Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Testing one, two, three, four, five.

We're good to go? Everybody ready? Good afternoon, everyone. It's Tuesday, September 15th, 515, and this is our City Council meeting. We're gonna go ahead and open up with roll call.

Council Member Boush? Here. Council Member Riehl?

Here.

Council Member Gregory? Here. Council Member Strong?

Here.

Mayor Hammond?

Here. For closed session items, we have looks like one item, and we'll let Attorney Serra tell us what we're going to be talking about.

Good evening, City Council members. Nice to see you all. Sarah Laqua with West Western Krieger. Tonight we're meeting regarding a conference with the Council for Real Property Negotiations pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.8. This is in regards to a portion of Pioneer Park located at 1910 Riverside Avenue, APN 008-254-003. Agency negotiators are Chris Hewatt, City Manager, and Angelica Fortin, Community Services Director. And negotiating party for potential purchaser or leaseholder is Pioneer Museum Foundation, Don A. Ernst, Esquire.

Okay. Thank you, Sarah. We'll open it up to public comment. Anyone on the matter in front of us? I see no public. Anyone online?

No, sir.

Okay. We'll go ahead and adjourn to closed session and reconvene at 6 p.m. Good evening, everyone. It's Tuesday, September 15th, 6 p.m., and this is our Paso Robles City Council meeting, and we'll call the meeting to order. If we can, we are reconvening from closed session, so we'll begin with Pledge of Allegiance, and then please stay standing for Pastor Pat Sheehan for the invocation. Okay.

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

Tonight we thank you for Mayor Hammond, Councilpersons Gregory, Bosch, Strong, and Beal. Fill them, Lord, with the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Christ for every decision before them tonight. Lord, bless and be with our police and emergency services personnel who bravely serve and protect us all. Give your grace to our city manager and all those in City Hall whose labor benefits all of us who live in Paso Robles. Supply them with all they need to care for our city. And Father, I just want to ask that your kingdom would come, your will would be done in our lives, our families, our city, our state, and these United States of America. We ask all this in the glorious name of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Madam Clerk, can you call the roll call, please?

Council Member Bausch?

Here. Council Member Beal? Here. Council Member Gregory?

Here.

Council Member Strong?

Here.

Mayor Hammond?

Here. Staff introductions beginning on my right.

Melissa Martin, City Clerk, joined by Mary Sponholz, Deputy City Clerk.

Warren Frase, Community Development Director.

Chris Huot, City Manager.

Sarah Laughlin, City Attorney. Bess Buston-Krieger.

And welcome, Sarah. And if you would, could you give us a report out from closed session?

Yes, Mayor. There is no reportable action tonight.

Very good. Thank you. Yeah, we're having technical difficulties. Everybody hearing okay? Yeah. All right. All right, first up, we have presentations, Constitution Week proclamation. If I can have Daughters of the American Revolution, Lisa Wood, Susan Howard, Terry Vanderhoeven, and Leslie Overton come join me, please.

I'm Terry Vanderhoeven, and this is Leslie Overton.

Let's go over in front. No, one, two. There you go. Thank you. Proclamation declaring September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week. Whereas September 17th, 2026 marks 238th anniversary of the drafting of our Constitution of the United States of America. by the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia, and whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorial anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations that will commemorate the occasion, and whereas Public Law 915 guarantees the issuance of proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America, designating September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week. And whereas, during Constitution Week, our nation reflects on the significance of our Constitution and gives thanks for the blessings of our liberty that its document helps secure. We honor the men and women who supported and defended this throughout history many times with their lives. And whereas, we ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideals the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed through us as the guardian of this document, remembering that lost rights may never be regained. And whereas, now therefore let it be resolved that I, John Hammond, by virtue of the authority vested in me as mayor and speaking on behalf of the entire City Council, to hereby proclaim the week of September 17 through 23 as Constitution Week and urge all citizens to study the Constitution and reflect the privileges of being American and all the rights and responsibilities which the privilege involves. Thank you very much for coming. Do you like to say a word?

I would just say on behalf of the El Paso de Robles chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and SDR, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay, moving on, we have general public comments. This is the time that the public may address the council on items within its purview, but not scheduled on tonight's agenda. Council or staff may briefly respond to statements or questions posed by the public. Please fill out a speaker card and give it to the city clerk upon speaking. Speakers will have three minutes. Those people wishing to speak on any scheduled item on tonight's agenda will be given the opportunity to do so at the time the item is being considered. Welcome, Dale.

Good evening, Dale Gustin. At our Main Street board meeting, we're still struggling with the adjustments after Norma Moy passed away, but Chris Beals came to our meeting, and we've always enjoyed the city helping us do events in the downtown park and of course on Vine Street and Chris Beal assured us that that will continue. So I want to thank the city for your support of Main Street.

Welcome.

Hi, Linda George 3126 Spring Street. Here, what a really good day. I don't know, I keep saying that wherever I go. I must be feeling pretty good these days. Anyhow, the first thing I want to say is that I was remiss the last time I congratulated the police department about the cannabis stuff. I know it's on the schedule, but I have been campaigning since July 30th. I have met over 800 people, and I am proud to say at this point, that there have been zero complaints about our police department. And that is huge for me because, as you know, I started this journey off in 2021 regarding my dissatisfaction with the then police department. So I'm really excited to know that we have new faces, new officers. I've met so many. I think we have three Stuarts, a Beal, no relation to Chris Beal. Some, I can't even pronounce their names. I just call them Officer G. So I like them all. I think Chief Davis and Chief Nord have done a tremendous job at hiring new faces, young, young, 21, 22, 25. Anyhow, I just wanted to give that information to the community because it was really weighing on my heart. It was really important that we had a police department that was respected. And I 100 support the accreditation that they'll be moving forth. So the other thing I wanted to talk about is the hydration stations. And I sent this email, Chris Hewitt. It got bounced back. I don't know if you received it. It said my email was blocked. Is there a way that we can have a community El Nino prep? I know the county just had one. I think another city had one. I spent a good two or three hours with the riverbed folks and 95% of them told me they will leave if they have somewhere to go. And so I have a list of District 1 churches. I supplied it to Ashley. I understand Paso Cares is working on getting churches for our people to go to. So I really want to encourage that to happen. Every community, every city is helping El Nino Prep. And I think it would be really prudent for us to do that in this situation. So that was what that email was regarding, Chris. But basically, I came to say that is that I'm really looking forward to continuing to campaign and meet everybody. It's a really beautiful city. You know, it really is. The more I walk around it, I'm just astonished on how, as I've said in the past, it is still a slice of heaven to live here, to have a place to live where you still have single family homes, most of all. But most of all, that you have such beauty around. I mean, so many beautiful wineries. And I just have to say to all the people who have worked at that in the past, great job.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. I'm John D'Annunzio with SLOCOG staff, the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments. I'm here tonight to give you a quick update, and more importantly, to invite the community of Paso Robles to an upcoming public workshop that we're hosting here on the US 101 northbound off ramp. If you travel through this interchange, particularly on busy weekends during peak travel periods, even Monday, you've probably experienced a problem that we're trying to address. Traffic of the northbound off-ramp can exceed the ramp's storage capacity, causing queues to back up and sometimes onto the US 101 lane. This results in congestion and delays, and at times drivers using the shoulder to get to other routes. So SLOCOG has been working with the city of Paso and Caltrans to evaluate improvements. And we're now at an important part of the environmental process. And we want to bring this project back to the community before moving further into design. The improvement currently being studied would lengthen the off ramp. from uh 1200 feet and provide three new lanes on the ramp and a short 1300 foot auxiliary lane on northbound 101 and widen portions of the existing bridges so i do want to emphasize that this is a targeted project focused on addressing the northbound ramp only We're not looking at the whole interchange or other ramps in this particular time. So it's not intended to reconstruct or solve every operational project or problem at this interchange. So we'd really like everybody to join us on Thursday, October 8th here from 5.30 to 7. We'll start with a brief presentation, and then we'll move into more of an open house style format where people can look at the proposed improvements the environmental information and talk with the project team ask questions provide comments for more information you can see this flyer which i've left in the back by the door visit the slow cog website slowcog.org and we really want to hear from paso as a community and move to the next stages of this project and thank you so much for hostings

This was the off-ramp northbound 101 at 46 East, correct? Yes. I don't think you mentioned 46 East.

Oh, is that? 46 East. Yeah, the 46 East. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, that's Thursday, October 8th, 530 in this room.

All right.

Welcome. Testing. Hello.

Mm-hmm.

It has come to my attention, first of all, greetings. Thank you for all the work that you do because I know it's work, so thank you. It has come to my attention, a group of us that could not all be here tonight, that a sitting council member, Steve Gregory, removed Franco for Bayer signs. He was confronted, he acknowledged, and he informed Dr. Warren Franco where he could find them, and I believe they were in the dump. Frankly, we're all kind of, no pun intended, we are appalled to hear this. It just goes to character, number one. Number two, it also goes to the character where you were reading, where you were living half-time in Montana and half-time here, and still went for office. It just leads to think What shenanigans may have been concocted because Britain is heavily involved with the spaceport, which I'm not saying is good or bad, personally. I think it's gonna come and I think it's gonna be good. But what shenanigans have been going on in the back to really, how badly you want Britain for mayor. I ask you, will you publicly accept responsibility and apologize for Ms. Franklin? She's decided to take the high road and there will not be a police report filed. I ask you, will you take the high road? Will you apologize? Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah. Anyone online?

No, sir.

Thank you, Melissa. Councillor McGregor?

Yes. I'd like to address the comments of the previous speaker. I spoke to Dr. Frankel twice, once on site when I was putting up a sign for Bill Britton on Creston and Niblick Road, and he came up to me and accused me of taking faith signs down I said I've never touched anybody's signs ever and as a matter of fact when I was standing there putting up the sign one of faith signs was next to me next to the post where I was erecting it then Dr. Frankel called me again and we had a nice conversation about it and he misunderstood me I did not remove any of Faith's signs. Some of Faith's signs were in the public right-of-way in the City of Paso Robles, and the staff removed those, not me. I've never touched a sign for anybody ever, and I've run for office now three times, and that is a false statement you made. And you can get Dr. Frankel on the phone right now. We've talked to Dan Dow. I've talked to Dr. Frankel. And he understood clearly what really happened. And everything was settled. I did not touch anything that belonged to Faith Frankel or any other candidate ever in my life here in Paso Robles. I know it's against the law. So I'd like to make that statement. So if you'd like to apologize, you can. Thank you.

