City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to your Patterson City Council meeting, Tuesday, June 16th, 2026. Report from closed session. Your City Councilor is returning from closed session. Your City Council will adjourn from the closed session and will be on recess and will reconvene at the end of the open session. We will now adjourn from the closed session. Public meeting guidelines. City of Patterson City Council meetings are conducted in person at City Hall Council Chambers. As a courtesy and technology permitting, members of the public may continue to participate virtually. However, the City cannot guarantee the public's access to teleconferencing technology will be uninterrupted, and technical difficulties may occur from time to time. The meeting will be televised and available for public viewing on Comcast Channel 7 on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 12 p.m., or members of the public may watch on the Internet with a VMO link available on our City's website. Before we start our regular session, those in the audience who wish to do so, please stand and bow your head for our invocation. Heavenly Father, as we meet once again as a community, we desire to enter your presence first. We offer our gratitude for your grace, mercy, and love. We are thankful for your blessings upon the families of our city. We have on our agenda for the evening decisions that must be made on behalf of our residents. We take seriously our commitment to represent this city, and so we seek your wisdom that we might make decisions that are best for our community. We ask that you would bring us together to work through each issue with a unified spirit. We look forward to your continued blessings on our city. And we say these things in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Please remain standing as we call the meeting to order. Patterson City Council meeting will now come to order. Statements of conflict. Are there any statements of conflict from the council members? None.

None.

Your mayor has no conflicts. Items for the public. Any member of the audience who wishes to address the council on a matter not listed on the agenda may do so by raising your hand and stepping to the podium. If you're joining the meeting through Zoom, please use the raised hand feature. If you're calling in by phone, you may press 9 when the mayor announces the item. Council will take no action other than referring the item to staff for study and analysis and may place the item on a future agenda. In order that all interested parties have an opportunity to speak, each individual may provide public comment once during the public comment period. After an individual has spoken, they may not return to the podium or otherwise provide additional comment during the same public comment period. This ensures fairness and equal access for all members of the public. Any person addressing the Council will be limited to a maximum of three minutes unless the Mayor grants a longer period of time. The City Council requests everyone be respectful of other citizens' time and stay within the allotted time period. If after extending the three-minute time period, the mayor determines that the speaker will not complete their comments within a reasonable time, the mayor will request that the comments be completed at a later date. Once the mayor closes in-person public comment and transitions to online Zoom public comment, those physically in attendance may no longer provide public comment. At that point, only individuals participating through Zoom or by phone will be recognized. This applies to all public comment during this council meeting. The City Council fully supports the right of the public to comment freely during the public comment period per the Brown Act. However, all comments must be made respectfully and not be disruptive in nature. The Brown Act expressly authorizes the legislative body to remove from a meeting those persons who willfully interrupt the proceedings. Independent of the Brown Act, California Penal Code Section 403 makes it a misdemeanor to willfully disturb a lawful meeting. Please state your name and city when you step to the podium.

Cynthia Homan, Patterson resident, and I'm the chair of the Senior Commission. So I wanted to come to the meeting and invite all seniors in the Patterson area to our commission meetings. We have great speakers on topics that are really important to seniors. We had voter register our last meeting. Today's meeting, we talked about senior meals at the Hammond Senior Center. And we've had wills and trusts and all kinds of issues that seniors could benefit from hearing about. So I am here to invite everyone who is 50 and over to come to our commission meetings and participate and learn. And that's all I have. Thank you.

Hello everyone, Yolanda, City of Paterson. I had a question and maybe I'm not finding it online, but are all of the commissions and committees supposed to or have the ability to be seen online like this one, like Zoom? I know the Planning Commission does, but I rarely see the other ones.

They typically do. It's on the agenda. I believe the Parks, Recreation, and Beautification, the Planning Commission, and the Senior Commission are available on Zoom.

Okay. And do they have recorded ones, like the council?

No, I don't believe they do. We do have the recording, correct, that Zoom keeps? Oh, for planning only. So they're recorded and kept.

Is there a reason why the other ones aren't?

No. There's no requirement, so we just do it to help the public participate. But just for planning, not the other ones? Right.

