City - Regular Meeting

the um special uh study session with the city council on Wednesday, April 1st, 2026 at 5:00 pm. Um, and you could see this on Zoom at uh it'll be on the agenda for that. And I'm going to call this meeting to order. Uh, for this special study session and new business will be I'll have um deals with city communication efforts and I'll have Joyce Halby start us off. Start with

uh Mr. Mr. Vice Mayor, did you want to acknowledge Mr. Walking Stick participating remotely? Okay, I notice uh hi Paul. Um Walking Stick, Councilman Walking Stick. Um do you have um I need to let you know that do you have anybody could you unmute yourself there, council? Yeah. Do you have anybody in the room or anything um with you? There is nobody in the room. I only have my wife Christine walking stick at the residence uh obviously over the age of 18 and that's it. But nobody in the room currently.

Okay. Thank you. Um is there any objection from the council? And Mr. Vice Chair, uh could you please confirm that Mr. Walking Stick is participating under the emergency circumstances? Yeah. Uh uh Councilman Walku disposing under the emergency um circumstances under the Brown Act. Uh that is correct. Uh I would like to ask the city attorney if I'm required to uh to make a statement to that effect at this time.

Nope. Just have as I understand it a family emergency and that's sufficient. And then Mr. Vice Mayor, uh technically the council needs to approve the uh remote participation under that uh circumstance. Okay. Uh do we have approval? Um so moved. Second. Okay. All those in favor? I

Okay. Okay. It's been approved. Uh we are missing um Mr. Baduri who is going to be Councilman Baduri is going to be in a little bit later. Um, and the mayor is absent today. So, why don't we go ahead and get started on the city communications uh with Mrs. Helby. Halibby. Miss Helby.

Mr. Mayor Pro Tim, if I could just quickly kind of frame tonight's discussion because uh we uh don't typically do study session meetings. realize these are a little bit new to us but they give us the opportunity to be a little bit more informal providing information to you and for you to have a little bit more informal conversation at times without

the pressure of any decisions. So this the purpose of this session really is informative at the end of the day. Um so as you mentioned the focus of this one is about our city's communications efforts and and particularly um efforts that the council you know encouraged and and and um supported us in about a year ago when um deputy city manager kind of took this on as as her one of her roles. Um so the reason that that we care about a communication program and why we want to promote that within the city is I would say for number one we want to be a trusted source of information. And so we want the public to know where they can get good information and where they can look for that. Um we also want to create more of a greater sense of community and I think the more information and people are included they feel a greater sense of the community. Then um they want we want to have a good avenue when we need it to provide educational resources to the public and to for them to you know again hear from us on those things. We want to keep our residents informed and I think you know um one of the great things we've been doing too is it is an economic development tool. So then the more the more that we put out there about the the great things around our community, the more people are exposed to that. So it's a a very inexpensive way to get to get that message out. And I would say at the end of the day though, one of the reasons that, you know, I know the council supported this last year is we were hearing from residents. They want more information. They want more transparency. So anyway, um, Miss Halabby put a lot into that this last year and, um, she's going to provide you a pretty good overview of all the progress we've made.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Morginson. Good afternoon, uh, Mayor Prom and council members. Um, as Matt mentioned, this is specifically focused on the city's communication efforts over the last year. Essentially, what I'm hoping to do with this presentation is to provide updates on our recent communication efforts, share some key metrics and insights of those efforts, and highlight some areas for continued growth and improvement to come. So, I really want to anchor this conversation in something that's really important, which is why does communication matter? Matt mentioned some really great points, but to elaborate further, we want to ensure that people get timely, clear, and accessible information from the city. Again, really framing us as a trusted source for information. It supports transparency in our process and ours and helps over time build public trust. It increases general awareness of the city programs and services that we do offer and that encourages community participation and engagement. So in my opinion, communication is really a core public service and in order for us to communicate effectively with the various segments of our community, we need to harness a variety of tools and channels to reach them. So a quick overview of the tools that we do use. So we use social media that includes Next Door, Facebook, Instagram. We have an email newsletter that goes out. We have our government website. We harness media or press releases to reach traditional media outlets. We've done public mailers, mailers to addresses. We have our public meetings like tonight, like our regular city council meetings and boards, committees, and commission meetings. And through that, we use things like Zoom and YouTube to get people to view, participate, understand what's going on. And then we have a variety of other community touch points. We go to special events and table, you know, we reach out to partner agencies and work with them to communicate. So each tool that's listed here serves a

very specific purpose and we try and use multiple channels to help reinforce the message, expand our reach, and improve general accessibility to the information. So since May of 2025, we've placed much greater emphasis on our communication efforts. And before I get into what exactly we've changed and what the impact has been, I want to start with where we began. So before May of 2025, we didn't have a dedicated resource for coordinating communication efforts across the city. That led to decentralized efforts across departments, no centralized real strategy, no content calendar or any sort of like performance tracking that we were regularly doing. And as a result, the communication was much more reactive. So, we're posting about an event that's upcoming or construction that's upcoming but less proactive in nature and that resulted in having more limited and inconsistent communication that reduced reach and engagement and again was less proactive. We didn't have opportunities to really educate and engage in that way. So kind of the updated state today may you know May 2025 moving forward we've really placed emphasis on strengthening our communication and so today we have a much more structured and coordinated approach and that includes a dedicated resource to help coordinate those efforts across all of our departments. We have pretty strong cross departmental collaboration. So I work with a representative from each individual department to talk to them about what projects, initiatives, things that they have going on, maybe services that they have that have been not really strongly promoted that we can help promote in an engaging manner. We have a strategic content calendar where we're planning well in advance, like months in advance. We have very consistent scheduling. we're posting on regular cadences and we we've really shifted from just reactive communication um to proactive communication and I'll elaborate that on that further in some subsequent slides here but the communication focus has

really been to educate the community increase transparency raise awareness of the the services and programs that we provide support economic development highlight what makes Pacific Grove such a wonderful place both for visitors and for our residents and improve access to timely information. So, we've used these kind of focus areas to help shape the content that we're producing so that we can share clear, relevant, and useful information. So, this presentation is really going to focus on three of the communication channels that I mentioned. Um, and we're focusing on these three specific ones because this is where we've made the most significant changes and the greatest impact has been achieved. And so, those three focus areas are our social media accounts, our email newsletter, and our website. So, I'm going to jump into social media. So, social media is a really important tool that I think more and more municipalities are using and leveraging to reach the community. And it's important because we're meeting residents where they already are. Everybody's typically on their phone. A lot of them have access to social media channels. So, we're not asking them to change their behavior. We're just going directly to them. Um, we're able to communicate in real time. We're able to provide timely updates and announcements. We're able to expand the reach and increase engagement because inherently social media is social, right? Like you can easily share information with your friends, with your family, and that increases our traction. We're able to support diverse content formats on social media. So, we're not just stuck to text, right? We can share images, videos, all sorts of things. And it enables us to directly interact with the public. So, they can directly comment on our posts. Um, again, share, save, like, go back to the information later. So the section of the presentation that's focused on social media will really focus on Instagram and Facebook. So a little before and after. So before May of 2025, um our posting cadence was pretty infrequent and inconsistent. Some weeks there would be three to five posts.

Other weeks there would be no posts. Um today, so this is after May of 2025, we have posted consistently and regularly four to five times a week every week. So for almost a year now, we've been able to maintain that cadence. In terms of content formats, in the past we were primarily posting traditional post. So that's a static image with a caption. Now we're doing that. There is utility and and great um aspects of doing a traditional post, but we've also been harnessing reels, which are kind of short engaging videos. Um carousels, which are a series of images, right? That helps tell stories. Um, and then the stories feature, which is you're able to kind of reshare the content that you've already posted or reshare partner agency's content is sort of a different channel within the Instagram or Facebook accounts. The content topics have also expanded. So, in the past, we were focused more on time-sensitive updates. So, again, we have a special event or we have construction that's coming really soon and we want to let people know about that. But in our current state, we've been able to expand beyond the time-sensitive updates, which are important, and we still do those, but we've included educational and more proactive content. So, we're talking about like our coastline is more than meets the eye. There's a whole, you know, area of special biological significance and what that means. We're doing emergency preparedness messaging like we are doing a wide array of educational things um for our community and it's much more forward-looking content. Some additional enhancements are that we are like actively utilizing trends. So there are things that are trending and when you tap into that you automatically increase your reach and engagement. Um we have also focused on higher quality images and videos because again social media is inherently like visual in nature. The better quality of your images and your video, the more likely you are to get traction. So I just want to show you some examples of exactly what it is that I'm talking about. Uh these are some screenshots of some of our social media posts. On the

very far left, um this is an example of just some of our monthly recaps. So at the end of the month, we'll post a series of pictures from various departments that we've snapped to highlight the different things that we have going on. Um we this the next two photos here where you see Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Um this is us applying trends. No. So there was a trend going on where they were transposing this picture of their engagement um and showing things that people love. And so we used it to say say I do to being part of the volunteer effort at Perkins Park um and to again really like harness a trend to try and drive a message that relates to city to specifically to the city of Pacific Grove. Same thing with the what's in our bag. So there was a trend where people were taking items out of their purse and saying here are all the things that I keep in my purse every day. So, we did a what's in my bag, but an emergency preparedness edition and really framed it around like what you should have in your go bag in the instance of an emergency. So, again, we're harnessing trends to try and make regular content that maybe might not be as exciting much more approachable and interesting um to our community. We've also just used it to highlight things, you know, that make our community unique. Uh Lover's Point was for the 13th year in a row named the best place to get married in Monterey County, right? Right. And so we want to highlight that. We want to show what makes our town unique. Um and the last two on the right hand side are more geared towards education. So on Valentine's Day, we did a whole post using that song L is for the way you look at me. Oh, if everyone's familiar with that song, I'll stop singing now. But we used that to go through and show the different um things that public works is responsible for maintaining that made the shape of that letter. So we showed you know a tree m meeting the um sidewalk and that made the L. We showed O which is here a manhole. We showed V which was the opening of a recycling bin. So again using trending audio to really drive a message home. Um

in the last we've done a lot of content around the library like the library is so much more than just books. So we've shared content about like did you know that you can check out a telescope and take that on a camping trip with you? Did you know that you have access to like state parks, passes, things like that? So, to really again show the breadth and depth of the services that we provide. Just a few more examples. Um, on the far left hand side of the screen, we did some volunteer recruitment messaging around the hyperaric chambers and that post directly got us some media engagement. So, folks saw that and we had some press reach out just because we offer such a unique service that people aren't always aware. Um, so they did a great story on the fact of that we have a hyperbaric chamber and and all the amazing work that the volunteers do. We've centered content on economic development. So shopping local and coming downtown and going to our different commercial corridors. Again, hopping on some more trends. Um, at the end of the year, people love posting their Spotify wrapped. So for those of you who aren't familiar, Spotify is a music streaming platform. At the end of the year, they tell you what your favorite songs were, what your f favorite artists were, and we use that to show like city accolades. So like the awards that the city has won over the last year and like top achievements that we've earned, how many work orders we've done. So again, really trying to frame the information in a more engaging way. Um, and then we've tried to do creative things like do virtual recreation, so crafts that folks can do with their kids at home with our recreation team. So again, really expanding beyond just we have construction or there's a special event and really doing a breath and depth of um education and content around all the amazing things that the city does. So as we started implementing these changes, we really began to see some meaningful impact. So I'm going to quickly talk about the impact and some metrics here. So the first is that we saw a huge huge increase in views. And before I jump into what that is, views are actually the number of times a content was viewed. So this can include multiple

views by the same person. So if you watched the video five times, that would count as five views. So here I'm comparing on this screen some baseline metrics. So a full quarter of metrics before we made any changes. So that's February through April 2025. In that quarter we had a total of 78,000 views. In the last quarter alone, we've had 1.8 8 million views which is a huge huge increase. Um that is over 20 times an increase in views and in the last three quarters alone we've had over 4 million views. So between May and January so that's a huge huge impact but what does that actually mean? Increasing views means that the city's content is being seen much more frequently probably more frequently than it ever has been. And so that's a huge thing but that is only one metric. So the next me ne next metric we're going to talk about is reach. So reach is the unique individuals who have seen the content. So another ways you can say that is how many people actually saw a post. Again the baseline metrics which were before we made any changes were about 31,000 in a quarter. Today in the last quarter alone we had over half a million. So this is a significant expansion in our audience reach and that growth has been sustained over multiple quarters. So again, what does this actually mean? Right? This means that we're not just increasing the visibility, we're reaching more individual people. And this is both folks within our community and beyond, right? Because when something is shared, it might be shared with somebody who is a distant relative who lives in another area. It might be shared with somebody who lives down the street. Like we have a pretty good range of folks seeing content. The next metric is interactions. interactions represents the total number of actions taken on content. So that's if you liked, shared, comments saved, etc. Um, so again, more than 20fold increase in interactions. If we look at the quarter before we made any changes,

we had about 2,000 interactions. In the last quarter alone, we had almost 50,000 interactions. So this shows us that people aren't just seeing the content, they're actually engaging with it. The last metric on social media that I'll share is our continued audience growth. So today we have 10.7,000 followers on Facebook and 9.2,000 followers on Instagram. On Facebook, this represents a 75% increase in followers since April of 2025. And on Instagram, it's almost 30% of an increase in followers. So again, we're not only reaching more people, we're continuing to grow that audience over time. So, I just want to quickly show, I think this is helpful to kind of tie all the pieces of social media together, some of our top performing content that has been on Facebook over the last year. So, just at a quick glance, you'll see that two of these posts, and I'll kind of explain what's going on here. Two of these posts are related to um like emergency related communications. So the very far post on the left um was related to a media release related to the incident um with the shark attack and same with the center beach closure post in the center here. So you'll see that that first post where we released um a media statement had almost half a million views which is a significant a significant number. The other had just over 280,000. So again, two public safety type messages made our top five content. The next post over where you'll see the butterflies was a real where it said, "Meet me where the monarchs sleep." And it was highlighting overwintering season and kind of what overwintering season traditionally looks like. What's most impressive about this specific post is that over 7,000 people liked it. And my favorite metric is that over 1,500 people shared it with somebody else. So somebody else said, "Wow, look how cool.

