Remarks by Rudy Picha
81 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 4
- Play at 24:24
“Yeah. So I've been on council for going on a couple of years now, and it seems like For the last couple of years, we have been having these conversations with Dave Marion, city manager, with Jim Pia, and now you. And it's been going on for at least the two years we've been on. And we've been doing everything we can to be... Politics aside, just conservative fiscally, literally for the last couple of years. You guys probably thinking about, but the biker rally, the biker rally. Yes, we did do the biker rally. But we really didn't know how bad we were about rubbing nickels together until June.…”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 26:04
“Thanks for that. You can just ballpark it. It's been five years, ten years.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 28:47
“Okay. So it's probably been quite a long time because we're down in a hole and we dug ourselves pretty deep. We've done some things the last two years. We haven't dug our way out of it. creating the, what was it, the Halster Financial Task Force, which isn't fully, we don't have full headcount on that yet. So if anybody would like to be on that task force, you have some acumen when it comes to, you know, making things balanced, it would be really nice to have you. So that's all I have now.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 59:53
“Yeah. So I do have a question, especially since SEIU is here. And I'd like to know, when it comes to certain things like the stormwater and, you know, keeping the storm drains clean and like abating the leaves, we've got a lot of deciduous trees. We've got to clean those things out. Where does that show up on a bill for stormwater? Where does that show up?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:01:01
“okay so you know when you said that we should potentially change the way we look at running the city and run it more like a business which you brought up the the phrase cash flows um well when you say cash flows it it occurs to me that you have money coming in you have money going out and that that cash has got to come from somewhere so we've got a cost center we provide a service and that's what businesses do they provide goods and services so it's a service that the city's provided but we don't have any way of collecting for that so we don't have like two bucks kick in for the fun two bucks…”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:01:52
“Never been a utility. But how long have you been providing the service? More than 10 years? Because we've had these trees for quite a while.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:02:36
“Okay, that's over 12 years ago. Okay, so it's been a long time. And there's just a lot of little holes like that in this city that we have been in the last two years. We've been trying to shore them up, trying to shore up these kinds of things. So yeah, is it comfortable to raise water rates? No, it's not. It's not comfortable to do that. But there are two sides of the town when it comes to where you get your water. One side sunny slope and they're a little bit newer side of town. So it's like the east side of town. The houses are more stucco versus shiplap, right? And they're not gonna need…”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:05:33
“Okay. I know we have a, it was in the documentation, but you have a plan and we're going to pass another audit this coming, what was it? June. And then a year later, we're going to pass another audit. So we're literally doing what we can to catch up. Literally, it's not enough. We haven't passed audits for a bunch of years. So it's going to take a little bit of while for an outside generally accepted accounting firm to go through all of our numbers because You guys don't know exactly what's in the numbers. We clearly don't know exactly what's in the numbers until we have an actual catch up on…”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:07:11
“I just want to verify. Everything that we are discussing right now, all of the numbers, when people are asking us to crunch numbers, It's really not what I believe I'm here to do exactly, do the number crunching. I thought giving direction was mainly the job. But are these documents all publicly available? Are we hiding anything?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:08:14
“And then is there a way on the city's website, like, functional work groups like important work groups like Hollister Police Department can be notified when there are important matters that they might want to attend to or come to because I don't want people that are important to decision making not to have a chance to come up and speak literally you guys I'm not always my mind's not always made up up here when I read all the documentation which I do I'm probably 70% kind of made up. The other 30% is whatever you guys see in here. And that's just ballparking it, right? So is there a way that…”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:09:08
“Okay, so they can just go on our website and sign up for notifications. Okay, cool. So there is a way. There's a way. There's a will. That's the thing that we need is the will to go on the website and figure out when these new meetings are going to be happening. That's all I have.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:28:13
“Yeah, we're going to make it quick. So, man, a lot of people have come up here and said, hey, we don't want you to do it, right? I just told you. I just told you. 30%, right? A lot of people say, don't do it. Don't do 5.1. But I must be getting this all wrong because when I look at this, I look at it as a declaration, right? A declaration saying, we we messed up we have not been running the financial side of the city very well and we need to change course we need a course correct we need to stop gap all these holes start charging for things that we need to start charging for and make some…”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:29:13
“So it makes me wonder if I even know the English language. If you were going to define the word declare, right? That single word, right? We're declaring that we know that we're in a deep hole, right? And we're going to outline some things that we're going to do to get out of it.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:29:51
“I just want to know what we mean. Is it to make a statement?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:30:04
“Okay. Right. So we're just making a statement that we're, we recognize that we're in financial turmoil. Yeah. And these are the things that we're going to do to get out of that. We're going to do because our creditors are going to want answers.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:30:19
“That's all I got. Oh, and the last thing, we've been talking about the bike rally for a long time. We're talking about the financials of the whole thing. We knew it wasn't going to be like a big old money-making enterprise. It really was for the businesses of downtown Ulster. But are we going to get those numbers soon?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:32:23
“I just want transparency. Thank you for that, by the way. No problem. Please help. But that's what we're doing. We're declaring that we know there's a problem and we're declaring the actions that we're going to do to rectify.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:36:57
“Yeah, I got a quick question. Hey, so we got a letter from the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area, and it was from Dennis Martin. man is that for the previous item or for this item it is for this side so uh how did dennis martin know that we had this agenda item on and how is it that like certain work groups of our own don't know that certain things are going down like how did we just get this letter regarding borrowing from impact fees that we get from the building industry, like how would we get this?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:39:25
“Well, I just wanted to assure the public, I mean, in the letter, it's stating, hey, you need to make sure through independent legal review that this has been verified and that has been completed. This literally has gone through legal. Okay, that is my only question. Okay.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:41:46
“So clearly, if we're going to use money for purposes that it was not meant for that, like impact fees, pay for schools and fire and police protection.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:42:05
“So we're reasonably certain that we can pay these funds back.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:53:00
“So the Casey's had a lot of concerns and they want some accountability, right? Everybody in here's here on a Friday night. Can you justify the $18 million? You confident you can pay it back when we get, you know, our revenues. But can we just provide the, can we just disclose the, the, the numbers behind the, the staff report and make it so they can go through it themselves? Can we just disclose everything on the website?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:54:37
“Okay, thanks for that. Sure, no problem. Did we not discuss that we were working on ways to tighten our belts and potentially get back to pre-pandemic levels of spending?”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:55:32
“No, that's all I had. I just want to say, guys like Matthew, thank you, and that's all I had.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026
- Play at 1:55:49
“Well, we don't make payroll if we don't move forward. So if we can satisfy the Casey's with the information that they would want and have the accountability for guys like Matthew, I totally agree. This is not the way to run a city. Borrowing from ourselves is not the way to run it. We can just do everything that is outlined in the previous document on 5.1. I move to adopt.”
City Council · Oct 2, 2026