls on the street ends, specifically around Marcus in that area and some along the Rhine as well, 29th and 28th Street. We've got repairs, and I think there's one or two that we'll be replacing as well. And lastly, we're looking at replacing some tide valves throughout the peninsula area as well. In the water section, the large project that I mentioned earlier was the new wells in Fountain Valley. And we'll be starting to drill those wells early or late summer. We've been working with Orange County Water District for a loan of $10 million. There'll be an additional $8 million or $8.5 million next year that we'll be looking for, which will be from our water funds for the additional work for site development and such. But total water, $13.4 million. the wastewater these are typical programs we have every year funded by our wastewater fund and then lastly our seventh cycle housing element planning is going to begin this coming year and it'll happen over the next three years fun again and so that's what this item is and then looking forward in the five-year look ahead So first of all, the bubble island seawalls will be looking at the design. We're already we're starting to design now for the entire island and the little island. And in the following year, as soon as we get through permitting, which will be the biggest issue with coastal, we'll be looking for phase one, which is the Grand Canal and the West End to add and put in a new seawall. And in 28, 29, we'll be looking at the police station, which we'll be discussing later, right after me. 29, 30, the Newport Pier. We've moved it back a bit, but it's not gone. It's still in our discussions, but moving it back a little bit with some other priorities. And then 20, or 30, 31, fire station number three. and 31, 32, it's already time to replace the synthetic turf. That'll be 10 years. That's typically when we replace synthetic turf due to degradation over that time. So we'll be looking at it. If we find that it's good at that time, we'll extend it. And with that, if you have any questions, I'm ready to answer them.

Thank you, Mr. Houlihan, for that very thorough presentation. We have a lot going on, as always, in the city. Okay, are there any questions up here for staff, Councilmember Wiegand?

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on that Orange County Water District loan. That's on Thursday. We have a subcommittee as a director for the Orange County Water District. I get to serve on that. And that was something that we implemented a couple years back. So, so far, only Seal Beach and Santa Ana have gotten that. So Newport would be the third city. It's not an unlimited amount that are available for loans. It's a very select group. So thank Mark Vukovic back there that has worked hard on establishing that and getting that set up. THAT WILL BE VOTED ON ON THURSDAY AND THEN WE GO TO OUR MAIN BOARD. SO IT'S A SUBCOMMITTEE ON THURSDAY AND THEN OUR MAIN BOARD WILL HEAR THAT ON THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY. SO I APPRECIATE STAFF'S HARD WORK ON THAT BECAUSE THAT WILL GIVE US ADDITIONAL FUNDS TO USE FOR OTHER THINGS AND I APPRECIATE THAT.

Councilmember Grant. I would just comment that's a remarkable amount of work to be achieved even in a five-year period, one-year period, and I'm grateful that you and your capable staff will be heading up all those projects for our community. Thank you.

Are there comments up here? My question is, are we pursuing any grant opportunities? I know we've engaged Townsend to look for grant money wherever we can find it, especially for, I know we have a lot of grant money that we've already used to build the trash interceptor, but any more opportunities out there?

There are opportunities, and we continue to work with Townsend. We go through our list, and we sit down with the city manager's office to identify those areas where there's opportunity. It's challenging, competitive, typically. So anyway, we do. We definitely do. And with OCTA, we'll definitely, you know, when there's opportunities on the larger construction projects, we look for opportunities. for their M2 funds, the competitive ones.

Great, thank you. Okay, we'll now open it up to the public. Mr. Brass, I see you're ready to go.

Full house tonight. So good. And the parking is so full that I'm sure people are still streaming in and you have the overflow going tonight too. So good job. Mayor, Council, Dennis, Brest, Balboa. And I just want to comment on the wells in Fountain Valley. So that's going to be awesome because that's going to give us then full 100% local water, right? where we don't have to count on the Colorado River. And I don't know if you've read in the news, but there's a lot of might go to legal in regards to allotments coming through. So it's good we're properly planning. So my question would be, when are those wells going to be officially up and running? And when would we start receiving water from those wells in that project? Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any other comments from the public?

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. That was a very good presentation. And I just wanted to let the city council know that island leaders have been working closely with your staff for years. And we concur with the recommendations of the staff. Two quick notes. On the seawall replacement, it's going to be a very costly endeavor. And I've encouraged the staff to look at other technologies where maybe we don't have to replace the seawall. And we can use shoring or other methods to give it another 40 years of life. So I would encourage the staff when they're evaluating alternatives to include that, what I think is going to be a much cheaper alternative. And then a final comment. Out in the five-year spectrum, we've always talked about when we've done our part as property owners in doing the undergrounding and replacing the alleys, begin the street replacement program. out about five years that's when the polls will be down and it'll be calm again on the island but if the staff could include out maybe five years to maybe look at beginning the street reconstruction on Balboa Island we'd appreciate it thank you thank you next speaker please

afternoon mayor council members denise overman great job for staff and providing an overview of the capital improvement programs i just had a couple of comments one is relative to the one hundred and ten thousand dollars that was stated to be allocated for signal synchronization. I think there is a much broader need for evaluation of our entire signal system in light of a dramatically increased traffic flow. that can be anticipated through the other economic development with housing and other development along mariners mile and a number of other areas also with the advent of the e-bikes and the multimedia pressure that's put in our roadway system including around residents and also schools uh my sense is that 110 000 is remarkably skinny and the scope and the budget with that could benefit a look and then lastly relative to the five-year budget i think it's a good global look it would be helpful to know what the vision is for the amount of capital that is required for those various programs that were identified thank you thank you

Good afternoon, Adam Leverins. Lots of interesting things in there and whole lots of money. Thank you. Having recently seen a presentation at a Coastal Commission meeting on microplastics, I'd hope to prompt some thought about when there's replacements of artificial turf with more artificial turf or conversion of real turf to artificial turf. there's ways to measure what comes off as that gets used and I was kind of shocked at some of the measurements I saw in this presentation at Coastal and the science on microplastics is evolving right now and and I just think these are things that should be thought about that's maybe going to turn out like back in the early 1900s when smoking wasn't bad for you and was cool and fashionable so I just like some thought put into when turf is going to be substituted or replaced with something that appears to have all kinds of harmful effects especially being so close to the water as we are and I'd say this ties into the water quality elements up there too so just something to think about thank you thank you next speaker please

Mayor Kleinman, members of the council, my name is Jim Mosier. First I'd like to observe there was a time when members of the public coming to these meetings and especially study sessions like this could expect to find in the lobby a paper copy of the presentation and those who were interested could take that copy and follow along a little better than they can with the slides that are shown for a moment and then disappear and actually take notes on those to give you better comments than is possible now. I think the reliance that everybody is online following this is probably misplaced. The second comment I would make is, which I made in writing, is there appears to be, or there is currently in our general plan, a expectation or actually requirement that the entire CIP budget or project list, and not only our own cities, but those of other agencies that might be planning to do work in the next five years in our city, are kind of consolidated together by the public's work department and presented to the planning commission to make sure that they are consistent with our general plan. I believe some years ago a similar requirement in our charter was removed, but there still seems to be a state law requirement to do that. So I'm wondering how we're fulfilling that obligation to make sure all these projects and those by other agencies that may be happening in our city are consistent with our general plan. And then my final comment, since I didn't have a paper copy to take notes on, is I believe one of the last slides mentioned, and this is kind of apropos to your next study session item, which is about relocating the police station. The Public Works Department is apparently not even expecting to begin thinking about that until 2028. And I found that interesting when we're here today. to be initiating something that is not even in our capital improvement program and not expected for the next several years. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back up here. Any other comments from my colleagues? OK. Moving on, I do want to mention before we get to our next study session item, we do have some seats available up here for anyone standing in the back who would like to sit down. We'll now move on to the Newport Beach Headquarters Reconstruction Study Session. Mr. Jurgis.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I appreciate it. With me is Dave Webb, our Public Works Director. So this evening's item is really to talk about the reconstruction of the police headquarters and really specifically as to where. We've already talked about in the past how old our facility is. It's over 50 years old. And by the time we build something somewhere, it's going to be, you know, another seven years old. From a staff standpoint, we understand the complexities of building a police station at Santa Barbara, and we understand the issues with regards to Dove Street. So our choices are really, really small at this point. Hence, we floated that idea of building it at the Civic Center. There's been a lot of conversation in press media about removing the bunnies or the sculpture garden, and that's not our intent. Our intent is really to study it. We need to study the Civic Center if there's a council consensus on it, and so we can understand the environmental impacts, the traffic impacts, where we can relocate the sculpture garden, where we could relocate the bunnies that we have out here. So it is a conversation. I am looking for a little bit of consensus, Madam Mayor, at the end so we can continue the studying process and hire consultants so we can answer some of these broad questions that everybody keeps posing to us as far as how do we mitigate some of these impacts? What are the traffic levels? What is the view impacts? And we don't have those answers yet because we haven't studied it. So I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Webb. He's going to go ahead and make a full presentation about the other project sites. With us this evening is your police chief, Dave Miner, is your fire chief, Jeff Boyles, and community development director, Jaime Murillo. And we're all here to answer any of those questions that you may have after the presentation. So thank you.