Look what's happening in Pacific Grove." Right? And so that's where you see some of that like viral momentum where we're reaching a much broader audience is because if you like something and you share it with somebody else, that message continues to propagate. And that's the power of social media. Um the post that has Lover's Point as a picture was a post about our aquatics program. And so again, that had really great traction. And the last post on our top five trending content based on views was an actual post about us hiring. So, we had several vacancies at the time and we posted um about like this being more than just a job and what a great place this is to work. And that got almost 200,000 views and 116 shares and we had several comments, 45 comments and a lot of them were like, I want to apply tomorrow. So, again, we get some really good traction. I'm going to now swap to the top five performing content on Instagram and you will see some overlap here. There are slightly different audiences. Um, so there are also slightly different content here that kind of was best performing based on views. So again, we had that beach closure public safety notice that performed well. The one adjacent to that is the hiring post that I mentioned that was also a top t top five on Facebook. We have a different post related to the monarchs that made it to the top five on Instagram. And again, you will see that that had 508 shares. So when we post things about the monarchs, people love to share it with other folks. um which is awesome. The difference you'll see here is the last two posts. So we had another public safety message that uh performed really well almost 30,000 views and this was related to the tsunami advisory and I think this is promising because it shows that people are going to the city's page and sharing the city's information when it's a public safety event. Um the last was a post about HGTV naming the city of Pacific Grove one of the best places to visit um in America. And so that's great because that's kind of that economic development tool, right? Like we're promoting ourselves, we're framing

ourselves as a great place to be and a great place to do business. So what drove all this growth and um engagement, it was really just that we consistently posted, which increased our visibility. We co coordinated our messaging and improved clarity. We had more timely and relevant content, which increased engagement. And again, we expanded kind of what we were posting about and that improved access to information through like linked resources. So, we're using Linkree and other technology to point people back to our website to look for more information if they are interested in what they're seeing on social media. And this is just going to be my plug to anybody who sees this to follow us if you're not already at the City of Pacific Grove on Facebook and Instagram. Lastly, I do want to note that I realize that not everybody is on social media. So not everybody in our population or in our community that we are trying to reach has a social media account and that is why we harness variety of different tools and tactics to reach the community. But we have recently placed a social media aggregator to on our website which kind of looks like the screenshots at the bottom. And this highlights all of the activity from our social media challen channels pulling it directly from our Facebook page. And this offers the residents a preview of what's happening on our social media, even if they don't have an account or are regularly using the platform. And so with that, I'm going to switch over to the newsletter, which we lovingly call the city manager report. So this newsletter provides residents with more structured and in-depth updates on programs and services. Um, and this is facilitated through Mailchimp. When I first came on board in this position, we did an analysis and it showed that the twice monthly newsletter had pretty low engagement rates and in looking at the content, it really wasn't always timely and could be better organized. So, we proposed some improvements and I'm going to go over those very quickly. So, before September

of 2025, our cadence was twice a month. The newsletter was sent out the Friday after every council meeting. Um again after we did that analysis we saw that there might not be a need to send it out once a month because not many people were opening it right. So we reduced the cadence to once a month. In terms of formatting um the formatting was previously organized by department. So you would look at information and there would be you know content from public works there would be content from the community development department and I think those that organization is confusing right because we understand how we operate in our individual departments but that's not necessarily understandable to the layman to somebody who doesn't work inside the government um agencies. So we changed the format to be more focused on sections. So again, we reduced our newsletter frequency to avoid oversaturation and improve engagement. And in doing so, we shifted more of our timely updates to social media. And this is where these different channels kind of come into play together. Our newsletter was refined to focus on clearer and more structured and in-depth content. So again, we want to provide value. So we want to give people information that they're looking for. We want to provide them with deep dives on content. And our newsletter previously wasn't doing that. Now we're kind of in a much better position to to do that to provide those more in-depth articles. And then we again transition from that department-based formatting to topic based sections. So now we have sections titled empowering through knowledge where we talk about deep dives on topics of interest. We have opportunities to engage where we highlight the various different avenues whether it's a public meeting or um a survey that we're offering. And then last we have a section called upcoming community events where we highlight community events that are upcoming. And so now the impact of all these changes. So I'm going to quickly highlight um the opens and the clicks. And before I do that, I want to define

those. So opens is the percentage of successfully delivered emails that were actually opened. And clicks is the number of times a recipient interacted with the links or the buttons that are in our email campaigns. So again, the baseline data December through June of 2025 shows that our average opens were only at 13%. So only 13% of the people getting that email to their email inbox were actually engaging with it at all, even opening it. And so again, the thought was if we reduce the cadence, it might feel less spammy, for lack of a better phrase, because think about the number of emails you're getting in your inbox. So the less you're emailing them, the more likely they might be to open it. And what we saw here was that when we reduced that cadence to once a month, so now it's getting sent out the Friday after the last council meeting of the month, that increased to 24%. And the average clicks also increased from 2.9 to 4.9%. So this means that not only are more people actually opening the emails, they're engaging with the information within the email. So they're clicking on our website to get to more information on that topic. And so these are all really good signs and this is meaningful positive impact in our newsletter engagement. Um that's not to say there isn't more opportunity for growth here, but it is meaningful. As it relates to audience growth for our newsletter, our subscriptions have grown to 2,700 and that's a 15% increase in subscribers. So again, not only are we expanding the engagement, but we're also growing the audience base. And we are now taking opportunity to do some cross channel opportunities. So when we post a newsletter, we're now posting that on social media. We're providing links to the latest newsletter and showing people how they can subscribe to get that content delivered directly to them. And so again, my plug here for anybody listening or watching, if you aren't already subscribed, please do so. City of Pacificrove.gov/eotify. And last, I'm going to quickly touch on our website and some improvements we've

made there. So our website is kind of the main official secure digital platform to provide access to and information to the public. Um it's a central source for city information. It provides a really robust um set of information as it relates to resource services departments. It supports self-service access. So you can go to our website at anytime you want and peruse through the data and information available there. So it is a reliable and always available source of information. In May of 2021, the city did a complete website redesign. Um, I looked for photos of the prior website and was unable to find any, but it it is a huge improvement. Um, a huge huge improvement. So, it is not only more visually appealing and user friendly in terms of accessing information, but there are some key features that we've really focused on promoting over the last year. Um, and those include our news and headline section of the website as well as our e notification functionality. I'm going to quickly go through those two things. So, our new homepage has a specific section dedicated to news and headlines. And the focus here has really been on creating content for the news and headline section of the homepage. So, often we have information that does rise to the occasion of posting on the news and headlines section. We may have a new program, we may have a press release, we may have um like an Arbor Day celebration. And you'll see here, those are the things that are currently on our news and headline sections. And we've really been trying to work with the departments to get that information on the news and headlines section so that it is front and center on our website. Websites can often contain a large amount of information. So this specific section helps us k highlight the most important updates. And the cool thing about it is that we can directly notify interested audiences. So that leads me to my next slide which is about e- notification. So our platform allows

folks to register to directly receive either email or text communication if a web page is updated. So they are able to enter their information and they will receive an update um at the time we add new information and we have 989 total e notification subscriptions. So this reflects the number of subscriptions not necessarily the number of unique individuals. So I just want to make that distinction. Um, but again, we've been promoting this because we want to make it easy for people to get to information. And the easiest way to do that is you get a little notification on your phone. You're not having to poke or peruse around. So, since promoting this feature, we've seen a 36% increase in the subscriptions since 2025 to date. So, this does indicate that there have been more people that are becoming aware and are actively using this feature. So, this brings me towards the end of my presentation, which is just really that we've made some notable progress over the last year. Um, but there are continued opportunities for improvement and we're going to continue to charge forward and make improvements. There are some items listed on the screen here. Um, but it is not at all an exhaustive list. So, the things that we can do to improve is that we can harness next door more strategically. Um, we can make further websites enhancements to more clearly point out pages of interest. So maybe having a section related to hot topics um where we can clearly call out pages. Again, further promoting subscriptions to our website and e notifications and newsletters. We can harness things like print media to again drive folks to subscribe for more. Um we can further enhance the collaboration between departments to you know further promote information as well as cross department pages. Uh we can promote signups at key touch points for our websites. Um again at at events um and where we're actually talking to people

face tof face again encouraging them to sign up and pro and um engage with our content. And then we can continue to refine our messaging to be more concise, consistent and audience focused. So there is really strong opportunity to continue building on the momentum that we've gained over the last year and that is our plan. So with that I conclude my presentation. I really appreciate your time.

Thank you. Uh Joyce Helby uh before we uh bring it to the council. Um let's see if anybody's online. Uh Sandra, do you know if anybody's online? We'll do have uh some callers online and we have one hand raised. Uh Ingaloin Sando, thank you Sandra. Uh this uh carefully curated PowerPoint that was just dropped on us by email today. I asked for it last Saturday uh in a letter to the city manager, but it wasn't why was it not posted with the agenda so that the public could really see what was going on rather than just a sound bite. Oh, we're going to talk about communication. Well, if you're trying to be transparent and offer more real information, not just kind of storybook graphics on social media, um why wasn't why wasn't it posted with the agenda? The information from city hall does not seem to be freely offered with the drought dragging it out of staff. And our letters are not published in timely matter. And yes, obviously you've heard me many times say I am on no social media, nor will I be. And as far as the newsletters or uh signing up for them, I have signed up forever. I'm part of that sort of small small section there that you

said subscribes to the newsletter and reads it, clicks on it, I guess. Um, I find that that these graphics are taking away it's it's like a major marketing concern now rather than information. And it's getting to be more like like federal information, similar to the consolidation of real news sources, lacking in diversity on message and content and relentless pushing of marketing message. This is not transparency. This is this is um not truthful information. This is like having less news sources and the same message over and over. Raw rah Pacific Grove, come to our town, spend money, and hey, move up our uh housing prices, too, so that no local could ever live here anymore. Um, unfortunately this whole social media blitz, which I'm sure you're very happy with, I see it as you're coordinating your efforts to propagandize PG information in childish graphics and sound by promotional social media. It It hits me cold. Uh, and the newsletter is not even published in a timely manner as I pointed out in our last city council meeting.

Right now, thank you very much for your comment. Are there any other uh um comments online? Yes, we do have one other hand raised. Uh, Mayor Prom, go ahead. Um, oh, I'm sorry. Her hand. Here we go. Jessica, you have floor. Oh, maybe her hand went down. Sorry about that. Christie Ataliano Thomas, you have the floor.

Thank you. I I came in late to this meeting, but uh just a little bit. I caught I just compliment um you all on the um city manager email. I signed up for it quite some time ago. I really appreciate it. I try to share it on um Next Door. Um although I have great respect for uh Ingga and people that say they don't do social media. I mean that is your choice, but it's kind of like you either move into the 21st century or you don't. And like I say, I I do have tremendous respect, but I don't think it's the city's or anybody's fault that someone chooses not um to do that because obviously it's just like at churches, you know, they used to send out the oldfashioned uh newsletter to everybody. Well, who can afford to to mail that anymore? So, you reach more people. I don't know if it would even be uh costworthy or probably cost prohibitive to print some out to leave at the library for people um that don't do social media or even have email. But again, you know, I don't know what to say to people that are digging in and not um going to be on electronic communication because uh that's how I've learned everything with the city. And then even if you don't want to get this uh or don't have an email to sign up for the very informative city manager letter which recaps, you know, everything from all the meetings, you certainly then have to take some responsibility to get on the city's website to um

educate yourself. But anyway, thank you. Thank you. And is there anybody else? Yes. Uh Jessica Denor.

Yes. I wanted to just say um thank you because I think the communications in terms of the um Instagram, Facebook, they've been excellent. I've been living in PG for 11 years and I've learned more in the last year about the community uh through those communications and the graphics are fantastic. the little videos, it just really brings, I think, the community together. So, I want to really thank you for the work that you've done on that. The only area, you know, I would like to see more communication is on maybe specific projects that may be impacting a neighborhood and understanding when you can be involved in that or give the feedback. So, that's the only area that I haven't really seen a lot about, but I just really appreciate the efforts in this. And I think um the woman who presented, she's just done an excellent job. I've never met you. I wanted to meet you, so I'm really glad that I called into this.

Thank you. No further hands are raised. Okay. Anybody in the U public wishes to speak? Not hearing anybody. Let's reit. Oh, wait. Here we go.

It was already on.

Yeah. Uh, my name is Andy Cuba. I'm a resident. Um I I I guess the only thing I have to say is um you know I I understand we're in their earlier stages of uh improving the product here but having to wait till today to get the pre the charts versus being able to take a look at it over the weekend. Um you know I'm retired. I have time to look at it. Uh it wasn't dropped till somewhere between 2 and 3:00 this afternoon and I've received no notification of that. Uh we keep talking about that we need younger people involved and you know if if they are working today or someone is outgoing picking up their children at the school they would have no knowledge of this and the council can see here uh I was the only one in the audience here. So somehow or other the message did not get out to the public about this meeting. Uh, and then I believe there was like uh 10 participants on Zoom and I think three or four of them were uh staff or um one of our uh council people if I'm counting right. So I mean there may have been only five or six people on Zoom. So somehow or other there's a deficiency in sending out communication and uh if we're going to have transparency we should have u somehow that gets out to the people um and we should be able to look at this having a chart presentation of 35 charts and then being expected to come up here to digest 35 charts as a resident and then come up here and make a comment um you know is not really fair. So, uh, I think, uh, it should have been out last Friday when the agenda came out. And I specifically sent an email on that. And I was told that's not the way we do business here. So, uh, to me that doesn't seem like maybe that needs improvement. The one in that last page there where we say we do improvements and I suggest that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Um, I don't see anybody else in the audience. So, let's bring it back to the council just to be aware that we'll be starting at 6:00 and council member Paduri is uh will be here at 6:00. Yes. Uh, Council Member Raw. Thank you.