Okay. I just have a problem with everyone can see the planning but not the other commissions. I feel like you give a lot of importance to them and not all the other commissions that should be doing a lot more for our city as well. So I would like to maybe look into that and see if we can do both, all of the commissions. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Greg Nyberg. I am a supervisor with the Recreation Department here. And firstly, I wanted to thank everyone who made it to our first event of the summer, which was the 20th birthday of the Patterson Aquatic Center. We had a great turnout. We had a great time. So I want to thank everyone that made it there. And then secondly, I'm here to invite everyone, council and the mayor included, to our next event, which is next Saturday, June 27th. It is Skate the Circle. We'll be holding that right out here in the downtown circle. And this event begins at six and it ends with a showing of Zootopia 2 at sundown. So we hope to see you all there. We hope to see everyone from the public there as well. Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Gabriel Ortiz, a part-time coordinator for the Recreation Department. I want to commit to thank all of our sponsors who are making Skate District possible. Oak Valley, St. Mark, Patterson Tire Pros, Blue Floral Company, Epcot Veterinary Hospital, the Wesley Patterson Chamber of Commerce, The Kindness Knot, Crystal Geyser Spring Water, Kalinas Portables, And I want to give a special thank you to our movie sponsor, Garcia Striping, and our entertainment sponsor, Magical Moments. I'm looking forward to seeing you all there. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Simon Herrera. I'm the Director of Operations and Planning for Santa Rosa Regional Transportation. Authority. I'm here tonight to invite the Patterson community to participate in an important discussion about the future of transit services in St. Louis County. Like many transit agencies across the county, CNRTA is facing a significant financial challenge, including an estimate $3 million budget shortfall. To maintain long-term sustainability, we are evaluating proposed service changes, which include an overall service reduction of approximately 15%. These recommendations are based on work completed throughout our short-term transit plan, which includes rider feedback, community outreach, demographic data, and transit performance analysis. Because these proposed changes could affect routes, schedules, dial-a-ride, and paratransit services used by Patterson residents, public input is crucial. We encourage residents to visit connectthes.org to review the proposed changes, compare current proposed service, and provide feedback through our online survey. We also invite the public to attend our upcoming meeting on June 23rd from 5.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. at 529 California Avenue in the city of Modesto. We also have another meeting on June 24th at 6 p.m. via Zoom with information available at connect.ask.org. In addition, we look forward to present these proposal changes to the Patterson Senior Commission meeting on August 18th. Public feedback will help shape the final recommendations that we will present to the STAN RTA Board later in the summer. And if approved, the changes will take effect early 2027. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jessica Flores and I am a resident here in Patterson. I'm speaking tonight to share my concern regarding our local homeless population. You may or may not have seen recent videos of myself and a friend of mine, a woman named Gwen. We cook for the homeless. We get clothes donations and things like that. We go out and we serve them. It's amazing to me what has been taking place regarding our local shelters over these years. The host house that was created, from my understanding, about 15 years ago has seen many changes over the years. It was a place for people to eat, sleep, take showers. I'M HERE TONIGHT TO ASK YOU WHY YOU WOULD ALLOW A FACILITY THAT THE TAXPAYERS HAVE FUNDED FOR OVER A DECADE TO BE SOLD BY A BOARD PRESIDENT WHO HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN. THIS PRESIDENT HAS FALSELY CLAIMED THAT THE HOMELESS DO NOT WANT SERVICES AND THIS IS NOT TRUE. I JUST DON'T THINK THE RIGHT PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SERVE THE HOMELESS. NOW THE HOME THAT HAS RECEIVED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN GRANTS AND FUNDING IS BEING SOLD FOR 850,000 WHEN IT WAS PURCHASED FOR A FRACTION OF THAT. WHERE IS THE EXTRA MONEY GOING AND WHY IS A BOARD PRESIDENT RELATIVE THE LISTING AGENT? If Cambridge Academies, who should be under investigation, owes money, why is it the community that is paying for it? I'm requesting that council take a serious look at this and ask yourselves if this is the best thing for our community and all that live here. In addition to this, I would like to give you, I don't know, a proposal. I would like to offer my time. I have Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays where I would like to, under supervision of whomever, however I can get involved, sit at Naomi's house while the homeless can shower because I'm pretty sure if I'm correct right now they have no showers available to them because the host house is being sold. So I would like to take the opportunity to I can sit there on those days and supervise showers as well as serve hot meals and for them. So I don't know how to get connected, but that's what I'm trying to do is get connected with people. And yeah, that's all. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. My name is Danielle Morgar. I'm from the Office of Assemblyman Juan Alaniz, here to provide a legislative update. Assemblyman Alaniz did have two of his bills passed the Senate Public Safety Committee. This is AB 767. This is the Sexually Violent Predators Bill alongside AB 2004. This is the Fresno and San Joaquin County Correctional's Peace Officer designation. AB 2004 is currently awaiting a presentation on the Senate floor. If you have any questions regarding our legislation or need any assistance with any state departments such as EDD, DMV, or Franchise Tax Board, please do not hesitate to reach out to our office. Thank you. Thank you. A comment.