Thank you for your statement.

Ma'am, you... Thank you, ma'am. You had your time. Thank you. It's very important that every candidate knows the rules and regulations for putting signs up in the city. We've all been there and all done that. Thank you. I think we're finished then, of course, with public comment. We'll go ahead then and move on to agenda items to be deferred. Mr. Huot.

Mayor, no items for deferral this evening.

Thank you. Consent items, we have, looks like, I didn't get the total number, 13 that I see on calendar. And I'm going to go ahead and read that. Then we'll have Mr. Huot, if you would, go ahead and give us the overview of what's on consent for tonight.

yes thank you mayor as you mentioned 13 items on the consent calendar the first is the approval of your minutes from the september 1st 2026 regular city council meeting item 2 is the approval of various advisory body minutes this includes several airport commission meeting minutes from the april 25th august 22nd september 24th february 2000 february 27th of 2025 and then april of 23rd of 2026 our youth commission meeting minutes from august 5th of this year item number three is the amendment to the conflict of interest code for the city as pursuant to state law this updates that conflict code to address various position changes and other miscellaneous updates item number four is the receipt of the warrant registers since we last met the city has made around five million dollars in payments Those that exceed $100,000 are as follows. Payment to United Field Service Corporation. This is for the Golden Hill Water Tank Recoding Project out of the water fund in the amount of $287,850. Next is a payment to Visit Slocal for the June 20, June 2026 Tourism Assessment District. This is a pass-through payment. in the amount of $131,713.49. Next is a payment to visit, or excuse me, to travel Paso. Similarly for the June 2026 assessment for the Tourism Improvement District in the city in the amount of $174,734.87. Next is a payment to the State Water Resources Control Board. This is related to a low-interest revolving loan fund that was helping fund some of our recycled water work in the amount of $2,711,857.71. Next is a payment to Best Best and Krieger for June attorney's fees in the amount of $138,068.40. Next payment is to USA Bank. for the 2019 water revenue bonds. This comes out of the water fund in the amount of $333,791.91. And then finally, a payment to USA Bank. This is related to a CFD payment. This is, again, a pass-through payment from property owner assessments in the amount of $283,341.09. Moving on, item number five is the receipt of the treasurer's report for June 2026. And each year, state law allows the delegation of authority for certain investments that are being made on behalf of the city. a reoccurring item for you to delegate that investment authority to the city treasurer to invest certain funds of the city pursuant to the city council approved investment policy item number six is the receipt of the treasurer's report for july of 2026 item number seven is the second reading related to a special, a levy of special taxes within community facility district number 26-1, improvement areas one and two. That was approved at your last meeting. Item number eight, again, another annual requirement, which is a report from our police department on certain military equipment. use and and equipment purchases and this is again related to state law and local ordinance and so those items are outlined in that in that staff report in that resolution item number nine is the approval of a resolution that awards a contract to greg drilling and this is related to a paso robles landfill groundwater groundwater monitoring well project It's also a professional services agreement with Cleve Harris Geologist for construction phasing of that work. Item number 10 is the approval of an agreement with the Integrated Waste Management Authority or IWMA. uh to continue to operate the household hazardous waste collection facility this is a facility that's open to the public each weekend out of the city's landfill and offers an easy and convenient way to dispose of those hazardous wastes that do not belong in your black blue or green cans Item number 11 is the approval of a contract with Davis Spur, and this is related to biosolids stored beds rehabilitation at our wastewater treatment plant. Item number 12 is the purchase of a telescoping skid steer for the landscape division due to the, as part of our replacement schedule, excuse me. And then item number 13 is the acceptance of certain public improvements for the remaining portion of Airport Road and additional backbone improvements of Phase 1. This is for the Olsen-South Chandler project. And so Mayor, that concludes the summary of the consent calendar. We're happy to answer any questions. Very good. Thank you, Chris.

The consent calendar items are considered routine and do not normally require separate discussion. any member of the council or the public have specific questions, and once those are clarified before the item is discussed, we will get those answered before the vote is taken. Secondly, any member of the council that wants a full discussion on a particular item, that will cause the item to be pulled from consent and moved on down to the discussion items part of the agenda. I will now ask the council if they have any questions on consent 1 through 13. Councilman Bausch.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to ask Council's indulgence to table item P1, approval of the September 1 Council meeting minutes. until date certain, October 6th. I need a chance to go back and review the video. It just recently come to my attention that there might be something amiss on the minutes, but I didn't have time to do it. So I'll bring that back if that's okay. I have a question on item P4, and I have a clarification on item P10.

Okay, so let's take the first one then. Let's get consensus if we have a need to have it removed and tabled until the next meeting for the minutes until October, date certain, October 6th. Anybody have a problem with that? Okay. Thank you.

On the receipt of the warrant register, I'd like to determine what the source of the funds are for the check to the State Water Resources Control Board. What fund did that come out of?

That came out of, I'm sorry if I missed that, that came out of the Wastewater Fund, so it's the Wastewater Enterprise Fund, not the General Fund.

Very good, thank you. And then on item 10 regarding the agreement with Integrated Waste Management Authority, that landfill will be receptive for all of citizens' e-waste as well, correct? Besides hazardous waste?

I believe so, but I'm going to let our staff respond. I do know that they accept e-waste, and so I'm not sure if that's part of the hazardous waste facility or just the... Landfill itself.

Yes, the landfill does accept e-waste and that facility does accept material from throughout the county from all of All county residents, but it does accept e-waste their location.

So all all county residents. Yes, and it is open every Saturday Since you ever let me ask you another question as I may So the agreement IWMA is for one dollar a year. Okay

no i'm sorry one dollar a month a month and it is actually an iwma program so it is it is for it is available for all residents throughout the county and is that i mean have we done a cost study on that i mean that seems like a really swinging deal for a dollar a month it's a service that we're providing yeah for not only our residents but also for the county because it is a facility we have several of these hhws

throughout the county. We happen to have one here. So that's the area. It's just a small area that we do.

I believe there's only four locations throughout the county. So they just closed the one near the coast. I believe there was one in Morro Bay previously that has recently been closed.

Is there any limitation to like residential use only or commercial enterprises? Correct. It is residential use only. Okay. Very good.

Businesses are charged.

Thank you very much.

Okay. Councilman Beall.

Just real quickly on P3, the conflict of interest, I know that most of that was to harmonize with the new staff titles, but I was hoping Mr. Huot could explain why some advisory bodies are subject to this conflict of interest and why others are not, and just talk us through what other board members or commissioners are involved with.

I'll do my best, then I might look to city clerk. But we identify some advisory bodies in the conflict of interest, I do believe, because of the decision-making authority. And so I believe the planning commission in and of itself is really above and beyond the conflict of interest code. But I believe it's the housing authority and the, remind me of the other one, please.

Housing authority, arts and culture, and I believe there's one other one.

Airport commission, I believe.

Airport commission, yes, thanks. And then planning commission is required statutorily, so they actually do it through the e-disclosure system with the FPPC just like council does.

And so maybe explain also to the public why certain advisory bodies wouldn't be subject to it. like parks or art?

It really has to do with the decision-making authority of the body itself and whether or not they have financial decision-making authority. So the ones that don't have financial decision-making authority are not required to do the conflict of interest reporting with the Form 700. All right.

Any other questions from council? Then we'll open up to public. Anybody have any question on calendar consent, please?

Yes, Linda George, 3126 Spring Street. I have a general question on the consent calendar, number 8 and number 11.

Wait, is that the right one?

Number 10. Should I just tell you the questions now? Yeah, ask your question. Okay, great. So the first question is, is there a dollar amount for the consent calendar when we get into these $130,000, $200,000 monies? You know, we just kind of bowl over these, and some people have never seen or discussed. That's question number one. Number eight, I'm curious to know what the current military equipment that we have is. in the city and the number II the waste treatment one when I was told by one of the advocates that our waste treatment water plant has a leak and that They they showed me that the bottom area of the riverbed by the water treatment plant. They all have sores on their arms and The other side of the riverbed does not. He was supposed to come tonight, so I'm putting that in there. So my question about this is that my understanding is that the water treatment plant has had money in the past to fix and rehab the treatment plant. So is this going to continue trying to fix that? So my understanding is that we dump sewer into the riverbed. I don't know the legitimacy of that because I haven't had time to look it up. But if you do see the homeless, they all have sores on their body. So whether it's from hazardous living or whatever, but it's just on that side of the riverbed. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else on public? Questions? What calls public comment? Anyone online?

Yes, I do have a caller online. It is Jan Alvin.

Okay. Jan, can you hear us? Go ahead.

I can. Am I heard?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Okay, my question is about item 13. I'm a little confused by the recommendation and one particular phrase where it says authorizing administrative release of the associated performance and payment bonds. How do those bonds occur and what determines that we release them?

Okay, we'll get an answer for you then. Anything else, Jan?

Okay. No, thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else on line?

No, sir.

Okay, maybe we can get Dante to come on up real quick and we'll do an inverse order. I'll take Jan's first on item 13. Question was about bonds forgiveness.

Good evening council Dante Paganino interim city engineer. Yeah, so the answer to that one typically when a Developer goes and puts in infrastructure in the public right-of-way We take a bond a surety bond to make sure that that gets done So first as a performance bond and then there's a payment bond the payment bonds to guarantee that the workers get paid and materials get paid for performance bond is to make sure it gets done and So what happened here was back in 2025, a majority of the work was done. We released a portion of the bond. There was a couple cleanup items. Those items since have been completed. We've checked them. They're done. So now we're able to release the entirety of the bond that we've held to make sure it didn't happen.

Okay. Very good, Dante. Thank you. Next one we had, I think, a question on 11. And that was maybe, Chris, do you want to take a shot of that or get Chris up here?

Oh, OK. Yeah.

Casey, welcome. Question, it was about the Dave Spurr working at the treatment plant.

Yeah, good evening. Casey Shepherd, wastewater manager. So we discharge our treated wastewater to the Salinas River. That does meet all state regulatory requirements under our NPDES permit. We've actually, the city, we have invested as a community over nearly $70 million in wastewater treatment plant upgrades over the last 10 years or so. So very high quality tertiary treated water that meets all regulatory standards.

Okay. Thank you, Casey. And then the other one was Caleb, I believe. Military equipment? Welcome, Caleb.