I'd like to say thank you to uh Miss Halib for that presentation. You know, it's interesting. I mean, it's, you know, there's water and how do you get the horse to drink the water? It it's, you know, yes, you have to provide the water, but then the horse has to go to the water. And if you, you know, I think every small town and every big town in California runs into the same thing. How do you get information out to people in a timely manner without bombarding them? And then how do you target it to what they're specifically looking for? And I hear some people say, well, you know, I didn't know about this meeting or I didn't know about that plan or I didn't hear about this. And it's like, have you signed up for the city manager newsletter? No. Okay. Do you follow us on Instagram or Facebook? No. Okay. So, it costs 6,500 about $6,500 to send a postcard to every uh to every person. So, somebody had asked about how expensive that was. It's really expensive and the chances that somebody looks at that postcard and doesn't toss it into the recycling probably pretty low. So, you know, I think there is some personal responsibility along this line that you have to want the information, not just expect it. And I think in order to do this cost-effectively, you have to embrace some sort of technology. these days we can't really hire a town crier to go up and down the street screaming from a horse. So I think uh if you look at the engagement and if anybody's ever you know ran surveys you know to say that you've got 5% of the com the community that's opening an email that's incredible in you know out

in the world. Um some people think that success is 2%. So to get to 5%'s unbelievable. Um so I think that over the last year there's been massive improvements. We've seen the results. The one thing that I would like to add in here as our next steps is emergency response. And I think that may be where we're where I'm concerned that we're going to lose some folks. Um, can we use a texting app that people would sign up for so that they can get the first response uh if there is an issue? And then, you know, how do we put together a list of at risk people who are not on social media that are not maybe they don't even have a cell phone that they only have a landline. How do we get information to those folks so that in the event of an emergency they know, oh, um, the road through the Prescidio is open for this particular emergency or if you live in this neighborhood, use this road or whatever that happens to be or, you know, we have 50 people on this emergency list that we know we're going to have to call and contact. And how do we set up a phone tree to do that to make sure that all of our citizens are safe? But when you talk about a social media presence and the information that comes out, I think this is this just highlights we're on the right path and we just have to keep going. Thank you.

I'll go ahead and start and we'll get back to the rest of you here. I just wanted Miss Halibby, that was excellent presentation. Um, I personally learned a lot and I've been here for a while, but uh, uh, excellent presentation and I just had a question if, um, I I missed it. If is it on the site if someone wants Hey, I want my send all the stuff to my email. Is there a button on there that uh, does that? Yes, Mayor Promp that if you go to city of Pacific Grove.govy, /notify you can subscribe to our newsletter, email notifications, and a host of other things.

Right. Thank you. Um, thank you again. Uh, yes. Uh,

thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that because, um, we know I've noticed the increase in communications and I don't even have time to be paying attention that often. So, that means they are getting through and so that's greatly appreciated. I do get the email and the the text ones are actually the ones I see because it's the thing that's always attached to me for work and life. Um but but I think it's great to be able to measure that we are getting the word out more. A and while it's true some of it is more geared maybe to younger population for example because they are more likely to be living their lives in social media. Um, I would say it's it it's the most commonly easy way because even those of us who are really busy, an easy way to check things quickly versus trying to search for something on a website which can be clunky, is often to check the social media. Um, and I think the texts are particularly useful from my perspective. So, yeah, having timely ones of those and I think those are really good points. I've been wanting to find a way for some time to see how do we reach out to the community during emergencies. So I would fully get behind us doing something that finds out how do we reach those people that may not be engaged in the ways that the new form of communication is easily getting to um with timely messages and especially if we do have more of emergencies so we can make sure that everyone in the community is safe. And one thing that kind of stood out is uh so one request I would have is actually having a more centralized place for community events because I still oddly find myself going back and doing a search through the agendas to find the annual calendar events like we're approving tonight. So having that someplace where we can plan ahead, make sure it's in our calendar because sometimes by the time I find out I've already booked something at that time. So, I think that would be really helpful because I have people texting me to say, "When is this?" And then I, you know, go digging. So, I think that would be great. A community calendar for other things that happen in the community. One

example is, for example, the popping season. I'll announce this later, but we have six pups now. So, um, things to let people know, hey, we're in these this season. Great time to be quiet. So, I really appreciate how you said that we have more reach and it's sharing. So, kind of like Se Monteray is trying to get people to enjoy responsibly. I think this is a really good way for us to promote that as well where we can get the word out, have people share it, and have people come who who really appreciate what PG is really unique for and respect PG because it offers these things. So, so I really appreciate kind of being able to see the outcome of those efforts. just like we've kind of known it's going on, but to see just how largely it's been expanding, I think it really gives us an opportunity to get out important messages that benefit the whole community. So, thanks so much.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, yes, council member.

I think my colleagues have covered a lot of ground. Appreciate that. Um, I wanted to point out that while you've done a splendid job of making um the messages and the channels interesting, entertaining, and compelling, you've also added good content. And it's not just jazzy. It's the headlines and news tells you what you need to know. So, uh, the communication strategy is, I think, meaningful and I think that's what keeps people coming back because they got what they wanted. So, thank you. You've done a splendid job. Um, and I look forward to seeing this trend continuing. I think it will. Thank you.

Uh, council member uh walking stick online.

Excellent. Thank you. Hit my uh notes here. Um, first of all, I wanted to uh uh thank everyone for setting up this public meeting in the first place. I think this study session is a fantastic way to engage the public uh solicit feedback early in the decision-making process and uh the the presentation was informative and showed tremendous progress uh within our managed communication channels. Um it was a great job. Thank you very much, Joyce. Um, within the presentation, I was also excited under further actions for uh asking for signups at events. I thought that was a great idea. Um, certain events uh definitely have a lot of uh voters that turn out to them um and a lot of interested parties and we can kind of strategically take advantage of that by making sure that we have active community members signing up for for the information. Um, this is a great first step in community outreach. Um, I actually enjoy the digestible information uh that is that is presented in the the social social media format and it's probably our best avenue for timely information. Uh, a lot of communities uh social media posts are their first go-to for uh uh uh distress and emergency communications. Um, of course there's there's the uh uh uh uh uh uh the phone um uh avenues available as well, but for the detailed information, they always go social media. And um I wanted to ask Joyce and actually the city itself uh to double check that the social media posts actually make it to the news and headlines section of the uh the city website's main page. Right,

Council Member Walking Stick? Not necessarily. Um, they do make it on that social media aggregator page, but specific content is pulled and added to the news and headlines sections depending on kind of if it meets that criteria. Okay, thank you for that clarification. I noticed the ones that always caught my eye were always on that front page, so I thought it was all of them. Thanks for the clarification.

Okay, so uh this is a great where you've made great progress. I think uh for a good next step uh we do need to continue our our efforts for the digitization of the city information. Um, you know, uh, making part of part of good communication is making sure that your information is accessible and the digit digitiza digitization, help me out here, Joe. The digitization of our city information is going to u help tremendously with making sure that we're everything's accessible and uh we're transparent to the public. Um, and communication channels aside, uh, the information needs to be shared in the first place. We've sometimes had uh we've had improvement in that area, but I think it's an area that's still ripe for uh for continued improvement where we're making sure that this information is being shared in the first place and done so in a timely manner. Um I don't think I don't want to misconstrue that as we're doing a bad job, but there's room for improvement for sure and I think we should we should continue on that path. uh addressing the concern that people uh expressed um during this meeting of not hearing about this meeting in uh in time or receiving as much information as they would have liked. I think when we have public outreach meetings and to thank you for doing this, this is fantastic. uh we should probably make a uh habit or a policy of putting it in the uh the manager's report and giving people at least uh uh uh two or three weeks heads up on the fact that a a community meeting is happening. Uh if we can leverage our social media posts to actually uh put the word out there too so that we can get the information disseminated and start getting passed around within the community, I think that would be helpful. But more of these meetings is fantastic. I'm sorry we didn't have a huge showing. I think that would have been great, but uh it's actually a little ironic that it's for

our our communication efforts, but I I think we're in good shape. Let's do next steps with uh uh giving people a little more heads up. Um pushing a little harder on the uh uh community involvement for these community oriented meetings. And that's it. Thank you very much. Uh thank you uh council member walking stick. Yes. Uh what what we're going to do is we're starting a regular meeting at 1,800 I mean uh 6:00 and uh so depending upon how it goes it might be I think we'll start it at 1805 hours uh to give everybody a little bit of break. 1805 hours for the uh city council 605. I'm sorry I'm thinking military. Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. And and to that note, um so I'm guessing that normally the presentations don't get posted with the agenda and that's why it wasn't available yet. Will this presentation be available to the public? Yes, I believe it's already posted to the agenda. Thank you.

Okay. Uh uh Mr. Morgensson, Mr. Mayor Pro Tim, um if I could say two things at the end here. First of all, um I think that what you saw tonight um you know, even I'm not aware of all that Joyce is doing all the time. And that's probably 15 to 20% of her time that she's putting in. She's producing that much. So, thank you, Joyce. That's doing a great job. Um the other two things, you know, yeah, we do strive to always get our presentations and everything posted with the agenda as early as possible. However, you know, if you you'll notice this afternoon that you got two other presentations as well, you know. So, our usual our standard deadline is, you know, by midday on Wednesday because the staff reports are really the content that need to be posted with the agenda. Um, so we do our best to get it out, but obviously there's often lots of other competing priorities. So, um, we we did um though on a study session type of thing because there's no decision and everything, people have time to dissect digest this information. and they can send us any comments that they want based on what they saw tonight. I also think that when it's really detailed like this, sometimes it takes a narrative to go along with it to really understand what you're looking at. Um, the last thing I just want to point out is, you know, from information from what I heard tonight, there was more concerns also about emergency communications and we do have separate processes and plans for that. So perhaps in the next, you know, months coming, we can come back and we should talk a little bit more about that, you know, because we're we're part of the county, we're part of other things. We have an emergency operations plan and there's lots more details and different avenues that we do that. So, I thought I would share that as well. So, but thanks for um participating tonight in this study session. I think it went well.

Excellent. Okay, we're going to at um 6:05 we'll meet back. Recording stopped.

Okay. Can um I'll just record him absent at this time. He dropped um Yeah. would you uh council member Raw, could you text him a few minutes here? I'm promoting him as a panelist and so he should be coming over very shortly. Was that uh Sandra? I'm promoting Council Member Walking Stick. Okay.

Coming up very shortly. We just need an acknowledgement from Councilman Walking Stick about adopting the agenda. Yes, I will be uh attending remotely due to a family emergency. Okay, thank you. Um, Council Mayor Walking Stick. Also, uh, staff, we just reverse it here. Staff announcements first.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor or Mr. Mayor Prom. Um, acting Mr. Mayor, I do have a couple of announcements tonight from SAS perspective. Um, first of all, while a couple people make their way up to the mic, you know, this is getting to be a little bit more normal, I guess, which is a good thing. But I also but I did want to uh recognize a couple of employees as well this this evening who got some nice accommodations this last couple of weeks. You know, one was um Pence Speed who works in our maintenance services department. So, there were some issues with water that happened over the weekend and we got a really nice email from Kevin Phillips, the owner of the Beach House restaurant about how helpful he was and everything. So, I wanted to go ahead and quickly recognize Kent. And there's also been another issue um I guess incident on the peninsula with law enforcement type activities. And we got a nice letter from the chief of police in um the city of Monterey, Dave Hobber, and he just wanted to thank um some of our officers. It was uh Sergeant Paul Nagamini, um Alexander Barnub, um Daniel Marty, Robert Rutleg, and Nathan Cordoba. and they were, I guess, in instrumental in um an Amber Alert and in ensuring the safe recovery of a four-year-old boy recently. So, got a nice letter on that. So, I just wanted to recognize those couple of things. Um, also, really quickly, we have the microphone at our next council meeting, we're going to have another study session like the one we just had, but the next one is going to be a presentation by Monteray 1, and it's going to be considering the Coral Street pump station relocation. So, anybody's interested in that one, um, this is the opportunity to hear directly from Monterey One about the project itself and provide input back to them.

Five o'clock. That would be also at five o'lock. Yes, 5:00. Now, I will turn it over to Miss Alibab. Good afternoon. I just want to quickly highlight two upcoming community events. The first is the annual Perkins Park cleanup, which will be April 11th from 9 to noon. And then the second event that we have upcoming is our annual Arbor Day event. This will be at Esplanade Park Sunday, April 19th from 10:00 am to noon. Thank you. Any more announcements, Mr. Mugginson? No further announcements. Okay, let's go to council announcements. Uh, council member.

Thank you, your honor. Uh this is unfortunately going to be my last meeting. Uh I am going to be leaving city council so that I can take care of family business. Uh this is not a decision that I came to lightly and uh it is it is extremely disappointing. Um, but I trust that uh uh the city council and the mayor will appoint somebody who can devote the time and attention necessary to do a good job uh for the people of Pacific Grove. Um it has been the honor of my life to uh serve the people of Pacific Grove and I'm grateful for that opportunity that you've given me. So, thank you very much and uh let's have a great meeting.

Thank you. Uh, Council Member Walking Stick, uh, appreciate it. You've been super. Um, and, uh, I've always said family comes first. Yes. I, I just wanted to, um, recognize Councilman Walking Stick. I really appreciate your passion for the city council business. Uh, I know whatever decision you made is is is going to be tough for you, but uh, always have appreciated your views. Uh, and I can tell you just based on my experience that uh, you're one of the quickest learners on the council. Uh, really caught up with all of the things really quickly. Appreciate all all that you've provided to us in their short course of time. Looking forward to working with you in the future. Thank you.

Yeah, the same when I got the email last night. I mean, I know what a gut-wrenching decision it must have been for you and just, you know, our thoughts from our family to yours having gone through it. It's not easy and um and family does come first and I don't think you're ever wrong to put your family first. So, uh we wish you all the best and uh send you and the family a big hug. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Yes. Uh Council Member Deg Garfield. Thank you. Just very briefly wanted to thank both Paul and Christine for the contributions they've made to the city of Pacific Grove. We'll miss you both. Yes, Councilman.