Dave. Well, good afternoon, Mayor, council members, members of the public. My name is Dave Webb, Public Works Director, and thank you for coming today to talk about a little bit more on our presentation regarding the police facility replacement. So let's start in and talk about recent undertakings. I'm probably going to do some of this as a little background for some of you, but others who haven't been in the conversation want to make sure they understand that We've been working on this for quite a while, and particularly recently on November 4th of 25, the council set up a Newport Beach Police Headquarters ad hoc committee, and that has Mayor Plotam Blom on it and also council members Weber and Baltos who've been looking at that. With that, we also hired an outside firm, Griffin Structures, to give us some support in terms of constructability and costing and things like that to do the rough quantities and look at various items and give us kind of a feel what we're looking at. And then the committee started looking and considering various sites, and I've had four of them listed on here. The current location, Santa Barbara, has been looked at, and we'll talk about that more tonight. um we've also looked at the proposed 1201 dove street location as you recall back in may of 23 the city bought a facility thinking that might be a good location for the police station and then we've looked around the civic center area and also recently we started looking at the civic center park and i know that's a note of interest for a lot of folks tonight so Let's let's start about talk about the first place is the existing police facility and that that's been a conversation popping up with a lot of people and they've asked the question, why can't we just build it where it's at? Well, I want to let you know that the committee did look at this and we did extensive review and I happen to be around for many years and we looked at this before with other councils. It's very challenging to build it on that site, and I'm going to go through some reasons. But with that reason, we even looked at and bought the Dove Street, knowing that it's very difficult to build an existing facility, a new facility on an existing site. But the current site is four acres. The zoning on that site is public facilities. It's got a residential overlay, and it's got a height limit of 300 feet. That's a significant point because that's changed a lot since we originally built and bought the property and built the facility. Now it's a residential overlay with a height limit on it. It makes it very valuable, and one of the questions that comes up, and Ad Hoc had to work on that, is do we want to put a police facility, an important facility, but on a very valuable piece of property that has a lot of high value in another way? So that's an important point we may talk about tonight. The current police facility is 49,200 plus square feet. It's a concrete tilt-up. It was built back in 1973. The site building shares with the fire station. Fire station number three is on that site. It takes about one acre of the four acres. It's a 13,000 square foot concrete building, and that was built a little earlier, 1971. As you can tell from the dates, all these facilities are aging. So we talked about the facility condition. We did an assessment of all our properties in the city, all our facilities in 2021. And we have that assessment. And when we looked at the police building, they rated it as fair at the time. Just as a note, the fire station on the corner, number three, is rated as poor currently. These buildings are 50 plus years old and they're very important. They run operations 24 seven critical public safety functions. So we have to really look at these and make sure that we're staying up with and investing in that. So what we're finding increasing system failures. There's a growing need of more maintenance costs and various items that are breaking down on these older buildings. Just for instance, on the police building, I look back for the last three years, we spent about $1.5 million in upkeep, maintenance, small capital projects, just trying to keep the building up to shape. The fire station itself, smaller building, but we spent another $170,000 a year on that, I'm sorry, for three years on that building. but we're finding it's increasingly we have system failures growing maintenance needs and that's like any building as it ages it just you have more maintenance needs on that recently we've had sewer problems in the police facility and you can imagine cast iron pipes old pipes maybe rust things like that we've had some electrical issues come up we actually had a fire in one of the buildings that was a shorting with wires And then it's funny, recently we do a lot of work to keep these buildings in great shape. Our utilities departments routinely test our generators and switches, but we had a power outage and the switch failed. And it's just from an age-related thing. It's not from our lack of attention on it. So those things are starting to show up in science. Other things, major structural infrastructure concerns. You have an age in building that's requiring more repairs. You've got lots of systems in there and they're getting outdated. They're way past their intended life. When I say that, think about 1970. We were all excited with copper phone lines. We started getting coax cable. We're way beyond that now. We have Cat 6 cable. We have fiber optics. Things have really evolved, and this building wasn't set up that way. Many systems are outdated in that. So the other thing is the employees inside the building. This building has only 20% natural light inside of it, and that makes a difference for employees' morale and things like that. So we looked at things like that. And the other big thing, being a critical facility, if you're aware of structural codes, they're built at higher levels. When we have an earthquake, we want those buildings to stand up even when others fall down. So this building doesn't meet current codes and seismic standards. So that's a consideration on the existing building too. We looked at the technology and digital evidence demands. Again, digital is so much further than we had when we built the building. There's a need for modernization, sort of allowing that technology. Think of data storage. We have the need to store a lot more data from body cameras and video data and things like that. So that and its servers and the network are in there. The electrical needs of the facility are much different. Think about the AI discussions we're having now. With all that demand, we have data storage here now that needs a lot more. We actually have drones now running out that are electric. We just need to upgrade the electric systems. And then again, just retrofitting the aging infrastructure is costly and inefficient. So when you start thinking about an old building, should we put a lot of money into that? The operational constraints of these buildings, our police department, as we've grown as a city, their needs have grown. Space limitations on the department are huge. We don't have significant parking on there. We have insufficient size in that. And the operational support areas are sometimes constraining the operation itself. The facility layout design, it's not modern. It needs updating on that. So one of the questions that the ad hoc looked at is when you start looking at an old building, should the city continue investing its major system upgrades in a building that's basically reaching the end of its life? And that's an important question because you're needing to dump a lot of money into this building and communications and drone technology and other things. We looked at that. Other things that ad hoc really took a lot of interest in and did a thorough job in this, they set up criteria to look at these buildings and various components. We have an operational continuity. This is important because when we get into replacing a building or moving something, something as critical as a police service, can we keep it working uninterrupted during a construction process? That's a big question. Location, central location. This discussion has been around, but right now, where's the proximity of the building to the civic center or the services in the center of the city? That's a discussion. Fiscal responsibility. What's the total cost to taxpayers for a building and a facility? And that includes land acquisition and construction. Those come into play. And then constructability. There are sites we can look at, but very difficult to construct on, including the existing site, and we'll talk about that a little bit. Can we even construct it without too much disruption? And then long-term functionality. This is kind of looking into the future. This building is going to be around support policing needs for decades because these buildings tend to be longevity-wise long. And then land availability. We're looking for land, and we're preferencing something we already own. City-owned land is obviously favorable over very expensive commercial land around it. So those are some of the criteria that went into it. So I'm going to stop and focus a little bit on the existing facility now, because I know there's been a lot of questions, but I will tell you the ad hoc looked at this prior ad hocs and prior councils looked at this. As I mentioned, we looked at other places because the difficulty of building on the current site, our construction folks worked with us. We looked at three probable options to do this. And before I look through those options, I also want to note, remember we have a fire station on the site and it's very important to note. Before we can rebuild the police facility, we have to move the fire station off. It's due for replacement anyway, but it would be in the way of a new facility. So we have to go find a place for that. That adds about three years just to design and construct that type of facility once we have a site. So when we looked at the current site and figured how can we re-put the police station there, we looked at three options. One would be renovate the existing structure and add to it. That would be a full retrofit, seismic retrofit, adding about 25,000 square foot. and then building a parking structure of about 250 stalls. And again, all these are estimates. We're doing block diagrams, so don't get too caught up in the specifics, but we're moving these around to kind of see if we can fit. Option two, what if we build a two-story police facility? We demo the existing structure, we build a new building about 75,000 square feet, and then we also build another parking structure with that 250 square feet. And the third option we looked at was building a three-story structure, again, smaller footprint, higher up, and again, building a parking structure a little smaller, and then some surface lot parking. Again, that brings the cost down, but it does take up room. So as we looked at these options, we wanted to lay it out for you, because we did do a significant review of this, and the ad hoc kind of really looked at this and looked at all the facilities, those criteria they're looking at in regard to this. So if I look at option one here, we're talking about temporarily, and I put these photos on here to kind of understand the sequence. Phase one, we have to basically remove that fire station, remember, to begin with. And then we temporarily build a trailer complex on that site. We need some place to put the staff and the operations. The note on this, though, look at that. You're basically building a trailer village. It's about 15,000, maybe 20,000 square feet of space we could do. Remember, this building's about 50,000 square feet. What that's telling us is we're not going to get all the functions and personnel in that facility. We're going to have to do something about it. So we end up having a major disruption. We have things like outsourcing the jail service or evidence service or shooting galleries and other things that the police use daily. will not fit on the site. But this option we explored further. So then we would go ahead and demo, not demo, but rehab the existing facility. And you're going to have to do a really major rehab gut. You're going to take it down to the concrete and the steel. You're going to have to do seismic retrofit, put all new systems in, build a new building within that old building, and then add about 25,000 square feet to that. And once that's done, now we can move the police into that building, get rid of the temporary facilities, and then build a parking deck on that. Again, as we do this, you see some of the challenges, and I said major disruption because the police are going to have to move out of their building and operate in a temporary way, and that's very concerning because, again, we need them to operate and function normally, and this could put some operational shackles on them that we may not feel it's warranted to do. The other concern in this is required off-site parking, and they probably need a shuttle. If you know this area and you think about Santa Barbara and Newport Center, Where are you going to park all these people when we can't park them on site when we're building this? There's about 300-plus vehicles there. We figure that's going to take about two acres. We're going to need a secure area with the police vehicles and employees. And I've scratched my head to figure out where we do that. My brain goes to maybe the Hyatt parking lot off the drive over there or the Dunes or something. But we really don't have a real close proximity place to put these people. We're going to have to shuttle them back and forth. Why I'm saying that, it's an inconvenience. It breaks up the operation. We're concerned about that. Looking at the timeline on this, again, with the fire station being about three years to relocate and get up and running, you got another three or four years on the police side to basically get that facility up and running. So you're looking at maybe a six to seven year total timeframe to bring this into where we want to be with a new facility. So that was option one we looked at. Option two, a little different. In this case, we're gonna build a new two-story police station, 75,000 square feet. And then we're gonna put that on the formal fire station site in the parking center. So in this case, the existing building is still operable. We'll keep the police running in that while we build a new station next to them. But again, notice we've removed all the parking. So we're gonna have to build an offsite parking lot and run that. And we'll get the new station up and running. And the pictures again are blocked because remember you need areas around that block to stage and lay down steel and have cranes and concrete and things like that. So it really constrains the site even though we're gonna keep trying to run the existing operation there. Once that's building done, we move the police into the new building. We go to the old building, we demo it, and we build a parking deck over there. Again, we've got a disruptive operation. This one's a little quicker because it's two stages. Again, we need an offsite lot. We haven't figured that out yet. It's gonna take about three years, maybe six years total to do the whole operation. And then we looked at one other one to try to see if there's a better way to skin that. But this this is a more four stage where, again, we build a temporary parking structure on the fire station lot. Then we construct in this case a parking lot first, a little smaller parking deck, 160 stalls. And then we come back where the temporary parking was and we build a three story police station. And then when those two are up and running, again, we still need off-site parking because we don't have enough to work. We would take down the old station and build a surface parking lot there and some supplemental facilities for the police station. Again, you're looking at three years for the fire station. You've got another three, four years to build the new police station. You're looking at a six- or seven-year time frame to do that. So we put these in a slide and again, these are all available online for you. We published the slides so you can see if you want to get in the detail. But the detail here is that ad hoc looked at is the option one, two and three and kind of comparing them how to do it on site. And again, I will emphasize that it's not an easy process and there's a lot of thought that's gone in here and it's difficult. But if you look at some of these things, disruption, We don't have a dollar value on disruption. We'll talk about that later. But we know there is a dollar value associated with that. And no one wants a disrupted police department when we're trying to operate a city. But there is some level of that. Temporary facilities, we need them or not. Parking on and off site, again, just the challenges. We haven't got to solving the problem, but we know there's a problem with trying to locate a two-acre parking lot somewhere. Secure it with on-site security and fencing so that the employees and our equipment are safe. um and then get them back and forth to the police station there's a shuttle operation that that's a complex thing we have to figure out if we go that route and then some other things building presence site constraints they looked at um equipment uh can i move equipment around and build it here highly limited things like that and then the schedule and then the bottom line there's the cost just the hard cost to construct these facilities That last line there, cost exclusions, is important because we don't really know all this. What we do know, let's say option one, is we're going to have to basically not work. Some of the facilities operations will not be able to fit on the site. We'll probably have to work with, I've heard, maybe Huntington Beach or the county to move our jailer operations there. What about dispatch? Is that going to go somewhere else? Is it going to go with the county? How do we do with our evidence rooms and things like that? Where do we put that? There's a cost, a hard cost to that. And we estimate maybe between five and 20 million, but there's an unspoken cost. We don't know what the disruption cost is and all that, but there will be one. So those have to be accounted for. And that's kind of shown in this slide. So with that, we looked at going to another property, and this would be 1201 Dove Street. 1201 Dove Street is a property the city bought for $28.7 million back in May of 2023. It made a lot of sense at the time. It's still a good move, but the committee looked at it. Should we build up there? Should we put the police station so far away? This site is zoned currently for Residential 2 and could do 179 units on it. So it since has changed its zoning. and has other opportunities. If you're familiar with the airport area, there's a lot of residential development going up there. So we don't know what the best use of that is, but that was one of the things. So the ad hoc looked at this, and they looked at it, and the good news is that this is an income-producing property. The city made a wise move, I think, when they bought this. They bought it in the commercial downturn, And now they have an asset that's producing revenue. The revenue income there, by the way, that's a dash, not a negative sign. It's actually a positive 2.3 gross revenue a year and a positive 1.2 net annual revenue that this building's generating for the city along with the value of the building. However, it's located outside the Civic Center area. It's not really central to Civic Services. I added a map there to give, if you don't know where this facility is, the blue dotted line on that map is the city boundary. And way up on the top in the airport area is where this property is located. And you can see it's quite a ways from the center of the city, and if you want to get towards the Civic Center, which is I don't know if I can point there, but it's it's down by the bay there You can see the mass where Newport Center is it's quite a ways from that this affects response times Connections with the civic operations things like that so that's a consideration on this building is location But the good news is that the construction costs a little less 1.5 million 150 million we looked at this site and But on the alternative, if we didn't do that, the property could be used and sold to help fund a new police station, if that was the choice of the council they wanted to go there. So there's strengths and weaknesses here, and they outlined that as they reviewed these sites. Another potential they looked at was what if we went out and tried to build a new police facility closer to the Civic Center? And again, I'm going through this detail because there's been a lot of thought put into this and we wanted to share it with you and we've just started this discussion. That's why we're here today to kind of have more discussion on that. So the ad hoc looked at various locations around it. And obviously, if you look around Newport Center, it's pretty well built out. There's no land around. So the only really way to do that is look in and maybe buy a potential property and redevelop it. So, they did some rough work in that, that little weird shape, not it's a rectagon, but it's an off shape. It's kind of one of the areas they looked at. There happened to be a building up for sale, and they said, well, let's go look at that in representative of where we can do around here. So, we did some rough layout. We came up with a scheme, kind of saying, how would we lay out a police station if we did this? This is kind of just a rough sketch to say, we can build it. We can get this done. So, should we pursue this? The rough estimate to build is about $153 million. That excludes the land costs, though. And again, all this goes into the calculations. Then we did some appraisals of the land. There's four parcels there we'd have to assimilate together should we have a willing seller. There was one for sale at the time, I believe. But you're looking at about 3.6 acres here, and the appraised value was $80 million to $90 million just to buy the land, add that on top of that $153 million cost to construct. That now becomes kind of the baseline. They have to value it on that. So that's what we did around here. And again, there's really limited options to build around the Civic Center. So that led to another discussion about, well, what is around here and close? And that brought in the conversation, maybe there's a portion of the park that might work. And the ad hoc said, well, let's take a look at it. So we have our Civic Center Park next door. Proximity to Civic Center and City Services is great. It's right across the way. You're coming here to do some police work. You can come over and get your parking permit at the same time, whatever you're doing. The city owns the property, so there's no acquisition cost. That's a big plus in this case. It integrates the public safety into the campus real well. There are some downsides. There's a lot of grading that would obviously happen here. There's an existing park that we'd have to basically look at redoing or massaging to a new geometric format. AND AGAIN, THE ESTIMATED COST IS 162 MILLION. I WILL NOTE THAT 2.5 MILLION OF THAT IS MONEY THAT WE WOULD NEED TO REBUILD AND DESIGN, FACILITATE THE ADJACENT PARK. SO JUST AS A NOTE THERE. WE LOOKED AT THIS IN TERMS OF THE PARK ITSELF. THE PARK IS BASICALLY 9.45 ACRES, BOTH SIDES ACROSS SAN MIGUEL. This would take about 3.5 acres of that, leaving the residual of 5.59, about six acres left. And we thought we could reimagine maybe the sculpture garden. There's a lot of area up there along with the dog park that might be able to be repurposed and reused. And there would be a connection between the Civic Center and the park. I know the square doesn't show that, but there would have to be some kind of park trail that goes around there and connects the two. So again, this is high-level block diagrams. We haven't got to that. So that's the conversation that kind of took place on that. And then we laid on just a real simple overlay. How do we do that? And that's the one we we previewed on the planning session in January 31st that you got the initial thought process. What do you think about something like this? So it have a police building in front. There'd be a parking structure in the back of some sort and then some service areas between the two buildings. It's going to change when you get into a hard architecture, but that's just kind of layout to understand the size of that. So then the ad hoc committee kind of looked at, okay, let's put them all side by side. What are our best options? And they started using their evaluation criteria. And we've got the current site, the Dove Street site, the private center, or maybe the Civic Center campus. And this kind of lays that out in a holistic view. And you can see the costs vary a lot because some of them have land, some don't need land. The construction, the constraints, there's a lot of them on the current site, much more because you have You have temporary facilities you have to deal with. You have disruption to the current service. You have longer construction times. You have to move a fire station to even get that one off the ground. Dove Street has its own concerns. It's got income to it. It's quite a ways away. It's not civic center-centric. There's increased response times if we had to deploy out of there to get towards the beach areas. The private land has its own issues. I mean, it's great, its location's really nice, the one we're looking at, but it's got significant cost to it, and that's, again, remember those criteria. It's about usability, it's about total cost, it's other things that the ad hoc was looking at. And then again, the Civic Center campus is very well suited. It's also cheaper overall, but it comes with some other costs. As you know, we have a park that's involved there and other needs, so that's kind of what we summed up. and why we want to bring that tonight for discussion. The ad hoc wanted to bring that to the full council and the public to talk further about this. So tonight we're looking for additional input from the council and the public to talk about these sites. And then the ad hoc is basically requesting direction Do you want us to continue and evaluate potential sites and timing and things for the police facility? Or would you like us to now focus in maybe consider evaluation in the new police facility at the Civic Center Park? And that would include at this point, as the city manager mentioned, we would then move into maybe hiring a set of consultants to dig deeper and to look at different concept designs, tighten that up, get the traffic involved. What kind of offsites are we going to have to do in mitigation? Do the environmental documents. And then with that, we know we are affecting the park, so there'd also be another element where we're soliciting input from the public and the Arts Commission, because we'd have to redesign and rework the park in a way that we'd still have a park, but what's that going to look like? So we'd want a lot of public input. Or the third option here is to pursue other directions as provided by the council's direction. So that's kind of where we land tonight, and we turn it over to you, council, to give us input.

Thank you once again for that very thorough presentation, and I want to thank the ad hoc committee for what seems to be a tremendous amount of study and analysis. Before we open it up for discussion, I would like to invite the chiefs up just to get a better understanding, both fire and police chiefs. I know we're talking about the police station today, but because we're talking about Santa Barbara site and trying to get an understanding of all the logistics, IT WOULD BE HELPFUL JUST FOR EVERYBODY, CERTAINLY FOR MY BENEFIT BUT FOR THE PUBLIC AND FOR THE REST OF THE COUNCIL TO HEAR YOUR PERSPECTIVE ABOUT TODAY'S OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS AND YOUR GENERAL NEEDS AND THEN WE'LL OPEN IT UP FOR QUESTIONS FROM THE DIAS.

I can go first. Madam Mayor, council members, Dave Minor, your police chief, thanks for having me here. I'm impressed with Dave Webb's presentation. It covered a lot of the concerns and discussion points that I'm familiar with. I think overall, my concern as your police chief is maintaining operational excellence in the level of service that we provide to the community. I have concerns about maintaining that operational readiness and success if we're operating out of a construction zone for three plus years on our site. I think it would create significant disruption were that to happen with many of the things that Mr. Webb covered. I also think operationally it's beneficial to be centrally located, to be near the Civic Center, to be as centered as possible geographically for response times. understanding that our officers do have assigned areas. So if they're assigned to the bubble peninsula, we do have officers that are in their beat. But keep in mind, we have a jail, we have property and evidence, we have regular meetings and discussions. So if an officer down by the bubble up here makes an arrest, he or she has to transport that body all the way to our jail to be booked or if they seize property or if they have to Have a meeting or deliver paperwork. So that's time to drive back and forth And so yes, we do have officers that are distributed evenly throughout the city, but there is time Where they come back and forth between the police station multiple times a shift. So that is a consideration and But speaking of the current facility, Dave covered it very well. It's 50-plus years old. It's routine that we have sewage backup, that we had the electrical fire last month, the power outage with the failure of the backup generator in November. These are all things we've grown somewhat accustomed to, so I do support wholeheartedly IMAGINING OR RESEARCHING WHERE A NEW POLICE STATION CAN BE, BUT WE DEFINITELY DO NEED A NEW BUILDING. AND HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY OTHER QUESTIONS YOU HAVE FOR ME.

Mayor Kleinman, members of council, Jeff Boyles, your fire chief. I'd like to echo Chief Miner as well. Dave did a great presentation outlining some of the challenges that we're facing with our current fire station three over on Santa Barbara Avenue. It is a couple years older than the police facility and has its challenges as well. Some of them downstairs, specifically gender challenges with chief officers and captains. WE DON'T HAVE ANY FEMALE CAPTAINS OR CHIEF OFFICERS YET, BUT WHEN WE DO, IF AND WHEN THAT HAPPENS, IT WILL NEED A MAJOR REMODEL IN THE DOWNSTAIRS AREA. DAVE POINTED OUT THAT WE SPENT ABOUT $170,000 IN MAINTENANCE IN THE LAST THREE YEARS, BUT over half a million dollars or nearly half a million dollars in the last ten years and I'd just like to point out too that We have some heavy roll-up garage doors to the tune of about three hundred thousand dollars that we decided against replacing the last couple of years Thinking that this move was on the horizon So we were just trying to work around that but they do create significant issues when they break we have to move the rigs backwards and send them out and OF THE OTHER DIRECTION. IT JUST GETS TO BE PRETTY CHALLENGING. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO POINT OUT WITH DAVE'S TIMELINE REFERENCE, I SAW, I BELIEVE, THREE TO FOUR YEARS, DAVE, IF I'M NOT MISTAKEN, FOR A FIRE STATION BUILD. AND IN MY EXPERIENCE, OUR BUILDINGS ARE PRETTY COMPLICATED. THERE'S A LOT THAT GOES INTO THEM WITH TECHNOLOGY AND SOME OF THE DIFFERENT AVENUES FOR HOUSING AND HOSTING FIREFIGHTERS ON A 24-7 BASIS. SO THREE YEARS MIGHT BE A LITTLE AGGRESSIVE, JUST NO KNOCK TO PUBLIC WORKS. IT'S JUST HOW BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION GOES. JUST SEEING HOW THE CONCRETE POUR-IN-PLACE JUNIOR LIFEGUARD BUILDING WENT, YOU CAN SEE HOW THAT TIMELINE, IN MY OPINION, COULD STRETCH EVEN A LITTLE BIT FURTHER, PUSHING THE POLICE MOVE EVEN FURTHER OUT. SO I WOULD AGREE THAT STAYING CENTRALLY LOCATED FOR OUR FIRE STATION THREE IS PARAMOUNT TO OUR SERVICE IN THIS AREA, BUT IT DOES NEED TO COME IN THE NEAR FUTURE BECAUSE IT'S AGING OUT.

THANK YOU. OKAY, I'LL BRING IT BACK TO THE DIUS AND OPEN IT UP FOR QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS UP HERE. OKAY. YEAH, WE'LL HEAR FROM THE PUBLIC NOW. THANK YOU BOTH. OK. Well, now open it up to the public. Mr. Press first up again.

Front row. Thank you. Mayor, Council, Dave. Great presentation. First of all, I just wanted to say Dennis Press, Balboa Island. Thank you very much, Simone, and for staff to make this available to the public. As you can see by the amount of people that are here, it's a very important topic. So thank you for the transparency. Yeah, there's a lot going on. First thing, 53 year old building for the police. We got to get them a new building for sure. So I had spoke at that Saturday meeting about the possibility of further investigating all options. And one of them was the park. That said, after final review and I sent you all an overview of my position and that was I think option three is the best. We already own the land where they're currently at. It seems like the bigger issue is how to mitigate during the time of the build for the police department to function. That said, we already own the property. I don't think the location of the building we have that's outside of the zone makes sense just because of its location. And I think, um, one of the keys is for a win-win is to be able to have the current location that you're used to low local to a fashion Island. So that's what I would say from my perspective. And thank you for allowing for public comments.

Thank you. And on that note, I should have, um, first taken just a quick survey show of hands of how many people in the room are planning on speaking on this item. OK. So I think we do have a lot of interest, a lot of passion on this issue. We'll go ahead and limit to two minutes. Was Mr. Bress's comment about two minutes? And I just want to remind everyone to please maintain decorum. Please be respectful. Thank you. Next speaker.