Good evening. Good evening. I believe the question was, what military equipment does the police department have? The police department has a variety of things that are listed in that are defined as military equipment. Primarily, if you look at the attachment, what those are listed as are drones, are military equipment, are 40 millimeter launchers, which are a less lethal weapon that we would use for diffused situations, are listed as military equipment. We also have different types of distraction devices that are listed under that and several different types of firearms that are listed. Each of those are listed into the report and also pepper ball. Mainly all those items are listed by the government code section as defined in what you have to list. And so we keep that list updated annually. So that's what this report is for.

Okay. Very good. Thank you, Caleb. Okay, I think we've pretty much covered all the questions, and so we have pulled item one, so it looks like we have two through 13, looking for discussion and a direction.

Mayor Hammond? Yes. I move that we approve items two through 13 on the consent agenda, and that item one we're moving to City Council meeting. Second that motion.

Okay, we have a motion by Gregory, seconded by Strong, to approve items 2 through 13 on consent. Discussion? Okay, we'll call for the question, Melissa.

Councilmember Gregory?

Yes.

Councilmember Strong?

Yes.

Councilmember Bausch? Aye. Beal? Aye. And Mayor Hammond?

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Moving on, we'll open up public hearings. First up is approval for a resolution establishing city user fees for cannabis regulatory permit activities and services. Catherine Piotti.

All right. Good evening, Mayor Hammond and council members. My name is Catherine Piotti, and I'm the finance manager here at the city. So the purpose of tonight's meeting or agenda item, if I can get this to go, Thank you. All right, so the purpose of tonight's item is fairly straightforward, as it's simply to establish the fees necessary to administer and oversee the cannabis regulatory permit that was recently approved by city council. So the item is a follow-up item to council's action on August 18th, where council approved the cannabis regulatory permit and directed staff to return with the fees developed under option A, which was the hybrid services delivery model. This model, as you may remember, included city staff retaining the core administrative functions of the permitting process while engaging with a specialized consultant to provide that really cannabis regulatory expertise that we needed. As a quick reminder, the cannabis regulatory provides the city with an ongoing regulatory mechanism that allows the city to monitor the ownership, the operation, and the compliance of the individual cannabis businesses. The program addresses things such as security, record keeping, delivery vehicles and drivers, as well as inspections, renewals, transfers, and financial audits. The permit is not meant to be a one-time application, but rather an opportunity for city staff to have regular touchpoints with our various commercial cannabis businesses in order to foster collaboration as well as compliance through a variety of regulatory activities that require city staff as well as consultant resources. As you may also recall, under the hybrid model, city staff will remain the primary point of contact for our cannabis businesses, and final permitting decisions will remain with the city. City staff will handle the administrative side of things such as application intake, final permitting, as well as city inspection responsibilities. Our consultant, HDL, will supplement those efforts with their specialized cannabis regulatory expertise, including technical application review, background checks, site and security plan evaluations, compliance inspections, and the financial audit. This approach allows the city to retain control of the overall program while utilizing that specialized expertise when and where it's appropriate. As such, the proposed fees are as follows. So the initial cannabis regulatory permit application is set to or proposed to be $5,500. The annual permit renewal is set to be $4,600. The annual or tri-annual financial audit is $11,000. A permit transfer would be $5,500. And then appeals or revocation-based related activities would be charged on a time and materials basis. Additionally, background check costs would be charged directly to the applicant by the consultant as they depend on the number of owners and employees that would require those checks. And just for additional context, the fees that you are seeing this evening that are being proposed are the exact fees that we brought to council back on August 18th. So no changes have been made to these proposed fees between then and now. As a reminder on how the fees were calculated, the proposed fees were developed using a full cost recovery methodology. Staff considered the estimated level of effort for both city staff as well as the consultant to perform the various functions of the regulatory permit process. And again, the intent of these fees is not to generate additional revenue for the city, but rather to recover the reasonable cost for providing these services. That's an especially particularly important piece because the services being provided are attributable to the businesses being regulated as opposed to a general city service that could be subsidized by the general fund. As you may also recall from the August 18th City Council presentation, staff did review the comparable cannabis-related fees of our neighboring jurisdictions, and while our proposed fees were generally lower than our neighbors, the important piece to remember is that our neighboring jurisdictions often regulate a broader range of cannabis businesses, such as retail, storefronts, and cultivation, whereas our fees are strictly for non-storefront delivery businesses, which require a different scope of regulation. Also, just wanted to draw a little bit of attention to the fact that these fees being proposed this evening are not meant to replace any other fees, taxes, or regulatory requirements that are already in place and might apply to a cannabis business. These items could include applicable conditional use permit fees, building permit fees, as well as business license and cannabis business taxes. Those charges address separate services or requirements and are not intended to duplicate the regulatory services covered by the proposed fees. All right, so the proposed fees are regulatory in nature as opposed to development related and as such the 60-day waiting period that applies to certain development fees under the government code does not apply in this situation. So staff is therefore recommending that the fees become effective immediately upon City Council adoption. Going forward, the fees would be reviewed and adjusted annually using the consumer price index with the adjustment becoming effective each July 1st along with the majority of the city's other user fees. Now, because this is a new program, there is definitely a level of uncertainty around the actual volume and complexity of the applications, as well as getting the renewal process up and running. So staff will be periodically reviewing the program to make sure that the fees continue to cover the reasonable costs of providing these services. If the actual costs differ materially from the assumptions that we use to establish these fees, staff will return to City Council with recommended adjustments at that time. And again, just from a fiscal perspective, the city is not anticipating additional revenue in excess of the cost of providing these services. All right, so being that this item is required to be a public hearing, city has completed the required public noticing and cost information requirements. And with respect to CEQA, the city finds that this action is exempt under the Public Resources Code, which provides an exemption for the establishment or modification of charges by public agencies when the charges are established to cover operational expenses. So in conclusion, staff recommends that council approve Resolution 26-XXX, establishing the city user fees for cannabis regulatory activities and services, which would then establish the fees necessary to implement the cannabis regulatory permit previously approved by council in August using the hybrid service delivery model previously selected by council. And with that, that concludes the presentation. However, I am happy to answer any questions.

Very good. Thank you, Katherine. Questions? Councilman Bausch.

Thank you. Catherine, thank you very much. I think for including the cost of the annual review, two questions have come up. How, if for some reason federal regulations come into play that we're responsible and it increases the fee structure, would we wait until July 1st to implement those? Would we be able to implement those as effective? item back to council at any time and uh had people comment on the triennial audit uh can you review one more time i know you did at the last meeting why we moved from an annual to a triennial audit

So there is language within the regulatory permit that allows for the city to actually access the books or records at any time given proper notice. So we do have that mechanism already in place that we could utilize if we see some writing on the wall that looks like there might be something that we need to look into sooner than three years. And that's where our consultant will also come into play so that way they can give us a recommendation on whether or not we need to look into something as well so it's not subjective from the city's standpoint. Additionally, when we are reviewing our cannabis business taxes that we receive on an annual basis over a quarterly payment schedule by our cannabis businesses, we are not looking at very material dollars. And so in order to do a triennial audit at the cost of $11,000 when maybe a particular business is only remitting $20,000 in cannabis business tax or less, We looked at that material threshold to see if it made sense to put a business through that specific type of audit for those types of dollar amounts.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Catherine, I had a question too on the hybrid scope that we are adopting with the consultant. I noticed just for the first time it seems like there's some overlap. We're doing it, they're doing it. Is that either or or both?

Yes, there are some elements where both staff and the consultant are going to be working together on certain elements. Part of that is at the request of city staff to be able to learn the ins and outs of the cannabis regulatory businesses and the process to get our police department familiar with what our consultants are looking at from a state and federal level, as well as there's certain elements from a city standpoint that we would like to see that's maybe not

standard for the consultant as well so that way we're able to work together to cover all the bases yeah certainly there are experts in this field for sure okay any other questions from council okay i'll go ahead and open up into public uh open up the any questions for this welcome

Linda George, 3126. I just have one question. Has there been any people interested in already getting ready to sell? I know there was a golden apple and moms. Have they been noticed or do people just come to us and say, hey, we want to sell? And just amazing job, guys. I'm very impressed.

Any other questions? Okay. Anybody online?

Yes, sir. I have Megan Souza.

Okay. Megan, can you hear us? Go ahead.

All right. Good evening, council members. I'm Megan Souza. I'm the owner and operator of Megan's Organic Market Cannabis Retail Company. And I'm just calling in to say that I'm grateful to staff for the time and thought that was put into this resolution. And I support the resolution.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

No, sir.

OK, Catherine, there was a question. Do you want to try on?

Yeah, so staff has been fielding a few questions or interest from different businesses waiting for this to come through. So I believe Katie actually just responded to one, letting them know that come October 1st, this process should be ready. We're also in the process of updating our website with information as it becomes available. So hopefully we'll have a resource to be able to send out and notify people of. There's also, we've had... businesses that have existing business licenses. We've been trying to send them notification if we have their email addresses on file or things like that, notifying them of the items as they come to council as well.

Very good. Thank you. All right. I think we're done. We'll bring it back then to council for discussion and or action. Who would like to start? Recommendation is to approve Resolution 26XXX.

Mayor Hammond, I'd like to move that we approve 26XXX, establishing city user fees for cannabis regulatory activities and services based on the materials presented. Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Gregory, second by Beale. Discussion? Okay, we'll call for the question.

Councilmember Gregory?

Aye.

Council Member Beal? Aye. Council Member Bausch? Aye. Council Member Strong?

Aye.

Mayor Hammond?

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

Very good. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close public hearings and move on to discussion items. First up tonight, we have the adoption of a citywide traffic signal plan. And Leslie Frazier, you're going to have that for us?

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Leslie Frazier, Public Works Director, and tonight we are excited to bring the City's first comprehensive traffic signal master plan to Council this evening. The plan was prepared by GHD in 2025. The plan was prepared by GHD, who was selected in 2025 through the City's competitive proposal process. Staff is recommending tonight that the City Council accept the Traffic Signal Master Plan and adopt it as our long range guide to manage, improve, and modernize our traffic signal system moving forward. So what is the master plan and why is it needed? There are several bullet points on the PowerPoint slide, but in summary, the city's traffic signal system is comprised of 29 signals, and those have largely been built out one intersection at a time over several decades. And as Paso has grown, we need to move from individual intersection improvements to a more coordinated traffic signal strategy through our corridors. The Traffic Signal Master Plan is the roadmap to accomplish that. So tonight, GHD Shelby is here to present the key findings and recommendations of our Traffic Signal Master Plan.

