City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Good evening everyone. I hereby call the Palm Springs regular city council meeting of February 25th, 2026 to order. Tonight we have Lana Emerino. She we here uh who's going She's from Palm Springs High School and will be leading us in the pledge. Is Lana here? Maybe not. Okay, we're going to do it anyway. Okay, we're going to invite Lana for next time. Mayor Prom, do you want to lead us off?

Thank you. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good job. I acknowledge that the land we gather, live, and work on today, currently known as the city of Palm Springs, is the original homeland of the Auakalente Band of Kua Indians. The sovereign band of Auakalente people have stewarded this land throughout the generations and continue to steward this land for all future generations. We honor and respect the many diverse indigenous people still connected to this land. City clerk, can we please conduct roll call? Let the record reflect that all members are present.

Wonderful. We have a presentation, director of planning, Christopher Hadwin, who's going to give us an update uh a review of our public comment process relating to our zoning code updates. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Prom, and members of council. I am Chris Adwin, your planning director. Uh so we're going to keep this uh fairly short tonight uh with an understanding that we will come back to you uh shortly with a fuller presentation and certainly for discussion and direction. Um but I just wanted to touch base on the process where we've been and what we've been hearing so far and sort of where we're going next. So we have the timeline up here on the screen. Uh and as many of you know, we just completed our fourth round of open houses uh for the zoning code update. Um, and just wanted to give you again a a brief uh update on on where we are. As a reminder, we began this process in mid 2024 and have held many outreach meetings in the 18 months since we begun uh covering a variety of topics. We first compete completed a code audit which assessed the current code and identified gaps or challenges based on current practice and law. And we released draft zoning districts, use standards, and maps uh for public comment. Those preliminary or very draft proposals, I want to stress the word draft and preliminary a lot tonight because uh everything is very very early in process have been the subject of two rounds of open houses, online surveys and target targeted stakeholder outreach. I'll talk more about that in a minute, but just to sort of finish out the timeline and looking ahead, you'll see that we have another year or so to go before we wrap this process up and before it's before you all uh to make an ultimate decision on it. During that time, we have a lot more feedback to gather from the public about the rules themselves. That's really the meat of the zoning code um because it's the

rules that will decide what gets built on property throughout the city and what it looks like and that's very much still in development and we still need to have a lot of public discussion about what those rules look like. I would also just say that this timeline is very fluid. So on this we're showing sort of two more uh openhouse or community meeting uh touch points uh through the the remainder of this year. I think as we learn more about the about your direction and certainly the public's concerns and comments, we'll sort of reassess this timeline on an ongoing basis to see if we need to do more outreach or or what that looks like going forward. To elaborate quickly on the engagement that we've done to date, uh we've held 27 stakeholder meetings over the last 18 months and had over 180 unique attendees at our open houses. We've had nearly 1,000 responses to our various online surveys and online engagement. and we'd certainly like more. As you know, we don't update these rules very often. The last time we did it comprehensively was in the 1980s. Uh so it's really important that the community remain engaged, stay engaged, get engaged, uh and that we um hear as many things from them as possible so that we can be as responsive and inclusive in this process uh as we can because we're going to have these rules for many years to come. So again, encourage everyone to get involved if they haven't been to date. Moving a little bit into what we've been hearing. I first just wanted to briefly show I'm not I'm certainly this is hard to see, but uh just to give some context on the very complicated web of state law that is at play here and that we're working to understand. Um this is just from the last couple of years. So it's a constantly moving target and we're working very closely with the city attorney and his team to understand what our obligations are under these the variety of state laws. You know, I think recently we had a conversation around updates to our ADU ordinance based on six different state laws that were passed in October and which we were given about seven weeks to respond to. And so that's the kind of regulatory environment we're operating within and that we're trying to sort of

remain caught up to uh and address through this ongoing update. So um it's it's a lot to work through um and that leads to some of of where we've been, where we're going, and some of the concerns that have come up through the process. So just to provide a couple of examples about how those laws have trickled down locally, these are just a few of the commitments that the state required be included in the housing element that you all adopted uh at the beginning of last year. Uh for example, we must reszone our commercial corridors for mixeduse housing. We must also ensure that the zoning provides enough land to accommodate our regional housing needs assessment allocations. And so for the current cycle that takes us through the end of 2029, that's about 2600 units. We also know we're going to get the next bound batch of allocations in the next 18 months or so for the period that begins 2030 and we're hearing we may get an even higher allocation through that process. So really this zoning code update we have to plan and accommodate all of those allocations that we're getting from the state. Um, and we can't do anything that would uh the no net loss uh reference here is we can't do anything through individual zoning changes or through our zoning code update that would take residential capacity away from property or downzone properties. So that is state law that we have to address. We have a commitment in the housing element to increase the height to accomp to maximize res residential density. And we also have committed in the housing element to adopting an inclusionary housing policy which means that a certain percentage of private development would have to be set aside for affordable housing. And the mechanics of what that looks like and and how we do all of that is very much open for debate and discussion. But that's the the stuff that we're working on as we come forward to you with the zoning code update. As we've been discussing these concepts and again very preliminary proposals publicly, we've been receiving a lot of feedback and I know you all have as well. There are certainly many in the community have expressed concern about the additional height and density that were uh shown very early on in the maps and those concerns were largely focused

on on areas along our commercial corridors but where they were also adjacent to established lowdensity neighborhoods and the issues largely related to views, privacy and protecting the character of Palm Springs. We also received many comments from people concerned about affordability and wanting more housing choice in locations close to jobs, shopping, and transit. So, you know, we're trying to balance uh what at times are sometimes uh conflicting opinions. Um but certainly taking all of this into account as we work through um the process and work on revisions. Because it's been a subject of so much of the discussion, I just wanted to elaborate a little bit on the height issue that has really been uh at the forefront of the public discourse over the last uh few weeks and months. This map shows where our early proposal identified areas for additional height. We showed our tallest buildings downtown where today's rules already allow tall buildings, but we also showed areas, and they're mostly shown in sort of the the medium color of pink here, uh, where you can get three to fivetory buildings uh, along our commercial corridors. And I just want to be very transparent on this. The basis for these maps was state law that already allows under certain conditions mixeduse buildings of five stories in certain locations adjacent to transit stops even if we don't allow it in our zoning code. Um and again I want to be very transparent that we developed this based on an early understanding of state law and how uh it applied in Palm Springs that we arrived on through discussions with the state with our attorneys and with our consulting team. But since that time, our understanding of that law and how it applies to Palm Springs has been evolving. There's sort of differing opinions. And so I want to say uh clearly that we are continuing to work through that with the city attorney's office so that we understand how it applies or doesn't apply to Palm Springs so that we can shape uh and refine this proposal based on that guidance. Um, while we're doing that, we're also working through all of the comments that have been received so far to balance our need to grow and bring more jobs and

housing to the city with the community's concerns that we do so in a way that uh respects what makes Palm Springs special. So, my message here is it's an evolving uh web of state law. We're trying to understand how it applies and doesn't apply in Palm Springs. And I think we have a lot of latitude to make changes to the proposal to respond to the community's concerns. And that's a conversation that we'll come back to council with uh to to receive direction in the coming months. So going forward, there's a lot of material on our website um that sort of shows the evolution of this process over the last 18 months. And the openhouse materials that were shared at the meetings at the end of January and the beginning of last month or beginning of this month are available online for the public to comment on through March 13th. As I mentioned, we're working with the city attorney's office to get uh clarity on what state law requires of us. And from there, we'll sort of wrap all of that up and look at what potential changes can be made to the draft maps to respond uh to the public comments as well as our understanding of state law. Once we have all of that, we'd like to come back to you, like I said, for a fuller discussion and for some direction on on height and several other issues that we need to work through as we get into writing the actual rules that will actually implement and and form the basis of the zoning code. So, we look to do that later this spring. And just again another pitch uh and stressing that there's a lot more outreach to come on this over the course of the next year and we really need the public to stay engaged in this. So, there's a long path ahead of us and a lot of details to work through, but that's where we are now and uh plan to be back to you later this spring. Thank you.

Any Thank you, um, Chris for that summary, for reminding us that this is an intentional long public engagement process um and that there's going to be multiple opportunities coming up um for that continued engagement. Any immediate questions or comments? Council member Garner.

Thanks so much, Chris. I really appreciate this. I think, you know, one of the things we're trying to do with this zoning code update is simplify things and just make this entire process easier to understand. And as we're moving through it, you can see just how complicated all of this is. So, I'm really looking forward to what we've we finally adopt in 2027. And I hope that it's something that will be so much clearer for everyone. And so I really appreciate the public's kind of efforts and moving through this with us and understanding that things are constantly changing and evolving. Uh and and we really want this to work for for all of us. Um just one thing when you come back if you're able to kind of show us at all maps of different um density options that would be really great because I you know see with this map there was a lot of five sevenstory buildings and kind of particular areas. I'm curious, what does it look like if there were threetory buildings a little bit more throughout? You know, how do we get some of the density that we want without um sevenstory or nine-story buildings? What does that look like? Is it possible? I think one of the things that I'm looking forward to is just the the variations that we could possibly have in our city to show um the residents um other options. Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Bernstein. Thank you, mayor. Um, thank you, Chris, for this. Um, couple things just thank, you know, it's confusing and obviously very um passionate our community that is concerned about uh changing our our our look and feel. But a couple things I wanted to just suggest. The zoning code is not just about this building height and density. There's a lot of other things in the zoning code. And um what I would suggest in this process is that you let people know all not all the different elements but samples of the different categories of elements that are included because there's a lot of things whether it's parking for businesses or types of businesses that can go in what neighborhood. All of these things are things that are important but they're not really being discussed because it's overshadowed by the height conversation. So that's a suggestion.

Yeah. And thank you for that. But I think it's such an important point and we have certainly had information at our open houses and we've engaged directly with with business community and the hotel community and the tourism community. But yes, there's so much more to this beyond just residential height and density that it's really important we remain engaged with our stakeholders on.

Okay. The second thing I was going to say, you had a map that showed our total land and what's actually buildable in Palm Springs. And then obviously some of that's tribal land which we can't really in they've asked us not to include in our reet allocation. So if you could in the future share that map and then potentially discuss are there strategies to use that with with our state uh representatives to um I guess Skagg who does the numbers to to identify that we can't while we have a lot of land we don't have a lot of buildable land that we could include. Um, so I would suggest that. Um, and again I echo what Council Member Gardner said about the um, options other than very high buildings. Are there more rooms for smaller buildings? And I guess the last thing I would ask is if you can if we can be sure to keep the public updated as to what we learn about state law and how that changes if to the extent that it's feasible to do that. Um, because people there's still an understanding right now that this is what we're proposing. We're advocating. We're just working with this and and I think you've mentioned here that we are going to be reviewing it and understanding it and and but I want to make sure that gets out to the public.

Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Mayor Promp. Thank you. So, so Chris, is there a time frame that the state says we have to do this by?

Um, yes and no. So some of the commitments that I had on that earlier slide about the housing element. So there are timelines associated with each of those commitments through the housing cycle which takes us to the end of 2029 and annually on April 1st of every year. So that's coming up. Good reminder. Um we have to submit a report to HCD demonstrating what we've done or not done and if we haven't done it by the timeline we agree to in the housing element when when we're going to. So, some of the commitments about commercial corridors and increasing the height are things we're actually uh supposed to do this year, but the response to HCD will be we're doing it through the zoning code update. We expect that that will be done as early next year as possible. Uh so there's no mandated timeline on which we have to complete the overall zoning code update, but some of the elements that are being rolled into it do need to be addressed uh on certain timelines per the housing element.

Okay. So, we we have have time. And when you talk about we're still trying to figure out what the state law is. How do we do that? I mean because I'm just trying to get to understand the process. We need to definitive. The state says you must do this. Then within that there are exceptions that we have discretion as a city to do X Y and Z. And at that point then it seems like that's what the community would respond to. So I'm I'm not sure like like what are people commenting on? They don't know. if we don't even know what the rules are yet, how do they know what to comment on?

Yeah, it that that's a good point and a a complicated issue to work through and I want to be as uh respectful of my colleagues at the state as possible in responding. What I would say is we've received inconsistent guidance and direction and so the way that you characterize it as the state saying thou shalt do this thing is not necessarily the direction that we're currently receiving. I think um and I'm going to look to our city attorney to correct me or or disagree with me, but it's it's almost as though we have to determine our own path forward based on our own interpretation of state law and make our own decisions for how we want to proceed understanding that someone may challenge us and a lot of these laws are so new they haven't necessarily been tested in court yet. So, we're left in a little bit of a more reactionary uh position than we would like to be, if that makes sense. So, it's challenging for the public. Absolutely. It's challenging for us as staff. It's challenging for you as decision makers. Um, but I think what we're going to do when we come back to you in a couple of months is give you our recommendation and advice based on the readout from the city attorney's office and his team of what we think we have to do and based on the compromises we think we can make based on the community's feedback. And so, trying to find that sort of compromise area and give you some options uh to get some direction from you on how you want us to proceed. So that that that's when we're going to have the discussion on the discretion that the city has.

Yeah. Uh and I presume that you're making that clear at the the meetings because what we're getting is a reaction of people. Well, it's going to be this or that and and and that's not what trying and and it's very hard. And what I will say to be a little bit more direct about it is the maps that were on the screen showing where those five stories were were based again on direction we had received that has since been backed off. So, we started that whole conversation believing we had an obligation to do the things that were on that map. We're now being told we may have more ability to interpret things in a way that works better for us. So, we just still need to work through those mechanics, but that that's how we got there. Thank you.

Just a little bit to follow up on the mayor prom and also council member Bernstein. as that clarity is is growing, especially on some of the state legislation and and how we can move forward. I'm I'm just wondering if there's explainers like in layman's terms that we can put on engaged Palm Springs to help um kind of even prior to the next round of open um community meetings. But how can we just develop materials that kind of summarize um the legislation as and maybe it's kind of you know this piece an explainer on this piece and an explainer on this legislation. I'm not expecting kind of like a whole book but um I don't think we have to wait until we do the next community outreach to explain it but helping people understand it as we're learning as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's going to be really important. So, I think as we're working through these conversations and getting clarity, I think putting something together for the website and for future outreach. Absolutely. Great. Any other comments? Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.

Okay. Next, we have uh before we get to proclamations, a really special shout out. Um, and Chris, maybe I don't know, I didn't ask you to do this, but if you want to add to this, uh, we want to acknowledge Edward Robertson's, who's retiring from the city of Palm Springs after 21 years. Edward has been a true pillar of planning services since joining the department and has handled so much of our we're talking about what our city's going to look like and you helped build uh and get us to the city that we're at right now. So um on behalf of the my colleagues we just want to say a deep thank you um for your contributions to our work to our city to this building um and and just so grateful for all of your expertise your guidance your energy um and just wishing you the best in this next phase.

I don't know if you want to say anything. I told him he had questions on a controversial project that he was a gift to myself.

I love it. Thank you, mayor. Thanks to the staff. I saw them and I thanks to the assistant city manager. Um, and above all, thanks to uh the mayor proam, Mr. David Ready. He hired me um May of uh 2005 and I started working in August of 2005 of 2005. I'm sorry if I'm a little bit he I was I was prepared for something different. Sorry to give you extra work the day before your last name.

And he knows this is not my style. I just come here to do my job. But it's been um a great 21 years service. I'm very grateful. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor Prom, do you want to add a couple thoughts?

Yeah, if I could. So, again, great. I'm so happy for you, Edward. And thank you for all all truly thank you. You've done so much. But one thing I would say about Edward is as you know, in planning things can get a little tense. The stakes are high. People want things quickly. uh we you know do our best to get things moving through the system but but always Edward brought a calmness integrity you know he didn't get ruffled upset he would just work through it and you brought to the process a calmness that everyone appreciated and you helped more people than we could even acknowledge through a complicated system uh with your guidance and so uh you know I witnessed it for many years and so just from my perspective, thank you significantly. Thank you. Uh and from the city's perspective, uh it's because of the dedic dedication of the people like you that you know this this system, the city works.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Just just one thing, Edward. See, this is what happens when you tell a council member that you're retiring.

Um, that was amazing. Moving to uh our no more sneaky agenda items. Um, our proclamations. Uh, we had two that we want to recognize. Uh, first we have the we had NDA Lynx Day proclamation issued on February 12, 2026. recognized as the Palm Springs socialite, best known for appearing in Slim Erand's iconic 1970 photography, Poolside Gossip, essentially becoming a symbol for the city's glamorous mid-century lifestyle. And then, um, we also had International Bear Weekend February 19th to the 23rd, recognizing for its significant impact, global visibility, and long-standing role in supporting Palm Springs tourism and its inclusive community. Our next item is acceptance of the agenda. The city council will discuss the order of the agenda, may amend the order, add urgency items, note abstensions or no votes on consent calendar items, or request consent calendar items to be removed for separate discussion. Are there any items staff or council member would like to be removed? If you could know if it's a separate discussion, a comment um um yeah, or tabled. Um let's start at the end. Uh, council member um, Deart.

Thank you, mayor. I need to recuse from one B and one C uh, several entries and, uh, those items relate to organizations that I'm involved with. That was B and C. Correct. Council member um, Bernstein, I'd like to Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to pull one F for discussion. Uh, mayor, uh, 1D, I guess it's a comment, but it might be a discussion, so maybe what would you like? Uh, discussion. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else? I had F as well. Okay. Um, D for remove, D for discussion, F for discussion, and council member Deart um, accused on B and C. I would like to entertain a motion to accept the agenda noting those um BS. Do we have a motion? Oh, I think we're doing it on on our everyone have it open.

Yeah, we're waiting for a second. Oh, here we go. We have a motion by Mayor Prom, a second by Council Member Bernstein. All voted.

Motion carries. WONDERFUL. WE'RE GONNA GET FASTER. OKAY. We're working on it. Okay. At this time, I invite city attorney Jeff Ballinger to provide a report on close session, please. Yes, honorable mayor, members of the city council, members of the public, the city council met in close session earlier this afternoon to to discuss the items that are listed on the agenda and there was no reportable action.

Thank you. Next item is public testimony. This item has been a set aside for members of the public to address the city council on non-public hearing agenda items only. Two minutes will be assigned to each speaker. You're asked to please begin your time by telling us what agenda item or items you are speaking about. Please note that testimony of your public hearings will be taken at public hearings. We don't have any. Um general public comment on subjects not on the agenda will be taken later this evening. If there's a written comment that you wish to distribute to myself or to my colleagues, you can hand it to the city clerk. Our first speaker is Mr. M Pikkin. Michael Joseph Pitkin 1 BC 3B CD. Today I ask this body to create like many other cities a free city license indigent art zone where individuals may sell personally crafted handmade non-commercial art. Other cities have such off the side yet still close by tourist areas. The tourists love it as they realize someone who is making an effort to make a couple dollars to better themselves is more safe than being in an unsafe area panhandling. I cannot afford over $2,000 to have a legitimate license to sell anything in Palm Springs legally. I do not want to start a business. Perhaps if I sold a few pieces of art, I could afford the 2,000. In another matter, where do citizens on patrol get to be Glattus Kravitz individuals so much like gang stalking almost daily that law enforcement mail out hundreds of dollars

in fines for safety checks? Palm Springs and tribes, this is notice of potential litigation. Thank you, Mr. Pikkin. Next, we have Mr. Paul Henrikson. And on deck after Paul is Matthew. Hi Paul.

