City - Regular Meeting

okay recording in progress good evening everybody uh my name is joe emilio i'm the mayor pro tem uh mayor uh nick smith is absent tonight not feeling well so um why don't we go ahead and do the pledge of allegiance first uh uh council member raul thank you

Justice for all.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and Uh, do an adoption for the approval of the agenda 1 thing I would like to do is move 13 a, the capital improvement project before artificial intelligence, which is 12 C. So.

Okay, so I hear a 2nd 2nd.

Okay. Thank you. Um. And we're going to be giving a, um. Meredith conduct, uh, award. and the Chief will be up here to do that. Before we get started, I'll go ahead and read this. Tonight, the City Council and Monterey Fire Department are honored to recognize individuals action demonstrated courage, effectiveness, selfishness, and responsibility. And if the Chief would like to go ahead and start.

Can you get the, it's on, it's on now.

Get along now. Testing, okay. Fire Chief, thank you for having me here tonight. So before I kind of go through what happened that day, I kind of want to do a couple of introductions first. So first we have John Woodhouse, who was the surfer in the water that day that received assistance. We have Justin Horrell was the bystander who jumped in and helped. state parks lifeguard joe who's here as well he was a part of the call our medic engine 12 who should be here in a minute they were the first ones on scene to help provide aid and then we also have medic engine 14 who's the engine here in pacific grove that that helped as well So we go, as firefighters, we go through a lot of EMS training. EMTs go about 200 hours. Paramedics go about 1,200 hours. So when you have paramedics, it's kind of like bringing the emergency room to the scene of a call. And thank you to you, we do now a paramedic service in Pacific Grove starting at the beginning of last year. So what's pretty common is that's going to medical emergencies, medical emergencies all the time. Unfortunately, what's becoming more common is going to medical emergencies where people are unconscious, not responsive, no pulse, not breathing. We have had some success with our program in reviving these patients, but unfortunately, a lot of times they don't fully recover. So what's uncommon is that somebody that could be here walk out of the hospital that can tell their story and has survived. It's also really uncommon that a bystander would have such significant impact on a call to lead to the success of someone surviving. So that day, there's a series of a lot of good decisions that were made that helped to help John so he could be here before us today. So what happened that morning was that Justin was walking on the beach, recognized John, John was floating in the water and seemed like there was something that was not right. It was on a Sylmar and he had been surfing. So he asked someone to call 911 and went out, risked his safety safety to go into the water and pull John ashore. So when he pulled John ashore, he realized that he was not breathing and needed help. So he started CPR. So that was, you know, that takes a lot of courage to do that, to do that and start those chain of events. So we began CPR, the person called 911 and the state lifeguards responded. And they made a couple of good decisions too. So what they decided is to go out to the patient and they also left one lifeguard at the beginning of the beach, at Solomar Beach at sunset to bring equipment and people to the call. So I don't know if you need to have CPR training, but the most important thing is just compressions. But you do start to get fatigued and they become less effective. So having another person there is very important to continue that CPR to lead to that chain of success. So Medic Engine 12 was on a call in Pacific. I don't know if they just walked in. They were on a call in Pacific Grove that day. Our engine was training that day, and they noticed the state like parks. I'm a heck of a time of that state lifeguards respond to a call. So what Captain home did he was here today looked at. We have an ipad that tells you what what the call is and saw that there was some need on the beach. There's a medical emergency cpr in progress. The other thing about Isilmar Beach is like half of it is Pacific Grove is a part of it. Part of it is state property. So some of this is our responsibility, some of it is Cal Fire's. So sometimes there's a little bit of confusion in the dispatch. So what they did is they had not been dispatched yet, returned to the engine and responded down to the call. Met with the state lifeguards, went out to the patient and began intervention on the call. Captain Holmes also asked for assistance. That's where our other engine came. Cal Fire eventually showed up and the state lifeguards were there too to provide aid. So when they started to extricate John from the beach, he started to come around, started to get revived. And then he got to the ambulance, went to the hospital, and he made a full recovery, which is great. This is very exciting today. But I think it just shows a really good cooperation from all of our agencies from state parks from us from cal fire from amr but all this couldn't have happened if justin didn't take that first step and take that chance to come out and um to pull him out of the ocean and begin care so that's why we're here today so we want to give him this certificate of accommodation to john hall for his actions that day and to recognize him tonight so i'll call john just into the report

Thank you.

It just goes to show that like when it's time to do something, like you do something and that's all that happens. So it's just great. Thank you. Thank you for this. It's very nice.

If you all stand here, we can stand behind you. Okay. It's easy that way. Oh, yeah. We want the medical miracle.

Absolutely, everybody.

Come on back. Make three steps back.

It's like a concert when you're at the gate. Perfect. fabulous thank you yeah it doesn't always turn out that way you know so congratulations

what um is take a uh two minute two minute break just to let uh the fight upon them and those that were witnesses leave oops yeah it's on so uh uh we'll be back here at okay no worries in uh two minutes okay

That was really cool. Hey, when did we get captions?

Okay, we're back in session.

Recording in progress.

Welcome again. We'll go ahead and do council and staff announcements and maybe we'll do with the staff first. Staff wishes. Any comments, Mr. Mogensen? Oh, Chief. Okay.

Brad is dead. Okay. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Honorable City Council. I just wanted to briefly announce on National Police Week, also known as Police Officer Memorial. As you may know, we celebrated the observance on Monday, May 15th. During that time frame, a flag was flown at how staff and staff members went to social media recognizing the this important um kind of observance for the year so um we have a really nice video and some graphics on there and um included just you know some one-on-one interviews on you know what this day means to some of the personnel over at the police department so if you haven't seen it it's worth a watch on the department facebook this observance was originally established in 1962 by a joint resolution of congress and it was signed into law by john f kennedy During the annual observation, we recognize those federal, state, and local officers that have paid the ultimate sacrifice and, you know, passed in the line of duty. I want to take the opportunity to say publicly to those that have paid the ultimate sacrifice and their families that we honor that legacy and we will not forget those that have come before us. I also want to publicly recognize and thank all the current officers that are serving our communities throughout this nation. And again, just honor that legacy as well. Two of the things that really stand out for me as a chief, and I'll be coming up on 30 years of total service in January, is my trip to the National Peace Officer Memorial in Washington, D.C. I got to take that tour when I was at the FBI National Academy. And I've been back several times to the Peace Officer Memorial in our capital here in Sacramento. And both of those places, for me, really are emotionally impactful and kind of make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. So just kind of wanted to bring attention to National Police Week. And thank you. Thank you.

Are there any other staff announcements, Mr. Mokinson?

No further staff announcements.

Okay, thank you. Does the City Council have any announcements?

Nothing?

Okay. We'll go ahead and move forward. This is the time for a general public comment that is not on the agenda. Is there anybody would like to, in the audience, have public comment? And please come forward.

Honourable council members, staff, I just have a brief comment about the Coral Street pump project, if I may. At the March council meeting, Monterey One Water made a presentation and Mr. Sciuto was kind enough to take questions afterwards. And at about, I think the two hour mark on the recording, he mentioned that he wasn't aware of alternative locations for the electricals building. I think he might have been thinking about the golf course, but he added that he was open to the idea. At the April special study session, Mr. Thompson kindly came along and made a presentation, and he shared some computer generated drawings for the electricals building, but they were at the same location. So I just wanted to say that I'm looking forward to hearing more about possible exploration of other sites. And just to remark that the neighborhood is still quite distressed by the plans that we have seen. Thank you for your attention. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Anybody else in the audience that wishes to make a public comment? Mr.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council members. My name is Andy Kubica. I'm a resident and I'm speaking as a resident. I wanted to share with the Council something I read last week in a local newspaper regarding a well-attended budget workshop. And I'm quoting now the quote, the first The first was the continuation of a budget process unlike any city has seen. The staff came in having done the work of examining every line of spending. Some of those reductions noted by a council member went past muscle, past bone, and into marrow. We added some funding back where it made sense, but encouraged staff to keep their eyes open for savings. This process itself was exactly right, and this change in culture at City Hall is healthy. a standing expectation to look hard at what we spend, where do we get it, and whether we can do better, end quotes. This article goes on, but these opening remarks by Carmel Mayor Dale Byrne are brilliant in assessing the fundamental issues that our city, Pacific Grove, is also facing. To be perfectly blunt, it is the city budget and the increasing deficit in our city and expenses greater than revenue. My urgent request is that the City Council do what Pacific Grove residents expect. Look at the proposed budget and ask questions of the staff. Solicit staff recommendations regarding savings and make the hard, often not popular choices to be fiscally responsible. Two weeks ago, I attended a community outreach presentation by our city manager, Matt Mogenson, our assistant city manager, Joyce Halaby, and our administrative services director, Fred Marsh. It was greatly appreciated and very informative, this outreach. However, there was no actual data, no timeline for the greater promise city hall efficiencies. I know you can do better for our city. And I know that budget is a very important item and is total responsibility of the council. So please do better. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anybody else in the audience that wishes to speak? Okay, is there anybody online, Sandra?

Hi, yes, Mayor. There appears to be a couple of hands raised.

Okay, go ahead.

My initials KL, you have the floor.

Good evening council the last time the cannabis lottery issue was discussed a council member noted that whoever had written the ordinance should have anticipated excuse me that.

So is there any other comment that's not on the agenda? This is going to be on the agenda in the future.

Sure. I just wanted to go over the history of Measure N to begin with, to kind of go over kind of the history. But speaking of measures and self-dealing, I'll then speak on Measure C if we need to speak to that issue later on. And there's Measure C, where the council first tried voting for their own compensation increases. A voter referendum gathered enough signatures to require a vote on compensation from the voters. The council then created a new measure which maxed out the possible increase in compensation. There was really no requirement for this current June special election at a cost of $63,000 for the taxpayers of Pacific Grove that chose the least possible voter turnout in opposition. To quote come former council member paul walking stick if we're going to make this districting work if we don't pass this in june then we don't have a motivating factor to push people to throw their hats in the ring to run for a city council in the fall there's already current currently seven applicants for the empty seat with two days left to apply it seems like there's motivation enough for people to want to join the council Later on tonight, I hope that we go over going back to 2000, how the cannabis ordinance got drafted up, but I guess that'll be for later. Members of the council who appear remotely from places like Chicago noted that even filling that empty seat would be counterproductive to point, a temporary member at this point, but I hope the decisions that are made tonight are based on constituents' input rather than simply consolidating further political power.

Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else online? Sandra?

Yes, we have two more hands raised. Dave Sunday? Dave Sunday?

Sandra, you unmuted me. Try Dave Sunday.

Okay, I'm back. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, very good. My name is Dave Sunday. My residence is 92819. I have a kind of a simple request. I'm requesting that the consent agenda item number 9B, which is a request to... Issue a supporting letter for a certain assembly bill be removed from the consent agenda so that is true of the appropriate time for this request would be at the introduction of the consent agenda.

So, if you don't second, I'm not going to go out to public. Thank you very much command the next person online.

Yes, England.

Thank you, Sandra. I want to back up Andy Kubica's thoughts there because it's truly, truly imperative. The Pacific Grove just doesn't keep its spending going without really good data and consideration. And I'm talking about they should start looking at themselves. And I'm looking up there at the dais tonight. which is pretty thin, I got to tell you. I mean, we've got a council that voted to drop four meetings a year, and then we've got a chronically remote council member who seems to be working. You know, he's got a full-time job and yet wants still 135% pay raise. Something is seriously wrong here. Folks, this is Pacific Grove. We're a small town. We volunteer. What is wrong with this picture? Look at yourself in the mirror and think about it, please. Thank you.

Any more people online, Sandra?

No further hands.

Okay. Let's go with the consent agenda where I have a motion. First of all, let's go out to the public on the consent agenda. Is there anybody wish to pull any items on the consent agenda?

We do have Mr. Lee back online. Okay.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you for your consideration. I'm requesting that item agenda item number nine B in the consent agenda be removed for some additional discussion. I sent an email to the. City of Pacific Grove City Council this morning, which offers a different perspective than the agenda report that is in your packets. And I just wanted to make sure that you all had an opportunity to review that and was here to answer any questions that you may have prior to voting on that particular item. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Is anybody else online that wishes to pull an agenda item?

yes sir we have uh one more mike gibbs yes i'd like to pull 9c please thank you okay um is there anybody else online no sir

Okay, thank you so. we'll move to my suggested is we move to approve the consent calendar with nine B and nine C following the regular starting the regular agenda and starting with those. Do I have a motion to do that? Okay, thank you. Do I have a second? You don't have a second then it fails. So no there's no consent item then Mister Lorca.

If there's no motion to adopt the consent agenda then the consent agenda is not approved okay a second okay ordered what happened cake.

Second all those and well first of all let's do a roll call Sandra.

Thank you mayor pro tem. Council member round.

Councilmember Garfield.

Councilmember McDonnell.

Aye.

Mayor Potem Emilio. Aye. I've got Chaps. Councilmember Paduri is raising his hand.

Okay.

Let me bring him into the meeting now before we go further. Councilmember Paduri. Aye. Council Member Paduri, would you like to vote on the consent or shall we skip that vote for now?

I just want to know if we're voting yes on the consent agenda or no. Okay.

Yes.

If it's a yes, then yes to the consent agenda.

Thank you. All right. Motion carries.

Okay, thank you so. We're going to do is go to. First. That called in for nine. Dave Sunday was it.

Yes, Dave Sunday would you like to speak further on the. Item that was pulled.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I sent an email this morning to all of the council members that articulated a different perspective than that which was presented in the agenda report with regards to this specific AB 1942. And I just request that the council members and Mayor Pro Tem take the opportunity to read that email before they make a decision on this assembly bill, recognizing that while it may not be a huge impact overall on the bill, I believe that Pacific Grove has an opportunity here to be a leader in how to deal with this problem of these electric motorcycles and And full disclosure, I'm a retired peace officer. I am a e-bike rider. And so I do have a dog in the fight, if you will. And not an e-bike motor, not an e-motorcycle rider, but an e-bike. There's a differentiation. And I think that the email that I sent covers all that. I don't need to read it to you. I believe you can all read and take the opportunity to make a decision based on another perspective. Thank you.

Are there any other comments online on this particular item?

I do not see any other hands raised.

Thank you. Chief Doe, did you want to go ahead and make a presentation on this?

I'll keep a brief good evening, your pro tem and honorable city council, really the recommendation before you this evening is to consider approving issuance of a letter of support for a, B, 942. this would essentially cover the registration and license plate issuance for bikes. So the background is in your agenda report. The brass tax here is AB 1942-62 establish a statewide registration and licensing framework for certain e-bikes currently representing meaningful step toward improving accountability and standardization. And currently the proposed legislation was identifying type 2 and type 3 e-bikes. A registration system has the potential to support enforcement efforts, and I've talked at length in front of this Council and in other forums about some of the difficulties and challenges that are involved in literally identifying types of equipment as related to e-bikes for the officers that are out on patrol. Also, from a local government and public safety perspective, a comprehensive and clearly defined regulatory structure is critical. Expanding the program to include all eBike classifications would promote consistency. The city also recognizes the importance of balancing regulations with accessibility you like serve as an important mobility option for new residents, including those who rely on them as an affordable alternative to other means of transportation.

So currently.

This. PROPOSED LETTER OF SUPPORT IS SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN CIRCULATED THROUGH OUR MUNICIPAL PARTNERS IN THE LEAGUE OF CALIFORNIA CITIES. SO REALLY THE AMENDMENTS THAT ARE OUTLINED IN THE LETTER THAT'S ALSO ATTACHED TO THE AGENDA REPORT SPECIFICALLY DEAL WITH THREE AREAS. THE FIRST BEING APPLICATION OF THE PROGRAM TO ALL EBITE CLASSIFICATIONS INSTEAD OF JUST THE as the proposed legislation stands now, type two, type three. So the recommendation would be for the people to essentially be all-inclusive to all equipment. Number two, to establish a clear and reasonable cap on registration fees, recognizing the importance of that mobility opportunity to some of our residents, not only in Suffolk Grove, but throughout our many municipalities throughout the state. and three require readily identifiable visible markers by classification that concludes my my staff report agenda report and uh i welcome any questions if you have them thank you chief i i know uh which way about several months ago i was at a subcommittee for this league of california cities and uh any bikes was a was an issue and i'm glad that

We're here to support it, but I will bring it back to the council. Any comments?

I do.

Yes. Council Member Rao.