So the clicker, it's this button right here. Good evening, council members. Yes, I'm Shelby Naden of GHD, and I'll be presenting on the master plan. So first off, it's important to note that this wasn't developed in a vacuum. GHD worked with the city and stakeholders and reviewed all of the city's existing plans and guides and documents to make sure that the master plan was in alignment with the city's values. Most notably, the local roadway safety plan was consulted. So the traffic signal master plan advances recommendations that were developed as part of the LRSP and further them by developing projects and priorities and implementation strategies that reflect those original findings. And we have some examples. So for example, in the local roadway safety plan, Things such as signal timing deficiencies and a need for coordination were identified. So in the master plan, there are specific projects that address signal timing issues and coordination improvements. Also, pedestrian safety concerns were highlighted in the LRSP. So in the master plan, specific improvements such as countdown heads, accessible pedestrian systems, and leading pedestrian intervals are included in projects and so on. So how we put the plan together, we started with an evaluation of the existing system. There's an existing conditions report that was done, which included the inventory of the signal equipment. And we also started off by forming a stakeholder group with GHD, the city and other stakeholders like the emergency services department. And we also reviewed the city's plans and guides and documents to make sure we were in alignment. And the first part of developing the master plan was to create the visions, goals and objectives, which again is just to make sure that the master plan is in alignment with previous plans and also the city's vision for moving forward. The meat of the plan, the first part was to create a concept of operations, which is basically how the system will function. So I'm gonna discuss that next slide. And then from that, we created a phase implementation plan outlining the specific projects. I'll discuss that a little more too. And then the plan ended with developing an operations and maintenance plan to outline basically just operations and maintaining the system moving forward. So the concept of operations, like I said, is basically how the system functions in both short-term, mid-term, and long-term. And for this plan, we had goals for a modern connected system. So the main goals were to improve safety, reduce delay, support multimodal transportation, support emergency response, and also have efficient and cost-effective operations and maintenance in the future. And then the implementation plan was how do you carry out those goals? So we split the projects up into immediate, which is within the next year, and then moving on to short-term within the next couple years, and then mid-term, two to five years, and long-term would be five to 10 years plus. So in the immediate term, it's focused on optimizing what you have today. So some of the immediate projects would be doing a signal timing audit across the whole city, and then doing signal coordination on some key corridors. And then short-term would be getting more into equipment upgrades and infrastructure, potentially updating controllers, cabinets, and then looking into staffing, potentially having a signal technician on staff. And then mid-term, starting to kind of expand connectivity, looking at implementation of... DIFFERENT COMMUNICATIONS SUCH AS WIRELESS AND THEN ALSO EXPANDING THE EXISTING LICENSE PLATE READER NETWORK AND THEN ALSO THE CCTV EITHER IMPLEMENTING OR EXPANDING IF THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN IMPLEMENTED. AND THEN LONG TERM IS REALLY THE FUTURE TRAFFIC SYSTEM. SO LOOKING AT THE BUILD OUT OF FIBER OPTIC NETWORK, LOOKING INTO ADVANCED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND THEN EVEN POTENTIALLY HAVING A TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT CENTER. So we also identified grant opportunities for these projects. And we listed some of the programs that could be potential sources of funding. So the biggest one is probably the Highway Safety Improvement Program. That's safety projects that benefit all users. You must have LRSP or equivalent to apply for those funds. And there are several, well, there's many projects in the master plan that would qualify for those funds. There's also the active transportation program, which focuses on increasing walking and biking and enhancing safety for non-motorized users, but that could be a good funding source as well. There's also Safe Streets and Roads for All, which is split into planning and implementation grants. So the planning side of things, you could get funding for comprehensive safety action plans or road audits or funding to enhance the existing LRSP. And then on the construction side of things, you could get funding to actually implement those projects. There's also office of traffic safety grants, which are usually utilized by emergency services. Police departments will apply for funds from that program frequently. And there's also the build grant, which is generally just focused on transportation projects and other miscellaneous road projects. So I'm going to hand it back over to Leslie to discuss the priority projects.

You want me to do this one?

all right I didn't know I was doing this one um so this is a list of priority projects for the uh immediate term these are the the projects that are going to have the most bang for the buck so for recommended systemic safety improvements and systemic is improvements that can be applied widespread throughout the city so not just one location you can apply it to multiple locations with the same characteristics so updating signal timing is something you you could do to every single intersection. Also upgrading a loop detection intersections to video detection could be a good initial project. It's just more reliable than the loops. And it's easier to make changes to the detection if you have changes to your intersection geometry. It's just easier to update if you have video. And then we also had some recommended pedestrian safety improvements. One of the easier ones would be installing pedestrian countdown signal heads. That would be a quick and easy one to do. Also implementing leading pedestrian intervals, which is basically where the pedestrians get a few seconds head start before the vehicles are allowed to go. And then also correcting pedestrian push button deficiencies just around the city.

Okay, now Leslie. Yeah, to summarize the recommendations, and thank you, Shelby. for the presentation. As I mentioned, the goal tonight would be to accept the traffic signal master plan and adopt the plan as our long range guide moving forward for our traffic signal system. Also to direct staff to begin implementing some of our immediate needs. And then the last bullet point, we've provided a rough order of magnitude construction cost. So that would cover everything that's in the plan, going from immediate need, short-term, mid-term, and long-term. The estimate in the plan is about $16.5 million. But to be clear, tonight we're not requesting funds, we're not requesting budget, we're not requesting an allocation. this plan does not even commit the city to implementing every single improvement identified what the rough order of magnitude cost does is it allows staff to have the information that we need to pursue grant funding it supports our grant applications it also helps staff to prioritize the work as well So the full recommendation tonight is to approve resolution 26XXX, receiving the report and adopting the citywide traffic signal master plan as the city's long range guide for the operation, maintenance, coordination and modernization of the city's traffic signal system and to direct staff to implement the recommendations of the plan in phases as funding and resources become available. And we are available for questions.

great thank you leslie okay we'll open up then to council uh for questions first who would like to start pro tim gregory yeah um leslie um i thought i might be mistaken but when we approved the niblick improvement plan i thought that included the timing on the signals for niblick road yeah

so niblick road would be timed just that intersection to the mutcd standards so it it wouldn't include timing of all the signals through the corridor just the timing of that particular signal at the river road at niblick and south river road and then also at niblick and creston

So those two signals are timed together?

Yeah. Any signal work will be timed to MUTCD standards to bring that in compliance.

And may I ask a question? Why is the cost of that so high? Is that because you have to get fiber optics to each light?

Well, there's timing the signal to MUTCD standards, which is an immediate need for our citywide and our signals that we can move forward with. But then there's corridor timing. And corridor timing needs to be connected by fiber optics so the signals can communicate. And that is more of a longer range goal.

It's not available by Wi-Fi? What was that? Wouldn't it be available by Wi-Fi instead of fiber?

Yeah, so fiber optic is the most reliable form of connectivity, but at the most basic level, what we could do and what was recommended in the master plan for some of the primary corridors was to install GPS clocks at each intersection, and then they each have the exact same time. So when you do the signal coordination and the signal, the intersections are offset from each other, they will stay coordinated then they will not fall out of coordination. And then moving on from there, you could do a wireless option and we discussed that in the plan as well. And we did select a primary corridor for that to use as kind of like a, preliminary implementation for testing it out I think it was 13th Street 13th Street but there are also there there can be issues with that not issues but you then you have an ongoing monthly fee for basically Wi-Fi for each intersection so there there are different methods but the GPS clocks is the simplest and then fiber optic is the most reliable long-term solution thank you

And then just to follow up on that, I believe in our traffic signal master plan, GHD recommends we start with the simplest form now and then move to fiber in the future.

So what we're saying, though, is that although we are going to take care of the signalization at the two intersections with the major arterials, in between it's going to be a matter of demand because there are some times when more people are going to go to the shopping center on the left, other times more people are going to go to the shopping center on the right. And so that's to respond to that demand, I assume.

So, yes, with the private development, when they time Niblick and South River Road, it will be timed with a.m. and p.m. peak hours, which is what you're describing, the peak volumes. That will be incorporated into that individual intersection timing.

Very good. Thank you.

Councilman Beller.

So just to follow up on that, the GPS clock, we're able to signal or to coordinate not only peak times at shopping centers, but let's talk about our school traffic hours. I read that in the report that we have some ability to control timing to try to get coordination with our school districts. Explain maybe a little bit more on how that might work

So if corridors are timed, they can be timed for a.m. and p.m. peak hours. So that would be your school drop-off and pick-up times. And we can also time them for when school's in session versus when they're not in session. So winter and summer, we can accommodate that. But keep in mind with the GPS clock, It's a static timing, meaning you set it once, you put everything on a clock, and that's what it is. It doesn't have flexibility to adjust other than how it's set. A more advanced system would be once we have fiber connection, we could have what I call it. This is not a technical term, but I was going to say like a smart signal. It can adjust in real time.

Mm-hmm.

And that's when the big dollars start to come in. We have a traffic controller. We have someone who's actually physically monitoring that system and adjusting those.

Yeah, the immediate need, we can go with the GPS clock, which is a much more reasonable price. We can time through corridors, but it's a static timing, meaning it's set, it's established, and the signal will always use that pattern. The fiber optic system is much, much more expensive, but it's a smarter signal. It can adjust in real time.

Yeah, Leslie, I think, oh, Councilman Bill, go ahead.

Leslie, thank you very much. And I was very excited to see this on the agenda. I never know I'd be so excited about a master signal plan. But I think, and you can help sort of explain this, we have a few different things going on here because we have all of these independent intersections. that have all different types of equipment. We have both kind of an equipment issue and a technology issue in terms of where we're deficient and what's standing between where we are now and where we would like to be. And I think it's important for people to remember When we talk about timing, just like you said, like the first step of that would be static, where we want to get to is adaptive, but we're a ways away from that because we have things that we need to fix in the meantime to build up to that.

So if you could just speak about that. And Shelby can speak a little bit more to it, but to summarize, There isn't just a quick fix that we can do right away. Even with corridor timing, we have to have certain controllers upgraded. And GHD has done a very good job making sure through their recommendations that every step of the way, whether it's short-term, mid-term, or long-term, they're making equipment upgrade recommendations at the same time that they're making signal timing recommendations. They're always making sure that our equipment can support the timing that we need.