Could I have your email address to...

Yeah, I can spell it out. It's my first name, D-A-N-I-E-L-L-E dot my last name, M-O-R-G-A-R-T at A-S-M dot C-A dot G-O-V. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. Is there anyone else present in the council chambers who wishes to provide a public comment? All right, seeing none, Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wishes to provide a public comment?

We do have a comment. Alyssa, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi, good evening. My name is Alyssa, and I'm a resident here in Patterson. Before my main comment, I want to acknowledge today's resignation letter from Councilmember Jessica Romero. The concerns she raised regarding transparency, process, hiring practices, public contracts, and closed session confidentiality being broken are serious concerns. Whether residents agree with her conclusions or not, I believe those concerns deserve clear public answers and transparency moving forward. I also have a quick procedural question. So at the last meeting during general public comment, one individual was allowed to speak twice, the full three minutes twice, plus a question. So technically three times. Could the council please clarify whether residents are limited to one person? opportunity during general public comment or whether multiple turns are allowed. I only ask because I intentionally kept all prior public comments within the three-minute limit and left out several topics in order to respect the rules and everyone's time. So I would just like to clarify so residents understand the expectation moving forward.

So I have added a couple of lines into the items of the public comment pre-statement that I make to make sure that that doesn't happen again. And I bear full responsibility for allowing it to happen, but because of the issues that were going on that night, I felt it very important, especially for transparency purposes, to allow people to speak. That being said, moving forward, they will be restricted to only one time providing public comment during each public comment period, and it will be a maximum of three minutes. We will have in-person public comment, and once that closes, no one else will be able to come back up to the podium, period, and we'll move to the online comment. So I bear full responsibility and blame for that occurring.

Thank you so much for that. I appreciate your answer and adding that statement in at the beginning. And then, okay, so the main issue I want to raise tonight is the infrastructure in my neighborhood. I'm really happy to see the slurry seal project going. I'm glad that more roads are starting to get done, including Hartley and Lorelei, which is pretty close to me. I would like to ask if there are any current and upcoming plans to address the roadway and sidewalk conditions in surrounding areas. including Leverton Drive, Berlin Way, or Finster, and other streets around. In several areas, the sidewalks are really uneven and broken into sections. Some have like several inches going up, where it's a big tripping hazard. I was severely injured back in September, and during my recovery, my wheelchair kept getting stuck in the cracks in those sections. It made it very difficult and, in some areas, kind of impossible for me to be wheeled on a walk in my neighborhood. So it does raise accessibility and safety concerns, not only for wheelchair users, but also residents who use walkers, strollers, mobility devices, or quite honestly, some of the cracks are so high, you don't even have to be disabled. It's just a tripping hazard. And then there's an area on Berlin Road, or sorry, Berlin Way, close to Leverton intersection, where there's an area of road that looks like it could become a sinkhole in the future. So my question is whether these streets and sidewalks are currently being evaluated to be included at a later date, or if it could be looked into now that I've put it on your radar. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much. And what we can do is if you could reach out to me and just give me your email, I can address all of those things specifically.

Okay.

That would be great. Also, I would like to add, given that you're probably in my District D, I completely understand the gravity of our infrastructure there. Hopefully we are working on something. Hopefully we'll be voting on it today. Hopefully we could do a 1%. sales tax, measure tax that could help us with that infrastructure. Unfortunately, on our district, we don't have any of those mellow rules or CFDs, which restrains ourselves from making any infrastructure. But moving forward, hopefully by November, we should be able to work on those infrastructures on our district. And if we could probably meet sometime next week, and we'd love to go over those streets and see what we could do. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, is there anyone else online who wishes to provide a public comment?

