City Council - Regular Meeting

We are going to get started. I hereby call the Palm Springs Regular City Council meeting of June 10th, 2026 to order. If I ask you to please stand for the pledge, then Mayor Pro Tem will lead us in the pledge. I acknowledge that the land we gather, live, and work on today, known as the City of Palm Springs, is the original homeland of the Agua Caliente Band of Quia Indians. The sovereign band of Agua Caliente 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. Madam City Clerk, can you please conduct roll call?

Let the record reflect that four members are present. Council Member Bernstein has an excused absence.

Thank you. We have two presentations this... No, we have one presentation this evening. The emergency operations update has been rescheduled to August due to an emergency, so it seems appropriate. We will... hear today about the Pierce's Pledge Program. This presentation will be led by Deputy Chief Kyle Stern and also Ms. Leslie Hugh.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Reddy, Council Member Gardner, and Council Member DeHart. Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to speak tonight. As we recognize Gun Violence Awareness Month in June, I am intensely motivated and feel very passionate about what we're going to talk to you about this evening. This is an important initiative that the Palm Springs Police Department is engaging in. We are working feverishly to fine-tune the details of how we're going to implement this very important program, but we're going to introduce you to this amazing woman who's standing next to me and her story, her and her son Pierce's story. When we heard it, Chief Mills and myself, we felt extremely compelled to take action. So we're going to talk about the plan and we're going to talk about why this is important and why reducing gun violence and firearms fatalities in our community is never been more on the hearts and minds of those of us at the Palm Springs Police Department. So to kind of explain in depth why we're here, it is my honor, my privilege to introduce Leslie Hugh.

Thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you for your time. My husband and I here are residents of Palm Springs. We moved down here a few years ago. And so I'm so grateful to the city of Palm Springs for hearing me, for Chief Mills, and for the police station, for listening to this program, and for taking action. So gun violence is the leading cause of death of children. We've heard that so many times, but it is the leading cause of death. But what people don't know is that a lot of children are killed at home. When you look at the statistics, school shootings are horrendous and terrible, but kids killed at home from domestic violence is more than double. Stanford did a study last February 2025. Of the last 121 mass shootings, mass shootings are four or more people. 59% of those are family members killing other family members. 40% of those are parents killing their children. Just on Monday in LA, a father killed two of his 10 year old sons. This is my son Pierce. On January the 13th, 2021, his father, my ex-husband, shot and killed him while he was sleeping. I was in the middle of a custody battle with his father. I knew he was not well. I was in a marriage full of coercive control. He was very angry. He was conspiracy theorist. And so I divorced him in 2015. And in 2020, I had to take him back to court because he was showing signs that he was not well and I needed to keep my son safe. Pierce was only nine. And And on January the 12th, 2021, I went to court. The judge ruled in my favor. He said that I could go ahead with what I had requested and get medical custody of my son. And on January the 13th, I went to pick Pierce up at school and he wasn't there. And I had learned that my ex-husband shot and killed Pierce. in his bed while he slept, and then he tried to kill himself by hanging himself, but he couldn't do it. He shot himself instead. That's the day my whole soul shattered and everything changed. What I learned is that what happened to Pierce happens every six days in America. A child is killed during custody every six days on average in America. And so Pierce's pledge was inspired by my friend, a family law attorney. She decided she had had enough. She's like, I'm taking a stand. Every client that comes in here, I'm going to ask them about firearms. And if they have them in their possession, I'm asking them to store them off-site as a part of my retainer. agreement. I will not take them on as a client unless they store their firearm outside of the home. We know that divorce is a very complicated and critical time for families. And when people went from I love you to I absolutely hate you, we know that this is a dangerous moment. And so she took a stand and did that. And that's where we decided to do Pierce's pledge. I thought, let's ask every single family law attorney in the US to do exactly that and keep our kids safe at this exact moment. And so what we did from that is we've identified different times where you believe that you should store guns out of the home. Sometimes we know that life changes and that nothing you can do sometimes to change what's happening in your life. So there are moments in your life where where we believe that guns are better stored outside of the home than inside the home. And so some things we believe that storing outside the home would be when you have young children visiting. Maybe you have grandkids' children. Maybe there's dementia. Somebody's been diagnosed with dementia in your home. Maybe it's mental health crisis. There's suicidal ideation in your home. Another hard fact is five teens a day die by suicide with a firearm. Five teens kill themselves with a gun every day. And 80% of those guns come from the home. So we have to do better. And what we did at Pierce's Pledge is we decided, Where are we going to store these firearms? If we're going to ask people to start storing firearms out of the home, where are they going to store it? So our team called every single gun store in America, all 56,000 of them. We're in our third year of calling. We've located 1,700, about 3% of those gun stores that offer gun storage. And so here in Palm Springs, we do have one gun store that offers gun storage. But what's incredible about the Palm Springs police is that I came to them and I said, look, this is the problem. We need to start advocating in our homes that when things are wrong, when we find ourselves in a critical moment, that people can take their guns and store them out of the home safely just until that moment passes. And that they can get their gun back if they want it.

and um and palm springs police has stood up and took a stand and now is offering gun storage sorry i'm i'm all over the place with our slides but this is our location okay here we go yeah fantastic and i i can only imagine hearing this story for the first time for those of us who heard it it it's a call to action it's a call to action that something must be done and there's ways that we at the palm springs police department and our partner law enforcement agencies throughout california and throughout the nation can help take meaningful steps to help bridge the gap between legally on the books methods to involuntarily take firearms out of homes and out of people's possession when there is good cause to do so those are already on the books but this bridges the gap and it's an important initiative because it is based on voluntary surrender It is offering people a bridge. It is offering people an opportunity to take a breath when they realize that sometimes being a responsible gun owner is knowing when it is safer and better to not have a firearm in the house than the necessity of having it in the house at that time. And what we've decided to do, we had Chief Mills write an open letter in support of AB 1974 just two weeks ago. This is an assembly bill that aims to give structure, aims to give cohesion across policy and procedure throughout California so that law enforcement agencies like ours have a framework and have meaningful metrics and best practices to rely on when we want to start opening our doors to Pierce's pledge and other organizations to create a safe haven for when people do the responsible thing and decide that in this moment, in a chaotic or crisis-based environment, it's best just to have a firearm outside the house. So again, we heard Leslie's story, we heard Pierce's story. It was a demand that we take action. We immediately decided collectively as an administration team that we are gonna get on board and we are gonna take Pierce's pledge and that we are gonna offer safe storage at no cost to Palm Springs community members when they decide to voluntarily surrender their firearms in a time of crisis like you see here. People who are experiencing mental health crisis at home, depression, dementia, traumatic events, domestic violence, something could be as simple as you have grandchildren, you're not used to having grandchildren in the home, You just don't feel comfortable, you don't know all the best ways to keep your firearms safe, and you'd rather have the police department do that for you. And then we have veterans mental health issues. So this is just an example of some of the educational component that's gonna come from the Palm Springs Police Department so we can start promoting that this is a resource that we offer. The process that we're gonna put together is fairly simple, fairly straightforward. After filing an online form with the California Department of Justice, you then just come to the Palm Springs Police Department. You make the firearm safe. You store it safely as if you were traveling with it or if you were going to the gun range with it. You remove the magazine and the ammunition from the firearm. You store those separately. You lock it with an appropriate lock or a zip tie. You then come to the police department, you leave the firearm safely locked in the car, you come and make contact with our staff, say that you'd like to voluntarily part-time surrender your firearm in part and in cooperation with Pierce's Pledge, and we will take it from there. We've already started working on, again, more educational information that we're gonna start answering some of those frequently asked questions that we're likely to get. And although it's difficult to see on this particular write-up, you'll be able to see that it does make note and it does draw attention to the fact that There are already legal remedies on the books that have to do with what can take place when someone in the community represents a danger to themselves or a danger to other people. There are things called gun violence restraining orders. These are available. It is very similar to a regular restraining order that more people are familiar with where you can petition a judge to issue this on a temporary basis where someone is then involuntarily not allowed to have possession of a firearm, ammunition, magazines for a brief period of time until there can be a full hearing and then the judge decides whether that should be extended for a number of years. The same thing goes, we have a document on the left that represents something that we already regularly use. There is a item in the Welfare and Institution Code if someone is involuntarily committed for a mental health assessment and evaluation, Welfare and Institution Code 8102 and 3 talk about us taking those firearms and making it prohibited for people in that situation to retain firearms for up to five years. So this is all an approach for us to again help bridge the gap and let people know, remove roadblocks, make it easy for people to make what can sometimes be a difficult decision when they're already facing challenging times in the home, that it is safer for them, it is safer for their loved ones to just have the firearms out of their house for a short period of time. So this is offered to people in our community for up to 12 months. Again, there is no cost from Palm Springs PD. If the individual who surrenders voluntarily their firearms does want to get those back, there is a small nominal fee to just file some paperwork with the DOJ so that that can be returned. We make sure that they are still lawfully able to possess and own firearms at that time before they return them. But other than that, there is no charge from Palm Springs PD. So this is an important initiative. We feel very passionate about reducing gun violence and firearm fatalities in the city of Palm Springs. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn by saying that I believe council agrees that that is an imperative. And when we heard Leslie and Pierce's story, we felt compelled to take action. So we wanted to share this initiative with council and community just to make sure that they know this is something that we're always working on. And we're looking to be at the forefront of law enforcement in not only California, but across the nation with regard to reducing gun violence in our community. So with that, we're available for any questions. We really just wanted to introduce this to everybody, and we're going to continue to promote this as a powerful tool that we can utilize to make our community safe. Thank you. I defer to any questions.

Yeah, thank you, Deputy Chief Stern. And thank you so much for being here. Your boy was beautiful. And I'm so sorry for your loss and also so deeply grateful for your passion to make... more home safer and raising the awareness on what we can all do to make sure that in moments of transition or families in crisis have a pathway for their children to be safer. So thank you so much. And I just also want to say, you know, the kind of the context of gun violence restraining orders is really really helpful and I just want to say thank you to the police department for kind of giving that context because sometimes the most loving protective thing you can do is recognize somebody you love might be in crisis and realizing whether it's your own guns or firearms in the home is just not safe and I think that sometimes that's a mental health crisis, but you've raised several others where elder care or dementia or you're not used to children in the home. These are all really, really valid reasons, and I think it's, you know, Palm Springs, Pumpsters residents love to take care of each other, and this is one real tangible way we can do that in our own homes. So thank you for this work, especially in Good Violence Awareness Month. Unfortunately, in this country, we have to think about this all year long. And so to have this attention right now is really valuable. So thank you. If any of my other colleagues, Council Member Garner.

I echo the sentiments of the mayor. Thank you so much for being here and for bringing this forward to us. I wanted to ask you, Deputy Chief, it's my understanding we also allow people to drop off guns at the police station and just turn them in, right? Is that still?

We can. We don't traditionally do a bunch of gun buybacks. But if someone, we often have instances come up where a member of a loved one passes away. And then when the family comes to take care of their estate, they realize there's a trove of firearms. And they don't know what to do with them. So that would be something that we would take into our custody as safekeeping. Again, those people are voluntarily turning them over. And then there are processes in place that we can utilize that they either are sold appropriately through an FFL or they're transferred out lawfully or we will ultimately destroy them.

Thank you.

Council Member DeHart. You mentioned the volunteer who surrenders the weapon. They want to retrieve it. They pay a small fee. What's that small fee for registering with DOJ?

So it's $30. So actually the registration, it's all online. It's incredibly easy. They make it as easy as possible. There is a fee, it's a $30 one-time fee for the first firearm that you are retrieving back, and then it's $3 for every additional firearm. So it's not monetarily a lot of money, but we do recognize to some people, we don't want there to be any obstacles. So what Pierce's Pledge, we at the Palm Springs Police Department, and I know many of our stakeholders in the community, I think would be open to saying is, If a financial impediment were ever standing in front of somebody when they felt like this was the proper recourse, we feel very confident we could remove that impediment.

Yeah, and that's where I was getting at. Are we comparing to another market? How many cities where this has happened, our size, how many guns have been surrendered?

Well, we're really, again, at the forefront of this initiative. Leslie and Pierce's Pledge and their team are working hand-in-hand with San Francisco PD. They are really the first major individual agency that is bought in to making pierce's pledge but i'll i'll let her speak for herself she is regularly engaging she spoke to state state senate just yesterday got bipartisan support on on these initiatives and we are working hand in hand one of the things that chief mills and i feel is important that by being at the forefront of this initiative we can help pave the way for other agencies maybe some that are our size aren't large like San Francisco PD or Los Angeles PD, but we can pave the way and be trailblazers for setting best practice, finding any hurdles or landmarks and then helping other agencies move those out of the way as they try to get on board with important initiatives and programs like this.

Yeah. Well, I'll pledge $1,000 so we can make sure that there's not a fee for people that they have to pay to come and retrieve them so that there's no hurdle whatsoever.

appreciate that and that that's the type of generosity and that's the type of commitment we feel like once people hear Leslie and Pierce's story and they understand that this is a voluntary program it is encouraging people to do smart responsible things even as conscientious gun owners we really feel like the type of support that council member DeHart is expressing we don't really feel like that's going to be something that will limit our capacity.

Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. I did have a question. Deputy Chief, you had mentioned that it's for Palm Springs residents. I presume it was someone from Cathedral City. Since they don't have programs in other cities, would we do that for them as well?

well what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to encourage our partners in the coachella valley to take pierce's pledge with us so that we can exponentially expand the simplicity with which everyone in the coachella valley can take part in this but i think look what we want to do especially at the forefront of rolling this out is we want to make sure that this is taking care of the palm springs community first But at the same time, and I think very much to Council Member DeHart's point, we want this initiative to succeed and we think the work that itself is really the most important. So we're gonna be open to making sure that the program is beneficial to everybody who wants to take part. With that being said, we want to be responsible about figuring out how that will impact operations. And we'll really have to see what the volume of traffic and buy-in and participation will be. But we are really committed to iterating as we go, learning as we go. And we are working hand in hand. Leslie and her team have already reached out to some of the other chiefs of police at Indio. We're going to reach out to Cadito City PD. So we're going to expand the reach of this program. And I feel like when they hear the benefits and really there isn't a lot of hurdles necessarily for us that we can envision at this time, we think they're going to be motivated to get on board as well.

And one area to increase awareness maybe to think about our school districts, you know, domestic violence shelters are two that kind of stand out of top of mind. And so anything else that we can do as this program is launching to help raise that awareness with kind of key groups, family law attorneys, you know, do let us know how we can support that.

Yeah, I think Leslie and I were talking just before we walked over today. We're looking for new allies for this program and this initiative wherever we can find them. And we are very committed to supporting her and her team as we continue to educate the community about not only the laws and the rules and the legal remedies that are already on the book, but also these type of new initiatives and this voluntary component. Just lastly, before we close, I want to take a quick moment to recognize very publicly there are two very important members of our team that have really helped lead the charge on this initiative, and that is Officer Francisco Salgado, who's seated here in council, and then our property and evidence technician, Tim Thomas. They have worked hand-in-hand with Leslie and her team. They have really done the bulk and the lion's share of the heavy lifting thus far to get us where we are, and we are committed to seeing this across the finish line. So thank you very much for the time this evening.

Thank you. We're going to keep going with our agenda. Next, we have our proclamations. On May 29, 2026, the City of Palm Springs recognized the Historic Camelot Theater for Historic Camelot Theater Day. The Historic Theater was recognized for nearly six decades of cultural and cinematic excellence in Palm Springs. Excuse me. Serving as a treasured landmark for film, arts, and community engagement, there was a surprise showing of Disclosure Day, the new Steven Spielberg movie. So literally ahead of its time, even still. So congratulations to the Camelot Theater. Next item is acceptance of the agenda the City Council will discuss the order of the agenda may amend the order at urgency items No abstentions 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 members would like to remove from the consent calendar for separate discussion and or vote?

Councilmember Garner I'd like to pull item 1 J. I

Mayor Potem. One F. F as in Frank.

Thank you.

Remove for discussion.

Oh, I have questions. Questions. Yes. Or in combination.

Okay, so you do want it pulled. Okay.

Sure, thank you.

Council Member DeHart, do you have any? Okay. Noting removing F and J for separate discussion, I'd like to entertain a motion to accept the agenda. Or can we send the motion?

I don't have it.

Do you have it?

I have a council member ready to make a motion.

You don't see it? I don't see it. Hold on. Now it is try hit refresh it worked on me when I hit refresh Yeah, my voice voted hold on one second, okay, okay great Full service here. Okay. Do we have a motion? Aye I don't know. Mine doesn't show this, but that was my vote, so that's great. At this time, I'd like to invite attorney Elizabeth Hull. Thanks for stepping in for Jeff Ballinger to provide a report on closed session.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. The council went into closed session on three items earlier today. The first was conference with legal counsel regarding initiation of litigation. I would like to report out that on a motion by Council Member DeHart, seconded by Council Member Garner, The council voted 4-0 to direct the city attorney to initiate litigation. More information regarding that litigation will be available to the public after the city effectuates service. The second item was conference with legal counsel regarding significant exposure to litigation. There was no reportable action. And the third was conference with labor negotiators, and there is no reportable action.