Also just to add to that, signal timing in and of itself, too, usually is recommended to be done every three to five years. So it doesn't last a super long time. Like with the life of this plan being a 10 year plus, there's kind of an assumption that the signal timing would be redone at least two or three times during the life of the plan. So it's an ongoing process. But there is a lot you can do with what you do have. And like Leslie said, The equipment recommendations are, I don't think there's too many of them. Your system as it is is not bad, it's pretty good. It's just that some of those operational improvements being implemented would make a really big difference and then just staying up on those improvements also as well. The long-term plan getting to that 10-year plus is kind of the pie in the sky a little bit with if the whole city was connected by fiber optic and you had all the signals were connected to a traffic management center, whether it was a virtual or like an office at City Hall, then you could have an advanced traffic management system in place, and that's kind of what Leslie was talking about, where you could alter the signal timing immediately. In a situation like that, you wouldn't have to go out in the field, open up the cabinet, and make adjustments to the signal timing. You could do it from a computer somewhere. And that is very nice. But in the meantime, there are a lot of good improvements that can be done before you get there, for sure.

Okay, Leslie, I have some questions. I know that Niblick, essentially, you know, I know that we have fiber, or not fiber, but we have the conduit in there. We've been looking for this for many years to tie in that artery from basically Spring Street all the way over to Creston. That's, to me, it sounds like low-hanging fruit that we might be able to get that artery moving faster. And there's just going to be, I think, the problem as all these homes come on board on the east side, people are going to have throughput issues at certain times. So in this plan that we have, $16 million set up, is there certain projects we might want to attack quicker and faster to get traffic moving as the easiest, so to speak, or what's the plan?

So with the GPS clocks, we can go ahead and time that signal corridor now. And I even believe that that corridor could be selected as a near-term improvement that we could do as part of the city council goal to start implementing part of the traffic signal master plan. So we would be looking at the Niblick corridor as one of the immediate needs. As far as connecting it with fiber, that would be more long-term.

Well, I think we already have a conduit in there. As I remember, Ditas told me we had that. It's just a matter of getting it done. Yeah.

I think part of that, though, is that we need to make sure that we've got the controllers in place that could support that system we would also need to select which system which also comes at a price of you know per intersection that will that were charged so uh I know Shelby you might want to add what all might be more involved with the real-time idea

There was also another issue that was brought up when we did the existing conditions report. The sub-consultant that went out and did basically the inventory noted in the report that quite a bit of the conduit was over full. So even though the conduit is there, there's not enough space to pull additional fiber optic for the purpose of connecting the signals. So even though there is quite a lot of conduit existing, a lot of it is not sufficient for connecting the signals. You wouldn't be able to just go out and put additional fiber optic in that same conduit. So there could have to be a project to install additional conduit or upsize.

Okay. Well, yeah, fiber is awful small. I know that to get just a little bit of control through it. But, yeah, Chris Bausch, go ahead.

to that point i looking at the map i think it's attachment 2.1 there's a lot more conduit than that i realized i thought it was all city but a lot of its county as well you have a lot of proposed conduit that still has to be installed and where there is uh conduit now um As you say, it's already oversubscribed, so you'd have to put new content. That's more of a microtrenching operation more than digging up major construction. Have you seen other cities, how they handle that? Or are we looking at major construction when we go to do that?

I know that whenever Ditas has road projects, she's actively putting in conduit right now along Creston Road. She's got a long stretch in there right now.

She's doing that now, but if we happen to do something in the future, we're doing a lot of work right now to the roads. I'm sure that there's conduit capacity being placed in the roads that are being worked on now where it's applicable. But if we had to go back and add additional capacity My question is, could we do that with micro-trenching, or do we have to do that with full-on ripping up the roads and starting over?

Yeah, we would need to evaluate case by case. There may even be an opportunity to use overhead as well, which is the cheapest option. Oh, interesting.

OK.

Thank you. A quick question maybe for Chris. You know, this is a $16 million project over 10 years, roughly is what the plan is. And clearly, when we put a price tag on it, we can actually start demanding basically when projects are being built that they're going to pay for part of this share basically with their impacts is that how are we going to fund this well obviously i don't remember seeing any kind of a line item in our budget which is already set for two years so what's the thought yes very good question so i just want to back up real quick and you know for for many years city staff and the council have been asking questions about

how can we improve traffic flow? And one of those ways is to add more volume, which becomes very expensive in terms of widening streets and talking about existing right-of-way, widening existing right-of-way that really doesn't exist without taking out homes landscape that sort of thing and so we we went down this path because we felt there was a real opportunity to look at our existing traffic signals and find better ways to create more throughput in terms of funding there are priority corridors listed in the plan there are priority recommendations as miss Frazier mentioned these are funding dependent and we are going to be very aggressive by getting looking at grant funding and this plan would help us do that but beyond that we are going to have to prioritize both corridors and improvements in a way that fits within the overall city budget these are general fund dollar capital dollars there is no real dedicated special fund for this type of work but one of the things we recognize is by not articulating and planning for the future, we are going to continue to try to work with a system and disparate systems that will continue to fail and continue to become more obsolete. And while that's not a direct answer to your question, my answer to that would be is We are going to prioritize these projects. You will see dollar allocations as funding becomes available. We will have mid-year opportunities to review available funding should it exist. We are entering into the Niblick corridor project, the ATP project that's coming up. That includes roadway work that there may be an opportunity to incorporate outside of the grant, but while that work is happening, work on Niplik Road. So it will be a fluid process, but this, from my perspective, sets the standard and the vision in which now we are going to tackle our traffic signal program. And as to new signals that come on board for future development, I would expect that from this document, we will now have a set standard that new developers would have to meet, which will be compliant with our future anticipated needs for better traffic signal coordination. So it will be fluid, but this gives us the real foundation to attack our traffic system.

I think another thing, too, just the fact that we're starting to see some roundabouts come on. I think the public could have really realized that roundabouts actually do keep traffic moving faster than a light sometimes.

They do, and I'll add something, too, to that, is that they actually, in most cases, require less asphalt and hard surfaces, whereas a traffic signal you need... You know, two or three lanes in all the different turning movements. Roundabout, you typically have one lane going into the roundabout, one going out. And the volume is equal or greater than in a lot of cases. That's Leslie and others teaching me traffic engine 101.

Traffic 101. OK. That's all my questions. Any others from council? We'll open up to public. Anybody having a question on this, please come forward.

I always have questions and follow-up. Linda George, 312 Spring Street. Okay, so if I'm understanding, it's 29 signals, $60 million for 29 signals, and does that include the radar speed signs and whoever put it by Uptown Park? I'd be happy to take you out to dinner. It is wonderful to see that 25 mile per hour radar sign right in front of that church. I came barreling down and I was, okay, these things make me excited. I'm gonna go sit down now.

That's my question.

Hello, Jeff Carr, Paso Robles. Very happy to see this kind of a plan in place. I've been talking about this with certain individuals in the city for the last couple of years, primarily with respect to pedestrian movement. I've sent emails before and actually had to come to council once about that. Did get some improvement there. I would have hoped to have seen some public workshop on this before this point. If there was one, I'm sorry I missed it. Because I, and I know everybody I talk to in the town, has an opinion about traffic. And they got some real life experience about problems with the traffic that I think would have been good to talk about. I hope going forward that we get a little more detail before we start buying stuff. Let's get it out to see how the public thinks about these things. Like I said, the leading pedestrian intervals, I'm glad they defined that finally. It wasn't in the report. I think is a great advantage. I mean, I get almost hit on a daily basis crossing Spring Street because people are looking at the light. They're not looking at me. They got this big A pillar in the front of their, on their cars. They can't see me in the, they don't even look, but they can't see me easily. So if I can get a head start, get in the intersection first, that's, I think that helps. And those are all good things and i'm very happy to see this one question i have though is that license plate readers is in here and it's not really defined why they're in there and i and it's even a priority for the first one to two years so i think maybe the first step in the plan would be why what i mean my little engineer's brain can think of all kinds of things to do with them but it's not all good So I wish they would have defined what that is, what you're going to do with these license plate readers, and how it became a priority. I'm completely baffled because I could think of a lot more things to do. But yes, I agree with this 100%. In addition to being a pedestrian, I ride a motorcycle around town, and it's amazing how many of these intersections do not detect a motorcycle. Even Golden Hill across Niblick, I don't get detected. I have to go all the way around or wait for a car to come up to get across Niblick. I'm not Niblick. 46 at Golden Hill. 46 at Golden Hill. So that needs a lot of work. And I've made comments in the past about we have an economy here that's so built on sales tax that people need to get around. If you want us to stay in town and buy stuff, don't make it hard for us to get around town. Because I have said in the past sometimes, and we've got a new Trader Joe's here up at Lowe's, but I live in the southwest part of the city. It's a little farther for me to get on the 101, go to Trader Joe's, In Templeton, but man, it's a much nicer ride and drive. I mean, if I have to go up to that low shopping center from the southwest part of town, it's a battle. So if you're going to count on my loyalty to the city to pay you Cesar Hill stags, well, it's only going to go so far. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Joe. Anyone else? Anyone in line? Melissa?

No, sir.

Okay. There was a question about... From Jeff, I don't know if you want to try and answer that or not about the card readers or the place to place readers.

Yeah, so as we were developing the traffic signal master plan, we wanted to make sure that all of our city stakeholders and internal stakeholders, and that includes emergency services and security, that they were incorporated in the plan as well.

Okay, very good. Okay, bring it back to council for direction and or action.

Mr. Gregory. I've got more questions for you.

Sure.

So is the goal, if we approve this action, it doesn't spend money, it just puts the plan in place, correct?

That's correct.

And then your goal as an administrator is to find grant funding to help pay for this?

Yes, exactly. A small amount was allocated in the current adopted budget. And we hope to use that as like our local match funds for up and coming grants. So we already have an HSIP grant, cycle 13. The application's due November 2nd. So we are already working to put that application in place to see if there's anything from the traffic signal master plan that we could apply for.

And then as a secondary question, so eventually it will be tied into the Niblick Corridor as well?

Exactly. And Niblick Corridor is identified as one of the high-priority corridors through there.

Very good. Thank you.

Questions out there? Chris Bowser.

Leslie, Mr. Carr made a good point about public workshops. We've talked a little bit about this in previous meetings. Is there any opportunity for the public to weigh in on some of this?

You know, much of the plan is our equipment inventory and upgrading our signal equipment or intersection improvements, refreshing our crosswalk striping, our interconnectivity. Sure. I believe that GHD, you know, they've put great exhibits together that had our priority corridors in there just based off of our traffic counts and our traffic volumes.