Good evening honorable mayor prom and rest of council and wonderful staff. I stand here with great gratitude for all of the participation that city leaders and staff have given to item 3A, the parking in this city. Some of those issues have become exacerbated as of the development of technology with things like Turo and so forth, as well as airport parking prices going up. And so people are trying to find ways to beat that and you've given a lot of attention to it and so grateful for that. For many years my husband and I were co-chairs of neighborhood formation support. So we went to literally hundreds of neighborhood meetings throughout the city and year after year, neighborhood after neighborhood, parking issues were a common topic. many of which we would hear over and over again and would be confronted and saying, "When's somebody going to do something about it?" Well, it looks like you really are taking this seriously and you're going to do something about it in favor of what you're doing. There are some issues that aren't quite covered that have been topics for many years for neighborhoods such as we're talking about with Turo. It's illegal commercial warehousing. But sometimes it's not a business venture. There are people like myself and husband who collect old cars and some of us can be impulsive and we buy buy them go, "Oh, I got to have it." And they end up parking it on the street when they don't have parking for it. But there's other reasons, too. And so streets get filled. Reparking is a component that we've talked about for over a decade. After the 72 hours is up, they can move

it a few feet and the clock starts ticking again and they continue to game it. So please try to address it. And thank you again for all of your engagement and support. It really matters to us residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. Next we have Mr. Matthew Buscet. Uh good evening. I believe I'm addressing item 3D. Um and I've worked for many multi-billion dollar companies, actually run many multi-billion dollar companies. And if anybody ever showed up in my office with something that was 50 pages long, that was usually a bad sign. What it usually meant was the hard decisions hadn't been made. The hard tradeoffs hadn't been made. And very often in these big strategic plans, the no is more important than the yes. And so I picked up the strategic plan to take a look at and I was a bit concerned because a plan is as only as good as its execution. And the fir it read to me like it was like a brainstorm session and everything was recorded for everybody in town who wanted anything. And when I thought about it, if we adopted that document and use that going forward, just about anything anybody came up with for the next five or 10 years would fit somewhere in there. And so I would encourage you to think a little bit about the hard decisions. We can't do everything for everybody. So what should the nose be? And how are we going to execute it? because at 50 pages, nobody's going to read it. And your chances of execution are going to be low. And I was struck that it lacked the executional challenges. What are the measurements? How do we know when we've succeeded? How do we have the right staffing? Where do we get the money? I wouldn't have even come up and said anything had I not run read the ticket on this. So, right now, we're spending 85% of our money on the convention center because we've got a focus and there's some big ticket items there, but that only left 15% of the pie for everything else. And I was flabbergasted to see that this study cost $600,000 and was kind of in this state because it was sort of a culmination of the entire

city's brainstorming. And so to give you perspective on $600,000, that's six times the total dollars that the city spent on helping small businesses in the last year. So before we go and give this this um consulting firm more money, perhaps we could see if we could maybe tighten things up beforehand. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Mr. Buscat. Madam clerk, do we have any speakers online? We have no speakers online.

Okay. Thank you. Next item is the consent calendar. I would like to entertain a motion to accept the consent calendar without items D and F as well as recognizing council member Deart refuse on B and C. It should come up, right? Your browser. Still waiting. We have a motion by council member Garner, second by council member Bernstein. Motion carries. Okay, let's start with item D, please, if we can have the staff report. Madame Mayor, Mayor Prom, council, staff, I'm gonna hand this over to city attorney Jeff Ballinger, who's been carrying the heavy water on this while I was out of town. Uh, so I will uh hand it over to him, and we're both available for questions following the discussion.

Yes, this is a second reading of the ordinance that uh uh recodifies and reestablishes a a new and updated uh and more streamlined version of our hotel incentive program. Uh I recall at the last council meeting the the council gave us some direction on um the language about uh any operator who is not current on their toot. Uh the council was concerned that maybe the ordinance uh as proposed at the first reading uh provided a little bit too much time for them to come into compliance and so um at first reading the council directed us to shorten that to 60 days which is what is provided in this. Other than that I don't believe any other changes were made at first reading. So this is second reading. Uh assuming the council is okay with this, you can conduct that second reading and it would go into effect 30 days thereafter.

Thanks, Mayor. Uh thank you uh Mr. City attorney. Question I had I appreciate you you reduced the number to 60 days. That was good. But the the question I had and again I'm I'm not interested in uh having to redo this. My thought was that a word change may not um trigger that. But on page 11 of the staff report where uh in indeed we indicated that we wanted staff in city to be able to have the option to terminate an agreement for not paying tot and that's what I think you did under uh if they on the second 30-day the city shall be entitled to intermin terminate. So that gives us flexibility. Could be reasons we don't want to do it. All right. Uh my my question is on on point one D1 it says should an operator fail to remain current um you know first that the city may issue a notice providing them 30 days. So the first one so in my mind that's mandatory because they're behind and we got to get that process started. Now 60 days has gone by. That's where our discretion is. So maybe we've worked something out with them. We understand better and we have that discretion. My concern with the word may is that the clock may never start running if we don't send it out. And in my mind, if they have the incentive, they have a higher duty to be paying their toot. So that's why I just want to make sure that first toot once they're 30 days behind, the first notice goes out and it starts the clock. So the question is, I guess on number one, can we change May to shall or will? Um, I think you could probably appreciate it, uh, having gone to law school. I think the difference between May and Shall from a legal perspective is pretty significant. Uh, and so if the council's inclined to make that change, um, perhaps what you can do is, uh,

conduct the second reading and give direction to staff in the city attorney's office to bring back an amendment of just that one, uh, subdivision. That way, we can go ahead and get the ordinance into effect. And this issue, which certainly with regard to our current uh covenant operators is not an issue because they're all current. Um we could bring that back very quickly if not at the next meeting at the very next meeting. I I just think I think changing May to Shell is not a typographical error. I think it's pretty substantive. Well, and I could offer this uh you know, clearly I think we could just leave it as it is as may. But yet, you know, just as sort of an informal policy, the city manager understands that this is something important to do. So, I mean, I'm fine with it staying as it is just as long as it just like for the record, the council has a expectation that this process will get started uh by staff if someone's 30 days late.

Mr. Mayor Prom. Uh that would be uh perfectly uh good with us as well. We understand the importance of it and uh you know we it it would be easy for us to make sure that that that happens. And again these are for operators that have received an incentive from us. So it's not that large of a group to begin with. So uh it's an easy enforcement uh me uh method for us. Thank you. I'm comfortable with that. Thank you. Okay. Oh yes, council member Ghart. But

Mayor Prom, I think you raised a valid point. If it's not written down, we're not going to know in two years that it's supposed to be followed. So I I don't see why we wouldn't do as the city attorney suggested, approve what we have tonight and come back with word change um at a future meeting. That would be I would I would be in agreement with what the city attorney had suggested. Approve as is and come back for a word change with the what did you say

of of just that one subsection changing May to shell. It'd be very short ordinance, very short staff report, very simple to do. We have a motion by council member Bernstein, a second by council member Garner, but the motion as is as the city attorney just stated. Got it. Motion carries.

Thank you, councel. Next we have item F. Can we get a staff report, please?

Madame Mayor, Mayor Prom, and members of council. This action will award a professional services agreement to ACOM to prepare a comprehensive shade and heat mitigation plan to support multimodal transit. By way of background, the sustainability department submitted a grant application to CALR in 2024. We were notified later that year that we had been awarded $400,000 in grant funding with a required 11% local match. This is through the safe streets and roads for all grant program with an emphasis in looking at how heat and shade can support the use of transit. Um the agreement was finally signed in 2025. We issued a request for proposals in December of 2025. Five firms submitted proposals. However, one was uh identified as being nonresponsive. The proposals were reviewed by an evaluation team and we selected ACOM to perform the heat and uh mitigation plan for us based on other plans that they had done including plans for the county of Los Angeles for Metroink and they currently have one underway for the city of Elkrove up in the Sacramento area. The purpose of the study is to help the city reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet our goals by encouraging the use of multimodal transit in what is becoming an increasingly hotter desert climate. In short, what that means is providing shade um along uh sidewalks, along bicycle routes, at transit stops. So, um, people can continue to use it even though we are, uh, experiencing warmer

temperatures here in the desert. Some of the key deliverables of the plan include strategies to reduce heat exposure, expand shade access, and as I had mentioned, enhancing transit use. Um we're asking our consultant to come up with both short-term strategies uh some longer term strategies and then to cost those out for us as well and then to provide design concept for shade structures, tree canopy expansion and adaptive landscape treatments on transit routes and at hubs. Uh stakeholders that we'll be doing outreach to include of course Sunline. um they're a very important partner for us in looking at this study. Seag in looking at regional transit uh also the airport in terms of visitors here that are coming to the area. We'll also do outreach to neighborhood organizations, chamber of commerce, community organizations. We'll reach out to the hospitality sector including Visit Greater Palm Springs. Um, but most importantly, we'll be doing outreach to outreach to our transit users. Um, how we can best accommodate them and make it easier for them to use transit to bicycle to walk. Um, one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that this grant is limited in terms of its funding and its scope. However, we need to uh kind of interface it with other plans that we have underway. Um, one example would be the shade study that we're doing around the convention center in order to bring people from the convention center to downtown and vice versa. So, it'll be very similar to that except looking primarily at transit routes. Uh, another plan that we have um teed up to be updated is our 2021

pedestrian plan. We want to expand the scope of that and so projects that couldn't be covered under the uh shade and heat mitigation study could be covered under our 2021 pedestrian plan update. Uh so that is kind of a summary of what we intend to do with this program. Uh we're under kind of a tight deadline. We do have to expend our grant funds by June of 2027. Uh so our consultant will need to hit the ground running. One of the reasons why we chose ACOM is because they do have the ability to do that, but uh we're very anxious to get started and excited to begin this work. With that, I'll go ahead and take any questions you might have.

Council member Bernstein, why don't you start us off, please? Okay. Thank you, Flynn, um for answering all my questions I asked you before. So um uh but I just want to so they also this grant is specific first of all it's terrific we got this grant um so thank you to whoever did that um but you know shade and heat mitigation is sort of a key priority in all areas as you mentioned commercial districts residents you know our our new convention center airport and and and obviously for the residents this has specifically focused on underserved and vulnerable populations. Is that part of the the grant scope?

Yes, it is. It uh does require us to look at equity in terms of those who are underserved. And so that's going to be a primary focus. As I had mentioned though, it does give us the opportunity in the update to our 2021 pedestrian plan to look at other areas as well. So, uh we'll certainly do that.

Okay. And this also said there's only I mean you listed a lot of stakeholder groups but there's only a maximum of six stakeholder uh engagement meetings that they'll do. So I guess the question is what are the opportunity how first of all how do we make sure these are the best stakeholder groups and is there an opportunity to add on other stakeholder groups either outside of the scope or change it? Let me clarify that um with some of our stakeholder input uh that will be one-on-one. Our consultant for example will interview uh and sit down with Sunline or CVAG or things like that. In terms of the six outreach sessions, those are intended to be more general sessions where we're reaching out to the community. So, it's going to be a combination of uh interviewing stakeholder groups uh by our consultant versus the six outreach sessions that we'll do that will be more publicly facing and open and available to everyone.

Okay. So, I guess the other question because we also have shade and heat mitigation in our commercial districts and our parks which is not really included in this. Can is there an opportunity to add on to it or to have this consultant expand their scope separately from this? It would be difficult at this point to expand the scope of that and that's why I'm suggesting um we can incorporate that as part of our update to the pedestrian plan that we're planning to do later this year.

Okay. Because what I would say is is you know certainly you know our commercial districts pedest uh um walkability and heat shade and heat mitigation is is key as well as the parks and so and I don't want to add on to this one necessarily but since we have an expert company that's already doing a lot and setting it it seems like it would be efficient costefficient and result efficient if they were engaged to do to expand it and I don't know how that would get funded. But it is that an option that we might consider?

Yeah, since we haven't sub prepared the RFP for the update to our pedestrian plan, uh we might look at that as an opportunity in terms of using those grant funds in that manner. So, that's something that we can investigate. Okay. Um yeah. No, I think that's great. I just I want to make sure that we're we understand the importance of this and and are doing the maximum possible we can for for our residents and businesses and and transit users going forward. So, thank you.

Any other questions? Um, I have some questions as well, Flynn. Um, so can you just help me understand the the timeline of this? So, we applied um January 24, awarded July, notified July 24, accepted it July 24. Um, but we went out to RFP about 18 months later. Can you just help me understand?

It took us about 12 months to get the agreement signed. Um, part of that was a delay on the states end, part of that was a changeover in our staff. And so that's why it took us so long uh to get to the point of being able to issue the RFP. And then the original term was always going to be a December or I'm sorry, what was June 27?

June 2027. Yeah. Okay. Um, I agree with Council Member uh Bernstein. Shade, having a shade and heat equity plan is what's going to make this city a place people want to visit, a place where people want to live. Um, and the the climate res resiliency is just such a key piece to if we want to be a year-long city for our visitors and our residents, we have to make it more pleasant to be outside. Um and so if there is any way that this study is informing the other work, not waiting until June 27 to give some of that early analysis or what findings I mean we just need to make the um complimentary as you mentioned to our other work and not waiting until the end to see what applies. Um it just has to be a much more open collaborative resource sharing so that it's complimentary to we don't want to study the same thing at the same time in two different concurrent studies please. Um

completely understood.

Yes. Um and so it and if we can expand another one I think um our school districts uh is another key piece. students are a key uh customer in our Sunline um transit customer profile. Um and so I think that warrants being in this heat equity study that's already underway as opposed to waiting for the pedestrian plan um because they are users of our of our transit system um and are also active transportation. So, I I think there's there's pieces of our pedestrian plan that we have not moved forward that I want to see if it can be incorporated in this study faster. So, it's not just updating the pedestrian plan, but what are pieces of the pedestrian plan that we haven't moved on in five years and how can maybe potentially this heat equity study put some um fuel into those pieces. And so, um, again, just being as looking at all of our, uh, plans that we have in place and seeing what how we can add, um, some speed into this. And so, um, I I say it a lot, but radical shade should not be a radical idea. We we need shade everywhere. Um, and that's every every age, every phase of life wants to be outside and be comfortable. Um, and so this just I'm just I'm a little bummed. It took 18 months to go to RFP. Um, and I hope that we are not waiting until June 27 to share the findings and help it inform all of our investments across the city.

Any other questions or comments? Yep.

I I guess the one other question is in terms of timing. So then how do we start planning on an implementation plan? I mean this is just a study of what we should do, right? It's sorry it's going to have a series of recommendations in terms of projects. Uh as I had mentioned, it will have short-term projects and so those are the ones that we're going to be focusing on first. Uh critical to getting this accomplished, of course, is funding. Um having a plan makes us eligible to obtain grants to actually build things. Uh having a plan also makes it possible to budget for either um capital projects or measure J or things like that. Uh and so that's how we really begin to implement. But we want the plan document to be specific recommendations that we can then take out and build. So that's we don't want it to just be concepts but rather be specific.

Okay. And because this is going to take two two years is that right? Uh we have less than that just under 18 months. 18 months. So this will be in our next budget cycle we'll be looking at what might you might want to allocate so we don't have to wait until exactly 2029. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Not looking for a Can you send them motion? Looking for a motion. We have a motion by council member Bernstein. Approve item F. Do we have a second? Second by council member Garner. Thank you. Motion carries. Okay. Public hearings. We do not have any. Next we have um moving on to our business and legislative uh items. The next item is item 3A, which is a request for an introduction of ordinance adding section 12.28.055 to the Palm Springs Municipal Code for regulating vehicle sales activity in the public right of way. May we have a staff report, please?

Yes, honorable member uh mayor and members of the city council. Uh this item is an item that is being brought back to you uh following the October discussion by city council of some ways that the city might be able to address uh the use of city streets for commercial activities involving vehicles, whether those are sales or rentals. Uh what is before you is an ordinance that adds section 12.28.055 to the city's municipal code. uh it establishes a contentneutral uh way of enforcing um uh this ordinance and prohibiting uh sales and rentals of vehicles in city rights of way. Um specifically, it provides that the ordinance can be enforced uh without any evidence of of a sign. Uh, as I uh mentioned to you during our October council meeting, uh, courts have struck down ordinances that are based on signage, based on first amendment concerns. Uh, and so what this does is establishes kind of a presumption that if a vehicle is left uh, for more than 72 hours within a city ride ofway uh, that it is presumed to be uh, being used uh, for purposes of sale or rental. Uh and that establishes kind of the um primaascia case of of a violation. Um it does con the ordinance does contain a very limited exception for individuals who might uh be uh selling their cars within a location that is proximate to their to their house or residence where the the vehicle is registered. Uh the council indicated a desire to have that limited option um at the time of our uh discussion in o in October. Uh the ordinance would be enforced through our normal administrative citation process. Um that process involves uh a citation. The first citation uh will be of $100. The second citation is

$250 and the third citation is $500. So it's got escalating citation dollar amounts. Um, we believe that this is a a enforceable and and efficient way of uh addressing the concerns that have been raised with the council. I know the council uh has also uh heard concerns including tonight about the use of uh city streets uh as well as private property for rentals of cars including through exchanges uh uh such as um the app Turo. Uh I believe that this ordinance would address those activities rentals uh if they're using city rights of way for those rentals including through um modern technology and apps and whatnot. In addition, I believe that the city zoning ordinance uh if private property uh uh is zoned residential and it's being used for uh rental activities of vehicles, I think that would also uh be a violation of our zoning ordinance. So, there are multiple ways that we can address those and and my office is working with the code enforcement department uh to address those concerns. With that, I'm available to answer any questions.

Um, thank you. Um, I'll start us off. Um, thank you Jeff for that summary. Um, can you just to reiterate to the community, so there's been lots of different parking concerns uh of different kinds in our neighborhoods. And so the 72hour um max, which is already in place, but it then assumes there's um commercial activity intention, which then changes the um enforcement. Would that be an accurate summary?

Yes. And and again, that's really just one way of uh of establishing a violation. There could be other ways, including statements by a vehicle owner. If we, you know, if our code enforcement officers or police officers are talking to a a vehicle owner and they and they admit that they're selling or leasing the cars, uh there are other ways that we can establish uh uh the requisite activity. This is just probably the easiest one is the 72 hours. And it uh it includes 72 hours um even if they move the vehicle. So if they move the vehicle 20 ft, if it's within a 1,000 ft uh uh distance, then it's still going to be presumed to be a prohibited activity under this ordinance.

And if it's commercial activity less than 72 hours, it's still potentially addressable. If it's less than 72 hours, then we're going to have to uh get at it by other evidence such as talking to, you know, witnesses, talking to property, uh the the vehicle owner, other other ways. Yes.

So, so for the Turo parking by the airport, um and it's less than 72 hours, there's a visitor who picks it up within 9 hours, but uh I don't know, 12 hours, whatever it is. But that would still be if it's verified, confirmed through either the customer witnesses or owner that would count as commercial activity that Yeah. And if if you're talking about on airport uh activities because the airport does have an agreement with Turo for on

No, not not on airport but like the Turo owners who are parking near the airport who are telling their clients or the whoever reserved it, walk two blocks, it's the red car on such and such street. Right. we would have we would have to use other evidence and and you know as we've experienced with Airbnb and VBO those apps sometimes provide the evidence itself right um I'll go to Council Member Garner and then Bernstein

on on that you know we're we're getting reports about Turo activity all over the city we even have it um as far north as Vintage Palms neighborhood which is uh where near where I live. Um, so I think that's kind of my concern is for this rental activity that where the cars are not necessarily staying there for long periods of time. Um, how can we kind of swiftly address it? Uh, is there and I don't I don't know how the Turo app works. Is there a rundown of kind of how that works? Because if you're you're saying like it's Airbnb, sometimes these apps themselves can give us that evidence that we need. Is that something that we know for sure and and in terms of how the Turo app is used?

I haven't used the Turo app myself. I don't know if our code enforcement uh staff or airport staff is available to answer that. I I've been a Turo customer. Oh, okay. Can you tell us?

Not in Palm Springs. Uh but it's um similar to Airbnb. You get the details after you've uh confirmed it and it's close to your rental. So, you make a reservation um and you say, "I'm going to be in Palm Springs. I want such and such type vehicle." And then maybe like 20, I can't remember exactly 24 or 48 hours, it'll get you'll you'll get the details of where to pick up your car. And so, depending on where someone um the owner has left it, they might say, "I've parked it in lot uh the overflow lot. You have to go pick it up there and there's a lock box for the key." It could say walk over to Civic Drive. This is how you you know. So it's really that's why you might have tour owners who are fully in compliance with the airport and then you might have some that are parking in the neighborhood.