I'd like to thank the caller for pulling the item so that we could talk this through. and i i understand the desire to have it be a pacific grove enforcement issue the challenge we have is that our path runs into monterey and it also runs into the state parks and there is no consistency for the laws the regulations All of that, and I think it's desperately needed. If you have been to these council meetings over the last 6, 8 months, there have been a lot of public comment about. People driving their bikes too fast on the on the. Pathway and that it's unsafe and I think this will be 1 tool to help us. Get to that consistency that will help us get to. and it shouldn't just all be on the local jurisdictions with our, you know, with our infrastructure running into Monterey and into the state parks. I think a total, you know, a state law is the one way to fix this. So I'll be voting yes and I'm ready to make a motion when you are.

Okay, go ahead.

thank you mayor uh and um yeah and and this is a thing that's come up a lot and and i appreciate kind of the arguments on both side i know that um we've had a lot of complaints being somebody who's on the trail a lot we have a lot of challenges with enforcement this is one tool that the state is already looking at doing and we're actually supporting a letter that would try and impose a cap on the registration fee. So this is us trying to support that we do keep the costs affordable. And I think another important thing to point out is this actually did come from a multi-disciplinary working group. So they actually included law enforcement, public works professionals, city officials, and that's where the original policies came from. And so what we're doing is supporting the Cal cities element of that, that is looking to ensure the three things that Chief Day talked about. that it really provides a mechanism that does enable them to better enforce. It's hard when somebody reports a speeding e-bike, as I've learned, for them to identify, first of all, is it violating any regulations? Because it is hard to tell the difference. And so it does create a structure which actually helps them enforce for us, while at the same time, also making sure that we get our voice heard, that we want to keep the expenses low to make it an affordable option. for people who are using e-bikes for transportation. So thank you.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Garfield.

Thank you. I fully support my fellow council members' points of view. It's very well vetted. It's been researched very thoroughly. I think that the provisions in here for the exceptions to amendment will give our police a better handle on who's doing what. And when you ask require them to be registered, it gives us an opportunity to educate and make sure that all riders are aware of the rules and laws. We've seen a very worrisome trend in kids riding e-bikes in a very dangerous way. And so whatever we can do to kind of get a grip on that is really necessary. To council member rouse point. We have all sorts of people coming into our city, our visitors, people coming into Mont from Monterey, people who just simply just brand new got about an e bike and don't know what the rules are. These all give us tools that will help make this a safer proposition. And the cap on registration fees would be very helpful for those who wrote in and let us know that they were concerned about the costs of registration. So I also support this wholeheartedly. I appreciate people's points of view, but we can't do this by ourselves, our little old selves. This is something that needs to be done well at the state level.

Council Member Roth?

I would like to go to the staff or the chief's recommendation to approve issuing a letter of support for AB 1942. Can we have a roll call?

Yes. Council Member Rao? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Emilio? Aye. Council Member Garfield? Aye.

Council Member McDonald?

Aye.

And Council Member Paduri?

Aye.

Motion carries 5-0-1, Mayor Smith absent.

Now we'll take up 9C. I think Mr. Gibbs brought this up and I see Mr. Gibbs' hands raised. Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Gibbs.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. Probably not to be a surprise, but I'm in favor of a letter in opposition to this bill. I think if I'm not mistaken, it has already passed the assembly and our assembly representative, Don, has voted for it. So one of my questions is, did the city staff or anybody on the council uh communicate with dawn addis about her opposition the city's opposition to increasing uh certain aspects of the pension system which would modify the pension reform act of 2013 the bottom line is this is going to cost pretty much every city in the state of california more money which of course we don't have. Most of the cities now have a structural deficit. We can't afford to change the formula, which over 15 to 20 years will add $8 billion in cost to the taxpayers of the state of California or of the cities in the state of California. I believe that now the bill is in front of the committee, the Senate Committee, of which our representative is John Laird, and I think he's predisposed to voting and supporting this AB 1283, which is detrimental to Pacific Grove and not a good thing. So I'm glad that you're taking this action i would like to see the vote but i'm just curious why it has taken this long it's i think was first introduced at the end of last year and it seems a little late to the game to be showing our opposition at this point nonetheless here we are and i hope everybody's in favor of the letter opposing this very costly bill thank you very much

Thank you. Mr. Baduri, you were out and about. It's pretty self-explanatory, but do you have anything to add?

MR. No, I think it does. Just wanted to at least mention that this does require a few more committees to pass through, including appropriations, from what I understand, before it actually finally passes. And I think this is an appropriate moment for us to convey whatever opposition we have.

Yeah.

Okay. Good. Mr. Paduri. Okay. Councilman Paduri. Thank you very much. Back to the council. Yes. Council member.

Thank you. Council member Paduri for letting us know where we are in the process. I think we're all in agreement that we need a, to absolutely work against this particular bill, it would not do our city any good at all. And it wouldn't do any city any good. I can understand why people want to vote for it, but I firmly support our opposition to it.

Is there anybody else on the council that we should speak? Yes.

I agree with council member Garfield and you know, we've talked a little bit about the numbers with at least I have with Mr. Mogensen and it would be devastating and I know that nobody in the state legislature wants to vote against you know. employees that are working as hard as they do, but the reality is that this would cripple the city into a budget shortfall that we just could never recover from. So I'm in favor of this letter, and I would be willing to make a motion that we approve the formal position to oppose this Assembly Bill 1383.

Okay, is that a motion? Yes. Okay, I'll second that. Let's do a roll call. Go ahead.

Mayor Pro Tem, Emilio. Council Member Rao. Aye. Council Member Baduri.

Aye.

Council Member McDonald. Aye. And Council Member Garfield. Aye. Motion carries 5-0-1. Mayor Smith-Adson. Aye.

Okay, thank you very much. Now we'll go to the agenda. Mr. Larkin, am I correct that wants to speak on anything on the agenda or as we move through the agenda? As you call each other and got from the no worries okay, thank you. So the 1st agenda item is an ordinance mending the salary classification school job. And Stephanie is going to speak.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. So good evening, Mayor Pro Temp, members of the Council staff and members of the public. Staff is bringing forward an ordinance to establish a new job classification for an information technology analyst within the city's salary schedule. Historically, the city's IT support functions have been provided by a management analyst. While that job classification has served multiple departments across the organization, it has broadened scope and does not specifically reflect the technical nature of modern information technology work. following resignation in the it unit staff evaluated the city's current classification structure and identified an opportunity to better align the position with the specialized responsibilities now required to support city operations Today, the city's IT functions include responsibilities such as systems administration, cybersecurity, network management, and support for enterprise applications. These duties require technical expertise that is not adequately captured within the existing management analyst job classification. Staff believes this new classification represents a strategic investment in the city's operational infrastructure and long-term workforce sustainability. Staff recommends that the council approve the ordinance establishing the information technology analyst classification. That concludes my staff report. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Let's go out to the public. Is there anybody who wants to speak on this? not saying none is everybody on line let's see hands raised no hands raised okay let's go back to the council yes uh well i mean uh you guys keep moving around yeah okay

Okay, so the first question when you look at your reorganizing a department is to say, should we outsource or should we insource? And so I had a conversation with Mr. Mogelson, thank you for filling me in, that the outsourcing has been tried. We're insourcing. And that this has become, as Stephanie said, a more complex issue. set of responsibilities than was previously covered in the position that had been held. So it's a particularly good opportunity to align the tasks that are required with the skill sets that are needed to meet them. So I support this. I think it's good to always analyze every position to see if we've got the right skill set fit with the job. And I think if we talk about AI, we talk about cyber security, we talk about things. This is way more complicated than it was even five years ago. So I'm glad we're taking another look at it. And I support this.

Council Member Rowe.

Thank you. I do and I'd like to just recognize Mister Muggins and real quick. Because if you look at the financial impact we did go out and find the savings that we need to make the difference for this. And incorporated into the fiscal year 2627. So I think it's important for everyone to realize that as we do these things, we are in the background looking for cost savings to help offset something that may cost us more in the annual budget. So I'd like to say thank you for doing that. And with that, I'm prepared to make a motion.

I would just say the same thing everybody else said. I really appreciate the staff going through assessing the real need here before we fill a position, finding out what is the best way to best serve our community. So I'm also in support.

Council Member Rowe. To the salary classification schedule to add information technology classification and direct the summary of the proposed ordinance be published as approved by the city attorney.

Thank you. Council members Garfield, McDonald, Paduri.

Motion carries 5-0-1, Mayor Smith absent.

Thank you. Let's go on to 11B, through the downtown business district. Yes, this is Ratty.

for the business improvement district program for the fiscal year 2627. I'll later refer to it as the BID. There has been no majority protest written for the annual district assessment, and there's been no changes to the boundaries this year. Through the adoption of the resolution tonight, it's recommended that city council approves the Chamber of Commerce annual report, levy the annual assessment, approve the program for the upcoming fiscal year, which includes annual expense budget of $31,000, appoint an advisory board and authorize the city manager to execute an agreement with the Chamber of Commerce, allowing the city to administer the BID budget. To cover the cost of cities collecting the fees and administrating the BID program, the city is proposing retaining a fee equal to 1% of the assessment amount collected. All the above-mentioned documents are published in the council meeting packet. As stated in Resolution 07.42, all specific points of the compliance have been met. That concludes my report.

Okay, thank you for your report. Is there anybody in the public, in the audience that wishes to speak? Not hearing anything. Sandy, Sandra?

No calling online.

Okay, good enough. Let's bring it back to the council. Anybody? I'll go ahead and make a motion. Did you have something to say? Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Thanks. I was actually just going to make a comment that it was, I really enjoyed reading this item because a lot of times we're not really sure what's going on in the business. So it was really interesting to read the letter from the chamber, finding out where we're at with the local businesses. So I appreciate you bringing this. I know it's a requirement to bring it forward each year, but I found it very informative. So thank you.

Okay. I'll go ahead and make a motion. Mr. Lorca, can I go through motions 1, 2, 3, and 1, 2, and 3? Or do I have to say each one?

You may take them as a group to make a motion to adopt each of the recommended actions.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and make an adoption to 1, 2, and 3, the recommended actions.

Second.

Okay. Can I have a roll call, Captain Boat?

Yes, thank you mayor pro tem Emilio I. And remember around. Council members for during. I felt I mcdonnell I motion carries 5, 0, 1, with mayor smith absent.

You better up next.

Thank you this public hearing is being held for the hospitality improvement district program for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven also referred to as the. There has been no majority written protest to the proposed annual district assessment and no changes in the boundaries are recommended. Through the adoption of the resolution tonight, it is recommended that City Council approve the Chamber of Commerce's annual report, levy an annual assessment, approve the program for upcoming fiscal year, which includes an annual expense budget of $309,000. appoint an HID advisory board and authorize the city manager to execute an agreement with the city of Pacific Grove's Chamber of Commerce, allowing the city to administer the HID budget. To cover the city's cost of fee collections and administration, the city is proposing retaining a fee equal to 1% of the assessment amount collected. All above mentioned documents are published in this council meetings packet. And as stated in resolution number 07.044, all specific points of compliance have been met. That concludes my report.

Thank you for your report. Let's go out to the public. Anybody wishes to make any comments?

No hands raised.

And how about no hands raised on the line? Okay. Let's move back to the council for a vote or a motion. Oh, a question here? Yeah. Go ahead, Council Member Morrell.

Thank you. This question is going to be for Mr. Mogenson. The visitor center, we're paying approximately $145,000 a year. Is that mainly rent and lights and...

She's telling me that it includes all of the utilities, property tax, so it's triple net, so it's everything is included in that cost.

Okay.

She's here. Actually, if you want to ask, we're going to need to ask moving forward is, is this 145,000 dollars is the juice worth the squeeze? I do know that the HID in general has been speaking about this lately, and I believe that their lease is up in a year. So they are talking about different options and thinking about that.

That would certainly go a long way to help us with bathrooms downtown and additional trash pickups and some other things we'd really like to do. So I think a cost analysis of whether or not we're getting value for that expenditure would be appropriate.

Is there any other questions on the council? Yes, sir. Council Member Garfield.

So I think this is actually this discussion right here is an example of a very effective partnership. And I think it's important to remember that the chamber, the HID, the BID, the city work real well together. And there are things we iron out together and things that we may disagree about. But I think it's a very effective partnership for the benefit of the city and the citizens of Pacific Grove.

Okay, thank you. No other questions. Why don't we have a motion on this?

Motion to approve items 1, 2, and 3.

Second that. Can we have a roll call vote, Sandra?

Yes, sir. Councilmember Rao? Aye. Mayor Partem Emilio? And Councilmember Spiduri? Aye.

I can't remember mcdonnell I can't remember garfield I motion carries 5, 0, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2

Staff has prepared the master fee schedule for the 2026-27 fiscal year for your review as required by chapter 6.02 of the municipal code. The City Council adopts fees, charges, and the Cost Recovery Policy 400-4 serves as a guide for the City Council's establishment of fees for services, fines, and other charges for services to help ensure consistency in fee-setting rationale. The city staff is recommending an increase to the current fee schedule were applicable by 2.7%, which is derived from the Bureau of Labor statistic application using consumer price index for the San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose area. The period ending December 31st, 2025. Looking at the master fee schedule document, in the first column, you have your current fees, followed by the new proposed fees. Changes other than those receiving the 2.7% increase are highlighted in the fee schedule document and noted in the staff report. But I have a few key points to go through. Land and property sales or rentals are not limited to the cost recovery principles. They can be sold or listed at the market rates. State and government agency fees that appear in the fee schedule are set by that agency and may not change annually. To help address the City Council's goals of recovering at least 30% of costs, staff is proposing a 5% fee increase for all fees and charges for Community Development Department and the Recreation Department. This will allow the departments to make continued progress towards this goal and move towards achieving a goal of 80 to 100% cost recovery as stated in the City's cost recovery policy. The cemetery is facing a revenue deficit due to the reduction of plots that are available in ground burials and the cost of water to maintain the cemetery grounds. Staff is proposing a 10% rate increase for all fees and charges to assist in funding cemetery operations and expenses. With this continuing scale of rate increase increases carried into the fiscal year, 2027, 28 and 2028, 29 is estimated that the city will reach its long term goal of having a hundred percent cost recovery for the cemetery and community development departments, the recreation department to have a 30% cost recovery for providing services to the community. Lastly, we have the parking meters. The proposed rate increase is 25 cents per hour. This will bring the new rate up to $2.25, and that will mirror the City of Monterey's parking meter rates. Staff anticipates the recommended fee additions and adjustments to correspond with the cost of providing services for the new fiscal year. This concludes my report, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Ms. Freddie. Let's go out to the public in the audience. Is there anybody out here that wish to speak? Seeing none, how about online?

We have one caller online. We have three callers online. Mike Gibbs, do you have the floor?

Thank you, Council, and thank you for the presentation. I just would like to focus on one aspect of the fees. The cost of reserving a room, for example, at the Pacific Grove Community Center compared to other AVAILABLE SPACE IN OTHER CITIES, MARINA OR SEASIDE. SO JUST TO PREFACE THIS COMMENT IS THAT THE PRICE IS USUALLY BASED ON QUALITY OF THE SERVICE AND AVAILABILITY AND OTHER FACTORS. AND IF THE PRICE IS HIGHER AND THE QUALITY REMAINS THE SAME, IT BECOMES A LESS ATTRACTIVE SERVICE. LET ME JUST GIVE YOU AN EXAMPLE. A member of a couple of groups, and one of them, the chair of the group, is in seaside, and we've been looking for a room, and he reserved a room at the Otemeyer Center. Everybody's familiar with this. It's a very high class center in seaside, and the cost of the room It's $37 an hour for and there's no minimum except for one hour. And that's for the cost of a resident cost for a resident in the city. Pacific Grove for the room, the main room at the community center is three and a half times what competing spaces in other cities like the Odomite Center done a survey of other centers. And so the result is actually to drive by raising the fee even more beyond basically the high cost that we have here at the community center is to drive more people out for meeting to other cities and use their facilities instead of ours. And I think it's a big mistake. It sends the wrong message. Just as an example, we have a number of guilds, craft guilds that used to meet in the City of Pacific Grove Quilt and other kinds of craft guilds. Many of them now meet in Marina or Seaside to avoid the high cost in Pacific Grove. So we're driving our really talented, talented people to meet in other cities, they should be meeting here. So I'm pretty sure it's all baked in, but I would seriously ask you to think about what we're doing with the fee, particularly for a meeting space for public groups when they can go some other place much more affordably. We should be lowering the practice to Pacific Grove and keep them here. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else online?