I think council would agree that, I mean, if the opportunity presents itself in the future, and I certainly understand the justification for where we are today, not disagreeing with that, but if the opportunity presents itself in the future, that might be something to consider.

And I think, obviously, Leslie, you're going to be doing this to, you know, recognize standards of safety, right, that have to be met with traffic signals, right?

Exactly.

So it's not a whole lot of public input that can happen to a safety regulation, right?

Right.

All right.

Yeah. Much of it was, you know, crosswalks, leading pedestrian intervals, pedestrian heads for crossing, MUTCD standards and whatnot.

Yeah. very good okay if i may just real quick uh just to respond to uh just just a couple thoughts there one uh they showed earlier that the basis for a lot of this work was based i believe in the local road safety plan that was adopted by council which had a pretty significant amount of public input um and then the other thing i would mention too is we just happen to be starting to plan for next year's uh outreach programming including coffee with the city and some other outreach that we want to enhance so we will add this to the list to see if there's an opportunity to uh have further discussion and awareness of the work that we're doing behind the scenes on this and other traffic improvements great way to get it out okay looking forward direction our motion

Mr. Mayor, I recommend that we approve Resolution 26-XXX, receiving the report and adopting the Citywide Traffic Signal Master Plan as the City's long-range guide for the operation, maintenance, coordination, and modernization of the City's traffic signal system and direct staff to implement the recommendations of the plan in phases as funding and resources become available.

Second. Okay, motion by Beall, second by Bausch. Discussion? All right, Melissa, we'll call for the question.

Council Member Beal? Aye. Council Member Bausch? Aye. Council Member Gregory? Aye. Council Member Strong? Aye. Mayor Hammond?

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Good job.

All right, moving on. Discussion item number two, establishment of a standing committee for advisory body interviews. Melissa Martin, you have that for us.

Thank you, Mayor Hammond, the members of council. So the item that I'm bringing to you this evening is regarding the establishment of a standing committee for advisory body interviews. As you know, the city regularly conducts recruitments to fill vacancies on advisory bodies. With the addition of the Art and Culture Board earlier this year, the city now has 10 advisory bodies serving at the pleasure of council. There are 69 total members across those 10 bodies with staggered terms that require annual recruitments for each body. Over the last year, Council has conducted five special meetings to facilitate interviews for 76 applicants. Sorry. The regular annual recruitment for all of these bodies typically requires four to five special council meetings a year to hold interviews. And when unexpected vacancies occur, additional meetings are required as well. As you are all well aware of, scheduling these additional meetings is particularly challenging when trying to find alignment of an available time for all council member calendars. Senate Bill 707 took effect on July 1st, 2026, requiring, amongst other things, live stream two-way audiovisual broadcasting for all council meetings, including special meetings. Within San Luis Obispo County, Paso Robles is one of just two cities that, due to population size, are required to comply with SB 707. San Luis Obispo is the other city that is required to meet those mandates. However, they've already embraced a committee structure to handle their advisory body recruitments rather than holding special meetings and having the full council interview each applicant.

Next slide.

While the city is fully compliant with SB 707 and could hold advisory body interviews in a fully live stream meeting, there are other aspects to consider. Live streamed full council interviews can increase applicant anxiety and reduce the quality of dialogue in those interviews. As council has witnessed, applicants can and regularly do experience some amount of anxiety and nervousness in their interviews. Adding the layer of having the entire interview broadcast and recorded will likely add to that anxiety and could result in having less individuals apply to serve. Forming a standing committee would streamline recruitment, reduce dependency on full council scheduling, and create a more comfortable setting for applicants. This approach remains fully transparent. Standing committee meetings would be publicly noticed and open to the public for in-person attendance and public comment opportunity. The recommendations of the standing committee would be brought back to the full council at a regular meeting to allow council final decision making on all appointments to advisory bodies. Moving to a standing committee to manage advisory body interviews would allow for increased efficiency and fewer special council meetings, a less stressful interview environment for applicants, and would continue to provide transparency and accessibility to the public. Should the council decide not to form a standing committee to conduct these advisory body interviews, the advisory body interviews would continue to be conducted at a special meeting of the city council. However, the overall meeting structure would need to be modified to meet the full requirements of SB 707. Notably, all interview meetings would occur here in the Norris Room and in the future in council chamber once we move back to that location. The meetings would need to be live streamed, allow for two-way communication with members of the public, and would be recorded for future viewing on the city's YouTube platform. meeting those requirements would necessitate having additional city staff participate in each meeting to provide remote call screening i.t support presentation documents and meeting operations support additionally we may need to consider having staff from pd available to provide the same standard of meeting support that we have at all other city council meetings All interviews would be conducted from the dais with interviewees set up at the front and center of the room just in front of the dais. Additional interviewees would need to wait in a secure location outside of the room, ensuring that they're not listening in on prior applicants' interviews. This would also necessitate additional staff to be present in that location. With that, staff's recommendation is to establish an advisory body standing committee of two council members and to allow for the annual reassessment of the standing committee membership to be handled through the council liaison appointment process.

And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Melissa. Okay, we'll start with council.

Questions?

Councilman Strong?

It's not a question. It's just that I'm categorically opposed to this particular motion. And that's because each council member brings their own perspective to things. Those perspectives are very important in determining the members of our various committees. And although it's cumbersome, and although it requires a lot of extra work, it's still a process that guarantees that the full public of the entire city is represented in those elections. Whereas if only two members are there, it's only that segment of the city that is actually represented. And this city, this council is about to undergo major changes in membership. And that means major changes in the individual perspectives of those members. And I think it's important that all of those members have their own perspectives expressed in that process. And that's why I know it's extra work, and I know it's cumbersome, but I think that the public's best interests are served by not approving this resolution.

So this was questions only. Is there a way we can maybe get a question out of all that? I think what you're probably asking is really, how much time does it really take? I mean, we've been doing it for so many years. And we do have a certain number of bodies, of course, that we have to go through all the time. That's my question. Really, how much staff time is it really going to save?

From the standpoint of saving staff time from my perspective, it's not going to save me any time. I'm going to do the same amount of work. I'm actually going to do a little additional work if we have a standing committee in order to bring the item back to council at the regular meeting. However, the addition of all the other players in the game that would need to be present to support a full council meeting with the live streaming, having security room, all of those different things, that's where you're going to push into a different area of required support and work by staff that don't typically to this point have not needed to participate in these meetings got it okay yeah melissa um my question is uh have you guys considered um

I'll state my opinion after a public comment, but have you considered doing, condensing it maybe down to two meetings and maybe having it on a Saturday? Because I think on a Saturday morning or whatever we do, I think we could get through half, two Saturdays each Saturday, twice a year. And that's the question I had. Have you guys talked about that?

So I believe in the past, some of the advisory body interviews for community services were handled on Saturdays. That is certainly something to consider. However, it would mean realigning all of the advisory body's recruitments to specific dates in the year. Right now, they all recruit at the same time every year. Their terms go to a specific time based on those. So it would be challenging to realign everything. It would take a little bit of time in updating all of the advisory body bylaws. But it's not impossible.

Thank you. Councilman Balch.

Thank you. Along those same lines, I was going to make a suggestion or ask a question. If we couldn't do this on a quarterly basis, twice a year works as well, but if we just schedule that this is going to be one of these dates that we meet on, and maybe it works out three times a year, But if we know that in advance what that is and if there's a vacancy on an advisory body until that next meeting, so be it. I have a similar observation that Councilmember Strong has in that some of us that sit on these committees develop a feel for what those advisory bodies are looking for. And I think that internal perspective is very helpful. And by limiting to just two, we're going to lose that. So if we can figure out a better methodology time-wise, date-wise, and know that we're scheduled for that, that would eliminate your problem of us not being available.

Currently, I do try to schedule them out when we do calendaring at the end of the year for the whole year so we know when they're going to be. What has happened over the last few years, as you can all attest to, is we have begun to get more applications for each body so rather than being able to do for example three advisory bodies in one of these meetings to cover their recruitment it winds up that we have 20 applicants for one body and 10 for the other and 10 for the third and we split it into two meetings thereby having to find another meeting time or even two more meeting times that's been a challenge in more recent years with the uptick and people applying to serve which is wonderful

Well, and I think part of this conversation is that most of the work around advisory bodies is carried by the community services department. And for their own sort of streamlining and management of that, it helps to have that all sort of timed in a similar way so that the department as whole is onboarding, interviewing, training people on the same schedule. I think this is a really complicated situation. I don't have a question for you. I'll wait until we get to discussion. But I appreciate people wanting to kind of streamline it, but part of it is organized around departments. And honestly, we had a very challenging, we had a lot of requirements on our interviewing responsibilities this year during that one cycle. And there were nights that we were interviewing over 20 people. Honestly, we couldn't do more than that well. So.

So here's my question, Melissa. And it's more centered to advisories rather than like the planning commission or airport commission, something like that. But with these advisories, when you have multiple 15 to 20 people applying, Is there a way that we can have the two designated liaisons pre-sort or give recommendations ahead of time to narrow the field down a little bit? Because again, they know the particular body that they're working with, that they could give a recommendation and then that could be done at a meeting where it's more streamlined for numbers of people that we would be interviewing.

So to make sure I'm understanding you, you're saying set up a standing committee just to do an application review and then push forward certain applications to limit a certain amount to going to full interviews? That's kind of what I'm throwing out.

In other words, we're getting, I know at that point you're already limiting public who wants to participate, but on the other hand, I see the point where we're getting so many applicants for so many little seats that it really does take a big process to get through them. But that's what we've always done. But I'm just saying, I'm throwing it out. Is there a way we can kind of streamline? Maybe we're still going to have, I'm basically looking for continuing the same way we are doing. And I know we're going to have to do it online. It's going to have to be streamed and all that. Is there a way we can narrow the number of applicants, I guess is what I'm trying to say, with the people who are on that advisory? Chris?

I think it's a great idea to streamline. This is a question for Ms. Laughlin and Chris, if you would. Is it legal to limit the number of applications that are going to have an application period And I think it's like two weeks right now. And we'll take the first 10 people that apply. And after that, the application period is closed. Is that unconstitutional? Is that advisable?

I'm just, let me back up here a little bit. That's kind of what they're asking us to do anyway, Chris. I think the liaison or this standing committee is going to already recommend a more narrow field. We're still getting down to two, John.