Thank you and very much so. Likewise, greatly appreciate the the wonderful contribution you've made and I'm sure you will still be working with us on community activities when the timing is right. So, thank you so much and and on another note also, I would like to just point out that we are officially in popping season. As of this morning, we have six new seal pups for anyone who would like to quietly take a look over at Hopkins Beach. Anything we can do to help, you know, promote people giving them the time to rest and grow um and get the sleep that they need, that would be be great. We have some very pregnant moms looking for a safe place to uh lay down and and have their their pups as well. So, exciting times out there on um our beaches.

Thank you. Anybody else have any other comments? Okay, thank you. Um uh now for general public comment. Uh these are items that are not listed on the uh agenda and um if you wish to speak uh you may come forward and I see Mr. Mo Amar

testing. Good evening city council staff members of the public. My name is Mo Amar. Prior to passing away Mr. Pacific Grove Richard Stillwell wanted to replace the 25 benches at Calonia Park. Sadly, he did not get a chance to do so in time. And it was Chamber President CEO Christy Metsner, who's with us this evening, who stepped up and heard about the project and decided to replace those benches at Calonia Park. I want to thank our public works director, Dan Go, for blessing the project and allowing the chamber to take it on. Thank you, Dan. So Christie wrote a letter to Hwood Rumbumber requesting a donation, thousands of dollars in lumber to replace all these 25 benches. General manager Willie Nelson is his name. He's with us this evening, approved a donation, which again amounted to thousands of dollars of prime redwood. And Mr. Nelson, who's been with Hayward in Pacific Grove for 14 years, is with us this evening. I'd like him just to stand up and be recognized. Thank you very much. And for those of you who may not know, Willie served a full term on the economic development commission of the city of Pacific Grove. Couple things about Hayward Lumber that I came to mind. I recall a celebration 28 years ago where the late Homer Hayward donated the land behind the yard to the city of Pacific Grove. How many people do you know that would donate land uh in this environment? So, thank you the late Homer Hayward. Secondly, I think you all know that Hayward Lumber is the largest top sales tax revenue producer for the city of Pacific Grove. Now, I know that when Home Depot opened up uh 25, 30 years ago, everybody thought Hayward's going to go out of business. Well, guess what? Hayward is

doing better than ever due to the leadership of Willie and his team. So, thank you, Willie. really appreciate your generosity especially to the schools. I have four kids in the school district and all I read is about how much Hayward is donating to all the schools. My hero in this project is retired public works supervisor Rocky Pierro who's with us this evening. Rocky, stand up now. Rocky Rocky heard about the projects and he said, "I got this. I own it. I'm going to get it done." We we just couldn't believe it. We had few people that wanted to volunteer. He said, "No, I'm going to do the job by myself." He picked up the wood, stained the wood, drilled the holes, and installed the new benches, and we're good to go for another 25, 30 years. You know, that's the kind of volunteer spirit that I really appreciate living in town. And I've got all the grandkids running around Calonia Park, and I look at those beautiful, beautiful benches that look brand new without a single cost penny to the city of Pacific Grove. In closing, I wanted to thank Christy, Willie, and Rocky, and have a nice evening.

Thank you. Um, I know I got to meet uh Mr. Willie Nelson. He said he wasn't going to sing tonight. So, um, anyway, so uh, let's see. Do we have anybody else in the audience that items that are uh, you may speak, not on items on the agenda? Hi, good evening members of the city council and residents of Pacific Grove. My name is Bourju Musa. I'm a certified public accountant and I'm here tonight to briefly introduce myself as a candidate for Monterey County Auditor Controller in the upcoming June primary. Over the past 17 years, I have built a career specializing in governmental accounting, auditing, and financial reporting. Before dedicating myself to serving Monterey County, I worked as an external auditor in public accounting firms, focusing specifically on the unique needs of government entities and nonprofit organizations. That foundational experience led me to Monterey County Auditor Controllers Office where I had the privilege of serving first as the chief deputy auditor controller overseeing the general accounting division and until most recently as the assistant auditor controller. I am running for this office because I believe the foundation of a healthy community is transparent, accountable, and fiercely independent financial management. Having lived in this county for 11 years and as a frequent visitor to your beautiful butterfly town, I know how vital it is for local municipalities to have a reliable collaborative partner at the county level. Whether it is ensuring the proper and timely distribution of property taxes or safeguarding the integrity of our county's overall financial health, my goal is to provide rock-solid financial

data so cities like Pacific Grove can continue to thrive. Thank you for your time and your dedication to serving this unique community and the opportunity to introduce myself tonight. I look forward to connecting with many of you in the coming months and hope to earn your support. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Uh is there anybody else in the audience wishes to speak? Thank you. How about online? Uh Sandra. Uh yes, we have one caller online. Uh Daryl Terrell.

Uh good evening, honorable mayor and and members of city council. My name is Daryl Terrell. I'm a proud Marino Valley resident in Riverside County. For the past four years, I've gone before county boards of supervisors and city councils across California advocating for the adoption of a catalytic converter unlawful possession ordinance. Not because it's easy, but because it's necessary. I am speaking to you tonight with the same message. I wish I could be there to say it, but catalytic converter thefts has not gone away. It's still happening. In fact, just last week, I saw a story from KSBW Action News8. A series of catalytic converter thefts in your city that left drivers concerned. In just eight hours, five vehicles, all Toyota Prius were targeted. Five families one morning disrupted. And as police chief day said, you guys remember when these catalytic converters were emerging four to 5 years ago, it seems like we're not past that. And he's right. We are not past this. On October 2025, I went before the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to ask them for the same solutions because from Greenfield to King City to Solidad, communities felt it firsthand. And one night alone, seven catalytic converters were stolen. Seven families one night. And behind each number is a person, a worker, a parent facing repair bills of two to sometimes $3,000 at a time when gas and everyday costs are already too high. That's not just a crime. That's an affordability issue. Now we have laws, but too often they fall short. I have spoken to deputies and they are encountering individuals

with multiple catalytic converters clearly suspicious but they can't act. No identifiable victim. The threshold isn't met. Under state law AB641, someone could be caught with up to eight catalytic converters and face no consequences. And so they walk. But under our local uh ordinances, you don't need identifiable victim. If someone is in possession of a detached catalytic converter, they must show proof of of it's theirs. And unlike state law, they face possibility of jail time. That's the difference. Real consequences. That's how we prevent the next step. And that's how we just respond to not to the last one, but let me be clear. It's not about over policing. It's not about mass incarceration. And it's about accountability, fair, simple, and necessary. So tonight, the question is not whether this problem exists. We know it does. The question is, will we close the gap? And and please consider adopting this ordinance. Thank you.

No further hands are raised. Thank you. Anybody else? Uh is there anybody else online on phone calls? Okay, thank you. Let's go to the um consent agenda. Does um anybody on the council wish to pull any of the consent items? Okay. Does anybody in the public is to pull any consent items? Nobody online to approve the consent items. So second.

Thank you. Um call. Yeah. Thank you. Council member R. I. Council member Garfield. Council members walking stick. I Duri McDonald and Mayor Pamelia. Motion carries 601 with Mayor Smith absson.

Okay. Thank you. Now we go to the um uh regular agenda which is um common action adaption plan Mr. George, the program manager.

Good evening, Mayor Promamilillio and council members. Tonight, I'm pleased to introduce Blue Strike Environmental, who are here to present a review of the final draft of the Pacific Grove Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. This plan has been several years in the making. It originally gained momentum through a recommendation from the Beautifification and Natural Resources Commission and was later elevated by council as a formal goal. Council formed the climate action and adaptation planning committee, bringing together members of both the BNRC and the council. That committee met regularly in Brown Act compliant meetings, engaging with subject matter experts, learning from neighboring jurisdictions that have completed similar plans and carefully considering Pacific Grove's unique priorities. Along the way, they face difficult decisions. How to balance climate action with climate adaptation. how to prioritize between city operations and communitywide efforts and how to address complex challenges in a way that is both feasible and fiscally responsible. The committee along with engaged members of the public played a critical role in shaping the scope of this plan. They helped guide and participate in the RFP process and ultimately select Blue Strike Environmental as the consultant to work with the city to develop the plan that we are reviewing tonight. Importantly, the committee's work was not limited to planning alone. They also advanced immediate actions the city could take, most notably the 2024 decision to opt up our power purchasing to 3C prime and commit to 100% renewable energy for city facilities. The draft plan reflects that same spirit of action and practicality. It builds on the city's past success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and identifies opportunities to accelerate those reductions moving forward. At the same time, it addresses climate adaptation, how we prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change with particular attention to sea level rise

and the realities of being a coastal community. A key focus of the plan is identifying crosscutting strategies that advance both emissions reduction and resilience in a cost-effective way. It also emphasizes leveraging the many plans and guiding documents the city already has in place and strengthening collaboration with regional partners or organizations and the public. All of this has been developed with an understanding of state requirements, emission redu reduction targets, and the fiscal and operational constraints the city faces. Implementation will require ongoing commitment from council, from staff, and from the community. It is also important to acknowledge that the scope and goals in this plan could be more ambitious. Throughout its development, there was a clear understanding of the urgency of climate change and the desire to go further. However, the plan was intentionally crafted with a realistic view of the tools and authorities available to the city as well as the level of funding and resources that can be reasonably expected. In that sense, this plan attempts to find a balance being actionable and implement implementable rather than aspirational without a clear path to delivery. This plan is intended to be a living document. It will not on its own eliminate the city's emissions or fully insulate us from the impacts of climate change, but it does provide a clear framework and practical tools to help Pacific Grove reduce emissions, build resilience, and track our progress over time. With that, I will invite Brennan Jensen of Blue Strike Environmental to come up to the podium and review the development and details of the plan. Also here tonight and available for questions is Kristen Kushman, the CEO of Blue Strike Environmental and an instrumental contributor to this plan. And I'll also be available for questions. So, thank you. And Bren, if you could pause for one second, I'm going to sort out this presentation and make sure I get it on the full screen. One second.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, George. Um, and hello, um, council. My name is Brennan Jensen. I'm the director of engagement and resilience for Blue Strike Environmental. Um, I'm also joined by our CEO and founder and 27-year resident of Pacific Grove here tonight. Um, and it is my sincere honor to be presenting uh this climate action and adaptation plan. Um, let's see. And I think we can probably jump to the next couple slides. There we go. Excellent. Um, I'd like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the city and to the broad community for the collaborative effort that have informed the framework and the strategic approach for this plan. I would especially like to honor and recognize the many community members who provided their very important input uh by responding to the community survey, by attending one of our in-person workshops, by submitting public comment, and for the key guidance and contributions, this shoulder-to-shoulder work that we were able to do with council members, with um the beautifification and natural resource commission, uh with the climate action and adaptation committee, and uh various staff members across departments under the leadership of the environmental program manager George first. So, thank you to all those who participated. Um the purpose of our presentation today is to present the final plan and receive public uh comments and obtain your direction on next steps. Uh staff is re recommending plan approval. Um in the next slide you can see kind of the overall milestones of uh the process. We've been at this for about a year and we are um just approaching the the final plan. Um so I want to highlight some key themes

of this process. Um the CAP builds on prior planning efforts. Um we move to the next slide. Um what what we did is we really looked at your existing planning efforts, your recent plans and policies and successful collaborative regional planning efforts that are already very established and really are a stalworth of our local community. Um so things like the city's membership in region Monteray, 3CE, Amag, Tamzy, and many others. It leverages these established partnerships to elevate the city's impact and effectiveness. The plan includes annual five-year and 10-year targets for key goals and strategies uh to support implementation and progress me measurement over time while minimizing annual expenditures and maximizing total result spreading implementation over time. It establishes key initiatives to fund and implement the existing plans. For instance, calling for timelines and annual funding allocations to accelerate the implementation of your shoreline management plan, which is a really key guiding document that complements this plan um in support of adaptation and resilience objectives. This is an implementationdriven plan that is focused on strategy prioritization and municipal leadership. Um on the next slide you can see the um project approach which utilizes key data analysis and policy established by these recent plans. Things like Amag's 2020 greenhouse gas inventory, the regional hazard hazard mitigation plan, the community wildlife protection plan, and of course the shoreline management plan. It included robust community engagement. Presents a top 10 high impact strategy

list. Provides tier identification priorities and co- benefits. Organizes recommended goal strategies and actions into a strategic roadmap by focus area. And finally, the plan is complemented by an indepth funding and implementation plan that highlights uh likely and available funding sources by focus area. um internal city funding opportunities and a detailed four-year implementation plan to guide the process moving forward. These aspects support the city in leading by example with specific measure implementation and setting up the city to be well positioned when it reviews its first five-year uh plan review and update. Uh this plan is created as a living document. It's supported by a backend internal climate action tracking tool that will help support um as a work plan for your staff to do implementation and can be updated and refined over time as the city makes progress towards those goals or um commits to more aggressive initiatives and timelines over time. The plan is actionable, feasible, and directly responsive to the specific impact and guidance of the city and the community. Um, I want to emphasize uh the communitydriven plan. You can see here some images of some of the community engagement activities that took place. So things like canvasing at far farmers markets. Uh we did uh targeted outreach at um key locations like meals on wheels. Um there was surveys, there were um workshops and and many other opportunities for engagement. So we want to extend our again our gratitude to all the community members who provided your time and your contributions to the process. Um on the next plan I want to talk a little bit about some of the refinements that you see here in the final plan