Thank you. At this time, I'd like Library Director Jeannie Case to come up and she'll give a brief announcement on the library summer reading program. Thanks, Jeannie.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. I am Jeannie Kayes, library director of the Palm Springs Public Library, and it's summer reading time. This year's summer reading program started this week and it runs through July 18th. Our theme is Plant a Seed Read. Summer readings open to all ages, kids, teens, and adults. We have fun programs each week, from performance shows for kids, crafts for teens, and intriguing lectures for adults. Our summer reading program is sponsored by the City of Palm Springs, but also by our Friends of the Palm Springs Library, who paid for the grand prizes and the free books that we give away, along with local merchants donating other raffle prizes. Some of our grand prizes include a Nintendo Switch 2, an e-bike, and an Amazon gift card. Plus, the friends received grants from the Literary Society of the Desert and US Bank in support of summer reading. We are also partnering with Deserted Films and the Palm Springs Cultural Center for a USA 250 film series celebrating films from our bicentennial 1976. And finally, with the help of the Friends of the Palm Springs Library, your library card allows you free admission to our Palm Springs Power Baseball games this summer. So visit our website, pslibrary.org, for more information. And we invite you to come to the library this summer, get your library card, and register for summer reading But most importantly also, mark your calendars for July 22nd at 6 p.m. for our grand finale celebration where we will draw the winners of summer reading and give away lots of other fun prizes. See you at the library.

Thanks, Jeannie. Just a couple quick comments. This is a great program for families looking for ways to keep their kids occupied. It's indoors. It's also just such a fun variety of activities. And so thank you for doing this. And hopefully it gets maybe some new people into the temporary space that hasn't checked it out yet. It's lovely. I just have one request if we can make sure the e-bike gets a helmet as well. Oh, absolutely and a lock. Thank you. Yeah Thank you, thank you Next item is public testimony this time has been 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're speaking about. Please note that the testimony for public hearings will be taken at the time of public hearing. And the general public comment on subjects not on our agenda will be taken later in the evening. If there's a written comment you'd like to distribute to city council, we invite you to hand that to the city clerk. Our first speaker is David Vignolo. Afterward will be Courtney Newman.

Good evening, Mayor Soto, Mayor Pro Tem Reddy, and council members. My name is David Vignolo of District 5, and I'm speaking on behalf of citizens for an elected mayor regarding item 3F. On April 8th, This Council directed the formation of a working group to advance this important public policy discussion. Yet two months passed before the group's first meeting was held on Monday, and the public still has not been provided with a schedule for future meetings. If this initiative is truly a priority, it needs momentum, transparency, and a predictable public process. For many residents, this lack of visible progress is concerning. When the Council establishes a working group, the public reasonably expects a timely process, regular meetings, and clear opportunities for public participation. To date, those expectations have not been met. Citizens for an elected mayor respectfully asks the council to prioritize this initiative and move the working group forward with greater urgency and transparency. Specifically, we request that a schedule of public meetings to be held in July and August be developed. and released no later than the June 24th regular city council meeting. A published schedule will provide accountability, allow residents to plan their participation, and demonstrate that the council takes public input seriously and is genuinely committed to the process initiated on April 8th. We appreciate the work of the six working group members and staff. however the community deserves a clearer process and a more predictable timeline going forward thank you for your consideration and commitment to this important process thank you mr vignolo next we have courtney newman after courtney newman will be tom dole

good evening my name is courtney newman i'm the president of the palm springs modern committee and i'm speaking on behalf of the palm springs modern committee on item 3b thank you mayor and council members on behalf of the palm springs modern committee i want to express our support for the providing palm springs firefighters with a modern fire station that meets today's public safety and operational needs we recognize the need for a new facility and appreciate the city's commitment to our first responders. At the same time, the proposed acquisition affects one of Palm Springs' most historically and architecturally significant commercial properties, the Town and Country Center. This site includes important work associated with Paul R. Williams, and A. Quincy Jones, two of the 20th century's most celebrated architects. Their legacies are increasingly recognized around the world. In 2026, Paul R. Williams will be the subject of major exhibitions at USC Fisher Museum, the Getty Center, and LACMA. That makes it especially important that Palm Springs handle this property with care. P.S. ModCom is not opposed to the acquisition, nor are we opposed to demolition where it is truly necessary for the fire station. But for a property of this importance, verbal assurances are not enough. We respectfully ask the city to secure written enforceable commitments for the preservation and restoration of the remaining historic portions of the town and country center. These commitments should include a clear restoration timetable, progress reporting, and accountability measures. We also ask that the new fire station be designed so its height, scale, and architectural character do not overwhelm or diminish the remaining historical buildings. Restoration should follow the Secretary of Interior's standards and be based on documented historic material finishes and colors. P.S. ModCom has already worked with Dunn-Edwards to identify colors, and we'd be happy to share that information. Palm Springs has a rare opportunity to show that public safety and historic preservation can work together. A thoughtfully designed fire station paired with restoration of the remaining historic structure could become a model for doing things the right way. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Newman. Next, we have Tom Dole. After Tom will be George Nichol.

Mayor Pro Tem, council members, thank you for this opportunity to make a public comment on item 3B. My name is Tom Dole, and I'm the creative director at Destination PSP, occupying the north building of the Town and Country Center on Palm Canyon Drive. The center couldn't have a more illustrious pedigree, as one of the most important commercial complexes in Palm Springs or all of Southern California. When the store, Destination PSP, moved there in 2014, we had great hopes that it would spur a restoration. But in the dozen years since, the part of the center that the city is now considering purchasing has only become a more dilapidated and dangerous eyesore. We fully support this purchase, but we shouldn't have to wait another dozen years before this jewel in the heart of Palm Springs can again become a vibrant community space. Imagine a welcoming plaza with shade and landscaping, cafe tables and a coffee shop, a welcome place to relax, read a book, meet a friend, or engage a tourist. Significant architecture is the very foundation of Palm Springs identity, brand, and economic wellness. As a strong supporter of our city's visual heritage, I hope we will also seize this opportunity to create a bold, modern fire station by taking the time to hire a visionary architect. With earlier fire stations by John Porter Clark, Albert Frey, and Hugh Kaptur, we have a legacy that needs to be upheld for future generations. Thank you.

Thank you, Tom. Next, we have George Nickel. After George Nickel will be Sydney Williams.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council. My name is George Nickel. I'm a full-time resident of Palm Springs. I moved here from West Hollywood, where as a public safety commissioner and as a co-captain of my neighborhood watch group, I pushed for years to have a replacement for a fire station there, Fire Station 8, that was also built in the 50s. It was really undersized, and it was not up to the needs of our firemen and women. So when I actually was able to go to the open house and do a tour, I was surprised at Fire Station 1 that it's even more cramped than Fire Station 8 in West Hollywood, and it desperately needs to be replaced. So I understand the concerns of the businesses. I really, really do. The need to have ample parking. But I would just say that when you look at where the firemen and women stay in Fire Station 1, that you need to remember that they leave their homes, and they leave their families, and that they go there, and they live for days or a week at a time. and they wait for us to have our worst day and then they come out to save us so as long as the chief is behind this i think it's really great that the community came together really quickly city staff council members stakeholders to move this forward uh... just as long as response times are not compromised because The difference between having the worst day of your life and having the last day of your life is the response time for our first responders. So thank you for the time, and I really look forward to the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Nichol. Next, we have Sydney Williams. After Sydney Williams, we have Gary Wexler.

Good evening, mayor and council members and staff. My name is Sydney Williams. I'm the former curator of architecture and design at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and I'm addressing agenda item 3B. I'm here to speak in enthusiastic support of the purchase of land and a portion of the town and country center for a new fire station. As you've noticed with letters you've received and the number of people in the audience speaking tonight, This is seen as an important issue in Palm Springs. This brings together the preservation and architecture community that recognizes this project as pivotal for the city. Town and Country Center designed by A. Quincy Jones and Paul R. Williams has a storied past. As a class one historic site, the preservation community has long advocated for this important structures restoration in the heart of downtown. Now with the proposed new fire station, this project is doubly important. This is a tremendous moment to shine a light on the city's commitment to preservation and to outstanding contemporary architecture. Since the founding of Modernism Week over two decades ago, the economic impact of architectural tourism has been profound. The recognition of Palm Springs as a mecca of modernism is well established with the thousands of visitors attending Modernism Week programs. It has also had a tremendous impact on real estate. For visitors to keep returning to our city, they need to see that we value great architecture and we seek and support innovative and creative solutions. Albert Frey's Station No. 1, Hugh Capter's, and John Porter Clark's indicate that this city values architectural excellence. We have a legacy that we are proud of, and it is essential to restore town and country and commission new architecture in the heart of downtown as exceptional opportunity. Thank you, Ms. Williams. Thank you so much.

Next we have Gary Wexler. After Gary Wexler, we have Karina Castaneda, I think.

Hello, Council. I am here tonight because I fully support Proposition 3B or Agenda Item 3B and your purchase of the two sites on Indian Canyon. I want to also... voice my support of the letter written by Palm Springs Modern Committee. I agree especially with their recommendation that you look beyond budget and hire a quality architect for the project and let's build one that is compatible with the historic Williams and Jones building. want to remind the council in twenty eighteen that uh... you were presented by the property owner a plan to renovate the town and country and that's property that's been under the preservationists uh... discussion for many many years uh... in that presentation was their first recommendation that they tear down the 1955 Wexler and Harrison building, the E.F. Hutton building. So with the voices of preservationists, council voted it down and that, in fact, the E.F. Hutton building was the first building to be totally restored and opened in 2023 for Modernism Week to great pride. I also support the effort to relocate the new firehouse at this location. It ensures that the Albert Frey gas station will become a historic monument to our architectural legacy. I don't know what will happen with it, but it's not going to be torn down or renovated into to accommodate a facility that it no longer will work. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Wexler. Next, we have Karina Castaneda, and after Karina will be Michael Joseph-Picken.

Good afternoon, everybody. I am part of the small hotels of Palm Springs through my family hotel, Los Arboles. I support the TVID for I see its strong marketing efforts. The rapid growth in small hotel ownership in town over the years is a testament that it is working. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next we have Michael Joseph Pickin. After Michael will be Barbara Marshall.

Michael Joseph Pitkin, and this is for all agenda items. One of the first experiences I had in Palm Springs five years ago, I had a meeting with a family associated bank. The bank is magically no longer there. I set my $500 trifocal prescription eyeglasses down, and after the meeting, before I left bank property, I realized I left my glasses. They were nowhere to be found. In five years, I have been denied medical doctors and insurance to attain new glasses. In five years, I have been unable to see. I have a negative one power prescription. I guess negative two power is total blindness. Each eye has a different prescription. I have stigmatism in each eye. I am nearsighted, farsighted, and had a prescription in between. No one in the world will be able to use them. The individual who took them felt someone was more deserving. I cannot see anything in this city council. However, I can hear everything you say. Now do you see why I have been so adamant for my civil rights?

Thank you, Mr. Pitkin. Next, we have Barbara Marshall. After Barbara Marshall, we have Karina Zaki.

Good evening mayor, city council members and city staff. I'm Barbara Marshall from the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation. I'm here to speak on 3B. We recognize that the city's impending purchase and future rehabilitation of parts of the historic town and country center will go through many hoops including the AAC, the HSPB and the Planning Commission. That's a good thing because there is a lot of expertise on those city boards and commissions. Some of you may recall that it was PSPF that brought forward the class one historic resource nomination for the Town and Country Center in 2016. But prior to that, in 2014, PSPF submitted the center for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. the california historic resources commission unanimously approved the center as eligible for listing on the national register the owner however objected the very first thing the city should do as the new owner is to rectify that status and allow for the center's listing on the national register It is a small paperwork job that can be done tomorrow. However, for the preservation community, it is very, very symbolic. Thank you.

Thank you, Barbara. Next, we have Karina Zaki. After Karina will be Ginny Fote.

Good evening all and thank you for having me today and it's Karima. My name is Karima Zaki. I am currently serving as COO of Town and Desert Hospitality which has a group of nine small hotels here in Palm Springs and I'm here to speak on behalf of 1L which is the TBID resolution. I am here for the second time in my career. It's my second tenure. I actually was here back in the... Not wanting to tell you exactly which years, but I was here half a decade the last time around and have been here since March of 2022. I, throughout my career, have actually enjoyed being part of boards and chairing organizations in the tourism industry. including the Convention Visitors Bureau in San Diego and the Tourism Board in San Francisco. And when I came to Palm Springs, I was very pleased to hear, considering that my hotel group is in the small boutique category, that we had a T-Bid. Now, I had been part in the past of organizing T-Bids, supporting T-Bids, and seeing T-Bids get underway and be very effective. I didn't know exactly what to expect when I came to a smaller community like Palm Springs, but I must tell you that everything that I have seen and I do sit on the board is truly a measure of comparison to all the large cities that I have been part of. The organization has vendors that are accountable They're creative. They understand their mission, and they pursue it with vigor. The board is engaged and does not just simply stamp the ideas that are brought forward by the vendors, but they ask questions. They offer great opinions. and make really rational and good collective decisions. This community of small hotels is critically important, and as an outsider four years ago, I don't know that I fully understood how important these small hotels are. Thank you, Mizaki. You're out of time. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, we have Ginny Pho, and after Ginny will be Chris Menrod.

The town and country. It's been the nemesis, I think, of every council that I can think of. And finally, it really is the epitome of promises made, promises broken. That center has needed to be saved for many years now. We tried almost 15 years ago. It was scheduled actually for demolition if the downtown plan had gone through. It was going to be a road going through there. And my council did actually an amendment, so that didn't happen. And each council since has had to deal with the fact that the town and country, which is a historic place, site has deteriorated more and more and more. So you now as a council, and I'm 100% behind and endorse what Courtney said and what ModCom has presented to you, but this council has the opportunity now to finally save at least part of this historic site. So I urge you to not only approve the fire station going here, because I think it's a great idea, but also to commit that there will be historic preservation of the property. And that's a really, really important thing because the community is not very trusting right now about that because we've had so many times that the renovation has been promised and it hasn't happened. So I would urge you to be sure when we are, if you do approve the fire station going there, that you also commit to the renovation of that property. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Folk. Next we have Chris Menrad.

Hello there, my name is Chris Minrad. I'm a 26 year resident of Palm Springs. And I'd like to just say I do fully support the purchase of one half of the town and country center. And I think it's actually the perfect solution for what really is a 20 year problem of getting that important historical resource rehabilitated. But I would like to address the new fire station design itself. It's a design that's been circulating in the newspaper and in social media. And I'm actually hoping that this rendering that we've been seeing is kind of a concept of a concept, because this building is an amazing opportunity for Palm Springs to demonstrate what should be our commitment to modern architecture. we celebrate historical modernist architecture by modernism week and lots of other events throughout the year but i believe to further our town's brand we need to concentrate our energies on new architecture all over town we've seen very mediocre projects popping up now one exception is the aloe i think it's a fabulous project and one that could be an example So we don't have a lot of developable land left, and I think we need to demonstrate a commitment to good design, and that should really flow down from City Hall. So I'm advocating that we engage, perhaps even via competition, architects to produce for us an excellent design. We can lead by example and show developers a way to a better built environment for us all, and we can take our celebration of great modern architecture into the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in person?

Good afternoon. My name is Felipe Castaneda from Los Árboles Hotel and Amira Soul Restaurant here in town. And today I... WORKED MYSELF AND DECIDED TO TALK AND ASK YOU TO SERIOUSLY CONSIDER THE CONTINUATION OF THE TBID. IT'S ONE WAY THAT THE SMALL HOTELS IN THIS TOWN IS ONE WAY WE HAVE TO PROMOTE OURSELVES out of town and we don't have many other opportunities to do it. So we thank you in advance for considering the continuation of this way for us to keep doing what we do best. Have some pillows. We are a city about tourism, and without hats on the pillows, we have no tourism. We have to find a way to bring them in, and the TBID is it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Castaneda. If there's no one else in person who'd like to come in person, come on down. And then we'll move on to the Zoom presenters.

Good afternoon. My name is Frank Tyson. I spent almost half a century Restoring Casa Cody, which is now the oldest functioning hotel in Palm Springs, as well as four properties around it. In fact, my first involvement in the city was an appointment by Sonny Bono to the Planning Commission, and I now am involved with a group called ABCD Advocates for Better Community Development. Anyway, I basically don't want to reiterate what has been said so far, but I strongly in favor of all this because what people don't, what people forget that this revival of the small hotels in the 80s and the 90s really started the revival of Palm Springs. Anyway, so I'm all for it. It bothers me that the city has not been more aggressive. For instance, at one point during the golden age of Hollywood, the record club was one of the most important places in the world. And it just sits there right now. And there seems to be no real initiative to save that wonderful piece of property. And I certainly urge to go ahead and do that too. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tyson. Seeing no other in-person comments, we will move to Matthew Busquets on Zoom. Mr. Busquets, if you can hear us, you can unmute and you have two minutes.