I have a problem with that. Oh, me too. I do. But if we limit the number of applicants, we accomplish several things. We know when we're going to apply. We eliminate having to schedule two meetings to interview 20 people. If we know that there's only 10 people that can be interviewed or whatever that number is, I'm just using 10, throwing it out there. We can better plan around that and we limit the interview process to five minutes or whatever time frame you use now.

that that's a defined amount of time great maybe council can you weigh in on something like that or do you have any ideas on how that would work

You know, I think to Councilman Biel's or Voucher's point, sorry, excuse me, we do already set some parameters on the application process, right? We have a timeframe to say you have to provide a timely application, you have to provide a complete application. So we do provide some parameters on who, you know, what will be considered to be an applicant, someone who gets their stuff in on time, it's complete, they're, you know, living in the community. So we have some parameters here. As far as limiting the number of applications, I think that's a more narrow request. I'm not sure if it serves the best interests of the community, potentially, because we're artificially narrowing our applicant pool to the first come, first serve. But at this moment, I can't think of any constitutional concerns that I would have with doing something like that. I would also look maybe to Melissa to see if the city clerk's office has gotten any feedback about this. or if you have any thoughts or concerns, because we have been getting an increased volume in the number of applicants over recent years.

I don't have any specific concerns with limiting that way or forming some kind of standing committee that would then review the applications ahead of time if it was allowable under the law. I have been working with a different attorney at BBK. Nick had provided some guidance in looking into doing this at all before I brought it to you all. So but this was the recommendation coming from that as well and looking because there were a few different options that I tried to look at to try to One of the options that I looked at and we were not able to do was to set up a standing committee with the two liaisons for each body that already participated in the body to have them do each one, but that would have required setting up standing committees for every different advisory body.

Kind of the piece of purpose.

Well, it would have been really not even more work, just really, really complicated for everybody to follow what was happening with it. So this was a way to kind of umbrella the whole process and have it be something that everyone understood what was gonna be happening. It would keep us from having to have those full meetings with everyone, but it would still allow the opportunity for council to change who the sitting members are annually. So it wouldn't necessarily limit in some of the ways that you live. brought up because at your reorg of the liaison assignments every December typically, you need to look at it and make updates, you could just start a rotation and say, it's mayor in district one, it's district two and district three, it's district four and district five and keep a rotation so you always knew where it was headed and it was never something that was only these two people get to do this.

Okay, let me let the public weigh in a little bit on it before we get back to us. So let's open it up to the public. Anybody have any ideas on this one? Please come forward.

Welcome.

Hi, thank you.

Your name?

I'm not sure what I want to say.

Your name?

Corrine Chuster. But I think a whole point is being missed here. We are public servants elected to serve the people, and yet we're kind of indirectly saying there's too much public involvement. There are too many, I hear a shake, I see a shaking. Again, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, but it just doesn't sit well with what you're trying to do. You're trying to limit interview time because it takes too much time. But is it not the goal to engage the public? Do you not want, well maybe you don't want more people here, I don't know. There's always talk about transparency and getting the public more involved. And why aren't they here? And I think there's just, overall, you're missing the point.

Anything further?

I don't know, I'm seeing there's more time, so I'm thinking.

Yeah, okay.

Take your time.

I mean, it's really, it's hard to come speak, honestly. I always get nervous no matter what, but it gets easier when you're up here.

I think we're on your side, but go ahead and continue.

Well, I just, you really need to put that at the forefront. I mean, yeah. Okay, I think you get it. Thank you.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Hi, Linda George Street, 12th Street.

Spring Street.

Unfortunately, yes, you can put a cap on applicants. You can do it whichever way you want. You could do it by qualifications, education. I think that limiting the applicants is probably not the way to go. I liked Melissa's idea about rotating you guys. I understand the conundrum. Everybody wants input to who's going to be on the commission. And I think if I'm understanding the state law that was passed is for the streamlining process. I don't know if it's for the two to be selected. I think the best thing to do is just go ahead and try it. I know that everybody wants input for who's going to be on the board. Maybe it's your uncle, your cousin, your sister. But I think that's what the intent of this law is, is to prevent that from happening. Well, that's how I see it. Because if you guys want to limit the applicants, I understand what Corrine's saying. At first when I heard that I thought to myself, well that's not fair because what if I'm number 49 and I really be on the committee? And I know that you guys went through this last year with a horrendous amount of people applying for the Youth Commission. I would hate to see 27 kids not be able to be interviewed because you put a cap. So I think the bottom line is that I would like to see it to stay the same way myself, but I think it's a good option to rotate maybe every commission, two different council people on each decision-making body. And remember, everybody that comes here serves at the pleasure of the council. That doesn't mean you need to keep them if they are not Living up to the Commission duties. I think that's where as always enforcement comes in a rule regulation things like that so I say just go ahead and try the two because for whatever reason the state legislature is just starting to Oh God, I forgot the word micromanage cities That's what I keep seeing coming out of the legislature. They want to streamline housing They want the homelessness is going to be streamlined through HCD ALL OF IT, THE DASHBOARD THAT CONNECTS TO THE STATE. I SAY TRY IT, AND I WOULDN'T LIMIT, BUT YOU CAN, IS WHAT I WANTED TO SAY.

THANK YOU.

Bob Simoni, Apostle Robles. So I'm trying to think of a possible solution. Do you really need to interview every single candidate? I mean, you could accept unlimited number of applications. Just like a job interview, people generally look through and they find the ones that are best qualified. Then they bring in those for an interview. So that would allow everybody to apply.

Anyone else? Anyone online?

No, sir.

OK.

Yeah, that's kind of how we do it when we pick our city manager, essentially. We have somebody interview ahead of time and screen. But let's go ahead and bring back council for discussion.

So I think I'll withdraw the limiting the number of applicants. That's not a good idea. Thinking in terms of the Youth Commission, I would hate to limit that and all the applicants. There's a lot of exuberance there and excitement. I would hate to curtail that, so I'll formally withdraw that.

there was a time when we didn't have very many applicants at all coming for some of the seats. So, yeah. Pro Tem Gregory.

Yeah, I'll agree with Councilman Bosch. I think we should not have any limits and I think it's, I'm going to kind of echo what Chris Bosch said in the beginning is we all have our connection to these committees, but I think we all bring something a little bit different to the process. So I'd rather work on some kind of a scheduling device so we can allow everybody who wants to apply to apply and maybe set up four Wednesdays a year where we do this or whatever we need to do to accommodate it. I think Part of the mission of the law is to get it streamlined so people can see it and be part of it. But I don't think it's in the law to reduce the number of people, or is that recommended?

The life?

The interviewers. Is it recommended to go down to two, or is that just a way to deal with it? I'm sorry.

Can you ask the question again?

I don't know that I thought of it. I think the spirit of the law is to get it streamlined so that we have public access. Right. Is it also to reduce the number of interviewers by just down to two or is that in the law?

I think you're addressing two separate things. One is if we do full council meetings, they have to be live streamed for the public to be able to view online and to be able to participate in that two-way communication as we allow here. with that the standing committee if we were to go to two people the standing committee allows us not to need to do a fully public meeting in the sense of meeting the live stream we would still be doing a public meeting it still would be transparent we would produce an agenda for it we would let all the applications go out the same way that they do currently we wouldn't be limiting the public's ability to have any access to information in any way shape or form all we would be doing is allowing a mechanism that would allow you to meet with just those two individuals, keep it as an in-person only meeting, and give everyone who's interviewing a little less anxiety over, oh, I'm doing this and it's being broadcast out to the world for replay later, and all of those kinds of things. Does that make sense with the differentiation there?

Okay. So I would recommend keeping it the way we do it now and get scheduled meetings.

Well, let's continue discussion then. So, Chris, you want to weigh in? Chris Beale.

This is a really interesting agenda item, actually. And what I'm hearing is that there are a couple of different issues. I see scheduling in the room where you can live stream with the five of us and others, that is really challenging. And we are blessed to have so many applicants coming to the process and wanting to be part of this. This is a wonderful challenge that we're finding ourselves in. On the other hand, we have this issue of having so many people to interview. And it is really a lot. And I know, you know, I would really, I think the conversations about having kind of a screening process by the time people get to the interview is valid. And it's not on the agenda right now. I would certainly have staff thought that that was an interesting thing to pursue. I would trust staff to come back to us for something. But my take on this would be to keep it as it is. We can revisit it in a year. I would certainly be open to coming up with a screening process to reduce the number of interviews that we have. But I agree. I think we all bring a little different perspective and that that's valuable when doing the selection.

So with our new dais that's going to happen here coming up, I mean, that's going to be a great facility. We're going to have a lot of capability in there. And I think personally, you know, I think if we keep it and try it the way we are with the new dais and new facility, new equipment, it's going to be all televised. It's going to be something that any public can weigh in on and listen to as we do it. So I think that's another opportunity, too, to try this as we have continued, you know, over the years. But scheduling, like I said, is going to be the key thing.

councilman straw yeah mr mayor and council i think really we have to make a decision how many citizens do we want to disenfranchise we shouldn't disenfranchise any citizen they should all have the opportunity if they want to participate in their government they should have that opportunity that doesn't mean that we don't find They don't have to meet certain criteria. I mean, when you get a driver's license, you have to meet certain criteria. When you get any kind of a license, you have to make certain criteria. So the criteria is the important thing. If the application is insufficient, if it doesn't meet the requirements, that's one thing. But other than that, you don't tell citizens, oh, we're going to have this number, and the rest of you aren't going to involve in government anymore. You can't do that. That's unconstitutional. I'm sorry. And no, this is not a bad idea, I'm sorry. I understand it's great for staff because it makes their job easier in some ways. But I don't think it's a good idea from the point of view of the public or from the point of view of the Constitution of the United States. Council Member Bausch.

I don't think anybody's talking about limiting the number of applicants anymore. We're beyond that. We moved past that. So I like Council Member Gregory's suggestion about scheduling three or four Wednesdays when we know we're going to have Youth Commission come up maybe it's Wednesday and Thursday that you schedule whatever time of the year that is because we know we're going to have or anticipate maybe Thursday's optional if we can get it all done on Wednesday great and everybody gets Thursday off I don't think that's going to happen but i think we know ahead of time that we have to have these dates certain like we do for council meetings we endeavor to be in town for council meetings and then we'll try to be in town for the following week when we have advisory body committee interviews um I'm not sure that people are going to be that nervous about being on camera. You might be right about that. It might be a good call that people get afraid. This is Paso Robles. I think people are pretty open and they want to be involved. The applicants that have come to be on our advisory body committees, very impressed with the caliber of their willingness to be involved and to speak up. if if like councilmember veal says if we need to come back and revisit the committee issue we certainly can do that but for but for now i'm satisfied with how we do things today okay any other discussion protein quicker city attorney are you on you're on but it's not coming through can you hear me out there okay good so my question is um

I don't want to approve this resolution, but I do want to give staff a recommendation. Can I just say what I recommend is we leave it as we are today and work on scheduling it so it's more efficient for our use.