So see then that kind of makes it a bit difficult, right? Because it's not like you can search for it and say ah you're selling here or there. they for all we know there could be somebody who has a garage that they rent where they're putting these cars and then moving them somewhere else. Right? So I I'm just my question here is how do we make sure that this ordinance gives us enough so that we can address this situation um and we have the evidence that we need.

I would say this ordinance gives us the framework to to pursue those violations. this creates the violation. I think we're going to have to work with staff to develop ways of investigating these violations based on evolving technology and different ways of of behavior by by um by um people. But this this at least creates the violation for using city rights of way for rentals. We're going to have to figure out how to go after them. But we don't need to include how we're going to move forward in this ordinance. No, usually you don't see that in the ordinance. the invest in investigative techniques you don't see in the ordinance.

Exactly. Okay. I just want to make sure that that's um very clear for everybody. Thank you, Council Member Bernstein. Um Yes. Thank Thank you. So, I just I want to check because we talk about a a safe harbor zone of less than 72 hours.

The safe harbor zone is onetenth of a mile. So if uh if uh a property owner is selling their car say in front of their street or within onetenth of their mileet one/tenth of a mile from their from the home at which the vehicles is registered then that uh is a defense. Now if they are parked for more than 72 hours or in violation of any other um applicable parking regulation then that safe harbor is not permitted. So, if they're parked in a red zone, they're not going to be able to take advantage of the of the safe harbor.

So, just in terms of the the the rental car model, I I'm renting out my own car and I can park that on the street for up to 72 hours. That's I'm allowed to do that. Yes. And it's limited to one vehicle per adult at the residence. So if if there are two adults at your residence, then two adults can take advantage of that safe harbor for two vehicles. So if doesn't mean you can have 19 vehicles registered and parked within a tenth of a mile. It's one vehicle per adult. And that's in addition to whatever cars I may have for my private use.

Uh yes, because you may have two cars and one you're trying to sell in front of your house. I'm talking about the rentals business. So, I have two cars in my home and then I want to have two more cars I'm just going to park on the street to use for rentals under this ordinance. Yes. But as I mentioned under our zoning ordinance, I think we could still treat that as a commercial activity.

Okay. So, commercial activity, I mean, an Airbnb vacation rental is a commercial activity that we allow. uh under our ordinance under our zoning ordinance we've treated vacation rentals as an incidental use of residential property we have not done that with rental of vehicles under our zoning ordinance that's that's what forms the basis of my belief that that there's a distinction does it make and I don't I mean we make money from Toro at the airport right

I think so I said yes so my question is is this something that we should permit and regulate say like vacation rentals um and have stricter limits and code compliance and permits and all that kind of stuff. In which case we can also say to Turo who were already have an agreement with we want to make sure you only have permitted people. That is a very fair question. I know that we've had kind of some preliminary discussions with code enforcement. So, if council would like to give us direction to bring back a discussion item of of that specific kind of model or or type of use, we certainly can.

I guess what I would suggest and you know, right now we've talked about the airport, a couple things, and we know this one person in um Vintage Palms who has 15 cars. Obviously, it's better for us to get ahead of the problem if there's going to be a problem, but I also don't want to overregulate something that's not a problem. I mean that that that could be handled easily. So I guess I would I don't know who maybe defer to code compliance to to look over time if this is something that a regulation makes sense in permitting process. Um I would defer to their expertise in that but it does seem like we would want to get ahead of this before it becomes too big an issue. Okay. And then I guess just um we had another question about um um uh if if CCNRs prohibit something.

What's that? You're raising my question. Oh, well you lost your notes. I thought I So you want to ask the question? Go ahead. So if CCNRs prohibit commercial use and does that does the cities this override this or if they allowed it would the cities override it? Um if CCNRs prohibit this type of activity then really strike from HOAs we're talking about yeah CCNRs HOAs um then the stricter of the two would prevail. So if our ordinance is more strict and then our ordinance will prevail. If the HOAs CCNRs are more strict those will prevail. If the CCNRs somehow are silent or purport to allow this activity then our ordinance is going to prevail because it's more strict.

Okay. So add adding on to that who who can enforce that though? Well what can our code in CCNRs right?

The city does not enforce CCNRs. CCNRs are enforced either if there's an organized HOA then that HOA sometimes has enforcement authority in the absence of an HOA then it's left to the individual property owners whose properties are subject to the CCNRs to enforce. So that's that's that's kind of the situation that that we have. There's CCNRs but there's no formal HOA. So it makes it a bit difficult for you know neighbors to just what knock on the door and say well or or threaten a lawsuit or bring a lawsuit. I mean that's from a legal perspective that's how CCNRs are enforced. If there's not an HOA this this ordinance would provide kind of a back in this case ours would be the stricter. Yeah.

Basically more enforceable at least. Yeah. or at least it'd be another probably more viable option, right? Yeah. Which is I think is what we need because I I think it's it's pretty difficult for neighbors to just knock on the door and demand compliance in this case. What what are the if you violate these things, what are the repercussions?

So, we uh I I would envision the city using our administrative uh uh enforcement action, which are administrative citations. As I mentioned, those are fines of $100 for the first violation, $200 $250 for the second violation, and 500 for any third and subsequent violation. And each day is a violation. So, if somebody's putting the car out there for multiple days, then we can go out there and resell them.

It's strict enough. Um, okay. So, just to go back to the fact that we actually have an agreement as our city, our airport has an agreement with Turo that this is the kind of business where if it's just if I'm going to make money selling my renting out my car that's parked in my driveway like or one on a street every once in a while, that might be something that is very reasonable. We want to allow and to have this business in our city and it's only when it gets abused that we want to have a problem. So I would suggest that we also potentially engage Turo and other apps like that so that we can potentially work with them on a positive solution that doesn't b that doesn't hurt the overall business in our airport but protects our streets and our residents. I mean I guess I would defer to our airport staff on that.

That would be a suggestion. I think in addition to uh the un building a more productive relationship with Turo, there's also just understanding the Turo customers here in Palm Springs. Are they average three-day, five? There's also like the person who wants to drive a Mustang on a sunny desert day for a day. Like that's also another type of Turo customer. I I think the um the the possibility of tour owners wanting to function outside of the airport is just like a whole other customer profile. They're not all flying into the airport and that's the only time they're going to pick up. So that that's why I say that. But that might be different in it's really popular in a coastal city. Like if you want to drive the PCH, you might want a really fun car to drive the PCH. So it's kind of things like that. Um, and I'm not quite so sure and it might be again something worth exploring coming back once we see this um, market kind of evolve here in Palm Springs as to what the Turo customers kind of like.

Okay. But I guess just to close, so in the immediate term, if we pass this, we're going to address the issue with the 15 cars on the street. That's something this will be another this will be another tool that we'll have. Yes. Okay. And then going forward, we may look at whether we're doing permitting or other things and and whether we engage with them through our airport staff and others with Toro on how we make a more productive and and better for experience for our residents and visitors.

Sounds great. And then just to bring back the original intention or explor exploration for this around for sale but then kind of expanding it to vehicles. Um, this is not about the for sale sign on the vehicle. It's really about the public use and if it's being used in that way, correct? Then it's Okay, great. Okay. Yes, Council Member Deart.

So, I I think um city attorney, I I think we've got um a comprehensive policy in place. Um, I just don't know how we expect to enforce it. H who's going to go measure 100 feet this way, 10 feet that way, 72 hours this way? I know, you know, but but we're we're asking our police department to go and and try to enforce this. I I just don't I I find it it's going to be a difficult thing to enforce that we're putting on the books. And

I I think it it's anticipated this would be done by code enforcement, not not our peace officers. It allows our peace officers to to site if they if they uh have to or want to, but it I I would envision as a practical matter, it's going to be code

and and and I noticed that it says that the cost is is nominal. How can it be nominal with us having to assess staff time and code enforcement to monitor this type of infraction? So, I I just I'm I'm I'm just concerned with the enforcement side of it and we're asking our team to take on um you know, this this we're going to put the pressure on them to be verifying how many cars are whose and where they came from and and who moved what and when. So, I'm just voicing my feeling. Merna,

so just on that, I mean, with with all of our code enforcement, um, we respond to the complaints. And so, I think that's where it's it'll be a little bit easier because what we'll need residents to do is let us know, hey, there's this activity going on in my neighborhood. Can you send code enforcement to go check it out? code enforce. We do not have the capacity by any means to have our code enforcement proactively go and be measuring distances of cars or searching for this activity and they don't do that in general. Um we rely on our residents to give us that information and then code goes out. So, I think that's why it's it's going to be nominal in this case as well. And that's just a reminder to the public. If there is an issue that it falls under code enforcement's jurisdiction, you need to tell us and report it to code enforcement or else it will continue to stay a problem uh unless somebody else reports it for you. So, just keep that in mind.

Yes, Council Member Bernstein.

I had one more thing. what was brought up in this uh discussion was also is the reparking um which I realize within 1,000 ft we address it but but um in general reparking is coming up throughout whether it's in our downtown parking or people on leaving cars on the streets indefinitely not necessarily their you know their own cars and so I would I'm not suggesting this now but we should continue to look at whether how we do a reparking ordinance and that may come up in the discussion of the downtown parking Um, but I think that's something that we hear regularly that is an issue with people parking cars on the street indefinitely and just moving them a little bit or downtown. So, there are no other questions. Um, I'd like to entertain a motion. I have a motion by council member Bernstein and a second by council member Garner and carries next. Um

Madame Mayor if I read the introduction. Yes, please. Okay. An ordinance of the city of Palm Springs, California, adding section 1228055 to the Palm Springs Municipal Code regulating vehicle commercial activity in the public rightway to promote traffic and pedestrian safety and protect residential parking. Thank you. Thank you. Next item is item 3B, which is a receive and file item for fiscal year 2425, fiscal financial audit reports of the city of Palm Springs. May we have a staff report, please?

Good evening, madame mayor, mayor prom, members of the council. I'm Christopher Mooney, director of finance and treasurer. Uh, this item is in relation to the uh, city's annual audit. Uh the annual comprehensive financial report is a product of that audit and there are some required communications that our auditors have to make to the city council. Uh Clifton Larson Allen is the city's auditors. They've been with us for one year and Dafty Munos is our partner on the engagement and she's got a short presentation for the council.

Good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council. Uh my name is Daffany Munoz and I am a partner principal at Clifton Larson Allen and I am here tonight to present to you the results of our audit for the year ended for the 2025 audit. So my presentation will cover our uh audit scope, our opinions, um management responsibility, our responsibility as auditors and our report on internal control over financial reporting and our required governance communications. So for our scope, we performed an audit and issued a report on the financial statements which includes as the annual comprehensive financial report, the standalone uh public financing authority report and as well as the standalone measure J financial statements. We have also issued a report on internal control over financial reporting and other compliance in accordance with government auditing standards. We've also issued a an exit letter which is the required governance communication letter. We perform a report on compliance with regards to the single audit. The city spent more than 750,000 in federal expenditures. Therefore, the city is required to have a compliance audit in accordance with uniform guidance as well as we've also issued a report on compliance on the facility passenger facility fees. We've also uh performed an agreed upon procedures review on the city's GAN appropriation limit as well as measure D. First, I'd like to go over our audit opinions. Uh the first paragraph of our audit opinion that's included in the financial statements is first the period that is covered by our audit which is July 1st, 2004 to June 30, 2025. Um we have issued what we call an unmodified opinions which means that the financial statements did not require any

modification and it is really the highest level of opinion that any audit can get. In layman's term it is a clean audit. I would also just like our report included what we call an emphasis of a matter uh pointing the readers to a certain note that uh talks about the restatement of beginning that position in because of implementation of gasb 101 uh compensated absences and summary statements. See the financial statements and the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements are the responsibility of management as well as adopting internal controls over those financial reporting. Our responsibility as auditors is to express opinions on those financial statements and to express those opinions we have obtained reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free of from material misstatements. And I would like to highlight the term reasonable because we are not providing absolute assurance that the financial statements are free of material misstatements. And the reason for that is because we did not test 100% of the transactions that happened during the year. Therefore, we cannot really provide an absolute assurance that the financial statements are free of maternal statements. We performed our audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards as well as government auditing standards. So as part of our audit, we um perform a review of the internal controls over financial reporting to see if as a basis in determining whether our procedures are appropriate for providing our opinion. However, we do not as part of our audit provide an opinion on the internal controls. However, if during our review of those controls, something came to our attention that we think merits the attention of management and those charging governance, we will be issuing some recommendations and it will

be included in this report. So, I'm happy to report that we did not have any reportable items under this uh this report. So our professional standards require certain communications that we are to provide to those charged with governance. First is that the accounting policies used by the cities is described in note one to the financial statements. Um we did not have any disagreements during our uh our audit. We did not have any significant uh difficulties in perform our audit. We did not have any again disagreements and we did not have any corrected on our corrected misstatements. The financial statements include certain estimates for which actual results could vary and some of those significant estimate is the estimates related to the pension liability. Um and the pension liability is based on actual valuation performed by actuaries of Kalpers. The estimate on the other post-employment benefit liability for the city which is based on estimates provided by actuarial valuation by actuary that are that were hired by the city and estimates on claims payable. The city management has given us uh has represented to us that they have perfor that have provided us all pertinent information and did not withhold any information related to the audit and this is included in a manage what we call a management representation letter dated December 18th, 2025. And lastly, to our knowledge, um the city did not consult with other accountants regarding any auditing or other matters. That concludes my presentation and I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Council member um Deart, I wonder how you would know if if we hid something and didn't turn it over to you. Well, we did we do some risk assessments as far as like when we reviewed the internal control. I'm joking. Uh so are there any uh impending uh regulatory uh changes or uh emerging risks that you have uh uh you uh think we need to be identifi addressing

with regards to the financial reporting there is uh not regulatory but for us we are uh for reporting purposes next year the city is required to implement what we call uh Gatsby 103 which will change some of the way the city reports the uh the enterprise funds and the there will be some changes on the the financial report. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Um I have just a couple on like timing. Can you just share a little bit on how long it took and kind of what that as a new audit kind of how this fits with other clients?

Yes. So um first of all I would like to thank management for a um for a new audit which is always a difficult because there's some onboarding issues for uh for auditors and management have been really helpful in providing us all the informations that uh we needed. So we started our audit as upon execution of the contract. We had an initial meeting I believe in um May and June and then that's also when we what we we perform what we call our interim audit where we reviewed internal controls in reviewed procedures uh processes to understand whether the processes over cash dispersements payroll and then see if there's like that's where we review internal controls that will be basis for our our substantive testing. And then we came back and that is about a two-eek period the interim period the interim field work and we came back in September October to perform what we call a final field work and that that's when the city provides us their financial statement their trial balance and we review substantively and that it would include uh confirmation of cash accounts to financial institutions vouching receivables and accounts payable and liabilities to subsequent receipts and subsequent dispersements. Um confirming with uh for claims payables and those we're doing analytics and that took about four weeks especially it's a new uh it's a new audit and then we did our reporting in December. We've issued the final reports by December 30th.

December what? December 30. Uh December December 12th was actually the date of our report, but we've issued the final reports December 30th. 30th. Okay. Up until that that's so late. Um that's a hard December, I guess. Um if there's any way we can kind of get that closer to early December or anything, you know, open to any recommendations as to how we can kind of get that closer to a December 1st maybe. Um

yeah, so that is the that would be our goal for the second year. with it with it being the first year it took a little longer for us to understand the processes and now we have the basis and for next year it will be updating those in ter and then we have the financial statements already ready and set up so um we could certainly have that as a goal for the 2026 audit. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

N seeing none I'd like to entertain a motion. The motion's coming up. We have a motion by Council Member Bernstein. Anybody want a second? Second. Motion carries. Thank you. Um, next item on the agenda is item 3C. 3C, which is a receive and file item request for the general fund, airport, and capital midyear fiscal year 2526 budget update.

Hi, Chris.

Thank you. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Just a just a couple comments before I reintroduce uh uh director uh Mooney. Um, I just want to reiterate, uh, this is the first of a number of ongoing general, uh, quarterly reports that we will be bringing to, uh, city council along with the capital, uh, update that you're going to hear about. The numbers that are reflective in this report are for the second quarter of the fiscal year, which takes us through uh, dece uh, uh, December 31st of this year. Um I will just mention uh from a general standpoint for the benefit of the public uh the departments uh you're going to hear about are generally uh on budget uh with management of salaries and services uh kind of as expected. Uh we are uh paying very close attention to holding the line on expenses within within the department as we talked about when we approved the the bienial budget. Council members will remember we at the time we approved a soft hiring freeze and we're hitting all of our numbers with our uh position vacancy savings with that. Our department directors are are doing a really a good job of uh helping us manage uh within uh the budget on that. And as we get through the year and we continue to see stability uh throughout that, we'll be able to be a little more flexible. And we're already approving many positions uh in the budget as we go. especially if they're related to public safety or direct services to the public. But right now, uh our soft hiring freeze is working and our departments have been very cooperative in working uh with us on that. Uh you'll hear uh we're going to go through our our general fund uh budget and forecast. uh same with our uh airport and then at the end we've added uh a number of uh a

number of pieces of information about our capital projects and we'll continue to do that. Uh what I really on the capital end of it, what I'd really uh what I know our directors will appreciate is um any advice or suggestions you can give us as you look for that capital those capital uh projects about what we can how we can improve on the report. This is a living breathing report. It'll change. It it'll evolve. We can make it work however it it uh will work best for all of us. Um and then we'll be back uh you know as we're just these are numbers through the end of December. Uh once we get through our third quarter fiscal year report which will go through the end of March, we'll be back in May with that third quarter report. and that will really start to give us a a much clearer picture on how we're doing financially both on the revenue and expense standpoint. So, with that, uh, I'll turn it over to our finance director, Chris Mooney, to walk us through all of these, uh, portions of the report. We have a number of our, uh, directors that are all here for any questions that, uh, come up throughout the course of the discussion.