Good evening. My name is Matt Busquette. I'm a representative of the Block 200 Club, which speaks on behalf of 45 businesses and building owners in the two to 300 block of North Palm Canyon. We want to express our universal support for item 3B on the agenda. This solution provides significant benefits to citizens, business owners, and visitors of Palm Springs. at a minimum it should achieve the following one it eliminates blighted and derelict apartment buildings that for years have discouraged foot traffic and development of several blocks of indian canyon this effort from the city should jump start development of private parcels belonging to nearby property owners and finally begin to maximize the downtown indian canyon strip two This should with, of course, the right detailed written commitments begin the long awaited meaningful restoration of the balance of the town center, which will enhance the stable of historically significant buildings in town. Three, this will provide our fire department with the downtown location for the equipment necessary to service several of the large and new and overly scaled hotel developments. Hopefully, it'll help our fire department improve response time metrics on their calls. And four, this will preserve the parking lot near the current station, which as confirmed by the recently completed parking study on this lot, is heavily utilized by both locals and visitors alike to patronize the small businesses. Finally, a commitment on the people concerned about grid. I completely understand why people are hesitant to have the city deal with grid on this given the history of terrible deals the city has made with grid over time. It would be great if someone else owned the property, but it's not the case. We can only be wary and make sure the city does a better job in the details of the contract. Please do not let who the seller is color what is a great concept for Indian Canyon development, historic preservation, fire protection, and small business growth and survival. Please vote yes and thank you to the staff and council for your patience and vision throughout this entire process.

Thank you, Mr. Biscuit. You're out of time. We appreciate your comment. Madam Clerk, are there any other public comments?

No further commenters.

Okay, thank you. Next item is the consent calendar. I would like to entertain a motion to accept the consent calendar without items F or J, which were removed for separate discussion. We have a motion by Councilmember DeHart. We have a second by Councilmember Garner. Motion carries.

let's get started with item f please can we have a staff report good evening mayor mayor portem and council and city staff and members of the public my name is wayne olsen i'm the chief economic development officer for the city of palm springs uh just a clarification do you want a staff reporter or am i going to be answering questions there was a Oh, I'm sorry. Do you want a staff report or am I answering questions?

A staff report would be great. Thank you.

The item before you, 1F, tonight, advances implementation of the Economic Development Strategic Framework that the Council passed in November of 2025. Adopted last year by moving from planning into execution, the proposed amendment with Civil Economics focuses on activation priorities, including code and regulatory review, business process modernization, and investment readiness. The work will identify barriers within current city processes, develop targeted recommendations, and create implementation tools to support long-term economic growth, operational efficiency, and a stronger business climate. Importantly, this effort is structured as an iterative and parallel implementation process so multiple strategic initiatives can continue advancing simultaneously. That concludes my report. I have a few slides if there are questions related to them, but open to answer questions.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Wayne. Just a few questions. Sure. So, you know, I support the concept and the idea. And in reading through this, I had some questions on how this actually will sort of play out. And particularly, this is the code review. Correct. And then it also talks that there's going to be a separate business process audit. And I guess my question is, I'm wondering, since there's such significant overlap, why they wouldn't be maybe combined? Because the regulatory piece is the one where you have the most problems, the permitting, where it gets caught, all those kinds of things. The regulatory, which are what things like the EIR fees, parking in lieu requirements, and You know, those we know what those issues are and what the concerns are. And those are policy issues for council to deal with. But the real holdup is in the permitting and the process. So when this talks about separate, my question is there's 170,000 for this study. But then how much is the audit study? And there's no answer to that question. I'm not sure we would even know. So that's why in my mind, since there's so much overlap, it would be more advantageous for us to get to the heart of what the issues are by having those studies together. And I wonder if you could address that.

Mayor Pro Tem, great question. To your point, I've provided a slide. We did a survey during the Economic Development Strategic Framework that identified 68% of businesses identified the process and regulatory environment in Palm Springs to be onerous to their business. 51% and 48% looked at either closing their businesses or moving their businesses as a result of the regulatory situation in Palm Springs. That's a real big challenge for us. So, yes, this is a heavy lift. Title V alone, which is related to business, has some 30 chapters and 1,500 subsections. It... they will review the entirety of the code relative to principle A of the economic development strategic plan. To your question specifically, the original proposal was to do both at the same time. Civil economics provided that, and we brought that to council, and the thought was to then bring it back, which separated. At least that's my recall. THERE IS A PROPOSAL, NOW OUT OF DATE PROPOSAL THAT CIVIL ECONOMICS PROVIDED. IN DISCUSSION WITH THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THEN SUBCOMMITTEE, NOW LIAISONS, THE AGREEMENT WAS TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THE CODE AND REGULATORY REVIEW AND THAT AT THE SAME TIME IF PROCESS ISSUES CAME UP WE WOULD IDENTIFY AT THAT TIME, COME TO COUNCIL WITH THAT RECOMMENDATION AND INCLUDE THOSE PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS while they're studying the code i don't have an example off the cuff but if they were to come across some code that uh in their early audit that we identify as something that needs to be repaired we would just initiate that action at a staff level uh likely with no cost other than staff time i know that's a long answer to a short question but i don't know if that answer you said there was a proposal for both how much was that proposal i think it was if my memory serves about 240 000 somewhere in that neighborhood to do both and that was from civil economics

Yeah. So why couldn't they do both for 170?

Well, that's a good question. And, you know, I did do a little research. There's 1,500 subsections to Title V alone.

But they won't be looking at all those.

Well, correct. But we have 16 titles of... of our municipal code, and that doesn't include addendums or other graphics. I would say maybe half of those relate to business, but it does require that they review all of the sections in order to determine whether they're still valid or not. Now, those that aren't valid, I would argue you wouldn't have to do anything with, but it requires that we review them to see that they're not inhibitory to economic development. If my staff and I spent time on this, 30 minutes, a line item, it would take us about three and a half years to finish that, if and only those would be what would be available to work on. As a result, I think the 170 is a bargain. Of course, it's a lot of money. I have a great deal of respect to the community. I got a few calls from business members that were concerned about the cost. This is, relative to the overall spend of the city, a nominal cost. $170,000 IS A LOT OF MONEY, I HAVE IT APPROPRIATED IN MY FISCAL YEAR 26 BUDGET. SO AGAIN, I HOPE THAT ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION.

HAVE YOU GIVEN THOUGHT IF YOU DID THE BUSINESS PROCESS AUDIT, THE REGULATORY WOULDN'T BE AN ISSUE? basically the reverse.

Council Member Reddy, I think it's, I would argue it's a little bit of a chicken and egg. The code informs the process and the process informs the code. What I can tell you is that the first stop with the consultants and their plan would be to the council first, of course, to look at the issues that your constituents are concerned with, to prioritize code and the code review in that dimension. and then the recommendation would be to form a roundtable of small businesses, mid-sized businesses, whoever is interested, developers, architects, to work in concert with the consultants to identify and prioritize those processes that are the most critical.

Let me ask you this. They talk about a stakeholder roundtable. Who will they actually be talking to? That wasn't clear in the scope of work.

Yeah, Mayor Pro Tem, I think the intent there was to be as open as possible to both the liaisons from the Economic Development Subcommittee. At the time that the proposal was produced, there was an Economic Development Subcommittee, and the intent was for them to discuss who those groups would be. Now we have liaisons, so that'll do that in concert with the city manager, as well as the council direction from our liaisons.

And I just raise this just from... Dealing with this issue for a long time, there was nothing more important to councils for many, many years than the business process. We're business unfriendly. Nothing seems to work. How do you make this work better? You're still dealing with it today. There's periods where you have improvement. Probably the best one was when we had a business concierge. That was the single most important thing I think we ever did to help alleviate that. Rarely, if ever, do you ever have a complaint that I was aware of on the code other than the EIR or the parking in lieu fee. Those are just policy issues that, you know, the EIR, that's state issues, and this $170,000 we're going to spend isn't going to resolve that issue at all. That's why I think if the focus was on the process, which isn't the actual codes, it's the process of, well, who's going to deal with my permitting issues when someone's on vacation? Why can't I talk to anyone in person? Why does it take so long? All that kind of stuff. That kind of study is always good, and I would support that 1,000%. I've just not seen the utility on the code side because I'm not sure how that's going to get to any improvement.

Mayor Portimao, if I might, I think I can give you an example and I'll anonymize it. I was speaking with a consultant today whose work from home and he was attempting to purchase a business license as a result of a contract that he'll be having with this, a small contract that he'll be having with the city. When he went to issue his business or to be issued his business license, it triggered a fire inspection. And that would require that an fire inspector go out and look at his home office at his home. That's an issue in code that exists in code that's triggered by the business license process. It is both a process and a regulatory issue. So I don't disagree with you. I think there's many processes that need to be repaired and improved. Um, and again, I don't want to leave the impression that that is going to be left to be second. It'll be coterminous with this and we can report back to council as frequently as you sort of answered the question.

I'm just saying we know that's a problem. But that's a policy issue that the council, you know, can have a debate and change or not like our fees are too high. So I'm not sure paying him $170,000 to tell us what we already know. I guess that's my concern where the process is more of where the pinch points are is what at least even now as a council member, the feedback I'm getting from people who use the system.

Mayor Pro Tem, I appreciate your concern in this regard. I believe that we can do this through the code regulatory process. I do believe that we will address a lot of the process issues. Some of these are already getting addressed. Finance took a look at their business licensing process and have been improving that relative to the module that our IT team uses. So those are ongoing. The staff is working on the process issues as we discover them. I would argue that the The items that we don't know about are the ones that need attention, and we can't do that unless we do this audit first. And so the order of operation is, the logic of it is, we've completed the economic development strategic framework, principle A, this code and regulatory audit meets four of the five initiatives under principle A. It is also the second activation priority that was identified behind the convention center, which is also underway. So I think it's a false dichotomy to say that one wouldn't occur without the other. They will occur at the same time and in council with the council as well as the small business community.

And that's fair, but finally, but then when are you bringing back the permitting process audit separately?

No, that would be in concert with, excuse me, Mayor Pro Tem, that when we go to identify the particular issue in code. So for example, a particular signage ordinance. I can't think of one immediately, but it's one that many businesses have talked about. If we identify issues there, we can start to resolve a process that would improve that, and we can bring that back to council immediately. Again, these aren't linear. They're intended to happen at the same time. And to your point about saving dollars, we actually are saving dollars. What we would be doing is assigning those process improvements to staff rather than consultants. So again, in my mind, we're actually saving money by doing this at $170,000 rather than spending the whole 240 and identifying processes to your point that we already are aware of. And those are already priorities to begin with. So the structure of the code and the regulation, I would add also economic development has very little code. THE BUSINESS CODE TITLE 5 RELATES TO BUSINESS BUT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ITSELF HAS VERY FEW REGULATIONS AND AUTHORITIES. AND SO THAT'S SOMETHING ELSE WE'RE GOING TO BE LOOKING AT AS WELL AND BRINGING THOSE BACK OBVIOUSLY TO COUNCIL IN THE APPROPRIATE PROCESS THAT THE CITY ATTORNEY ASSIGNS TO US TO UPDATE THE CODE.

OKAY. THANK YOU.

So Wayne, you said if your department would have been doing it, it would have taken you three years. You'd be done by now if you started. I agree. You would be finished. Challenged with what's in front of us. You even mentioned cart before the horse or egg before the chicken or whatever it is. We're going to have process, process, recommendation, recommendation, recommendation. Then we're going to talk to the business community. And I think that continues to be backwards. And the business folks who've been engaged in this process that have spoken to me are kind of laughing at all of us, that we're engaging in another 170 grand, which is going to lead into another contract of who knows how much that's going to be in the next step. Instead of taking the report we got initially, and really having our business community sit and tell us what we already know and then that's what we start working on. We start working on the points that are already identified that we know are already an issue and not wait another year. That's my other concern here is we're gonna wait another year for this process to go through and and before we really start to Start to talk to the business community and and I don't I don't support this process And I think we've got to engage our business community in a much bigger way and they want to be engaged and they're disappointed that they're not being engaged is what I'm being told and and they wanna contribute. They're the ones that are seeing the problems when they're trying to do business with the city. We just need to ask them, okay, give us the 10 things. Then we can go and fix those 10 items. Give us 20 items. Tell the city manager we gotta go get these 20 items done and then it's up to Scott to come back and tell council. This is what we've gotta tackle. We've gotta tackle these 10 items and it's gonna cost this much money. Then we can have council weighing in. So I'm just challenged on continued consulting process and not being able to have true action and true engagement with our stakeholders in the community. So I'm challenged to support this item as it is. And I'm curious as to why, what's different between what we see in front of us today and what was in front of us on May 21 that was pulled?

uh... remind me of may twenty one it was last on the agenda it was lost on consent and then what's different no we had a clerical error with the amendments it's not nothing changed it was just an issue with the amendments and to your to your points I thought long and hard about this because I had heard from a few business owners, one of them who has happened to be having his best sales in his entire ownership of the business, and the city invested an additional $200,000 to remove a median so that he could have access to his driveway. So I think that the improvements that we're talking about are part of this process. I disagree with the concept that somehow the 170,000 is excessive or unnecessary. As you can see, the city has identified that economic development is one of four main priorities. We invest 342 million in bridges and facilities, 86 million in police and fire and airport security, 13.8 million in homelessness and housing, and 1.2 million in economic development. And this contract is $170,000 to accelerate the economic development strategic plan that you passed on November of 25. In fact, it is entirely principle A. It also activates the activation priorities. So relative, I don't disagree. We want to be careful with our dollars. But the $170,000 question of whether we have too many consultants has to be a question of relativity and context.

And how much have we spent up to this point?

I'm sorry?

How much have we spent?

I think it's 225 for my portion. It's in the report somewhere. Give me a moment. I can look at it.

And then we got the 170 coming. So it's not as much the dollars.

Council Member, sorry to interrupt you, but we also spent $600,000 on a zoning code update. Again, I appreciate the public's concern around the spending. This is not the place to be penny wise and pound foolish. We are spending money on priorities across the city. It's not the dollars. I appreciate that. Are there questions?

I would like to ask some questions as well. OK. So Wayne, just for some history for the public, for the context, you are the first chief economic development officer of the city, correct? Right. And remind us again, do you want to? It was vacant before you arrived, right?

In terms of this role. It was split between two. It was a split role. OK.

And when you came, was there a master plan or some type of guiding structure as to what we wanted our economic development activities to be?

Mayor, there were part and parcel plans. It wasn't that there wasn't any economic development, but this was the first formalized, fully realized economic development strategic framework that took 12 to 18 months. And the reason I would argue that the additional $47,000 that was spent in 2025 was was because we wanted more business participation. We spent an extra six months getting that small business participation and talking with our community members to ensure that they felt included. What I don't want to do is distract the eyes on the prize and the goal with a couple of folks who are disappointed or unsupportive of uh... you know the city's activities in this regard but yes that's correct and so the council approved that november this is considered one of the activation priorities absent it uh... i did do a a a graph for you uh... this is an analysis i put in date uh... a i on my time i think the subtext to some of this is that the staff could do it Instead of the $170,000, I disagree strongly with that. This is an analysis of my time over the last year. I took every calendar item in my calendar and demonstrated where I spend my time. This is with a consultant.

And then, so this framework was finalized, approved by council about eight months ago. Correct. And then since then, we have heard from community members that they wanna see progress and momentum on the strategic framework, correct?

Correct.

Okay. And in terms of key items, Is it 10, 20, dozens, hundreds? I mean, when we think of how many things can be updated and how to prioritize them and how to bring them back to city council, can you describe a little bit of just kind of the extent of how many action items we have in the strategic framework and how this fits in with them?

Mayor Soto, that's correct. We have 103 action items. They're separated under the principles and initiatives. And among those 103, about 38 are near term, meaning in the first one to two years. Those are separate and apart from the work that we are talking about with the activation priorities, of which this is identified as the key activation priority. If this isn't passed tonight, it effectively stops the implementation of the economic development strategic framework. And we can certainly go back to square one and spend another year doing that and develop a framework that feels, for a few people, more participatory. We worked very hard as a staff and as a consultant team to try to include every voice we could. The other challenging issue is, and I want to reiterate, that the process isn't absent business. The characterization that business will come last is incorrect. As I said, we will be visiting with council first, and then we will construct the roundtable of small businesses. It's actually literally the second item behind the council.

And ideally, we want you and your team to be able to fully participate in those discussions and utilize your relationships that you have with our business community to help facilitate that process. If you or your team is bogged down and in this code review, would that delay or stagnate that process? kind of direct business engagement?

Mayor Soto, as I mentioned before, I did do a quick analysis, a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but actually this would be a good, this would occupy 100% of both my and my staff's time. I only have two staff members, by the way, for the major priority of the city. And again, I would argue that, again, I understand it's not the dollars. This is 0.1% of the overall general fund. It's 0.23% of a spend on police and fire. So I understand that this isn't about the dollars, that it's about participation, but it is specious to argue that there isn't going to be participation because there is.

And fixing the code would help our current businesses and ideally future businesses that we want to come into the city.

Mayor, that's absolutely correct. And like all things, we have active people that have a lot of ideas and thoughts. We don't know that that's representative of the overall business community. We have something over 11,200 licensed businesses in our community. We're hearing from two or three that are upset about the process. I don't disagree. We always want to include more participation. But there's also another 11,198 or 97 that haven't called and raised concerns about the process around the EDSF. This is a key component to economic development in moving forward. We can argue about whether process should come before code review or regulatory. In effect, what is going to be happening is we are going to be looking at the processes that 68% of our businesses feel is contrary to their best interest. 51% of our businesses have considered moving from Palm Springs because of our regulations. They said it in our presentation. in our plan. I beg you to please stop layering on more and more committees, boards, and bureaucratic regulations on local businesses. It's soul-crushing. Shrink the regulation, bureaucracy, and the paperwork. That's what we're proposing tonight is to conduct that audit and help businesses do what they do best, which is sell services and goods to the community.