So we can make that a motion. We have basically three options. Take no action or make a standing committee or give direction. So your motion basically is give staff direction.

Leave it the same and give staff direction to schedule it so it's easier for staff and this council to get together on a regular basis to do these interviews. Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Gregory, second by Bausch.

And one more thing, no limitation on applicants.

Staff, do we have, you have enough to go by kind of what we're thinking about here? I have plenty. Okay. Thank you, Chris. All right, Melissa, let's go ahead and call that question.

Council Member Gregory? Aye. Council Member Bausch? Aye. Council Member Beal? Aye. Council Member Strong? Aye. Mayor Hammond?

Aye.

Motion passes.

All right. Thank you. Moving on. City Manager Report.

Mr. Huot. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple items. One, I want to the item and the discussion of El Nino came up earlier and I want to just flag that our October 30th Coffee with the City will talk about stormwater and flood mitigation so there will be some elements there of some of the work we're doing as a city to prep for El Nino and what resources are available for those that would like to take advantage of them. And then this week staff will be down Thursday. The California Transportation Commission is holding a meeting in San Luis Obispo. staff's been invited to provide a presentation on some of the work we're doing out at State Route 46, trying to improve that corridor. And then I wanted to highlight, and I think I just saw him leave, but Catherine's still here, so I will recognize Ryan and Catherine and the entire city team. We received word that we received the government finance officer's budget award for the second cycle in a row, and this is for our budget document, and that is an award that has to be earned and that document has to pass quite a few different tests in terms of the information that it has in it the comprehensive nature of both the narrative and the numbers and so not not every jurisdiction in the country gets that but this is our second budget cycle that we've submitted and the second one we have received that award so just want to take a minute and graduate and so with that that concludes my statements for the evening thank you mayor

Thank you, Chris. Council business and committee reports. Chris Beal, would you like to start?

okay it's been a busy little a little bit uh congratulations to the city team especially mariah and her team for the health fair that they had i guess it was like the first time that they had one in 12 years everybody was so engaged there was tons of information it was really well attended and i know everyone was excited we had a parks committee meeting yesterday there was a small work group working on the basin in terms of identifying and exploring different projects that we might be considering moving forward. Special thanks to Deputy Chief Enns for giving me a tour of the fairgrounds, which acted as the incident command post for the Plaskett fire. As always, I learned a lot. And also Saturday the 12th, Our local firefighters hosted the 9-11 stair climb. It was a very touching morning with people from different agencies climbing, you know, 100 floors of stairs there at the fairground. So it was a great way to connect and to remember. And I think it was the highest attendance yet. And they raised money for a burn foundation that does camps for young youth burn victims. Upcoming, we've got the Homeless Services Oversight Committee tomorrow. I don't know if you all know, but the Ag Tourism Summit is coming to Paso Robles next week at the Ava Hotel. It's a great way to kind of show off our agritourism and other ag destinations that we have here in the area. and then this saturday at nine we're doing kind of the big creek cleanup so we'll be meeting at the wendy's on niblick road to go over the riverwalk trail and then also at larry moore park it's part of a broader effort uh statewide actually to do some creeks cleanup so that's all for me thanks for letting me be of service great thank you chris councilman bausch

He attended the Youth Commission meeting on September 2nd. Unfortunately, I got caught in the conflict. I missed the Library Board of Trustees meeting on September 10th. I was able to make the pickleball ribbon cutting, along with several other council members. That was a lot of fun. I finally know what a dink is, so I'm learning. Attended Parks and Recreation. on the 14th unfortunately the senior citizens advisory committee meeting got cancelled while we're on the subject of committees and talking about advisory body applications i think there are two openings right now one for the airport commission and that's uh applications are due uh by tomorrow if anybody's thinking about applying for that there's an opening and then also on the um housing constraints and opportunities. I think that's open until the 16th. Also, if anybody wants to apply, please see the city website. There is a Chamber of Commerce business mixer coming up this Thursday, it's a fabulous, uh anderson uh that's at 5 30. uh and then uh would not be uh fall if we didn't get to uh partake in downtown pastorables main streets taste of downtown this saturday september 19th it's the 30th anniversary should be an amazing event and i think there still might be tickets still available at my805tix.com hope to see you there

We're good. Thank you, Chris. Fred Strong. Yes, thank you. And the most important meeting that I had was the water thing. And we had the water meeting for that particular development. Of the $169,859 that is spent annually to provide that water, Paso Robles gets 22% of that water. And we are only paying about $1 per person per year for our citizens for that privilege of having that water and that well in that water. So that's a marvelous price that the citizens are really paying, what, less than $0.10 a month. to have the access to that water, which is a very important source for our people. And I think that's important. This next week, of course, I think three of us are going to be down in Southern California. I'll be going down on Monday because I will be chairing the meeting of the Pacific Surfliner as chairman of the board. And we will be negotiating with our current provider the contract to continue them so they can continue to give us the very best service that is now available anywhere in the entire United States. That is the only agency in the entire country that is actually operating in the black. It does not have any debt at all. It is actually making money. So we're costing the state almost nothing. And I think that's to their credit. And we want to keep them. We don't want to lose them. So then we will be going over to the League of Cities, of course, the next day. And the three of us will be there in our various capacities. And I'm looking forward to that. Very good. Thank you, Fred.

Pro Tem Gregory.

Yeah. I had a meeting with Visit Slocal briefly to talk about what they are doing and I actually sat as a liaison on that board so it was a renewal of information that they're starting to focus more on Paso Robles and Sensorio and Firestone Brewery. They're starting to get more active with Paso which is a good thing. I also attended the ribbon cutting for the pickleball courts and A lot of people were there, and I didn't know I knew so many pickleball players, but they were very happy and very excited, and somebody gave it. Did Larry give the demonstration? Somebody did the demonstration. It was pretty good. And I also attended a really nice event on Friday at Warbirds, the celebration of GPS. And I'll let Mayor Hammond go into the details of it, but the siblings or the kids of the two inventors are all residents of Paso Robles, just by chance. So GPS is a really big deal in our world and how we live every day. And so one of the gentlemen, one of the inventors or one of the creators was there and told the story. It was very interesting. So thank the Warbirds and Citi and all the sponsors for that. And then I went to the Senior Center also for the meeting today. So I had my own meeting and just talked to Laura Deloy and just got to know her a little bit and told her some of the things that we've talked about.

No, no bridge.

Fred had that under control. But just to talk about some of the things that we had been talking over the years about the senior fund and things like that. That's the CAPSLO representative that's going to be running the senior center. And with that, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve. A couple things I did. Of course, the pickleball, seven new pickleball courts cut, ribbon cut at Sherwood was a great event. A lot of people out there. And we thank them for actually helping with that design. It was a very good group. And I think they're going to enjoy that lighted court, especially during our hot days. They're going to be able to do it at night. And it's going to extend the facility to a lot more people. Fred, thank you very much for covering me on that Nassau Mental Water Commission. That's a very important committee that we do have here, part of our city that, you know, our portfolio is huge with water. People don't quite understand that you always think we're out of water and we're not. But because of that, it's a great decision that this council made many years ago to be part of that pipeline system. The GPS Heritage, which happened last Friday, our city helped sponsor that, along with the Paso Robles Rotary and the Australia Warbirds, very helpful to have three sponsors. That was actually ran by Mr. Bill Britton and chaired by the committee to do that. Bill did it really, really well. The honored guests were, of course, Dr. Yarmovich and Dr. Parkinson. Dr. Yanovich was there, quite a man, quite an individual who invented this GPS system. I mean, there's nobody in this room that doesn't use GPS every day. And it's amazing what they've come up with and how it works and how it's evolved over the years, especially in aircraft, which I use quite often. It's a great tool. So thank you for doing that, Mr. Britton. That was a very well done event. The other reason I'm kind of gone, I was gone for almost three weeks, went to Europe, and I think I mentioned a little bit about last time meeting. I was going after something that I've been trying to get for about the last five years, and that's my dad's wallet that he took with him on that fateful day where he was shot down. They found it five years ago in a drawer, 82 years since World War II when it went down. And the Belgium family helped me get it back. And what's really amazing is that they actually took us to the crash site where the plane went down, which I had no idea we would even do that. I had to even buy a new suitcase to bring home part of the parts. They're still on the ground after 82 years. But this was amazing. I gave it to my mom. Mom's 99. And the idea is to let her have it until she passes. Then it's going to go back to Europe. a museum that we've already talked to about doing an exhibit on my father and what happened after he got to the ground and basically evaded them for seven days and finally captured new year's eve 1944. so it's quite a story very happy to achieve that goal and a lot a lot happened in that last week so let me go through the events here that we're going to do next one we have is the coffee with the city and I guess the topic on that is, Mr. Hua, it's going to be emergency services and strategic plan. It's going to be September 25th. Is that what I think? Somebody kind of changed it a little bit here, but emergency services is going to be doing the strategic plan.

Yes, sir. We had a change in the schedule, so they are subbing in for this next one, and then we'll get to the program that we're going to have, which is City 101 later in the year.

And that's going to be a Calco Spear patina room 7.30 in the morning. Then we have DRC Development Review Committee September 21st at 3.30 p.m. We have also Planning Commission Meeting September 22nd here in this room. Development Review Committee is going to be after that on the 28th at 3.30. Again, Development Review Committee October 5th at 3.30 p.m. And city council meeting here, our next one's gonna be October 6th, 6 p.m., Norris Room. We're getting close, though. We're getting close to seeing our new dais. And I've been talking with Chris about this, so hopefully, maybe the end of October, maybe the first of November. It's gonna be good, people. I'm really kind of, we're all tired of this room and the acoustics and such, but... Anyway, I know you've worked hard to get it to this point where we really appreciate it. So I'm looking for an adjournment. I think what I'd like to do, given the fact that we had Constitution Week and we're honoring all the people who maybe have given those lives to uphold the Constitution and defend our freedom, I'd like to adjourn in the number of people that didn't make it out on my dad's plane. There was five of them that we visited their gravesite. So if I can, make a motion to go ahead and adjourn in their name.

Second.

All right. First by Hammond, second by Steve Gregory. All in favor? Aye. We stand adjourned. Thank you.