Mayor and members of the council. I'm your Centennial Mayor, Don Webb. And I'm here. I was actually here in 1968 when I started to work, but I remember the police facility being built. And I was very lucky because when they moved out, I got to move into a new office that was a temporary building, but it was still one that I enjoyed. So I've Experienced it, but I was also on the council when in 2006 when we appointed the committee to find the city all and we were Very interested in in looking at all options and we Ignored this particular site because we owned the property it was part of as I remember it and I might be wrong on this and IT WAS DEDICATED TO US BY THE IRVINE COMPANY AS A PART OF THE CIRCULATION IMPROVEMENT AND OPEN SPACE AGREEMENT THAT WAS INSTITUTED IN THE 90s IN WHICH THE IRVINE COMPANY MADE PUBLIC STREET IMPROVEMENTS IN EXCHANGE FOR ADDITIONAL PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS. AND THEY DEDICATED THIS AS OPEN SPACE FOR US, AND I FEEL THAT that we owe it to the public. I know that we took a little bit away for this city hall, but we have really enjoyed using the park. I came across a couple last week that had come up here and they had met. One was coming from San Diego and one was from Santa Clarita, and they'd heard about Bunny Hinge. And they really enjoyed the walk through the park. It's one of my favorite walks. And I feel that if you take one third of it and build a wall across it, it's going to totally ruin the feeling that we have today and something that we worked so hard to create when we built this wonderful facility. So I would suggest across the street, perhaps.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good afternoon, Mayor Kleinman and members of the City Council. I'm Ron Rubino. I live in East Bluff. I'm a 39-year resident of the community. I appreciate the opportunity to provide input by the public, including myself, and I think this is a very big decision. It has long-time implications. I've read the report. I've seen the examples. I think Dave did a great job of walking you through it. I believe that This report does give you options within the options. And I believe the park site should be excluded and not considered. And I think it's irreplaceable, but I do believe the solutions are available without it. I do believe the police department and fire department do need new facilities. No disputing that. Think if you replace the fire department and you designate that location It's got to go first and I think everything in the examples represents that it frees up the current site And I do believe the logistics of building on the fire station low site to build a police department could be handled Logistically with the police staying in their existing site So I think the most economical solution is staying on that location and working out parking down at the Hyatt down in the the park on jamboree is possible for a shuttle on a short-term basis if that was required right now the fire department doesn't provide any parking to the police department on their half of the property it includes their parking so i just don't find the need for additional parking now if there's construction and disruption that's logistics and you have to work through it i think the city could also look at this site across the street it's in the map and there's four parcels and i know it's private property that's ideal to have access to something right there across the street that might be a great location for the fire department if it can be acquired and i don't think you need all four parcels you could probably do it on two of the four and it's on a corner with access in and out for the for the fire equipment so that might be what has to go first and then i support that you move forward study these locations but i hope tonight you'll exclude the park from the study and focus on the other options thank you thank you mr rubino feel free to line up on either side as well thank you

good evening mayor kleinman council members and city staff my name is dennis baker excuse me i'm the president of line in the sand uh that's an advocacy group here and we've been kind of quiet recently but i want to take a little different approach it's about the the whole process has been going on So, Line in the Sand was formed in 2014. We successfully defeated Measure Y that year. In two weeks, in 2016, over the Christmas holidays, Line in the Sand collected close to 14,000 signatures to qualify a referendum regarding the museum house. Now, there's a story to be learned from that process. The council reversed the decision after we got the referendum qualified. That resulted in the Orange County Museum of Art suing the city, suing this young lady over here, Nancy Skinner, and myself. We were named as real parties of interest, and we spent a year in court. The city spent a year in court and spent a lot of money in legal fees. I do not know how much the city spent, but we spent $150,000 in that year to defend ourselves, for our attorneys, and to represent us. And it resulted in a settlement. Orange County Museum of Art did settle with us. In the fall, of 24, the council made the decision regarding the Cardinal market. I don't need to go into that. That didn't come out too well because it didn't get a lot of community input. What that was ignored. My point is that this process, the whole process is not being done really out in the open. We are an organization that concentrates on referendums, initiatives, recalls, and that is a very, very poor way of doing government. And that doesn't mean we don't use those tools. We're not willing to use those tools, but it is very important that that be left as a last resort. Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and members of the Council. My name is Nancy Skinner, and I want to start by thanking Mr. Webb for giving us such a complete background to this whole story. All the different people you connected with, but as you were speaking, Sir, I realized that there was one major missing thing, and that was the city's people. Those of us that live here, we didn't get any input, any asks or any ideas ahead of time. And I think you'll see from what's in the audience today, That's what I think would be really helpful. We want to get along. We all love the police. We love the firemen. We want to do the very best for them. In fact, I personally hope they do get a brand new building. I just think we have to keep it out of the park. I was one of those that went against all of my friends who wanted to not even put what we have there in the park, but I said that would be something acceptable, but I just certainly at the time was informed and believed that we would have the rest of the park as a park. So I'm just shocked to think that we, with just a small ad hoc committee, made a decision without any... significant input from residents in the city. So thank you for giving that some consideration. Add us now. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Pamela Marks. I live right on the other side of Avocado. So this is very personal to me. I use this park often to exercise several times a week. I volunteer with the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center and I've released wildlife in this park. And I know once you start tearing it up and paving it over, the animals are going to leave. It's a beautiful wetlands. It's such an asset to the community. And, you know, the old saying, pave paradise, put up a parking lot. It just breaks my heart to think that that could happen to this beautiful park that hasn't even been here very long. And it's just gorgeous. And I see that the employees are using it every day. I use it several times a week. And you just can't chop it in half and think it'll be the same. And the cost of things can't always be measured in dollars and cents, as you know. So anyway, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and council members, for listening to the public tonight. My name is Sean Hanna. I live in a house that overlooks the city hall right over here just across MacArthur. So when we first moved here, this was just all wetlands. And our family, we saw, of course, first the town hall going here. And, of course, that was a problem. But, you know, we want to support things. And, you know, obviously I want to register my opposition to using the police department in this park area. Um, we feel like, uh, our community, we've been pretty tolerant of all the construction that went on over the many years, uh, of the city hall, but to take away the park, uh, in addition to that, what we've already gone through is, is, is a problem. So again, we hope that you'll look for other options. We support our police, but I think that they're the, an option other than taking away the park is the best one. Thank you.

Mayor Kleinman and members of the council, my name is Lily Lieberman. I'm a lifelong resident of Newport Beach. Thank you very much for this opportunity to share my thoughts. I'm a firm believer that stakeholder involvement in the planning of a new public project is a strong indicator of that project's success. This belief is one of the reasons I'm grateful for the time to speak and listen today. However, my belief in the value of public engagement is also what leads me to be ultimately disappointed in the council's process and move to oppose the relocation of the Newport Beach Police Station to Civic Center Park. My frustration stems from the distinct impression that the project was conceived without public involvement, is progressing without public involvement, and ultimately will occur regardless of what your constituents have to say in opposition. Councilman Blum, you were recently quoted in Voice of OC as having said, quote, I enjoy the idea we get the input now. I don't necessarily love the idea that input starts at the very beginning before we have any concrete pieces to play with. Councilman, you and I have very different views about when the beginning was. My parents, who in 2008 had recently moved to Newport Beach, were arts professionals committed to a robust and well-rounded education for my sister and I. Their support for the costly relocation of the Civic Center was founded in large part on the promise that was made to the voters. High cost in exchange for a park that preserved the natural environment, added to the center's display of artwork, expanded the library's offerings to young families, and heightened the city's reputation as a leader in shared public good. My grandparents, residents since 1971 and founding donors to the library, were similarly convinced. Crucially, they were all involved. They were asked in an open and equitable forum whether this was what they wanted. Councilman Blum, you're also quoted saying, I fully understand it's a huge cost, but I have full support behind it. I do not know how you can say that for certain as you never put it to your constituents until now. I can only assume you refer to conversations that voters, taxpayers were not privy to. I would prefer to underline, rather than readdressing the presentation, what I've already said, that an ad hoc committee of three council members cannot claim to be operating based on the public's desire when the public has not been involved. Please consider other options. Thank you very much.

No clapping, please.

Good evening. Mayor Kleinman, gentle council people. My name is Mary Ann Soden. I live in the Harborview Hills community and I am more or less a lifelong resident of Corona Del Mar. I'm here also in opposition to the police station in the park. I think we have a lot of interesting opportunities and different locations and so I really encourage you to consider what the police department needs and where different facilities need to be located. I was looking on the police website. There are a lot of office jobs, infrastructure jobs for the police department that possibly could utilize the building at 1201 Dove Street as it is. It's an office building. You could put the records department, you could put the call center. There are different You can put the detective offices. I mean, in some ways, what the police department needs are offices. And the report indicated they wanted more light than they have in the current police department. And so that structure maybe has a life that could continue. And then we're looking at building something smaller and more efficient. tailored to more secured functions like a jail, like a property room, like other things you might need. So I would encourage you to think about whether it needs to be one great monolith to the police who are a fantastic resource in our community like our fire department. And maybe there's an opportunity if you feel there needs to be a substation or some smaller police facility in and around the Civic Center area maybe that's something that gets paired with the with the fire department and instead of a fibrary we have I don't know what that is but a fire department and a police substation and there's access because I think our security and safety comes from those patrol officers who are surrounding us in the community at all times and there are different ways to divide up this service that might still give the police department the resources they need and the space they need without diminishing the park and the value for the community thank you very much thank you

Good day, Madam Mayor and members of the city council. My name is Charles Globe, and I am the current president of Still Protecting Our Newport, or SPAWN. We support providing our police department with the best tools to help them perform. That includes a new police headquarters when needed. The idea of putting it in the park was cooked up by three, or maybe one council member, and with no public involvement. We oppose considering the park site for this use. One reason is the park site is serious environmental issues that must be addressed, and it looks like the city is underestimating the costs. Take the placement of underground fuel tank to fuel our police vehicles. The California underground storage tank program has new regulations that became effective January 2026, requiring tanks to be placed in double line containment vaults and have extensive leak detection systems. This is particularly important here because the tank will be placed directly in the path of groundwater streams that drain the hillside communities to the ocean. Permitting is reported to take more than two years and will involve multiple state agencies for approval. As stated in the letter from the California Native Plant Society, the park itself is a riparian habitat wetlands. Birds, animals, and butterflies call it home and will be dislocated by the placement of the police station. State regulations may require mitigation for taking riparian wetlands. Lengthy environmental litigation is also likely. The fiscally responsible thing for this council to do is stop now, find a lower cost, less environmentally damaging location. The location is an environmental disaster waiting to unfold. Please consider another location. They say politics is perception. This is an election year. Four city council members will undoubtedly run for reelection. You can bet that opponents will use this issue against you. The council has already seen two or maybe four voter initiatives. Opposition to this location is huge. This would be an easy initiative to get signatures for. Thank you for your service.

Roy Engelbrecht, Noah, and Joe, nice to see you. Laird Hayes and I sat up there for many, many years, so I know how tedious public comment can get. So thank you for bearing with us. This whole issue of the Central Park and the relocation reminds me of a country song by Cody Johnson called Dirt Cheap. He's a sharecropped farmer. Developers come. They buy all the farms around, and they come to this one last farmer. They make him an offer. We're going to make you a rich man. We're going to build a subdivision there. And I want to get it right. The farmer says, boys, whatever you're offering, it won't be enough because I got a little girl that used to swing right there, and I can still see a pink bow in her hair. She's in the big city now. But what about if she comes back and it's gone? And he says, right over there, I got down on one knee. And it's about memories here in the Central Park. There's no dog in this fight from my standpoint. But how about all the moms who brought their kids to play in the Central Park? And 20 years later, those kids bring their kids and it's gone. How about the moms who did birthday parties in the park for their little kids, and those kids, 20 years later, bring their kids? It's gone. How about all those young men who bring their girlfriends and get down on one knee in that park, and on an anniversary, they come back 10 years later? It's gone. So it's about the memories when you think about the memories that have been in that park and the memories that are going to be there again. So think about where you locate this police station. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, City Council. My name is Ron Vanderhoff. I'm the vice president of Rogers Gardens right across the street. I'm also the state president of Cal Flora and a director of the California Native Plant Society. And I was asked probably 16 years ago to be on the advisory committee that established this park. We worked on the design. We worked on the restoration of the park, the trails, and all of what you see today. And we worked rather hard to develop this park, and I would be unfortunate to see it lost. In addition to that, I submitted and performed a biological survey back in 2014 that was submitted to the city, inventorying the biological species, particularly the plants, which are my specialty. No surprise. And submitted that. 152 plant species at that time called that space home, and probably more today. And I'd like to read the last two paragraphs of my report that I submitted, which is still on file somewhere in the city, 27-page report. And I'll read those two paragraphs. The natural area and the surrounding park is a quality example of a positive trend in public landscapes. By blending the community's need for recreational space with the need to protect and preserve some of our remaining natural areas, spaces such as this are important in our communities. Use of limited natural resources, particularly water, is well accomplished at this site. Additionally, many negative environmental impacts associated with traditional park lands have been greatly reduced here. These reduced impacts include limited green waste, fewer carbon emissions, reduction in fossil fuels for maintenance activities, and a reduction of nutrient flow off the site and lower noise pollution. And I have no more seconds left, so thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Please refrain from clapping so everyone has a chance to be heard. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Walter Starr. My family moved here in 1972. My parents, John and Elizabeth Starr, were active in various public projects, notably raising the money to build the Newport Beach Central Library. One of my late mother's strongest memories in the last years of her life was the groundbreaking. She described it as being out in the middle of nothing because, of course, there really was nothing here at that time. Now we have the library, the Civic Center, and the Civic Center Park. Some members of council now want to take a large fraction of that park to make way for a police station. To my mind, that makes no sense. Parks are sacred spaces, building on what we just heard. One does not destroy a park to make way for an office building because, face it, that's what the police station really is. It's an office building and a parking structure and a huge gas station. Imagine that you were on the City Council of New York City and someone suggested taking five acres from Central Park to put up a police station. Well, you would shoot that idea down immediately. You wouldn't even entertain it. Ditto if you were a member of Congress and someone suggested taking part of the National Ball. Let me circle back to the library. Today, it's not uncommon for moms to bring their kids to the library and then come up here to check on the rabbits, both the rabbit sculptures and the real rabbits that are out there. Well, that's not going to be possible if there's a huge police station sitting between the remainder of the park, which is basically going to be up there at the dog park, and the library. Find another place. Save the park.

Madam Mayor, fellow council members, I'm Tony Petros. I want to address the issue that's come up that in some manner moving the police station will complete a comprehensive plan or a master plan for the Civic Center. I would like to disabuse you and the public of that notion. In 2004, Measure B was circulated to the public. The very first sentence was an initiative to move the administrative offices and parking from 3300 Newport Boulevard to the Newport Center area. It did not speak to the police station. Furthermore, the models that were in the library or in the lobby of the then City Hall showed the design of this City Hall. It did not include a police station. Public comments were gathered for more than 70 meetings. Never was there a discussion of the police station. I sat on the council and was part of the building committee for this facility. We did not entertain at any one point putting in a police station in this location. Furthermore, I just retired from the firm that did the EIR for this building. One of the primary reasons that there is a park there happens to be that fenced area right in the center of it. Rich riparian habitat for which we could find no mitigation. No mitigation. The only mitigation for that was avoidance. That's why there is a fence around it. I beg you, do not listen to a small group, an echo chamber. Do not be influenced by unions or outside sources. Listen to the people and start at the beginning for an alternative. Thank you.

Mayor Kleinman and members of the council, my name is Rhonda Watkins. I'm a longtime Newport Beach resident and a transition specialist at Fountain Valley High School. The argument for preserving the sculpture garden in its current state, rather than replacing it with a new police headquarters, which is needed but not there, It is supported by extensive evidence on cognitive, mental, and physical health benefits of art and nature in urban environments. Far from being a secondary concern, public art and green spaces act as a crucial, cost-effective infrastructure for community well-being. From a neural aesthetic standpoint, evidence has shown that art strengthens the mind. It helps with cognitive enhancement. Research indicates that viewing art activates specific brain regions involving perception, memory, and emotion, increasing blood flow to the brain by approximately 10%, which is equivalent, basically, to looking at a loved one. Critical thinking and problem solving are also enhanced by the art that we have in our community. Interpreting complex visual stimuli, such as sculpture, requires analyzing patterns and symbols, which boosts higher level critical thinking and problem solving skills, which we can all use from a young age on. Memory and focus, viewing art even without creating it, has been shown to activate the hippocampus and improve memory processing. It also helps with stress reduction. It gives you a moment of pause, and it releases dopamine, which helps counter daily stress. Also, the benefits of green spaces and nature give mental health boosts, physical health improvements, time in nature helps all of those, and cultural and social cohesion. Sculpture gardens in particular create landmarks that foster a sense of community, identity, and pride. These serve as a vital, accessible, and inclusive public space for residents.

We don't want to cover it up.

Please consider other options.

Wow. That's a tough act to follow, right? Yeah, my name is Paul Watkins. Good evening, Mayor Kleinman and members of the council. I really said that because now I don't have to sleep on the couch tonight, which is very much a benefit. We've heard from Mr. Jurgis on his update and from Mr. Webb today. There is nobody that disagrees that the police headquarters needs to be updated. But like Mr. Petros, I went to read the 2008, February 2008 Measure B, and there's a pretty good description of a park site that needs to be here in connection with the Civic Center. And I think that commitment ought to be honored by this council. I've listened to Mr. Webb on options two and three of the Santa Barbara site. Yes, it's disruptive. Whenever my beautiful wife wants me to remodel the house, it's very disruptive. It's very expensive. It's a hassle. I'll agree with that. But options two and three I think are common sense. I think options two and three are cost effective. I think it can happen on Santa Barbara. And finally, from a legacy standpoint, I think you guys will be very proud of a Santa Barbara project. And frankly, in the decades to come, I think it'll be a legacy very worthwhile for this council. Thank you.

Hi, Mayor Kleinman and council. My name is Wade Womack, a 30-year resident of Newport and a retired law enforcement officer. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I just wanted to float an idea by, you guys each have a copy of this, many folks in the crowd do. I wanted to float the idea of building a new structure above the employee parking, where the first level would stay employee parking, Coincidentally, if you look, it's the size of the existing police station, 25,000 square feet-ish. So we could put a second story and have state-of-the-art dispatch centers and state-of-the-art crime response centers and drones and all that. If we want to go bigger, we can go three floors and we can have 50,000 square feet of office above 25,000 square feet of parking. And if we want to go even bigger, we can go four floors and have 75,000 square feet of police facility ready to serve our citizens. And so on the side here, I put a few notes. Lots of natural light. I think that was one of the goals when you do this new building. I think it will be not disruptive in terms of it's the employee parking. We could do what the malls do and do a shuttle from another parking lot for employees or by the time this happens, we'll probably have Waymo here or what have you. I think it's fiscally responsible. We already own the property and we could do this quite affordably and sometimes I feel a sense of urgency from the council and I think we could start on this like right now. Right here, right now. So anyway, just wanted to share that thought. Oh, in the bottom, we could do a firing range. I think they want a new firing range. So in the basement, down underground, do state-of-the-art fire range. So our officers have every tool they need. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Kleinman and members of City Council. I'm Arlene Greer, and I know all of you, and thank you for giving us the opportunity to comment this evening. We really appreciate it. When we as a city initiated discussions about a new city hall over a decade ago, the conversation included ideas and proposals from a variety of stakeholders throughout the city. Many public meetings were held, many diverse voices were heard, and in the end, we created a municipal campus that is both beautiful and functional. We did more than just build municipal buildings. We built a community center that serves the administrative needs of this city and the cultural needs of the community. It was always assumed that the Civic Center would be amended, amended, evolving as it needs appeared, and the interest of the city evolved as well. The library lecture hall is a result of that evolution. And now, maybe the addition of a new police headquarters in the next step, moving forward, may or may not, you know, come to fruition. We'll just have to see. But if the next step in the evolution of the Civic Center is that the removal of a large portion of the sculpture garden, something that in a few short years has become a place of solace, reflection, public enjoyment, and civic pride, I've seen phases through phases one through nine as a member of the City Arts Commission and serving in leadership as that happened. It is enjoyed, greatly enjoyed by the public and their civic pride and we need more study, more input from all the stakeholders in our community. We need to consult with the original designers of the community center, especially those architects, Bolin, Chesinski, and Jackson, the original designer of the gardens and landscapes surrounding the Civic Center, Peter Walker and Associates, who designed the World Trade Center Memorial Gardens. We need to have the same vision, the original council, to see what will best serve the future generations of our city. Thank you, Arlene. I applaud the work of all of you on City Council and hope that the Ad Hoc Committee will hear what we have to say. And I look forward to being part of the continued legacy of the city and basically appreciate your work and look forward to hearing more. Thank you.