Thank you, Scott, and good evening again, council. Christopher Mooney, director of finance and treasure. uh was a matter of format. We're going to do general fund. We'll take a pause uh answer questions uh discussion uh and then we'll move on to the airport. Again, take a pause, ask questions, and then we'll move on into the capital update. So, uh I I plan on moving through the year-to- date fairly quickly. Of course, obviously, we'll take any questions, but uh there's not really a whole lot to talk about on the year-to- date numbers as of yet, but we'll start with the general fund and look at the first six months of the year. Um the TOOT uh looks up. Uh that's a little deceiving. Uh and later on in the in the presentation, we'll talk a little bit more about up-to-date numbers for Toot. That's really timing differences. If you look at the 14.4 4 million. In that third column over, the blue shaded column, that's the year-to- date number for this fiscal year. The next column over, the fourth column is uh this time last year. So 11.9 million was collected of toot last year on 14.4 million. And that's just timing of class cash collections. Um could be meaning that more people are paying on time. As the council knows, we've had some significant collection efforts that are part of that number. So, uh, really we'll we'll talk a little more about Toott as we get further down the line. Property taxes strong once again. Uh, this is a number that has continued to see pretty good growth over the last, uh, two to three, four years. Uh, we continue to see, uh, expect to see growth this year at, uh, right now 13.4 a million versus 12.6. Sales tax uh, uh, as of uh, uh, up about 6%. Uh, these are numbers through November um, at 9. I'm sorry, numbers through October at $9 million uh uh year-to- date 8.5 million last year. And then the next significant number is probably our permits, fines, and fees. As the council is aware, we implemented

a fee increases as of December 1st of last year. Uh we did put some of that into the budget. Uh but it looks like we are seeing some good volume, especially on the plane check fees uh with the big developments that are happening in the area. So, we're up on fees, 7.35 million versus 7 million. Year-to- date numbers, total, the very bottom line in blue, third column over, revenue to date, 56.2 versus 52.4. So, we're having a pretty good first six months. On the expense side, uh really not a whole lot to share. Um again, just like Scott said, and we'll see this when we get to the full year forecast, we're keeping our expenses in check. We're not allowing any new appropriations. Um uh and uh we're keeping our vacancy savings target uh in check as well. So good to see uh the expenses uh in check. Largely they're down. If you go to the total operating expense line, you see 81.4 million versus 87.2. That's largely because of some of the cost cutting we did when we eliminated uh transferring money from the general fund over to the facilities maintenance fund and from the general fund over to the fleet fund. That was about $8 million. We'll move on to uh grant revenue yearto date uh 2.27. We did get the federal grant grant for the navigation center in this fiscal year. So that's part of that $2.2 $.2 million number and grant expense uh about at about a million is um the BSC police grant and a lot of the work that they're doing in the real time crime center and then the council set aside expense that 503,000 or five I'm sorry 583,000 in the third column over a lot of that is ten tenant based rental expenses that uh we uh had in the first quarter or first two quarters. So we'll move on and and before I get to

the full year forecast, I wanted to show the council some of the latest numbers on toot and sales tax so we are all on the same page when we look at the forecasted numbers. So this is the tot number. It's through December and it's uh last year was 19.56 million and fiscally 26 is 19.51 million. We're slightly down. Uh however, again talking about the significant collections that the city had, it's in the group meeting hotel line. It's between four to 500,000. If we didn't have those collections in this year-to- date number, we would be down 3% to last year's number. Uh just to put it in context. And then sales tax uh pretty strong year to date at uh 5% 14.3 million this year versus 13.6 million. It's really largely due to the September activity. If you see that number, it's huge. And uh you know, couple things happened that month. We had doubledigit increase in sales tax for auto sales. We had doubledigit increase in sales tax for food and beverage, so restaurants. And then in addition, the countywide pool, which is where a lot of outofstate purchases and that tax goes into the pool and then the state or the county distributes it uh to each of the municipalities, that was 25% higher uh in the month of September versus last month. So all that combined led to a really good September. Uh the rest of the months have been, you know, flat to down. Uh November was a good month at 6% and then just a few days ago we got our December numbers and we were up 2%. So 5%'s good uh for the year. Uh but we'll talk a little bit more about that in the full year forecast. So here's the full year forecast for toot. Uh you know we're looking at flat to date. Uh however the last couple months as we've seen the toot report have been

down four to five percent. So, we didn't want to uh, you know, really over project here. We're projecting to be on budget. And just to remind the council, as we've say all the time, you know, we've only collected 30% of our revenue in the first six months. We used to have 70% of our revenue to collect. And so, you know, it's it's really hard to put a forecast together at this point with knowing that amount of revenue is left out there to collect. March and April are the months for us. So once we do that third quarter uh forecast as Scott mentioned before, I think we'll have a lot better indication because we'll have March numbers about what's going to happen for the rest of the year. Going back to the forecast, property taxes, I'm looking at the green uh highlighted column there, that first one, property taxes, 38.58 million. We're forecasting uh the budget. We should be right on budget. Last year we brought in 37.5 million. If you go four columns over, um the assessor's website has that they assessed Palm Springs $39 million. So largely that's what we use as our guideline for our budget. There is a small amount of delinquencies in that number, but not much. So we're going to uh we're going to see very close to that $39 million number. Then here's sales and use tax. We are looking at it a little bit above budget but a little bit down from last year. Um, again, you know, we had one really good month in the first six months. Uh, we're up 5% year-to- date. Uh, we're not going to get, uh, you know, uh, too optimistic here with this number. We're going to stay here. Uh, you know, one big event in March and April, these numbers could go down significantly. Uh, we hope that doesn't happen, of course, but again, at this time of the year, we don't want to uh uh really project too much away from what we're budgeting. permit fines and fees 16.6 million. Uh

we had 16 million last year. We budgeted 16.17 million. Uh the fees are trending upward as we saw in a year-to- date number. So we just kind of took what we've realized above budget year to date and made that our forecast. So uh nothing big there. Utility users tax uh 10.2 million. We continue to see this number decline. Uh we don't really have any answers yet fromce, but we've inquired uh and uh we hope to hear something soon. So if this continues on this downward trek and we get to our third quarter forecast, we're hoping to have an answer as to as to why we're seeing some of this downturn. You know, is it mainly due toce and you know, is it in all of their territories? Uh is it just unique to us? And so that's the kind of answers that we're trying to get from from them. Uh, and I'll just go down to the bottom line. 174.1 million is what we're forecasting on a budget of 173 million. Last year, we had 184 million. And if you look in that fourth column over at the very last line, transfer some other funds. We had $5 million. At the time we performed that or we did the budget for this fiscal year 25, we thought we might need a little bit of additional revenue help from some of the other funds that had high fund balances. So, we budgeted to have that number come in. Uh, turned out we had a pretty good year. Uh, but that's largely the difference between what we're forecasting. Uh, and, uh, the FY25 actuals. Uh, some of the revenue lines like the toot, it looks a little bit better. Last year, that's a million and a half to two million. So, once you factor in the transfer and the decrease we're forecasting for toot, uh, you get to about 174 million. On the expense side, again, uh departments are are doing well. Uh very early, but we're at about 50% of our budget for expense, which is uh pretty natural to be at considering salary and

benefits is the largest number at about 98 plus million. Uh and you know, uh so that's pretty common to be at 50%. Um I'm going to go on to the next slide and if we have questions on this certainly take questions for departments but I just want to highlight one other thing. The very last line on the transfers to other funds you can see in the first green column that number is 8.7 million where last year it was 20 million. So uh we reduced that number intentionally uh to try to take some relief off the general fund and that's why you see a significant uh decrease in fiscal year 26 forecast versus the fix fiscal year 25 actuals. I want to talk a little bit more about this slide. So the salary and benefits line you can see at 98.6 it is obviously the city's biggest expense category. Um we did a couple separate analysis me and my team uh two different methodologies and we both came up that salaries and benefits are going to be somewhere around 98 and a half million. So we're fairly confident at this point in time of that number uh being uh you know forecasting it out to be pretty much on budget. Uh that does include our targeted vacancy savings. So at the budget we set a target for basic vacancy savings of about 4.1 million. Currently we're hitting that target, maybe doing a little bit better. Uh so we're like Scott said, we're keeping an eye on that. Uh and uh we're keeping a real close eye on that. We're going to try not to uh we're going to try to keep that uh savings intact for this line item. And then on contractual services, we did a real detailed analysis here too. This is one of the areas that we actually did cut uh some of the department numbers uh in even though we're showing up from last year. We're largely showing up from last year because we have some large plan check fee budgets. But as the council knows, uh those come back to us in fee revenue. So really it's just a pass through. They they we pay the consultant, we collect the fees from the developer. So u uh that's really why we're increase. But

just a point to note on contractual services. There's about $7 million of that number that's essentially fixed. It's convention center subsidies, Bureau of Tourism subsidies, it's animal shelter contract. So a lot of that stuff combines about 7 million. we're going to, you know, that's that's already going to be paid out. Um, and then you get to some of the large contracts like the parks maintenance contract with Mariposa, like the streets contract we have. Uh, and then the plan check fees contracts are about 3 million combined between building and safety and engineering. So those large contracts we know we we don't really get much savings. we spend that money and and so that amounts to about when you add all that stuff together that amounts to about 90% of contractual services. So that's why we're counting you're seeing it us forecasting it to be on budget because we we only have a couple of departments that may see some savings that we analyzed in our uh analysis. But uh for the most part, we see our departments, especially since the ones that we cut, we see our department directors really pushing up against that, you know, and against their budgets and and not really having a whole lot of savings. Again, transfers to other funds. Uh don't have to mention that much more. Um just want to show uh on down the line if you see materials and supplies that we're forecasting to be 1.7 million. This is another area where we uh cut some cost uh to get uh to try to align our budget. Uh we've been last year we were at 1.9 almost $2 million and this year we're showing forecast of 1.7. Total operating expenses 165.8 uh over our budget of 166. Again, we're staying in line with vacancy savings. We're keeping an eye on salaries and benefits, and we're keeping an eye on contractual services. Those are the two areas where we really need to manage and manage appropriately. And I appreciate

my colleagues uh doing a good job of of just that so far this year. Uh just want to show expenses by category last four years. It just shows, you know, how salary and benefits can jump up in 24 $90 million. uh 25 98 uh and then this year projected 99. That does take into account significant more vacancy savings. Uh so we're we're we're not envisioning that line to grow too much with the soft hiring freeze that we have on. Um I just wanted to show that for context. And then uh grant revenue uh 11.8 million grant expense. Same thing just the grants included in that's the encampment resolution grant, the HHAP grant uh for uh the operations of the navigation center, uh the police department's BCC grant, and then the cannabis uh social equity grants that the special programs department manages. We're forecasting 1.4 million in in the council set aside. of the set aides that the council did a few years ago. If you remember, we council wanted to set aside a few dollars for affordable housing and and homelessness. And uh we've only got $2.9 million left and it's in the affordable housing area. That's really going to be absorbed by the uh Desert Highlands project. Uh this year we expect to pay out a million dollars toward that project uh project by the end of June and then the rest of that money will be spent in fiscal year 27. Uh just a review of the fund balances. Uh uh the restricted or assigned balance of affordable housing. That's the number uh we take from toot and set aside for affordable housing. That's our Kalpers reserve that we set aside some money to that every year. Uh aviation uh fuel tax. Uh that is uh re uh measure D any sales tax collected on aviation fuel. Uh through measure D we set aside that to

be used for airport projects. uh the cannabis program 1% of uh the cannabis tax goes sets aside for social good and social equity purposes and then we have a minimum balance uh 32.9 million uh uh we're forecasting 31.5 and then we have unreserved of 61.5 for total unassigned balances of 93 million. This is a uh I just want to back up just quickly. Uh remember the 57 million and the 61 million. We'll walk you through how it grows. So, uh, the 57 million was where we ended the year of fiscal year 25 for the unassigned. Uh, we added a million to Kalpers, added three million affordable housing. There's a couple of changes in the other assigned funds. And then we add in our, uh, total deficit, our surplus that we're forecasting for the year. So, we're forecasting that to be 61.6 million. And then lastly for the general fund, just like to point out some of the things that are that are happening in the future. Of course, there's Chick-fil-A is now in the permitting process in and out still on the entitlement process. Couple of large warehouse project up uh north of I 10. Uh everybody has their eyes on the College of the Desert. Even though that's not a city project, it's important to the city, of course. Our convention center master plan is about ready to uh take shape sometime uh this summer to the end of the year. And then the Serena Housing project where 400 residential homes will be going in. And then we got three uh real notable affordable housing projects. Uh Red Tail, Pacific Properties, and then the Desert Highland Scattered Sight Single Family Homes. I think that does it for the general fund. So I am ready to answer any questions uh that the council may have for the general fund.

Thanks, Chris. Um appreciate that very comprehensive summary. Um recognize we're going to come back in three months with a much more fuller picture. nine months out of our 12 months of of the fiscal year. Um it's not included here, but so far um our stakeholders and business community are saying Q1 seems pretty promising, right? That we're feeling pretty optimistic for um January through March.

Yeah, we hear we hear some pretty good things from, you know, regarding to that that the the first quarter could strong of course or could be strong. Of course, we always like to adopt the wait and see approach and not get, you know, too confident, but but you know, we've heard some good things and some positive things. We hope that they pan out for sure.

Great. And then looking at um expenses, I I think it was like we are at 1% to budget, which is uh I think a real reflection that the you know the soft hiring freeze um the there just seems to be really close monitoring. um and that that's really um it's really working and appreciate to our city manager and all of our staff and everyone on your team and all the all the departments who are you can't be at 1% without having everyone on board. Um and so I just kind of recognize and and appreciate that that's being very closely monitored. Um, are there any concerns around like service impacts or any departments that um, you know, have direct like constituent um, services that that we are maybe a bit more mindful of? I don't know if that's you or or city manager um, if you have any kind of thoughts around.

I I think we're still full steam ahead. I mean, you know, we just because we made cuts in contractual services and and materials and supplies doesn't mean we're cutting services to the city. uh you know we're all of our department directors, public works, engineering, they'll tell you they're very very busy. Uh so uh yeah, we have not stopped not slowed down any services. As a matter of fact, we've probably increased our services to the city. Great. Thank you. And whatever miracle we got to do to repeat September that 42% up on on sales. Uh let's look into that. Um and and that would be helpful. Um I'll move it over to any of my council members who wants to go. Any no comments? No, just kidding.

Council member Bernstein. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Um, just thank you for the report on all of this. Um, so I just you you did include December sales tax at one point, but in the front on the front summary, you're not including that that the year-to- date numbers do not include December. Uh, the forecast does include December, uh, but not the front year-to- date numbers. Okay. And just just as a reminder to the public and sales tax is two months behind. So cash collected in December is is for October sales and so that's you know just just to note that.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um and also just when you're talking about the the toot the cash versus acral so so partly are I mean it's it's last year you were looking at exactly what had been on the cash basis what had been achieved by the end of the month and this year it's obviously $3 million higher. Yeah. And that you're attributing to just timing or

it's timing differences. There's nothing really to to say other than that because it's just, you know, when we we cut off the cash collections on December 31st and we have rec revenue recognized on a cash basis through November for toot. Um but yeah, it there's always a good discrepancy between the monthly report we iss, you know, several constituents and the council uh on an acrruel basis versus what we show as numbers on a cash basis. There's usually a pretty good difference but going forward our it year to year the cash basis ideally if we keep collecting well should be the same should be yeah

the very the difference or should be very similar to the ac cruel basis yeah it should be I mean you you absolutely right we think it would be we know in that December number there's some cash collections you know that were significant uh it could be uh because we've stepped up more collection efforts, more uh hotel years and vacation rental are maybe they're paying on time. If we keep up these efforts next year, then it should be more equal. Yeah, I would I would have expected them I was very surprised in all honesty. I would have expected them to be closer. Okay. But it's it's the way it uh it's the way it turned out. All right. Well, good for now. Um and what do you expect the property taxes to continue to increase?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, they we've had good growth in property taxes. uh you know since you know 22 23 and we've had some years where they grow six to 7%. And you know I I I stay in touch with the assessor's office and you know they didn't expect a very big increase this year. Um and we're not showing a huge increase but we're showing a consistent increase which is what I think we like to show every year. 2 to 3% is probably normal for property taxes to grow every year. Uh and we and again we we go to the assessor's website where we can see what was assessed to the city and so we saw you know $39 million. We use that as a gauge in our budget. Uh and and we're tracking that number.

Okay. Okay. Thanks. And you mentioned here a 7 uh $700,000 million $700,000 in centralized software purchase. Yeah. Yeah. That's a little mis it's not a purchase. So, what our IT director has been doing since he's gotten here is that he wants to take all of the software and put them in his department so he can better manage the software. And so, that is an effort that's slowing down now. We should be getting close to where all the software is in uh his department. So, what that really means is some other departments are down in their software expense and the IT is it's is up. It's just a reclass in a sense.

Okay. I see. Um I also want to just and I'll mention this later on economic development. Bless you. But you know you're looking at the the toot and when you do it by sector you can see group hotels are doing pretty well and and we're obviously working on the convention center um modernization which primarily will benefit. group hotels, although with with um uh everybody will benefit in the long run. But it does seem that now we need to start looking at small hotels, vacation rentals and other large hotels on what can we do as a city or economic development to help help them growth and and it may be somewhat maybe same as a you know big group hotels but there may be more specific things whether it's marketing or or highlighting our incredible small hotels and and things like that. So it's just a comment there. Um, the other thing I've brought this up before is, you know, this idea that we have six, you know, 70% of our revenue comes in the last six months and we're not really going to have any kind of information until May, which is a month and a half before our end of year. That it would be a good idea if we could keep thinking about whether we can have a better barometer on a current basis of how we're doing. Like the mayor was saying, we know about toot anecdotally from the group hotels. You could probably talk to a few car sales and grocery stores and retail and other service businesses so that we could actually have a good idea of how we're doing right now. It's it's the end of February. We should have a better idea of where we're at.

Yeah, I I agree. and and I'll work with the city manager on how maybe we can do something like that, get it started for the next forecast we present you because I completely agree. I would love to have that information. Uh it's very valuable to speak to the business community. Uh so I totally agree with you and I'll work with the city manager on trying to do something to get that going uh this quarter. Yeah, I mean I can tell you as a retailer I can I mean I know exactly what I where I ended February and I'm sure all the car dealerships and every other business does, but you're not really going to know for two more months. Correct. Um and the hotels you won't know for another 30 days, right?

So Okay. Um and I want to talk because you talk about the 61 uh million um unreserved fund balance and that that includes the minimum reserve or not? The 61 does not include it. It's a total of 93 that we're projecting. So the 61 plus the minimum of 31 32. Okay. And and we've talked about this before, but can you address why we need to keep so much unreserved and minimum reserve? The minimum reserve we have by resolution, I think.

Yeah. There's a couple of there's a couple of reasons. So first, we're getting ready to issue debt on a couple of different fronts. Likely for the fire station, likely for the convention center. when we issue debt for the library, we all when we issued debt, we always have a meeting with the ratings company, S&P ratings, uh, global ratings. And so what a high when we had that meeting glass we were complimented you know even though our P&L might look like it was a little stressed at the time uh we were complimented heavily and were able to keep our double A rating uh strong rating due to us having a high uh uh protected reserves and that we stressed very heavily that we were going to protect the reserves. Um so that's one reason we want to make sure that we keep our AA rating. It means a lot of things. Better interest rates, uh, you know, more people wanting to buy them. Um, and then on another front, we've got some internal service funds that, uh, we know that we're going to need to implement some more funding for in the future. So, uh, we don't know what that means yet. We'll have to get to the next two-year budget to decide what that really means. Uh, we know that our risk management fund, where a lot of our, uh, legal claims are paid from, is fairly depleted. So uh anything that's large that comes about right now it may have to we may have to use general fund reserves. So uh uh you know so it's it's good to keep those high reserves for many reasons uh you know just the overall comfort that we have them there uh in case of a huge downturn in our tourism uh industry. If we have have another COVID where we pull in half the tea or tea or less than we have right now that means we will absolutely have to dip into those reserves. So our, you know, that's an the economy or um the city of Palm Springs economy being so seasonal also helps to keep those reserves high. So we want to maintain them. City manager and I have talked about them all the time about how we like to keep them at these levels. Uh so uh that's that's our goal.

No, I think it's smart to and I and I I went back and looked at a lot of the old budgets from earlier in in the this century of our city. you know the first we didn't have a lot of money I mean and there was oftentimes we were below 20% right I think from what I can see and then we did the whole moderniz downtown revitalization and measure J and that really changed everything which which is why we're now able to do the fire station the library and the convention center it's 10 it's a lot more expensive than it would have been if we had done it earlier you know the first library budget was 10 million or something like that but we now are having the funs to catch up and do a lot of things. And so, you know, one of the things when we get to the economic development, I sort of see the convention center and the um and the convention center district as sort of like the next phase of that revitalization that was proposed, I guess, 2011 or something and worked and that, you know, so when we look towards the long-term future, I know there's there's concern, but we are looking at what we can do to bring in that revenue in 10 years to do the next big projects because when we get to the capital, there's a lot of big projects that are down the line that we don't have funding for yet. So, um, but I think that's great. Um, I also want to mention the importance of the affordable housing set aside, which you know, we have now seen the three two recently funded. I think there's one more coming up and three recently completed and that seems to be a great use of our our our our city's budget where we only paying 9 to 15% of the total cost and getting a lot of them built. So, um, so thank you for this and thank you for all the work in putting this together. I know it's a lot of work to do this a quarterly report, but it's extremely helpful and useful for us.

I agree. Thank you. Oh, I have one more last question. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. the cannabis. Yeah, you know, that's gone way gone down. And I don't know, maybe maybe um maybe Veronica's better to answer this, but we did a sales tax cut and I'm trying to figure out if that was helped the business, you know, which we're trying to do or or how that

I think I think and Veronica, I I think we has said that it's starting to stabilize a little bit. Um and but we know that we've you know, we've lost some cannabis businesses over the last couple of years. doesn't mean that we should have lost the volume, but we've lost some businesses. Um, and then there's still some extreme pressure on the businesses from the illegal market. And so, uh, you know, those combinations just, uh, haven't, uh, u, you know, um, produced, uh, the revenue that we'd like to see, but, uh, I but I think that, you know, sums up a little bit about that. Oh, we're seeing it start to stabilize or it's going to keep dropping. I'll let Veronica come up and elaborate on that

because it seems I realize we lost a lot so that's going to help the existing ones and we cut their taxes but hopefully that makes them strong. The ones left are going to remain strong.