And so we hear from the community some We lean on consultants too much. We have a master plan on how to tie our shoes, right? There's just too many master plans. But some of our master plans really give us a lot of focus and help us prioritize. I think the parks master plan would be a good example clearly identifying. Can you talk a little bit how we can make sure there's momentum from this review and how we can make sure that their action items that are being identified are being implemented as quickly as possible?

Mayor, Council, absolutely. So the program is designed to come back to you as frequently as you wish. My expectation would be that once approved, if approved, that the consultants would get to work over the summer and they might come back as early as September to report out on their first audit of that. We could then do a prioritization along with the business community and those businesses that are concerned about this process and to be sure that they're included and identify their concerns as well.

and so we wouldn't be waiting a year for a list of recommendations maybe once a quarter however frequent we identify things that require policy direction from council that's correct and my expectation would be we'd focus on title five first of the code which is entirely related to business

And as we discovered what was inhibitory to economic development, we would be bringing back process ideas as well. And again, this doesn't deter or defer current process improvements that are already underway or that we're trying to identify. What this does is, one, it continues an economic development strategic framework that we did spend $200-some thousand on, on the next step that we all agreed would be the next step. And in order to move this forward, this is the appropriate next step at an appropriate dollar volume relative to the importance that the council has told our community that they place on economic development. And excuse me, Mayor, in some ways it puts a halt to that. And so I would be concerned about what our priority would be next. And to Mayor Pro Tem's point, certainly process improvement is always the case. I've been doing this for 30 years. In early 2000s, one-stop shops were a function in St. Paul, Minnesota. So we've been looking at how to improve the government process many, many, many, many years. Nobody's got it exactly right. But we know we have some pieces wrong. We don't know what else we have wrong. And as a result, it would be an important first step to take to organize our thinking around this and to really gather our priorities.

Mayor, could I just, let me just interject here and add a few words so we can kind of maybe think through this on a little bigger picture. It might be helpful. So we have, you know, we go through these processes every so long. Mayor Pro Tem Reddy, you've been doing this a while. You know you go through processes and each year we get new regulations from the state, we get new unfunded mandates, things change. So, you know, it's entirely appropriate to take a look at some of our code and some of our regulations from time to time. as i'm looking to stuff does get later on top of each other and you have to take some time once in a while to see how you can do it a lot of cities struggle with this issue of how do we streamline things how do we do things quicker faster better YOU KNOW, WHEN I GOT HERE WE DIDN'T HAVE WAYNE, WE DIDN'T HAVE DEAN, WE DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING AND THROUGH COUNCIL'S WISDOM YOU WANTED US TO SPEND SOME TIME TRYING TO BUILD UP SOME CAPACITY IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. WE CREATED, I THINK WE CREATED FOUR BUSINESS DISTRICTS NOW AND FOUR OF THE DISTRICTS. I know with the mayor and council member Bernstein on the economic development committee, we're going to be working on what are the next steps. And we're really going to be depending on that ad hoc committee to give us some big picture policy decisions that we can bring back to everybody to start looking at things. So, you know, we've got the economic development framework that we're working on. I've got my own priorities that I want Wayne working on things. You know, if you asked me what I want him working on, we've got big obligations on trying to move the Convention Center project. I think you heard him indicate a big piece of his time is going through the Convention Center. We have I can rattle off five hotels that all of you have some level of concern about that we're trying to make sure they're hitting their milestones and they're doing what they're doing. And I'm bugging them every day to say, are they doing what they're supposed to be doing? Are they at where they're supposed to be at? So we're trying to track that as well. We've got a lot of economic development. We're trying to figure out how to get deals done around the airport as the airport changes, evolves, where there are opportunities. I have people coming to me right now with some restaurant entertainment deals that they want to do. We have to work on those. We're going to hear about the town and country later on, what's going to be the long-term future for the town and country property. We have to figure that out. So I guess my point is all of those require a lot of time and energy. When we hired our economic development officer, I said I wanted a small, streamlined staff. I wasn't looking to create a bureaucracy to see how many positions we can add. And I don't think we can afford right now to add a whole bunch of positions. So I think we have to be very cognizant of that. But I think to Wayne's point, I don't think 170,000 is completely out of the realm of what we need to do to try and keep moving. We wanna keep some energy going with the economic framework. I do agree there's some stuff that we can do on process and stuff like that. And maybe that can be the primary focus on what we're looking at and really give that attention. And then come back and some of this is gonna evolve as we go. My fear is that if we don't do anything tonight, that'll all get a little stagnant. Yeah, we could, as council member DeHart's indicated, we can go to the business community and say, give us 10 things to work on. We can work on those and we can do that. I don't know if we're gonna be looking at it quite as comprehensively as we need to, and we'll probably miss a few things, but we can do that if that's what you wanna, if that's the wishes of council. but I think it'd be good to kind of let this process play itself out, try and get going on at least this small piece of it, see if we can make some progress on the process. And because I don't want to take him away from all these other things that I have on my plate that I want him doing, because I know the mayor, council member Bernstein, you're going to be doing a lot of work in the community with, with, you know, bigger picture policy issues and, and, My fear is I'm gonna be stretching him pretty thin where I'm gonna be saying you can't participate in all of that because I got a whole bunch of things for you to do. So just some observations on my part, just some things to think about. I don't wanna spend a whole ton of money on consultants either if we don't have to. I don't mind spending a little bit in this case if we can be really focused on it and try and move the needle a little bit. So that's my two cents.

I'd like to just tag onto that, Mayor, if I might. I want to be clear that the two aren't mutually exclusive. The idea of gathering small businesses together around a table doesn't not have to occur as a result of this contract being approved tonight. That can occur at the same time. So again, I would argue that the council in 2025, I believe March, identified economic development as one of four critical priorities. you're spending 0.1% of the overall general fund on what you've identified as one of your primary concerns. I don't know what signal that sends to our community. Again, I have as many people talk about how great the plan is. We had an economic development subcommittee meeting in March. There was a lot of commendations around the table from many of our business leaders in our community. I don't dispute there are some that disagree. but you would essentially put a halt to this process. And again, I'll follow the leader of the city manager, obviously, but you'd be putting a thumbtack in something that we all agreed we'd move forward with in November.

A few things are a surprise when you're saying that the only two business people are complaining. I would hope that we have certainly dozens and dozens and dozens of business people that have talked to you and expressed themselves. But I'm looking at the timeline and it's showing that we've got four months going through a diagnostic scan. That gets us through August, September. Then we've got another four months to look at prioritization. Then we have another four months untargeted reforms structuring and sequencing and then next march or april we finally get into across departmental review refinement and final documentation and findings so timeline that's been presented to us isn't showing something that is a simultaneous and parallel process for the next 12 months. It's a linear process. Work's gonna be done. Findings are reported. Recommendations are made. And I truly appreciate it anytime we can get the city manager to share his wisdom with us. I'm clearly not making my point on what we're delivering because the point you two are making to me doesn't have anything to do with what's in front of us today. Yes, we've got a ton of stuff happening in our city. We've got a lot going on. There's a lot of projects, we've got a lot moving forward. We have too much going on, too much going forward. I've said for a year we've gotta put the brakes on. We gotta focus our energy and I started with my concern on this, I'm concerned about this. It's not something that I support today. And after hearing our conversation today, Neither one of you convinced me even more to support what's in front of us. Just the opposite. Tells me we have work to do to figure out how we can best streamline the work that's in front of us.

Council Member, thank you. And just a moment, I want to correct the record. It's not that I've only spoken.

I'd say, Wayne, let me just clarify this. One second, one second. Let me just interrupt. So, Councilman... We understand what you're saying. We will do whatever council's policy is. If we don't wanna go forward with this, we'll work with the economic development subcommittee. If there's 10 things that you want us to work on, convene some business groups, we can do that. I just wanna say, I've got a lot of stuff on his plate, doing a lot of stuff. And the business process stuff is gonna be difficult for us to do at lightning speed. CONVENTION CENTER, WE'RE GOING AS FAST AS WE CAN. SO WE CAN DO WHAT COUNCILMEMBER DEHART IS SUGGESTING, BUT IT'S, YOU KNOW, IT MAY TAKE A LITTLE DIFFERENT PACE AND WE MAY NOT CATCH ALL THE THINGS THAT WE'RE THINKING OF TRYING TO CATCH. SO THAT'S ALL I WANT TO ADD.

And I would just clarify that it wasn't two businesses that I've spoken with. I speak with dozens of businesses a week. There have only been a couple that have called me directly to complain about this specifically. Just wanted to clarify that for the record. So again, yeah, to the city manager's point, it's the council's policy. It's the council's plan. Staff will follow your advisement.

Mayor Pro Tem, did you have something else to add?

I have a question and a suggestion, but I would yield to Council Member Gardner if she wanted to make a comment.

Thanks. Wayne, what's the best way for businesses to reach you and your team if they have comments who maybe are hearing about all of this for the first time?

They're more than welcome to contact me on email, wayne.olson at palmspringca.gov. They also have Dean Grubel's email, deand.grubel, G-R-U-B-L, at palmspringca.gov. We answer our emails every day, almost within an hour, so we're happy to communicate with people. That's the first step.

Okay, thank you. I think through anything that we do at the city, it often takes many touch points before we get more people hearing about it. For as much work as we can do to get the word out about something, there's always somebody that says, I had no idea. Even when we put it in their mailbox, it just happens. That's life. So I think that part of all of this process is that we are doing things that are visible so that people might not have heard the first thing, but they see the second thing or the third or the fourth, but that THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS, WHETHER IT'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OR ANY OTHER DEPARTMENT IN OUR CITY, THAT PEOPLE KNOW THAT OUR STAFF, THE COUNCIL, WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU AND WANTS TO KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS AT ANY POINT IN THE PROCESS. SO JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PUBLIC KNEW THAT THEY COULD REACH YOU, THEY CAN ALSO REACH US FOR REALLY TRULY ANYTHING.

ABSOLUTELY.

A couple questions and a suggestion. Sure. So the study they did, the large study, the economic development study, that was 123. So this seems to be a subset of that, but this is 170. Do you know why this is so much more expensive?

Mayor Pro Tem, yeah, you're right. The original quote was 123, and it went another six months, so we did an addendum. This is why it's amendment number two, 47,500. So the first portion cost 170 as well. I think this is just a lot of time spent inside the code, and it's just a number of hours that they have to contribute. If you want to assign a certain dollar amount so we can get started, that's more comfortable. I'm sure the consultants would be open to that. You know, don't want to speak on their behalf, but happy to work with the council in whatever way they want to move this forward. I would also stress again that these are not mutually exclusive occurrences. In fact, by hiring the consultants, we would address primarily council member to heart's concern that we would be engaging the business community almost immediately as a result. To Scott's point, you can see my time allocation there. If we don't, you know, it could take a year even to get to it.

Well, my concern was, you know, it talks about, you know, your study, then the regulatory, then the 170, 170 for this, then they're going to need 170 for the business, and that's another year. And so, again, it's just consultant's time, year, and it's like a dog chasing its tail almost. Never catch it. So... I have a suggestion. You mentioned that if we don't do this, then all the work's going to stop on the economic development framework. I wasn't sure what that meant.

Mayor Pro Tem, we've identified five activation priorities, which are sort of pre-steps to getting the rest of the plan going. Again, this is all happening in parallel. We aren't doing this linearly. So our action items, we have a small group of people interested in working on the nighttime ambassador work. We have people interested that are gathering on education. We have people gathering around healthcare and wellness. We have people gathering around technology. We need to get busy on energy and clean energy development. So there's multiple pieces happening at the same time. And what I would argue is that this actually endorses the need for the consultant, that so many things are happening. And again, I'd remind the council, this is a priority they've identified. To date, we have two staff members, and this is a 14% administrative spend of my overall budget. So the message I would like to support is that the council supports economic development and that we're going to move forward appropriately with the plan that we put in place in November.

Well, there's no question council supports economic development. And I would... You know, there's nothing that makes me happier than to get staff the tools they need to do their job. So there's no question about that. I guess my hope is that for this 170 that... You know, maybe it's restricted. These are the codes you need to look at and then also include the process audit so you have all of it, all of it in a year's time frame and all of it within a price other than, you know, this is another year, 170, and then we'll have another 170 in another year. So I guess that would be my request. But a suggestion, what we could do is, this is an important topic, and Council Member Bernstein is also on the economic development, I believe, with Council Member DeHart? With me.

No, with me.

So so I I would just as a suggestion maybe table this till the next meeting when councilmember Bernstein is back Taking the vote without him. I think would be important for the full council to do that that that's that and Councilmember Bernstein is out On

For a family commitment and so and it feels very strongly on this as well and has put a lot of thought and had many conversations with both the business community and the consultants as well. And so I think that would be a great next step if you are amenable to that.

A city manager, if a city manager is amenable to that. Staff is prepared to represent. I just wanna say I am also a passionate mayor and mayor pro tem, and so I appreciate the council's willingness to engage in this dialogue and really do economic development in a way that's gonna work for the entire community. So more than happy to bring this back again.

Okay. All right, thank you. Okay.

So I guess do you need a motion to, Mayor, I make a motion that this be tabled to the next meeting. And I'll second. Or continue to the next meeting. Thank you.

I'm happy to second. Okay. Next we have item J.

Evening Mayor, members of council. Would you like a staff report, Mayor?

Yes, please. Okay, thank you.

David McAbee, Director of Public Works. Tonight's item requests council approval of the preliminary engineer's reports and a resolution declaring the city's intention to conduct a public hearing on June 24th for the annual levy of the city's assessment districts. districts were established under the landscaping and lighting act of 1972 and allowed the city to recover cost for landscaping, parkway, maintenance, street lighting, and related improvements that provide a special benefit to the properties within each district. It's important to note that tonight's action does not formally levy the assessments. It approves the preliminary engineer's reports and adopts the resolution of intention which sets the required public hearing for June 24th. At that meeting, council will consider the formal levy and collection of the annual assessments. This year we have made some changes. I've transitioned our assessment district consulting work to Webb Municipal Finance, a firm that specializes in this area and brings a high level of accuracy and technical expertise. I've been working with the finance department to establish individual financial system account numbers for each district, meaning going forward, only the revenues and costs directly attributable to a given district will be captured in its account. 2627 will be ensuring that all appropriate costs are being captured, giving us a true and accurate baseline for each district. Moving forward, it is our practice to not increase any district's levy by more than 5% in any given year, and that cap is inclusive of the annual CPI adjustment, meaning in any given year, meaning residents will never see an increase of more than 5% in a single year regardless of CPI. The long-term objective is for each district to be financially self-sustaining with levy revenue covering the cost of services and a modest reserve for unforeseen expenses. Building that reserve is an important safeguard against unexpected events such as vandalism, vehicle damage to landscaping, or unplanned repairs. Proposed assessment rates for fiscal year 26-27 are either equal to or below the maximum assessment rates previously approved under Proposition 218. Because of that, the proposed rates do not trigger a Proposition 218 election. Should the city ever determine that assessments need to exceed the current maximum rates, a Proposition 218 ballot election with majority property owner support would be required. Improvements being implemented, better cost tracking, dedicated account numbers, consistent levy methodology, and qualified consultant support are designed to bring steady, accurate, and transparent assessment district management that benefits both the city and the residents. Staff recommends adoption of the two resolutions, Thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Council Member Garner.

Thank you. So I appreciate that. The reason I wanted to make sure this was highlighted is because we are working with, you are working with Webb Municipal Finance now and one of the things that we've seen in prior years is that there's some districts that are charged very little or not at all and then a few years later they're charged a really large amount because suddenly there's a need for work. So basically what you're doing now is helping to regulate that so that there's always appropriate funds in these accounts to do the work that's needed and not have these massive increases occur at any given time. Is that right?

That's absolutely correct. We want this to be consistent across the board.

So that's important for people who, you know, for an example, there was One of these districts is a mountain gate and there was a few years where it was zero levied and then the next time was a $900 levy. So it was just a shock to people. So now that David is working with this other group and kind of thinking through this in a different way, basically people can have a little bit more, can look at these fees and know what's coming and not be blindsided by anything. So I just really appreciate that you've done this and that that was already something that you were doing when the issues arose, I think, last year. So just wanted to make sure the public knew about that and that it was highlighted, the good work that your team is doing to make it easier for residents and for the department to move forward with these. So thank you. I appreciate it.

We are waiting for a motion. Motion carries. Before we get to public hearing, I want to open up public comments briefly. We have some firefighters who were out on a call and would like to provide public comments as well. So if you guys just want to make a line, I'm not sure how many are giving comments. No pressure, it can just be one if that's the case.