We have two more callers online. Inga, I'm sorry, Chris Lindstrom?

Do you hear me?

Yes.

No, I have two items on the fee schedule that bring me concern. One is an animal keeping permit. of $390. And I was told, I had a letter from a former city manager saying you could keep two chickens. And the city said, no, it's $390 a chicken. Secondly, and chickens in this day and age provide environmental sustainability locally, garden fertilizer, recycling, food scraps, availability of protein and eggs and the health benefits. And everyone should be doing that and having their victory garden these days. So this prices them out of any realm of possibility. Second is the CPR and first aid fees, a first aid class of $111. I can remember the time I would go get one free from the fire department when I was at Berkeley and the Red Cross holds them and we're already paying for the fire department. So I think it's a great benefit to have everyone familiar with first aid that you gave an award tonight, someone who was doing CPR. That should be, everybody should be trained in that and it shouldn't be cost prohibitive. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Anybody else online? Yes.

Thank you, Sandra. Council, we seem to be pricing residents out of Pacific Grove. And I have one specific question and problem with this fee schedule is that I saw no change Even though I have heard six or seven presentations by Fred Marsh and Joyce Hallaby and Matt Mogenson about how the city is lowering and negotiating our fees and stuff, and especially the $70,000 negotiated in credit card fees so the city is paying less. And I asked Mr. Marsh point blank one presentation. on this subject. And I said, are you going to be lowering the fees that Pacific Grove charges for credit card transactions to residents? Because I will take a check into City Hall for anything that I need. I will not pay credit card fees online or otherwise on that. And Mr. Marsh informed me that, oh yes, they would be then looking at the fees. Well, I certainly, in this fee schedule tonight, see no change for the better. So if all the city has done is somehow managed a better negotiation of fees to the tune of $70,000, which they are saying is their tightening of the belt, where does it translate in? to taxpayers here. I feel like we are being double taxed on all these things. We are not getting service from our city. They are trying to charge us more for it, as well as everybody else. Hello, this is not how you live within your means or be sustainable. And it certainly does not build goodwill to your voters and your residents. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Is there anybody else online?

No further hands.

Okay, let's move back to the council. Let's go first. Go ahead.

Thank you. So probably the best place to start is the questions brought up by the citizens. So one was rental and increasing the rental costs. Can you explain why? So my understanding and but I may not be accurate, I want to verify is is the cost related to the cost of having staff available there and maintenance of facility, so that we can better understand be more transparent for why the cost is being raised and what that provides.

it it kind of relates a couple different things it does definitely relate to that and we also typically look at you know the market rates you know as well as what's being charged so um if council remembers we brought the study back to council i think like two years ago basically so at that time they kind of worked with recreation to kind of determine what was appropriate for rentals so kind of what we're doing tonight on most of the fees is just doing cost of living adjustment in essence um what i'm envisioning is probably within another year or so We'll probably have another fee consultant come out and do another full analysis of our fees. And we can really reevaluate that time, see if that for that specific fee, if it makes sense. But for this year, it's just a cost of living adjustment.

Okay, because I recall us talking, and I'm not sure if it was this counselor, the prior one about trying to bring down fees to some of our facilities. So residents could use them more. And so that might be driving some of some of the questions as well. And if we are indeed more than some of our surrounding communities facilities, it might be good to kind of find out what the market value is elsewhere and and

um thank you councilmember now take us back maybe i think this was a year and a half ago when we did our larger fee study update and we did actually lower a number of our facilities at that time because we were trying to get people to use to taco hall more often and i believe a couple of our others um but it really is i think to build on freddie was saying it really is hard to do apples to apples when it comes to cities because you know we'll just say the example of the obermeyer center that could be one that they staff every day all the time So for somebody to use a room, there's really no added costs other than the electricity and cleaning. For us, we might have to have a staff member who's not currently on shift come and work that. So it would cost us differently.

And one thing I wanted to add to just looking at that specific fee, it looks like a lot of the fee is actually for a security deposit. And obviously, if there's no damage or anything like that, that's returned. So that's really the significant portion of what's charged. The actual fee itself is, it looks like it's proposed to be like about 215. So, but I just wanted to kind of call that out as well too.

Yeah. Thanks very much for that. Cause I think that's really helpful for the public and council to better understand what went into that determination. Cause it's not always really obvious when we're just looking at a list of fees. And then the other one mentioned was the credit card fees. And it would be helpful maybe to understand a bit more about that and

yeah let me explain a little bit about the credit card fees so the bulk of that 70 000 actually relates to our meters you know basically right now and as council knows um we're going to be bringing back to council shortly agreement with a proposed agreement with park mobile we can't change anything right now with our current credit card providers um you know until that takes place because that'll kind of be restructuring you know basically how we're collecting and how it's assessed So that's why I mean the one of the colors was you know, talking about that we can't really do anything at this time. It definitely doesn't mean in the future, you know, once it's implemented that we can definitely we look at that fee in particular, but the bulk of it does relate to the parking meters we really don't collect a lot of credit card fees on other types of transactions so.

And I'm assuming whatever that fee is, is probably what the city is charged.

That's exactly it. In fact, we evaluate, typically we evaluate basically every year to see, kind of to make sure it's in line with what we're actually being charged.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Okay, I'm going to make a comment real quick. This is for the City of Pacific Grove, and it's best for the City of Pacific Grove. And a lot of these fees are going to go into effect 27-28, except the present increase. And I am for this, but Councilmember Rao. I keep saying Rao.

Hey, William. So... I appreciate the care that went into evaluating all of this. I have a couple of questions that I'd like to understand better. So cemeteries. As you alluded to, they're filling up. And so we don't have... And my understanding in trends is that fewer people are burying bodies and more likely to be cremated.

Right.

So there's some trends as well that are changing the available market.

And that's an excellent point you're bringing up because there's different types of burial services that we offer. And basically... the more expensive ones are the ones that we're not we're doing less of and more of the cremations which are a lot less in cost and obviously generate less revenue for the cemetery fund so just to give everybody understanding the cemetery fund was designed as an enterprise fund so that it would be self-supporting and not having to rely upon support from the general fund so we're trying to basically um we do have a separate endowment fund that we could draw upon in the future we'd rather not do that and focus strictly on the operations fund of the cemetery so in the two-year budget that was um you know, adopted by council earlier, you know, this year, it did show the deficits. And so that's something I talked about with staff saying, we want to start, I mean, obviously we could have proposed like a 50% increase or whatever, you know, to just tackle the deficit directly head on. We didn't think that was a, you know, realistic approach so we thought let's do a more phased approach you know of you know moderately increasing those fees for the next couple years with kind of like what lori was saying the goal of getting back to 100 within a few years so that we still have sufficient reserves in the fund for you know whatever maintenance needs come up in the future

It does sound like the cemetery fund or the cemetery's profitability or breaking even is going to be a continuing problem that we all need to be aware of and be watchful about.

It absolutely is. I know I've had, you know, regular discussions with the city manager, you know, on this same thing. You know, we have to kind of, and there's other cities out there, you know, that have had similar issues with their cemetery that ultimately had to go to their general fund, you know, kind of providing some maintenance for it. So we're trying to forestall that as long as we can.

So I appreciate that my second concern is about the recreation fees, and so we have a. they're aggregated so much that we don't know which programs are paying for themselves, which ones are meeting our expectations and which ones are falling way behind. So what I'd really like to see coming forward is a more program by program understanding of our recreation programs. So we know when some programs are more expensive for us than others and then decide what we want to do about that. We want to have an effort to get more kids into a program so it does meet the request to have a 30%. Or do we want to change that 30% to say we'd really like to see 40%? But I am concerned that raising things 5% isn't going to change much if we have programs that are under-enrolled.

Yeah, and I want to just elaborate on that a little bit in a couple different areas. So kind of took a similar approach to, in fact, we took a similar approach to all three, recreation, community development, and recreation. We did not want to hit, you know, just all in one increase. We didn't think that was, you know, fair or reasonable. So we basically purposely took a phased approach in all three. I kind of worked a lot with the city manager and the public works director on this. And in talking both with the public works director and our recreation manager as well too, they felt 5% was a reasonable amount of an increase, a little bit more than the cost of living adjustment. But the good thing is we're still very comparable with our surrounding cities as far as the rates that we charge. There's a few things we're going to look at for going forward, basically. One of the things is kind of like what you're saying, do more of a deep dive in those areas and look at the specific programs. it is going to definitely take some work to do that though because we really have to figure out okay staffing for each of the individual programs what is involved with that what's the facility cost that you know should be allocated to the programs the other thing too um in talking with the public works director earlier today as well too they're going to make a more conservative effort um this next year to do more of a public outreach to our residents to really you know encourage more participation in these programs so that's the thing they basically said they want to kind of do one more year of kind of doing outreach to see if they can kind of really, you know, increase the participation level before we make a final determination on what, if any, programs we're going to look to eliminate in the future. And again, like what you were talking about earlier, a better cost recovery ratio for each of the programs so we can make, you know, good informed decisions.

Yeah, I truly appreciate that you're paying attention to do we have programs that are successes and do we have programs that are failures? And we need to be sure we understand which is which. So I appreciate you taking the time and this will be a pivotal year. We'll look forward to hearing back on that. Thank you.

Council Member Dewey.

Thank you. I just wanted to just piggyback on some of the comments and I wanted to say that I It looks like it'll be helpful for the council to get some metrics behind the essentially the fee raises. So, for example, how many days of the year is the community hall like vacant, for instance, or or the recreation? How many enrollees do we have year over year? I think that'll present a better picture to the to the council to make these decisions moving forward. I WASN'T EXPECTED TO SAY THIS, BUT WE PROBABLY NEED TO TRACK SOME METRICS RELATED TO THE CEMETERY TOO, SO JUST TO MAKE SURE WE'RE DOING THE RIGHT THING MOVING FORWARD. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER BADOURI, IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE? ANYBODY LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION?

I move that we approve a resolution, a resolution adopting the city's fiscal year twenty, twenty, six twenty semester fee schedule, including the annual consumer price index adjustment and other changes as we direct.

Okay, thank you. Council member Rob second.

Please yes, council member. Councilman Rao. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Emilio. Aye. Council Member McDonnell. Aye. Council Member Paduri.

Aye.

Motion carries 5-0-1.

Okay, our next item, excuse me. Reservation for Coastal Development. at 69 Mermode Avenue. Mr. Biggs. Thank you very much Mayor Patel, Emilio. I have members of city council. I have Garrett McCowan, who is the planner on this project that is going to be presenting it to the city council this evening. So Mr. McCowan, take it away.

Thank you council.

One minute while I get the presentation prepared.

It's because of

All right. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem Emilio and council members. My name is Garrett McCown, associate planner for the City of Pacific Grove. The item before you is appeal of architectural permit, historic preservation permit, and coastal development permit 25-0186 for 689 Mermaid Avenue. On January 28, 2026, the project was first presented to the Historic Resources Committee. Upon consideration, the HRC voted 3-0, three yeses, zero noes, to recommend approval of the project to the Planning Commission. on april 9th 2026 the project was presented to the planning commission upon consideration the the planning commission had questions for the applicant in regards to why they were requesting the historic preservation permit the first motion was to approve the project uh that had failed by a three one three three yeses one no three absent vote The commissioner who voted was not satisfied with the setback discussion and the rationale for why the applicant is requesting the historic preservation permit. The second motion to continue the project to a date certain failed as well by a 3-1-3 vote. Therefore, the planning commission had two failed motions and only four commissioners were present at the time, which led to a technical denial. of the permits on April 10th 2026 the applicant applied and paid a put fees for the P of the planning Commission's technical denial of the project. So the subject property is located within the city of special biological significance and archaeologically sensitive area and within the coastal zone, it is also list on the historic resources inventory, it is not located in an environmentally sensitive habitat. This parcel is an interior lot on Mermaid Avenue located between Nyad Street and Marine Street in an area consisting of medium to large size one and two-story residences in the Beach Tract residential neighborhood and R3PGB zoning district. The 1,320 square foot site is currently developed with the 1,173 square foot non-conforming two-story single-family residence and a detached garage slash storage. proposed development consists of a remodel to include the construction of a 40 foot a 40 square foot first floor addition and a 98 square foot second floor addition which is indicated by the red line resulting in a 1311 square foot two-story residence The existing structure is nonconforming with regard to building coverage, site coverage, front yard, rear yard, and east side yard setbacks. These are indicated with the blue lines on the slide here. The existing nonconforming setbacks will remain the same. However, the new addition will encroach the rear setback regulations, creating a new nonconformity, but does not exceed the degree of the existing nonconforming rear setbacks. And that's indicated by this red line. The applicant has applied for a historic preservation permit to seek an exception from the zoning district regulations, and this is to preserve and improve the livability of a code compliant staircase upstairs as well as a bathroom. As mentioned previously, it doesn't meet some of the zone regulations set forth in the municipal code. And the HPP historic preservation permit would allow exception to the following. It allows building coverage to be increased by 40 feet, 40 square feet. Pardon me. Resulting in a 55% building coverage for the subject property site. Allow the proposed 1st floor rear addition to exceed the 5 foot rear setback allow the proposed 2nd floor addition to exceed the 8 foot rear setback. Allow the continuation of the existing not conforming site coverage of 83% and reduce the parking requirement from one covered parking space to one uncovered parking space. The Pacific Grove implementation plan serves to carry out the policies of the local coastal plan and land use plan, including providing the requirements for issuance of a coastal development permit. As proposed, the project complies with the Pacific Grove Municipal Code Chapter 23.90 implementation plan, including coastal hazards, water quality and marine resources, scenic resources, biological resources, Communities design so long as the historic preservation permit is granted. As well as cultural resources. So here's the, this is the elevation that shows the project from the north. Um and this property is on the Hri. Therefore, a phase two historic historic assessment was prepared for the project and concluded um that it meets the secretary of interior standards. Um and the proposed alterations to the building meet this um ARE CONSIDERED MITIGATED TO A LEVEL OF LESS THAN SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON THE HISTORIC RESOURCE AND DO NOT CONSTITUTE A SUBSTANTIAL ADVERSE CHANGE TO THE HISTORIC RESOURCE THUS CONFORMING TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF CEQA HERE'S THE PROPOSED ELEVATE EAST ELEVATION AND THE PROPOSED SOUTH THIS IS THE REAR OF THE PROPERTY Here's the proposed West elevation. And here's a rendering of the proposed project. So based on the Historic Resource Committee recommendation, the Phase 2 historic assessment, consistency with the general plan policies, consistency with local coastal program, which allows exceptions for zoning district regulations with the historic preservation permit. Staff recommends the City Council approve architectural permit, historic preservation permit, and coastal development permit 25-0186, subject to the findings, recommended conditions. and class one and 31 categorical exemptions. This concludes my staff presentation. I'm available for any questions that you may have as well as the architect. Thank you very much.

Mr. McGowan, why don't we go out to the public first? Is there anybody? Oh yes, the applicant. Can't forget about that. Okay.