So what we're seeing and it's not just in Palm Springs, it's statewide is a stabilization of the industry like um the tourist industry, the cannabis industry also saw that COVID spike. So we saw that increase in revenue at that time. So shortly following the COVID starting to return to our prepandemic levels, we reduced the tax by 50%. And we also revised the definition of our gross receipts to remove the excise tax. So the what was being reported after those changes was significantly lower. So we saw a huge decrease. What we are seeing now across the state, which we still have one of the best cannabis industries in the nation, is just the market starting to stabilize. there was an oversaturation, especially here in Palm Springs. In the last two years, we've seen 14 dispensaries close. Um, with those gone, the remaining dispensaries, which is approximately 13, um, are doing better. We do have approximately five that we are seeing trending upward monthly. Um, so there is improvement occurring and will most likely continue to occur in the years to come.

Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. I'm finished. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Other council members council member sorry mayor prom.

Thank you. Uh hey Chris uh good good report. I appreciate I just uh a couple clarifying questions on looking at page I think the last page 14. Just just want to clarify. So what you're saying is that you have six 6.877 6.8 8 million is is what you're forecasting on page 14 for revenues over expenses at the end of this year. That's what you're anticipating. Can you reference the table number? Uh Mayor Pro Tim, I don't know my pages 14 on your present. Yes, page 14.

Unre Yes. unreserved fund balance forecast where you have total surplus deficit 6.877. Right. So so just just clarifying at the end of this year you're forecasting that we're going to take in 6.8 million more than what we're expending. Correct. That's correct.

Good. Thank you. And then um on the operating expenses which is page four of your presentation you you have the the administration economic development of 14% due to legal costs. uh legal cost in terms of are these the claims we're paying or is this their legal services? Uh not not claims and and do you know what accounts for a 14% increase and that's not even the claims? Uh I I I might have to defer to the city attorney on this but I think it's just litigation in general and and that's just in the general fund.

It's just in the general fund. Correct. Okay. And and by the you mentioned before uh the internal service fund. What what's what is the approximately the balance in the risk fund now where we pay claims? Well, we ended the year of 25 at a deficit. So there how much of a deficit? About a couple hundred thousand. No, no, no. 485,000. And ended last year 25. So where are we now?

We we did budget a $500,000 surplus in that fund to try to bring it to uh even. uh the auditors, you know, they allowed us to be in a deficit position, but don't like those internal surface funds to be that way, but we told them that we' try to correct it. So, we're hoping that we have that surplus and that it'll break even this year. Uh we still have a claims budget within the risk management. So, we still budgeted for some of the claims that were happening, $2.5 million, but it doesn't cover any large claims if there's anything like that out there. Well, I'm not sure I understand. So you're you're saying there's a deficit but yet there's still money in there to play pay claims. Correct. Mhm. So you don't have a deficit.

Well at the end of 25 we did have a deficit. So the re the revenue and you know mayor t the revenue uh is comes from the general fund. So you charge each department and so we uh budgeted for $500,000 surplus. Uh but we also budgeted claims. Uh we do that every year. Right. So how much is in there now is what I'm trying to understand. Well, it's still a deficit, but the budget for claims is 2.2 million and and so so do you have the 2.2 million in there to pay it? So it's not a deficit. Well, I'm just trying to understand. Well, I think it's a deficit. We got a budget. I guess the point is do you need to have a supplemental appropriation to the risk fund, I guess, is what I'm trying to get. Exactly. And when does that happen? You need that prior to next budget cycle. I presume

we're going to look at it in the next budget cycle. And how do you pay the claims between now and next budget? Well, we have a small amount budgeted. So, if there are claims comes through, we can pay that out of the risk fund up to about two million. You said up to about $2 million now. Yeah. If we don't pay that much uh in claims and it'll fall to the bottom line and we'll have a maybe a surplus.

Right. Good. Okay. All right. That that makes sense. And and again, as I would just say on on page uh uh six when you talk about uh the group meeting hotels are the 13% up which is really carrying it. I think council member Bernstein noted, you know, it goes to show you how important it is that we, you know, the convention center project that's going forward, uh, how important that will be paying dividends long into the future. And, uh, mayor, that's all the questions I had and thank you very much. It was a good report. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yeah, Chris, thank you. I appreciate um, all the work that your entire team put into it. You know, I um um I'm common frequently I'm asked, "How come you don't talk and ask the questions like my fellow council member?" And I I want folks to know that uh yesterday I had an hour and a half meeting with our city manager and and Chris and uh spent time going through um you know the the document. So uh that's why I don't have a slate of questions for you. you did very well in answering my questions and covering some of the things that I was looking for yesterday today. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Um looking at the clock, it's Do we want a break before we do airport or do you want to go through airport and then do How are we feeling? Break. Yep. Okay. We're going to have a 10 We'll do a 10-minute break and we'll come back at 8:05.

Thank you.

Okay, wonderful. We are back. Chris, I know it's a marathon presentation. Keep us up to date with what's going on with the airport.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I appreciate it. We'll dive right into the airport. If I can find where I put the clicker. Ah, here it is. Okay. Same same format. We'll go through the airport P&L. Uh we'll hit a couple of the highlighted areas, open it up for questions. Um so uh we'll go through the year-to- date stuff fairly fairly quickly. Uh $8.2 million, third column over in blue versus last year of 6.5. We'll talk a little bit more about this in the forecast, but uh the rates that we charge the airline for landing fees, uh gate use, pasture bridge, they all went up. Uh Raiden charges it gets evaluated every year. It's based on their operating and maintenance budget. The operating and maintenance budget went up 33% from this year to last year. The rate went up about 31%. So just increased revenue through uh uh an increased rate we charge the airline. And on the uh uh non-airine revenue, you'll see a little bit more about this. Uh we'll talk more. We'll talk about the non-airine terminal rent uh food and beverage and retail. Uh these numbers are going to trend uh well above uh uh last year's numbers due to all the refreshed look at the airport. Um and then the other revenue large item is the on airport rental car revenue. If you go about threequarters of the way down this page, you'll see it and that is 6.28 million in the third column over that is revenue generated from the rental car companies. the city gets 10% of gross revenue up to a minimum guarantee that the airlines have agreed to. And on the expense side, um salary and benefits up uh and utilities are up uh due to the cogen. I'll get to that in the fio forecast. Uh the transfer out to

capital uh we reduced it from 10 million to about seven 8 million. So four fullear forecast. So, we're expecting in the green column 22.6 million for airline revenue only. On top of a budget of 17 million and last year's revenue at 18.5 million. The budget uh we're well over budget at the time we adopted the budget. We did not know what that rate was going to be and it can fluctuate kind of based on what the airlines see, what the airlines say. Uh but it ended up being a good increase. Um it went into effect August the 1. Uh so uh you know that's why we see all of these line items up from um the prior year. The only one that's really not affected by the rates and charges charged to the airline is the terminal airline space which is all of the least space that we uh the airlines have for ticket counters and office space and everything else they have. That's the least space on the non-airine revenues. Uh, I'll kind of just focus down to the I'll go down to the middle of the page where we see the non-airine food and beverage and the non-airine terminal rent retail. So, we're forecasting 1.7 million for food and beverage uh 1.2 million last year and then the retail 2 uh 3 million versus 1.5 uh last year. So, significant increases for those two areas. All the new restaurants are open. All the new retail uh areas are open as well. And then the next big line item, the on airport rental car fees, a significant increase over last year in that we're just seeing more volume uh at the at the rental car level. So uh we've uh the first six months was better and so we kind of carried that volume increase through to the rest of the year. And so we're seeing good uh revenue from uh the

rental car companies. Um we're seeing down from budget in the budget. uh we at the end of the year uh we sometimes have to pay the rental company cars back uh for some payments they made to us early into the year that they paid more than they should have. Um what happens is according to the minimum annual guarantee uh sometimes in the months that are slow they have to pay us that minimum guarantee and it's over and above what uh they actually received in revenue. So at the end of the year if they exceed uh their minimum guarantee uh then we give them that money back. Last year it was about $2 and a half million dollars. Uh we budgeted 500,000. So uh that's why that's down from budget. So projected revenue at 60.36 million. Just to note this is the operating account only. The airport does have obviously a customer facility charge uh account which is dedicated to rental car facility construction and they also have PFC's which is uh restricted for uh projects approved by the FAA. I do short in the staff report so happy to take any questions. I just didn't provide the information here in the PowerPoint. On the expense side, uh we the airport's hired 16 positions in the last six to nine months. So it's not uh you know, we do see salary and benefits up about $4 million. Uh and that's reflected really across all of the departments. um to uh go through uh a couple of the departments, the the landside operations, which is all the operations outside of the secured area. The main um driver of that expense increase, that's where the ABM parking contract is. Uh we just underbudgeted uh we budgeted about 700,000. It's coming in about 1.1 to$ 1.2 million. So, a

little bit better uh than uh than last year. um a little bit more than last year. And then the other significant uh item I want to point out is the terminal building operations. This is where this is the area that absorbs all of the cogen uh utility expense from the cogen facility. And at the end of last year, we evaluated our cogen fund and saw that it was becoming depleted quickly. So we did a serious a real big analysis between my team, public works, David Mcabe's team and also the cogen facility guys who run the cogen plant and found out that while we are charging 20 cents per kilowatt hour for last several years, we should have been charging a lot more than that. And so recently uh we evaluated that we should be charging 57 cents per kilowatt hour. So obviously a very large increase. The airport consumes about 75% of that output of electricity. Uh and so it we're budgeting about a $4 million uh uh overbudget in terminal building operations just related to that COVID charge cogen charge. Uh total uh operating expenses 64.97 million. We're projecting a deficit of 4.6. But I do want to point out as Mayor Pro Tim uh pointed out as well uh we do include a budget transfer out in this uh uh P&L, the budget transfer out is a transfer from their operating fund into their capital fund. It happens every year. Doesn't have to be made. It's based on a certain amount of projects that they're doing that they want the operations fund to fund. Uh it really should be outside of this operating expense category. If we take that out, the airport's running a surplus. So, I just wanted to point that out. We will be changing their reporting uh for our next forecast to reflect that.

And that does it for the airport P&L. Um I'll be more than happy to take any questions. I have uh Harry here as well, the executive director of aviation if I can't answer any operational questions, but uh feel free to to answer any questions the council may have. Council member Bernstein.

Thank you, Chris, and thank you, Harry. Uh, just a couple questions for the non-airline revenue, we're at 44% of the year's budget, and the and the airline 48%. Are those when we looked at the general fund, the difference was 33 to 31. Is is the 44 and 48 normal? Oh, a 44 um because of the year because we've done 44 or 4 48% of our revenue right in the first half of the year. Isn't that sim isn't the airport re is the I shouldn't say isn't is the airport revenue similar to our general fund where we get the bulk in the second half.

It is and and you know that that looks pretty positive on the revenue side to budget. So it could means that we exceed our budget, but you're correct in that the passenger traffic, you know, it's seasonal just as well. And so a lot of these airline charges and non-airline charges are related to the passenger traffic in our tourism season. So uh yeah, it seems like that collecting 44% of our uh revenue to our budget uh today seems pretty good and and seems like we may exceed and it's normally in the 33 low 30s. I I don't know the history of the airport and how it relates to the budget like I do um the general fund, but I can certainly find out and bring that number back what we've done the past couple of years.

Okay. And the cojan money that's that the expenses, where does that money go into uh to uh uh the cogent money that it's going to the electricity um the airport's use of electricity utilities. So the air their expense goes to where? Like they're paying whom? Oh, so they they're the cogen. So there's an internal service fund for the cogen account. So all the expenses that the cogen uh generates is out of this internal service fund. So we have to recoup all those expenses. So when we charge the airport for their amount, it goes it serves as revenue in the internal service fund to cover all those expenses.

Okay. And does that revenue go if we need electrical upgrades or is that from somewhere else? Um the electric electrical upgrades uh not necessarily it would go for electrical upgrades that the cogen plant needs. That's what I mean. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, got it. Okay. Um and the numbers that you had on retail retail is generally more than FNB. Yeah, it's trending that way. Um and uh I'll go back and look and see, but yeah, it's it's definitely trending that way. Is that is that historically the case?

We we budgeted that way, so I think it is historically the case. Okay. And I guess my last question is, I mean, this looks very positive for the airport and and so I know we had a lot of concerns with Canadian travelers. Is this reflective of the I know we're getting more money from the airlines and from things. Is that ref also reflect the travel coming in?

Yeah, I'll I'll start this and if it's not a good enough answer, we'll bring up Harry. But yeah, Canadian traffic is down and uh but the overall passenger traffic is projected to be above uh above what we are doing uh last year. So it's being compensated for uh and I think it's reflected in the numbers that our passenger growth even though our Canadian traffic is down. It's trending up and turning into better revenue.

And is the Canadian travel down as much as we thought we were fearing it would be or is it uh Harry Barrett, executive director of the airport. So, it is down as much as we thought it would be. Um and it is still trending down. Uh that said, we are working very closely with the Canadian carriers to make sure that um we're monitoring that closely year-over-year. A lot of that is being absorbed, however, by domestic travel. So, we're seeing an increase in domestic travel compared to the Canadian travel.

Okay. And I guess this good if this Canadian downturn is not sustained then that's that's good for us overall then. Okay. Thank you very much. Yep. Council member,

hey Harry, when when are we going to know the the stats on because people don't believe when I repeat that we've had record-breaking year of passenger traffic through the airport and um they don't understand that that could be when they see that they're not realizing that record-breaking revenue um in other uh sectors. Um, so when when will we know the analysis of how much of that passenger traffic is from new drive customers that are flying out of Palm Springs that weren't flying out of Palm Springs before and and how many people are now flying into Palm Springs and going somewhere else? Uh, when when will you have those that analysis?

Um, so a lot of that information is a little bit anecdotal in a sense. Um it's very difficult to find. Um we do track certain metrics in uh coordination with visit Greater Palm Springs. Um we can do an analysis and bring that back to you. I'm not sure it's going to be complete. Uh but um we we just don't have that complete picture right now. Yeah. Okay. Now you don't have to bring anything back. I just curious to answer those questions that are out there. If we're having so much traffic, why aren't we seeing such great increases in other areas? Um

yeah, and so actually that's an important distinction and something that I meant to mention earlier. So, um the airport serves the region. Um so we can see an increase in traffic in the airport and it still may not necessarily translate to the city of Palm Springs. It translates regionally. What just to expand a little bit on that, which is even more so why it's so important to partner with Visit Greater Palm Springs to make sure that we're um driving visitors to our city, but also to our entire region and working with the appropriate partners to make sure we're doing that in a way that's collaborative and effective. Um so, so thank you for for working so closely with Visit Greater Palm Springs. Um, a question around Canadian travelers that are as down as what we expected, but we do we have any sense of how many were snowbirds versus how many would have been short shorter visitors or is there any sense of kind of c can we tell any of that?

Yeah. So, the way we would extrapolate that is in the number of seats coming through the facility. In this case, over the last couple of months, we've been down anywhere between 11 and 38% in the number of seats coming through Palm Springs. Um, so what that tells me is that the Canadian carriers aren't filling their airplanes. Um, and they're starting to reduce capacity, but the United States carriers are increasing their capacity. Thank you. Um, any other questions or Mayor Prom ready? No, thank you. Actually, finance u if Chris, thank you. Well, f first of all, I to the point of the codegen,

I I think I heard you said well well first of all to public works director, I don't know if you maybe ready to abandon codegen. I know it's a rhetorical question for another time, but the point the point is if I understand you correctly, we're probably not charging enough per kilowatt hour. You're going to charge them more and you said that's about a34 million more from the airport to the general fund. Correct. from the airport to the internal service fund. Well, which saves the general fund because the general fund's responsible for it ultimately. So, just some some history. So, in the '9s when they did the codegen, it was a good news bad news.

We're producing our own electricity for the city and the airport with natural gas except about every five years we got to put about five million bucks into it. So, it it's always a thing. So, I I guess if you're saying that we can charge extra for them, which is great. I applaud it, but my question is, is that going to cause us then to charge more to the general fund the same rate? Yeah. So, the other buildings that are So, the FAA doesn't flag it. The the other buildings are uh that operate off the cogen also get charged. So, it's the police department and it's the So, we're going to charge them We have to charge them a higher rate, too. We charge them a higher rate as well. So, in the end, will that balance out or cost us more in the general fund?

It'll cost us a little bit more in the general fund. it's a higher expense. So, at some point, I guess it we're doing that analysis because if we don't if it makes the general fund increase go up proportionally more than revenue than we get from the airport, it may not be worth doing. But anyway, that's just an analysis that you're going to have to make at some point. But, okay. So, that but I'm glad to hear that you're taking a look at that. Uh, the final question I have, what actually is the fund balance for the airport? It's about unrestricted about 34 to 35 million. Okay, that's what we ended with Mayor Pro Tim at 25. That's why I quote that number. Great. Okay, thank you so much. Any other questions about the airport? Okay.

All right. Going.

Okay. Thank you. Uh so now we'll move into the capital piece um of our presentation. And I just want to mention before I turn it over to the city engineer for his presentation is that in the staff report, in the back of the staff report, we have four pages. Uh it's essentially 10 projects that are active in play right now. It's measure J, it's deferred maintenance, it's airport, and it's engineering. Uh so more than happy to take any questions on those. I think the right people are here. David Makabe, public director, Joe Montalavo, s engineer. Uh so we'll uh be more than happy to take any questions on those projects. But right now I'm going to turn it over to city engineer. He's got a presentation to make on some of his capital projects.

Oh, in the staff report in the stages

on those four pages there are essentially 10 projects per page. It's 10 projects within the measure J fund, 10 projects within the engineering that is ran by the engineering department, 10 projects that's ran by the deferred maintenance or public works department, and then 10 projects at the airport. And it's it's 10 projects that are active and and I think we're visible that we think the council cares about. And so we're kind of putting status updates on those particular projects every quarter. And if you have questions on those, we more than happy to take them. Uh I believe I saw a list from them today.

They're not in here. So how do you know?

No, that it's public works or uh airport. Uh so the way I think the simplest way to think about it is all deferred maintenance is really handled by public works. Okay. All most capital uh other than that is handled by the engineering department. Measure J is a combination of both. It can be either deferred maintenance or it can be capital. Okay. Good. Thank you.

Good evening madame mayor, members of the city council. Joel Montavo, your city engineer. Um, so the slides that are going to follow are essentially a list of all our capital projects. I'm going to start going through each project, but if you want me to stop and if you have questions and you want me to elaborate on any particular project, please stop me and ask me those questions. There's quite a few list here, but I think this stems from the council wanting a full list of capital projects. So this this uh PowerPoint's going to reflect that. So um again there there there's quite a few of them. So I'm just going to start with the very first one and go down the list. So the first one that I have here is project it's the Indian Canyon uh Indian Canyon uh bridge over the Union Pacific Railroad. Uh that project is under construction today. Um it's slated to be completed in uh late 2027. um that project experienced a few delays, mainly storm Hillary. So, there's other issues that have happened on that project such as environmental uh constraints that we've had. Uh but for the most part, that project is underway. Um and it's ongoing. So, if if you have questions on the Indian Canyon Bridge, please let me know. If not, I'll move on to the next project. The next project is actually tied to that is the actual sewer that's running on Indian Canyon all the way uh from uh Tram View Road or or or um yeah up up to the bridge itself. Uh that's about I don't know about two miles of sewer that are are being constructed and as part of the bridge project the the final portion of that sewer is being constructed. So right now we're actually doing a jack and bore operation underneath the railroad tracks to complete that sewer project. It's under construction. We

expect to expect expected to be completed by June of 26. Um the next bridge is the uh South Palm Canyon Bridge at Bogurt Trail. That project essentially is currently under environmental review. There are certain issues with that project, but as soon as we clear environmental and we're able to move forward with that project, we should be under construction. uh for now it's essentially uh under the environmental phase of of revalidating SQA and NEPA. Although if I could ask a question on that just because u getting questions in in in my district with the weather we've recently had there's some flooding going on. Nothing significant uh but it's been raising the question. Is there any more specifics in terms of maybe the city attorney how long you think that legal issue is going to take place or when when this actually could get back into a production sort of phase? Um well, staff is moving forward with uh all of the um kind of administrative aspects of the project while the SQA lawsuit is pending. Right now, we're still putting together what's called the administrative record, which is all the documents that were before uh the city council when the city council made its decision. No hearing has been set by the court on the briefing of the case itself. That's usually 6 to 8 months after the record is is put together. So I would imagine probably sometime in the middle of this year for the trial court uh decision. Um depending on how that goes and you know whether there's an appeal that could be another year, year and a half, but probably still consistent with the time frame that we're talking about for studies and whatnot.