Sorry about the delay. Good evening, Council Members and Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem. I'm speaking on behalf of the Palm Springs Firefighters Association in support of the purchase of this plot of land for the construction of a new downtown fire station. For those that don't know me, my name is Brandon Wright and I'm the Vice President of the Fire Department's Union. I've been with the department for almost 12 years now and have been stationed at the current Station 1 as a firefighter, engineer, and very briefly as a captain. the conversation on a new downtown fire station has been ongoing for quite some time now so in an effort to be brief and to the point i'm going to speak solely on the new proposed land Our community deserves a modern day firehouse that can adequately house the firefighters of Palm Springs, as well as deliver the services needed by the city. While our downtown station has given us a good run of service and lasted us nearly 70 years, it is no longer capable of meeting our city's demands. And while the downtown station is currently located in an ideal spot, it can neither be retrofitted nor modified due to its designation as a class one historic building. Because of that, our ability to build a new station in an area that does not impact response time is limited to a very small footprint of land. This new location on the corner of Andreas and Indian Canyon falls within that ideal area, does not impact our response times and can adequately house the city's firefighters. Plans for the current and future needs of the city and preserves the parking lot area needed by the downtown businesses to maintain operations, making it a win for all of us. The firefighters of Palm Springs strongly urge you to move forward on this and prioritize the construction of the downtown fire station. I'd also like to add one more comment in regards to the construction of the station. Right now, every day, there are six firefighters living in a fire station that is undersized and inadequate for today's needs. We spend a large portion of our professional lives away from our families in these stations for up to five days at a time, standing by to serve our community in whatever we can. While I do understand that the government can be a slow-moving machine, I ask that you do what you can to expedite this fire station so we can serve our city appropriately. Thank you.

Thank you. We have one more comment.

Good evening. My name is Ali Harandi. I'm a battalion chief and the president of Palm Springs Fire Management Association. I just wanted to add to the points that Brandon has made and just wanted to say from an operational standpoint, this decision and the ask to move the fire station to this new location has not come lightly. There has been extensive work, as you know, through the Office of the Fire Chief with private consultants through the office of the city manager to really make sure that we focus on our response times, how best to serve our most dense district, which is the downtown district, and really taking everything in mind to what's best for the community, how to serve the community in the best manners, and that is the location that's come up with. Really, that is, in our opinion, with everything that's been addressed, best for our future for the next 70 years that we're going to ask of this new fire station. And we want to thank you for this opportunity and encourage you to please move forward with this project. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other comments? Thank you very much to you both. Okay, we will next move to our public hearing. Do I have to officially close public hearing or public comments?

Okay, we're closed up again.

Next item is 2A, titled General Fund and Airport Fund Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Continuation Budget Adjustments. I know the Knicks game and the Spurs game is on, guys. I know. I know. I'm trying to get us out.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, I'm Christopher Mooney. I'm the Director of Finance and Treasurer for the City. And tonight I'm presenting a continuation budget adjustment. As the Council knows, a biennial budget was passed in June of 25 for the fiscal year 26 and 27. And we have some proposed adjustments to make to that fiscal year 27 budget. Tonight, I just want to remind council that this is essentially the city manager and I are here to receive your feedback on the proposed adjustments. We'll take that feedback. We'll go back, make some adjustments, and then we'll come back on 24th for a short presentation and hopeful adoption. So that's the process. So I have a short presentation here. We will start with the general fund proposal. And just referring to the proposed adjustments for the general fund, we have a couple of revenue adjustments we'd like to propose. First, property taxes and sales and use taxes. We've seen those run rates kind of pick up a little bit in the last year, so we want to adjust that revenue to what we've been seeing this year and uptick it to what we think is going to happen next year. And then secondarily, the $1.2 million revenue adjustment under miscellaneous income, that's comprised of two things. The airport underwent an FAA audit, and as a result of that audit, they asked us to confirm the methodology behind our central services administrative charge to the airport. That's IT and HR, finance, procurement, and those services we charge the airport for the work that we do for the airport. We didn't have a lot of substance behind the methodology. So we engage will Dan to come in and take a look at it. Uh, right now, or before we'll then came in, uh, we were paying, or the airport was paying the general fund $2.2 million a year for those services. We'll then has recommended that the airport pay $3.2 million for those services. So we're adding a million dollars to miscellaneous income. The other 200,000 also came out of that study. And that was that, uh, the general fund should be charging the wastewater fund for a small administrative charge as well so we're recommending a proposed adjustment of 1.2 million dollars for uh revenue with the general fund that goes from 175.2 in the adopted budget and the adjusted budget if approved 177.6 will be the general fund operating revenue next will do some expenses uh... we've broken out these adjustments into what we call a carryover adjustment and then some newly added expense of the carryover is dollars that have been targeted uh... for spending twenty six but the service for the product won't be received by the end of the year but their funds have been committed to the role of those funds over so that those services in those products can be uh... received in the fiscal year twenty seven so for example Under admin and economic development, we're proposing $225 of carryover from the economic development budget, and those are for some of the service that was discussed tonight, digital hub, and maybe to expand some of the capital program like the facade program. The $360,000 of new added expenses, we've had some increased legal activity, so you want to add to that budget of about $300,000. And then the blue zones, this $60,000 didn't make it into the budget, so we want to make sure that gets into the budget. This is year two of three, and so that $60,000 will be added if approved, and then the next $60,000 for year three of the agreement will be put in the next two-year budget. The next column, developmental service, $577,000. This is made up of two things. That's all carryover. $150,000 for the engineering department to continue on with their plan check fees. And then from the planning department, $427,000 will be carried over for some initiatives that the council has backed, such as a zoning code, the college park-specific plan, for planning to look into some cheaper ways for developers to develop ADUs. So things like that, that our planning director has in his tasks, we're gonna roll over funds for that if adopted. And then just to jump down to a couple of other things, the library. uh... we're gonna add a total of two hundred sixty thousand were proposing to add a two hundred sixty thousand fifty thousand of carryover and then adding two hundred ten thousand as the council is aware uh... their budget uh... last year was contracted uh... you know they went to a temporary facility so jeannie managed her budget very well uh... but we want to give her the tools to add her to her collection so that when we get our fresh new library open that it's uh... has the appropriate amount of materials uh... to meet the demand that she's going to have Next, under Police Department, the $250,000 proposed adjustment, the police PD wants to purchase a Bearcat. Their Bearcat's very old. I think it's well known that it's old. So we want to carry over these dollars. They're looking into the purchase as we speak. The Bearcat doesn't cost $250,000. It costs somewhere north of that. So they have some asset forfeiture funds they want to add to that $250,000 in order to get to the total purchase price. And then lastly, under tourism and community support, 135,000, this is our joint authority agreement with Visit Greater Palm Springs. And the budget hadn't been adjusted for the last couple of years. We wanna make it right. We're gonna, under the current calculations, we're gonna send, under this joint authority agreement, about a million dollars to Visit Greater Palm Springs annually. So we wanna make sure that we get the budget right and not go over budget in that area. And lastly, for general fund, we're going to talk about a couple of different things here. So we've got total revenue. I'm looking at the third column over for the 27 adopted budget. Total revenue of $175.2 million is what the adopted budget had. $175 in expenses for a total operating surplus of $157,000. And you see that surplus extends down to the total surplus deficit of $157,000. So our proposals will extend that operating surplus. So after we carry over adjustments are netted together and the newly ads are netted together, the adjusted budget will see 277.6 million in revenue, $175.8 million in expenses for an operating surplus of about 1.87. And so if we go down, you look at the deficit of 692,000 that we're projecting, what's causing that deficit is if you look at the 2.57 million in the council set aside expense in the carryover column, that is for the Desert Highlands Affordable Housing Project. And that was originally budgeted, as you can see, in the 26 adopted budget in the very first column at $2.9 million. Those dollars were originally budgeted in 26. The developer didn't meet the milestones, so we carried that dollars over to 27. And that $27 amount, what's left to be handed over to the developers, $2.57 million. And so that is a timing difference between 26 and 27, and that's causing the deficit to be at $692,000. And with that, that's the general fund. I'll move on to the airport, and then after we'll take questions, unless you want to ask questions now.

Do we take questions for each one or after?

We typically do. We stop right now and pause, and so I'll be more than happy to pause and take questions.

Airport time.

You could question I'm trying to understand so on the the 2.5 million for the housing the council set aside If that was appropriated in 26 I'm just trying to understand why that's causing a deficit because it was appropriated and not spent it's just carried over but yet we're treating it like we have to take it out of the unappropriated balance and

Well, I think you said it right, Mayor Pro Tem. It's appropriated but not spent, and that's the key terminology here. So because it wasn't spent, and that's just the budget, it's not what happens. Actually, if you can see in the forecast in the green column, it's only $688,000 of that $2.9 million was spent. So we had to reduce that.

I'm following you, but if it was appropriated in 25-26, right?

And well, 26-27 it was appropriated, correct? No, 26-25-26 in the adopted budget in the first column.

Okay, so it was not, why was it not carried over to 26-27?

It is being carried, that's what we're proposing here today.

Okay, so the money's there, you don't have to take it out of fund balance, right?

Well, we're not taking everything out of fund balance. We're only taking a little bit out of fund balance. Well, the 2.5. No, we're only taking 690,000. That's the deficit. So in the last column, under 27, the deficit's only 692,000.

but if we had a hundred fifty seven thousand dollar deficit with it in there and we didn't spend it so it carries over yeah so now why is that causing a six ninety two deficit if you look at the uh... uh... the second to the last column under newly added

So that $2.45 million is newly added revenue. So that newly added revenue for the $1.2 million of administrative charges and the increase in property tax and sales tax, that's helping to offset some of those expenses that we're adding and helping to offset desert highlands.

So you're not putting back in the money for the housing? The housing money's already there?

The housing money was in the adopted budget. It didn't get spent in the forecast in the green column, so we are putting it back into this budget, or proposing to.

Okay, and just a question. So why is it, because I see you're reappropriating these. Why do we even have to do that if we're in a two-year budget? and it wasn't spent in the first year, it just automatically carries to the second year. Why are we reappropriating them?

And that's the thing. It doesn't automatically carry over.

And why is that? Normally, in a two-year budget, they would. In a one-year budget, it would not. In a two-year budget, it would. Why do we do that?

Just curious. Even in our two-year budget, it doesn't automatically carry over. It is a two-year budget, and we see that, but there are some things that we do not carry over in the first year to the second year. There are some contractual services in some of the departments that are not being used, and we're not carrying those dollars over because they have a contractual service budget in 27. So not everything gets carried over. Only what we think has been committed... to in twenty six that's not going to get spent on twenty seven that's what gets carried over so it's not an automatic that something is carried over so essentially you're doing a one year budget I don't like to think it like that okay it was just a question we're doing some adjustments okay

where we're showing the housing because there's a we think the developer is going to perform that's correct so that's an assumption yeah just like the whole budgets of assumption that's an assumption right we want to the airport well just a couple of questions uh... a couple comments uh...

So going to Mayor Pro Tem's point that this is a continuation budget and these carryovers from 25-26 to 26-27, the reasoning is we I guess I'm going to backtrack. At our last meeting you gave us an update on Q3, correct? And it's showing an expected surplus, right, for this year. Correct. We have many pending financial responsibilities which will quickly gobble up most of that surplus but we are in a better position than maybe we were anticipating when we first made this budget, correct? That's correct. Okay. And then we're only carrying over what we're what we have clear anticipation that will be used, but not necessarily if we haven't spent it and there's no plan to, we don't carry it over. That's correct.

Yeah.

Okay. And then another question around specifically some of the other funds. So Measure J, our public safety fund, can you kind of clarify a little bit around how they're planning year one or year two? And for some context, I have Jeffrey Bernstein is always very, our council member and colleague is always very prepared. And so he sent me some of his questions. So I am channeling council member Bernstein, um, and his extensive notes. So I want to make sure, um, that's part of our discussion.

That's a very good question in mayor. And I realized he asked that as well. Um, we, we just don't have the time in all honesty to visit every single fund like we would in a regular two year budget. Um, So we know that when we go into these years, and to add on to that, there's not a whole lot of change because there's not a whole lot of activity in a lot of those other funds. Measure J might be the exception, but as you well know, I'm the liaison to Measure J and their budget looks good for the second year. So there's, you know, this, and when we did, we do this continuation adjustment because we know things change in the general fund and things are changing in the airport. This isn't uncommon to do one of these, but the purpose of the biennial budget was to not take up staff's time and our time to do a whole new budget and address each fund. So we're comfortable with the other funds. Yeah, there may be some issues we could have addressed, but that takes a lot more time to do that, and it's just not feasible to do that in the amount of time we have.

Okay, thank you. I feel comfortable with that. Any other questions on the general fund? Yes, Mayor Pertham.

Yeah, so Chris, maybe you addressed this in the airport, but where in here you were increasing the amount for lease payment at the yard? Where is that here in the general fund?

Oh, that'll be in the airport budget. It'll be airport revenue. In the general fund, we are not increasing the general fund. We think that the facilities maintenance fund, where all this rent gets paid out of, can be can absorb those payments so we're not we're not adjusting the general fund this year in the next two-year budget we will be adjusting the general fund for the increase in the payments it's not substantial to the general fund it's probably maybe a hundred hundred fifty thousand across all of the general fund departments so we feel that the facility maintenance can absorb that so it's not the seven hundred thousand uh... the seven hundred thousand so uh... the airport pays most Of of that. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting my lease rent payments in reverse. So, you know, you're right. It is six. So that's the city yard. The city yards total payment will go from one hundred eighty to eight hundred thousand. So you're right. Feel feel that that payment can be absorbed by the facility maintenance fund. So that's that's the route we're going to take. We didn't want to do an adjustment for for those dollars.

Well, on that issue, I think going from $180,000 to $800,000 is a really big hit to the general fund. Right. So obviously that's – so right now you say you're already budgeted for that?

So we – yeah, we think the facilities maintenance fund can absorb it.

Okay. And the basis of that, as we discussed, was the FAA, well, the audit that you had, the appraisal on that land. Yes, yes. Okay. So one thing I would ask you to look very closely at, that seems to me very, very, very high, and in looking at that appraisal, they are charging rent for both the land and the building. the airport did not build those buildings i don't think it's appropriate to be doing it on the buildings it should just be on the land so certainly don't be paying for something we shouldn't and you know whether it's legal issues or you know whatever we need to do to drill down to make sure that's if it's correct it's correct but my sense is that's not what's required so i think that would be important to review and if you could get back to us on that, that'd be helpful.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's a great point. And, you know, these appraisals just came in a week or so ago, so we haven't had a whole lot of chance to look at them. We do know they were performed by CBRE, which is the city's real estate authority. But, no, that's a great point. We want to take a solid look at it, and you bring up a good point about the city building, so we'll take a look at that. Thank you.

Speaking of, let's get to the airport, please. Okay. Okay.

Okay, so we'll start with airline revenues. So a lot of the adjustments that you see on the airport are to bring the budget in line with what we've seen in our forecast. So you're going to see a lot of adjustments, but some of them are just sort of bringing the run rates in line. There is some substance behind some of them, and one of them is this adjustment here. So the airline revenues, when the budget was adopted in FY26, the airlines rate and use charges which is what the airport or the airlines pay the airport for the use of the airport that hadn't been approved yet by the airlines it didn't get approved to august first of last year so it didn't make it into the adopted budget but we were picking up all those additional revenues since august first so we want to right size that right now And we want to do a budget adjustment to bring the revenues, airline revenues, up to what the airlines are really actually paying today. And then the second adjustment is the airline settlement, the revenue share you see in the $2.2 million in the very last line there. That $2.2 million is just essentially a reclass of an expense that used to sit in the airport administration, and we'll see that in the next slide, but the airport's financial advisor, Frasca, had recommended that we take that out of expense and make it a reduction of revenue because the airlines do see this budget, and if we add unnecessarily expenses, then they're going to ask us why and be a little critical. So this is the appropriate treatment. It's the appropriate accounting treatment as a reduction of revenue. The airlines do share in revenue. So this is an appropriate treatment for that settlement share. And this is non-airline revenue. And again, I'm looking at the continuation budget adjustment in the second to the last column. And just to address the conversation Mayor Pro Tem and I just had, that $615,000 is additional revenue to the airport. And that's the FAA new appraisal for where the city yard sits. And yes, we will definitely take a look and make sure that we scrutinize those dollars and we're not paying anything unnecessarily. A lot of these are just adjustments. Again, we looked at forecast in the green column, and then we looked at our budget, and we just want to make some adjustments to bring it in line. But the adjustments with some substance in it is if you look at the parking, four columns down, that $1.1 million proposed adjustment When the budget was adopted, they didn't have the parking fee increase, so $20 per night to $26 per night. That went into effect in December when the comprehensive fee schedule was passed. That didn't make it into the adopted budget. We have a full year of those fees now, so we're adding a million one to the parking revenue. And then going down to on-airport rental car fees, the negative 1.5, what that is is every year at the end of the year, we usually pay the rental car companies back for some overpayments they made in non-busy seasons. So we're adding that to the budget. That's a negative 1.5. And then going to expenses, again, a lot of these are trying to bring some stuff into run rate, but we'll go over them, some of the larger ones. Airport administration, I'm going to the second to the last column where it says continuation budget adjustment, that negative $1.5 million. That's a combination of moving the $2.2 million up into revenue, that reclass, and then also adding in the $1 million charge that will be an expense to the airport and revenue to the general fund that we talked about earlier. And the next couple of big ones, we'll combine these, the airport law enforcement, 560,000, and then the airport rescue fire, 1,055,000. Back in 25, when the city had our audit conducted, it was noticed by city staff that the airport hadn't been picking up their public safety calipers liability. So it wasn't sitting as a liability on their balance sheet. It's about $8 million that we need to transfer over from our balance sheet general fund over to the airport. The auditors are letting us do this in over four years, so it's not a huge hit to the airport. So that $2 million is what that represents, is that additional pension expense that the airport will incur over the next four years. And then we're doing a couple of budget additions and budget decreases. So land side operations, the 500,000 right below that 1,055,000, that represents two things. The parking management company that the airport uses, their run rate was a little bit more than budget, so we want to adjust that. and make it right. In addition to that, we're going to offset it by some reductions in the terminal building operations of $500,000. So there's no budget impact. It's just kind of a reclass of budget to ensure that there's no impact. And lastly, the transfers to other funds, the $7.9 million. Annually, the airport usually makes a capital transfer to cover various projects from their airport operating fund into their airport capital fund. We eliminated that, and we're proposing to eliminate that. Currently, they have a censure in doing a capital plan, which the airport desert never has. And so we want to wait for that plan to get done and determine how some of these projects are going to get funded before we actually know how much money that we're going to transfer from the operating fund over to the capital fund for these projects. And that concludes the airport. I'll be more than happy to take any questions. I know the interim director, Victoria, is here too. If we have any questions that she can answer.