I'm gonna do just sort of brief summary of of the things that apply to the project. And Paul, who is also an architect and project manager, will fill in the details. So this is actually a fairly simple historic project with the exceptions to the zoning standards for the existing and proposed conditions, all of which are allowed by the City Historic Preservation Ordinance. And kind of as a review, the purpose of the historic preservation ordinance was in place, so it would encourage retention, restoration, and code upgrades, especially for non-compliant, non-conforming historic properties with the incentive of allowing exceptions to zoning requirements to facilitate the project. This project, as carefully explained by the planner, required exceptions to existing setbacks, site cover, building coverage. And I think maybe one of the issues is I believe The issue may be that the one of the planning Commissioners or several are not familiar with the significance of the historic reservation ordinance and the loud exceptions that benefit historic properties. The staff report on your agenda packet has a long list of view conditions, all of which were met by this project as well as list of design and planning criteria that the project needs the most important of these. Is that the project maintains the character and the neighborhood and will restore a key resource on mermaid avenue so i'll have Paul come up and give you the details of what the addition was and what's required, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and council members. My name is Paul Simpson, architect with JCB Architects. The general scope of the project is to remodel the existing residence for current living standards to improve the safety by replacing the existing stairs. and add a bathroom to the second floor adjacent to the bedrooms and for convenience and safety a couple of the considerations that we made are our objective is to maintain the streetscape of mermaid by keeping the addition to the rear of the structure and to maintain the overall character and scale of the house although views are not protected we minimize the impact of the second floor addition in consideration of the neighbors behind We accomplished this by enclosing the breezeway space between the existing house and the shed storage. And the second floor addition extends six and a half feet beyond the existing wall, a second floor wall. So we only extended six and a half feet over the breezeway and shed. By doing that, it is not overwhelming to the existing house or shed by minimizing that size. Similarly, the roof of the addition sheds and slopes with the existing second floor roof. So it continues the slope down again, minimizing the mass of the addition. This allows us to replace the noncompliant and dangerous existing stairs with co-compliant and safe stairs, as well as being able to add a bathroom to the second floor. Again, making it safer and convenient for the residents. In terms of compliance, some of that has already been mentioned exceptions to the city to the site coverage, building coverage and setbacks are allowed per the city's historic preservation ordinance. The proposed project does not increase the setback nonconformity. It follows the existing historic wall line. The newly enclosed space between the buildings does increase the building coverage because it's now being closed, but does not increase the site coverage because it's already paved and covered by the overlapping eaves. To address some of the Planning Commission concerns, actually the In the report, it lists three concerns that were not read aloud. And they were from the Planning Commission. They were complications of building the staircase and the rationale for needing to go beyond the setback, why the staircase could not be built to allow setbacks in the zoning process. district, why the services should not be moved forward to meet the allowed setback. So to help answer some of those questions, first of all, the HPP allows for exceptions into the setback. The existing rear two-story wall is nonconforming. We chose to extend along that same wall line at the rear, therefore not increasing a nonconformity. This in turn means that the front wall of the addition does not extend beyond the front face of the existing storage shed. By using what the HPP allows, we were able to prioritize preserving the streetscape of Mermaid and the overall character and scale of the house. If the stairway would have been moved forward to meet the current rear setback, This would have increased the building coverage, because we've been pushing further out, would have detrimentally impacted the front elevation and simple form of the house and streetscape, again, by pushing out beyond that facade of the existing storage, and made the interior space less functional and usable. Likewise, turning the stair 90 degrees would not fit within the side yard setback, and would have increased the mass of the addition as viewed from Mermaid and would have been more obstructive to views from the properties behind. So in conclusion, the proposed project maintains the streetscape along Mermaid Avenue, maintains the character of the historic house, increases the livability and safety of the house for current and future use, The proposed project minimizes the mass and visual impact of the addition to the streetscape and the rear neighbors. We'll reserve time to answer any questions. And thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Let's see. Is there anybody else in the audience that wishes to address me? Please come forward.

Hello, my name is Cindy Bileci and I am a resident and probably the most impacted resident of this project. And I would like to say thank you to the architects who did a fantastic job in design of creating a space for a historic property that is protecting some of my views. and they never consulted me and I never consulted them. They were just very considerate people to do that. Unlike other people in this city that don't consider views. So I wanna make that very clear that that was very important to me as a person here. The other thing I wanted to address was the technical denial. I don't know exactly what that means, But I was at that meeting, and there was a quorum, and in my experience in my life, when there's a majority, and there's a quorum that should suffice. But apparently there are some exceptions to those rules. I don't know what the City of Pacific Grove's exceptions are, but I think that having... a citizen, a property owner have to pay if they had to pay the thousands of dollars for appeal is just to me painful and outrageous. They're already spending a lot of money trying to make the best thing for their home. My professional background is in physical therapy and specifically in brain injury. I support making a home safe. I have seen devastation because people have fallen downstairs. So I'm throwing this all in because I am in support of the city's recommendation. I'm supportive of the project and I can't understand why one person wouldn't allow it to go to a next meeting instead of having it come this far costing this much money and this much time for everybody it's not a it's it's a good project thank you okay thank you is there anybody else in the audience that wishes to speak okay let's uh bring it back oh yeah is there anybody online we do have one caller online okay uh dean casperin

Good evening, Council and Mayor Pro Tem. Two things or just a couple of quick things on this project. But if I may, I'd like to thank Council and the community for what you folks did at the beginning of today's meeting. Shows compassion and kindness that Pacific Grove keeps in their heart. And that was very, very good of you folks. Thank you. I'm a resident of Pacific Grove, three generations deep. My grandparents bought property on Ocean View Boulevard, just catty corner from the said property. And we knew the Mangetti family who owned that property up until recently. And I can see that the new current owners are putting 100,000 million percent into maintaining the integrity and the strength of those two homes. I also second the last speaker with her suggestions of support. There are some technical difficulties in regards. I was at that last meeting where there was the quorum. I understand that. Let me take you back a few minutes when we tore down our original house built over 100 and something years ago and put a new structure back in the 80s. And we had very little opposition from the neighbors. They're going to lose their views and whatnot, but it's a community and technicalities can be overcome with a little communication and a little compassion. I see nothing wrong with what's going to happen moving forward as opposed to the property to the east at 685, which is just falling apart and it's critically ruining our property values because of the state of affairs at that home. And it's just adjacent to this project. At the end of the day, I have a side of my house with zero setback from the neighbors with their parking structure touching my home that was allowed years ago. And we weren't consulted, it was just done. We're going to make a war out of that. No, their neighbors. They've been in the community as well. So I want to support this. The new owners are doing their very best to accommodate everybody. It's been a respectful. They've already started the work. They've already started the demo. They've already got the 2 homes completely encased with. cyclone fencing and tarps and whatnot. So I just wanted to put my two cents in as a community resident, someone that's proud to be part of the community. I know that the fire and police department and Chief Day are doing their best with the limited resources and the council. You have your hands tied. You're not going to make everybody happy. And it's a very treacherous position to do your job for the benefit of the community and the city, and then keep everyone in the campfire from stabbing you with sticks and marshmallow things. So I just want to say thank you very much, and I support what's moving forward if it can be done.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Is there anybody else? Yes. Yes.

I think the last caller for his comments, but I just wanted to clarify when he said that is under construction, there are 2 houses next to each other 687. uh did not have uh some of the the coastal component to it and was approved at uh hrc went through uh the building department and everything and has a and has a current building permit they are working on it currently 689 is enclosed with the fencing in anticipation of the work they just went ahead and enclosed the fence but 687 when you said they were working i'm like not on 689 they're working on 687. thank you

okay thank you um we'll bring it back to the council but i would like to uh before we make a motion this uh money that was appeal the person that appealed this um the the owner they should get their money back that's just my thoughts on it so um but i will entertain what the council feels yes

Thank you a couple of things I think to help everybody understand because the planning Commission is a 7 member body. Although 4 people were there and they had a quorum. They still need 4 votes is that correct Mister bags. that's correct for the boards and commissions policy handbook that was the requirement for the vote and so i just wanted to make sure that you understood that it looked like a technicality it kind of is a technicality but unfortunately um because it's in our code we are bound by that that being said um I sit as the council liaison to the ARB and the HRC. I can tell you that it is very rare that you get a project that has no neighbor objections, especially in this situation. I understand the need to Want additional information that the planning commission, however, um, at the same time, we cannot let historic preservation. Get away of someone's having a habitable resident. Residents. And we can't let those architectural gems deteriorate. So we have there's a reason why that historical preservation permit exists is so that people can move forward with a project like this. I think the project's great. I thought it was great when it came to the HRC. The HRC approved it without objection, and I am not, I'm not gonna object to this either. I'll vote yes, and I'll make the motion if you need me to.

Okay. Let's see. Council Member Roth. No. I know Garfield.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor Smith. Okay, so I appreciate the support from neighbors. I also appreciate them taking the time to say so, time out of their day. You don't have to do that. You can just let it go, but you didn't. And so thank you very much for calling in and sitting in. And you've sat here through the entire meeting up to this point, so you have this moment in time. So thank you. So when you look at the plans of what this additional staircase provides, It is clear that it makes this House enormously more livable to current standards, the way the single bathroom was constructed or configured in now is horrifying. and I'm amazed that people wanted to buy and save this house. So I'm impressed with their perseverance to get this done. You end up, when you look at the plans, both the interior and the exterior, with a building that is more balanced, that is safer, more livable, and again will match its twin next door that did not need the coastal development permit because it already had the coverage that's the only difference between these two these two projects um i am very much in favor of it i appreciate what everybody has been through i would like to visit the issue of can we um not barge them for their time here

Okay, why don't we go with? Yeah, did you? Okay, let's go with Council Member Paduri online.

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to just echo some of the comments that I've been hearing. It looks like, for whatever reason, the Planning Commission decided to not even extend the hearing to another date, which is really unfortunate, which is why we're here and debating on this. So I'm in support of refunding any fees if that's a possibility. I'm also looking at the project plans and everything. It seems like this family deserves a restroom. This family deserves a restroom on the second floor so they don't fall down the steps to go to the restroom in the middle of the night. So these are all really check marks. I don't think we should be actually, shouldn't have come to this point, which is unfortunate. So I think we should do the right thing, which is just refund the money and bless this project to move forward. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Yes, go ahead.

Thank you. Yeah, I actually, I would agree with that. I was really taken aback as I was reading the program, asking clarifying questions and looking at the actual plans, thinking it was a really well-designed plan. I really appreciate that you did take the time to not take away views from the neighbors as much as possible. And I appreciate the neighbor speaking to say that they weren't objecting to that. and appreciated that concern. It does look like it really well maintains the integrity. And I think that the architects did a really good job of really adhering to what the point of the plan is like everyone else said. And so, I'm always trying to go through and look for findings. It seems like we almost don't need them in this case, but I really appreciate the city staff laying out what all of the requirements are of the different regulations and checking with you to clarify that indeed we met all those regulations and that it isn't extending while it's slightly more building coverage. It's only... a small portion that's more connective almost and above than increasing the space on the ground. So definitely support that. And I also found it unfortunate that the applicants had to pay because it was a technical failure and didn't get a chance to be reheard under their initial requirements. permit through the planning commission. So is there a way, I know we've all said that we think that's a good idea. Is that something that is within the city's purview to not charge those fees?

Our CDE director can confirm, but I believe there is the council retains that authority.

Yeah, and I would agree with that. You have the authority to waive those fees, and we would do so with your direction.

Great, so we know whether we can put that in our motion.

Okay, just Mr. Lorca, it's not part of the – I want the money refunded, but – Stop part of the agenda item. Do we add that to the part of the motion?

Uh, you can so what you can do if that is the pleasure of the council is to go with staff recommendation with the direction that the appeal fee be refunded to the applicant slash appellant.

Okay. Um. Go ahead council member Cynthia Garfield. Yes.

I move that we. the follow the staff recommendation to reverse the action of the Planning Commission and approve architectural permit, historic preservation permit, and coastal development permit 25-0186, subject to the finding, recommended conditions, and class one and 31 categorical exemptions. That's good enough. And that we direct the CDD staff to refund the appeals fees.

I second that. Have a roll call vote.

Yes, sir. Council member Garfield. Tim Emilio. Council member Brown. Council member Paduri. Aye. Councilmember McDonnell. Aye. Motion carries 5-0-1 with Mayor Smith absent.

And now I see people are waiting in the wings here. But we are going to take a break until 8 o'clock. We'll be back at 8 o'clock.

Recording stopped. I have family members that call me that. Hi. Yes, I do.

okay let's see do we have everybody one two CHAPS OKAY WE GOT EVERYBODY ON BOARD HERE UM LET'S SEE OUR NEXT ITEM IS TO RECONSIDER THE DRAFT CITY COUNCIL POLICY IN TIME OF VACANCY IN ELECTIVE OFFICE AND APPOINTMENT UM ANYBODY OUT THERE THAT WISHES TO SPEAK ON THIS PARTICULAR ITEM Well, yeah, we're going to let Sandra go ahead and speak to this.

Thank you. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council, City staff and members of the public. This is part two tonight of reconsideration of the draft City Council policy entitled Vacancy in Elective Office and Appointment. staff has revised the attached draft policy for the council's reconsideration and further discussion the revisions reflect direction provided by the council at its may 6 2026 meeting including applicant speaking time limits online posting of applications consideration of top applicants and other related recommendations the council discussed questions posed to applicants in response staff has incorporated proposed language for the council's consideration Tonight's recommendation is to adopt the resolution approving the city council policy entitled vacancy in elective office and appointment. And that concludes my staff report. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Sandra. Is there anybody on the public that wishes to speak to this? And is there any online that wishes to speak to this?

No, callers online, Mayor.

Okay. Let's bring it back to the council. Uh, don't remember Garfield.

Thank you Joe Emilio. Um, so. I really appreciate having a set. Process in place that we can see work with. It's very thorough and thank you very much for developing this. Um. I do have a question about the. The last stage of the process, the one where if if no candidate gets the four nominations and affirming vote, the next step is a nomination process. And a second and then a vote, but it seems seems to me that having that sort of puts you in a race of who can be the first one to raise your hand and and then maybe get a second, but there might be several candidates that would get four votes. And i'm wondering about having more of a whittling process where we could have. Several rounds. to reduce the pool. And that's just how it's occurring to me. And I'd appreciate hearing from my colleagues, how it seems to them or what they would foresee as that process, everything up to their sense to me, I like it. But it's that last little bit that I have some concerns about.

I could probably answer that and Mr. Lorca you could Mr. Mogeson what happens if we come up with where there's no majority after the interview the mayor will make the choice am I correct on that Mr. Lorca I think

I could add really quickly just that, um, you know, none of this policy is currently written. You wouldn't necessarily just default to that. That would be if you are at a log jam, you know, you can't make a decision then the mayor would would be the ultimate 1. okay. Um. Okay, the, um, I'm glad we.

did this draft city council policy i guess i should ask first anybody out there that wishes to speak anybody online i don't see anybody okay so um i i may to me it sounds like it consensus is probably going to pass. Am I correct on that? Do you have anything, Council Member Rowe?

You know, I do agree with Council Member Garfield. I think you know, if we were through the, we'll call it the whittling process, down to three people, whoever that first person is, they may be choice number two for a couple of people, but they're not choice number one. Their name comes up, but you want to wait and hold off and wait until your first choice. I mean, it makes it a little awkward as to how you're going to, you can do that. It's not like we can go through and vote for all three. So whoever gets the nomination, you know, whoever makes the motion first with a nomination is probably has the advantage just by where they get picked. Would it be fair to, I don't know, put their names in a hat? Would it be fair to do some kind of ranking? I think back with the process with council member, when we, And, you know, I think the process naturally flowed to a unanimous vote. But I don't know if that organic process is guaranteed. I'll say it like that. And I know Council Member McDonald and Council Member Paduri have some thoughts as well.

why don't we go with the council member mcdonald first thank you yeah and thanks for bringing that that was a similar concern i had last time um and thank you for bringing back the i like the idea of everybody has their first choice but we kind of all probably have a first and a second choice um so it may make sense to do even a second round of the if you want to call it the first step. So everybody gives their first choice. We then kind of know where others stand as far as what first choice and second choices may be. So it could be that, and I'm assuming, but maybe it's good to ask, that there is a process for discussion in these steps, and it's not just vote, come back, vote, come back, vote. I think that if we know where everybody stands. We can find out if other people's second options would fit in line with other people's first options and hash it out through more of the discussion. I just want to make sure we don't get into a situation where also it rushes to who can jump first to make a nomination. The discussion is then kind of camped out and then we're not able to really come to a good consensus. So I agree that our goal is to find a consensus.

Thank you. Why don't I go with Council Member Paduri. He has his hand up. Go ahead.

Yes, thank you. I just want to comment that the policy does say that each member of the council will state for the record their top applicant. And so technically what that means is the worst case scenario, you have a 3-3 tie with every all council members being present. And so technically, the mayor could make the choice at that point to say who to go with. And I think that's fair enough. But I'm open to any other suggestions. I think that keeps the process simple. But everybody will know who the applicant is. And we can just continue with the same process on who the top applicant is, like the second applicant, if we come into other issues. I think the resolution or the policy as it stands looks good.

Thank you. Council member.

Okay, so if in this section okay going to the item is if no applicant receives for form affirmative votes that's that's the part the last section that I wanted to talk about. If every Council member got an opportunity to make a nomination. and wait for a second, then that person that was nominated and seconded would be on a new ballot. I would get to say, I nominate Tina Rao, and Tina, you would second it. So she's on. You would say, you nominate Nick Smith, and he seconds it. Now Nick Smith is on the next round. And then you nominate somebody and don't get a second. then that person's not on the ballot. And then you end up with a slate of those to be voted on. The whittle down process. And it does mean that you don't have to race to get a nomination in. And I'm just, I know I'm throwing this out there and I would appreciate anybody saying that that seems workable or that doesn't. I would appreciate your input. All right.