So So are you saying though that we're continuing on that it's going to be put out to bid or you have to wait till the end of the legal proceedings? It can be put out to bid while the legal proceedings are going forward. Yes. So, so is is that what our plan is to do and what would that time frame be?

Yeah. So, right now, one of the things that we're doing is the environmental process. One of the major components of the environmental is the Casey's June beetle study that can that has to be done and that can only be done in a certain period of time. And the current protocols that the Fish and Wildlife has has it's a two-year protocol which means I have to do it this April uh and then I have to do it again next April. What we are going to do, we're going to try to work with Calrans to see if there's a way to just reduce it to one year if we if there are no findings. So that's really what's going to drive the construction of this project is the finishing of that study. And what's the deadline on this bridge again? So there were several state funding.

Yeah. So there were several state lines deadlines for funding. Um the one thing that we are able to do with CALR is request extensions. Right now, uh, the way this project is moving forward, we're going to have to request an extension to extend the funding to 2030, the the deadlines were 20 to be under construction in 2026 with another one in 2028. Uh, but because of the environmental issues, the litigation, we're going to work with our CALR partners to extend the funding beyond 2028 to 2030. And do you know when you expect an answer on on that if they'll grant it?

Um, we need to put in the request. So, right now, we're hoping if we can get through the environmental and they're allowed we're allowed to do one year of surveys, then we might be able to hit that timeline and move that project forward faster and get under construction. Yes. So, so I think what I you're saying is that you're not doing anything for two years till you do these Casey June beetle studies. That that that's part of the environmental study. Is there a reason why we hadn't done that over the last

We did do them and because of the time lapse that the project lasts for 10 years during other litigation uh the environmental groups came back and asked us to do revalidate our our SQA and NEPA and that's the process that we're going through right now. So would it would it make sense to ask the state to get the extension knowing we have to do this because you know otherwise we're going to get down the road another year or so and then ask them. Absolutely. It makes sense to file for an extension and we will work on that. It's a a cooperative work agreement extension. We do that with other projects and it makes sense to start doing that. Yes.

So so what I could just sort of I'm trying to figure out how I could articulate to the people in that area of when this could happen. So I think what I'm it's three three years at least until you even think about possible construction based on the environmental that that would be an accurate statement. But if we can beat the if we can actually expedite the environmental review by doing only one year of protocols then we could beat that timeline. And are there other studies that are going to affect that as well or is that the most timely? That is the most uh lengthy one. the other the other studies are happening currently.

Okay. And and that's not that doing those studies isn't going to resolve the the people the plaintiffs in the case. That's not what they're that's not the environmental they're suing on. Okay. All right. So, I think the key I think just and thank you for the update uh make sure we can get the state extension because otherwise everything's sort of moot. And uh Mayor Proam, you raised some good points. we uh were drafting some communication to the residents up in that district to let them uh kind of know and so we're kind of working through that right now and we're going to be getting some more information out to them about it. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Moving on to my next bridge which is uh the Raone Road Bridge. that one. Um, I'm happy to report that we are going to bring to council next uh the next council meeting our construction management team who also has a public information office officer team to get started on that project. Our goal for Raone Road is to be under construction in December of this year. So that that project is actually a highly visible project. There's a lot of businesses that are impacted. So, we want our construction management team on board here soon so we can start putting and working with the the folks in Cathedral City. This is this project is a dual uh project that's uh being um being spearheaded by the city of Palm Springs, but it's also impacts the city of Cathedral City. So, we're working together with their their PIO departments, their engineers. So, it's a joint project.

Madam Mayor, if I could just just offer a suggestion again. the city manager had suggested, you know, this is a process and and first of all, thank you for bringing this forward. I had asked this this is good. It's helpful and and and Joel, there's there's a lot on your on this. And so, if it's okay with council instead of you having to go through each one of these uh they're here for the public record, but if if there's projects on here that us at the council have specific questions on, maybe we could just focus your attention to those and it would be I didn't know how we were

Absolutely. welcome that would that would work. I' I'd love to explain every single one of the projects that we're working on and I was going to go in my monotone boys just continue going down but I'm happy to you know concentrate on those projects that that you want answers on. Um yeah because I think we'll probably all have some ones. Let me go down and say if there any questions or comments and if there isn't we just move on. Yeah. Thank you. Raone Road Bridge. Any questions or comments for Joel on that? Okay,

I will ask questions as we'll ask questions as we follow up in the budget review that we come up next time. So, well, this is an excellent list to give us knowledge of what's coming down the road and what staff is got on their plate. So, we can help uh if we can help prioritize. For me, I think the time for me to do that is when we start the next budget cycle or anything that leaps out like South Kane. So, I have two questions. One, Chris, you mentioned there was airport items on here. I don't see any airport. It's not on that list. Oh, it's on on this list. No, on the staff. Oh, okay. Okay. That's separate. The last four pages.

And the other question I had is on the library because we had that grant the work that had to be done in 26. Are we going to we're getting an extension? So, yeah. So far we're working with the our the librarian Genie. Um everything seems to be going you know on track. Um and if there is an extension to be had and required we'll work with Genie to to to obtain the extension but the project itself is on track.

Okay. And then I just wanted to go back to the one you said on the Raone bridge. It is going to be very disruptive and so we're obviously going to talk to public information and we got to have a lot of planning on how to make it as least disruptive as possible to the businesses. But if you're bringing back of this on the next council meeting

Yeah. So the what the next council meeting what I'm bringing forward is our construction management uh contract for that bridge project. So I want to note that it's March that we're bringing our CM team on board and we're not planning to go to construction till December. So that entire time frame is for us to get a handle on public outreach to work with our our business community to work with the city of Cathedral City and get the word out essentially learn from the projects that we are that have already occurred like South Palm Canyon Bridge if we you know we're learning from whatever mistakes we made there in getting the word out to the public. So you know we're trying our best. This particular CM firm has two public outreach firms that they hired at our request that I put into the proposal. So that's exactly why we're bringing them on board this early.

Okay. So the next council meeting, you're prepared to talk about it in general terms what we're going to be doing for outrage outreach and minimizing impact on the residents and businesses. I can. Yeah, I typically will bring it back as a consent, but if you'd like me to speak on that, as you bring this up, it's going to create it's going to raise the questions. I would You said the very next council meeting. Well, he says he's going to have the approval for the

construction management. uh the award of the construction management, right? That's who we've been actually meeting ahead of this with that firm already. They've already come twice to talk to the city without having a contract. They're just kind of wanting to uh get started on this process. So, yes, we're going to be very engaged with public outreach on this project because at the point that this is now out public, this is going to raise all the questions and concerns we had like with the South Palm Canyon. And so we should be prep I would suggest that we be prepared to well it's going to be now because I just said it but we should be prepared to address the concerns or the plan for addressing the concerns.

Yeah, we're we're planning on committee meetings, public outreach. We're going to address every single individual driveway that the project impacts. So yes, we're going to go above and beyond what we've already learned for lessons learned from previous projects. Great. Thank you. And just to follow up on that, um, so the Ramon Bridge project will, I think, is scheduled to kick off at the end of the year. Yeah. The goal is to be out in construction in December of

So, we have talked, we've had a number, Councilman, a number of internal conversations already with both the uh outreach team and everything. And we have stressed very strongly uh this bridge is going to be a big big project. It's going to take a lot of work. it will be disruptive and it really uh is going to require a tremendous amount of outreach. We want to we want to start on that far far in advance uh this spring and you know on both sides because it'll affect Cathedral City and Palm Springs on both sides. So we've also had uh significant in-depth conversations with all the staff from Cathedral City as well so that we're all aligned, we're talking about the same thing, we know how to communicate with each other. So, a lot of lot of that discussion is underway.

Okay. Thank you very much.

I I just have a couple more things about specifically the Raone Bridge. Um I very glad to see that this will be a coordinated outreach strategy with Cathedral City for this project. I think the other piece to that is the kind of normal disruption just on the construction where I'm also want to make sure that there's like a real plan is when we have um severe weather and Raone Road is heavily utilized when our other corridors um are washed out. Um so I think it it it's normal disruption and like you know the the rain apocalypse disruptions. Um, and so just want to make clarify if that could also be included when we're looking at that.

Yep. That's that's why we're hiring a construction firm early on to to try to think about all those things. The goal is to have two lanes in each direction open at all times by shifting traffic up and down, but there may be times where where that's not possible. There's also going to be times when, you know, these big storm events close all our roads and everybody's trying to get out of Raone Road. And we're not going to be able to say that it's our bridge construction that's that's doing the the delays. is just that's a standard that's what happens currently. So, okay. Yeah.

And you know, just you know, one more comment on this is uh you know, we've had conversations just like with some other projects where we've wanted to do some night work and some other things to keep the project on track, moving quickly. We all want to get this project done as quickly as possible. Thankfully, I think on the Raone Broad Bridge project, there's not a tremendous amount of residential uh development around that. So, you know, we'll have to have some conversations about that to see, you know, where there's opportunities to be more aggressive with construction.

And I guess my only last comment I had was on the Demouth Park improvements mayor mayor and I heard from the parks director this earlier this week that they had a sudden window of opportunity to start earlier. Is that right and get the whole project done earlier? Well, they're starting earlier. They want to actually be able to start and do all the project at once. So they they are looking at ways to expedite the construction and by disrupting now but being able to complete the project faster. That that that that's what's happening because they're starting in two days. Right. Right. We Okay, great. Thank you. Member Garner.

Thank you. Um yes. So part of the Duth Park improvements includes not only the dog parks, water fountains, uh as pickle ball courts. So Duth Park in general is going to be a bit disrupted for quite some time. Um the playgrounds, all of the ball fields are still going to be accessible, but just people should be mindful that it's going to be a little bit trickier over over there uh for a while. Uh but all good things. Uh I wanted to just flag on here one of the projects that's under construction and expected to be completed by the fall is the Indian Canyon and Vasquea uh traffic light. Um, and just for the public, uh, this is probably the thing I ask Joel questions about the most is traffic lights. It takes a really, really long time once we purchase the actual equipment for it to arrive here. Once it once all of the equipment arrives, it goes up very quickly. Um, but right now we're just kind of waiting until this stuff gets here. Um, if it gets here early, then it will go up earlier. If it doesn't, then we're we're looking at the fall. Uh, but it's a very important light. It's one of those areas where you when you're traveling um north on Indian Canyon or south, but especially north, there's accidents that happen all the time. So, it's very exciting that we're getting a light at that signal. Um, glad to see that it's that we're almost there. Um, so just wanted to flag a few of those items that are happening. Oh, and then that also the uh if you could just give us a little bit more information uh for the public about the lighted pedestrian crossing upgrades because that's another really important project that we've got on.

So, one of the things that we have it's the the infrastructure ages, the technology ages. Some of these crossings were put in a very long time ago. A lot of them have ingground lights and those are really prone to failure and constant repairs. So what we've done is try to figure out a better way to do this, right? Come up with a new technology, standardize it, and if we can use actual hard connections to electricity instead of battery operated. And that's what this this program is about is to actually identify those areas, try to if we can get electrical connections, do them, and just start constructing and replacing all the old infrastructure. And that's that's the goal here. Um it does take a while. This technology is very similar to traffic signals that the the equipment itself uh you order it you can start a project but it takes you know five six months to to arrive. So um we do ask for patience but we are working on on trying to get these projects and these old infrastructures upgraded and basically brought to current standards and something that's uh consistent and can easily be replaced.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. I think it's I'm really excited about about that happening. Um and then just one more thing for the public. um all of if you go on engage Palm Springs, you can look up all of the different engineering engineering projects and there'll be more information there. You can also um download our staff report on this item if you want to read more about it. There's about I think 38 projects that are that we're looking at right now. Um lots of good stuff. So just encourage folks to use engage Palm Springs to learn more.

Thank you. We did have a a few more questions uh with with regard to the the I think would you call here the East Palm Canyon at the wash that's on Sunny Dunes and East Palm Canyon. Um I I know that you were ready to transfer over from one side to the other. Is that is that on track? I get some questions from the

Yeah. So there has there have been delays and and and the the one delay that just happened recently is the rain rain events trigger pavement pavement operations to to change you know production of pavement. So we are on track. It was supposed to I think by the end of this week it was going to occur but I'm being told that the paving isn't going to arrive till early next week. So we're we're not that project isn't delayed by any means. is the way I gauge delays if there if we the city approve a change order extend the timeline of the working days that we contracted for that hasn't occurred on that project we are you know we do have to react to current conditions construction issues uh but we and one of the things that that that I've been told is that we put out the notice that it's happening and and then once we do that the contractor comes back and I have this issue and changes the deadline on us and then we have to put out another notice so what I understand today is that by early next week that paving should occur and the transition should happen.

And I know you've been working with the contractor and the city manager also on uh to see if you could shorten the the final completion time and I thought you had made some progress on that. I don't know if you have any update. I I really don't have an update because we've only finished one phase. The next phase of construction is happening. We need to demo that second phase. Um we have worked nights. We've given authority to to the contractor to do that. Expedite paving where possible. So, we we're trying to use every tool that we have to expedite the the process and the project, but really it comes down to the contractor's ability to get subcontractors and get materials. So, you know, overall the project is still on time.

Okay. Uh and on the library, is there any any break in what you think the the milestones are there? Is that proceeding? That's actually we did a very large concrete pour today. um the footings of that uh that particular building needed to be upgraded. Uh but we couldn't demo and find out exactly where those footings were. As soon as we exposed them, the footings were needed to be a little bit different. So we we did do, you know, some change orders to allow the contractor to to do more work. But that project is on time and and currently on budget. I don't see any major issues. There are of course there there are some surprises here and there, but they're not not something that we didn't anticipate.

Okay. Over the last couple years, you you've done on South Palm Canyon, there was the road diet, the bike lanes, all all that big project. And I I didn't see that on here specifically, but do you know when I thought that was supposed to start construction this year? Yeah, I think it is on here. If you go to project 221, South Palm Canyon and Racket Club road traffic calming 22. No, that's uh is that that the one we're talking about? Yeah, this is the one. It's from South Palm Canyon uh at at East Palm Canyon all the way up to Murray Canyon.

Right. So I think it is that's basically we mentioned two projects under 2221. One's Racket Club and the other one is South Palm Canyon. So both we are, you know, uh we think we're going to be in construction in September of this year. Okay. So you have to bid that that one out. Yeah, that Yeah, we're currently in design and I think I was told we're about 95% done with the plans. Um, so later this year you're looking at construction. Okay, great. Thank you. Uh, and then

you see here 2406 the citywide sign inventory and I know because we have some you've ordered some uh signs that need to be replaced. So this is part of that. So this is going to allow you to have an inventory so it won't take months to get these signs.

The inventory is to tell us which signs are deficient. So regulatory signs, other signs as well all over the city. We have a vehicle that goes in and drives. It's everything combined. So we're I mean I think you're getting to the actual illuminated signs that are on our traffic signals, right? Uh those uh we are going to tackle those. But because each one of them, each intersection would cost about 15 to $20,000 to do. We're, you know, we we're we're we're budgeting and we're trying to get to those as part of this project and then the the subsequent project which is to uh to replace the signs that are not to to current standards.

Okay. And and if if I could could ask in the in the pavement plan, obviously you have your streets in your schedule. Uh I I was asked this question and and I just want to confirm that that Toledo is being paved in 26 your cycle this year and that I will confirm with 100% certainty that it is going to be in our next paving program that it's going to start in 20. Thank you. And and then finally uh I I I know and I appreciate you you're you're trying to do the Sunny Dunes restriping. Um and any update on when

so the sun doing restriping right now and we're talking about the parking lot the very last project that I have on this list. Um right now we're we we have our team we award the design which is $33,000 for design. Um they went and surveyed the entire area and are working on the very first concept of of what that's going to look like. Um, one of the things we have to be mindful is of, you know, ADA access to the businesses and how when we shift the the parking, it may create certain issues with ADA. We need to look at all that and make sure that we accommodate the the ADA transitions and it may require some some concrete work essentially. It's not just going to be striping. It may be a project that's a little bit more than just striping.

So So do you have any guidance that I could tell that soda group? Um, you can tell them that we're currently under design. We're we're bringing our concepts. We're looking at it, but in a time frame of when the next step when that could actually occur. Um, we think we're going to be at least at 50% uh completion by April. So, first what I what I want to say% of the design phase.

Yeah, we're in the design phase. We think we're going to be at least 50% complete by by by April. Essentially, all of March will be in design, but there's going to be a step there. I want to take we're going to take a concept first to look at it to see what things, you know, stand out. Uh, and what I'm looking at is for cost. What what things can be looked at that if it's not necessary, we can reduce cost or if it is necessary, I want to make everyone aware of what that is actually going to look like. Okay? Because because the sidewalks that are there are more recent and there are ADA ramps and and things. So again, once we do the concept, we're going to flush all that out and if something stands out, I will be sure to talk to the city manager and and and make sure that everybody's aware if that I see potential cost escalation.

Okay. So, I'll follow up for with you for future updates

on that. Thank you. And then u I guess well I I guess it's more of a a a question u part of this exercise is there's a lot here and is there anything potentially that you need that council can do to help you? I mean, short of not piling more projects on to help you uh in, you know, maybe it's it's a it's just a question that you need to think about staff resources. You know, I don't know what that is. Maybe you don't know exactly either at the moment, but I guess the the point of this is how can we help you do these things more? I would u maybe come back to a comment that uh Councilman Deart made just a short time ago about uh we're going to be coming up on our continuation budget where we'll be taking a look and update on our five-year capital plan and other projects and I think that would be the time for us to do a good good review of those priorities and you know for if if there's things that that council sees that uh you think rise to a higher level to advance. Um, you know, those would that would be a good time, I would think, to have some of those discussions. We're obviously looking for good policy direction from council on, you know, where our five-year capital project is program is going. So, you know, we'll be talking more about uh roads resurfacing, reconstruction projects, that sort of thing as well. We're trying to make a lot of changes to how we allow uh residents to notify and see where road repaving is going. I know you get lots of questions about that. We get lots of questions. There's some work that there that we're trying to do. So, um you know, any of that sort of guidance that that you can share with us is always helpful.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

I uh thank you for mentioning that, Scott. Um, I this is just an incredible amount of work to be keeping up with, keeping in the loop with knowing and sharing all the status of each of these projects with each of us anytime we get an email from a constituent on any one of these 35 plus projects. And so, you know, I would encourage you and and and Scott to think about maybe at the next um uh quarterly update how we can make this as simple as possible for a resident. Um people really care what's happening down the block from them and what whatever they're experiencing on a potentially delayed bridge or if they work and have to cross Raone. Um it it's very understandable that their entire experience on capital projects in our city is actually very narrow based off of the grand scope of work that we're doing. And so I would love to make it easier somehow for residents to just get a general sense of you know maybe there's like a green yellow red coding system. 80% of our projects are in the green zone. They're moving forward. we don't have delays and we're just looking at yellow and red, right? And we can easier flag more easily flag the projects that are worth bringing to our attention on how we can expedite or identify or communicate to residents and community members. Um, but people are busy. They have jobs. They shouldn't it it is they shouldn't have to look up 30 different projects, right? We we should just be able to in a condensed way be able to communicate to residents that our staff is working incredibly hard. Look at all these projects that are moving forward. If you want to look more details, this is how we do it. But in general, you know, again, most of our projects are in

the green. And so, um, you know, I maybe in our next update that that could be some type of identification that we can have. Um, and so that we are we shouldn't have to become like I don't want to be a baby engineer. I really don't to keep up with all these projects. I think most constituents and stakeholders don't either, but they do really care about what's going on in their neighborhood or next to their business. And so if we could have some way to easily identify those, categorize those, um I think that's going to um go a long way in making sure people understand what's the best way to stay engaged on these, but also this is a lot. So thank you.