Wonderful.

Mayor, Council Member Bernstein.

Not an airport, Chris, but in note eight, did we point out that the... Bearcat is not being donated to Cat City good point because that was in the staff report.

That's right We just found out a few days ago our public works director David McAtee McAbee found out that Cat City is not interested in taking that donation So we're going to put the bearcat up for auction once we deliver once the other ones received and how is footnote 3 impacted with the tabling of the item today and Yeah, so if we're going to continue to leave it in, but of course we're coming back on the 24th for adoption. If that item is not approved, those dollars will not be rolled over.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Question on the liability, the CalPERS public safety for the airport. When you talk about the $8 million liability, $8 million expense over four years, Aren't they, they're paying annually, they're paying what their PERS bill is for those employees every year. So I'm not sure, is this over and above that?

This is the unfunded portion of the liability.

Okay, so are they, again, I don't want to get a file of the FAA, are they required to pay unfunded? They're required to pay what their annual bill is, and then they're good. I'm not sure why they have to do the unfunded.

Because they have public safety employees that are stationed at the airport, and they're dedicated to the airport. So this became an audit issue. The auditors agreed that the airport needs to have public safety CalPERS liability on their balance sheet. So it's $8 million of $150 million. But, yeah, they have public safety staff that are housed at the airport, so they should share that.

I understand, but so... We make an election to pay down our unfunded liability for general fund. Can we impose that on the FAA? I guess is the question, and I'm not certain. Maybe it's a question to look at.

Yeah, well, we can. Probably we need to look at it a little bit further, but this essentially puts that liability on their balance sheet. We do make one payment in July for the city that goes directly toward the unfunded. So if we wanted to take a look at what the airport's share of that might be, we can take a look at it.

Yeah.

Well, I'm not, I mean, you can get that and plan it down. That's great. I'm just, again, I'm just not sure that that would be, that the FAA would allow that. As long as they're paying their annual amount, there's no requirement to pay extra on their mortgage, so to speak. And that's why I just want to make sure we don't run afoul of that.

No, we'll look at it, and we'll make sure that if that is something that the city wants to do and the auditors buy off on that, we'll definitely have to run it by the FAA, no doubt about it. But it's a good suggestion. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions or comments on the airport? No?

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. We'll be back on the 24th, and we'll present the same budget.

Thank you. Wait. This is public hearing. Just hold on. Oh, yeah. At this time, we'd like to open the public hearing. The public is invited to speak on this matter for up to two minutes. I believe, Michael, you were listed on here for this public hearing.

Michael Joseph Pitkin for all financial items. This is my public declaration. My dated handwritten signature is my seal, a medical HIPAA protected theistic Satanist religious mark used only for my life religious identity and my living necessity. My handwritten signature is my contract with others. It is not to be used to sign any paper like a blank check under false pretenses. All of my adult consenting life in private, public, online religious business and relationship websites, it has always been my intent to inform everyone of my adult consenting homosexual lifestyle. It has always been my intent of my notice of 21 years of age only. I do not consent anyone audio or video recording me under 21 years of age without my approval of their parental consent. I do not consent to anyone audio or video recording me in order to entrap, cause harm to my authentic identity. This is legal notice. I am HIV positive. If you touch me, you go to jail. If you continue to touch me after my disclosure and if you spill my blood, it is an automatic hate crime. You go to prison. For those daily inciting violence and provoking, just because you do not approve or like me, cease and desist. The law, federal, state, international, tribal, and universe galaxies mandates, once I disclose notice, all must back off. Whole world notice. Hail God of all creation. And this shout out to my friend, Little Miss Honey Boo Boo. Hello.

No further commenters.

Okay. Public hearing is now closed. Any discussions or additional questions from City Council? Yes, Council Member Garner.

Chris, I had just a more specific department question about the budget, if that's fine. So one of the things we've been talking about a lot in this city is splash pads for the kids. I'm wondering if there's anything that we have in our budget that would allow us to move forward with one of those projects, so if maybe Yeah, I'm going to defer to Nick. I'm just not sure what, since we're not giving the same detail.

Sure, yeah.

What do we have available? What's the possibilities within the next year?

Sure, Nick Gonzalez, Director of Parks and Recreation. So in the next year's budget, the department plans on embarking on a aquatic and splash pad feasibility study. We've appropriated about $75,000 to help us with that study to determine placements, future placement of splash pads in our park system. The idea here is to get an idea of exactly where we wanna do it, the size, the scope, and the type of amenities, the aquatic amenities that we would place there. We've been hearing this for quite some time where we've had the turtles in some of our parks for a while that we're taking out. And so we know that this is a priority for more aquatic and water play in the community. And so that's what we will be doing in this next budget cycle.

How long do you anticipate that study taking?

the feasibility study. It shouldn't take no more than six months, but we do have to go out to RFP for that.

Okay, and why not just build some splash pads or small, I mean, again, like small things in the park?

Sure.

In any of the parks?

Sure. Well, we want to be intentional about the type of amenities and things that we want to be including in our parks. And so as part of the feasibility study, we hope to also do community engagement so we can ensure that we're getting proper feedback from our community members to ensure that we are making intentional design choices in our park system.

OK. So I think this is one of the areas where we have enough information. At least in my memory it's been 10 years and we still don't have any other than the one that just opened after four years of delay downtown. And what I hear from parents, kids is they're not looking for anything fancy, they're just looking for some relief from the heat outside. So I'm just, wondering what we can do, if we have the feasibility to actually start doing this. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be thoughtful in our planning, but there's logical locations of where these things can go. And so I think my larger question is just is there funding available in your budget for these projects, or is this something that we still need to allocate funding for in the next two-year budget cycle.

That is correct. There is no funding in the Parks and Rec Department's budget for a construction of a splash pad. And so that's why we want this information now so we have that readily available as we go into the next budget cycle so we can look at requesting that as a decision package to the council. And we have a better understanding and an estimate of what the cost would be to construct that and the ongoing maintenance.

Okay. All right, thank you very much.

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

Just one quick budget note on implementation. Scott, thank you. David McAbee, thank you. Joel Montalvo, thank you. And Wayne Olson, if you're still here, thank you. An expenditure you did on the soda district, the change of the street parking. You guys are heroes and champions to that district. And I wanted to thank you on their behalf. And thank you. Money well spent. Thank you.

Okay, well, I think that's it from direction from Council, and we'll come back. If there's anything that comes up between now and you finalize it, we can send it to you.

Yeah, absolutely. Please do.

Yep, we'll keep those going. Thank you. Thank you. um next we have the next item is uh item 3a or first business and legislative item introduction of two ordinance to expand the historic site preservation board and airport commission can we have a staff report please

madam mayor and mayor portem uh item before u3a is an introduction of two ordinances to expand the historic site preservation board and the airport commission during the special council meeting on may 19th the city council discussed the importance of diversifying boards and commission the council acknowledged the need to provide opportunities for applicants interested in joining these boards and recommended an ordinance amendment to add an alternate member to the board. The city council ad hoc subcommittee also recommended an ordinance amending the airport commission board that would represent visit greater Palm Springs. So we do have both of these ordinances before you to expand the historic site and the airport commission. And if you have any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or discussion from council? No? No? And the motion? Motion carries. Can you please read the ordinance that needs to be vocalized?

Yes, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Palm Springs, California, amending section 805040 and 805050 of the Palm Springs Municipal Code to expand the Historic Preservation Board to eight members, adding one alternate member. an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Palm Springs, California, amending section 21602 of the Palm Springs Municipal Code to expand the Palm Springs International Airport Commission to 20 members, 19 voting members, and one non-voting member representing Visit Greater Palm Springs. Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is item 3B, which is an approval of a purchase and sale agreement of real property with town and Town and Country LLC, a California limited liability company for property consisting of a portion of APN 513-092-009, generally located at the southwest corner of Andreas Road and North Indian Canyon Drive for the purpose of obtaining a site for new fire station number one. May we have a staff report, please?

Madam Mayor, Mayor Potem, and members of council, the item that we're bringing to you this evening is for a purchase and sale agreement for property that would serve Fire Station 1. In terms of the need for the fire station, The city commissioned a study from our consultant, CityGate, to do a fire services master plan for the entire city, looking at all stations and looking at all facilities. What it revealed and what you heard in testimony from our firefighters this evening is that Fire Station 1 is woefully out of date and insufficient to serve the downtown area. As part of that study, it did establish a preferred zone for a new fire station one, and that's the area represented in red there on the map. And so it's a rather limited area in which to build a new fire station. And the reason for the boundaries of that is to prevent encroachment into other service areas. And so for that reason, staff looked at a number of sites in and around the preferred zone. We looked at seven plus sites and evaluated them for the ability to serve the community, sufficiency of the square footage of the site, to accommodate a station, to accommodate the vehicles that we would need to have to serve the downtown area. One of the sites that we preferred was the public parking lot immediately adjacent to the existing fire station. However, based on public input that we received, there was a concern with the loss of parking there, and so we reopened our discussions with the tribe in looking at sites that they might have available. We also looked at other sites within the preferred zone. One of those that we landed on was what we're referring to as the Town and Country site, which is located at the southwest corner of Andreas Road and North Indian Canyon. The site that we're interested in is part of a larger parcel. we would actually propose to purchase just under an acre of that parcel. It does include four buildings on the site, three of which are class one historic resources. The one that is most known as the Town and Country Building or 169 North Indian Canyon. We've done some initial studies, conceptual studies of the site to see if it could accommodate a fire station. And our research shows that yes, it can, including the longer articulated ladder truck, which is what we really need to serve the taller buildings in the downtown area. So the site is more than sufficient to accommodate a modern fire station and one that will last for at least 50 years into the future. In terms of negotiating a deal with the seller, the seller's purchase price for the property was set at $4 million. There are a number of things that need to be completed as part of this deal. Number one, the seller needs to create the new parcel that we would be buying, and so they need to go through the process of completing a lot line adjustment. We have also asked them to demolish the buildings at 171 and 181 North Indian Canyon. It would be necessary for those to come down in order to accommodate the new station. We've also asked them as part of that to shore and stabilize the existing building. 171 abuts a building at 165 North Indian Canyon. and we would need to have that building stabilized as we demolish the other two. We've also asked them to fence and stabilize the site, remove the concrete foundations, remove the asphalt parking lot. Another thing that we've asked as part of this agreement is to lease 11 spaces in the parking lot immediately south of the Town and Country Building for future use by the city. In return, the seller is requesting to be able to have the opportunity to lease what we refer to as the grassed area in the courtyard, which is an area in front of the Town and Country Building. with the intent for future outdoor dining. There are six existing residential units in the buildings at 171 and 181 North Indian Canyon. The seller is requesting credit for those six units that the city intends to demolish, and we have agreed to that point. In addition, the seller will need to build a new trash enclosure for their tenants as well as a screen wall in their parking lot. They've asked the city to expedite the permits for those items. As part of any purchase of property, we have commissioned an independent appraisal to assess the appropriate value for this site. Our consultant, CBRE, considered the square footage of the site, the condition of the existing buildings, the highest and best use of the property, and they came back with a figure of 3.15 million. Because there is a difference between the appraisal price and the asking price, that allowed us to go back to the table with the seller and to negotiate additional items relative to that difference in value. Number one, we were able to pick up additional area on the site, approximately 4,000 square feet. That includes the part of the courtyard area that they hadn't offered previously, as well as a sidewalk along the south side of the town and country building, which gives us access from the parking lot. We also assessed that if the city were to demolish the two buildings at 171 and 181, as well as doing asbestos removal, doing the shoring and stabilization work and fencing. That would cost us approximately $455,000, as well as if we were to undertake the technical studies and the application for the lot line adjustment, that would be worth approximately $95,000. So those three costs, the additional land, the demolition costs, the mapping costs, bring us just a little bit over that $4 million asking price. So again, if the city were to do those additional things, that would more or less even out the asking price of the property. There's also some additional benefits that we may not be able to put a cost on right now, but we feel are important. Those include the access to the parking spaces that I spoke of previously. There's also the opportunity for us to lease courtyard space, which would be monthly income coming into the city, which would assist in paying for some of our maintenance costs. And then I think more importantly, preservation of the town and country building, as you've heard from the public testimony this evening. This gives us the opportunity to preserve that building and to find an active use for it at some point in the future. That in turn will also, we think, generate additional redevelopment in the downtown area. And so the development of the fire station, preservation of the town and country building, we think will have a very positive financial impact for the community as a whole. Our recommendation this evening is to move forward with approving the purchase and sale agreement and to authorize the city manager to execute all related documents. With that, we would then proceed with haste to work on the design and construction of a new fire station one to address that very important need in our community. That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. We also have Chief Alvarado here in the audience if you have any questions for him related to the fire station itself. Thank you.

Thank you, Flynn. As you kind of mentioned, this has been a huge priority for us in the city to make sure that we can get a fire station that is up to current times, is a place where our firefighters wouldn't mind working and being at multiple days downtown. Can you just give maybe a little bit of context as to how long has Fire Station 1 been like top ten, top five priorities for us here at the city? What would you guess?

That's a little difficult for me to answer. Let's just say a very long time, at least 20 years. Just looking at its state right now, looking at the development that's gone on in the downtown area, and the fact that we just cannot accommodate the necessary equipment or the personnel necessary to really serve the redevelopment that we've seen in the downtown area over the last 15 to 20 years.

You mentioned that we reviewed alternative sites, more than seven, and those were looking at feasibility, distance. Can you just kind of remind folks what we were really looking for and underscore why a block down this really hits all the reasons that we needed?

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of the sites that we looked at, number one, we looked at sites that had to be available for purchase or lease. So that was one of the things that we looked at. We also looked at the preferred zone, as I had mentioned before. There's a very specific area defined within the downtown core. And that's important because if we start looking outside of that area, that starts to influence response times. It also begins to encroach into other districts, District 3 to the north, District 2 to the east of us, District 4 to the south of us. And so we were confined to an area in which we could look. We also looked at the size and configuration of the parcel. It had to be large enough to accommodate, as I had mentioned, an articulated ladder truck to be able to maneuver that on the site. It had to accommodate living quarters that were sufficient for a crew to staff that station. It had to be accessible to streets where our fire teams could easily exit and get to their destinations. So sites that were to the west of Palm Canyon, for example, really were insufficient because that put them on the wrong side of a two-way street, Indian Canyon, where we can easily get north-south. There were other sites that we looked at where they were only available for lease. Going through the Bureau of Indian Affairs would take us a couple of years on a lease agreement. That's really time that we don't have. So we looked at quite a few factors in narrowing down the sites that would be appropriate for a fire station.

Okay, thank you. And in terms of... And in terms of the kind of the design and exploration on this new site, can you share how that's going? We do have an architect already reviewing that, and this was affirmed as a really viable and ideal place, right?

Correct. We have an on-call architecture firm, Interactive Design Corporation, that works with us on a number of different projects. We had them evaluate the first site that we were looking at immediately south of the existing fire station and did studies on that site to look at being able to accommodate a station and maneuvering. When we decided to move on from that site and look at the town and country site, they also did the same set of studies for that site. They looked at the possibility of having vehicles enter off of Andreas or enter off of Indian, reviewed those studies with our city engineer in terms of the city engineer's recommendations in terms of traffic flow, We also looked at the proposed square footage of the fire station, how we'd be able to accommodate that on the site. Obviously, it will need to be a two-story design, but we've looked at that, and we are comfortable that a couple of different configurations might work on that site. I just want to make it clear that these are conceptual studies. We haven't done the architectural design yet as the community was questioning early in public comment this evening. We will select an architect and a contractor at a later stage.

CONCEPTUALLY. CONCEPTUALLY IT DOES WORK. GREAT. AND THEN QUESTION FOR ELIZABETH. IN TERMS OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AROUND THE 4 MILLION AND THIS AGREEMENT ON THE 4 MILLION AND ADDITIONAL ITEMS TO BE DONE ON THE PROPERTY IN PREPARATION FOR THE BUILD. or maybe Elizabeth or Scott, if you could share, has the process been productive, feasible, you know, kind of describe a little bit on how quickly maybe we were able to kind of negotiate these final terms and why we feel kind of confident that these additional items really make the four million really appropriate.