I personally think that we go with what was drafted on the city agenda. I also make a suggestion that we should all provide at least two questions to mr lorica or mr mogelson give him two questions which you would want to ask at least two questions and then it turns out that your question is the same as my question and then we may switch quite that's why i asked for two i don't know how the council feels about um going giving him two questions and then he's gonna do it yeah what do you think

i think it's a good idea okay i would still like to get back to the this last step okay

Yeah, I would agree that us giving to staff is a good idea. So that way we all have a question to ask. I think the important thing is in terms of fairness, making sure that everybody has asked the same question. So I think that's the important part we would establish ahead of time. I think by submitting them to staff ahead of time, they could let us know who has each question based on which ones each council member had. And then from there, each of us would ask the same question to every applicant is how I understand this process.

Okay, go ahead.

As I'm thinking back to when we went through this process to fill the last vacancy, I believe that's how we did it. We had nominations and seconds that put everybody into sort of the next phase and folks that didn't get a nomination or didn't get a second didn't move forward in the process. And I think that's probably a good way to, you know, thin down the options. And I think it makes it fair to everyone, whether you move forward or not, but at least you understand. And I think we do need to whittle it down because I think at this point we're sitting at seven. And I think we may have more than that by Friday. So I think it's going to be important that we do try and whittle it down to something that's manageable. So I do agree with you that we should have a process for that.

Okay.

nomination in the four votes doesn't pick a winner right away uh let me ask a question mr orca we're just now we're just right now reconsidering this draft city council amendment that's that's it for now yeah correct and then that's what i understand the also um i think we should also add that Two questions from each council member be brought to. Mr. Morgan said that's OK. And then to consult with you, Mr. Lorca. And does that sound fine? Mr. Marcus said, OK, why don't we go ahead and agree that. The council right now will go with two questions going to Mr. Mogus and by. I would say within.

by next friday what do you think what what would you what's your pleasure mr muggins when they should come to you i would say if um if at all possible maybe wednesday just in we need to think about the agenda packet and um

this wednesday by wednesday this week a week from a week from wednesday okay today right okay that sounds good okay so why don't we go ahead and do what we have to do on 12a uh reconsider the draft city council policy entire vacancy in the elective office and appointment um i i will make a motion that we accept that uh first on that particular item on 12a I don't hear a second. Oh, go ahead.

The issue is we still haven't addressed what has been brought up as what we wanna make. We wanna make sure that the process is clear before we go into it, because it wasn't last time. It ended up being a rush to a nomination that then had to lead to a substitute motion. And I just wanna make sure that the process really goes smoothly. We want it to be smooth for the applicants as well. And what I'm wondering is if no applicant receives four affirmations, maybe knowing now how the others are faring and if we know that our second choice is in line with that it might be worth sharing who our first and second choices are so we all know and see who has the the most votes based on that so i mean there may be a way as an interim step or at the very least because this goes into perpetuity we're discussing this now although the mayor actually isn't here with us hearing the discussion um this will will be on the books and i want to make sure it's really clear that the process and there there's a step for that discussion of trying to come to a consensus before jumping to i i i want to make sure we have the chance for discussion and having that consensus before we go to a vote so it isn't a race as well. And so everything else looks really good, but I still have that same concern I had last time about how do we make sure that it becomes a really collaborative process that's fair to all of the applicants and best serves the community.

If we get applicants.

Well, we have seven, so.

Seven, okay. I'm keeping my mind open here.

Yes, Mr. Lorca. Mayor Pro Tem, so as you consider this, you know, since tonight is the night to adopt this, either amend it or otherwise or not adopt it, it would be helpful, I think, probably for staff of some specific lane, which was proposed by the council to accomplish the objective that you've been discussing. Okay.

Council member Paduri.

Yes, I would like to keep this process a little bit simple. I know that if there is a 3-3 vote, then technically we have half of the council agreeing to a certain individual. And I would say that in this policy, it's written if no applicant receives four affirmations and there's some bullet points. But the last bullet point is if no applicant receives four affirmative words, the mayor will make the appointment. I just want to move that to its own bullet point, meaning if one applicant receives, it goes above the no applicant receives four affirmations. So thereby, if you're in a 3-3 tie, the mayor makes the appointment. Otherwise, I think this process just becomes convoluted, like with the second choice or choice and whatnot. But 3-3 to me, like I infer that to say half of the council is good with the candidate. And that to me is good. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Great point, Council Member Baduri. So what's the question of the council? I'm going to start again. I agree with Council Member Baduri's statement. In fact, I'LL ASK COUNCILMEMBER PADURI IF HE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION ON THIS.

I MOVE THAT WE APPROVE THE POLICY AS STATED WITH THE AMENDMENT THAT THE SUB BULLET POINT UNDER APPOINTMENT DAY UNDER THE IF NO APPLICANT RECEIVES FOUR AFFIRMATIONS. THE BULLET THAT SAYS IF NO APPLICANT RECEIVES FOUR AFFIRMATIVE VOTES THE MAYOR SHALL MAKE THE APPOINTMENT. be moved as its own separate bullet point uh after the bullet which says uh the console will state for the record their top applicant and if one applicant receives for affirmation so i just want that sub bullet to be its own bullet point so that we don't get into if no applicant receives for affirmations

Okay, Council member Garfield has a clarifying question or a fine question so just to be sure what i'm hearing correctly, is it you want the process to go as follows. People speak we get public comment comes back to the Council for discussion and each Member States, for the record, their top one. And then. This doesn't say anything about a nomination in a second. It just says if one applicant receives four notifications of being their top, the vote is conducted to ratify it. And then you're saying that if no one receives four, it immediately becomes the mayor's choice as opposed to having this second piece in here that we were discussing earlier. Is that what you're proposing?

I think for clarity's sake, I would say that I think it's probably thank you for pointing that out. I think it's for clarity's sake. We should also add the language, which would say that in the event of a tie and if no applicant receives for affirmative votes, the mayor shall make the appointment.

But my question is, is that you're leaving out the process, a secondary process that would have a different method of nomination in second and vote.

Correct.

You're away with that.

Correct. OK. Then I'll go ahead and second that motion. Yes.

I'm really not okay with that because we haven't gotten to the point where we've even found out if people also prefer a similar candidate. We have basically eliminated all discussion. It's a one-top candidate. If they don't all agree and have four, the mayor just decides. That takes counsel out of the decision-making process. There has to be a process where we actually communicate and deliberate and choose the best candidate to serve our community. I think we're abdicating if abdicating our responsibility if we just say we didn't all agree on the very first vote and now the mayor selects it that that's i don't think that that would be appropriate governance yes so he's not here so uh there was a first and a second uh i'll call for a vote thank you

And then I. And some of the government no.

And some of the government no.

And counseling around. And some of the government no.

And counseling around. And some of the government no.

And counseling around.

And some of the government no.

And counseling around. And some of the government no. And counseling around. And some of the government no. And counseling around. And some of the government no. And counseling around. And some of the government no. And counseling around.

okay yes uh mr morgeson mr mayor i just wanted to see if i'm if i reflect back a bit of what you maybe you said and perhaps this helps to frame it a bit if not discard it um so we're gonna work our way down to the bullet point where it says one applicant receives four affirmative votes so at that process where everybody says that you know this is my number one this is my number one this is my number one um what if if you don't come up with four at that point um the the top two people in those affirmations move on to the next round that's your pairing down so if you have one who gets two one who gets three one who gets one you know it would be the two and the three that would go to the next round for for the pairing it down Yeah, I'm not telling you what that number should be. I was just saying, is that a way to pare it down as you're saying off that first vote of who your number one is?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

We could say then, because there's seven people, we could say for anybody who gets at least two votes, that they would then go on to a next round so that the council has the opportunity to discuss, because at this point we haven't, we may have had some discussion actually already, but I think until we get to discussing I think there has to be a step where we then discuss and try to come to a consensus. I think that's very important.

And I think we owe it to the candidates to say, you know, we need to get, it would be great to get to a unanimous.

But if it turns out, like, If it's a 3-3 vote, then nothing moves forward.

Well, it would because there's seven council members, so at some point we would vote again, and maybe whoever's person wasn't moved forward would then... Oh, that breaks. But the point still being that if it does end in a tie, it does then have the caveat for... if we can't come to us getting to a place where four people vote for the same person, then the mayor does do the vote and that makes sense. But I think it's important to ensure that we have due process for this. And so I would not vote for removing. And so I like the suggestion by Mr. Mogenson that we add something that maybe the people who have at least two nominations are then discussed and see if we can come to a consensus and a vote.

So what you're suggesting Go ahead, so what i'm hearing is is it in that sentence that say if, in spite of whites, if not in. If. No applicant receives for affirmations when we all say who our favorite is. The following steps will be taken to narrow that narrow the applicants before voting again so and that would be all candidates receiving two votes, two or more votes would be included. In a ballot in a roll. Okay. It would be you'd have a group of candidates that had two or more votes. Each one taken in turn would have a roll call vote. And would it work if the first to receive four votes was then chosen? Or do you want to have a vote on all of the candidates that have been narrowed down?

that's actually a really good point is that um if each council member was then asked who would be your top vote we can see if that achieves the four because i prefer not to have to vote no on somebody to be honest it's it's it's nicer if we can come to a consensus anytime you can have full consensus that's better that may not happen because you know different people in the community may not agree either but i think it gives us a chance to get to that process so i like the idea maybe of those who get two or more votes would then be asked each person couldn't be asked of of the remaining people who would you vote for or that way but i think it's really important to have an interim step like that

to just put in here for future reference is that it's two steps. You do an elimination, and then if you still haven't reached consensus, again, you take all those that received two or more votes and vote it again.

Yeah, you reiterate. An iterative process.

Yeah. And I truly appreciate your point about we want to be affirmative. We want to vote for people, not say no, never, whatever.

I appreciate that. Yeah.

I think that what we just discussed could get me to a yes.

And it still is the mayor's choice if we still can't reach a consensus after two rounds.

Yeah, I was looking through this thing, and I want to make sure that if we're going to go two rounds, I'll ask Mr. Lorca or Mr. Mugazin, I think this process should not be difficult it should be a simple process that we should be able to choose someone to fill the office for whatever it is four months in uh four and a half months so um what do what is uh you know i'm i'm trying to make this as simple as possible and sometimes i almost think and i know i'll be outvoted on this but uh We should move this item to the next agenda item because we can't seem to come up with consensus.

Well, the next agenda, we're going to be voting on a new council member.

Well, if we can't do this one, then we have to consider the next round. Go ahead.

Thank you. And I think the important thing to consider is that this is for this particular vote. But as Sandra had pointed out, this is actually also designed, should we during future elections not have a candidate for a district or something like this, this policy would actually be used in situations where it could be somebody for a much more appreciable period of time. And so that's why I think rather than trying to rush through the process, it's really important to make sure we do our due diligence and really considering candidates and what's best for the community and I think that we need a process that reflects that that we care about that and that we really, you know, take the time to do that right. So that's why I think that the iterative process, if there's only six people. then at most you would have three candidates if you have to get two each so at most this process should only go through two to three iterations so it's not like it would be really onerous in terms of time because it would be as simple if we don't have the top four we go to say who's your next top knowing where everybody stands if that still doesn't meet four maybe that does lower it down to just between two people and then people who might have had the third candidate change their vote and very likely that would bring us to four if people are that divided that we get three and three then it would make sense to have the mayor vote but not before then okay uh council member

Yeah, I just realized that right now we're in a position where four people need to be saying yes to move this item forward. And it doesn't appear to be that way, somewhat reflective of what we're trying to argue here. uh yeah i'm i'm supportive of like if you want to move this to a later agenda item uh do a later kind of discussion uh if you want to consider the mayor's uh kind of like um kind of like feedback too but uh i would say ultimately i do believe in one thing which is that we all need to be supportive of the mayor too and i think mayor will make the right decision for the council and so i think if we are in any in any case like a there's a tie The mayor should have the authority at least to to decide who needs to go. Thank you.

Well, um.

I'm tempted to so he won't be the dividing vote.

So, it could be the mayor's decision. I think what we have to do is move this. I personally think this should be moved to the next agenda. And that's just so we have further discussion on. When the mayor is here.

I'm sorry, what was the question?

Can we make it a next agenda so that it's. I mean, if we continue this.

Council members, we can certainly position this prior to the council considering the new applicants. But, you know, sitting here listening to you, I'm not sure you guys are saying anything very much different than what's in this document, except for that paring down to only two. If you have two votes, you go to the last bullet point for the nomination process. So I think you're kind of on the same track still.

My major point was not having people gaming who gets to make the nomination first and having us having the word of every single one of us putting forth their opinion and and the idea of getting a second is that you have an affirmation from somebody that this person should be voted on again um and that was the one piece is that not the first one to make the nomination carries the whole thing um so if we want and i appreciate the idea of making it simple but if I can frame this, that if nobody gets four votes on the first round, all those with two votes, okay, all those with two votes would be put on a ballot and there would be a vote of the sitting council members from that ballot. And if there's. So two things could happen. One, you get four votes and that person is selected. You get three and three, and it's the mayor's choice. Or you get two, two, two, and we go to another ballot with those remaining. Only two ballots. If we can't come to conclusion after two rounds of ballots, which shouldn't take that long if you want to keep it real simple and fast, That's what I'm thinking is a way to this so everyone has equal standing.

Let me see. We've got people in the audience that wish to speak on some other subjects, and I think we're really spending some time on this, and I realize it's a very important subject, but we don't have the mayor here to speak on his part also. and uh mr dory already councilman dury already said his piece uh i'm just wondering uh what are what is the best solution uh mr worker because i don't know if i'm going to be um affirmative on this situation.

The best solution would be it's a it's a council policy decision, not a legal one. I will say that the way this is framed, this would be adopted not not only for the forthcoming appointment, but going forward in the future. I'll also say that if it's not adopted before the forthcoming appointment at our next meeting, then you'll fall back on the current existing policy. Okay, go ahead.

And I thought the problem was we didn't really have a good policy for that, which is where we ran into problems and why we're trying to hash out now how to make that process more efficient. So I think what Council Member Garfield has said is we can replace... that what I guess would be the first bullet underneath the if no applicant receives four affirmative votes, instead of it going to a rush to nominate first, we're just saying we would like to have that one bullet revised. So we say everybody who got two or more votes would go on a ballot, let's call it, and each council member would vote, but I don't think it's appropriate for us as council not to represent our community in a way that we do do deliberation to do this just so we can get it done faster. I'm really firm on it is our responsibility for good governance. to make sure that we do the process. And if it takes a little bit of time, that's great. But I also don't see this taking that much time because we'll have this in place. And I don't want to see the public being upset with us because we have one vote and then turn it over to the mayor. I think it's very important that we have the steps in place so that we are best representing the community and changing that one bullet mark so that the process instead of rushing to nominate is doing a second ballot and if need need be one more and then we're done that's a few extra minutes and i think that that would be the best way we serve the public i'll go ahead and make a comment again

i think we need to go with the vacancy in the elective office and appointment there's bullet points here that uh when the mayor's here or myself will seek public comment the matter will return to the council or discussion on each member of the council will state for the record their top applicant if one applicant receives four affirmations a vote shall be could considered to ratify that top candidate. It's pretty simple. If no applicant receives four affirmations, the following steps will be taken to narrow the applicants before voting. The process of voting will begin with the city council member making a motion to nominate a CAM applicant. If a second If a second is received on the motion of a roll call vote will be taken the process repeated until the applicant receives for affirmative votes. Votings will be by roll call no applicant receives for affirmative votes, the Bay makes the decision that's what the ordinance says. And I still believe we need to prove that ordinance makes it simple.

I think I would make a motion to continue this to the next meeting because we're not going to get to.

Yeah. Yes. Council member raw. I totally agree with you. I think we consider it to the next meeting.

Would, would, is there direction to staff to draft something or just continue the discussion?