compared to the the draft plan that was presented recently to the BNRC community um committee. And uh I want to say that we welcome public comment um as part of the engagement process and we acknowledge that several uh comment comment letters have been received. Um we've worked very closely with city staff and the BNRC committee to incorporate specific refinements into this final plan and in response to public comments and the guidance uh from your city. So you can see some of those identified here which include several forecasts which I'll highlight further as well as some specific strategies. So for instance the BNRC committee wanted to see a little bit more spec specificity on wildlife protection um thing enhancements like having an offset for new sidewalks but also making sure that there's an increase in public in porest surfaces. So those are just a couple examples of some of those enhancements. Um okay and then moving um to some of the specificity that's in embedded within this plan here you can see the em emissions data. Um so I want to emphasize that this is both a uh climate action so dealing with emission reduction plan but it's also an an adaptation and resilience plan. So it's dealing with both sides of this equation. So just on the emissions you can see the 2020 um greenhouse gas inventory uh listed here and what we see is that transportation and energy are the two largest emission sources which is very typical for many communities but not typical for many communities is that uh Pacific Grove has already done a really excellent job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector with your participation and your leadership in 3CE Prime and indeed it was one of my great honors of of my career to help establish that agency uh with the work that um Kristen and I did

with Monterey Bay Climate Action Compact. Um so uh what that means is that the energy reductions are already substantially addressed and that also means that the percentage that's associated with transportation appears to be a higher percentage there. Um on the next slide you can see some of the enhancements that are incorporated into the final plan. So, uh, there's a business asusual forecast and an adjusted business asusual forecast. Um, so these were, uh, created during the planning process and reviewed with city staff and they're now incorporated into the final plan. Um, that business as usual essentially shows a flatline because the primary driver uh, for a business as usual forecast is population growth and Pacific Grove is shows almost an almost zero. It's like 33% um, uh, population growth. So it's basically a flatline over time. Um the adjusted business asusual forecast takes into consideration already adopted policy at the state and federal level. So you can see things that are related primarily to transportation and energy policy at the state and federal level that show a slight decline over time. Um and I'll uh share our uh an additional forecast a little later in the presentation. uh here you see the framework that is utilized in the strategic roadmap which comprises the primary components of the plan. So you can see each of the areas where strategies and actions and goals are listed. Um and collectively they represent this intersection between what we call mitigation which is about greenhouse gas reduction and adaptation which is about responding to those changes that are already happening in the climate. and finally resilience which is uplifting and strengthening the overall community as you're tackling both of those things. Um so the plan

includes all kinds of strategies. Um there's actually a total of 172 actions in the plan. So I am um not going to go through every single one of them tonight because I think that's probably not desired. Um but I am going to highlight just a just a small handful. Um, so here you can see the top 10 uh top 10 biggest bang for your buck items here. And these were specifically selected for uh based on their potential for greenhouse gas emission reduction, their ability to contribute to adaptation and resilience community co- benefits and most importantly because they are in the direct purview and control of the city government. Um these actions are generally um also identified as tier one and priority one. They're areas where the city can really lead by example, generate long-term operational savings, support community resilience, and lay a foundation for additional actions that are also embedded within the plan. Uh these actions are de demonstrable, actionable, measurable, and impactful. On the next slide, you can see the the uh new forecast that's incorporated into the final plan. And uh this represents the associated emissions with those top 10 items. And as you can see, represents a very dramatic decline in emissions over time that aligns very nicely with um the state targets um for uh going towards carbon neutrality. Um I'm going to walk through just a a few examples in each of the sections to kind of give you again a sense of what's embedded within the plan. Um rather than going through all of them. So starting with mitigation for energy. Um the first one that we're showing here is related to the dis distributed energy resources

within the city. And this was um one of the most the single most highly recommended strategies uh that came from the community and from city engagement. So while the city already enjoys 100% renewable energy um as uh a member that's enrolled in 3CE Prime and thank you for your leadership on that. Um the installation of these deer systems like micro grid, solar and battery storage support energy independence for the city. Uh they support grid reliability in the face of increasing power out outages that unfortunately are becoming a little more common. Um they reduce long-term energy operational costs and that creates funding that then can be reinvested in other sustainability and climate actions. and um it supports the ability to integrate crosscutting strategies like for instance EV charging. Um this was such a powerful strategy in fact that on the next slide you can see some of the additional analysis that was in incorporated into the plan and donated by our organization to the process. So we looked at six different facilities within the city and did a comprehensive solar sighting analysis. So here you can see the water treatment facility. Um and very excitingly so this uh represents a 21 meg megawatt hour um annual production uh with a performance ratio of 87% and a payback period of just 3.7 years. So those are dollars that right now are being expended by the city that after four years could be invested into new strategies for the city. Um on the transportation and mobility side, here is an example of one of the strategies where the city has set a

specific what's called a ve vehicle miles traveled reduction. That's the VMT. Um so they've set targets for 2030 and for 2045 uh to accelerate the adoption of community uh electric vehicle utilization. There's also additional strategies that are embedded within this transportation and mobility related to things like uh setting a goal for 35 new EV charging stations communitywide. um supporting overall tr uh transit oriented development, increasing active transportation and consideration of a local trolley similar to that offered in the city of Monterey on resource conservation. Again, this is a great collaboration area. So, Pacific Grove has been a member of of regen Monterey for since its inception. um and that really reduces the cost of implementation in this in the area of solid waste. So, we're recommending continuing to um participate in that. Um here's an example of a goal related to creating a zero waste plan and also there's additional elements around uh continuing the SB 1383 implementation around food waste diversion and um edible food recovery. Uh there's also water initiatives within this resource conservation um focus area things like expanded rain gardens, rainwater catchment and low impact design on green community. Um this includes initiatives such as a grant program uh which would include which would increase the capacity of local organizations that are already present in this community doing great environmental work. Uh there's additional uh strategies around supporting uh the continuation and buildout of the green business program.

Um there's also um some key components like one of the top 10 initiatives to ensure regular reporting and integration of the plan um in your annual budget review process. under resilience. Um this focus area includes initiatives um like for instance uh increasing overall tree canopy um the increasing the transition to poorest surfaces within the city and fires safe uh practice promotion. Under adaptation, you can see that there's a focus um on implementation and funding especially for the shoreline management plan. Um, and it names uh several specific strategies and actions to help accelerate that implementation with such projects as the Espanon project which is already underway and many others that are listed within that plan. Um, finally the uh the plan before you also includes a robust monitoring and reporting component. This is guided by an internal planning tool which we call the climate action tracker. Um what you see here on the screen is the um prioritization matrix which was used to rank each strategy uh for their emission reduction potential and other key co- benefits that generated an overall priority score that you see next to each strategy in the strategic roadmap. Um and then uh finally um one of the unique components of this plan is a very indepth and detailed funding plan giving the city uh specific funding resources by focus area. So for instance a whole list for resource uh conservation. Here are all the grants that are available regularly that can support uh the city in accomplishing

those goals. Um there's a chart that identifies different kinds of internal city funding sources. Um here you can see on the screen a screenshot of the detailed four-year annual funding by strategy and also indicators for the amount of staff time that might be um embedded in some of those actions. In closing, we are pleased to have contributed to this implementation centered plan that provides the city with an actionable strategic roadmap to support mitigation, adaptation, and community resilience right here in our local community. Uh we look forward to receiving public comment and your specific guidance here tonight. And again, really thank you for the honor of contributing to this local plan in our community.

Thank you. Uh Mr. first. Did you have anything else? I think just thank you guys every you know your input here is appreciated and thank you to Brennan.

Okay. Thank you. Uh we'll go out before we go to the council, we'll go out to public comment. Uh public comment is now open and we'll take those on u line force. Sandra. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Prom Laura Davis, you have the floor. Thank you. Laura Davis commenting on behalf of Landwatch. Landwatch made comments in early February calling out a deficient plan draft, one that fell far short of what a city should reasonably expect with a $95,000 price tag. In response, the draft was sent back for revision, presumably substantial. The new draft was released just days before this meeting. That means that every member of the city council had limited time to review an almost 200page technical document. That's not enough time to provide a thoughtful review or to make an informed decision. It's also not enough time for the public to provide meaningful feedback. Does Pacific Grove want to engage the public and work together to craft a strong plan or are they trying to get it through as quickly as possible so that they can check the box and move on? We hope the former and we ask that the city council not approve the draft before you tonight and to instead allow the public and city council members more time to review this draft and any subsequent revisions. In terms of specific issues and based on a rushed review, LandWatch remains deeply concerned that the draft plan is not in fact a climate action plan. Unfortunately, on the most fundamental points raised in our February letter, the plan remains largely unresponsive. The updated draft still offers no analysis of the impacts of proposed actions. No individual action item includes a quantified GHD reduction estimate. The policy forecast assumes that full communitywide electrification and EV adoption will be achieved. It

doesn't indicate how much impact each action is expected to make. The city needs to address these and numerous other issues we've raised in our letters before adopting the draft. It needs to hold its consultant accountable by demanding a better draft, one that will hold the city accountable to its climate commitments by including measurable actions tied to specific outcomes. We ask that the city council send the draft back for further revision and that it provide ample opportunity for public review and comment in any subsequent drafts. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other buddy online here? Uh, Senator.

Yes. Uh, Chris Linstrom. Chris Lstrom.

We have anybody else?

We do. Let's go to uh Patrick Neas, please. All right. Good evening. This is Patrick. My name is Patrick Nevice. I live over on Locust. I've had a chance to take a look at the plan to some extent, but uh there are a couple of things that are missing specifically that I think ought to be considered. One is that the uh reduction from greenhouse gas reduction gases rather uh could be reduced by the electrification of homes within Pacific Grove and I don't see a a highlight of that but uh something where some kind of program of development where we could where we could uh have say 30 to 50 homes per year converted using heat pumps and electricity. city. The uh other thing is that the plan doesn't seem to incorporate anything from our uh housing element that's been approved. It's calling indicating that the growth of the city would be very very small and they may be ultimately a case but we do have a plan to grow the city and provide affordable housing and that it's that affordable housing that will reduce vehicle miles traveled uh and also create enough dynamic that it'll make it more worthwhile for uh transit mass transit to serve of our community. And there are a couple of things just uh kind of procedural or something or log logistic. The plan has a lot of pictures in it. It looks like something that, you know, it looks good and I'll put it on my my shelf and there it'll sit. I I

like to see a version where, you know, all the pictures are taken out. The the uh script is smaller. you this thing could be cut down to 45 pages and be more a more useful document and more inexpensively reproduced the uh Okay. Well, I think that's it for now, but thank you for your time and attention and uh good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else online? No. For their hands are raised.

For their hands. Anybody in the uh in-house uh public here wishes to speak? Say anything. Okay. Then we will bring it back to the uh council for discussion. And I'd like to start off. Um I know there's been a lot of uh community engagement on this. Um let's see. Uh in you know, by 2030, just to let you know that there's going to be um 62 to 86% of EVs owned by people. And uh you're starting to see that again uh the civ I see it constantly with X number of cars that are electric without names mentioned. Um, also you know the time and money spent on this project with our staff, it's probably close to now,000 95 to 100,000. I'm um truly believe that we and vetted this already. Um, I'm appro I would approve on this uh adoption for myself to hear the rest of the council. Anybody?

Oh, yeah. I'll go ahead and get uh Mr. Walking Sig. Uh, Council Member Walking. Go ahead.

Thank you, your honor. See um uh well I want to start off by saying this was uh uh I do think this was an excellent job given the uh the constraints uh that were given to them and uh uh I hear the feedback from the community regarding uh not having specific uh uh expectations on on what the implementation of these these different suggestions would have. Um I I think there's some merit to that. There was also uh they did however include their their uh uh uh expected impacts from the solarization plan. So there was some response to uh to that criticism. Um, I've followed this uh uh both as a council member as a as a member of Pacific Grove from uh from the beginning on this and um so pretty well uh familiar with not just what's in the plan but but why it's there um and and to uh to a great degree why some things are not there. Um, you know, I think part of the uh u what people might expect uh wasn't really included in the original scope that was handed off to Blue Strike. Uh they have stayed within the scope that was was given to them. And I think at this point now that Blue Strike has provided the information that was requested, um we're kind of standing on the shoulders of that information that's before us and starting to ask those those next step questions, right? And then we kind of wonder, well, why weren't those next step questions involved in the original report? The answer to that is that uh for the most part uh for the vast most part um it's because we only had initial questions that were asked and they have answered the questions that were put forward. Uh

that being said, I really appreciate the uh the funding plan that was put in there that was not in the original request and uh they went above and beyond to provide uh suggestions on where funding sources might be and to offer their expertise in uh in chasing out those after those those funding sources and grants. Uh there uh this is an aggressive plan. Um and people are right in calling it aspirational, but it fulfills what was asked of Blue Strike. Uh plus a little more. Uh Blue Strike is not a construction contractor. Uh they're not an engineering firm. Uh so for a lot of the the next steps they they just we have other expertise that needs to be um used and and and brought in in order to uh to get some of these next steps figured out. Uh and although the adaptation section aligns with California's climate climate adaptation strategies uh focus on nature-based solutions and helps create self-sufficiency and resilience, it does neglect some larger more difficult decisions again bringing in uh uh different expertise uh regarding retreat and relocating infrastructure and population to fall back positions. Um that's a very big part dealing with the erosion uh uh that we are going to be seeing with climate change. Uh those fallback positions are going to become a real critical part of our long-term view for Pacific Grove. So uh I think fallback needs to be addressed in the form of forward-looking CIPs. Um, I would caution against putting any new facilities or critical infrastructure near the ocean in erosion red zones. Uh, for solariz uh PG, I would suggest to distributed instead of a centralized energy strategy. Um, strategically spread the needed uh real estate around town to make it more invisible, you know, less uh uh uh less

of an less impactful and and more resilient. Um, part of our solar plan should be uh providing uh incentives to homeowners uh for solar home installation to help contribute to our self-sufficiency and resilience. Uh there's of course a lot we can't mandate of the public but anything we can do to encourage the public to kind of come along on that uh I think should be a consideration of ours. Uh next steps uh to take action on this prioritized list. I think the city should implement a plan that includes estimated level of effort, cost, and rough time frame for for accomplishing those uh those uh prioritized tasks. Uh city council would then need to approve the actions and make available some of the suggested internal funding mechanisms. Um and again, the internal funding mechanisms, I think, are a good list of different uh taxes or um um fees that that might be able to help out with this whole process. Um, and then get those actions on the calendar, actually get some uh get get the rubber on the road. Um, I think that pretty much covers everything. So, uh, thank you very much. Again, good job. Uh, thank you to everybody. Um, the the things that are not there are things that I would expect to be answered in the in the next steps, but we should probably get moving on those next steps sooner rather than later. Thank you.