That's another hard act to follow. my name is Phil Greer I was going to come up here and talk about one of the most underrepresented and disparaged groups involved in this whole process the bunnies because nobody's talked about the bunnies and as the executive director of the Newport Beach Foundation for the preservation of concrete bunnies I felt it was my duty and obligation to do so However, listening to everybody tonight, listening to the wonderful report that was done by staff and everybody else, this isn't an issue to be frivolous about. This is a serious issue. And I think if the council takes anything away from the discussion today and the comments that everybody's made, it should be that there needs to be more participation. There needs to be more input from those stakeholders, from the kids who go to that park, to the moms who take pictures, to the wedding couples who have their pictures taken on the bridges. they need to be inputted. The Arts Commission needs to be inputted. The Arts Foundation needs to be inputted. All those people who have contributed and participated in the arts exhibits and the art in the park events have to be considered because what you're doing is you're talking about a major change Just something that this city has grown up with and loves so I just ask that you listen to what the people are saying Involve and invite the people to participate in this and don't make this a secret City Council thing make this a public thing We can enjoy as we enjoy this City Hall and the library and the new library lecture hall. Thank you

Hello, my name is Jasmine Moini. I'm not an important person. I don't own a company and I'm not on any boards. I'm simply a resident of the community. And I want to agree with the previous speaker. I think before the, and first I want to say how much we appreciate you and the great work that you do. And a lot of times it's thankless and people don't know how much time and energy goes on behind closed doors. We all love and appreciate our police officers, our firemen, that goes without saying. But I think before the council makes such a big decision, why not put the choices in front of the people first and get some feedback before it gets to the point where you have this backlash of people who are against the particular choice that you've made without consulting the people here. The other question I have, and maybe this is not a really intelligent question, but what's wrong with the Newport Six Theater, the location there? And what's wrong with going up a little bit on Jamboree? I keep hearing about the location. We have to be central, central, central. But Newport Beach is a small city. I mean, you're talking the difference of a mile or two. So that's my two cents. Thank you for listening.

My name is Omar Herrera. I'm a resident of Newport Coast. I would like to thank our current city council for their efforts in funding our police department appropriately. When public safety is properly funded, it produces real results. As of February 2026 through today, March 10th, our city has had zero home burglaries. That is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the command staff. and officers of Newport Beach Police Department, along with our detectives, who continue to put criminals behind bars. Thank you for your commitment to keeping our community safe. I would also like to recognize a quote from a former mayor, Keith Curry, who I see him sitting here, and I really thank you for this quote. This quote is from more than 10 years ago. The new city hall and library expansion will allow us to improve the customer experience for all our residents for the next four generations, which I believe we're barely gonna be touching number two generation. We are now in a central location accessible from every part of our city. Thank you for that vision, former Mayor Keith Curry. I just want to say I would love for you to enjoy your retirement. We got this for now. I fully support building the new police department station next to City Hall. A modern facility in a central location will make services more accessible to all residents and support our officers in doing their jobs effectively. Let's also continue to protect the wildlife.

that makes i guess i'll stop there thank you guys for your everything thank you i'm is this is it is this on yes okay uh my name is gary galloway um i'm omar's neighbor and he dragged me into this so i'm glad to be here though uh i have um just a couple questions starting with the city staff gentleman that made a great presentation WITH REGARD TO THE PARKS.

SIR, PLEASE DIRECT YOUR QUESTIONS TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND COMMENTS TO THE COUNCIL, PLEASE.

IT'S TIME FOR PUBLIC COMMENT, SO BETTER TO KEEP IT TO COMMENTS AND NOT QUESTIONS. THANK YOU.

OH, COMMENTS. OKAY. IF THE FOOTPRINT IS NOT GOING TO TAKE UP MORE THAN 50% OF THE of a new police facility that's going to do all the things that those of us want to see that happen and it still left a good portion if not a majority of the park then that would be another debate thank you very much

Hello, my name is Margarita Avila. I was going to speak, but I realized I had to come say because I am a victim of a home robbery. And I live in Newport Coast, and Omar is also my neighbor, and he stayed with me until 3 o'clock in the morning. The police were wonderful. They came in. But Newport Coast is a little far away, and that is part of Newport Beach. So I'm just here to support the police and to be able to say to upgrade whatever facility they need for this time. We live in different times, and I've lived in Newport Beach for over 50 years, been a homeowner for over 30-something years, and I lived in an ideal situation about what Newport Beach was like until my home was robbed by professional robbers, and I just wanted to make that statement to support the police.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Kleinman. My name is Debbie Stevens, and I'm speaking as a member of the Harborview Hills Homeowners Association. And thank you for the opportunity and the public input that you are receiving tonight. Our forever mantra is to please protect the view plane ordinance, and I will say that on behalf of our organization. And the best way to do that, in my opinion, is to avoid putting anything additional in the park. I think the thing that's the most disappointing is that there was so much work and effort, as Tony Petros talked about, in putting this whole city hall together and the park. And just to see it being discussed differently and to throw it out is disappointing. Remember that there are about 2,000 additional housing units in the general plan and the housing element that are scheduled to be put into Fashion Island Newport Center. Where do we get additional open space? Where do we get additional park? There's been no discussion about that. It's very difficult to do. So I don't support the idea of paving over green space to put in concrete. The plan for California-related right across the street was just approved. I think we're better off leaving the commercial stuff in commercial areas. So whether it's Dove or whether it's Santa Barbara, I think that's a better place to put it. So thank you. I appreciate your attention.

My name is Linda Watkins, and my field is leadership. And over the years, I've come before council and said several different things at different times. Mostly, I'm talking about leadership. And so I listened to the report, and it's very rational, a lot of data in it. But when we're dealing with quality of life, what we want Newport to be, it's not necessarily rational, is it? So what I keep saying and have over the years to counsel is it's really a time for innovation. It's a time to think of something that, because we are facing wicked problems everywhere. And we have a problem. We need a new building for the police. But don't do it the old way, the old-fashioned, totally rational way, because there'll be too many people against it because they're pushing hard for quality of life. Okay? Thank you.

Adam Levins again. I don't have the historical knowledge of this subject matter that many in the room do, but I've had a number of people reach out to me and I've read the number of letters submitted to council. To characterize this as an argument between supporting the police and not supporting the police, that's not it. I don't think there's opposition to giving the police and fire current technology, current facilities, up-to-date infrastructure. The opposition is putting it in a park and as I understand it from speakers tonight that was promised as a park in 2008 and And I would hope that there would be continuity between electeds that where if a mayor and council make a promise that their predecessors keep that promise or at least consider keeping that promise. And I've also heard mentioned, you know, numerous times this year is about transparency. The increasing reliance on ad hocs of a few council members not subject to the open meeting law requirements damages the public trust and similar to not keeping promises so there's just all it's a simple ask a higher level of integrity and i don't think it should be that challenging and i hope that we can all strive for that thank you

Good evening, mayor, climate and council members. My name is Dorothy Larson. I'm a longtime resident of Corona Del Mar, um, and supporter of our police and fire by the way. And, and also very appreciative of the hard work that you all do. I know I see you everywhere and I know how much work it takes. Um, and especially the places that you're not seeing studying these issues. So as said, we do support our police and fire. We want them to have the best possible resources. That does not mean that we have to take away a priceless, generations-long attribute of this city. I just can't imagine what future residents, the kids that are seeing the park now, playing in it, come back and, like the former speaker said, come back in a few years and it's mostly gone, even if there's some little remnant token, even if half would be token. I just implore you to look at other options One of the things that was said well, actually, let me just say that I was traveling when I heard that this was Happening and I just was shocked and I don't think Residents of the city that are pretty involved should be surprised when they hear about something that seems to be a done deal with all due respect Can I note that most of the people, the primary people speaking about, well, the people from the city speaking about the options, the options being limited, the costs, all work for you. So I think there's a vested interest there. And I do believe that this would be a catastrophic change to take away the sculpture garden in any part. Thank you. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, there's a lot to be said about the analysis presented here tonight. I want to focus on one very compelling and I'm sure very unintended disclosure, and that is that the Dove Street site is $50 million less and Santa Barbara is $30 million less than the Civic Center site when you cost Dave's variables that haven't been costed yet and put those into the mix. That's real money. It's equal to two-thirds of the entire police budget, and you're going to need a better reason for spending an unnecessary $50 million, and we simply don't want it there. Next, I want to address the frequently heard comment that the location of the police station is related to response times. The city manager repeated this canard in his weekly newsletter. As all of you know, we do dispatch officers from the station. They're dispatched from a very well-organized patrol plant. Next, the assertion that our police cannot function if construction is occurring next door on the fire station site. That option does not require the police to vacate their current station. There's parking spaces at Chase Bank that could be leased, spaces in the city on Private Street. I counted them the other day. You can have some shuttle parking. It could all be done during the nine months it takes to build a parking structure at considerably less than the $5 million estimate for a mitigation fee for disruption. So let's complete the sentence. We cannot build on the fire station site because it will be disruptive to the police station next door. Therefore, we will spend $30 million more to force the station to be on a smaller site in a city park that will add two years to the environmental review and mitigation. That doesn't seem fiscally conservative to me. Finally, since I was quoted tonight, I will just say we never intended to put a police station here. We understand it's a walled, gated compound. It's going to look like an embassy in the Middle East. We understand it doesn't work here because it's incompatible because we release 1,000 prisoners a year who will be hanging out in the park and in the library waiting for a ride home. It's incompatible because sex offenders are required to register there. And that's why, as you look across America, nobody puts the police station in a park.

Mayor Kleinman, council members, fellow residents, my name is Chuck Fancher. I serve on our city's water quality committee. And in that work, I've had the pleasure to work with Dave Webb and the Public Works Department on matters regarding the city's water circumstances. I just want to share to everybody that their work is done Well, and you can trust their work. I don't think there's an agenda that comes out of Dave Webb He works to call it as he sees it. We need it. We need to we appreciate that Secondly, I don't think there's a done deal on Where this council and the ad hoc committee there's no done deal done. I'm going to the sculptural Park. That's my takeaway I don't read it. I don't sense it. I don't see it.

I

think that what we need to take away from tonight is that the city needs to involve the community in this in the in this debate discussion and resolution you've got to listen to the community and involve them secondly i think that There's clear pushback on using Sculptor Park. You need to write that in bold print and put it up on the wall. It's clear. We have only a sample of residents here, but they speak volumes. I sense it in the community. I think it's real. I think you've got two practical options of the four, and that's Dove Street and the existing site. If you're going to focus on the four, you need to drop two and focus on those two options and be efficient with your time. Thirdly, I think there could be other options out there, and I challenge you to make sure that you've exhausted all options. So I think you have work ahead of you. Please include us, and thank you for dealing with what everybody agrees to be a need. There's no question about the need for a new police and new fire. Thank you.

Mayor, council members, Denise Oberman. I think most everything that I'd intended to say has been said, but I'm going to say it again. This is an ill-conceived notion. Everyone supports the police. It's not at all clear that there's been a lot of thoughtfulness or adequate thoughtfulness about... how the police department needs to function. It's not only about the headquarters building. It's how to access the various areas. Should it be centralized or decentralized? For example, the fire department has a hybrid central decentralized. Has that been looked at? That's going to change the perspective on the physical building locations. Secondly, There are, we are losing open space. And I know it's been historically something that's been taken for granted, but we've kind of lost track of our general plan and what the underlying values were that contributed to the general plan. in favor of very opportunistic development that's been housing-focused. So without discussing the merits of all the housing that is proposed, decided upon, and about to be underway, full steam ahead, there are a whole bunch of consequences of that that have yet to be planned that will impact the police and the fire department's ability to effectively respond not the least of which is traffic there we are going to grind to a halt so this may feel like the center of the city but we're talking about a tremendous concentration of development not only in newport center already on the table but imminent on mariners mile along corona del mar How can we operate with only one facility? So what should be in the headquarters? What should be elsewhere? Should there be like many substations? It's definitely not the park. Totally incompatible use. We know that from our general plan. We know that from the public. So please take a step back and listen to the people. Lots of good ideas. Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

Hi, my name's Arthur Yelsey. I've been a resident of Newport Beach for 40 years. My wife, Karen, is president of the Police Foundation. I have a proposal that I think has no negatives, which all the other do have. And I've written you all an email, and I want to thank Robin Grant as the only person who responded to me. Thank you, Robin. The police station is ideally located where it is right now. The solution, which no one has considered, I haven't heard anyone else consider it, And this is a win-win for everybody. It's for the city to purchase the Range Rover dealership, which is right next to the police station. Has this been discussed before? I haven't heard it. And offer, in exchange or for money, the site we have on Dove Street for the dealership. Now, this is a win-win for everybody. We preserve our parkland. You don't have to totally... The police station stays located centrally in the city. And it's better for the Range Rover dealership because they'll be right around the corner from both Lexus and Fletcher Jones for whom they compete with their business. The location they have, Range Rover, is a poor location. I've done business with most of these dealerships. Sterling BMW is an example. It's a standalone dealership. It's one of the smallest BMW dealerships in the country. Range Rover would do much better near Fletcher Jones and Lexus. They'd be competing for the same customers. and it would allow the police department to stay there and expand from their current facility. I haven't heard anyone consider that. If you'd like me to negotiate with Range Rover, I volunteer to do that. But it's a better location for them, and it doesn't have any of the negatives that all the residents are talking about. So I hope you'll consider it. It's more work, it's more effort, but you can do it. Thank you.

Good afternoon, or good evening, Mayor Kleinman and City Council. I'm Karen Clark and I live in Corona Del Mar. I'm afraid I don't have anything exciting like Mr. Yeltsin to volunteer, but I'm really here to defend the park. When the City Hall was first built, I was actually against it. That land was donated by the Irvine Company as open space and a park. But I lost, and now I really like it, and I love the sculpture garden and the park. I use it all the time. The thought of those bunnies leaving just brings me to tears, I have to say. But the one thing that, you know, listening to the city discuss the options... They value the park as zero. This was free land as opposed to buying stuff. And I thought, so the use of a park by the public is valued in terms of the finances of the city as zero? Now, maybe that's the way you do it as if you're a CPA and you're doing that analysis. But if you're a resident who loves the park and appreciates the benefits of the city, it is not zero. It is worth millions and millions of dollars. So I just wanted to add that, and I thank you for your time.

It is now good evening. My name is Ruth Kobayashi. In 2013, it was said of our new Civic Center that for the first time now, Newport Beach has a heart. is an iconic portion of our city for the next four generations. Well, that heart beats strongest when public safety is at its core. Just imagine an active shooter on campus at CDM or Newport Harbor High School. Officers rush in, not just those on patrol, but sergeants, lieutenants, detectives, and command staff rushing in from the station. Extra weapons, SWAT vehicles, and rapid response resources are right there, because seconds count. Picture armed criminals at Fashion Island, Neiman Marcus, escalating from theft of purses to hostage taking. The specialized equipment and leadership needed for immediate action are centralized and accessible because seconds count. A civic center police station would ensure that central command and seamless collaboration with the emergency operations center. Police leadership and specialized equipment in the heart of the city to quickly respond to serious incidents. A visible deterrent to crime and a welcoming, reassuring sense of safety for visitors and residents. Public safety is the foundational essential service that a city provides. It deeply saddens me that such determined efforts to block relocating the police department to a Civic Center location has been done before any of the analysis, department needs, or expert input was presented. We all value our public spaces and art. But the heart of our city is the Civic Center, and the police belong here too. Thank you.

Hey people, let's have respect for everyone. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. Certainly appreciate everyone's time. My name is David Gonzalez. I'm a Newport Coast resident and I wanted to speak to a couple things. The first is I think obviously we all agree that we want a new police department. Seems to be the common thread. What doesn't seem to be the common thread is where is it located? I would say that if I were not a resident and I heard the arguments in the room today, I would assume this is the only park in Newport Beach. There's 64 parks in Newport Beach. This would eliminate one of those 64 parks. There's nobody in the room that's probably a bigger animal lover than me. I love rescuing dogs and cats and bunnies and all of those things. They're very, very important. But there's nothing more important than a human life. And nobody cares about the fire department until their house is on fire. And nobody cares about the police department until somebody's in their home. And I can tell you, centrally located, I believe our police chief makes a very good point that centrally located is critical. There's many more functions than just dispatching cars. So with that, I would ask all of you in this room To understand how precious the life of a bunny and a bird is, but I think the life of a human, when we're being under attack the way that we have been at our malls, in our residences, my wife, her ability to go to sleep at night with peace of mind is the most valuable thing to me. And I think a centrally located civic center and police department is a uniform policy across the United States. The majority of them are together for efficiencies. Let me just give you a couple of those and I'll be done. So centralized services in many of the approximately 19,000 municipalities in the U.S. Security, planning the police department adjacent to City Hall provides an inherent layer of security for local government officials and public records, and historical planning

Could you wrap up, please? Thank you.

Anyhow, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.

We're almost through it. Everyone, please, just be respectful. Thank you.

Yeah, hello. I'm Neil DeWitt, and I'm a 20-year resident of the Newport Coast area. I'd just like to say that I support a centralized, purpose-driven police department on the Civic Center property. The reason for this is several fold and some of those were captured excellently by the previous speaker. But response time is important. Purpose-driven would basically put us on par with cities like Ontario and Beverly Hills. We don't want to be behind the game in this when it comes to other police departments and their ability to respond. Sadly, crime has become worse over time, and I know that's unfortunate, but we need to be able to deal with that, and we need to be able to respond to that. Also to that was an interesting statistic that 64 parks are in the city of Newport Beach I knew was a huge number. And I think the thing that gets mischaracterized by a number of the speakers tonight was they're acting like we're taking away the entire park, like we're gonna take it away and there'll be no park left at all. It's less than a third of the park if you look at the presentation earlier. It's a small percentage when you think about the value of bringing local law enforcement into a centralized area where we too, like Beverly Hills and Ontario, could boast of a world-class, police-supported, single-focused environment. Thank you.

I wasn't going to speak, but I just. One of the prior speakers mentioned the Range Rover dealership, and that brought a whole other idea. I think we've been very limited in our thought. A lot of people are talking about access and how seconds are important, et cetera. I think we should consider perhaps some kind of a substation down on the peninsula at the end of West Newport. There are many places in Newport Beach that are a long drive, especially in the congestion. Somebody was mentioning the big Newport. They're going to put two six-story, 70-unit condos in there. That's gonna have a lot of traffic where those people going to the park, but I think we really need to expand our thought on what is To be considered and I am a huge huge supporter of the police department the fire department. This is not against them It's making the best for our city.