Well, we've got to, I think you're right. We've got to draft something because if we don't, we're going to come back and play this process out. And then we're going to have seven people waiting for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So I think we've got to,

I think we're at a little bit of a logger jam here. And I agree with Councilmember Rao that we should continue to the next meeting. And I know you asked the question, and I'll get to you in a minute here, that you wanted some direction. I think the policy is very clear the way it is. I just think we need more discussion and put it, first on the agenda so that we could have the discussion next time around that's just my thoughts i don't know what else otherwise we've got a lot of people in the audience still and um i'm not trying to rush this but i think we we've discussed it plain enough that i agree with council member raw that we just continue it to the next agenda yeah i i how do you feel go ahead

so my concern with this is that it's on our agenda tonight it seems appropriate to hash it out tonight if we discuss it next week unless unless the mayor votes the same way the three of us have voted we're still going to be now instead of three and two we're going to be at three and three so we haven't solved anything and Now we have the applicants waiting to go through this process and we still don't have a process. So I see it needs to happen potentially one of two ways. so it sounds um mayor pro tem amelia you're saying you actually like it as it is instead of removing what council member had suggested and immediately go to the mayor selecting if we don't get four votes on the first yes so what we're suggesting actually makes this process slightly easier because this has voting this actually makes it sound like you can do this process a few times by doing it with the top two vote headers and narrowing it down you've now minimize it to only two potential additional votes. Because there's six people, most applicants that could get two or more is three. we do a second round then pretty much you're either going to have an agreement or you're going to be down two so at the most it will be three iterations and we're done and then if we still can't agree the mayor would decide this leaves a little bit more process for ambiguity so i i think what we're saying is changing bullet number one like we've proposed actually makes process simpler and faster while still doing our due diligence to fully vet and discuss and come to a consensus that best serve the community. And if we can't come to that agreement tonight and everybody else wants to move it to the next agenda, I almost feel like maybe we can come up with a process for this next meeting and revisit the overall process so that we do that at a later date for if something happens, for example, during, if we don't have enough people in a district and we need to appoint somebody, for example. But I don't think it would be doing a service to the people who are already nervous waiting to apply for this position that we have to go through this whole process and they don't know what to expect before we enter the process.

Thank you. I still go with council member Raul that we need to move this agenda item forward.

I mean, I think we need to move the agenda item forward, but I think we need to move it forward with language that we can agree on because otherwise we're going to be arguing over or discussing the language at the next meeting in front of the people that are going to, well,

Okay, go ahead, council member.

The bullet point in question, the one that we're talking about, if it reads the process of voting will begin with every council member making a motion to nominate an applicant in turn. If the second is received on the motion, a roll call vote is taken. It's getting everybody to make their nomination in turn. It may just be a clarification. I'm not saying this that what I'm proposing is different. Let me say it again. So, if nobody receives 4 votes on the 1st, go around. Each of us says, I vote for Joe. If there's a 2nd. then that person is now in a different category. The next person gets a nomination and does not receive a second. That person doesn't advance.

That candidate doesn't advance.

And then the next council member makes theirs. So then we have a process of candidates either being in further consideration or having been eliminated by the nomination second issue.

And actually, in some ways, my question is, do we need that step? Because if we've all voted for our top person, we've essentially done that step where we've nominated effectively the person by casting our vote on the first line, where we each put our top applicant out there. So in a way, that sort of is almost like a nomination for our top person. So then the next step after that, and I think that's where we got to the idea that Mr. Mogenson presented, what if we then come back with the top, any vote, any person who has at least two, because at maximum that would be three people. And so I think that already brings us to six people trying to decide on the three.

So what you're proposing is we do the nomination, we do the nomination, And four votes. See if we can get that four votes. Let me see the phrase.

Well, I'm actually saying that when we each give our top applicant, that is essentially our nomination.

Okay. And after that process and there nobody gets the four votes, then you have a pool of people who've received two or more votes. Then do we vote on that ballot?

So then we see who chooses if we get to a consensus from the two to three remaining people. If we get four votes.

That's fast. Go ahead.

Yeah, I think we've deliberated enough of this. I think we need to push this to the next kind of meeting. Number one, I would also say propose staff to come up with options for whatever the secondary process that we're considering here. And then finally, I recognize that noting that this is being deliberated so much looks like this is a super important topic for us. And I think if that's the case, we really need to have the mayor in the room too. So let's just have it with everybody on the council and make the proper decision. Thank you.

John Potter, Thank you, Council member during I still believe this should be brought back to. John Potter, The staff in in i'll make a suggestion that. FOR THE COUNCIL THAT ANYBODY THAT WISHES THE PROCESS DIFFERENTLY TO E-MAIL MAYBE MR. MOGANSON, WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE AND SEE IF WE CAN COME UP WITH SOMETHING BECAUSE THE ONLY THING I'LL AGREE ON IS WHAT IT SAYS NOW. AND THAT'S NOT GOING TO GO. SO I MOVE THAT WE MOVE THIS FORWARD TO THE NEXT COUNCIL MEETING.

Can I offer a second with some friendly amendment to say that staff needs to research some options for whatever we discussed?

Yes, I'll add that too.

I'll second.

Okay. Can we call for a vote, please?

Yes. I can get my mic to work here. Mayor Pro Tem Emilio?

Aye.

Council Member Rao? Aye. Council Member Padilla? Aye. Council Member McDonald? Aye. And Council Member Garfield?

Aye.

Motion carries.

That was simple. Anyway, with tongue-in-cheek, let's go on to the ownership, let's see, 12B. Ownership Analysis and Control Analysis for the Cannabis Business License Applications. And Ms. Allaby, Deputy City Manager.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Temp, members of the council. The item before you is an Ownership and Control Analysis. The direct the recommendation is to receive the analysis and provide staff direction on next steps. This is in response to council direction that was provided in March, directing staff to do this analysis. Following that direction, we sent out affidavits to each of the cannabis providers. business license applicants. The responses are included in the packet. And then there is an Excel sheet as one of the attachments, attachment due, where we've aggregated the information from each of the submissions and attempted to color code it to try and help visually identify similar names and information. And that, again, that is attached. That concludes my presentation. We also have special legal counsel, Erica Vega, on the call to assist in any questions.

Okay, thank you for your presentation. Before we bring it to the council, let's go out to the public. Is there anybody that wishes to speak?

Good evening. Thank you, Council and Honorable Mayor Pro Tem for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Nico Ania. I'm a current resident of Pacific Grove. I live here with my partner and my daughter. I chose to live in the city in addition to the deep roots that my family has here, but because I really like the small town politics and the very sensible scene through details and just reducing a complex situation into a simple understanding. I i'm a founder co-founder of nug one of the applicants in this process we were also a applicant back in 2020 um you know when the process stopped in 2020 i was really in favor of the council taking a pause getting community input and coming back with you know what was put forward as a fair, equitable, and transparent process. What we have now with the 10 applicants, it does not seem transparent, fair, equitable, or what is considered best practice for cannabis application processes in this state of California. All cannabis application processes use the definition of owner to simplify who is actually applying. In this circumstance, there are 10 applicants, but really, when you look at the application packets, there's three economic enterprises applying for this single exclusive permit, which is a privilege and a highly valuable privilege. I would really encourage the city to take the path of least resistance, which is follow in the footsteps what the city of Monterey did what the city of Marina did what most cities in California do, which is identify economic enterprises through the definition of owner to. drill down on who the actual applicants are. So no economic enterprise could submit multiple applications, thereby giving them an unfair advantage.

You have 14 seconds left. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak in the public? Just kind of queue up here.

Hi, I'm Valentia Valentine Piccinini. I own Synchronicity Holistic, located in Carmel. I was the first mutual benefit nonprofit corporation who has issued a license on the Central Coast. I have been in the space a long time, and I've seen these consultants make a lot of mistakes, not only in our municipalities, but throughout the state. There is no question that cannabis still continues to struggle in California. We're hoping our governor will come in and make some remedy to resolve it. I have some concerns. PG was the last dry state in California, excuse me, the last dry city In California and i'm just curious why you would allow somebody like off the charts bring a bevmo to pacific grove I specialize in seniors I have some of your seniors they will continue to come and see me, depending on who is going to wind up with this license. The lack of transparency of somebody putting in eight applications without making that visible to all of you should concern you. I've seen the market, the industry, and I've seen it come and go, and a lot of them are not forthright. Nico's family has been very committed to this community. Two of your most iconic properties, the bathhouse, the lighthouse cinemas. This young man worked for me this summer. And he knows the medical side. I'm the only one in California who's ever had a pharmacist in RN. This young man is so compassionate that this is somebody who should be at the front door. Not somebody who's got 300 people coming through their door that don't care about the senior's needs. We're gonna be, the DEA has just rescheduled. You're gonna see a lot more demand. You're gonna see people coming in sick, understanding that this is medicine. And I think that Meg is the only candidate that I see. Maybe the only way to equal the playing field would be to only have the applicants. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Anybody else? Go ahead, sir.

That's OK.

My name is David Erickson.

I'm a local resident.

Sorry, so everybody can hear me and it translates. My name is David Erickson. I'm a local resident as well. My family's lived here for a generation. I've now moved back here after 20 years of service in the Navy, and my children are also living here with me as well. So we have three generations of Pacific Grove here. I'm a business owner. I'm an author. I've routed myself here in the community as well, just coming back from the military and trying to get really back in the swing of everything. But I definitely can say that I looked at this and this is. Kind of absurd, it's old policies that should have had something about stacking in it. And I know that. There's a legality probably into it as well of how it was written and how the, the city could get potentially sued based off of removing applicants off of it as well. But I. I do wish that, uh, it doesn't make sense to have 8 of them 8 for 1 and their employees. I know if I. If I would have known I could just take my LLC and dump it onto an application and submit it, I would have done that seeing that I have nothing to do in that industry itself. And I think if you look at the employees that are on here that had that work for off the charts, you can see that they all just made a company and it seems like whatever their company is, they just submitted onto it for the application as well. if stacking is permittable i mean you're probably going to have a million applications and you're going to have a lottery that's not very feasible i think that the they weren't just into it and i think that they can uh expect that some of those would not be actually allowed through to to the actual three vote of the people who actually would put the facility there i think if any of them got picked up they would be sponsored by otc anyway and then brought into it. And with the one that's currently there, they will pick up a lot of that slack as well. So I just wanted to voice my opinion on it as a president. So thank you.

Thank you, sir. So anybody else before we go to the people online? Go ahead, sir.

Hello, just press this button. No, don't press. All right, thank you. Hi, my name is Ephraim. I'm also a local resident. I just moved back here about a year ago. I grew up out here and I went to Forest Grove. I was also looking over the information that you guys had on that sheet, and a lot of them did look very similar as far as who was submitting the applications. I mean, four of them have the same last name. I mean, even if you look based off of that, it's a little suspect. And if they're submitting these applications under perjury and under oath that all of this information is correct and it's not correct and they're trying to stack the deck, would you really want that person to be the only cannabis dispenser that you guys have in your city? They're going to be the person that's going to be representing our whole city as far as when people come to PG, that's who they go to. When people look up dispensaries in Pacific Grove, that's who they look at. And if that's going to be the person that we're going to have representing that, if even before the application process was even finished, that this is what they're doing, think about what happens when it moves further on and they get into that spot and into that business. What would happen then? What does that stop them from doing? I mean, they get in and they have eight of their employees going and submitting applications. That undermines the entire spirit of the competition that you guys are trying to create. I mean, if anybody could just walk in and throw down 100 applications in there, what stops any corporate, large, massive company from coming in and doing the same? Just buying out every application they can and snuffing out any little guy. Why does that make it fair or at all reasonable to do that to the people that are actually trying to do it and play it safe and actually follow the rules? Thank you. That was my time.

Thank you. Anybody else out in the audience there? Yes, sir. Go ahead.

My name is David. I have a foundation. I'm a Vietnam veteran. Oh, my name... Tess.

Very good. Okay.

I have a foundation. We disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate veterans. And I'm a combat veteran myself. Okay. And we... We have found that these medications are really helping our veterans out, okay? And the model that NUG Incorporated has presented is very wide open to be a conduit for me to glean veterans and help them get into the VA. Now, since dispensaries have come about, I have gone into almost every one and I have never gotten the positive feedback I've gotten immediately from NUG Incorporated. They're interested in making me a director of their veterans services and going throughout their organization and allowing me to vet vet veterans and get them um oriented to say the medication regiments and things like that and also allowing me to interview them and get them into the va system where they should be treated um it's um It's kind of a breakthrough for me because, as I say, I've been out into entity after entity and they seem to be operating under a a pressure system for sales and a pressure model. And these people had Jimmy Panetta over and I into one of their facilities. and they pinpointed a section for the medications for post-traumatic stress injuries that veterans are going and they're willing to Let me educate and allow me to show people how to detect and refer. And that's the model we use. We detect and refer and move them up the line and hopefully get them into veteran the Veterans Administration and get them get them the treatment they need. i um i wholeheartedly endorse nug and i think that they are uh more of a high-end you've got seconds left okay they're more they're more of a high-end uh organization that would really fit the demographic of your city um i salute the city council and appreciate your time okay thank you very much uh is there anybody else out in the public no okay anybody online

KL, you have the floor.

Good evening again, council. I'm impressed with the attention to detail the agenda packet until it became really hard to create a top two or three primary in determining the sea of applicants for the empty council seat. And I'm also surprised the assistant mayor is still pretending that no one is going to apply for the council seat without an increase in compensation as the initiative to provide a public... I want to start to... Yeah, so the last time the cannabis lottery issue was discussed, the council member noted that whoever had written the ordinance participating in attendance should be appreciated as some sort of corporate investor. willing to pay multiple $10,000 application fees and create multiple shell LLCs in order to stack the so-called lottery that the city called it, which has turned out to be a raffle where one entity purchased eight out of 10 raffle tickets to play the game. This was the exact concern from voters when the ordinance was originally drafted. It was assured at the time that vetting by legal counsel, the weed consultant, background checks by the police department, and scrutiny by city planning staff would prevent any sort of permit stacking or one entity taking advantage of a small town process to permit a monopoly on cannabis sales in Butterflytown, USA. So how did this all start? Going back to the year 2020, the media reported that the city manager was criticized by the city council members after he allowed representatives from the cannabis retail industry to help draft the initial ordinance presented to council. This was the same previous city manager who'd created the controversy when commuting on private aircraft from Southern California that was a gift from the developers of a failing waterfront project to the aquarium. But anyhow, I'll continue. Marijuana was then taken to the voters. Measure N went to the ballot in 2022. 70.83% of PG voters voted yes for a 6% tax on cannabis revenue with an expected return to the city of $300,000 a year. I want to make it clear this is not about opposing marijuana access. This is about a process that went totally sideways after voters approved a tax revenue. The resulting zoning ordinance influenced by special interests is a mess. Council member Paduri promised this process would be fair and the ordinance was introduced. And I appreciate that he's asked for an ownership assessment. The Pine Cone and Monterey County Weekly reported eight out of 10 applicants were submitted to a single entities, three family members, three corporate employees, their real estate broker and their attorney. Even proof of the lease was provided to the city, which contractually put in right.

Sorry. Yes, we do have a couple more hands.

Good evening, council members. I'm concerned about exactly the same thing that these speakers are telling you about tonight. And. What I'm requesting is that this hearing be continued until we can read the agenda report. I read it on Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday, I had all-day hospital meetings that had to go on. On Wednesday, this morning, I had a two-hour class and I had things after that I couldn't find out where I could find the information that is not available to anyone trying to read this attachment to the report. The attachment to the report, titled Ownership and Control Analysis, is simply not readable because the print is too small. When I sent my request this morning for a readable attachment, City Manager Mogelson replied that I could enlarge the text by pressing on a button. He showed me where I appreciated very much his answer. But when I pressed on the button, it made the print even more fuzzy. And if I can't read it, how can you read it? So anyway, please continue this hearing until we can get a readable ownership and control analysis. That's what I am requesting of you. Thank you. Good night.

Thank you, Ms. Haynes. Anybody else online?

Yes. Inga Lawrence and Dahmer.