Thank you, uh, Council Member Walking Stick. Uh yes, council member.

Um yeah, and and I appreciate uh Mr. First pointing out that when we started this process, um it was very much meant to be proactive. There was no mandate we had to do this. We recognized as a coastal community in addition to the action adaptation was going to be very important for us. we are surrounded on many sides of our city by the coastline and and so these issues are very real for us. So we definitely had a focus on the actual adaptation for that reason because we knew that that is where we really needed um help and part of the goal was to have them identify where we could tie in existing plans. We did not want to reinvent the wheels that were already invented. We wanted a program that would actually help us take all of those individual pieces and put them together into something comprehensive that we could then actually take action on. So I really appreciate u blue strike following the direction that was given to them. Um I do understand people having some concerns about not having like the measurable goals that people may typically look for in in some of the other climate action plans. But but one of the things I wanted to ask about so we we did have a lot of community projects and I I can really see where that community input was implemented a lot of the adaptation using the naturebased solutions things like that were included in the plan. Um one thing that was talked about in those sessions that wasn't talked about much for in the plan but I'd like to have blue strike talk more about is the tracker. And you did bring it up briefly during the presentation but it wasn't in the document that the public had to review. So our understanding was that some of those metrics that people would be looking for would be found in that tracker and that was actually developed for the city to use going forward where we could look at exactly the things people said seem to be missing in the plan. I believe if I understand

correctly those will be in the tracker where we can say here are actions. Thank you for the 172 there are and for and for really looking at one of the things we asked for. what are the things we can realistically do with the small budget we have and another thing was how can we do it in such a way that the public feels they can be part of it it's really easy to feel like it's beyond our individual control um and so if we don't have that in the tracker that would be something I would like to see us build on ways individual people can do that but um if we could have blue strike maybe talk and tell us a little about what the tracker would do because what I would love to see is something where we could see Okay, based on our available resources, what could we do? And how can we rearrange our priorities to make the most bang for our buck? So, what would give us the best outcomes with certain budgets? And I really love that you provided the funding. That was something else that we asked for and you really delivered on providing grants because that's something it takes a lot of staff time to figure out what kind of grants are there. We where can we find the funding to do what needs to be done. So, I really appreciate you providing those resources where now we have kind of like a guide book and one of them is coming up in October. So, we want to make sure we jump on that one so that we could put that request in in time. But yeah, so I'll I'll stop for a moment if you guys would like to explain the tracker a bit more so the public knows that there is another layer to this and maybe it could be added into the plan to be a little bit more clarified

to respond first and then uh comment and then we'll get back to that. Go ahead. If they want to take a list of questions, I do have a question uh that you can answer while you're answering. The other one is, is there any other city on the peninsula that's adopted a climate plan? Okay. Okay. Mr. uh, Council Member Baduri. Yeah. I actually want to hear about the tracker first u before I phrase my argument because I think uh there are some elements missing here. Maybe I'm I'm off in how I'm reading this. So So perhaps the tracker could help it. Why don't we go?

Okay. Why don't we go with the questions uh of the tracker

Lori McDonald for the uh for the question and indeed so um one of the things that we deliver always with all of our climate action plans and our sustainability plans is what we call the tracker and this is an Excel ba based tool that is tracking all of the goals strategies and actions by focus area and then includes also the build out um that is embedded for instance with that that funding plan. So um it would in it would include key metrics. So how are you measuring this specific strategy? Um what is the metric that is associated with it? What's your baseline? Um what is the cost of implementation and assumptions around that cost? In this case you have a much more comprehensive funding plan. So that all is embedded within the tracker. It also includes things like who are the key departments that are responsible for implementation. So you have sort of your lead folks and um supporting uh entities. You have things like your uh starting and end dates. What is the status? Is it already started? Is it in process? Is it planned? So those things can can be toggled through over time. So you can actually update it as well. So that really becomes your behind the scenes like uh work plan for your staff to guide all of your implementation. So um it's information that's embedded in your plan, but it also has some additional detail and it's in a format that's a little um more user friendly on a staff level when you're doing your implementation from a tracking and implementation standpoint. Yeah, thanks for that description because I I I felt like as I was reading it that the tracker would cover some of the things that the public was asking for that wasn't shown in the plan.

So, what might be helpful is to add a section in the plan that a little bit more clearly details the tracker and what it provides because that way in case of you know staff can change over time, council obviously changes over time. So having that kind of documented somewhere where we know what that is and what's available I think would be helpful. And on a related note, I know we talked about this in um some of the events too where we were giving feedback. And one of the things I still think would be really h helpful and and you did mention that the tracker is more staff facing. What would be really helpful is to have an online resource that we could provide to the community that lets them know here are the things individuals can do that really make a dent in climate action because I think that's the best way to get things and engage and as Joyce presented in our um earlier meeting our special work session um our community engagement is really going up. So I think this is a real opportunity for us to utilize our new community engagement platforms to get people really involved. And if you get it involved with children in the schools, it almost becomes a competition for kids to say, "How can we help, you know, improve the climate?" And I think you can really build and roll on it from there. Um, so I'll leave it at that for now. I I I might have some other things based on what other council members said, but those were the things I really appreciate the work, the listening to the community input because we can see where that was implemented, you know, where we've been through the process. And um thanks very much.

You're welcome. And if I could just make one comment on that. So um I wanted to highlight that there's actually several actions within the embedded plan that talk about that type of of community-f facing engagement. So there's it there is a suggestion to create a web hub where this information is centralized. That would be at the discretion of the city to decide h what level of detail you want to include in those things. But certainly there are things like centralizing available uh resources, incentives, rebates that can support your various objectives from energy efficiency to electric vehicle installation to how do you install a rain barrel in your backyard. So that can that is something that is a recommendation and there's a number of other supportive actions around community education um that are already embedded within that plan and have associated funding metrics and have an implementation time frame and all of those components.

Yes. Yes. And and your question about other peninsula cities. So for instance, to your near nearest neighbor um uh Carmel does have a climate action and adaptation plan. Uh Seaside recently u went through the the process for a climate action plan. Monterey County is going through a process. Um so that yes um several others.

Okay. Yes. Member Yes. Thank you for the additional information and as we go forward I think it behooves us to have metrics on pretty much everything we do. Um so that's not really a a different it's not a separate thing. It's the way we should be doing business. Um I have a very simple question is what does it mean if we say adopt? When we adopt this plan what does that mean? Do we promise to implement everything? Do we say thank you? Now we go forward. What does adopt mean so we know what we're voting on? Who would be best to edge that? Mr. First,

Council Council member Garfield through Mayor Prom. I think your latter summary would better better summarize my my understanding of adopt. I don't think I think the promise to do everything in this plan um would not be feasible. You know, I think a lot of these are recommendations and a lot of them are goals, but to say, hey, we're going to do all of these things in in an immediate time frame is just not practical. And I think we all need to acknowledge that. So, I think it's more of a thank you and this is what, you know, this kind of our guiding document and where we're going to set our priorities and where we're going to, you know, direct resources. But a lot of these are big asks both with time, staff time, community time, council time, and then some of these are huge asks financially. So by adopting this plan, there's no guarantee that all of this will be implemented and it's going to like that's just going to start, you know, climbing that hill.

Okay. Thank you. That's um to to now building on that answer. I still have something to say. Um uh so given that adopt means we hear you, we have this information, this is a good reference for us for going forward and can be a guiding document for things that we might choose to do. In my years in strategic planning, um the recommendation I would have is we pick three. Um you just can't take on all that that this is here. However, circumstances come about uh that we that cause us to make decisions and when a decision is in front of us, this kind of document can guide us very helpfully. It can give us what are our options, what are our um alliances, what who can we reach out to and I think that that it serves it has tremendous value in that way. But when I was reading this, I was trying to figure out what can we do right now with what we write, what we have right now. And so much of this is about transportation. And if you simplify it, it's how do we get people out of their cars just period? And we can do something about that this month. We can have traffic and safety and the recck department work on ebike regulations that make it a safe endeavor for everybody. So, we have more bikes on the road, but they're behaving well. Not like now. Um, we have bike routes. Uh, in San Francisco, there are published routes. The Wiggles. Waggles. Oh, my German daughter-in-law calls them wiggles, so maybe there's a translation difficulty here, but it routes you um a a safe Well, in San Francisco, it's how to do it in the flattest possible way, but we could do

it as the safest possible way and get people from key points. How do you get from um Safeway to Lover's Point in a recognized bike route? Um, we can have racks that are everywhere to lock up your bike so that when people are riding into town, they have a place to put their bike that's safe. Um, we can have pedestrian corridors. Pick a few pedestrian corridors, promote them, make them safe. That's where we focus our sidewalks. Um, it's sort of an addition to safe routes to schools that you mentioned and thank you. Um, but pick how do people go? How do we get them uh out of their cars? Um we have a a ready chamber partner. They are ready to start a recognition program for green businesses and um help them find a protocol that would let let us recognize them. Let the chamber recognize them. I've already talked to uh Christy Mester about it. And our restaurants already are part of organizations that recognize green businesses. So we promote that. Um, and we have BNRC can work on fireproofing the city. Um, can get busy on some of those recommendations, find programs that work and give us good advice about how to do that. Um we can look at our tree ordinance, our landscape plans, all the things to be as um to improve our ability to address the inevitable temperature rise, rainfall decrease, and larger storms um that we're going to have in our environment. ARB can be working on fireresistant materials um that can be uh approved immediately rather than have people have to invent this one house at a time. And planning can be working on um building

permitting for uh solar that makes it slick and easy and that you don't have to pay $670 to get the permit to put a charger in your garage like I did. Um, so it's it's a way to make it easy. Um, and that's stuff we could work on right this minute. So I appreciate what this gives us. Um, I think it should be required reading for everybody. Uh, because it make it opens your eyes and I truly appreciate the work you put in on it. But I do strongly suggest that we need to pick a few and and get to work on it. Um and you've spoken about uh uh the importance of of understanding what our biggest issue facing us in this city is not fireproof materials. It's what's happening in our shoreline. And we need to understand what our goals are in that regard and have a robust conversation in our community about what it means to be looking at this shoreline not just next year but in a decade and in decades to to come. So I say thank you. I think we have some work to do going forward to pick pick our our three and then we can get to work on them in a way that we're well informed. So, thank you D.

Thank you, uh, Mayor Pam. Uh, I I just wanted to hear other council members first, uh, because I don't know whether I was interpreting this a different way or not. So, just wanted to get some at least some feedback there. Um, so when I look at um like plans and adaptation plans, my u I and please correct me if I'm wrong because I know what I know. Uh I don't know what I don't know. So the the way I look at it is it's almost like there's so much GG in the atmosphere. Uh we're trying to bring down GHD. So you almost have a statement here saying statement number one contribute so much GG if we finish statement number one we will reduce GG. I mean it's an if then kind of like kind of clause and and is that part of the tracker? I think that's that's my first question. So there's several like there's 170 plus kind of like items in here. By implementing any of those items, how much is the GG reduction that we are doing within the community?

So, uh what what we did from um a quantification standpoint for each of the measures um is we created the that top 10 priority list and then that has been quantified and represented in the forecast. that's added into the the final plan. Um, under the approved scope that we were given, the scope and budget that we were given, we were not asked to individually quant quantify each individual action.

Okay. All right. So, so that is helpful and I think that's helpful for not only me but for a lot of other folks too is there's so much of a scope that you work with and that scope has resulted in this. So um so with that um I think the tracker kind of becomes like a pivotal point for us to effectively measure what is going on. But I I do uh believe uh consider I mean council member McDonald made a great statement. This is just it's a document and it's not just us as a council. There's going to be several people. This is going on till 2050. So, so it'll be helpful to have those GG kind of like whatever you have tracked that is at least to be part of the document. So, so we know what is going on. Um, and then I I randomly wrote down a quite a few notes. So again, please apologize in advance if this is too much, but uh I I I do think that we're in a if when I look at Pacific Grove, right, like it's it's uh we're we're surrounded with the I mean ocean is there. Uh we're it's it's springtime but feels like summer. So there's heat kind of like uh adding to the mix. So there's wildfire. uh then we're looking at uh the fact that uh water exactly isn't is a very tricky subject here to begin with. So there's a there's drought uh on top of it. Uh there is the the the fact that there there may be fire, there may be smoke can lead to air quality. So what I'm getting at is um there are risks with all of these and and when I holistically look at this document I I didn't exactly capture that a sense and so I I didn't know whether that's that's a section that I need to look into or is it part of the shoreline management plan some of the other plans that that will address some of these. So for example,

if if uh tourists stop like coming because for whatever all of these reasons, what is the economic risk? So is that should that be contained in another plan or is that like a CAP thing? I I I I don't know. So I'm asking a question. Uh so I feel like what you're asking is uh sort of the a calc an economic calculation around what is the opportunity cost of inaction

that um so if the city did nothing what would that what would that cost the city to implement so that is that is an analysis that we're able to do and have done for other communities. It wasn't part of the scope and work for for this project. But what I can say to in a general sense is the cost of in action now is always going to be more expensive than it will be later.

And so um for instance looking at your shoreline management plan, there's a lot of great strategies that are in there. What was missing is an implementation plan and specific funding allocation on an annual basis. So that then became a specific strategy under this plan is to prioritize that on an annual basis. You can't you're not going to do every single one every year or all at once, but you could you could pick one to start with this year and use that. Um, for instance, the Esplanade project that's just underway that could can be a nice pilot project that then can be implemented on additional reaches over time so that you're ekking away at it and minimizing that future cost which will be certainly greater.