There are no other comments, Mayor.

All right. So since we have no one else present or online who wishes to provide a public comment, we will now close the public comment period. All right. Moving on to the consent calendar. All items are approved by a single action. Any item may be removed from the consent calendar for separate discussion upon request from a member of the public, staff, or council member. Consent calendar items 5-1 to 5-10 are open for consideration for approval. Are there any items to be pulled for discussion by council members?

None.

Any items to be pulled for discussion by staff or members of the public? All right. Seeing none, do I have a motion to approve consent calendar items 5.1 to 5.10?

I'll motion.

All right. We have a motion on the table. Do we have a second? The motion has been seconded and requires a roll call vote from the council. Mayor Pro Tem Roque. Aye. Council Member Mora.

Aye.

Council Member Hernandez.

Aye.

Your mayor votes aye. The motion to approve consent calendar items 5.1 to 5.10 passes with a 4-0 vote. Presentation action items. Approve resolution number 2026-36, adopting general fund and all other funds budget. Staff report. Finance Director Williams.

Thank you, Mayor.

And good evening, City Council, Mayor, and members of the public. Tonight, I will be giving a short presentation on the fiscal year 26-27 budget, which is being brought before you tonight for adoption. So presentation outline. First, we'll be providing any updates that were made from the budget presentation last council meeting. We'll be showing a new request summary. city-wide budget summary major fund summaries and then finally where to find our digital budget book so during the the presentation at the last meeting it was requested that money be appropriated in the fiscal year 27 budget for basketball court upgrades upon further analysis staff determined that there were unspent appropriations in the walker ranch lmd for basketball court upgrades in fiscal year 25-26. So as this is a capital project that has unsubmitted appropriations in fiscal year 26, no appropriations were added to the fiscal year 27 budget. Rather, the project was added to the CIP to ensure that we capture the carryover of those appropriations from 26 to 27. Next, I kind of, before we get into the new request summary, I kind of want to give an update on some of the challenges that we are facing funding-wise. First, when the federal government passed HR1, the big beautiful bill, it really took a lot of – it cut a lot of funding from the state. And so therefore, the state had to eliminate a lot of its funding as well. And so what's happening is that the state is shifting responsibilities to cities without the funding to pay for them. So – As you'll see in our next slide, our Patterson budget is affected by this. So we've had about $6.2 million in annual deferments related to infrastructure for core projects and about $1.3 million of annual deferments in service provider positions such as firefighters, police, and other infrastructure repair positions. So On the graph on the left, it's showing the new requests that were made and the new requests that were approved in fiscal year 24, fiscal year 25, fiscal year 26, and fiscal year 27. So in fiscal year 24, there were a total non-TIP or grant new requests in the total of about $5.3 million. And of that, about $3.4 million were approved. But we see a very sharp decline in fiscal year 25 and 26. And then we see a very large request in fiscal year 27, but still a short amount of the amounts that are approved. So due to budget constraints, staff limited new requests in fiscal year 25 and 26. Unfortunately, staff can no longer really defer these requests any longer without it starting to affect services. Unfortunately, and due to inadequate funding, the vast majority of these requests were still deferred to a later date. Then the pie chart on the right shows where the funding of the new requests are coming from, and so the majority of these requests are coming from the Water Fund, and about 131,000 are coming from the General Fund. So for CIP, there's about $21.2 million in CIP that is included in the budget. The vast majority are being funded by grants, bonds, and other restricted revenue sources. However, there is about $507,000 of CIP being funded by the general fund. Citywide review. So on the left here, the citywide, we're anticipating to receive about $113 million in revenues and transfers in. And then on the right side, we're showing about $124 million in expenditures and transfers out. And so a reason for this disparity is being caused by the $21 million being invested in CIP. Next, in the general fund, the general fund is expected to receive about $39.8 million in revenues and transfers in with expenditures and transfers out in the amount of about $41.2 million. We are anticipating using available fund balance to balance the budget in fiscal year 27. The anticipated available fund balance at the end of the year is about $1 million. This is a graph of the general fund's reserve requirement and the amount of total fund balance in the general fund. So the general fund has a reserve requirement that requires the city to put aside five months' worth of operating expenditures, or it comes out to about 42%. So for fiscal year 26-27, we are anticipating that the reserve is going to be fully funded. However, as you can see in the green bars above, the total fund balance is continuing to shrink as we are having to use fund balance to balance the budget. Next up, we have CFD 2003-1. This is fire station number two. We're anticipating about $3 million in revenues and transfers in and about $4 million in expenditures. This fund at the end of fiscal year 27 is expected to have a fund balance of about $300,000. For the garbage fund, we are anticipating about $5.5 million in revenues with about $6 million in expenditures. The total fund balance projected at the end of fiscal year 27 for the garbage fund is about $1.5 million, but we do have a reserve requirement of $1.8 million, so we are going to be a little bit short of that. All this means is we're dipping into reserves to meet operational needs, but this was a planned strategy with the updated rate study. Next, we have the sewer fund. We're anticipating about $9.5 million of revenues and transfers in and about $10.8 million of expenditures and transfers out. We do have a total estimated fund balance for the sewer fund of about negative $672,000, and the sewer fund has a reserve requirement of about $2.2 million. As mentioned in the budget presentation, staff is working through a litigation item and looking at updating rates that will cure this deficit. In the water fund, we're anticipating about $16.8 million in revenues and transfers in and about $18 million in expenditures and transfers out. The water fund has a total fund balance of about $9.2 million with a reserve requirement of $2 million. So about $7.2 million is projected to be available at the end of fiscal year 27. Finally, the city's fiscal year 26-27 budget book is available in all its glory on the city's website. That concludes my presentation and I'd like to open it up for any questions.