So I'll have to defer to the city manager and Flynn on sort of the process that you all went under because Jeff Ballinger was engaged in these negotiations. What I can tell you is outside of my city attorney life, I do real estate for many, many jurisdictions in California. And this is not an uncommon structure where you have an appraised value. And a sales price that maybe don't exactly match up but there are additional benefits that the city is going to receive That sort of make it balance out. So the key is to avoid a gift of public funds, which is overpaying You know and giving more public money and not really getting value for it in this case You're avoiding the time and the cost of demo yourself. You're avoiding variety of things that you might otherwise have to do once you own the property in addition there's the sort of intangibles that that Flynn had mentioned that we can't really put a dollar value on but they clearly have benefit to the city in the community and so those are all things that would go into the analysis of whether or not this would be a gift to public funds or an inappropriate payment in light of the benefits to the community and I think based upon the information your staff has provided that no court would find that there was a gift to public funds here.

Thank you. And Flynn or Scott, do you have any thoughts on in terms of level of pain or itchiness on negotiating this one?

No, I think Elizabeth summarized it quite nicely. Flynn did a lot of work along with our fire chief in trying to work with the community. You know, we had a lot of stops and starts. We looked at a whole number of different sites. As I said, we had to stay within that zone of influence. We looked at tribal sites. We looked at other privately owned sites. You know, we looked originally at the site next to the fire station because it was our land, and it would have been free to us. So that had to be something that we had to give some thought to. So it was... you know, it was important. I remember having to walk down the sidewalk with you and council member to heart. And when we looked at some other sites down the street on Indian. So, you know, we knew that we had to stay within that area. We knew we had to appraise the site. We knew we had to get pretty close to avoid any sort of gift to public funds. So pretty normal real estate acquisition process.

Okay, thank you. I'm gonna see if any of my colleagues have any questions or comments. Council Member Garner.

Thanks so much, Flynn. Can you just talk a little bit about the process that the city's taken to talk with nearby business owners and kind of what their response has been?

Certainly. When we seemed to be coming close to finalizing the deal points on this property, we put together an outreach plan to conduct one-on-one visits with adjacent property owners and businesses. Denise Goolsbee from our Communications Office, Battalion Chief Damian Myers, and Dean Grubel from our Economic Development Office went out and visited with over 43 business and property owners over the course of last week to get their feedback, to share our thoughts on purchasing the site, and to get their input on that. And they reported back that The response that they received was very positive, that business owners are happy to see the fire station developed and the property being put to use. And so it's been very positive so far. We do have a couple more property owners and business owners to reach out to, which we'll do in the next week or so. But overall, the engagement with the public has been very positive.

Thank you, really appreciate you doing that as well. We want everyone to be excited about this because it's a really important, wonderful project that we're doing. Just in terms of architecture, design, one of the things that I just want to make sure again that we really do is make sure that we're in communication with our firefighters who live there, work there on a regular basis. Their input in this process and how things function is the most important aspect of the design, even down to where you put outlets is useful for somebody who's going to be living in this facility. so i just want to prior make sure that that's prioritized that we are working with our fire department especially the staff that are very likely to be moving into that facility so i really appreciate them being here sitting through this meeting giving public comment and it just shows that this is something that they truly care about and i appreciate the community also being here to recognize that we want this to be a functional space for for a fire department and i think any building that we make, we want to have it be beautiful as well. And as Flynn has stated, this is going to go through the design process. We have lots and lots of wonderful people who serve in our city to make sure that design is beautiful and we're fortunate for that. So I think that this is a positive step in terms of public safety. It's a positive step in economic development downtown area and i think it's it's going to be something that we can all really be proud of. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you Mayor. Well first of all thank you to all the work that's put in as council member Gardner indicated you know it's the firefighters who are going to be there their input in this design is going to be important and we do have the opportunity to have an amazing modernism design so we'll see how that unfolds I encourage that but but I would just I think it's important I want to make sure everyone is clear because I some feedback I've heard is that well why would you be paying four million for something appraised at 3.1 and clearly we would not and so Flynn thank you for clarifying that and I think it's important to highlight the added value we're getting. They're tearing down the buildings, the asbestos removal, all those things. Basically, the value adds up. The other piece of this, and you mentioned it in the staff report, is that we're avoiding the costs of eminent domain. If in fact we went forward with eminent domain, those legal costs would be substantial, they'd be lengthy, and no good comes from those kinds of legal fights, it seems. So the value of this, I'm very comfortable with the value. The other thing that this does, long term, it's one of these rare things that covers so many bases. It takes care of an old fire station. It takes care for, finally, we see light at the end of the tunnel on modernism. to finally do something with the town and country. It was not gonna happen after all these years. It couldn't, it wouldn't, it wasn't going to unless we were partners. And so now we have the opportunity to be the partner. That's gonna happen. That corridor was so blighted with those two buildings, those two vacant old blighted buildings, nothing was really going to fix that but for the demolish and this. And then finally, then the other key piece of this is we preserved how many parking spaces were in the other lot where we were going to put about 40-some, Flynn? 50?

There's a total of, I believe, 92 spaces in that lot.

Saving that parking lot, and I'll tell you, we've been parking for a long time, saving 90 parking spots there in the downtown, it's priceless, at least a couple million. So all this together does something that I think the whole community can be proud of. And so a lot of staff work went in. Thank you to everyone who support this. And I just have two quick questions. One on the actual agreement, if I could. With regard to the additional land that we're getting and the lease of that grass area, and I just want to clarify, if I could, with the attorney, it's section 5.3, the lease of the grass area. It says, it talks about that we would lease that back to the seller and it would be offset by the cost of the parking spaces. We had talked and you'd indicated that this was, it would offset the cost, but then it's not a full exchange cost. I just wanna make sure that that's the case.

Right, it won't be a total, it's not a dollar for dollar offset. If the lease price is $1,500, or $5,000 and the parking spaces are 15, it would be 1,500, it'd be 3,500. That's what the city would end up receiving.

So we'll be able to charge market rate for that lease and then he can subtract what we pay for the parking. Okay, I just want to confirm that. And then finally, I just have a question on the process with regard to, once we go ahead and do this, the escrow. You know, there's several escrow companies in the city of Palm Springs. I would request, if possible, that the escrow be to a Palm Springs escrow company. Now, again, I don't know what your process is. We used to have a process where they would rotate between escrow companies to keep it local. Obviously, you'd need to do that with some fair way, however that is. But if possible, I would ask staff that the escrow could be done within at least a Palm Springs escrow company. presuming all things being equal and they're equal in price. I would just make that request.

Just one more thing too about the historic part of the site, the historic town and country building, former Zelda's building. One of the things about that is that I know that there might be some time, we don't know the timeline of when construction or work or renovation could happen on that building. And I know that there is interest, obviously, from a lot of people about preserving it, the history, et cetera. It would be nice to be able to put some sort of information about the building and the architects in front of the building just for people to know in the meantime. Paul R. Williams, for instance, was a prominent black architect, and it's one of the stops on the black history tour that happens in our city. He's also really a... one of the first in a lot of ways in Southern California. So I think it's really interesting history that we have here, and it's history that touches on a lot of different members of our community. So I think it would be interesting to just have something there, especially because there could be a gap between when there's actual renovation done. Thank you. Council Member Dart.

Yeah, Flint, excellent staff report. So thank you for recapping and thank you for your involvement in the process and for sitting down early on when we reached out to our preservation and modernism community and thanks to the folks that were involved in those conversations today. uh... just even look at the viability of going down this path and in the your input and comments certainly have shaped where we are today. And I just want to share that many of the public comments that came out this evening on the architecture, the design, the sensitivity to having a specialist involved in the design process, that will all come after we actually start working on the building and and and that entire process today The purchase price in the contract isn't tied to the heightened scale of the firehouse that is going to be built or the design of the outside or having modernist architecture experts involved. So we are committed to that. We are committed, council has had those discussions as you brought up the questions early on. And we are committed to making sure that we all work together and including not just our business community, but the tribe. and the tribe can have a big role to play in the historical context of the placement of this firehouse. So we're looking forward to what the future has. The dollar price and the price we're paying, I think it's important that the community gets to see how we got to this $4 million figure. And four million is actually a negotiated down figure from what we were originally looking at. So between staff and conversations with the owner, uh... and then the mayor and i uh... continuing to talk with the owner we we got to this four million point uh... which uh... we've heard from my my colleagues and staff isn't it's a uh... a very uh... Good position to be in great value for the city Good value for the seller obviously he wouldn't be selling if it wasn't something of value to him so it's it's something good for the city and what we can't put value on and has been touched on is is protecting the the historical context of that town and country building and you know maybe it's not a hundred percent of the entire town and country property but we have a good chunk of it if this guy if this uh... goes through tonight the city will be in possession of a good chunk of that property and and we know we can be good stewards uh... of that property and it will take a village it will take the modernism community of preservation community working together with the city uh... but we know we can all work together as a community and preserve this building for many, many years to come. So I'm excited about this. I thank everybody's involvement and huge appreciation to our firefighters for uh... your patients and uh... having been on the other end of the arguments that popped up when the first location was announced uh... it's not always easy uh... to be on the the end of the lot of complaints and people's anger so i appreciate you all sticking with it and uh... you know hearing folks out in the community and taking the time to talk with the community was very important. And I know the merchants in the 200 block that raised some of those initial concerns are very, very happy with the way the fire department was involved in this process and how you all took time to personally talk to them. So thank you for doing that. I know it's not in your job description, but thank you for being there to lend that olive branch and be open for conversation. And now it's up to council to set the path forward.

We have a motion by Council Member DeHart. Do we have a second? Second by Council Member Garner. Motion carries. Very exciting, congratulations. Our next item on the agenda is item 3C, which is a request for authorization of issuance of long-term bonds or other obligations payable from assessments levied within the Palm Springs Tourism Infrastructure District. May we have a staff report, please?

Good evening again, Mayor and Council Members. I want to introduce Kim Byrons, who's the City's Bond Counsel from BBK. She's going to give the staff report.

Good evening mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Kim Byron's I'm with best best and Krieger react as bond council for the city So as you know the Palm Springs TID was formed late last month and you've taken action to levy assessments in the TID and now it's time to consider long-term obligations and begin the process of for issuing bonds of the TID. So before you tonight is a resolution approving a bond issue or any long-term obligation and authorizing the city to prepare those with its financing team to move forward for the issuance of bonds. We will come back at a later time for approval with the final bond documents, the disclosure documents to be sold or to be offered to the general public for purchase. That's basically the report. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Thank you. Do we have any questions from city council on this? Do not, okay. We have a motion, we have a second. We have to wait for the mayor pro tem. I think, oh. We're voting. That's okay, there was, okay. motion carries thank you thank you very much thank you for driving all the way out for that crucially long presentation thank you Kim next item on the agenda is item 3d which is a request for to discuss and provide direction to staff regarding the teleconference teleconferencing pursuant to recent Brown Act amendments SB 707. May we have a staff report, please?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Elizabeth Hull, BB&K. I'll be filling in on this one. So a few years ago in December of 2023, the City Council made a decision to

No, it's this Knicks game. It's crazy. Okay, keep going.

I'm going to make this short so we can get out of here. In December of 2023, you all had a choice of whether you wanted to use the new teleconferencing rules or stick with the classic Brown Act rules. At that time, you made a decision to stick with the classic Brown Act rules. Since then, last year, SB 707 was passed. It dealt with many of the concerns that people had with the newer teleconferencing rules, and so we just wanted to bring it back to you and give you the option again. Under the old classic rules, If somebody needed to telecommute or telecommute teleconference into a meeting, you had to put it on the agenda, post it at their location. They had to let the public into whatever location they were at. It's the same way we've done it since, I don't know, 1973 or whatever year it was that they included teleconferencing in the Brown Act. Under the new rules during COVID and then as liberalized over the past few years, there are a number of ways to telecommute or reasons for it. Just cause, medical emergency, different things like that. So the question for the council is, do you want to continue to just use the classic Brown Act rules, or would you like to expand and use additional teleconferencing options as they're presented under the Brown Act as of today? Your staff report went through in excruciating detail all of the different steps and things, which we can go through if you want. But I think you have the idea that basically you're giving yourself more options if you do it one way or sticking with the classic. it's entirely up to you.

Yes, Council Member Garner.

Thank you, I really like a lot of these these updates and would love for us to move towards this. It's like one of the things just for the public is under just cause, it takes into consideration that there might be caregiving needs, whether that's for a child or a parent or a spouse that might come up at the last minute. But you can still participate, but you can't be physically in the room here on this dais. And I think there's a lot of really thoughtful carve outs here that I think would be beneficial for us to incorporate but I think the other thing too is that it is a little bit easier I think for the public in general to understand the classic rules are a bit dense and here they're kind of calling out these specific things that we know we are already allowed and we do for instance teleconferencing as an accommodation for disability that's in the ADA of course we do that already but this kind of really highlights it to just remind people that this is something that's allowable and And I think that kind of heightened transparency is useful for the public and anybody that's wondering how they can participate as a commissioner, especially people with different abilities. So I would support this. Let's see what my colleagues think.

I'm the same. I support going with the new, updated, more fun and current and hip guidelines.

It doesn't exclude you from using the classic. The classic still exists. So if you know ahead of time and you want to use the classic, that's still an option for you. This is just giving yourselves a little bit more flexibility.

I agree. And I think this is just... I'm grateful that we have this option and it's these expansion I think it's just a reflection of like this is what happens when we have a state assembly that reflects people in different stages of life and different familial commitments and so Yeah supportive We have a motion we have a second Motion carries I just, for the record, it was 106 versus 107. Nick's won at the end. Okay.

Thank you.

They were, yeah.

That was an awesome comeback.

It really was. Next item on the agenda is item 3E, policy establishing procedures for disruption of telephone. Well, these are both, no.

So one was allowing you to use different ways to telecommute. This is, or telecommute, teleconference, sorry. This item, SB 707, which became effective the first of the year, requires the city to adopt a policy on what happens if you lose connectivity. So if your internet goes out and you've told people that they can teleconference, what happens? So it just sets, you have to set forth a policy on how you're gonna handle it. And the law tells you the Brown Act under SB 707 tells you how you're gonna handle it You're going to adjourn immediately as soon as you become aware of the problem. You're gonna hang out for an hour Well your IT staff scurries and is really stressed out and tries to solve the problem and then you're gonna reconvene after an hour and if you've solved it great you can continue on and IF YOU HAVEN'T SOLVED IT, THEN YOU ADJOURN OR YOU MAKE A FINDING THAT THE ITEMS ON THE AGENDA ARE OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE AND NEED TO HAPPEN AND THEN YOU CONTINUE ON WITHOUT THE TELECONFERENCING. THERE'S SOME MORE IN THERE ON SORT OF HOW IT WORKS. that but that's sort of the gist of it is you're required by July 1st to adopt a policy and so this is sort of both BB and K considers best practices and is very similar to what most of your colleagues are adopting across the state yep supportive as well you send the motion thank you we have a motion and a second

And carries. Next item on the agenda is item 3F, which is a discussion of the city mayoral position and report from the ad hoc subcommittee. Who wants to lead that update?

All right. We, Council Member Garner and I attended the first meeting of the working group on January 8th here at City Hall. And all members invited participants were there and we took a little time for folks to have introductions. Most people didn't know each other or haven't worked with each other so uh... it's a nice uh... group of folks come into the table uh... they uh... decided uh... they're gonna have a next meeting on january fifteen uh... at that meeting uh... they are uh... going to set uh... in plan in place uh... timeline for a series of public meetings and they'll get those meetings back to, or the schedule back to staff. So those meetings can be posted on schedules and the public can plan to participate well in advance. we'll have those and then they're also gonna work on what their working group schedule is going to be. So there's two schedules, a working group schedule and then this public meeting schedule and they did ask some questions about how many times you know, did the first voting rights group meet. And in July and August, they met almost two dozen times the first time around. No idea what this group's desire is going to be, but they are going to work that out, and we'll learn at the January 15 meeting. We also shared with them a little bit, you know, we reiterated what the purpose and guideline was of them coming together and what they were being asked to do. So first was to establish the timeline for public meetings and also to get their working group schedule together. That was top priority. Second was to start to look at how are they gonna gather public input on what type of government structure the community would like to see for the mayor's office in Palm Springs. So that's part of the conversation that they'll have with these community meetings. Another one was to gauge the public's appetite for a ballot measure and to explore whether alternative approaches exist and what what we talked about at council before. Is that the rotating mayor one year like we do now? Would the community like to see multiple year rotating? These are all questions that can be asked and learned from the community meetings and at the end of the day no matter what the feedback was what the idea was of the structure that the community is saying they like to work with legal counsel at the city and and make sure that the idea that is brought forward is one that meets all legal requirements, voting rights requirements, and whatever may be required of us from the state level, the federal level. And as we know, the Supreme Court decision may bring about changes at the state level, and all that's going to be discovered in time. uh... we don't have any real answers today but this working group is going to keep uh... a focus on making sure whatever they do bring back to council recommendations have already been vetted uh... and uh... will meet a or they'll be look better through a legal lens to make sure that any risk is uh... is going to be mitigated for the city with whatever ideas suggested to council uh... And then they have a report back to council of what their findings are. So those were the core points that we previously brought forward at council that we wanted to see from a working group. And that's what we touched base on, and we covered that in this first conversation. And I thought it was only gonna be an hour meeting, but it lasted almost two hours. So there was some good feedback, good questions. We did have a city attorney present. City attorney was able to give an overview of the legal issues that are at play today, some of the lawsuits that are in place in Huntington Beach and Santa Monica, and just a general overview of where we got to to this point. So it was a good meeting, and I thought it was worthwhile. How about you, Council Member Garner?