Okay. Um, all right. So I I'll I get the get where you're going with that. So So I I'll And then um the I'm just going to highlight some of the other points that I just had here. So please bear with me. Um the um let me see where I can start. So I I I think the um so there's two uh I would say factors for Pacific Grove uh going forward to the future. uh one is the uh the reena numbers. So we have to meet a reena specific quota uh by the year 2031 because we're in the sixth um cycle housing element. Um and that does mean a thousand plus homes. Uh so that's roughly 1500 people at least somewhere in that region. So it's not exactly 0.5 whatever that was. I think it's a little bit more than that. So we need to account for that uh in this plan somehow. I think um the the other factor there is that automatically contributes to um transportation issues with respect to safety etc. Uh and so I I didn't get that from uh in this plan. In addition, as you may know, uh you it looks like you based the based it off of the 2020 vulnerability assessment. Um, and we just have a new hotel here. We're projecting to have another hotel in in place in in the coming few years. How is that impacting this plan? Because we're this plan is effectively an instrument for us to use till 2050, right? So, so how how is that factored in? I I didn't get it from this plan. So, and and maybe that's something that you can tweak towards uh that. Um in addition um I sit

on the TAMC board uh and so some of the things that I hear from them are vision zero plans in Pacific Grove does not have a vision zero plan and the lack of a vision zero plan is is effectively prohibiting us from receiving state grants. uh and so how is how can we use this plan to say that Pacific Grove needs to do something else which allows us to get more grants. So I I again like it may be there I I I may not have read it but I think vision zero plan and and at least in my view vision zero plan and cap kind of go hand in hand because one is talking about safety which is critical when we're talking about folks coming out of their car etc and we don't have the infrastructure for walking then how are you going to take care of all of these guys so so anyway these two somewhat are in alignment I think so uh anyway I'm I'm thinking that if you're tweaking this perhaps adding some verbiage around that will help. Uh and then um I would say the the other thing that I uh just broadly speaking on reena numbers as far as I know I my I uh when we got the reena numbers I was as surprised as everybody that Pacific Grove had an allocation of thousand plus kind of like uh units. We're talking about sea level rise. We're talking about uh the fact that perhaps there should be no development around the coast because of sea level rise. How can we make a case for the next housing element cycle which begins in 2032 to say look, we can't even develop there. Why are you allocating more units for Pacific Grove to develop? So I I don't want it to be 2000 plus next time around. and and I'm I'm sure Amag or whoever it is is having those conversations on the 2032 cycle already.

Can this be used to communicate something to the effect of look, we can only do so much development? Again, I I don't know if all of this needs to be contained in this. I'm just putting thoughts out loud because I I don't know which plan needs to contain it. And if that plan needs to be mentioned or created, I think this is a good opportunity for us to consider it. Um and then um finally I I I had u just when I look at this plan, the first thing I was expecting was and this again may not be in your scope. I'm so sorry. But what I was expecting is uh how much is the community contributing to GHG? How much is the city like meaning municipally we like the city staff the city vehicles how much are they contributing? So if you have an X amount of like percentage from the city versus ex versus the community I think that helps us uh provide information to the community to say look these are the things that you can do as an individual that allows you to decrease GHG versus us doing eczema. any I think a long- winded story to say perhaps there can be some tweaking that can be done to accommodate some of these items. Uh but more more broadly though I think I'm glad that we're at this stage rather than a year ago where we had nothing and I think we should just build upon this to to see what we can do next. So thank you.

Yeah, I'm going to go one more comment and then we're gonna and then I've got a couple of comments and uh B make a motion but go ahead.

Thank you. The reason I asked about the other cities is I still maintain that we are a small community amongst uh other small communities and what we do affects everything else that and vice versa and as an example you know I think people will use public transportation if it's convenient but right now Tamy is cutting routes in Pacific Grove or has cut routes in Pacific of a grove that doesn't support our housing element and we really need the other cities to help us I think through this process. I did want to note that the cinema is not a cinema is not a city-owned property just for the the public out there so that they understand. You know, one of the things when you set up goals, probably one of the most important of the five things is to make it realistic. And I've heard the word aspirational around a lot today and I do agree with that. My concern is the cost handcuffing future councils. So I do appreciate that this is a roadmap and not necessarily a written in stone and a commit and also that you know funding grants like we have a funding grant for the repair of the pier. It's a $750,000 grant but we have to come up with the other $750,000. So even if we have a million dollar grant to get that matching grant, we need to come up with a million dollars out of our budget to do that. Um so although I think this is aspirational, I do think that there are other things that we can do that can help us get down this road and at least start to make gains. And when you look at one city vehicle

that's been electrified or 10 people out of their cars and onto a bike, I think that's a much greater impact. I don't know, but you guys probably can do the math for me, but to me that's a much bigger impact. And so I think by creating a Pacific Grove path or a waggle or a wiggle, whatever you want to call it, you know, we can use some of the wider streets in our town to create this safe path. I don't think we put sherros on forest and hope for the best. I I think that might be a that might be not good at all. But I think with some of the wider streets in town, we could create a safe space to get us from Delmani Park and Forest Hill downtown to the aquarium out to Osamar in a way that, you know, we could help. You know, we're going to need to add bike racks if that's something that the community can help us with. Uh the shop at the high rack to our specifications. I don't know. I mean, it seems like a good community uh a community uh answer. Um so my concern is the cost and I just think with a federal reduction and elimination of funds right now, it really does give me cause for pause when we're talking about how we lay this budget out. But honestly, there are things that we could do and we should have already done them. We had the opportunity to buy an electric police car and it got voted down. There was only one person that voted for it and it's the guy sitting next to me. We had the opportunity to wait 6 months or nine months and get a fire truck that was all electric.

We voted to spend $90,000 or whatever it was on a fully combustible. So, we know what we need to do. We just need to have the will to do it. And you know, I mean, they say, "Oh, well, you know, the the the you you have to charge the police station, the police car." Well, you have to put gas in it. I mean, so it doesn't make any sense. The average police car in Pacific Grove goes 19 miles a day. That means on a 300 mile car, you're only charging every 15 days. So some of those objections were a little soft. And so I think in addition to this, we also need to have the will to, you know, whether it, you know, spend an extra $5,000 to get an electric vehicle, add more charging stations, whatever it is, we know that that's what we need to do. Um, so I just I want to make it, you know, clear that I think we need to be realistic and we need to make sure that as we're going down this road that we don't Mr. Mogensson made a great point to me the other day. You know, his fear is that, you know, we adapt this and then people are disappointed when it doesn't get done or it doesn't get done quickly. And so I think we just need to be realistic about how we're going to implement any of the things that we pick. I do agree with Council Member Garfield that, you know, how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time, right? And so you need to pick and choose what can make the most impact and then uh attack it from there. So those are just a a few of my thoughts. I'll wait to to see where everyone else wants to be. I wouldn't be in favor of spending any more money. Um

I'd like to see us spend the time on the will, but that's that's my thoughts for now. Okay. Um go ahead, finish your comments.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to let other council members kind of bring up what they had before kind of finishing to see if any of the other questions I had um were asked. But um I do agree that um and to me this is what this plan does. It's not about saying we are going to do this plan start to finish. It really was meant to help identify for us what can we do that can make a difference with the resources we have available. And I feel that that's what the top 10 was designed to do. Here are some things you can do that make the most bang for your investment. And some of those investment aren't in dollars, they're in staff time. So it was helpful to kind of see where that was. But then also for the things we want to try to pursue, here are some funding opportunities. For example, the the recommendation to solarize some of our facilities. if that will indeed give us a great ROI in the very near future and save us money starting in a very short time. Knowing that there are funding sources to potentially apply for to promote that I think really gives us some tools for moving forward. So when we started this process it really was about how can we get tools to help us as a city start to make a measurable difference. Um, and so I feel that that's what um has been presented here with the the different options you've given us and the tracker. The one thing I would say um I would support adopting the plan because again it's not meant to be a oneanddone plan. It is a living document. So to me saying yes, we're we're taking what we have here and we're going to continue to build on that. The things that I would recommend that we continue to build on include adding that thing um either in in that document or online where the community can really see where they can make a difference. I really think that has the capacity to make a real difference in people starting to participate and us moving the needle. And then I think also that

um sorry I'm just looking for my notes here. Um I also had the same question that um council member Baduri had about and one of the speakers had about the impacts of increased population on our outcomes. So knowing that we have to build those I think it would be helpful for us to know what impact that would have or if that's expected to be a net zero impact because those buildings would be built with some of the restrictions in place that would make them electrified and therefore lower our greenhouse gases. It may not lower transport or it may if we have more housing maybe than TAMY would or and MST would provide some of the resources that does bring more of that transportation to us. So I think this really gives us some tools to start with. The other thing I'd really like to see is some public education outreach. Um one thing as I was reading it that I thought of, we keep hearing this thing, we have to recycle our food waste. I think most of the public public thinks of it more as an inconvenience, but I think it's another real opportunity to educate people about how we lower greenhouse gases when you recycle your food or you reuse your food giving them to others. So, I think we have some real opportunities here for helping make a difference without much cost. And those are the kinds of things I would update uh recommend. And the other thing is as council creating ordinances for things that our buildings must be and we can do a list based on some of the recommendations you've presented. So um and one caller made one comment that I was also interested in even in trying to because I read my agendas electronically to try and save paper and um some of them you can't highlight because of the the boxes within the PowerPoint presentation. So, it it's nice to kind of have something you can look at in each one and have a layout that is visually interesting to kind of follow the plan, but I think having something in more of a list or Excel format kind of like a little bit different or maybe similar to what the other person said, not necessarily just removing the pictures, but having a way or maybe the tracker is downloadable where that would

give us something where we can see what all those tasks are to kind of I'm a data person and I I kind of use Excel to like kind of get a bigger picture of things. So, um, is that something that would be available to us from the tracker? Can we download that and have it as a resource? It looks like you're nodding. Yes. Okay, great. So, it sounds like some of the tools that people were concerned were missing are actually integrated. And so, the other thing I would advocate for is just adding like a a page or a small section explaining the tracker. And I think that then um it would actually provide a very valuable resource for us to start making the choices and decisions within the city that can actually help us start moving the needle. Thank you. Um I'm I'm going to go ahead and make a motion prior to that. Uh you mentioned MST. We're moving I'm on the board of directors. We're moving towards zero emission buses and we have a couple right now. Um so I wanted to bring that up. Also, I would uh I know this is a um a plan. You've heard comments from the council uh about the plan and uh to me it sounds like it's a I think you mentioned breathing and living document. So I'm going to make a motion to adopt I'll make it first. Adopt city of Pacific Grove climate action and adaption plan.

Yes. So this would stop the process and and give this this to work with adopting this. We've heard from several people, do we go forward? Are there more things to do? We're talking about tweaking or not tweaking. And so it says to me that this particular motion is specific to we stop here, regroup, think what's next, and then decide what we're going to pick and choose and how we're going to go forward. Um but in this options, it does not have an option to go forward add more terms or anything like that. So all we can do tonight is we take this as is or we don't.

Is there room, Mr. Lor? Is there room here for a substitute motion? You could make a substitute motion. Yeah. The the primary motion's not been voted on yet. Can I ask a question? Yeah. So first of all, the recommendation does have an alternative. It says discuss and take other action. So technically we could we could do something else. Um, but I had a question for for Did you have a Yeah, go ahead.

Most of you, I think all of you except for um I just wanted to let you know that as a resident of Pacific Grove, I've already told George, we we are here to support you. If you do adopt it, it it is a living document. We will continue to work with you to to make it what you want it to be at the end of the day. And I just wanted to say that I've enjoyed working on this project and we're not going anywhere. In fact, that was my question to George. So, so thank you for answering

what I wanted. So, in in the spirit of partnership, right? And and everybody's in the same community. We all have the same goals. I think we can adopt the motion as is in in charge. If you can work with uh uh the council to tweak this to our liking, uh then then I think I'm I'm fine with it. Thank you. So, is my first motion you're seconding it? Yeah, I'll second the motion with uh with with the just an add-on saying that the staff work with uh the consultant as needed on a moving forward basis and I'll motion on the first.

Yes. I I still have a concern is that we have not decided on what things we're going to focus on. And so, um I think we need a loop in here to decide what we're going to put our uh our attention. And anytime we realize that we're just going to be having staff time, that's expensive. It means what doesn't get done because they're doing that. So, I think we need to be very judicious about what we want to go forward with. And I don't think we've had that level of discussion uh this evening. Um I'm happy to say yes as is this is a wonderful resource but to go forward I think we need to have a much better much clearer idea of where we want to put our limited resources um going forward. So may may I well how do I

is that a substitute motion? I was mentioning that this has been uh let me ask Mr. First, uh, hasn't this been going on for three or four years now,

Mayor Pro Tim? Yes, this effort to create a formal climate action and adaptation plan has been going on for several years. But I I think that the the lift of taking climate action and addressing climate climate adaptation far precedes that. So, it's not like the city wasn't making movement in that direction before this effort. And it's not what I tried, you know, my earlier comments. We didn't stop making movement in that direction when this planning effort stop started or you know commenced and continued and we're not going to stop or you know we're just going to continue that effort with this as a tool. So I think choosing where we move forward is going to be it's going to fall under the normal procedures of staff discre discretion and council prerogative. So I think council can expect capital improvement projects being proposed that are in line with this and you know it'll be up to the council to allocate that you know the necessary funding and resources to that and um same thing where we might see recommendations coming from various boards and commissions in line with this plan and it's still going to be up to councils you know the council's prerogative to move forward or not or to provide the resources necessary or not.

Thank you. That makes me very much more comfortable. I appreciate that. Okay. You have a comment. Go ahead. Okay. Okay. Well, why don't I Okay. Why don't I go with uh Council Member Walking Stick?

Well, thank you. I was going to say uh this plan, like any plan, is is a guide. Um the way forward is not just going to be like actual implementation is not just going to be a conversation. It's going to be a series of many conversations over the coming years. and uh uh implemented project by project as the city already brought up. Um they're going to have to uh create some capital improvement projects to uh to actually do some implementation. Um and all of that is going to be at the discretion of uh uh what the city council sets as our priorities. But I think as a general guideline, like as just a general north star, uh I think this this plan is good. I think it's adequate for our needs. Um I do not think it's exhaustive of every good idea we're going to have for um uh clim climate adaptation or uh or action. Um nor should it be seen as our exhaustive list even though it's got 170 points to it. Um but I do think it provides what it was meant to a good comprehensive view. Uh a lot of wellressearched uh suggestions. Um, I think when we start looking at what our actual impacts are going to be, I think that's going to be a little bit on a a case- byase basis. Um, yeah, the the I'll leave it at that. I'll leave it just at that. Thank you.