Thank you. Yes, it's getting later. I agree with everything that everybody up there said. And yes, I have been a cannabis products user. Medically, I had my card. I've done whatever. As I progress in age, I use less. And what I use is my CBD products. I have to mail order them from up in Fort Bragg and Mendocino. No dispensary down here even carries them. And the thing is, off the charts is an absolute, that's a chain franchise thing. I swear to God, we ban fast food and we welcome in, in this process of supposedly carefully vetting and And HDL just has stirred, stirred, steered the city so wrong on so many things. And they say, oh, they're the ultimate, you know, consultant for cannabis. Well, I don't think so, because we sure ended up. Yes, we voted to go ahead and have it here. Yes, we voted to tax it. And certainly Ben Harvey didn't do that right. Hence the referendum. And it's not like anybody's opposed to it, but this process, this process went sideways. Yes, it did. It went sideways and crashed into a tree. And we need a small local entity, not a chain store. And we need one that carries specific products for our vets. I'm not going into Carmel for that, but I swear Big Sur Botanicals was my place of choice at the time. I just think that this process has gone so badly And you should be ashamed of yourselves for letting it get this way and not keeping on top of it to write a better ordinance. This stacking is just a shell game. It truly is. And you've just been hornswoggled and boondoggled from one end to the other. So that's it. Bad process.

Thank you for your comment. Is there anybody else online?

We have one more caller, Chris Lindstrom.

I'll be quick. You've heard it all. Not all of it, but there's a lot more that was written, and I support everything Jane Haynes has written you. Inga really summed it up really well, and all the speakers in the council chambers tonight pointing out the advantages to a small town of a reputable firm and not stacking applications. So that's all. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Was there anybody else online?

No further hands.

Okay. Let's bring it back to the council. Who wants to go first?

Go ahead.

Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Um,

Unfortunately, when council originally went through this, the goal was to make it a fair process. At the time, it was believed that a lottery would achieve that goal and make it a fair process. So I agree that the spirit of what the goal was is not being achieved here. Unfortunately, if I understand correctly, we're kind of stuck now because where our policy says So somehow it didn't end up in the policy, which I guess I misunderstood. I thought that was in the policy that it needed to be separate owners, but maybe we didn't know that that would be something that would be done and it wasn't included in the policy. So as council, we're kind of left trying to decide how we need to proceed in a way that follows our regulations so that we are in alignment with our policy and therefore not subject to policy changes. legal challenges. So while I agree that it's very important that each applicant should be one owner and those owners should not be affiliated, is there any way from staff and the city attorney's assessment that we have to Let me back up a minute. So we had everyone side off affidavit saying that they don't have common ownership. The part of the question where they asked, are you related or anything like that? That part wasn't answered. They only answered whether they had ownership of the LLC. And while it's true they might not have ownership of the LLC, I still feel that somehow it's managed to not answer the actual question of affiliation at the higher level. And I don't know if there's any grounds, I've realized we've already gone through this whole process again. We thought we would get those answers here and we still kind of haven't. It's been stated by speakers that for four of the ten applicants have the same last name but they're saying there's no common ownership interest so i don't know how we as council sort out what our obligation is based on our policy because it's not in our hands with our policy to choose who we think is the best fit for the community because our policy is for it to be a lottery but i agree that it's very important that we make sure this is a fair lottery so I'm trying to make sure that we are doing everything we can to ensure that fairness and find out what grounds we may have for ensuring that fairness if we're not getting the level of transparency, if that's indeed what is happening. So I would welcome any feedback.

Why don't we go with the rest of the council first, and then we might have some other questions. Oh, Chaps, I'm sorry. Council Member Dury.

Yeah, actually, Councilman McDonald asked some of the, I mean, I'm leaning with what Councilman McDonald has said. I did after, after we'd instructed the staff to kind of review the next step in the process to understand applicants, etc. There is, unfortunately, there's no, say there's nothing which kind of substantiates a position or not legally. I know it's somewhat evident that the applications look kind of like repetitive, but legally speaking, from my understanding and speaking with staff, et cetera, it's not a question that we can take to say that these are interdependent. And so I would lean towards whatever question Councilwoman McDonald is asking, but from my conversations with staff, My, my belief is that we need to continue with the process as is and go over the next step of the process. Thank you.

Okay, anybody else on council wishes to make any comments. Okay, that's fine if there's nothing. Go ahead. Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Lorca.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So I've elected to retain Erica Vega to continue on in this matter since a lot of this predates my time and for efficiency's sake for the city. So if she has a response to your question with regard to ownership, I would invite her now to advise on that.

Okay, Mrs. Vega.

Thank you everyone. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, great. So, to the question from council member McDonald, the way the city's current ordinance and policies regulations are set up the question of. You know, familiar or familial or business relationships between the applicants is somewhat irrelevant because we haven't set a criteria. that requires there to be no affiliation between applicants. So while it is information that certainly may be of interest to you from a policy perspective, from a legal perspective, it is not applicable to the way your process is currently set up. I hope that answers the question.

Thank you, you did and I guess the follow up question would be where does that leave us if we have the public telling us they're they're not feeling this is a fair process and we are after all agents of the public. So if the if the public is telling us they feel that this process isn't accurately reflecting the fairness that we were hoping to achieve with the policy where does that leave us as far as where we go from here.

So I think, again, from a legal standpoint, what you're talking about is policy concerns and, you know, correct me if I'm misstating this, but perhaps a belief that what your ultimate policy desires are reflected in the current setup. So in my view, I think that there's two paths forward, potential paths forward here. 1 is to proceed to the lottery and I do believe that the city's position in doing that would be defensible because you have followed your adopted procedures. The other option would be to cancel the lottery and provide direction to staff on modifications. You would like to see to the policy and go back to the drawing board and restart the process again in the future.

Okay, thank you for that. It leaves us in an untenable situation because if we do the latter, what that means is the public has to wait even longer to get the cannabis in our area because we have to start all over from scratch. So unfortunately that leaves us in the position deciding do we go on from here because it is our legally defensible approach to continuation. Our only other option is to withdraw altogether change our policy and then put it out there again and have to go through the whole process again and refund the applications, even though we've already spent the money on all the people who vetted those applications. So unfortunately, it's put us in a very bad situation. So we are having to follow the policy. And so we either have to decide whether to continue on or start over. And I guess that's what council has to discuss.

Thanks. Anybody else? Yes, Council Member Rauch.

We've spent so much time and money on this at this point. I am leaning towards what we can do that's legally defensible because I'm not sure that, you know, taking a step back, I think Council Member McDonald made a great point and, you know, I hear from the public and what they tell me is, why is it taking so long? We voted on this, we voted on this, we voted on this, and still we're waiting. And I also think that there's a lot of opportunity for this to rectify itself through the process. We don't know who's going to win the lottery. I mean, you don't. And you don't know that whoever wins the lottery still has to get a use permit. They still go through the planning commission. They still have to vet out each location. And I just, I still feel the best thing to do is to follow the process that was put in place and and move forward in a legally defensible way. And if we get to the end of this process, we pick a person, that person can't make it through planning, it goes to the other location, maybe that resolves itself anyway, but I don't think we can like answer all of these hypotheticals. We have to let the process play itself out before we get there. So, I mean, that's my initial thought is we need to go with what's legally defensible.

Okay.

Thank you.

Did you have anything? Me over here.

So we're in a position of inheriting a scenario that many of us didn't participate in. We're stuck with it. I think we're stuck with it. We have an obligation to the voters who voted for a cannabis dispensary in our town. Inherent in that obligation is that we will do this with We will move things forward. That has not been fulfilled over the last couple of years. We've been detoured and distracted, and I think there have been some moves to make it harder and harder to get that promise fulfilled. So here we are with an unanticipated complication or confusion on the relatedness of people who are saying to us that they're not related. They have the same last name, but they are saying that they are independent entities. I have no reason, I have not presented with any information that would cause me to say that that's incorrect. This is all done asking people questions that they've answered. And we're stuck with a situation that's nobody anticipated.

Okay. Anybody else? I'll go ahead and make a quick comment. don't particularly care for the process i'm going to tell you right now i i think it's in um um just with the the lottery system it's i know this is what we approved but um it doesn't seem uh in my mind right and um i'm just wondering at this point is there going to be is there going to be a motion on this So it says we've seen the ownership, we can provide staff direction on next steps. So we wanna provide staff with next steps. Council Member Padilla.

Yes, I move, I make a motion to move forward with the next steps of the process, which is the lottery, which was stalled. I suggest we continue or resume that process.

Okay, so first, Mr. Baduri, Councilmember Baduri? Yes. Motion, okay. Do I have a second?

Second.

Who's the second?

Councilmember Bartholomew.

Okay, do I have a second?

Yeah. I. Thank you. Councilmember around. I. Can't remember Donna.

And not resounding I.

And there are 10 million. i'm sorry. motion carries. 411. Okay.

THANK YOU FOR THAT. OKAY. BEFORE WE MOVE ON, WE'RE GOING TO GO TO THE PHYSICAL YEAR 26, 27 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS PROGRAM. BUT I DON'T KNOW, WELL, LET'S SEE HOW THIS GOES. MR. GO?

Bear with me, I do have a brief presentation.

I apologize for that.

Okay, thank you. Members of the city council members of the public. Unfortunately, this is coming across a little bit weird tonight, but since we're late, I'm going to just kind of blow through it. Real quick, so here we're here tonight with the discuss the fiscal year 2526. cip i'm going to provide some brief updates and then just talk about really briefly the 26 27 proposed capital improvement plan as i said i'll be very brief i know that we're running late we still have a few items what we're asking for tonight is to receive and approve the update including two addition additional projects to this up and coming fiscal year 26 27 capital improvement plan this is the big one is to approve the commitment of 750 000 from the general fund for reserves of the pier i'll get into that a little bit later and then approve a resolution adopting the 26 27 uh state bennett state bill one which is the gas tax projects i need to do that for a resolution what is the capital improvement you all know what a capital print is but we changed it just within the last year they're now projects over 50 000 before it was 5 000 Let's put a little meat into what a capital improvement is non non recurring. Um, and they consist of maintenance repairs, improvements or acquisitions of city assets. I know I'm blown right through this, but. Because I have questions, I'll give you opportunity at the end. So capital improvement plan identifies projects, provides an implementation schedule, like what year we're going to be doing it. It identifies financials and links the budgets or links projects to the specific budgets. They typically focus on a goal that you have set forth. And then we provide project info and justification. So, as you recall, last year, we approved a 2 year budget. That means we approved a 2 year. That's why this is more of an update. We've already got projects lined up. I will be asking for approval tonight of 2 new projects and the list to get approved. The list needs to be done annually. So then I can submit that resolution to the state. For their approvals, and then ultimately we received those funds for those road repairs. So, in fiscal year, 2526. And 2627, since we did a 2 year budget, we approved 16 projects. 3 of those were multi funded projects, which consists of the general fund and non general fund funding sources. i'll get into those briefly here but those are like basically your road or pedestrian movement projects and we had 13 non-general fund projects that equated to about nine million dollars the big ticket items on those are going to be like our sewer project that we're doing that we've just commenced in pebble beach which is almost seven million dollars okay so let's get into some updates so last fiscal year for 25 26 well the current fiscal year that we're in we approved road segments to be completed 10th street beacon and del monte i just that was at 1.7 million dollars i want to just give you an update that those are currently being engineered we're currently got a road rehabilitation project that's occurring right now on 19th street alder and the alleyway between second and fourth that's under construction that was from 24 25 fiscal year we've been kind of running with behind I'm not going to say behind, but these road projects are complex, and they're primarily complex because I'm getting Cal-Am in there to do all of their work before we get in there. So I want to dig once, and that's what we're doing. So Cal-Am engineers, we engineer. Cal-Am constructs, we construct. That's why it's taking a little bit longer, but let's do it right the first time. Okay, so that's the road rehab. And we have two sidewalk projects that we've done. Lover's Point, which is currently under construction. You may have seen it the past few days. They kind of knocked it out within the last three days. That one came in way under budget at $30,000, right? We had $450,000 budgeted for these two projects that came in at $30,000. The bids range from 30,000 all the way up to 300,000. So crazy, right? So that's why I didn't come before you because the proposal came in within Matt's spending authority. So we just pulled the trigger, did the contract, executed the construction. Then as you see, we also did the Prescott Avenue project, which came in at $181,000. That's completed project, that's done. So now we've completed that walking corridor from the city of Monterey on Prescott up to our shopping center, schools, so on and so forth. So that's done also. We had $450,000 budgeted for those two projects. We spent about 210. That extra money will go into the pot for future years that we can use capital improvement projects. I've also done some smaller storm drain projects kind of Robin Peter to pay Paul with some of this stuff that have been within Matt spending authority that I knew we needed to get done like cynics and Carmel that storm drain where we had that plate that got done. We're going to do some projects on evergreen and a couple other spots around town that were about the 20,000 dollar range using this money knowing we had all these savings. Okay, so here's some other non-general fund projects. We did the roof repair at the youth center this current fiscal year. We had a budget of $32,000 from rec donation. We got it done for 13,900. The city hall doors and windows over by Ms. Hallaby's office are being constructed. They came in a little higher than budget, but $38,000, still not too bad. We replaced the boiler at the golf course for 32,000. We had a budget of 40 and then the roof station, the police station. I got a misspelling in here. Shame on me. The police station roof repairs. We had a budget of 70,000 dollars and we completed them for 58,000 dollars. Those were all done this current fiscal year. Um. We're currently working on the sewer force main replacement at arena. We're engineering it. We anticipate constructing it this fiscal year. And then we're still receiving quotes for the calibration of the pause on the urban diversion systems. And then a couple more projects that we're working on the pillar privacy, steady booth at the. We're designing it, working with Pillar, and then the library backup power system. We've done all the engineering and all the design. Unfortunately, the library is in the coastal zone. So to put something outside the building and do these type of improvements, we need to get a coastal development permit. That's where we're at with that project. The Chinese pavilion and moon wall still moving forward. Um, we have operating donations of 200,000 for that. We're very close to. Getting estimates and proposals for the pavilion, which then will be bringing forth the city council for approval and ultimately your say, you're like. Say, go do it and then we'll order that and then we'll move forward. Um, and then she talked to hall. As Council Member Garfield knows, she met with us today and the architect. We're moving forward with that. I would say our plant set's probably about 30% to 50% ready to go. We're still working out a bunch of details. We anticipate putting that out to bid for construction in the next fiscal year, 26-27. Um, you've all probably seen that we've completed the rectal improvements by Espanol park. Um, that was done that was funded through the fund. And 36,000 dollars is what we had, and we completed that for 29 and then the big project that we're. Just embarked upon is the sewer collection system master plan project. Number 1. only number one that we've embarked upon at 6.7 million that's where we're doing all that work in pebble beach in conjunction with spanish bay golf course while spanish bay is being reconstructed we'll say with that being stated we're still doing the engineering of 6 and 9, which is Hillcrest and the highway 68 projects. So we're still engineering those. We're still on a contract with the Wallace group to continue with those engineering and ultimately the construction management. I wanted to also just hit on this 1, which is the Congress cedar and sunset update. Which we'll call the roundabout project, right? So the roundabout design, which the council said moved forward with, was approved by Caltrans. We're currently in the environmental stage of that project. But I do want to state that the project encompasses the entire corridor. It's not just the intersection. So it's the entire corridor past the high school all the way up to sunset forest and improvements at 19 street sunset force intersection along the high school construction of sidewalks on the residential side and then ultimately the intersection. So it's a much broader. more expansive project that's going to ensure pedestrian bicycle vehicle multimodal safety through that entire corridor with forest grove elementary and the high school we're moving forward with it we anticipate bringing an environmental document for council consideration either late 2026 or early 2027 but they're moving on it okay so The crack and slurry seal project for 2627 will be a new project. Last year we allocated money for the 2 sidewalk projects out of this pot and this year we're going to be allocating money for crack and slurry seal out of measure X and the general fund. So we'll be embarking upon a larger slurry seal project this year, which will have about 450,000 dollars for a budget. And then the two projects we would like to add is a sewer collection system master plan update or the development of a new plan. The last plan was developed, implemented, approved in 2014. It was like a 10-year plan. We developed a funding mechanism with that 10-year plan to then fund these larger projects like the pebble beach project that we're embarking upon right now we've only got a couple of those projects left in that plan let's come up with a new plan a new funding mechanism to fund future projects this is monies that we're requesting out of the sewer enterprise fund so we can begin that process we're anticipating it being about four hundred thousand dollars but then that also will identify how we're going to proceed through the proposition 218 process and set new sewer rates for the next 10 years and then the museum wants to replace the fence around their gardens and that can be all be done through the museum fund which has ample money to do this so we figured we would just capital improve it improve this project Okay, so to the pier. So the pier is a 100-year-old structure, and as we all know, it sustained significant damage, and I think it was 2022 during some large storms. The end of the pier actually fell off, and those are those pictures you're seeing here. what we need to do is put a new shell on it we've developed 100 plans and the city council approved us to move forward with those plans we did so we received the coastal development permit from a waiver to be able to implement this new shell that we're going to be up put on the pier so basically encapsulate it all with new concrete for lack of a better term like a shotcrete um The Public Works Department did apply for a grant through the California Coastal Conservancy and we received $750,000, a pledge, but they will not approve a binding agreement for that until we show we have matching funds. So I'm asking for your commitment tonight of $750,000 from the general fund so we can move forward with the coastal conservancy agreement and lock in that three quarters of a million dollars towards the project. The project, though it was a couple of years ago, was anticipated to be about $1.5 million. With that being stated, I've also applied for a federal grant through the Jimmy Panetta office, and we've been moved on to the second round of that. I'm feeling fairly confident that we're gonna receive some funding for that. If we receive funding from that federal grant through the Panetta's office, we'll be able to use that instead of the $750,000 commitment as our match. I've conserved, I've, confirm that with the coastal conservancy they don't care where the additional funding comes from as long as they're able to have a match so but i need to earmark it now because we won't know if we're asked to proceed to the next step with the federal funding grant until the september time frame and coastal conservancy is only going to hold their money until september you guys get my gist Okay, so then the last slide I have is the state bill 1 resolution and project list. So, as I stated, we need to approve a resolution to be able to secure that funding on an annual basis. And we need to upload it to the state for their consideration. It's anticipated this year that we'll get 420,000 dollars that we can use towards any type of pedestrian or multimodal. transportation project we've been using it for basically our road rehabs and also our sidewalk projects so what we're considering today is 17 mile drive from sunset to cynics it's one of our most heavily trafficated roads but what i want to do with that is it's got a pci-41 so it's not like totally failing but it's getting to that state But 17-mile drive in Cinex is also heavily used by pedestrians trying to get to George Washington Park. I want to build two curb ramps also on 17-mile drive in Cinex on that apartment side and then start to construct a sidewalk that gets people up into George Washington Park. That's my goal with this. So it's roadway, intersection, pedestrian improvements. And then Central Avenue from force to lighthouse is also falling apart on the post office by Caledonia Park. It's got a P. C. I have 37 and it's it's. Declining rapidly and then 16th street from Laura lighthouse. We've got the sewer down there. We've done a good portion of the Cal work. Um. We're just patching it and it's got a PCI of 41, but we think that would be a good candidate to get done with our budget that we would have remaining. I know it's a shorter stretch, but we could do some sidewalk improvements behind growth market right there through that little parking lot and so on and so forth. and then i haven't determined what we're going to do with the slurry seal yet but we need to do consider maybe doing something on lighthouse avenue and i could always bring this back to city council later but i'm going back up a slide here to our slurry seal side but i would like to do the downtown corridor with the slurry seal and last time it was probably done was like 15 or 20 years ago and if we don't catch it now we're gonna get too far behind on lighthouse avenue then it's gonna be a major construction repaving project that's just gonna cost us tenfold but i think if we slurry seal this year re-stripe all the parking and everything we can probably catch it for another 10 years or so That's my report. I'm open for questions.