Thank you Mayor Kleinman, City Council, Karen Tringali, Corona Del Mar. I just, I wasn't going to speak, but there were a couple of comments recently. So I'm not a fan of AI yet, but I sat in the back and I asked, where is the center of Newport Beach? And the center of Newport Beach was, the answer to that was Newport Center Civic Center. The current police station, in fact, is in the center of Newport Beach, the geographic center of Newport Beach. So there is an argument for maybe considering expanding and improving the property that we have there. The other comment was about the 64 parks. this entire piece of property was dedicated to open space. And in 2006, seven, eight, and on, we spent probably tens of thousands of hours in public comment meetings, city council meetings that went until one and two o'clock in the morning. And some of our council members that sat through those are in the audience today. And you know, together we worked on this compromise. We'll have a great civic center. We'll have a great world class park. And so unlike one of the arguments in Measure B in 2008, well, we don't really need open space because we have an ocean. Well, that's not, you can't, it's just not equatable to what a park is for a family. People that just need a place to be quiet and peaceful and enjoy the surroundings and I think we've made the compromise. We need to work on finding the right solution for our fire and police important services to the public. But we've made the compromise and we need to move forward. Thank you.

Mayor Kleinman and council members, my name is Bruce Clark. I live within view of you here over in Harborview Hills. And I do believe it's going to be using this park site is going to be a problem for the neighbors immediately across MacArthur. But the more serious thing that worries me is the traffic is so bad on this side of the Newport Center that it's going to be very difficult for police and fire to leave this area and go to other parts of the city. McArthur Boulevard that are completely jammed up for two or three hours every afternoon and every morning I can't see how it's going to be a logical place to Locate one of these facilities that's going to be Impacted so much by the by the traffic now. I have another suggestion. This is my last suggestion I have another suggestion we should think about and one is I don't see a large value of the police department being right next to the city council facilities. And I don't think it's all that important for the fire department to be right next to the police department. So one of my thoughts is, why don't we take the fire department, move it to a smaller site not immediately adjacent to the current police department, and then use that entire site to rebuild the police department at a location also still here in Newport Center that has much better opportunities to get back onto the highways away from where the police department is currently sitting. It seems to me that's a good location, but if we split the fire department and the police department some distance apart, I think we could find a small area for the fire department to put a new facility in and solve the problem here in Newport Center. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor Kleinman, members of council. I would ask the staff to put up a picture of the wetland sign in the park. So my name is Laura Curran. I live in Corona del Mar. In 2005, I started walking the site with Jan Vandersloot, after whom the Oak Grove at Castaways Park is named. And we thought about Deborah Allen and the Park Commission's original plan for a park and thought about how could we really make this a site that embodied Newport Beach, that was really Newport Beach local. And the vision is to have coastal sage scrub landscaping. So today you see oaks, lilacs, toyan, sugarberry, and many other plants to retain the wetland wildlife. And may I have the next sign, please? And as you see here, this is our wetland interpretive sign. It shows that the Park welcomes blue heron, snakes, raccoons, small amphibian critters, and as people were telling me today, hawks and other raptors. So we have a beautiful site. And in fact, our general plan calls for maintaining property in the biological resources element with use of native plants in parks and wetlands in NR12. The policy 12.3 calls for wetlands preservation. So our own general plan obliges you to retain the wetlands. Many people have talked about the issues of building on this site. and the need to truck in landfill. As we trucked out 200,000 tons or pounds of dirt for the site, we'd have to truck that back. I will also remind you that with the general plan in 2005, Banning Ranch was prioritized as open space. And as we saw, the city was obliged to retain that designation and prioritize Banning Ranch as open space. So I ask you to stay true to the vision and retain the park as open space.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

If there are other speakers, I'd ask that you please be ready to speak. Line up.

Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Remo Polselli. I just moved in this morning. No, I'm just kidding. I've been here for quite a few years. David, great presentation. Mr. Nelson, I love your idea. And I think yesterday was the anniversary of Rodney King. Can we just all get along? I came here with a different impression and I changed through here. It's obvious nobody wants to take away the park. However, everybody at the same time wants to be at this location. I believe the police department and fire department cannot operate functionally while there's construction going on. It's hard enough. having your home remodeled, let alone trying to run a business. And I totally agree, a life is more important than all of this. So here's a far-fetched idea which might be crazy. The Dove building, sell it for $27 million, try to get your money back. Take that money, and is it possible to build over the parking deck a three-story police station over the existing parking deck that's here? I know it's far-fetched, but the best way you have it at a civic center, you have the police station here, No, you can't build over the parking deck.

Okay.

Okay. That was a crazy idea. I'll go back to my seat. Thank you. Thank you for your comment.

Council.

Staff, thank you very much for having us today. Very good presentation. I just wanted to say that I'm in favor of the police department being on the civic area that we're standing in right now. Various reasons, but we do have, we do not have a shortage of parks in the city. I think the number was 64 or 68, and we are surrounded by one whole side of the ocean, Pacific Ocean. I think it's important to have all the facilities in one general area. And I think that since the land is here, it would be economical to do that as well. So I'm in favor of keeping the police station on the plans for right over here at the park location. and we could replace the bunnies and the butterflies will find a very good park to go to in one of our 68 other parks. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for the presentation.

I love the park, but there's half of the park that I really don't love. It's the one with all the people sleeping on the sidewalks where you don't want to walk your kids by and where you say, oh, don't look over there when you're on the way to the doctor because there's people showing their body parts. Can we swap? Like, instead of taking the nice part of the park by the library, can the police department take the part where you don't want to bring your kids and freshen that area? Just a thought. Thank you so much. I know it's a lot to listen to.

Good evening, everybody. I want to grab the situation. First of all, thank you very much for listening to all their statements. I am Iranian, and the community of Iranians in Newport Coast, Newport Beach, Kornel Delmar are very appreciative for all Americans, all the people, all the neighbors who host us, and giving us the opportunity to think that this is our land. America is our land. We are proud of Americans. We are proud of everybody. Thank you very much. Sorry, I was not supposed to say anything, but I was impressed by your patience. And I want just to say thank you very much again and again. And then I would like to tell you that in about 10 days from now.

Sir, is your comment related to the study session item? Excuse me is your comment related to the study session item we do have a time later in the agenda for public comments on non agenda items. It's not a problem you can come back in and tell us about news later. I want to tell you that in about 10 thank you we will bring you back at that time. Thank you so much we have any other comments on this item. Again, if you're planning on speaking, if you could please stand up and be prepared. Thank you.

George Leslie, Mayor Kleiman, Council. Thank you. I wasn't going to speak, but a number of people said, well, we have 68, 64 parks. This is just one park. First of all, it's not 68, it's 65. This is not any park. This is the flagship park of this city. I LIVE IN AN AREA WITH A PARK HERE, PARK THERE, ABOUT THE SIZE OF THIS FLOOR. IT'S GRASS. SO YOU CAN'T COMPARE THAT PARK WITH OTHER PARKS. THIS IS THE FLAGSHIP PARK. THAT'S IT.

ANY OTHER SPEAKERS? OKAY. SEEING NONE, I'LL GO AHEAD AND BRING IT BACK UP HERE. COUNCIL MEMBER GRANT.

Thank you. I'm impressed I'm the first to speak here, but I'm pleased to do so. I, first of all, want to acknowledge everybody in the audience, all the public that have spoken today. There's been a lot of very earnest opinions, a lot of great ideas, and I'm proud, actually, of this process. This is exactly the process that we should be engaging in. I also want to thank staff. Obviously, our Public Works Director, Dave Webb, gave us the opening remarks, which established exactly our starting point. And I think that there's a really relevant point to make here. Our starting point is that we all believe in public safety, and we all love our parks. I don't know that anybody in this audience disagrees with that. And the reality is that we can have both. It's important to begin with a point of agreement. And that's, I think, shared by my council. I've seen it shared here in the public. And I know it's shared by the staff. Newport Beach will have a modern, state-of-the-art police facility. one that our officers and firefighters, police facility and fire station, and it's one that our officers and firefighters will deserve and that supports their critical work. The question before us is not whether to build a police station, but where to build it. Several proposals have been submitted and are before us, and each has merits and each has complications. There is no correct one answer. We really have a job to do up here and in the public and in staff in looking at each of these proposals and figuring out where the right landing spot is. Since this project was first discussed at the January planning session, we have learned much, much more about the potential impacts. That new information raises serious concerns. Foremost, and I think it's, as an attorney I'll say, the thing speaks for itself. Foremost is the process. Public engagement before a decision is made, including public workshops and an opportunity to participate, is essential to good governance. When City Hall was planned, I think many people mentioned this. I didn't expect that everybody knew about it. A resident committee conducted more than, I thought, 50. I've heard 75 from, I think, former Councilmember Tony Petros. I respect his number. He was here. There were more than 75 public meetings assessing dozens of sites. By contrast, the park proposal has been developed solely through a three member council committee. Our community expects and deserves a more open and inclusive process. Second, the financial implications. The park site could add millions of dollars to the project. Park cost estimates do not fully account for environmental mitigation. It was the first thing that stood out to me when we were in the planning session, and I had a conversation with our public works director, Dave Webb, about it. I know he's very sensitive to that issue, and he's looking forward to digging into it, literally digging into it. But the environmental mitigation is something that we have not fully accounted for in these estimates. We're also demolishing millions of dollars of public infrastructure. There's replacement parkland, and then absolutely the potential for litigation, environmental litigation and other litigation, maybe a ballot initiative. I don't know. I've heard a lot of ideas out here today that could delay or halt this project entirely. We're not talking about two years or four years. It could be entirely halted. These uncertainties are difficult to reconcile. Third, viable alternatives exist. We've had some discussed by staff. We've had some interesting proposals from the public here today. These include the existing Santa Barbara Drive location, which I personally prefer, but I don't have enough information to even make that decision, or other sites within Newport Center that could deliver the same police facility faster for less cost and really in a more acceptable way to our community. These would all still meet the operational needs of our police department. And finally, I think a very important consideration is the Civic Center Park itself. I think Mr. Leslie called it our foundational park. This park was promised to the voters as our city's premier public space. It is a defining element of this campus and reflects the quality of life our residents deserve. Tonight we are considering the largest civic investment in the 120 year history of Newport Beach and we haven't had one public meeting other than this study session on that 120 year decision for the largest investment we will have made in that 120 years. I find that to be remarkable. We are not engaging you in a meaningful way. We owe it to you to broaden the conversation and ensure all viable options are evaluated through a full public process before we move forward in investing a million and a half dollars or any dollars. That is how we build the right facility for the police department. That is how we maintain the public trust. I support option three. I'll just mention that. I know my colleagues are gonna wanna speak, but I support option three to instruct staff to pursue other direction that would include adding resident participation to the existing community committee and commencing a public process to consider locations for a new police facility before we commit to any expenditures in excess of just regular expenditures that we do in the regular course of business. I do want to just put a footnote on that. I've heard ideas about, which have not come up today, so I'll just mention it very briefly, but I've heard ideas about perhaps selling the Santa Barbara site to finance this project. This is an expensive project. We are going to need to finance it. I hope that we don't have a rush to judgment in that as well. I can't imagine why anyone would think that we would sell a appreciating asset like valuable land to create a depreciating asset. Today, our police station, from what I hear, is worth zero. We're going to demolish it. In 50 years, whatever we build here will be worth zero. But that property on Santa Barbara is going to be worth, I don't know, maybe a billion dollars, not $100 million. That is the legacy of our children and our grandchildren. Thank you.

Once again, I'm going to ask everyone, please, no clapping. Council Member Bartow.

Thank you. I am very grateful to my colleagues for allowing me to sit on this ad hoc, though politically it might be fraught. I'm happy to have the opportunity. I was elected as a resident to serve on city council. I recognize that it's very important to balance all the things, quality of life, safety, and fiscal responsibility. These are all things we have to take into account. Previous councils have studied that Santa Barbara site, as they mentioned. That was the reason they decided it was important to purchase another site. And while this site at the Civic Center may not be the final site, this is a study session. This is to study the site. When you're evaluating the cost, land that you own is something that you should look at versus making a new purchase for land. I understand fully the emotional component because I'm probably one of the few people who spoke who is actually a young mom who took their kids to that park who has memories there. We have photos. I spoke with my children. They're like, really? There's things that you have to balance. The landscape of the city changes. The things that we have to hold true that give us the quality of life that we like are fiscal responsibility and public safety. That's what makes this place so special. So when we evaluate things, we do need meaningful public engagement, and that's why we're here as a study session to hear your engagement. This is not a done deal. This is an ad hoc. This is to study. i've heard so many issues with what potentially could be under the ground and i was previously built a project when i was on the school board that had environmental issues that were forced us to reconsider where we put things so i'm very sensitive to the fact that this may not be the final cost i don't think anyone who is on this committee who sat there who grew up here who has kids who hopefully come back to live here with their grandchildren, is taking lightly the fact that these are things that we will have to deal with, whether we are financially irresponsible by spending too much taxpayer dollars and making the city less than it is, whether we are relocating what the police have asked for. I'm not a safety expert. I'm not the police expert. The police have said we would like to be in a central location. I do think that is worth considering as we consider with our ad hoc. So as we look through all of these factors, this is a study session. This is your chance to come and talk to us. And I'm so glad that all of you did come because it's an opportunity for us to go through all the whys and the process of how we got here. And I think it's important to know we are listening. And sometimes people say, you're not listening because in the end, the decision is different than what they would have liked. we are listening. We do take that into account. And also we are going to be looking at the cost. And if it comes back and all of these environmental issues, as are they say, impossible to, and again, it's dependent on where my colleagues want to go, but if we come back and there are all these impossible environmental issues, we'll have to look elsewhere. And in fact, in that end, that actually preserves that space in a way that wasn't, you know, documented before. So I think that when we're looking through all of this, there's this idea that there's this rush. No, we do have a building that is 50 years old that is rapidly decaying. We do have a need for public safety. We do need to move forward and we having the residents participate is very important. But I think listening to the police who are going to be operating that facility and listening to what is important to them while balancing that fiscal responsibility, while balancing that public safety and that quality of life are all things that we consider and I hope everyone considers that thoughtfully as we move forward.

Councilmember Wiegand.

YEAH, THANK YOU, COUNCILMEMBER BARTEAU AND COUNCILMEMBER GRANT FOR THE COMMENTS. YOU KNOW, AS COUNCILMEMBER BARTEAU SAID, THIS IS A STUDY SESSION, SO THIS THOUGHT THAT WE'RE MAKING A DECISION TONIGHT AND THIS IS THE END ALL, BE ALL, WE'RE NOT VOTING ON ANYTHING OTHER THAN A STRAW VOTE TO SAY HOW WE'RE GOING TO PROCEED GOING FORWARD. And so as Council Member Grant had said that she's disappointed that this is the very first discussion that we've had in this, you know, we unanimously decided that we would authorize a study of the Civic Center site at our planning session. that was an open meeting that was broadcast to all and we had a debate and a discussion months prior to create an ad hoc and i know council member stapleton and maybe council member grant i think were on the opposite ends of how the decision of that was going to make that that was an open forum and discussion as far as how our ad hoc makeup was going to look i don't think that that ad hoc did anything to prescribed that there was some nefarious discussion that I've seen some commenters post to us or send emails to us on. It just started the process and we gave an opportunity to begin this long, arduous process of studying and we opened up ideas for Santa Barbara. We've considered Dove. We're looking around and we had a closed session that discussed a parcel that's nearby here to purchase perhaps for a police station. All of these options are challenging, and obviously, many of you have come out today to speak against the Civic Center Park removal. And look, I get it. I appreciate Councilmember Bartow's comments. My kids, I have tons of photos in my phone of us walking this park. My kids, when I was on planning commission, would come and meet me before. MY 630 MEETING BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T GOING TO SEE ME FOR DINNER AND WE WOULD GO WALK UP THERE AND HAVE A NICE TIME TOGETHER. SO I GET THERE'S THAT EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT. MY OTHER EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT IS THE FACT THAT MY MOM SERVED IN THAT BUILDING ON SANTA BARBARA FOR 33 YEARS. MY DAD SERVED IN THERE FOR 11 YEARS. SO I HEARD A LOT OF RESIDENTS SAY I'M A 30-YEAR RESIDENT OF THE CITY. My mom was 33 years in that building as a resident, as an employee representing the city. And she told me at many times at kitchen table dinner discussions how that building was impacted when she was there and she retired in 2010. So, you know, she said, you know, I would have loved to have gone to City Hall. That was literally right across the street. And she spent a lot of time going to City Hall down on the peninsula. And so those were moments that she spent in the car. She had to drive down there, have her meeting with either revenue, with traffic, with public works, all of these entities that she worked with, and then have to come back to the office. So those time commitments that are unrealized when it comes to staff's work. And there's a lot of times that I'm in this building that there's PD who are in that building. So they had to drive over from Santa Barbara, not to say that that's a long distance. But what if you had something that was here on the park that they could just simply walk to an office, that they could experience the remainder of the park that would exist? These are just thoughts and scenarios. Again, and I hear laughter and I appreciate that, but there is some serious discussions we have to have. And for all of these options that I've seen on the table, Options one, two, and three of the Santa Barbara rehabilitation or recreation. To me, it's not acceptable. It's not feasible. I don't want to impact one employee and any potential for a call of service response due to equipment replacement, staging, any type of impact that occurs when you redo something. There is, if you're... I am absolutely against any type of remodel. That would be the worst decision that we'd make. But you could clearly see that you cannot park every employee on all three of these options. And I think that is a tremendous impact. We haven't even evaluated the process of how you do that. And I think that the best options are to look outside Santa Barbara, but within the Newport Center area, so I would be supportive of studying additional options for land use Opportunities in the area, but you see the costs presented You know 20 million for one parcel from 15 million for another parcel that adds up So there's extreme expense when it comes to looking for another site here I'm absolutely against relocating a police station in Dove. I would be happy to sell that parcel tomorrow and I do not see that that is a viable location for a police department in the city such as ours. This core is here, as was even said by a commenter, this park is the core. So that means this city center is the core. So I want to see something here in Newport Center. So I would like to rule out options one, two, and three on the Santa Barbara site. And I want to rule out THE DOVE LOCATION AS OUR OPTIONS. THAT LEAVES US WITH STUDYING HERE. AGAIN, THIS IS A STUDY SESSION. THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITY. COUNCILMEMBER GRANT HAD SAID THAT SHE SUPPORTS THIS PROCESS THAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST WHEN IT CAME TO THIS SITE. I SUPPORT THAT PROCESS THAT WILL OCCUR AT THIS SITE RELATED TO THE POLICE STATION. I want to see public outreach. I want to see community town halls. I want to see polls. I want to see input from the average resident who isn't here. Because a lot of you, and I appreciate you all coming, but it's the same folks that come to the meetings every time there's a controversial issue. And I appreciate your comments. And I see you shaking your head, Denise Olbermann, but you're here at every single meeting. So I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but the average resident of the city does not participate in these types of discussions. So, yeah, I think it's important to have a public outreach at every area, perhaps one per council district. And each council member can moderate that discussion with city staff and have an opportunity to discuss what the impacts would be to this civic part. an opinion at somebody in newport coast might be a different opinion of somebody on the peninsula or in dover shores or in cdm or somebody who's right here in this neighborhood and those impacts need to all be played into a consideration and i'm not taking it away from any specific resident but you get an opportunity to have a well-balanced and discussed A CONVERSATION. SO I'M NOT AGAINST WHAT COUNCILMEMBER GRANT IS SAYING. I JUST THINK THAT IT'S PREMATURE TO SAY THAT THIS PROCESS IS FLAWED AND THAT WE'VE DONE ANYTHING NEFARIOUS FROM THIS COUNCIL FROM BEHIND THE SCENES. and again the laughter it it's comical to me because i sit on this council and i haven't seen it personally so if if you feel that way great but i as a council member come here to represent the city and i took a pledge that public safety would be my top priority and i think that the department and the men and women who serve this department owe it to us to make a decision on a headquarters that isn't impactful to their day-to-day life and that would impact response times And these response times are key to life or death in this city or your property or any criminal activity occurred against you. So I appreciate the public comment. I want to be open and transparent and allow for this process to continue. We already unanimously approved at our study session a discussion on a funding to a study this site at Civic Center. I want to continue on with that process. And again, as Councilmember Grant said, maybe it's not even feasible. Maybe it comes back and says that that millions and millions of dollars in mitigation or extra expenses that we're not anticipating makes it unviable. Okay, great. Let's get an answer and understand that that's what it is and we can at that time kill the project. But until I know that answer to be definitive and true and exact, then I want to see it through the process that we can analyze the site right here because I think it's the most viable option in my opinion. And because options one and two are not, and I don't think we're going to find a buyer, or I'm sorry, a seller of a property that's going to be affordable for our city to relocate in the Newport Center area. So I've probably gone on too much. I've probably offended too many people. But I've heard many times tonight that this is an election issue and that four of us council members are up for re-election. I didn't get into this role to run for reelection. I got into this role to do what's right. So if this is what it takes for me to stand up for something I believe in, to lose my election, okay, that's fine. And I appreciate all some of these commenters nodding their head, you know, go after me, that's fine. I didn't do this for that reason. I did this for the best interest of my city and my family who will be in the city beyond my time and their kids who I hope will be in the city beyond...