Okay. Can I I'll give a shout out to Joelle. We've been talking about these backlit intersection signs uh for a while and um I I I hope you all have seen Ramon and Indian Canyon. That intersection has got the new beautiful signs with our logo on them and they look gorgeous. So the goal is to replace all our city signs with that. But again, I remind you it's 15 to 20 plus if they're the the infrastructure is not there. Some of our signs don't have illumination. They have they don't have the actual infrastructure to actually press to have them lit. So, but it's started. Absolutely. It's it has started. So, thank you.

Great. Are we any any other questions? Okay. Was there was the airport the airport was there deferred maintenance? the airport projects were at the back of the staff report. Uh we didn't have a presentation on them. Uh just could you update on escalators? Just curious. Yeah, Harry's here. He he can he can provide Yeah, we're starting we're starting we could move on until we talk about it. Okay. And that's

uh yes, the escalator project is underway. Um it will start over the summer. Um, and the most recent timeline for completion I've seen has us completing at the end of September. Thank you. September, end of September this year.

Just to put a fine point on that, you know, there's Harry and his staff are doing all the upfront leg work right now to get ready to begin construction. We obviously want to get through the busiest season of the airport. uh but that through the summer months is we would get get most of that work done and as as he's indicated uh end of September we want to have everything in place. Yeah. Um a couple other comments just to also for any folks who are looking at the staff report to confirm Chris this is expenses through December. So we're still you know a lot of work still happened in the last seven weeks and that's not necessarily reflected on this like yeah percent of of spend right

good point the numbers are through December u those percentages of completion probably have increased since then over the last couple months a very good point

okay great and then the um other thing I would just say and this is just a general comments um deferred maintenance like it is not the ugly steps sister we have to prioritize our deferred maintenance investments. We cannot keep building new buildings, new playgrounds, and not take care of them. And so, um, making sure that we're able to kind of, um, I flag any delays, any issues, um, any, um, you know, if things are are wearing faster and we need to move things up, I would love to have that same level of urgency on our drift maintenance as well. And mayor ju just uh on the escalator I see now where it is in the staff report uh that the contract was coming in February. So I presume that will be in March now early March.

What project was that on the escalators the uh the vendor selection and that'll be the next meeting. Yeah. Harry notes it says in March. So so the vendor's been selected. Remember this was procured under an emergency procurement. The vendor's been selected. We have a contract already pencled. We have a schedule already. Uh the staff report has not made it to council mostly because I missed it by one minute the deadline. So uh you'll get it. The new system does not have any grace. Um so you'll get it next meeting. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Brenda said get it in. Unless there's any question. Uh that concludes the presentation.

Thank you. Appreciate um everyone. Chris, this is I think council member Bernstein mentioned this is a huge lift on a quarterly basis, but this provides so much insight as to what we're investing on. At this time, I would like to entertain a motion. Um, that's what it says. Receive and file. Okay, just kidding. Move and receive. Perfect. Um, next item is 3D, which is a request for an update on um from the Office of Economic Development uh on our strategic framework and implementation planning. Can we have a staff report, please?

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Portm, Council, uh, city staff, and members of the public. My name is Wayne Olsson. I'm the chief economic development officer for the city of Palm Springs. Uh first a quick administrative note. Uh I was absent over the last week and a half and unfortunately the wrong document was included as attachment A in the staff report. Instead of the civil economics framework implementation proposal that we were going to discuss tonight, council received another copy of the already adopted economic development strategic framework. The correct attachment A was distributed earlier today by the city manager via email. However, as a result of that area, staff is requesting uh that we postpone the second recommendation in the staff report until such time that we uh can follow the discussion tonight and have a more thorough investigation of that implementation plan. So, uh number two would be deleted from the staff report if council if it pleases the council. So, uh turning to the substance in the presentation tonight, tonight's presentation builds on the economic development strategic framework you adopted in November of 2025. The economic development strategic framework establishes a long-term vision to strengthen our existing industries while diversifying the local economy. As a reminder, the framework includes five principles, dozens of initiatives, and nearly 93 action items to be implemented over the next several years and up to a decade. In addition, four activation priorities were identified by the uh civil economics consultants that I will review shortly. Just a reminder of our principles that you adopted in November of 2025. I don't need to read those but they serve as the framing mechanism which uh we are then expanded on in the plan into initiatives and actions. Further the city has identified target sectors or what we have called pillars to date that e economic development should be focus focusing its efforts towards. Those are on the slide. You can see hospitality and tourism, arts and

culture, tech or technology, clean and green energy and business and workforce development. Together the principles and pillars provide discipline and direction for the office of economic development and serve should serve as a filtering mechanism for the work of our office. The activation priorities are designed to leverage citywide activity and create a structured regulatory and operational framework going forward. As you can see on the slide, in an effort to organize the implementation, the uh implementation plan proposal recommends taking on four activation priorities either before or in concert with the action items of the framework uh in years one and two. As you can see, they focus on one creating a digital economic hub for economic development. By the way, in in the finance director's presentation on, you know, updating business data, this is one of these things that we can do in economic development that is across departmental efforts. So, that could be a tool that we could develop collectively. But that's an example of how economic development can collaborate with other departments on delivering information citywide. Um, scaling the business districts and providing a more distinct structure for that program. uh a municipal code and regulatory review which is effectively a way to help structure the economic development activities and spending and development of a fiscal toolkit which is in other words incentives that support the framework and tonight the council reviewed the start of those which is the updated hotel incentive program. the other half of the presentation and your second attachment is a fiscal overview or summary of fiscal 20 year uh fiscal 20 excuse me fiscal year 26 discretionary spending. I want to be clear this is not intended as an audit level exercise uh nor is it a budget. This is simply a summary uh with the intent to offer transparency and demonstrate alignment with the principles of spending in in fiscal year 26. So you can see on this slide um the attachment was broken up into several

categories. One is the convention center that's a 6 approximately 6.6 or $6.7 million uh expenditure. Uh economic development strategic uh framework activation impleation is 610,000. Uh diversity, culture and arts in the form of uh primarily activities and events in our community is 255,000. business retention and attraction 325 that includes the facade program and then the emerging sector which would be some of the tech activities that are occurring at 105. So the total comes to 8.1 million. Of course that's not entirely the economic development budget. The economic development budget for fiscal year 26 is around 1.2 or 1.25 million. If you subtract out the convention center expenditure, we get about to that fiscal year 26 economic development total. So again this was not an effort to uh uh produce a financial audit if there are you know typ it's not typical for departments to provide this level of detail and spending but I thought it important during this transition year as we develop the framework that we be as transparent as possible and alleviate any potential concerns of how discretionary dollars are being spent certainly and and most definitely below the director level of approval which is $25,000 typically above $25,000 obviously I work closely with the city manager on those spending priorities. And at the start of fiscal year 26, with the additional dollars provided by the council, the city manager and I agreed that we would always align those decisions based on the the developing principles as well as the sectors. So, uh hopefully you'll be in agreement that all of the expenditures to date again in discretionary dollars after fiscal year at the start of fiscal year 26. So, for example, the uh popular uh uh love local card is not included in this because that was a fiscal year 25 expenditure. uh and then in other cases I exercise judgment to leverage the limited dollars into broader community economic multipliers. One of the efforts that the uh what's

going to be recommended is that we work closely with the economic development uh subcommittee that was finalized in January of 2026 to formalize ways in which uh develop funding programs and guidelines for the economic development department. Uh to that end, staff is respectfully recommending that the economic development standing subcommittee chaired by mayor stood and council member Bernstein guide implementation efforts in uh calendar year 26 and beyond. This would include shephering the activation priorities. You can see these on the slide, assisting in prioritizing action items, working with the consult staff and consultant and to facilitate structured execution and implementation of the plan and stakeholder input. Importantly, early focus areas are recommended. Again, following the uh the activation priorities would be, for example, developing funding guidelines uh under the fiscal toolkit for economic development discretionary expenditures. According staff, accordingly, staff recommends scheduling a subcommittee meeting prior to bringing the final implementation proposal back to the council at a future date. I just wanted to address quickly u Mr. Buscat. I appreciate I spoke with him earlier, his public comments. Um, I very much appreciate that he took the time to read the entirety of the document. It's rare that we have a public that's that interested and I very much appreciate his experience. So, I appreciate him doing that. Um, I agree entirely that as we develop these implementation plans that we must include metrics. Um, for example, we can look at sales tax as a potential metrics. We're up around 5% as the budget presented. We can compare those to economic development activities and see if those correlate. So, I agree entirely with his with his suggestion. I wanted to clarify that the $600,000 that he mentioned uh is not in those are include fiscal spends throughout f the future of fiscal year 26 and may you know um overlay into fiscal year 27. The initial contract was $230,000 for the framework plan. So the 600,000 that he's referring to correctly is future spend

across many disciplines. And then finally um we should be aligning our spending to our our goals. Uh I know that this 1.2 million is stretched enormously across many many diverse interests. Um I have a very small staff. Uh and so we must prioritize both our activities as well as the spending in the direction that the council wishes. So I look forward to your comments and questions. Uh I'll uh stop the presentation there and and uh be available for answers to your thoughts.

Thanks Wayne. Um appreciate the clarification around the attachment and also kind of where we are what the framework costs where we are in terms of implementation and um key pieces. Um a few some context and also just to confirm. So we have this framework. it's going to guide multiple years of of work for for your department. Um can you just share a little bit as to um the role of the subcommittee stakeholder engagements and um you mentioned staff execution and stakeholder engagement um and how the subcommittee can really support and maybe even provide um that kind of structure and transparency back to the rest of the council.

Absolutely, Mayor. Um to that end at at the November 2025 meeting November 24th the uh consultants recommended that we move forward with implementation planning. Um that's a complex set of processes that involve prioritization of the action items that involves uh understanding what action activation priorities we would want to spend our uh precious dollars on in both fiscal year 26 and 27. Uh obviously the stakeholder input from our small business community, our large business community that would need to be structured in a way that helps uh translate some of the more technical bureaucratic items to uh the community as well as hearing from them as to their concerns and what their priorities would want to be. Um and then finally, I would recommend that we you know look at certain programmatic developments certainly around spending. That's been an area of transition uh around the discretionary dollars. uh you know I have two programs in which I provide incentives. One is the facade program and I budget around $150 to $200,000 on that based on traditional historical use of that program and the TOT program which doesn't reflect here because it's future dollars that are uh split on increments so it doesn't reflect in our budget. So developing program guidelines for discretionary spending is is of high importance and relevancy to the staff. Um I also think just helping prioritize the entirety of the workload. Um, again, we have a very small staff. We're very agile. Um, but it does mean we do have to prioritize and that means leaving some priorities lower and some higher. So, I would ask that uh if I could respectfully that the economic development subcommittee would help primarily with prioritization and uh communication of those priorities back and forth from the community.

Yes. Yeah. I I'm uh I I would agree with that. And then I would also add you know very strategically utilizing our stakeholder engagement opportunities to the maximum benefit right we want we have a very active business community and um they have a lot of great expertise and feedback in their respective industries and so we want to lean on that expertise at the time it's going to be most beneficial for these various initiatives and so some of that might be ongoing workg groupoups or industry um groups um but activating them um in key areas of you know the the regulatory review we're going to have to talk to businesses um and so there's a I think there's the ongoing communications with our business community and then activating it for key moments um to keep the momentum uh moving forward but um I think in general um really looking forward to making sure as a subcommittee we're focusing um on the big priorities properties with large uh meaningful impact as much as possible. Um and that we are not losing pace with that um as that that's kind of our our driving focus and allowing um you know other or lower or uh more long-term um priorities that are listed. I mean we have I think 38 short-term actions even if we just worked on those that that's not doable just with you and your small team. And so, um, identifying what can what work exists in other spaces, I think, is going to be really important.

Thank you, mayor. Um, I'll pass it over to see if any of my other colleagues have any questions or comments. Who wants to go first? Council member Deart.

Yeah. Hey, Wayne. Um, it Thank you for clarifying and getting the additional information earlier today because I was not sure what we were doing. So, uh I I just want to um uh emphasize and I appreciate your ask to council and the subcommittee. Um this is such a massive project and it's going to take an incredible amount of work um and and work on behalf of the entire council to uh to to dedicate funding for each of these projects that are coming down the road. So I uh um I I wanted to make sure that um we could encourage our economic subcommittee, the economic development subcommittee, uh to to be the ones in charge of helping to move this forward with your department. um and that we we be as as focused as we possibly can on implementing the framework and not veering off course and picking new things off a list that aren't included here. Uh so I think that would be a really important thing for us to be able to accomplish with the committee. So

thank you council member

other thanks. Thank you. Uh, a couple question just if could clarify. It's on page 54. It's that last page of the staff report where where you list the uh I I think this is your economic development fund. I was just just curious. I wonder if you could explain I see there there's that $50,000. What I believe this is to the film festival for rent at the Plaza Theater for the film festival week. And and I I know in the agreement we have when the city put in the money for the plaza theater that the film festival would get use of it at no charge or at uh the the actual expense. And so I was just curious of why it was $50,000 and and how that came to be. Uh Mayor Prom ready, that's a great question. um that was a a business uh uh expansion grant to the International Film Festival based on the metrics and you know the the the reach that they have with their audiences. But specific to your question, I believe the budget for the first two weeks of the use of the Plaza Theater was somewhere in the neighborhood of $210,000. So this is a a small piece of that larger budget. So, you're saying they charge 200?

I believe that's about I'd have to give you that is rent. Uh rent, cleaning was the was one of the major costs that were charged. Tenting uh in case of inclement weather. There was a number of items in that and I do I can get that documentation from the Plaza Theater for you as follow. But yes, it was very expensive. Okay. Well, I I think maybe it's sort of enlightening if if they're char Wait, so the Plaza Theater is charging the film festival $210 for them to use it for free. 210,000 for them to use it for for very little charge for a week. I believe

if I could just clarify, I think what happened is they got the nonprofit rate, which is not the free rate. And some of those costs are not just what they're what they're being charged, it's what it costs for them to go in there because they have to set up a lot of their own facilities, their own tenting, all that kind of stuff. So I think the rate that they were charging was like half of that and then there was a whole set of other charges in terms of bringing in other equipment and things um and tents and things. So it is something that in the contract we set the dates. We did not say that Oak View would give it to them for free, which we probably in retrospect may have wanted to think about or how we arranged that. And so it became very expensive. It is something that I think the city manager is looking at rectifying.

Okay.

Well, I I I recommend we bring the contract back for an amendment. I mean, the intent was what? We put 40 million 30 million that and the always the Plaza theater was there for the film festival to use for years and you know they would go in they would show their film and there certainly wasn't the intention that they would have to spend thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it. They're just basically either they pay rent or they get discounted rent or free rent. The idea I presume was free rent. So I don't know what's exactly in the agreement. So, could we review the agreement and see what's actually in there? And did we hold them to that? And if it's not to our liking, we should come back and do an amendment. I mean, it it is a significant contract and that they have and the idea now that it's 50,000. So then, and here's I think the question going forward, we give the film festival 350,000 as a sponsorship every year. So, is this going to happen again next year? Should that be? And if so, and we're giving it to them, we should give that to them as 400,000 sponsorship, not here. So, I there's two ways that I think we need to look at either we got to increase their contribution or sponsorship or get control on what they should be charged.

Mayor Portm, I I can answer a couple of those questions or address your concerns. Um, there are multiple contracts, as you know, that we're referring to. There's the film festival sponsorship contract which is citywide sponsorship of the program. There is a short grant agreement that I did with the film festival for the $50,000. And then there's the agreement between the city and the Plaza Theater Foundation which is also a contract that you're referring to. Um some of those exist within economic development, some of them don't. So I would agree with you that I think this $50,000 if it needs to be updated. I think that our film festival sponsorship contract may be coming up in the next 12 to 24 months. So if that's the case, we would revisit it during that time. But again, that's not economic development currently.

No, but just let me add I think the the grant the sponsorship that you're talking about was a one-time grant. Obviously, we'll have to look at it next year. As council member Bernstein said, we're going to be talking to the operators of the theater about how that how that works. We we're also talking to the film festival, too, about the dates and how we get that get that aligned. So

there's also a there's our agreement with the foundation and then the foundation's agreement with Ow. And so you are correct. It's just there's different layers that have were not anticipated. And the other issue just you know the nonprofit rate of a theater that is being used for an event is different than when you have 12 days of a film festival. And so we've seen that other cases. So, if you were doing, you know, a big concert, whatever the amount is, let's just say it's $5,000 for the base rent may not be a huge deal if it's if it's um, you know, if it's if it's Matteo Lane or something, but $5,000 a day for a film festival is a different story. So, there were things that were not anticipated that should be rectified.

Okay. So I I trust you'll look into it and get back to us on and because if they're expecting this 50,000 again next year if then we probably should put it into the sponsorship or change agreement with Oak Group. So anyway, I'll let you take a look at it and and advise as appropriate. Uh so and one other just if I could and and on would have you have your card or are coded in the yellow the convention center and I understand you know that 6.6 6 million. A good part of that is is is obviously the project. Although I wasn't clear, you've got 307,000 for a consultant for community engagement. Another 150 for a consultant for program management. I'm not sure. I mean, this is getting very pricey. I'm not sure. And those are for spring of this year. I'm not quite sure what that level of expenditure would be for.

That's correct, Mayor Prom. uh to those three items specifically. The $150,000 that was listed in July 21 of 25 that was for work during 2025, the first half of 2025 uh from conventional wisdom who provided guidance on the operations and the uh uh general management contract. So that was the initial dollars there. Theund the next $150,000 that would be uh going forward would be for uh uh again program management in the absence of an owners rep. I the but management management of what I mean that that was to get us we did the RFP the manager we have the new management company in so what do we need program management for

I want to separate the the operation of the center from the capital project the promising convention center modernization project the first $150,000 was for program management and advisement on the general management contract going forward the next $150,000 would be to work on the actual capital project and manage the design teams until such a time as Joel and his team hire in an owner's rep or construction manager. So that's what that $150,000 is allocated towards. So the project manager wouldn't be the person to do that. We don't have a project manager yet to do that. Well, we would get them then we wouldn't need this.

Correct. So we have this budgeted as a projection. Again, I call it an earmark. It's an earmark of $150,000 that we may or may not use, but currently we don't have an owners rep that will take on those services. and the 300,000 for community engagement. Yeah. So that's that's a future report. The council will be reviewing that. I believe our procurement officer and myself will be bringing that forward. Maybe not next circuit, but the following in March on the end of end of March at the council will have an opportunity to review that and make comments. Again, that's an earmark. It's not a you know, council will have an opportunity to comment on that. Okay. Thank you. Council member Princy, did you want to go? Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was being very patient and waiting this time. So, first of all, I want to thank uh you know, Wayne for for letting us know about the attachment. And I just also want to point out like I guess you've been here two years and this this position's only existed for two years, right?