Okay. Let's go out to the public. Anybody in the audience that would like to make comment? Seeing none. Anybody online, Sandra?

Nobody online.

Okay. Let's bring it back to the council then. Thank you. Who wants to go first? Go ahead.

I guess I'll just say thank you. It's always informative to find out where we're at on everything. And I always appreciate the proactivity. and bringing forward the idea, for example, of downtown. The things that will help us save money in the long run, I appreciate you bringing that for consideration and everything on here seemed to make sense for how to proceed. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Yes. Let's move it around.

Well, thank you for adhering to our Dig One's policy. I think it's really important and I think there's nothing more frustrating than watching a road get torn up three or four or five times Highway 68. But anyway, I'd also like to thank the staff for their work on this. Thank you for watching the budget and coming in under. I've got some ideas about how we can spend that. But I'm ready to make a motion that we approve the commitment of $750,000 from the general fund and that we approve a resolution adopting the fiscal year 26, 27 Senate budget one bill one project list.

Okay. Discussion. Yes. Garfield.

Thank you again. Also well done. Well, good presentation. Really appreciate it. When we do the re is it repaving or slurry on lighthouse? Slurry seal?

Slurry seal, yes. And yet to be determined if that's what we're going to do, we've got to engineer and make sure that we can get it all done with the budget. But I think it's a possibility.

With other roads, when you do the slurry seal, it's an opportunity to review markings, parking, daylight laws, so that we get better visibility at our crosswalks. And so it has more advantages than just preserving the road surface. And I think we've talked a lot about speeding downtown, and this may be an opportunity to help enforcement help with education of folks and directing traffic. So I appreciate that. Also wanted to talk about the $750,000, totally support it. That pier protects one of the very few places where kids and families can be in the water. And it is a huge, huge asset to our community. And I appreciate that we're going to move forward in protecting it. And I wanted to go back to, this is why we ask the questions about our recreation programs, for instance. So we really are getting the best ones and the successful ones, and we're getting everything we want out of all of our programs so that we have enough money to do these necessary things. So it's all tied together. Anyway, I'm going to SECOND YOUR MOTION.

I JUST REAL QUICK ON MY DISCUSSION ITEM I'M SO SUPPORTIVE OF THIS IS ALSO ONE OF OUR GOALS FOR THE CITY. AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR PRESENTATION MR. GOES EXCELLENT. AND LET'S CALL FOR A VOTE.

THANK YOU. CAN'T REMEMBER LONG. CAN'T REMEMBER GARFIELD. CAN'T REMEMBER SPIDERI. I'm Donald. Hi. I'm Mayor Pro Tem Emilio. Hi. Motion carries, 5-0-1. Let me read

one comment real quick before either your comment uh same comment yeah okay it was our uh artificial intelligence was uh one of the items i think we need to move that uh forward uh to the next council meeting because we have someone sitting in the audience waiting to talk about the monterey airport and uh usually 10 o'clock we all turn into pumpkins so um

Mr mayor president that solution, the Council, we can put it on the June 30 everybody feel about that i'll make a motion that we move Ai to the next Council meeting.

All those in favor. Call please.

So that was a man for 10 moving and seconded by Councilman battlefield.

I believe so.

Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Emilio.

Aye.

Council Member Garfield. Aye. Council Members Rowe. Aye. McDonnell.

Aye.

Ampaduri.

Aye.

Motion carries 5-0-1.

Okay, thank you. Why don't we go ahead? I see someone waiting in the wings here, and you've got about, you can go on for about eight minutes.

Go ahead. Waiting for the presentation.

Yeah, so she's going to get that up for you really quickly.

While it's coming up, I will get started, and you'll get to see the slides as we go. So Monterey Peninsula Airport District. First, I'm Chris Morello. I'm the executive director at Monterey Airport. I've been there for 18 years, but I'm coming up on my first year as executive director. Monterey Peninsula Airport District was formed in 1941, so we're 85 years old as a district, but we had air service there even before that. We are an enterprise fund. We are... A special district, which is very unusual for airports. Most airports are owned by cities, counties, and or a state. So to be a special district airport is very much unique. We set our rates and charges. You can go to the next slide. We set, all our revenues come through fees and charges, similar to what you did tonight. And we're responsible for all the public safety, property, and everything like a city would be, but we just have no residents at the airport. Next slide, please. So besides providing you that access to air service for travel, we also are an essential service portion of the community because we provide emergency medical response. We provide life flight. We provide evacuation and firefighting capabilities from the air. and urgent supply relief especially when there's roads out especially down the big sur coast they they get their supplies at the airport we're 24 7 for that purpose We also provide community structural fire support from our facility, our aircraft rescue and firefighting facility that we have on airport. But we have our contract with the city of Monterey, and we provide them with a small area to go off airport as well. And really, we're an economic development engine to the whole community. All of us, we get residents or we get travelers up from Aptos, from the Salinas Valley, down to Greenfield. and we are highly regulated. We have oversight from Department of Transportation, from Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Homeland Security, as well as Caltrans Division of Aeronautics. Next slide. So a little bit about air service. Next one, please. We have 30 total. combined arrivals and departures for commercial service. We fly to Alaska Airlines. We have four commercial airlines. Alaska Airlines flies twice daily to San Diego, once to Seattle. Allegiant flies twice weekly to Las Vegas. American Airlines flies three or four times a day to Phoenix and once to Dallas-Fort Worth. And United Airlines flies twice a day to LA, San Francisco, Denver. And on Saturday, we start our seasonal nonstop service to Chicago. Next slide. We also have what's called seasonal hop-on service. So this goes out of Monterey Jet Center. It is done by JSX. And it flies from June to September to Burbank and Orange County, typically four times a week. So that's air service. I wanna get into the master plan for you. Next slide. So, and hit it again if you don't mind, just I think, yep. So we did a comprehensive look at the airport and the airfield as we need to do. And we have to really look at how does aviation fit best on the airfield in different locations. And we came up with what's called our safety enhancement program out of that master plan. It's a $200 million total program. It's funded through federal grants and from our airport revenues. And it also has a comprehensive sustainable initiative to the components to it. We've received $130 million in federal grants. We have to match that with 10%. So $20 million of a match. And we took out some debt service with $50 million in the next line. So the ultimate goal of this project or the program is actually just to move a small portion of our taxiway. It's the portion that sits in front of our terminal. It sits closer to the runway than the rest of that main taxiway so that we can park aircraft there. If we were to just move that taxiway, we'd no longer use the terminal as a commercial service. So FAA has asked us to try to solve the separation issue, and to solve it, it had a whole bunch of knock-on effects of additional projects. Next slide. And you can hit it again as I'm talking, if you don't mind. So we've constructed on the northeast corner of our property a new general aviation ramp. And the beauty of that is that that's next to a small general aviation runway. So they no longer have to cross back and forth. They used to be on the south side. Now they're right next to the runway that they typically would use. Definitely more safe. We also constructed aircraft rescue and firefighting facility at that location, and those all opened in October and November of 2023. I do want to point out in the right corner of this picture, you see that little box with the lines. That's a solar array that we installed in 2017. That powers 95% of the power that the airport uses and has since that time.

Next slide, please.

The, this is the new aircraft rescue and firefighting facility, and it is lead lead silver certified so when you can see the old one to the new one much better next slide. So once we were able to move those tenants over, so you can see the hangars that are here, those were all removed. The aircraft rescue was removed. Once those were removed, and you can hit the button, there's a little slide that will come through, we were able to go and demolish those facilities. So in June of 2024, we had demolished them all. By March, we had half of the new apron constructed, and we had moved our parking to a temporary location. One more hit. And this is what it looks like after the summer. One more time. And so this is where the aircraft are now going to park. You can kind of see in the left-hand corner where they actually are parking right now and how far out the tail will be. So we're moving them back away from that main taxiway. And this rectangles that you can see with the arm is the footprint of the building. So we are well on to after this project is finished last summer. Next one. Part of the components of the new replacement terminal is it is a replacement terminal. So we have 5 gates today. We'll have 5 gates at the new building. 1 thing that is new is we will have passenger boarding bridges. A lot of people are very sad about that. They get to walk out on on the ramp anymore, but it is much more accessible for people with limited mobility. It will have the commercial apron that I talked about at the ramp that I just got is what's called an envision for that verified rating. So that is another sustainable component that you can do that is for for civil building, not vertical build. So leaders for the vertical, but you can get this other rating. How did we get there? We captured rainwater and we use that for all of our dust suppression, 308,000 gallons of rainwater. We diverted 12,000 tons of waste and went from the landfill to recycle. We used a carbon-cured concrete, so it's less carbon in the concrete. And so that's how we got to those components. And all the dirt, we had 168,000 cubic yards of a cut because that ramp that those things sat on was up above where we needed to be. All of that dirt stayed on airport property. So, for the for the terminal, our goals for is a lead plan certified building and we're still on goal with that a 0 net energy ready building and all electric design.

Next slide.

currently have two contractors on on on site that are working so this is what the building is going to look like new circulation around it much better circulation at the corner of homestead garden road and fred kane we're putting in a roundabout at that location that was part of our environmental mitigation with the city honoree that is their street but we are building that as part of our are as i said our sequa requirements and you can see the building it will be similar and you'll come first you're coming to the departures or the ticketing the other end is arrivals similar to today with a beautiful courtyard in the middle you can see from beginning from front to back through it a lot of daylight which will get us our lead platinum and those overhangs in the front Better curb front, three dedicated lanes for pickup and drop off, two for taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, and shuttles. So we'll be able to separate those, which we don't do today. So a much better flow to the building. Next slide, please. How are we getting to LEED Platinum? Well, we have an integrated design. We're using mass timber structure, acoustical panels in the ceilings, direct and indirect light fixtures, HVAC air supply system, clear story with automated shades. And those are clear story or those upper light, upper windows, which give us daylight throughout the building. So for 50% of the day, we have daylight and don't need much power. An HVAC ceiling fan cooling unit and passive exterior shading so that front that had the overhangs is that passive shading that gives us sunlight but not heat, so it allows us to not have to have as much HVAC and all of the other things and heat. components and then a high performance glazing with it you're looking at the ticketing area here which is again five gates like we have today and one of the unique pieces is it will be common use which means that any ticket any airline can be at any one of these gates at ticket counters at any time and the gates as well we're providing all of the software and the infrastructure so we can be very flexible and move as is necessary and if new entrants come in to the airport it will be very easy to integrate them in Next slide. And the color palette here you're seeing is the redwoods, that wood and that green, you know, really a nod to where we live and the beauty of what we have here. And then you'll start to see with the furniture a little bit of green, and then we go over to some coastal blues as well. We will, the The after screening, we actually are adding a 3rd TSA screening lane, which we're eligible for today, but have no place to put it because of the number of passengers we have. So we'll have that available to us. We will have. What's called a call to gate concept so it's a little bit different. You don't need to sit at your gate. You sit more like in a hotel lobby. And you can see, you'll be able to see right through, you can see your gate, and we'll have a food and beverage right there. So Woody's at the airport will be our food and beverage at the new terminal. He has the cockpit today. But his restaurant, his public-facing restaurant, will stay at the legacy terminal, at the building that we're in right now. That building is remaining. Airport administration staff are staying in there, and we will be repurposing it for other uses, aviation uses, but not commercial service. And next slide, almost done here. Get you out of here. The building footprint. So as you can see, we are well into construction. As I said, we have two contractors on. Not the ideal way to be constructing, but because FAA had dollars for us for the land side, the circulation, a year before they had money for the terminal. We had that design completed, so we were able to go out and get our contractor for that component of it. So that's Auto Construction, who is a local firm. They actually are in Garden Road. So they're doing the land side component. And then once we completed design, we went out again to the market, and we have Hensel Phelps as our team that is constructing the terminal building. And we can see we actually started putting up steel last week, and we will actually be done with steel by next Friday. And then starting to go into enclosures. So the goal and last slide here. To wrap it all up is that it's about a 62,000 square foot building the same as what we have today. The 1 security checkpoint, but with additional space, 5 gates with the passenger boarding bridges that net 0 energy ready building. The design was completed in 24. We went into construction in October of 25, and we hope to be completed in June of 27. It will be summer of 27. We had some weather issues over this winter that slowed us a little bit. We're hoping to catch back up on that. and then the two contractors that are here. And then you can see the improvements that we'll be doing to the roadways. And that's the first thing people will be seeing right now. It's a bit of a mess. We are getting ready to start to move some of the parking so that we can reconstruct the rest of the parking. So it's going to be a phased approach to parking. So we'll ask for patience from all of our passengers, from residents primarily, because they're the ones that park, that we're going to be continuing to shuffle you around a few more times until we get to that ultimate condition. And with that, that's all I had. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. I've been out there several times due to family situations and I can see through the dirt.

Yes, for sure. Lots of it.

Any other council members? Okay, thank you.

So are we.

okay thank you good luck um this calls for a german of the council meeting and i wish the council members all nice evening uh go ahead we do have one caller online caller on the line okay i'm sorry tried to jump the community um yeah would you like to take that comment yes yes inga lawrence and doimer

since I've always preferred flying out of Monterey for all my years that it's, I even had a private plane there at one time in my long distant past, but I just wanted to thank her for her. Absolutely. That was the most comprehensive presentation I've seen on the airport, you know, reconstruction construction here. And I really wanted to thank her for her excellent presentation. That's it.

Thank you. Thank you, Inga, on that. Any other comments?

No more comments.

No more comments. Okay. The council is closed, adjourned, and everybody have a nice evening.