their time so that's all i have i would like to reiterate that the public had their opportunity to speak this is the council's turn to have a discussion so please do don't clap don't yell don't laugh don't cheer okay let's all be professionals council member weber

Thank you, staff, and to our chiefs for speaking and all of the work that went into evaluating these options. And thank you to the community who are here and part of this discussion. I think having a study session is exactly what we should be doing, and it provides the transparency into probably one of the most important decisions that the city will make. So I'd like to just take a moment and remember that the Civic Center has served as the hub of municipal services in Newport Beach. And I think it's important to acknowledge the leadership, you guys all know who you are, who envisioned and created this complex. City Hall and Civic Center are defining spaces in Newport Beach. I love them. Civic Center itself was created through forward thinking planning, and we have the exact same responsibility today to plan for the civic needs for the next several generations. So based on the presentation and community feedback, I do think there is a broad recognition that we need to address the current condition of the police headquarters. over 50 years old, operating challenges, infrastructure challenges, continuing to defer the issue is clearly not responsible. And so as I listened tonight, I hear the same kind of three topics come up, location, cost, and then the sculpture garden. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be sitting up here talking about the bunnies, but here we are. So from a location perspective, central access is extremely important for police operations, response times, and in my opinion, maintaining a visible public safety presence in the center of our city. When deciding where one of the most, arguably the most important civic functions is gonna be located in our city, it absolutely belongs where our other civic institutions are. And that is at the heart of our city. So Mayor Keith Curry, you get to be quoted again tonight. For the first time now, Newport Beach has a heart. and it's going to be an iconic portion of our city for the next four generations. So if the Civic Center represents the heart of Newport Beach, then public safety should absolutely have a place within that heart. While Santa Barbara is definitely centrally located, I seriously consider the importance of operational continuity. We just went through a remodel. I'm actually lucky I'm still married after what we went through. Rebuilding on the existing site, When I read things that it would be highly disruptive or require police operations to function next to a major construction zone for several years, it is very concerning about a disruption to service security and day-to-day operations. Public safety doesn't simply pause during construction. So maintaining uninterrupted operations has to be a major consideration for this. Now I've heard a lot about costs, and obviously fiscal responsibility is extremely important to me, as it is I know many residents. Cost absolutely matters, but it cannot be the only factor in a decision of this magnitude. We have to consider the operational efficiency, public safety needs, and really the long-term value this facility is gonna bring to the community for the next several generations. The lowest upfront cost doesn't necessarily translate to the best long-term decision for taxpayers. So I understand the concerns residents have raised about the sculpture garden and the open space of the Civic Center. I love the bunnies. Like for the record, I love the bunnies. Anything that has to do with any holiday, I'm here for. So I pulled up the final EIR for the Newport Beach City Hall and Park Development Plan. And the quote from it is, The project will consolidate public services and would provide an integrated civic center complex to better serve the needs of community through enhanced access to city government buildings and a central library. I think it's extremely important to separate the facts from the misinformation that's been circulating. The Civic Center option doesn't eliminate the park or the open space. So unless I've seen something different than the slides from the planning session or tonight, I'm a little confused as to how the narrative has spiraled so far out of control. In many ways, this builds on the original vision for the Civic Center and gives us an opportunity to thoughtfully enhance the complex for the next several generations. So I would love to see the city continue its efforts and resources on studying the Civic Center site. The location provides the police department with the facility it needs, a central location, utilizes the land that the city already owns, but most importantly, it allows the current headquarters to continue operating without interruption while a new facility is built. I equally think it's important that a public committee is formed at the right time, providing feedback, helping guide the design and open space and sculpture garden. I think a robust web page with an FAQ and the ability for the community to submit comments, questions, concerns is just as important. The community absolutely should have a meaningful role in helping shape how the project respects the park, sculpture garden and open space. At the end of the day, protecting our residents is the most fundamental responsibility we have as a city. Our officers deserve a modern facility that allows them to do their jobs effectively, and our community deserves a headquarters that reflects the importance of that mission. Public safety and open space at the Civic Center are not mutually exclusive. In Newport Beach, we absolutely can do both. Thank you.

Council Member Stapleton.

We're not to clap when I start speaking. All right, that's fine. Yeah, thank you. No one's booing at me already. I want to start by just thanking everybody and I just love the passion and I think this is why we all love Newport Beach. What a world class, a first world problem to be discussing. Do we want a world class police headquarters at Santa Barbara? Do you want to remove some of the sculpture garden? Just keep in mind that we are in the very, very early stages of this conversation. There's a lot of people that have been on city council well before our time, and they understand firsthand that this is the very beginning stages of a very long process. So I just want to thank the committee members, our staff, and of course, each of you, the residents. I do believe a process like this needs to have a tremendous amount of public input. If we're talking spending north of $150 million, obviously the public needs to be included. And we need to have a really good understanding what all decisions are put in front of us. I remember my predecessor, Diane Dixon, sitting up here discussing this very issue when she was on council and discussing that Santa Barbara wouldn't work and doing the site and purchasing Dove. We've been talking about this for a long time. I think if we accomplish anything tonight, it sounds like everyone's agreeing that we need a new police headquarters. So I think that's good. If we accomplish anything tonight, we'd all agree that we need a new police headquarters. Now we've got to figure out where to do it and the best, most cost-effective way to do that. I'm a big fan of a process and making the right informed decision, especially on something like this. I've heard a lot tonight from all of you, from staff, from my fellow council colleagues. There's a tremendous amount of pros and cons that come to each one of these sites. I think we need to continue to study so we can really digest and figure out what the design is going to look like in any one of these locations. And maybe there's a solution we haven't even thought about. I'm not sure if it's the Range Rover dealership. We love our sales taxes here in the city of Newport Beach, but there certainly might be other opportunities to continue to discuss and chip away at. Just a couple quick points. I, for one, feel like I make the best decisions when I'm informed. As I sit here today, I have no idea if this sculpture garden is even possible, understanding the environmental issues and everything else. I would like to continue to study that so we can keep it on the table, we can take it off the table. I don't want to make a decision tonight removing something when I don't know if it's even possible. That's feasible. Maybe, maybe not. I think we need to continue to have meetings like this and engage the public, whether town halls, study sessions, workshops. We need to engage the community to make sure we've got the most transparency as possible in dealing with a project like this. We need to work together. We need to understand the actual design. We don't build anything in the city without going to the public. I look at our fire stations in the city, and I've been a part of almost all those processes in the last decade, and there's three, four, five, six different designs that go through, and the community comes, and we're about to break ground on fire station number one. built in the 1960s that is going to be world class. And I just loved going through the process and understanding what the design works and having that public input. Secondly, I am very adverse to taking on any staggering amount of long-term debt when we have resources here in the community to build what I think is a world-class facility with potential properties that we don't need anymore, whether that's 1201 Dove, We are not that far off maybe in the next five to seven years, maybe longer depending on market returns from having an unfunded pension liability, an additional $45 million a year that we can put towards different projects in the city. Maybe I should step aside and get on that council. That'd be a lot of fun. So obviously there's a lot going on, but shovels are not in the ground. Design work's not done. The funding certainly hasn't been secured. There are so many steps that continue to remain out there. And I, for one, am just really looking forward to getting out in the community, understanding the best process, continue to see what we can do here at all the different sites. And maybe there's something, like I said, we haven't even discovered. So with that, I appreciate all your time and the continued effort, and I look forward to continuing this forward.

Mayor Pro Tem Blum.

Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. All right. This is exciting. I like it when we get some fever up there. So the first date that was thrown out by some people out there was November 4th of 2025 when the ad hoc was formed. I remember that date fondly. It happens to be my birthday. It's right around the election as well. And that's when we formed an ad hoc up here. Which means we didn't meet for quite a while after that because, as you know, no one works in December in Newport. And by the time we did start talking about it, we were looking at January. That was four months. Four months to now. So this idea of transparency, not engaging... I have to say it doesn't exist. That original meeting was to discuss ideas, options, because you can't bring an infinite amount of something to everyone. You get an infinite amount of return. We have to whittle down ideas and be able to offer them. That's the point. That's why all of you elected us to sit up here. Well, not some of you for me, but for the rest of them, sure. This is the process. The reason in January that we called it a planning session, I mean, we weren't just throwing random words out there. It was about planning. It wasn't a definitive agreement. It wasn't an absolute decision. It was planning. And now we're all sitting here acting like there's some nefarious activity when we're having a study session. So we've planned and we've studied. Feels like we're actually running through a pretty good process on this. But then I thought a lot about that November 4th, 2025 date. And I thought about the six years that I've been up here. And I thought when I first came on, we had a long and arduous talk about how we couldn't build a new police station during one of our CIP meetings, one of our capital improvement project meetings on the Santa Barbara site. So we started looking other places throughout the city. And that's where Dove came about. And at the time when we discussed that, it was an option. It was an option because no one really cared about the airport district, let's be real. I mean, most of you don't even know where it is, Sarah for sure. But as we start looking at what's happening up there, we start dealing with housing elements and things that are forced down from the state We had to pivot. We had to adjust. And in the best possible way, with the most local control, what was our adjustment? We wanted to create another village, another community in Newport. And that's what the airport district is becoming. And so when we look at that property, yeah, we've paid $30 million for it. I'm willing to say that its value is far exceeding that $30 million. In addition to the fact that we make about $1.25 million a year just by holding it, unlike City Hall that we built on bond measures that we will be paying $9 million a year for until about 2040 to be sitting in the building we're in right now, we didn't take out a bond measure up there. We aren't paying interest debt. That is straight money coming back into our budget. So when you talk about why, and I think that is the question that perplexes a lot of people out there. Why not just rebuild on Santa Barbara? Well, even though the costs vary by about $10 million, the reality is, how do you pay for it? because it's all of you that pay for it, every taxpayer. And I can talk about parks and sculptures and open space and my three-year-old daughter that walks it all the time, but that's not my job. My job is to make sure that we do not continue spending money that doesn't need to be spent. We look at a state that overspends, we look at fraud that's rampant throughout this country, throughout this state, And I'm going to sit here and tell you that this city doesn't do that. We look at the most fiscally responsible way to move forward. And the way I look at this, that Santa Barbara property is worth about the same amount of money as building a new police station. So instead of straddling debt onto every taxpayer in Newport Beach, I want to sell a building to buy a new facility. And when I look at the facility we have and I think that it's older than me, not only does that scare me because I'm sure its knees are going out and its back hurts, but I imagine that since it was created before we had cell phones, I mean, there was a time where we used pagers and payphones. That was my high school career. So this is years before that. I can't imagine we have an infrastructure that's ready for it. I can't imagine we have power going to it that's ready for it. So this idea that it's a simple rebuild, it's not a fire station. And the infrastructure that goes with our police station, it's kind of amount to how we operate our city. Every time we get a complaint about... We have too much homelessness, which, thank God, Mayor Kleinman has addressed with her full vigor, and it now is a much better state of this city. We look at the crime, and we talk about it on a regular basis. We look at what's happening on the peninsula, and we want to correct that. All of these are something we do with the structure that we have in place. So is the plan to demolish the structure because we don't want to give up three acres of a nine-acre park? Okay, I get it. Can we give you more park? Are there other options? Is there more open space? I'm not looking to negate. I'm looking to create. How do we build and adjust? And how do we do it for the future generation so that they appreciate it? Because when I was growing up here in the 70s, this was a ravine. with a drainage ditch that was man-made, that was owned by the Irvine Company. And when they built this parcel, they had to mitigate environmental issues. When we just did the library lecture hall, we built it over a drainage ditch. We had to mitigate environmental issues. I get it. But this city is very good at those things because we actually care. Because we have the brains, technology, and know how to make them happen. And so, I do. I listen to what everyone has to say. But sometimes the job is not to be governed by emotion. The job is to be governed by the reality that I don't want to force anyone else to pay more, to pay for emotion. I want to make the best decision that is in the best nature of every single Californian moving forward. And for me, as studying this parcel right here, And yes, it's sad that we have to reimagine the other six and a half acres of park space. But I would love for a committee to be formed for that. I would love to see the paths intersect more. I would love to see more art there. In fact, I'd love to see more art throughout the city. I know that's not our general council policy, but I'd be in favor of that. I love the idea, but at the end of the day, the job has to be fiscal responsibility because we don't want to find ourselves in another position. Thank you.

Okay. Sounded like that might have been a partial straw vote motion. Some support across the dais here for a continuation of studying the option of locating the police station here at CIVIC CENTER, IT DOES IN FACT REQUIRE ADDITIONAL STUDY AND ATTENTION AND AS EVERYBODY HAS TALKED ABOUT TONIGHT, MORE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT. I DO LIKE THE IDEA THAT THE MAYOR JUST SUGGESTED OF POSSIBLY CREATING A COMMITTEE TO TALK ABOUT how we reimagine, and what other open space options we have in the city. With that, I will ask for some direction from the dais here from my colleagues. Does that generally sound like the support that we have up here? If so, can we have a straw vote on that?

My full support, Madam Mayor, those terms. Can I ask just a point of clarification?

Sure. I WOULD SUPPORT, ARE YOU LOOKING FOR GUIDANCE NOW OR IS WHAT NOAH SAID. I WANT TO REMOVE OUT THE PLANS FOR ANYTHING AT SANTA BARBARA. I WANT TO REMOVE OUT ANY PLANS FOR DOVE. I WANT TO CONTINUE STUDYING ANY Plans for Dove as far as a police station, if I need to be specific, we can discuss what we're going to do with Dove later. But I would like to pursue potential opportunities in the Newport Center area. And we've already approved unanimously at our study session, but maybe we need to re-clarify that here tonight, that we've authorized funds to study a Civic Center Park or having the police station be in the Civic Center Park. I'm open to all of the other suggestions, especially when it comes to public discussion. I would expense resources to go to the average person to understand what their opinions are that aren't necessarily participating in the civic process on a routine basis. So whether that's town halls in each of our council districts, if that's community outreach events, that's staff driven, we've already got a website already created that has a lot of information, but going further out to the community, maybe doing some type of polling, I'm open to all of these as needed, but we've already kind of given staff direction at our study session or our planning session, at the end of January. So I want to continue to see that through to understand what the impacts are here and if this is viable. If this isn't viable, then we move on and we have to look to discussing other options and seeing what is around here or if this council, maybe it's a new council after November. So they can decide what they want to pursue going forward. So for me, I think that we've already Kind of had a lot of vision so far, but there's still plenty of opportunity for the public to engage here But I want to see what that looks like going forward so Options one and two I want to eliminate three and four keep on the table

I agree with the specificity of Council Member Wygant's comments. I agree that we're only looking for this draw vote for future funding for the Civic Centre site and that we would look towards a future ad hoc committee or a public committee to discuss the reimagining of the sculpture garden.

Councilmember grant.

I just want to make a point of clarification. I discussed this exactly this point with the city manager after the January planning session. And it was my understanding from our discussion that we did not authorize funds to be spent on any particular site. But all we were doing was authorizing a budget amendment to accomplish that if and when staff came back asking for a budget request for studying that site.

So at the planning session, we addressed the council that if we want to look at a police station and a civic center site, that we're going to need some money to do the study. And if there's council consensus for us to move forward with doing that. And it was unanimous for the staff to move forward with that. We will have to do RFPs to make consultant selections for the EIR and for any of the site design work that we need to do, and we'll have to come back to council for you to approve those consultant selections with adjusted budget amendments.

So I did go back to the notes. And in the notes from the planning session, it says council unanimously supported funding police and fire station projects. We did not have any specificity there. And that's exactly why I called you after I read the notes originally, because I was a little concerned with how vague this was. And I think that we did have a discussion about the fact that we were going to amend the budget to allow for that to occur, but we weren't actually Voting on expenditures. Is that correct? That's right. Okay.