Yeah, thank you. I wasn't able to stay for the whole meeting at a graduation that night, but it was nice to see mostly people that hadn't been on a committee before in that room. I think it'll be good to get a variety of viewpoints, and it seems like from what we're hearing that there's a good diversity of the community to do that. And just for clarity, the next meeting is June 15th, June.

What did I say?

January.

I'm planning ahead. I'm planning ahead.

This is all June. It is June.

That's correct.

No, but that's it for now. I think everything's moving forward, and I look forward to being able to share all of those dates at the next meeting.

Thank you, appreciate that. Any other questions or comments, discussion?

Question, thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the update. So obviously the next meeting is June 15th. They decide on the meeting schedule. So just sort of in the larger context, there's nothing that's going to occur in 2026 based on this process, getting information in any council action one way or another. Just wanna, there's nothing that's gonna happen in 26 under this schedule? I presume, just on timing.

You mean in terms of council direction?

Well, council direction, a ballot language, that would have to be August, wouldn't make that deadline. Right. Presumably, council could take some action, depending upon what that is, by the end of the year. But there likely won't be any change, though, in 26. Right.

And that's what we, we shared that with them, the likelihood that anything could happen. Clearly, we haven't heard from the voter initiative on what their next steps are. But we know council is going on holiday in the middle of... uh... june july to the middle of august and so any council action is highly unlikely so we won't see something from council so this working group really needs to look at what's the next timing urgency and that would be getting some kind of feedback an idea leading into a potential Could be a potential action from a voter initiative in as early as 27 But they we don't want the working group to lose time and they need to Get the community together and get these questions answered in case there is an initiative that comes forward in for 27 They're prepared and they're able to give counsel some input on what they've learned and nothing may come until 28, you know

And I think a big part of this is that doing community engagement, having these conversations with the public, because ballot measures, all of this stuff is a lot of money as well. And so if there's consensus and just good community discussion that's happening, then maybe that doesn't need to happen, right? And we can make decisions based on what we're hearing from the community. So if it's a robust process, that could be very well what happens. But again, it's just the beginning.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next well, thank you for that update and looking forward to hearing after that June 15th meeting Next is public comment. Next item is public comment on non agenda items This time has been a set aside for members of the public to address City Council and items of General interest within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city. We value your comments. However pursuant to the Brown Act We cannot take any action on anything that wasn't listed on our agenda. We have two minutes for each speaker. We have, it looks like two speakers. Michael Joseph Pitkin is first and Dale Rolfe will be second on Zoom.

Michael Joseph Pitkin, when my mom and my ex, Jeff Hill, made their own arrangement to have he and his children stay during his summer month visit, Terry Hortonist would call every day asking if the children were being molested. When Terry refused to put the children on the judge's airfare, she was in contempt and the judge was going to give the children over to Jeff. Out of retaliation, Terry sued me, my mother, Father Pat Russell, and Jeff in court for molestation charges. The judge knew exactly the game Terry was playing and threw the case out. The team of attorneys wanted to know how to proceed. I explained. This was Jeff's decision. I told Jeff I supported any decision he made. He needed to talk with the attorneys. I never once asked the courts for anything. Jeff insisted. The courts even granted me the ability on my own to pick up the children in Austin, Texas. I went to my mom's. I called him a couple days later to see what he decided. Jeff goes, oh, I thought we broke up, and I moved in with someone else, and he's HIV positive. I was negative at the time. His new Hispanic partner did not want anything to do with the children. Jeff's partner would burn buildings and collect insurance. Guess he got caught. I offered to be supportive to Jeff for his children's sake and if he needed any help. Jeff told me to stay out and I did. Jeff lost every case after that and he was in contempt. Jeff died shortly after of AIDS and today Chad, Seth, and Corey are in their later 30s and early 40s.

Thank you.

Next we have Dale Rolfe, who is on Zoom. Dale, if you can hear us, you can unmute and you have two minutes.

Good evening mayor and council members. My name is Dale Rolf with renewable innovations LLC. I work throughout California, assisting electrical contractors and homeowners with permit processing utility applications and electrical projects. I'm here tonight because I believe the city of Palm Springs is imposing excessive permit fees through an ambiguous permitting process that has already affected multiple contractors and property owners. in may of this year i submitted an application for a residential electrical panel upgrade through the city's simple permit process the city staff reviewed the application contacted the contractor to verify licensing information and issued a permit fee of six hundred and fifteen dollars which was paid Approximately one week later, the city voided the permit and informed me that because the property was a condo, it did not qualify for the simple permit process and would instead require a commercial electrical permit. The city's position is that condos do not qualify for the simple permit. However, nowhere in the simple application does it clearly state that condos are excluded. In discussions with the building official, I was informed that the city will be updating the simple permit language to provide greater clarity for future applicants. i appreciate that effort and it affirms the confusion that currently exists within the permitting process but more concerning was learning that the city considers a standard two hundred amp electrical panel upgrade servicing an individual residential condo unit to fall under a permit category carrying a fee of approximately $1,854. Fortunately, the city ultimately allowed the replacement permit to be issued at the same $615 fee rather than the full amount. So this homeowner and contractor resulted in a total permit cost of $1,230. That raises an even larger question. Why is a standard 200 amp electrical panel upgrade serving an an individual residential condo unit being classified into a permit category carrying a permit fee of almost $2,000 in the first place. California law generally requires local agency fees to bear a reasonable relationship to the services provided, yet Palm Springs charges some of the highest electrical permit fees I have encountered anywhere in California. Majority of cities and counties throughout California charge between $150 to $250 for similar electrical permits. I am asking the City Council to review the City's permitting practices, fee structures, and permit classifications to ensure residents, businesses, and contractors are not subject to excessive fees because of ambiguous administrative classifications. I appreciate your time.

Thank you, Mr. Rolf. We now have City Council and City Manager requests and our upcoming agenda development review. City Manager, do you want to share what things look like moving forward?

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor, if we can call it the tentative upcoming meeting schedule. We have two meetings left before our summer recess, as you can see. At our next meeting, we will have a presentation by Martha's Village and Kitchen, which we've been talking about for a while. And then we'll have two public hearings. One is our annual street lighting maintenance district public hearing, as well as our small business TBID public hearing that folks were talking about this evening. And then the continuation budget will be back for your approval. We do have a vacation rental ordinance update, so we're still working with VRON on that and whether this is the right time to bring it back, we'll be talking more with them. The convention center food and beverage contract will be ready for your consideration and any updates on the mayoral election work that Council members Garner and DeHart are doing. And then on July 8th, our last meeting before the summer recess, CVAG and our engineering staff will be talking about traffic synchronization. The cannabis lounge ordinance update will be coming forward. and maybe a little time we'll want to spend with you talking about our legislative platform update and what's coming down the road for the fall. We have a lot of initiatives around securing funding for homelessness and other stuff. So we'll be, I think, looking for some of your thoughts on that as well. I did want to, I've spoke to, been speaking to two or three groups this week on all the work that the city staff were involved in right now just if you give me like 15 seconds i just want to mention to everybody obviously we're full speed ahead on all the convention center work that's going on and now we're going to be adding the fire station uh work we want to keep that going uh at a very fast pace i want the public to know that um We just opened up the full renovation of the pavilion at Sunrise Park. And if you have a chance to go see the farmer's market on Saturday morning, you can go see the complete renovation. It really looks nice on what was done. The Demuth Baseball Park playground parking area parking lot has all been beautifully restored. You know, we just, uh, splash pad, uh, cut the ribbon on that at the downtown park. Uh, I toured the library renovation, uh, last week and it's going to be fantastic when it's done. It's really excited about that along with all the pickleball courts that are under construction. So just, uh, want to elaborate. I always am very appreciative of all of our staff. We have a lot going on and, uh, Just want to give some thanks to all of them. Also, just want to mention we heard some reports from our fire department this morning about how they are wrapping up some of their brush wildfire clearance work, especially around the western edges of our city. So that work continues. Just wanted to mention that. That's all for me.

Great. I wanted to follow up or kind of bring back what our last public comment was asking around permit fees for condos specifically. Not a ton, but every two or three months I probably get a question from someone asking about a building permit fee specifically for single or multifamily. Sometimes it's an improvement in the garage or a carport. I've heard of electrical upgrades and maybe we can just get a presentation on the schedule at some point specifically around building permit fees for multifamily. I've asked this as well at one point and was told it does someone I had a someone in district 4 was replacing windows in their home and it was the rate of commercial business replacing windows and so the person's comment is something I've seen a few times. So I was wondering maybe we can just get maybe an explanation or a presentation from building.

Mayor, yeah, we can start. Maybe we can start and send you some updated information and then let council decide if you'd like more detail on top of that. In this particular case, I know we've been, Flynn, our chief building official, have been in conversations with this individual too.

Okay, great.

any thing agenda item specifically and then we can get to events but agenda yes well and to to your comments mayor thank you uh and i'm not sure to what level this review needs to be but maybe something like so for example what we just heard the speaker talk about a water heater fees if you get a water heater the the inspec the license is six hundred dollars which we wanna encourage inspections for water heaters, but that's a disincentive that seems high. So I had some complaints there and compared to Palm Desert, theirs is 114, 114. for water heater inspection, ours is 600. And so we've seen these increases. There's good reason to do it, but again, as a policy, I think we need to review some of this. And if anything, when you're talking about what are impediments to building, these things are as much as anything so i i'm not sure if that's a study session if it's when we start to do the budget stuff for review at that maybe scott you think about it uh... and and you can make some suggestions of how we can revisit some of these i mean and also

YES, THERE'S MULTI-FAMILY HOMES ARE GROWING IN OUR CITY SO I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WE CAN EXPLAIN WELL.

SO ON THE AGENDA SPECIFICALLY, AND SCOTT, JUST WANT TO CONFIRM ON THE TRAFFIC SIGNAL SYNCHRONIZATION UPDATE, YOU KNOW, THE PRESENTATION FROM CVAG WOULD BE FINE, THEY'RE DOING THE INTERCONNECT, BUT WHAT I'M MORE INTERESTED IN IS WHAT THE CITY'S POLICY IS IN WHEN WE DECIDE, YOU KNOW, WHAT'S protected permissive turns, what's not. Obviously, there's the state guidelines, and then we use those, but many are one way, others are another way, and there doesn't seem to be a uniformity in just sort of that discussion, and council may or may not want to make a policy based on that discussion.

That'll be part of the conversation. We'll build that into the presentation. Great. Thank you.

ANY OTHER AGENDA ITEMS SPECIFICALLY? YES. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

THE STAFF GOT BACK TO US ON COUNCIL. WE GOT A REPORT BACK ON THE MARTHA'S VILLAGE. Working Group report that was provided to us on the review of the Martha's Village contract and where they were meeting the scope of work and not meeting it. And it was a good report from the Working Group. And I think, Flynn, your team, or your department, gave Council back a follow-up report and is looking for some direction from Council on some of the items that they're suggesting. But there's a couple, one in particular, that was brought out in the working group's notes to us, and that was the cooling shelter. And I know the city's opened, we just recently opened two locations. But the consistent problem with those locations is they close at 5 o'clock or 5.30 p.m. And we still have humans on the street in the dead of summer for all night and incredibly high conditions. So the request was, how do we take better advantage of the early entry facility and using that as a cooling shelter during those daytime hours when the overnight folks aren't there. So that was one that we mentioned previously from the dais that that was a high priority that we wanted to look at. And there's another one that is I think high priority. Martha's is saying that they're having a difficult time connecting with the animal shelter. And I think we have to be able to connect Martha's with the animal shelter so they can take care of some of the tasks that they're trying to address. And that's being able to let the owners be with their animals and accommodate them in closer quarters. and they're being challenged with that because they haven't been able to connect with the animal shelter. So from a direction standpoint, I think it's very easy, and I asked the working group if they would help connect with Martha's with the right people at the animal shelter so these animal questions can get taken care of. But the cooling shelter item is one that is a big issue. How can we accommodate the unhoused in during the extremely hot days in overnight situations and and there's we don't have an answer for that and Martha's doesn't have an answer it's cost money everything comes into play but we need to know What can the city do and if it's a cost council needs to know? What what that is and you know, what can we provide? so that is a that is a big issue that we I think is we need urgency on And the other items I suspect we all can give comments back to Scott and Flynn If you all have any comments

Yeah. Sorry, so I mean, we're gonna have this discussion next council meeting. So can that, the things that Council Member DeHart just raised, can that be added to this discussion next week?

Yeah, I think we absolutely can do that. We can talk about the connections with the animal shelter. Obviously, keeping the access center open longer, we can talk to Martha's Village. There's going to be a cost to it, and we'll have to talk about what the cost is going to be and then figure out where the money is going to come from. But in the next couple weeks, we can work on that.

Great. sorry just to clarify so is that just the navigation center or will the findings of the work group be part of this presentation

What we have on the agenda is a presentation from Martha's Village and Kitchen. We'll talk to them about presumably what they've done in the past is talk about how things are going, what issues that they're having, that sort of thing. And it's a good opportunity for council members to engage with them about... how things are going. We can certainly, council members can talk to them also about the report that Councilman DeHart is talking about. We've already, I'm sure we've shared that report with Martha's as well, so they're familiar with it. We can have them address those items in the report as well.

Okay.

But it's not, Martha's already answered. they've worked with staff and martha's given responses to every item raised in the working groups report we need action so this started on may fourth we've got the report too staff we need now to act on what's those requests that are being pointed out so it needs to be a discussion on council. And yes, some of it is money, but I think you all need to tell council what that money is so the public's aware that in order to do A, B, and C, it's gonna cost the city this much money. And then city council's gotta make a decision. Can we create, or is there a possibility to create an overnight cooling shelter? If there is, what's that cost and do we have the ability to make it happen? So we're not in a discussion phase with Martha's Village. They're already telling us in the report it's gonna cost money. So I think we're really more in how does staff tell us what it's gonna cost to make it happen?

So I think I'll have to defer to the attorney, but I think what we'll need is direction from counsel this evening to agendize an item for discussion at the next meeting in addition to the presentation.

Yeah, I would agree. It sounds like you have a presentation generally scheduled, but if you want to take action on anything, you're going to need an agenda item for that.

I mean, I think The presentation is going to lead to lots of discussion, so if it needs to be an agenda item instead of a presentation, then that's what it needs to be.

Well, what I heard Councilman DeHart indicate is he wants something more than just a presentation for Martha's Village and Kitchen.

Well, correct, but I think addressing the things that have been raised, you know, here's the feedback that's been received. And what is staff determining is possible versus not possible? What can we work towards? I mean, I'm not saying that there's gonna be a, everything can be solved, but to allow for further, more robust discussion.

I guess my question is, are you recommending a presentation and an agenda item, or are we just doing a business item so then we can just discuss it?

So right now, as I understand it, you have a presentation scheduled. So that would just be a presentation from this group and you can ask a few questions or whatever. If you want to actually take action on something, then you can do it either way. You can have a presentation and then have a separate discussion item. You can just make it all one item where they're given some period of time to present. It's really at your pleasure. We just need direction from you as to how you want it presented. What I'm hearing, I think, is that you just want one item where Martha's Village makes a presentation. Staff has a presentation to address some of the issues that you've outlined here. You guys have a discussion and provide some direction to staff.

Yes, it makes sense to me to kind of do it all at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't even need the presentation from Martha's village because we've got their answers already They've already told us what their view is We need staff recommendation on how do we make what can we do? based off of what Martha's already told us and the what the working group has identified and

So I think it's a business and legislative item, I think is the title on your agenda.

Yeah, I think it doesn't hurt to still have the presentation for Martha's and we can just expand that instead of a presentation to a business item.

So just we're going to stick with the presentation for Martha's Village.

No, it's going to instead of a presentation, it will be a business and legislative item. Martha's will present, staff will present, and then council will be able to discuss. Give direction. Thank you. No other, any other agenda?

note just uh... yeah before so i have a few events but you go first would like to share uh... you know during the meeting uh... off the dot uh... uh... wrote in and shared that uh... he would like to uh... pledge a thousand dollars to uh... support uh... pierces pledge effort at the police department uh... into so we don't have We don't have fees involved when somebody wants to retrieve their weapon that they surrendered. So it really can be a no financial barrier situation. So thank you, Aftab.

Thank you for that update. That's great. A few events coming up between now and our next council meeting. Next week, there is a flurry of events for Juneteenth starting Thursday, June 18th for the kickoff. On Friday, there's the Unity Picnic, a concert, a Tina Turner tribute concert. I will tell my mom she loves Tina Turner. But just a variety of really great events next week. So thank you to the Black History Committee and all the other partners who are making this such a fabulous week. And there's also XOXO starting next week. June 11th, tomorrow through the 22nd. Short Fest, June 23rd to 29. We have PS Next as well, that June 22nd, 23rd. So just a variety of events here in the city. It's not a slow June, so many things to do. And if there are no other comments. The next city council meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 24th at 5.30 p.m. This meeting is now adjourned.