And the truth is that even though we we did come up with a whole framework, um but we also have a ton of projects that are going on right now. I mean the convention center you've got the free trade zone already working there there is you know a tech and arts and culture there's a lot of stuff we're doing with diversity in the city there is um you know the airport stuff so it's there's a the business districts got formed so stuff is happening so this is not like we're I think what the framework is was designed to do and it is a lot of items in there is to make sure as as council member deart said that we work within this framework work that we don't come up with new things that aren't out there because the truth is you say 38 action items within one to two years. The other 60 what is it the other 65 items that are 5 to 10 years out it's not like we start them after the two year like consecutively those are just 5 to 10 year projects. So you basically have a hundred potential projects that could be starting right now that should be starting right now if you were going to do everything in this framework which is obviously not possible. However, some of these things we're way down the line with so the convention center with with the um with the with the stakeholder group that council member de Hart set up is already working on the convention center district and and the improvement plan. And so how a lot of those things are already in the works.

The other thing that that is the great example of is because the stakeholder group is doing a lot of the work in that. I mean we do have council member Hart and I are on a subcommittee and the city manager there and you're there. There's consultants but you know the the the T group is being basically run by our hospitality center. We had you know volunteers working on the architectury group. We have you know all these different stakeholders working on it and that's that is what makes possible these hundth pro project is because we we leverage our little bit of resources and money to create big projects. You are not going to develop diversity in our city. You are going to support the organizations and the districts that do that. And so I think we have to be when we talk about the hundred projects, we have to remember that the subcommittee when we and I agree with your proposal is that we start prioritizing, we start figuring out how we can actually achieve these with other working groups. I don't think the subcommittee should be a working group for every one of these. We have the convention center one, maybe we have a separate one on the on the business districts, we have a arts and culture one that exists, we have a tech one that exists. And so these working groups, as mayor said, can be doing a lot of the work that you just can't do in your department. So I think the goal of of the subcommittee would be to come back with a prioritization, a grouping, a plan on how we set up uh working groups that we can present to council um and do that um and uh and work it on that way. Um and and I think that will sort of clarify a lot in how we divide this up. Um I also want to start looking at what we really do spend on economic development. You've put a you put a

subset here, but you don't have the toot rate rates in there. You don't have measure J grants in there. You don't have grants and sponsorships, some of which are economic development. you don't PS resorts which is basically taxpayer funds is important economic development that the city is helping to invest in and so I think when we look at all of that it shows that we are doing a lot more and then we have to see where the gaps are as you heard from you know is there other small business development that we should be doing um out there and that's something that the uh subcommittee can work on um um and and I think this the these can all sort of operate in our city going forward. I would mention one thing is that some of these things and I know it's in the in this in the uh the the consultants proposal. I almost would re I would recommend holding off on anything with them until we come back to the subcommittee meets and we come back to council. I don't I don't know what your agreement is, but it seems to me like they put down as one of their four projects was the business districts. I think I would I would suggest that we have four that have formed and a number of other ones that are sort of in information. Let's try and get a stakeholder working group to come up with thoughts on how we should move forward rather than paying a consultant to to do that. We can we can have a meeting of a you know two-hour meeting and working session to figure out how to do next steps. I think a number of these ones we can we can also look at as well. Um I think in terms of even things like the um uh the processes and and procedures in our city if you had the right people in a meeting to talk about what their issues are. We could probably address a lot of it rather than starting with a consultant and having to do all of that. And I think mayor mayor and I have talked

about if we get the right stakeholders in the room we can achieve that. Um and I think um and we also have to prioritize you know are we looking at you know for instance the major employers out there we already have relationships with the school and the college of the desert which is mentioned in here. Let's talk to them about how we can best be useful and work together as a city. So I I I I think this is sort of good food for thought. I think the hundred items or whatever it is the 93 items that we have all make sense and now we have to prioritize group and see what we can actually do what we may do very slowly over the next few years and what may be fasttracked. Um and I think council had full agreement on the framework and now we just need to prioritize and how we get it done.

So that would be I think those are my comments.

Council member Bernie if I might mayor respond to that briefly. Um perhaps it's a happy accident that the uh proposal was not attached because I think it does allow the economic development committee to inform that more fully. I agree completely if there's dollars that can be saved through this process, absolutely we should be looking at that. Um I liken the process of the past year to uh continuing to serve dishes in a kitchen that's being remodeled. Um it uh you know it's physically impossible for two staff people to take on the volume of work that's described in this. So I appreciate the idea of bringing in stakeholders and looking at community opportunities. There's certainly community partners that are identified or will be identified in the partnering agencies as we go through that. Not all of this work will be conducted solely by economic development and some of it is you know happening in other departments. So I appreciate all of your comments. Thank you.

And just as an example, we you know we've set tech as a key pillar to grow. You know I've been meeting with a lot of the tech community and we put on an expo. We're having networking things. you know this isn't taking really any are the any of your time and a little bit of money but I would it would be ideal to go back to the subcommittee and saying this is what's being done

let's discuss it as a group and then go back to council and saying this is what's being done you know and this is the benefits these are the metrics that we have and and report back and so some you know council member Gardner and I are doing the arts and culture basically operating on its own when I think you've been to a few meetings how can we then take this group that we've gotten together and leverage some of these economic development action items into into um to support the efforts because they're will they're willing to do the work. We just have have to direct a lot of it. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for waiting, Council Member Ger.

Uh it's really hard to have this conversation when we didn't have this document. Um, so I we we really got it right before the the meeting basically. I apologize for that.

No, it's okay. I know we're going to bring this back and have a larger discussion about it, which I really appreciate. Um, but one thing just kind of very quickly being able to look over it. Um, all of all of these things are are very broad. Um, and so I'm I'm just curious when we come back the next time if you can really kind of go into more detail on on how we're going to be using this because it is so broad and I understand the subcommittee will be working on it. Um, one thing that um, the mayor has mentioned um, in the past and I want to reiterate because I I serve on the board for Desert Regional Medical Center. We rarely on this dis talk about the healthcare industry and that's a huge huge uh employer in and it's one of the things that we struggle with as a region is making sure that we actually have the medical workforce that we need. And so when we're talking about economic development, we should be thinking about all of the players regardless of whether or not they're in tourism or hospitality or emerging things like tech. there's um set businesses like that that are here and the school district was mentioned and the meta and the healthcare industry is another um we need these industries. Um even if we had even a quarter of this of the children in our in our city, we would still need a school, right? And no matter how many people are are living here, we're still going to need a doctor and nurses. And but the reality is that the entire region is growing. And we have so few uh primary care doctors, so few nurses, and we're constantly trying to attract them. So, being able to work with Desert Regional, work with Eisenhower, work with this entire Desert Healthcare District, um to really find out what it is that this industry needs in order to to be here would be huge because you're attracting these folks

who have um good paying jobs. They're going to spend money in our city. Uh it also increases the health overall of everyone who is living here. Uh which again allows them to go out and spend more money in the city. So, I just I and I really appreciate that the mayor has mentioned this many many times um because it really is a missing part of this economic development question. Um and yeah, and DAP DAP health, I mean there major major employers

um and major need in our city and it's just it's just growing. Um the same with like uh Cal State San Bernardino uh which is creating a Palm Desert campus and COOD. Both of these these schools uh have medical programming, right? So there's so much connectivity uh that we can really work on. Um so I I just want to flag that. But I I am really hoping that we can just kind of get into a little bit more of how this is going to be used the next time. and obviously I'll read it over with very carefully before then too, but um it it just feels really broad and I want to better understand how you're going to use it. Thank you. We'll be sure to provide that information.

Yeah, absolutely. Just to just to follow up on that point, uh council member, um we've got the as as we've talked about the economic development stakeholder group or the stakeholder subcommittee and we want to get that scheduled as quickly as we can. We know that we, you know, we want to get going on that. Um, our intention was to bring this report back in two weeks. Uh, so we could have a discussion, but if the wishes of council are to hold on bringing this back until we have our stakeholder subcommittee group, we're per perfectly fine doing that. We just want to get some direction from I would recommend that. I I think

we should bring it back more baked. I think we can get we can have a good subcommittee specifically. One agenda item is to review the action items and prioritize group them where we can get working groups and then we can come back with those that to council and saying this is where we've come up with and then have a discussion item on how to prioritize and move forward. Otherwise, we might do this and then go to this the subcommittee meeting and we get a whole lot of conflicting information from the groups and we want to make sure that our first group we actually get the right people in the room. Do we have healthcare representative? Do we have our local businesses? Do we have the diverse groups, the tech groups? So that so that we can come up with a unified agreement on how to move forward. I think if we try to move it as a council before that it could

I well difficult I think there's a couple pieces there's the standing subcommittee of me you Wayne Scott blushing this out more and then there's not if but when we bring in the stakeholder component. So I just I'm I'm looking to clarify to my colleagues is it bringing back our expected plan or also having that stakeholder feedback included committee should be a public is a often a public committee right it's agendaized city manager city attorney economic is public

so it would be you know we can have a pray planning meeting but it would be a public meeting and I think it should basically be to go through the uh framework and how we prioritize it and get recommendations. It's not like we're going to decide it all in a meeting. We have to get council to decide. But and we can meet beforehand and and sort of how do we present it best. But that would be my recommendation.

I think it's I guess I'm looking to the council. Do you want to hear from the stakeholder engagement or should we bring it back in terms of rough plan before we go to stakeholder engagement? Well, a lot of times when we do these things, we we we meet with the community first so that we have something to come back with that there's we've had other input on. It's not going to be finalized, but we have some plans. I mean, I I I trust you two to do what you need to do, but I I wouldn't want it to I wouldn't want us to go four months without it coming back and hearing from you. So that that's all I'm saying is yeah

I don't want it to go too long without getting I think this test should come back we should plan both within a month basically or end of March. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any other Okay.

I've got before Wayne leaves. So uh I've I've shared a number of comments uh with the city manager. um haven't been able to um share them with council, but um you know, my concern is from a a budget standpoint, uh council um uh worked hard to allocate an extra half a million dollars into the economic development budget. And um I'm I I have concern that has come up several times that it appears to me that you may be getting pressure to fund certain things, programs, events, activities. Um that you shouldn't be getting that pressure. And um you know, we're funding things that were not measuring the return. um you know I don't whatever the event is and we've taken much of that $500,000 and from my count where it's almost gone. Um in um there's several instances people shopped the request to multiple council members and then I think they go and they find an open door with you and and that's I think we have to figure out how do we stop that type of um circular process where if they're not getting support from council on something they can't go to you and and try to bypass past, but council has been telling them and that's happened uh for the organizational funding that we got behind. Um uh it's happened with the film festival funding. Um that that went through multiple people and and got to you because they knew they probably

weren't getting that the support coming from council. So, uh, I think somehow between you and the city manager, um, and and like I said, I've shared this my concerns with Scott, we need to help you and and give Scott whatever tools he needs to make sure um, you know, you're not being approached and being put into positions that you can't say no because it's a community stakeholder that's in high regard or it's any one of us uh that you you're then in an awkward position to not go and support um the the program and whether it's AI tech networking um um any of our events what how you're getting charged for the pride event is beyond me um but whatever we do fund you have a mechanism to measure the return on that investment before we spend more money. You know, let's know that we're doing we're putting good money into something that's having a positive return. So, um I hadn't been able to share my concerns with council and this was a perfect opportunity to do that.

Yeah. And I think part of the subcommittee is making sure that you're able to utilize your budget for the most high impact, high priority items. Um and that those we're spending the budget to protect that momentum. Um it the process review the the process the the regulatory audit um will have a meaningful impact for years to come if we can get that done as quickly as possible. And so making sure that we can protect the budget for those kinds of priorities um while balancing you know other smaller opportunities is going to be key. And mayor, if I could just I I think that would be a a terrific discussion when our subcommittee gets together to kind of talk about some of the things that Councilman Deart is raising. How do we just go about, you know, making impactful decisions on, you know, this these money? They're limited resources. Uh we've got a lot of great things going on in the city and we want to make uh we want to make good decisions and we've got a lot of stuff in the works. And so I I would suggest that Wayne and I we can work on an agenda and get some we really this is where we can get direction from council. We will be sponges for that. We we really need that.

And I agree if I can make a suggestion. So when you I when I mentioned like the the budget here because you've got your budget and then some of other budgets. I would have two separate things. One is just your budget of where that money is going and then other economic development money because you're right with the film festival for instance that we support them but we should be looking that in context of where else the money is coming from in our city and so because obviously we're doing things and then we can look at it as a whole and then I think at the same time if they are small things I'm not really I don't think we should be debating whether you're spending you know if you believe that getting in a uh you know a drone company to do business here is or good use of $5,000 or 10,000. I don't think that's the kind of thing we all need to discuss. I think there's a certain amount of that's what you're is in your discretion, but we can still review it. And so when we see your whole budget, we'll say, "Hey, wait a minute. You're spending we don't think you should spend at all on bringing in small companies here. Think it has to be divided up." So I think there's a I think there's an easy easier solution if we just see it all.

Thank you. And and present it to council. Okay. So the recommendation the motion that we need to approve is we're not doing two but the first one has already been neither one of them. I it it ends up being a receive and file with direction to staff to to come back on to come back with to schedule the agenda for the uh okay committee and come back. Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you Wayne. Um appreciate it. Um and we look forward to bringing this back.

Next we have public comment. The next item uh is public comment on non-aggenda items. This time has been set aside for members of the public to address the city council on items of general interest within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city. We value your comments. However, pursuant to the Brown Act, we generally cannot take any action on items not listed on the agenda. Two minutes are assigned to each speaker. Put it up my list. Um, first on our list we have Mr. Michael Pikkin and on deck will be Hilton Wood Whitaker. Michael Joseph Pitkin. As a theistic Satanist homosexual, females were always interested in me when I was younger. Back in the 80s, they were known as bag hags. Today they are allies and a spectrum of identities with proper pronouns. I would say h honey you are barking up the wrong tree. One of the times I was asked to be married was by Natasha Cruz from Puerto Rico. I met her in Reena with her wick of friends. She was a stunning ex-model, had several homes and had dated the prince of Qatar. My friends were amazed and my neighbors were amazed. Such a beautiful person was interested in me. Carney Lansford Oakland A's Joe and Sharon Rudy Oakland A's. Bob Tolman, the voice of Las Vegas National Finals Rodeo. He knows every country western celebrity in the world. Natasha and I powed around skinny dipped in Lake Tahoe and my taking nude photos of Natasha on the boulders out of Mount Shasta and Weed, California area. I'm sure the data hackers will all be in a frenzy now trying to get their spy satellites on that one. Natasha married a bornagain minister and she could no

longer be friends as she was now Christian. This all reminds me of Truth Social, a company in Canada whose members have a connection to a Christian church in Chicago, Illinois, and they believe Jesus Christ is an alien from outer space. Palm Springs and Tribes, this is your notice of potential litigation. Thank you, Mr. Pikin. Next, we have Hilton Whitaker. Bolton available. Ready?

you, Mr. Whitaker. Next, we have Cammy Celiba. Next, we have Connie Holt. minutes, miss.

Miss Hall. Next we have Regina Fernandez. And on deck after Miss Fernandez is Claudia Murphy. Regina still here. Uh next we have Miss Claudia Murphy.

Thank you, Miss Murphy. Mr. Buscat. Our

$600,000 report on page 36 suggests that the merchants of the city should get together when they have common needs and to express them collectively to the city. We're feeling like the ugly stepchild. The city has done everything in their power to prevent that from happening. you Mr. Buscat for your comment. Madame Clerk, do we have any members of the public registered to speak online? We have no further commenters.

Next item is the city council and city city manager request for the upcoming agenda development. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh members of council, we're trying to take a look at the upcoming regular council meeting schedule. Uh you'll see we have um quite a busy uh agenda for March 11th. And I'll make note that we are we will not put the uh we will not put the economic development report on for next week. We'll have our subcommittee meeting first. Uh do want to let you know we've got a leadership Coachella Valley program update presentation. Um uh great program develops leaders all throughout the Coachella Valley. They'll give a brief presentation update to us. Uh I know council uh mayor prom ready we're still on schedule to give an update on the orchid tree development. Uh that'll be on. We have our annual uh community development block grant annual action plan that we'll need to go over with everybody. And then another, you know, affordable housing project for council's consideration. That's moving along. And finally, an update to our uh ADU affordable accessory dwelling unit uh loan program. So, we'll be prepared to talk a little bit about that. Um I will u mention on um March 11th, we were originally uh planning to have a study session. We've got fire station 1, three, and five that we wanted to have conversation about. Um fire station 3 obviously uh is in need of renovation. We're working on that. Same with fire

station five. I said three and five. And obviously we had a uh open house for fire station one uh earlier this week. I will say from the staff standpoint, we got a a tremendous amount of good input uh from the residents and business and community that that attended. uh lots of good input about uh the location of the fire station, the the redesign of it, next steps. Um and then uh we got a lot of good uh suggestions about other locations that we should be considering. So the staff is we've got a lot of work to do with that as well. So I know the fire chief and our administrative staff were doing we're doing work on that. Uh taking a look at March 25th. If we can kind of scroll up a little bit, uh we have uh Scott White in the uh Visit Greater Palm Springs annual update. He and his staff will give us an update presentation. Uh you'll see we've got a historic designation public hearing along with um uh two hotel incentive agreements uh that we want to bring forward for the council's consideration uh uh required state uh report on employee vacancies that we have to give and then you asked us to come back with a another update on the Prescott Fire Preserve. I know Mayor Sodto uh and others had a meeting with community leaders about the fire and we want to do a followup afteraction report on that fire and where we're at. So we'll be planning to bring that back as well. Uh looking forward into April, we have um we'll have another hotel incentive agreement, a public hearing, and then um

uh council member uh Garner, I know you brought up the discussion about the city mayoral position, and we're working towards that discussion, that first meeting in uh on April 8th, and then April 22nd, we we need the second uh public hearing. Certainly there'll be a lot more uh information added to that uh regular meeting by that time. Uh that's all I have. U Madame Mayor.

Great. Um one question or or one request I would um ask my colleagues to consider. Uh in October, uh the short-term rental ordinance was reviewed and updated and the majority of the items that were identified that had to be updated were was approved. There was a handful of remaining items. Um and so just to kind of wrap up that work that we did, I feel like it was like 85 90% of it in October. I would love to see that come back and um finalized. Mayor, we'll try and uh get that brought back to council as as soon as possible. I I do remember there were three or four items. It wasn't Yeah.

Thanks. Well, just confirm that that we have three who want that, but But right, that's true. Okay. Um, mayor prom and then we'll go to council member Garner. Oh, I thought you did you have an item? Okay.

Thank you. Uh, so there I have a request to do a presentation at one of the meetings in April. Um, in March I'll be doing the C training which is community emergency response team. It's a 20-hour training that residents can do in Palm Springs with our emergency services uh teams. Uh it's also something that you can do in Riverside County all over the country actually. But then I also separate from that got a request from the Coachella Valley Disaster Preparedness Network and Team Rubicon which mostly does disaster response but also some disaster preparedness. Both of these groups reached out to me in the last week wanting to do a presentation to council. Um my idea is that we do a presentation with both of those things and also talking about C just to raise some awareness. As we've known um in Palm Springs, it seems like there's always some sort of emergency situation every year here. Uh and I just think it's important for us to continue to kind of hold this stuff to uh the forefront. So, if my colleagues are okay with it, I'd like to work with those groups and do um a short presentation at the beginning of one of the meetings along with, of course, our Danny Dalms and our our emergency team.

I think uh uh council member, when I last looked, we've got a couple more presentations for both of the meetings in April. I don't know if first meeting in May is acceptable. Yeah, I don't think there's a huge rush. I just want to be able to share my experience doing CERT and then give these these two organizations an opportunity to to share as well. There's there's a lot of great work in our community around disaster preparedness, which is wonderful. Well, and I and I will add we've done internally a lot of good work on our end as well in terms of preparation and, you know, everything that goes along with it. Any other? Yes, Council Member Princeton.

Just a reminder to the public on Saturday the 28th is the Black History Parade and Town Fair starting at 11 11:00 a.m. on Palm Canyon with the fair at the downtown park. And then at 3 p.m. is behind the badge, a chance to go to the open house at the police department that goes from 3 to 6 pm. Uh and the public is all welcome to go to both of those and encouraged. Thank you. Any other Those are great reminders. Thank you. Seeing none, the next city council meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 11th at 2026 at 5:30. This meeting is now adjourned.