Thank you Councilmember Stapleton Yeah, I Want to get in over my skis here councilman why good I understand your comment, but I don't see any I don't see any advantage to us taking something off the table and we haven't even studied if this site is doable I think when you look at Dove I would go on the record saying I'm not in favor of moving it out of Newport Center either, but until we study the site and figure out if this is doable or not, I think we just keep all options on the table at this point. So I would move forward and continue to study this site here to see if it's possible, but I wouldn't want to be supportive of removing another site until we know what's going on here.

I JUST DON'T WANT TO SPEND ANY MONEY STUDYING SANTA BARBARA. THAT'S WHAT I MEAN BY ELIMINATING THAT OPTION. WE WERE PRESENTED WITH FOUR OPTIONS TONIGHT. I WANT TO ELIMINATE TWO OF THOSE AND CONTINUE ON A DISCUSSION TO SEE WHAT NEWPORT CENTER LOOKS LIKE. ARE THERE ANY SITES in around this area that are viable. We saw an example of one. Did we rule it out completely? Maybe. But are there other options out there in Newport Center? I'm okay with that. I really want to see that maybe something comes along that is this amazing thing. Like you said, your comments were spot on. I DON'T WANT TO RULE OUT SOMETHING THAT WE'RE NOT EVEN THINKING OF. WE'RE NOT 100% EXPERTS AND WE'RE NOT THE END ALL BE ALL AT TIMES. WE TRUST THE PUBLIC TO MAKE SOME COMMENTS FOR US TO LISTEN TO AND I THINK WE'VE DONE THAT HERE, BUT WE GET AN OPPORTUNITY TO SAY, HEY, THERE'S PLENTY OF OTHER SITES IN NEWPORT CENTER THAT COULD BE POTENTIAL FOR THIS. Mayor Kleiman is working really hard at OCTA to get the fire station relocated to the bus depot that every one of the audience can agree on that. That's a really good thing. We can eliminate that and move that to another part by the airport. So I think that that's a great piece, but until we even know that aspect, we might not have an opportunity to move on that fire station that's at the current location for multiple years thereafter. Because every one of the sites that are here in the Civic Center area where the fire station has to go is extremely expensive. And we're looking at options for $20, $15, $25 million. That could be a cost that we're not even anticipating for the fire station to relocate to. If we don't get to move to the bus depot So i'm not there's puzzle pieces to be played in newport center that i'm still open and willing to accept in the meantime That's all we're doing here tonight is letting An option on the table to study the civic center park as a place for our police station And by doing that we'll know the realities if it's feasible if it's not And if it's not we move on and we cross that one off the list and move on to others. So I I think for me, seeing four options. Two of them are a non-starter for right now, and the other two, let's move forward with.

Council Member Bartow?

Uh, yes. So I think it's, and maybe I'm not understanding clearly, but I want to make sure we're on the same page. So the last slide is, are kind of the options. Um, they are talking about options for sites, but I think, um, as part of the ad hoc, what we were looking for was, um, whether we continue to review, evaluate potential sites and timing for citing new police facility or continue further evaluation of a new police facility in civic center park. WITH THE HIRING OF CONSULTANT TEAM AND ALSO SOLICITING FURTHER INPUT FROM THE COMMUNITY AND ARTS COMMISSION OR THREE, PURSUE OTHER DIRECTION. FROM WHAT I'M HEARING, IT SOUNDS LIKE OPTION TO CONTINUE FURTHER EVALUATION AT CIVIC CENTER PARK where everyone's going but also making sure we solicit input from the community that needs to be part of that and then I think maybe it eventually comes to it to be if we can't you know but that's down the road would we have to have another slide I think in discussion if we're continuing to review additional sites in the future that's the way I understood kind of what we were asking but I'm open to my colleagues

So thank you, Councilmember Rocho. I agree with that assessment that we're moving forward right now with just looking into the Civic Center spot with the opportunity for community input on the arts piece. Is that about where staff sees that? Okay, so if we could take a straw vote, I would really appreciate it.

Yeah, that's what I'm hearing as well. Let's go ahead and try that again on the straw vote.

just for point of clarification like if we're not ruling out anything in the newport center area though with that that that we can still discuss you know if options become available or as councilmember stapleton said you know maybe there's something we're not thinking of i i just want to make sure that we're short of the santa barbara we're still yeah santa barbara and dove but the other the other there's there's something around here if we're not thinking or we're discussing uh the civic center i'm 100 thank you

i don't know that there's the consensus to fully remove dev so i wouldn't want to just say that we're there necessarily if we need to do a straw vote that bifurcates that out no but i'm ready i'm ready for dev to be be tossed aside i just don't need i just don't think that we need to pull any i mean obviously santa barbara's look we have all this stuff that staff has presented and we have the reasons that we you know have the the things that we have seen however i think that just saying right off the bat pulling you know, dove off the table. That's not, we don't even really need to do that right now. What we need to do is evaluate this site. We need to make sure that community is involved. And again, there are interesting ideas that keep people keep bringing up. Let's keep moving forward with what we are doing versus just saying we're taking options off the table. I think we have a direction without doing that.

I THINK THE PUBLIC GETS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SAY THAT THOSE ARE OFF THE TABLE, SO WE'RE NOT DISCUSSING IT ANY FURTHER. THAT'S WHAT WE'RE HERE TO DISCUSS.

FOR ME, I WOULD LIKE TO CLEAN THE DOVE PIECE OFF OF THIS FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS. ONE, IT'S NOT CENTRAL TO ANYTHING WE'RE DOING WITHIN NEWPORT CENTER. That's not that we don't have a value add or asset there. And we're gonna continue talking about Dove in a million different ways moving forward. But as far as for a police station, I do not have a love or passion behind that. So I would like to move forward with the straw vote. moving forward on removing santa barbara and dove focusing on newport center and creating a public community a group that looks at the art and reimagining of the sculpture garden i

I'm going to ask for a friendly amendment. This is so, let's just, I'm all in favor of putting a little bit of money to go hire a consultant, do some environmental studies, and see if this is even viable. The conversation about studying what art and sculptures and paths and removing Dove, removing Santa Barbara, we don't know what the heck is possible here. Let's just, I think we have support, large support, just continue to study the site, see if it's possible. If it's not, we move on, we've got other things to look at. I don't understand applying Santa Barbara at all.

For the sake of just moving this along. Let's just study this and if it's possible. I'm okay with that.

You know where I stand. Of course.

I've made it abundantly clear on Santa Barbara and Dove, but let's just, I'm okay with that. I think we have pretty good direction, but I'll let the mayor handle the rest.

Council Member Grant's been waiting to speak.

I would suggest that we look re-look at option one to continue to review or evaluate potential sites and timing for citing the new police facility and that we don't take anything off the table and that we don't overly invest in any particular site. I'm not in favor of spending the full million and a half dollars on this site. I think that we do have some work to do before we make that kind of investment. I'd like to see us to continue to look at all the sites. We've had a lot of good ideas here today. So I would make a straw vote suggestion for item one.

So I think there's a lot of different motions out there on the table. It sounds like there's general consensus to move forward with number two. So maybe we just draw a vote that first. So everyone's in favor except Robin? Except.

Oh, Casimir Grant?

And only, are you saying only two or are we going to vote on each one? How are you doing?

I'm saying that it seems there's consensus to move forward with just two, only two. So can we vote again so we get an accurate vote? Moving forward with just number two? All right, six in favor. Council Member Grant opposed.

I want to thank everyone again for coming out tonight. This was a long discussion, but we appreciate everybody spending their evening with us and all of the thoughtful comments. Okay, we'll move on.

Maybe take a five-minute break.

Not really.

No? Okay. We're still in the meeting. Please don't approach the dais. Please don't approach.

We're still moving on with our meeting. Okay, we're going to go ahead and move on to our next agenda item. Madam Clerk, please read the notice regarding public comments on agenda and non-agenda items.

The City Council of Newport Beach welcomes and encourages community participation. Public comments are invited and items listed on the agenda and non-agenda items. Speakers must limit comments to three minutes per person to allow everyone to speak. Written comments are encouraged as well. The City Council has the discretion to extend or shorten the time limit on agenda and non-agenda items.

We'll now proceed with public comments on all agenda and non-agenda items. Please note the members of the public will still have an opportunity to comment on agenda items under consent and close session later in the meeting, provided they do not offer comments on those items at this time.

Oh, hey, guys. I know you're probably all pretty bored, but now you finally get to hear something besides the police relocation. So that's good, right? Before I start, I just wanted to let you know that I'm not speaking just as myself. I'm speaking for a bunch of kids my age and teenagers probably up to 15. Um, so, good evening. My name is Finn Wahlberg. I'm 12 years old and I'm here tonight to ask you, like, City of Newport Beach to set aside an area to build sanctioned community dirt jumps so that we can like ride our bikes without having to be like Because Park Patrol came along and destroyed all of our dirt jumps. So I just wanted to like like yeah, I So when I was about, like, ten, two years ago, one of my friends showed me some dirt jumps over by the back bay, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had. After, like, a little while, we started building our own and spent about six months, like, designing and building. And we made, like, some new friends, like, through this community. Like, it was super fun. I have three reasons why you should let us have our own area to build these. Reason number one, that kids need something to do. The first reason is simple, because kids in Newport Beach don't have enough to do. There's not a lot of fun, active options for teenagers, and a bike park would give kids a real place to go, a reason to put their phones down, get outside and be active. My second reason is for community building. I feel like a bike park can bring the community together. When we had all those dirt jumps, kids of like all ages and skill levels were out there riding, learning from each other and making friends. That's community building in action. A sanctioned bike park could do the same thing, but even better. My third reason is that it solves the neighbor problem. I know that there have been some complaints from neighbors about noise, e-bikers, and unsanctioned riding, but sanctioned bike park fixed that. We could have posted rules like being respectful, keeping the noise down, riding during set hours. When kids have a real place to go, the problems with neighbors go away. And if you even consider this, because all the police drama going on, I just wanted to be clear that I'm not really asking for something without...

Go ahead and finish.

Okay, thanks. I'm just not asking for free land to build on. We can have fundraisers, and we can ask people to help us pay for it. So here's what I'm asking. Help us build a community bike park in East Bluff. We'll raise money, follow the rules. We just need the city to meet us there halfway. There were dirt jumps. There were kids outside. Now there's nothing. Please help us change it. Thank you.

Thank you. What a thoughtful and well-articulated presentation. Amazing leadership. Thank you. We needed that tonight. Sir, thank you for your patience. I know you've been waiting a long time to come and speak.

No problem. Thank you very much for having us here, Mayor Klayman and the council members. My name is Kamran Takdiri, and I'm the resident of Newport Beach for the past 48 years here. And also, I'm the board member, CFO, and executive director of the Iranian American Community Group. We call it IACG. We established that group 15 years ago. It is a nonprofit organization. and it is non-religion and it is non-political. It's basically we are doing all cultural work. Everything is based on cultural and Iranian and Persian cultural. And we do have a standing festival every year for the past 15 years that we have it and we always had in the Irvine and in the park next to City Hall. And we normally had, always had, in the beginning of the March, 21st of the March, the first day of the spring. That's a Persian New Year is, always the first day of the spring. This year, for the first time, we do have that kind of a small festival in Newport Beach. We always have it in Irvine, and we have it in Newport Beach. And since the situation right now is a little bit not clear, we are not going to have a large gathering. We are going to have a very small gathering in the city hall here, basically a room behind us. And I sent a flyer to many of the council members and the mayor, and I also gave a flyer here. And we're going to have that one on the 26th of March. March 26 is on Thursday from 3 to 5. And basically, we have a small group of people displaying some kind of cultural items and sweets and tea. and small folk and cultural children dancing, basically, that we present at the beginning of the spring. And I welcome all of you to come, and we're going to talk more about Nowruz, that means the new day, and as I mentioned, it's the Persian New Year. And always the first day of the spring that fall on the 20th of March or 21st of March. I give it some flyers to the city clerk over there. I hope you receive it. And I hope we can see many of you on that day. Thanks so much for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Susan Pearl and I live on Balboa Island. As president of the Balboa Island Improvement Association, I'm speaking on behalf of our residents. Thank you for the leadership you've shown in bringing new businesses to Newport Beach and encouraging responsible economic growth. It's clear you care deeply about keeping our city vibrant, competitive, and financially strong. That's important and it doesn't go unnoticed. As Newport Beach has grown, an effort has always been made to protect the character that makes the city special. Charm is just as important as growth, and nowhere is that more evident than Balboa Island. People don't travel across Southern California and across the country to experience something generic. They come for the quaint streets, the walkability, and the neighborly feel. They come to stroll Marine Avenue, greet shopkeepers, enjoy a frozen banana on the boardwalk, and feel like they've stepped into a simpler time. Balboa Island isn't just a commercial district, it's a living piece of Newport Beach history and our homes. We recently conducted a resident survey. The results were clear and probably not surprising to anyone who has driven across the island lately. The number one concern is maintenance and repairs, specifically our streets. Dog waste, our longtime champion, is no longer number one, but is still a solid number two. And close behind that is traffic control. Beginning at Thanksgiving and continuing through the whole month of December, our residents experience gridlock, both coming home and leaving the island. Summer weekends can be just as bad. Residents are asking for the basics, safe streets, clean sidewalks, and the ability to get home without gridlock. As you continue encouraging new development and attracting business investments, we respectfully ask that you also protect the qualities that make our city unique, especially on Balboa Island. When we maintain the character of the places like Balboa Island, we protect the very thing that draws people here in the first place. Newport Beach's brand isn't corporate sameness, it's coastal elegance. Walkable neighborhoods and local shopkeepers who know your name. Balboa Island is one of the clearest expressions of that identity. Property owners have invested almost $50 million in new alleys, beautifying the island by undergrounding the utilities. This benefits the city of Newport Beach by increasing property value and enhancing the experience of those who come here to visit. Today, we encourage you to continue fostering economic growth, but also to intentionally protect our history and character. Let Balboa Island remain quaint by providing the basic services required to keep our sidewalks clean, deal with gridlock, and maintain our streets. that remain the kind of place where a visitor feels like they've discovered something special. Once that character is lost, it cannot be rebuilt. Growth is important, so is protecting what makes Balboa Island special. That's what keeps Newport Beach an exceptional place to live, shop, dine, and visit. Thank you for your leadership and for your commitment to keeping Newport Beach both thriving and timeless. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. Just a reminder that your comment should relate to the city and be something within the council's purview. Does it relate to the city?

Beloved Mayor, council members, administration, and citizens, I am Brother Steven Gerard Sidlowski. I am providing you a revised Revision to the resolution of which you've already received, I think, in the last month or two. I'm asking that you look at this new resolution in support of a Newport Beach, California declaration of a safe pre-born personhood city. This is something that we can do now because the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision was established in 2022. So cities that have charters, citizens can actually decide if they want to move in the new direction to put personal language right into the city charter. and Newport Beach has a city charter. I'm giving you the step one of this wonderful moment, and that is the resolution itself. Step two is where the citizens would actually vote in the language into the city charter. I'm delighted to let you know that Pope Leo, our American pope, just made a statement. He said that, He delivered one of his strongest pro-life messages to date, talking about how the culture of death... Keep focused on Newport, please.

...undermines peace. Go ahead and keep it focused on Newport, please. I'm sorry? You're talking about things going on in Rome. Keep it focused on Newport.

Okay. Well, he does talk about how municipalities, it's your responsibility with the citizens to actually move in this new direction. I didn't provide this as a copy, but I'd be happy to email it to all of you so that you can review it. But the biggest amendment to the resolution itself I think you'll actually like One, two, three, four. The fifth whereas of the resolution says California's model is Eureka and the Golden State, and a lot of the citizens, the majority of your citizens, prefer the Golden Rule. So that's right in Holy Scripture, too. I hope you've had time to start reviewing the information that's been presented to you. I look forward to now traveling to other cities, and I will be attending the Sacramento March for Life, the California March for Life, this coming Monday right before St. Patrick's Day. So peace and all good to you. God bless you with the loving wisdom, and I hope one of you or two of you are going to jump on board with this new possibility. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Well, hi again. I'm here to speak about the finance committee issue that's on your agenda. For the past 15 years, the finance committee has provided important independent financial advice to the city council. Some of our most distinguished citizens have served on the committee. The committee helps the council and the community to understand financial issues when they are not self-evident. And as an example, we just saw a discussion on the police station. I've always said that when the economics of a matter do not make sense, it's because you're looking at the wrong economics. I appreciate Councilmember Blum's clarity because it appeared that the issue was the location of the station. But the real issue is the ability to have a land sale transaction for Santa Barbara. That's how you plan to pay for it. the relocation of the police facility is just a necessary step to be able to sell those properties. The Finance Committee can help in ferreting out those issues so that they're clear to the public. Another role of the committee is identifying risk elements that might not be evident. Again, using the police facility as an example, risk of project delay, litigation, environmental mitigation, site preparations, state permitting, and inflation appear not to have been factored in to the council's process up to this point. And once again, the finance committee can help you with that. The impact is likely tens of millions of dollars. Now, some of you have expressed an interest in having a more direct connection to the committee. Three of you can serve on the committee, and those not on the committee have the ability to personally appoint a representative. As proposed, you would use that right, and the mayor would make the appointments. Let me just say that the public is not fooled. This proposal reduces transparency, and it reduces public participation. I just encourage you to do the right thing and leave the Finance Committee as it is. Thank you.

OK, seeing no other speakers, now is the time for Council. Oh, excuse me, Mr. Mosier.

Thank you. Mayor Kleinman, members of the City Council, my name is Jim Mosier. I don't know if this is, I'm not sure that this is working. It is. First thing, I think this is the only opportunity to comment on agenda item number Roman numeral 4, which is a motion for reconsideration. You may have noticed in my written comments I suggested that you reconsider your vote at your last meeting, approving the minutes from the meeting before, from February 20th. because they were lacking a record of what your vote had been on the matter about the beach shade structures and the changes to the safety enhancement zones and also the Bayview street calming measures. I happened to look just before this meeting at the recorded copy of those minutes and I see the votes are now in there. I don't think I was hallucinating though because I see a little note in the electronic version that it was changed last night, March 9th at 5.38 p.m. My problem with that is there's no indication of who made the change, why they made the change, what the change was, what their authority was to make the change. And if minutes can be changed, can resolutions be changed? Can ordinances be changed? I really think a formal vote to reconsider that and bring back the correct minutes would have been the proper course. And then on the consent calendar, I cannot guess what items will be pulled. So I want to comment on one of those, which is item number four, the report required about the completeness of our fire inspections in Newport Beach. I made a comment that the state law seems to require that report to come with your budget discussion as if the fee structure was part of what the discussion should be about. I actually this morning looked at some reports from other Orange County cities that have been filing those reports for some time. None of those actually scheduled it with their budget discussion or discuss the fee part of it. But what I noticed, they invariably said how many inspections had been made so that the public would have some idea of the scope of what their fire department does. And the report before you tonight is completely silent on how many inspections were made. We're told 100% of what we required was made, but not how many that was. I really think like the other cities that at least should be included. Thank you.