Go ahead.

Thank you so much. And and kind of to follow on that, a perfect segue was I kind of see this as the starting point for conversation as well. So having this tool now gives staff the the kind of guidelines or recommendations that they think they can then come back to council with what those recommendations would be for what should our top things be. So, what I'd like to see is this lead to a future agenda item or even working session like we had earlier today where the public has a chance for input where we are kind of looking at what are the next best steps for us as a city because I think that this now provides us with some of those starting tools and thank you to Blue Strike for kind of living in our community being invested in seeing this happen and being willing to continue to collaborate on this process because I think together we really have the resources to start when we started this process we were trying to figure out what's action what's adaptation why would we want to do either one like like uh Mr. first mentioned, we we found we listened to other communities, what worked for them, what didn't, what would be the best fit for PG. And what we have here really is a culmination of what did we feel would help us as a community start to make those differences. Um, so I think I', like I said, I'd like to see us work on that education and more of what the public can do. And I think we're really on our way to getting there in our future conversations.

Thank. Okay, we've had a first and a second. Mhm. Um, can I have a roll call vote? Yes, sir. Mayor Pomeio, hi. Council member Paduri. Hi, Council Member Walking. Hi, Council Member Ralph. Hi, Council Member McDonald. I, Council Member Garfield, I. Motion carry 601. Mayor Smith absent.

Okay, we're going to go ahead and take a um five minute break. Uh we'll come back at um I would say military time at at five minutes at 5 minutes to 8 we'll start last dial recording stopped.

Um the uh year 26 27 special events calendar reference to Katie Clark, recreation manager in Katie Clark or Dan Go or both. All right. Again, the item before you is item 12B, the fiscal year 2627 special events calendar. Uh, I'll start with a quick overview of the city council policy 900-1 special events. Uh, this policy outlines the process for the application submission, event classification, billing, and approval by city council. Special events calendar runs on a fiscal year cycle. The applications are due by November 30th. They are then reviewed by city staff and then presented to the recreation board in Yuri and then to city council for final approval in February. There is one additional step that is not outlined in this policy and that is the coastal development permit. In March 14th, 2024, planning commission approved a three-year coastal development permit. That permit covers the events that were on the fiscal year 2425 calendar. In February 2025, an amendment was approved to include the events on the fiscal year 2526. And then in March 2026, a new amendment was approved to include the new events for fiscal year 2627. Following this policy, again, the events are also classified as special events or city sponsored events. The special events require exclusive use of city count city property and support from police, fire or public works. Events are built at full cost recovery rates for

city staff support and for facility and equipment use. City sponsored events include traditional events that are primarily hosted by chamber of commerce, the school district or the city. All costs associated with these events include city including city staff and equipment and facility use are waved. The proposed fisc year 2627 special events calendar has 29 events. 22 of them are being recommended for city sponsored and seven are being recommended at full cost recovery. The proposed calendar and the estimated costs have been included in your agenda attachments. On the bottom half of this slide, you'll see the seven events that are being recommended as full cost recovery. The three that are in bold are new events. And then on this slide are the 22 events that are being proposed as city sponsored. The one that is in bold is the new event and the three that are in blue are the ones that are run and organized exclusively by city staff. There are four new applications this year. The first one is the Walk for Epilepsy 2026. This will be hosted by the organization Young Adults with Epilepsy. It would take place on Saturday, September 19th from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. It would take place at Lovers Point Park and on the recreation trail from the Lovers Point area to Burwick Park. It would include participant resources and sponsor tables at Lower Point's Park and then a walk along the recreation trail. The goal would be to provide a safe and accessible family-friendly event that raises awareness about epilepsy and provide resources to participants. City services required for this event would be public works staff to set up parking and to check the park and restrooms. The second event would be the Pacific Grove Home and Garden Show. This would be hosted by Pacific Grove Chamber of Commerce. It would take place on

Saturday, October 10th from 10:00 to 4:00 at Calonia Park. It would include exhibitors for furniture and decor, window treatments, landscaping and outdoor design, flooring and renovation materials, architect and home designers, contractors and special trades. Admission would be free. The city services required would be public works staff to set up parking and to check on the park and restrooms. The third application is the Austin Bantam Society 58th car show. This would be hosted by the Austin Bantam Society. It would take place on Saturday, October 10th from 10:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Juel Park. It would showcase 1930 to 1940s American Austin and Banttom cars and English Austin cars. City services required would be public works staff to monitor the loading in and out of the cars and to check for park the park restrooms and trash. It is noted that this is a late application. It did meet the requirements per city council policy 900-1 for late admissions. It was submitted more than 150 days prior to the event. It does not conflict with the other events on the proced calendar and it will be built as a full cost recovery event. If approved, this if approved, this event would then go to planning commission to obtain the required amendment for the coastal development permit. And then the fourth event would be the Monterey Bay walk and roll cure to cure ALS. This would be hosted by the ALS network. It would also be on Saturday, October 10th from 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. This would be at Lover Lovers Point Park and the recreation trail and the portion from Lover's Point to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It would include a resource fair, entertainment, music, and food at Lovers Point Park and then a walk along the recreation trail. The goal for this one is to provide safe and accessible family-friendly event for the ALS community. All funds raised would support the mission of the ALS network and the city services required would be public works staff to set up parking and then to check on the park and the restrooms.

Okay. Included in your packet tonight is a fisc year 2627 special events calendar as well as the cost estimate chart. This slide provides a summary of those cost estimate figures. The total staffing costs refer to the staffing cost incurred by the city to run all 29 events. This is an estimated cost of $176,136.54. The full cost recovery staff fees refers to the staffing fees that would be collected from the full cost recovery events. This would be for $42,33325. The full cost recovery fees would be the fees that were collected for facility and equipment usage from the full cost recovery events. This is an estimated $31,530.50. The total cost in the bold print there that is going to refer to the amount to be subsidized by the city if all 29 events tonight are approved. A couple of notes on this. All estimates are based on projected hours and resources. The final cost may vary and will reflect the actual hours and resources used during the event. The staff cost estimates are based on the current fully burden rates for fiscal year 2526. the actual cost and billing will be will use the fully burden rates for fiscal year 2627. And then the recommendations before you tonight are one, approve the fiscal year 2627 special events calendar. Two, approve seven proposed events as special events to be built at full cost recovery rates. Three, approve the 22 proposed events as city sponsored events and wave the fees for city staff support and equipment and facility usage. Four, authorize pets in the park for the pet parade per PG Municipal Code 1408030. And five, authorize a serving of alcohol for

Pacific Grove Heritage Society, Sunset Celebration, and the good old days per Pacific Grove Municipal Code 11042. And that concludes the presentation. Thank you. Okay, thank you for the uh presentation. Uh let's go out to the uh public before we bring it back to the uh city council. Thank you, Mayor Prom. I do not see any hands uh raised online for public comment. Okay. Is there anybody in the audit? Oh, we just had one raised. Okay. In Lawrence and Dimemer,

thank you. I'm not against this uh car show. um uh craning uh those onto Jewel Park. I just wanted again more information. Where's the map? What are the hours? What's going on? And why wasn't that in the agenda report? How does it affect the library? I mean, it's not that it's not a good idea. Obviously, economically, Moamar certainly thinks it is. Um, I'm just wondering why there isn't more information in the agenda reports to really inform the public of what is happening. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Um, anybody else uh on line? No, it does not appear Okay. Uh I don't see anybody in anybody in the public. No. Okay. Let's bring it back to the council. Okay.

Okay. So, just to look at sort of helicopter view of this. Um, I wonder if we might want to bring back the actual policy uh just for review because it certainly seems like this is not these do not take place over the entire year. There's a season for all of these events. So, these number of events are are sequestered within a few months of spring and fall. Um, and when we end up with things like Saturday, October 10th, we have Calonia Park and Jewel Park with a lot of people coming in from outside the city and that adds a lot of congestion. Um, and so the question I have is, do we want to look at our policy for adding to the the congestion that our community um, incurs when we have outside groups? What's our strategy for for no, you can't have two events on the same day because it there's no parking. Um, and it adds a lot of frustration. I think these are fine. I think, you know, we go ahead with this, but I think that it would behoove us to take a look at um who we want to um share our coastline with when it inconveniences the other people that are going to be using our coastline. I think you've followed the policy that you have and that's that's great. Appreciate the information. I think there's a lot of information here. Um, but I' I'd like to suggest that we take a look at at this going forward.

Thank you. I I had s kind of a similar thing. I know in years past I think we received the actual applications that had a little bit more detail. Um, so some of them are those same ones we have every year. So those were pretty easy. We're familiar with them. Um, the one thing I wasn't sure of was the Pacific Grove Heart Home and Garden Show. And the reason I'm asking is because I wasn't sure from the policy if city sponsored events are meant to in some way like serve our community or our businesses. So, do you know if that one benefits local businesses? is the idea to serve our local community so they have access to resources and discounts or we didn't have enough information to really kind of understand what that one was.

My council member McDonald understanding was that it was to showcase some of those local vendors and businesses. Great.

Um and then it's specifically outlined in the policy uh that chambers included in the special events that are city sponsored. So that's why we classified it in that place. Okay. Oh, and it looks like Christy may have lowered her hand. And part of the reason I'm asking it too is because there's actually three events on the same day. So, my concern was because we have the Lovers Point, the Calonia Park, and the Jewel Park. um they're slightly removed from each other and I was kind of like trying to envision where would all these people park. But this brings the question of h rather than just letting it be a free-for-all, I feel like we need to have some kind of maybe traffic and parking plan in place because if we adopt this, we are having three in a congested area. It could be people will park and visit all three in the same day. Um though the ALS people may not be interested in the in the um and and they all start at 10 am which is the other thing. So you might be able to some of them go to one and then the other. So the ALS one looks like it'll be a really nice walk from Lovers Point and some booths and stuff. The car one um I did go online and look and it looks like they did do their 50th anniversary one here in PG and it's supported by local business so they do tend to stay local stay in our hotels and things. So, it seems like um that one might not be quite as large. It's not bringing speeding cards. It's bringing tiny old cars that have need historical value. Um and then I wasn't Oh, and it looks like Christy might be able to answer the question about the home and garden show. So, I just wanted to see will the city have a plan in place to kind of help mitigate some of the issues we might see on a day with three events in a pretty close locality.

Okay. Um, thank you. Uh, uh, the president of the chamber, Christy Mesner, has her hand up. Uh, we have her comment. Yes. Hi, Christie. You have the floor. Can you hear me now? Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, council members and, uh, Mayor Pro Tim. I thought I would answer a question to that because I did see those three dates pop up on the same day and I had no idea we are flexible. I could move it out a week. What this is is um I was talking to a lot started with Mugo at Mum's Place and he had done something similar decades ago and it's just to showcase all of our um businesses that have to do with homes and I had no idea but we would have between 25 and 30 vendors that are all Pacific Grove um which is kind of exciting and so it would just be a really easy event in the park. It would only involve public works to dump trash. We wouldn't need road closures, easy in and out for our vendors, but we are flexible to move a week if it works for you to push us out. We are fine with that.

Thanks so much for that clarification. It actually sounds like a good event. We just didn't have that info. So, yeah, thanks for sharing that. That actually does sound like a great way to Yeah, no problem. Thank you. Thank you, Christie. Uh Tina or and then chaps

um I agree with council member Garfield and if we're going to open this up and look at this, you know, I wonder if there's not opportunity for volunteer hours that can help us offset some of these city costs. And if you go to, as an example, if you go to a baseball game at whatever they're calling the park, uh now where the Giants play, um if you go to the park, uh a good chunk of those concession stands are staffed by nonprofits that are working hours to get money donated back in order to put on their events. And I wonder if we can't use that same similar model to encourage some of these groups that want city support and a full city um a full city all-in contribution to, you know, maybe donate some hours in other events like Good Old Days and help us to offset some of those costs, whether it's helping with traffic or trash pickup or whatever that is so that we can use that those hours to offset hours that they're costing. So, I think we may want to look at some of those ideas just to see if there's a way that we can do this uh to, you know, lower some of that impact onto the city staff and also the city budget.

Yeah, thank you. I was just going to I mean, first of all, like the the fact that we're having more events is great. So, I think uh people want to come to town, which is fantastic. we're doing things which is also great. I I just wanted to piggy back off of the comments and I think I I would just be curious to know from staff like in the past have you run into any issues with respect to traffic parking items like those where you have an influx of like folks coming into town and irrespective of the answer I think what the council will appreciate is just some suggestions from you on how we can streamline this moving forward. So I I like for example, there's no events January to April, right? I mean, do we want to have events January to April? First of all, is there a reason why they're not there? I I I bring all of this up to say that like now that we have a hotel right here, people want to have events on weekends and etc, etc. So So something to think of and I I would appreciate any suggestions you have as well as any comments that you have. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Um I think someone mentioned earlier I do know the businesses downtown and around. I I don't very well and they are swamped during any of these holidays and it's great to see that businesses are so busy at that time. Uh including restaurants especially. So, um, I'm Let's see. I'm going to go ahead and make the motion to approve. Uh, let's see. Mr. Lura, should I go ahead and approve one through five? Um, it's up to you as the maker of the motion. You could make a motion to adopt recommendations one through five in one motion. Okay.

Or if you wanted to take them in turn, that's at your discretion. No, I'll go ahead and adopt one through five on on a motion. Second by Could I have a roll call, please? Yes, sir. Mayor Promio, I. Council member Paduri. Council members Garfield, McDonald. Hi. Ralph, I walking stick. Motion carries 601. Mayor Smith absent. Okay, that ends our meeting for this evening. Thank you very much for all that uh participated and have a nice evening.