THANK YOU. AND NOW, IT'S THE TIME FOR COUNCIL ANNOUNCEMENTS OR REPORTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OR COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES, RATHER, FROM COUNCIL MEMBERS. THE TIME FOR COUNCIL MEMBERS TO REQUEST AN ITEM AND BE PLACED ON A FUTURE AGENDA. COUNCIL MEMBER WEIGAND, DO YOU HAVE ANY ANNOUNCEMENTS OR REPORTS?

I'VE SAID ENOUGH TONIGHT. NO.

I JUST WANTED TO THANK COUNCILMEMBER WEIGAND FOR ATTENDING MY WATER QUALITY COMMITTEE. IT WAS NICE TO SEE SOMEONE I KNEW IN THE BACK. I WANTED TO JUST SAY THAT OUR WATER QUALITY COMMITTEE HEARD A REALLY WONDERFUL PRESENTATION FROM LISA HANEY FROM THE O.C. WATER DISTRICT REGARDING SAND AND SAND REPLENISHMENT. that we've talked a lot about here. It's something for the future and I just look forward to having further discussions and reaching out to our county supervisors to assist with that.

Council Member Grant? None. Council Member Weber? None. Councilmember Stapleton?

I just wanted to spend just two seconds and thank the Lower Castaways Committee. We had Commissioner Langford, Kirby, Hayes, and Commissioner Rudy from the Harbor Commission. And then Councilmembers who served, we have sunsetted that. That committee is going to come back for discussion and recommendation on the next council meeting on the 24th. So in disclosure of public comments and transparency, if you were interested in the 65 or 68 or 69 parks we have in the city, this could be another one, a beautiful four acre park that I'd love to have people come and speak with. And I did get some comments that the finance committee has been, the next two meetings have been canceled. That is false. We condensed the March and April meeting into April 16th. So if you're interested in the finance committee, April 16th is our next meeting. Same place, same time. Thank you.

Samurai Blah?

As is my way now.

Okay. Madam Clerk, do please read the notice regarding public comments on the consent calendar.

This is the time in which council members may pull items from the consent calendar for discussion, items 1 through 11. Public comments are also invited on consent calendar items. Speakers must limit comments to three minutes. Before speaking, please state your name for the record. If any item is removed from the consent calendar by a council member, members of the public are invited to speak on each item for up to three minutes per item. All matters listed under consent calendar are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion in the form listed below. Council members have received detailed staff reports on each of the items recommending their action. There will be no separate discussion on these items prior to the time the City Council votes on the motion unless members of the City Council request specific items to be discussed and or removed from the consent calendar for separate action.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we consider the consent items, I actually would like to propose an amendment to Agenda Item Number 5, Exhibit A, regarding the resolution on the Finance Committee. Specifically, I propose to modify the membership structure in Attachment A so the committee will consist of either five or seven members. The Council will seek to appoint four citizen members. However, if four qualified individuals are not available, THE COUNCIL MAY APPOINT TWO INSTEAD. CITIZEN MEMBERS WOULD BE APPOINTED THROUGH THE STANDARD BOARD AND COMMISSION VACANCY SCREENING AND RECOMMENDATION PROCESS SET FORTH IN COUNCIL POLICY A2. SO IF THAT COULD BE INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION, I WOULD APPRECIATE IT. COUNCIL MEMBER WEAGAN, DO YOU HAVE ANY ITEMS TO PULL FROM CONSENT CALENDAR OR CONFLICTS TO ANNOUNCE RELATED TO ITEMS NUMBER ONE THROUGH 11?

NO, I DO NOT.

COUNCIL MEMBER BARTOW? I DO NOT. COUNCIL MEMBER GRANT?

YES, I'D LIKE TO PULL ITEM FIVE.

COUNCIL MEMBER WEBER? I DO NOT.

I HAVE NONE. I DO WANT TO THANK STAFF FOR THEIR WORK ON ITEM NUMBER THREE. I'M NOT PULLING IT, BUT I'M VERY APPRECIATIVE OF THE WORK THAT WAS DONE ON THAT.

OKAY. WE'LL GO OUT TO PUBLIC COMMENT.

MAYOR KLEINMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL, MY NAME IS JIM I APPRECIATE THAT ITEM 5 HAS BEEN PULLED AND I WILL SPEAK SEPARATELY TO THAT. BUT ONE OF THE MOTIVATIONS BETWEEN PREPARING ITEM 5 WAS TO MAKE GREATER TRANSPARENCY TO FINANCIAL MATTERS AND HAVE MORE DISCUSSION HERE BEFORE THE CITY COUNCIL AND I WOULD JUST POINT OUT that we don't even read the titles of the items on the consent calendar. And so I'm not sure that anybody watching this meeting will know that item nine on the consent calendar is the second quarter budget update, something typically discussed by the finance committee. And item 10 is a, I don't know, 260 pages or something. It's our city's annual financial statement and the audit results for that, which again are things normally that have been in the past discussed by the finance committee. And I am not hearing a lot of prominence or discussion at the city council, even with these items on the agenda. For what it's worth, they are here, and I don't know where the discussion is. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Leverins again. I was really glad to see no public hearings on the agenda, so we could have a short meeting tonight. On consent three, a resolution for revised salary schedules and new classifications for key and management group. This is changing the job title of real property administrator to real property manager. and code enforcement supervisor to code enforcement manager. The staff materials indicate that the estimated annual cost to reclassify for the next fiscal year is $28,391 and change. I'm just going to call this transparency. Looking at Transparent California for the last year, they have their publicly sourced information available. The real property manager or administrator before the job title change is identified as Laura Whitlinger. Total pay and benefits $203,519 and change. The code enforcement supervisor identified as John M. Murray, $218,591 and change pay and benefits. And you've heard from me before, I would hope that civil servants here recognize how fortunate they are to work in a temperate climate, in a good, pretty, crime-free, clean city, and just appreciate these pay levels. And I strive for people to be aware of what their civil servants are paid. I'm glad item five was pulled. Item seven is revising a contract for restroom security for the public restrooms. You've heard about me on this matter a number of times, as has the Harbor Commission. With these automatic locks, I hope there will be consideration to expanding the hours, particularly on the peninsula when you've got hundreds and thousands of people exiting bars and restaurants at closing time or fishing on the piers and there's no restrooms. Staff materials indicated that the restrooms locking at 10 and staying locked till 6 in the morning has reduced overnight occupancy and deterred vandalism. That all makes sense, but it's increased human waste in alleys and dark corners and the harbor and the beach. and I would hope automatic locking gates at least could be automatically changed to expand the hours that the public has access to the restrooms, particularly on these very busy, warm weekends. Thank you.

Seeing no other public comments, I'll bring it back up here. Do I have a motion on the consent calendar?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd love to make the motion on consent with the adjustment to the minutes and item five being pulled by Councilmember Grant.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? Seconded by Councilmember Weber. Let's go ahead and vote. Oh, we're frozen. Do you want to do a straw vote instead? Oh, and we're back.

Motion carried by unanimous vote.

Okay, item number five was removed from consent calendar by Councilmember Grant. Councilmember Grant, did you want a staff report?

We could just have a short staff report for the record about exactly what we're voting on.

I'll just pull up a quick PowerPoint presentation. We'll walk through it with you. So the purpose of this item is to consider amendments to the structure appointment process and responsibilities of the finance committee. The proposed changes are intended to strengthen fiscal oversight, improve transparency, broaden financial expertise, and improve the efficient use of staff resources. These recommendations were developed with input and direction from the fiscal transparency ad hoc committee. Before discussing the proposed changes, I'll briefly review the background and how the committee arrived at these recommendations. The Finance Committee was established in 1994 and has periodically evolved to reflect the City's governance needs. Earlier this year, the Council created the Fiscal Transparency Ad Hoc Committee. The Committee was asked to evaluate opportunities to improve transparency, accountability, public engagement, and the efficient use of City resources. The proposed resolution before you tonight reflects the recommendations developed through that process. The proposed resolution makes several structural changes to the Finance Committee, which are summarized on the next slide. The proposed amendments focus on four primary areas. First is the overall structure of the committee, which has been amended with Mayor Kleinman's adjustments, which would keep it at seven members with four appointed, up to four, if two at a minimum. Second is establishing clear qualification standards for citizen members to ensure financial expertise. Third is a revised appointment process involving mayoral appointment and council confirmation. And finally, the proposal clarifies that the role of the committee as a technical advisory body with major policy discussions brought to the full council. This one's kind of outdated since we've made those changes. And that basically concludes my recommendation, my presentation.

Did you have further questions?

No, thank you. I'll just make a comment.

Okay, I guess I have to request to speak, right?

You're up. Okay, I'm up. First, I do want to mention that I support strengthening the qualifications. I think it's a very good idea for residents that are going to be serving on the finance committee to be extremely well qualified, and if we can strengthen that, Part of our policy. I think that is a very good idea these individuals with proven experience, you know provide that fiscal stewardship that I think is What our community deserves and I've seen it firsthand how it works and I think it works Well, I do not support eliminating individual councilmember appointments to the Finance Committee the existing structure allows individual council members to changing that structure avoids any, you know, if we keep that structure, we avoid any perceived undue influence over the finance committee. And I think it's very important. This committee is tasked with over $1 billion of assets, and it serves as a critical advisory role to our council. THERE'S NO ADVANTAGE TO CHANGING THIS EXISTING PROCESS. I ALSO DON'T SUPPORT SHORTENING THE LENGTH OF THE TERM TO TWO YEARS. I DIDN'T SEE THAT IN YOUR REPORT. I THINK THAT'S STILL THERE. TWO-YEAR TERMS FAIL TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE VALUE OF CONTINUITY AND INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE. SO I WOULD PROPOSE ADOPTING THE ENHANCED QUALIFICATIONS BUT PRESERVING THE COUNCILMEMBER APPOINTMENT AND FOUR-YEAR TERM STRUCTURE.

ARE THERE ANY OTHER COMMENTS UP HERE? Any comments from the public?

Mayor Kleinman and members of the council. My name is Jim Mosher first first of all in my written comments in my haste I Copied and pasted from the proposed resolution a wrong sentence and it may have given the impression I had some objection to the mayor appointing the three council members on the committee I actually intended to, I have no particular objection to that. A presiding officer usually chooses which colleagues will serve on various committees. That's typical. What I objected to was the provision that the mayor was going to appoint the two citizen members. Because I believe in our city charter, individual council members are not supposed to be acting individually. The whole council is supposed to be acting collectively. So I am pleased to see the proposed amendment, which I did not see in the staff report, that the process for appointing the citizen members would now be the normal appointment process in which the applications would come to the entire council for their choice of which citizens should serve on it. And apparently now it could be four instead of two. I support that. I do think that the terms, if they're going to be two-year terms, should be staggered so that the citizens don't all change at the same time. And I think if it's not being changed, there's a limit to two two-year terms. I think that's rather limiting, a total of four years service. There might not be all that highly qualified people in the sea who want to devote themselves to this, so I think you need more flexibility on that. And then there were extensive changes made to what would be the purview of the Finance Committee. And since there was not a red line, it was hard to tell what that was. But I did go back this afternoon and look at the previous enabling resolution and some of the things that have been deleted. Well, first of all, In the current one, there's a responsibility C about making advice about the recommendations about the budget, which seems redundant with the one before that, responsibility B. It seems to already cover that. It says that they will make a recommendation about the budget. some distinction between budget and final budget. I do not understand what that is. Things that were removed, though, the former responsibilities included reviewing and making recommendations about the reserve policies. I don't know why we are deleting that. It seems like something you would want good advice about. another thing that was removed was a responsibility review debt financing proposals if you're going to have a technical task force that is good at reviewing these things why do you not want them to be reviewing that and then finally they had a responsibility to serve as the audit committee you might want to be the audit committee now it's not clear though that the current resolution is actually saying that. So I think the audit review responsibility needs to be clearly spelled out. Somebody, I think, ultimately should be coming here. But you might want their advice on that. So those are my suggestions. And I'm a little confused since we heard the staff report that did not include the amendment. So you may want to repeat what that is. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moser. We thought you were infallible. Good to know you're human.

Adam Loverance one more time. This is a result of the formation of the fiscal transparency ad hoc. I find it a little puzzling that the removal of two citizens from the committee or the potential of the removal of two citizens as a step towards transparency. I appreciate Mayor Kleinman what I understood. is uh if you can't find four qualified then you would do two so that's somewhat mitigating that i i don't like uh three council members now the current structure appointed by the mayor subject to full council approval the proposed structure removes full council approval i'd like to have more than the mayor authorizing these things and these are incredibly important positions whether they be council members or citizens and i A counterpoint to Councilman Grant, qualifications and standards, yes, but as I understand it now, you vet people. If there are people who don't have financial degrees, who don't have lots of money, LIKE TO LIMIT IT TO A CERTAIN SUBSET OF A CERTAIN COLLEGE DEGREE OR BUSINESS EXPERIENCE, I HOPE THAT THERE WOULD BE AN OPEN MIND, BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU CAN FIND A QUALIFIED PERSON WHO DOESN'T HAVE A FORMAL EDUCATION, AND IT'S GOOD TO LOOK AT OUT OF THE BOX IDEAS SOMETIMES, AND I HOPE THAT THERE'S SOME RECEPTIVENESS TO THAT. THANK YOU.

ANY OTHER COMMENTS ON THIS ITEM? SEEING NONE, I'LL BRING IT BACK UP. Councilmember Grant, was your comment actually a motion now that we've heard from the public? Yes, it was. Do we have a second for Councilmember Grant's motion?

My motion was to accept the increased requirements portion of the proposal, but to not change the Councilmember appointments or the terms. I would accept that as a revision of my motion. So you're willing to? Okay. I'll amend my motion to accept the increased requirements for qualification for the finance committee to delete the proposal to change council member appointments and accept the terms as two-year terms. Okay, so that's my motion.

So I'll second that. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and vote. Or do we have an alternate motion?

Yeah, I'll make a substitute motion. I would take the staff recommendations through the ad hoc with the friendly amendments that Mayor Klein put together that council will seek to appoint four citizen members. However, if four qualified individuals are not available, the council will appoint two instead. AND THEN IN ADDITION TO THE CITIZEN MEMBERS WOULD BE APPOINTED THROUGH THE STANDARD BOARD AND COMMISSION VACANCY SCREENING PROCESS OUTLINING COUNCIL POLICY A2.

I'LL SECOND THAT FOR DISCUSSION. I HAD A LITTLE BIT MORE THINGS I WANTED TO SPEAK UPON. JUST ON JASON, ATTACHMENT B, IF YOU COULD PULL THAT UP, THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL JUST SO THE PUBLIC KNOWS THAT least we think that there's going to be less conversation, less transparency. I think that this... SLIDE DECK, THIS ITEM HERE OF ATTACHMENT B BASICALLY SAYS THAT THIS COUNCIL WILL SEE A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN THE DUTIES THAT THE FINANCE COMMITTEE WILL EITHER SEND TO US OR HAVE AT OUR DISPOSAL. AND I THINK THAT THAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT FOR US AND THE PUBLIC TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE'S A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT MORE COUNCIL REVIEW ON A LOT OF THESE ITEMS. SO I APPRECIATE THE AD HOC coming up with some of these this tentative schedule what this process is going to look like as far as The conversation about who gets appointed how it goes then The change to the normal process still allows us as a council to override that decision process so we still have an ability to say no, I think the committee's requirements and qualifications are significantly increased. So there may not necessarily be as many as there was when we had the committee in its previous setup. So having, yes, us choosing who that would be, I think the committee has to now vet and choose a specific candidate that's based on these requirements. So I think that that is actually a good thing because we're having policy experts. And as far as the discussion about a two-year term or four-year term, it looks like you could serve at max essentially an item B here, a four-year term with one two-year term with an ability to go for a second. That doesn't necessarily mean that that process is locked in there too. I can recall this council having discussions that if there's somebody who's really well qualified and somebody who is a good choice that we wanna keep on board, we still as a council can override these rules and continue to allow that member to serve. So I think this could be a work in progress that we have an opportunity to go forward with what and I'll support these recommendations with the amendments, but we get a chance to, you know, see how it's working out. If we need to change it, we always come back and do so. So I would make

I THINK THE MOTION OKAY SO WE HAVE A SUBSTITUTE MOTION ACTUALLY A SECOND I DID SECOND IT SO YEAH YES WE HAVE A SUBSTITUTE SECOND MOTION MADE BY UH COUNCIL MEMBER STAPLETON AND SECOND BY COUNCIL MEMBER WIGAN LET'S GO AHEAD AND VOTE ON THE SUBSTITUTE MOTION

Motion carried by the vote six one and council member grant a post.

Madam clerk, please read the statement on motions for reconsideration.

A motion to reconsider the vote on any action taken by the city council at either this meeting or the previous meeting may be made only by one of the council members who voted with the prevailing side.

ARE THERE ANY MOTIONS FOR RECONSIDERATION? HEARING NONE, WE WILL MOVE ON TO PUBLIC COMMENTS ON CLOSED SESSION. DO WE HAVE ANY PUBLIC COMMENTS ON CLOSED SESSION? SEEING NONE, MR. HARP, CLOSED SESSION ANNOUNCEMENT, PLEASE.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. THE CITY COUNCIL ADJOURNED A CLOSED SESSION TO MEET WITH LEGAL COUNSEL REGARDING THE INITIATION OF LITIGATION, AND THAT'S AS SET FORTH ON THE AGENDA UNDER ITEM NUMBER 5A. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. WE ARE RECESSED TO CLOSED SESSION. Mr. Harb, do you have a closed session report?

I do. Thank you. Regarding closed session item 5A, a motion was made by the mayor and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem to authorize the city attorney to initiate litigation in regard to one matter. All council members voted in favor of the motion. action of defense and other particulars shall be disclosed to any person on inquiry once the action has been formally commenced thank you with that we are adjourned