All right, member of the council with any questions, concerns, or comments for this item?

No.

I do, Kevin. I know we had a previous discussion that we might be allocating 5%. Is that included on this?

So that I would like to bring back to council at a later time once I have a whole policy drafted. But I have every, I plan on bringing that back to council very, very soon. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE WE DON'T FORGET.

I WILL NOT FORGET. WE NEED THAT MONEY IN OUR DISTRICTS.

I WILL NOT FORGET. I PROMISE. And thank you for finding that money for the full court basketball court. Is that for one or two in Walker Ranch? I'm going to defer to Interim Public Works Director. Currently, we're looking at one. Okay. No problem. I just wanted to clarify. But we will get one full court basketball court in the city finally, correct? And thank you for coming up with that plan, Xavier. I appreciate it. That's awesome. I don't have any further comments, so we will go ahead and open up 6-1 for a public comment. Is there anyone present in the council chambers who wishes to write a public comment on item 6-1? Go ahead, ma'am.

Mine is a real simple question. Your digital booklet, will that include all these slides, I presume it will, or...?

So as of right now, the budget presentation slides have been posted to the website as well. I don't see why. These slides are posted as part of the city council agenda as well.

I don't think I got them in my packet, but I could be wrong. I could have missed it. But that's why I was wondering. Because it went fast and I wanted to look at it. Okay, so I'll see it online then.

It should be online, yes.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, anybody else present in the council chamber who wishes to provide a public comment on item 6-1? Okay, seeing none, we will now close in-person public comment. Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wishes to provide a public comment on item 6-1?

Just as a reminder, if you're joining us on Zoom and wish to make a comment, please use the raise hand feature. If you're calling in by phone, you may press star 9. And we do not have any comments on that, Mayor.

All right. So seeing we have no additional public comment, we will now close the public comment period and bring it back to the council for their direction and action. Any final comments before we move forward? All right. Do I have a motion to approve resolution number 2026-36, adopting general fund and all other fund budgets? All right. We have a motion on the table. Do I have a second? The motion has been seconded and requires a roll call vote from the council. Mayor Pro Tem Roking. Aye. Council Member Mora.

Aye.

Council Member Hernandez. Aye. Your mayor votes aye. The motion to approve resolution 2026-36, adopting general fund and all other fund budgets, passes with a 4-0 vote. Item 6-2, adopt resolution 2026-37, submitting a one cent general purpose sales tax measure to the voters for the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election. Staff Report, City Manager Aguiola.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, Mayor, City Council. Get the presentations on? Good, perfect. So tonight, we're here to discuss a potential public safety and city tax measure and to continue the conversation about Patterson's long-term financial sustainability. Tonight, we will walk through why the city is bringing this forward to council, what we have heard from the community, what a potential one cent tax measure could mean for the city and our residents. And our goal is to ensure that the community has a voice in shaping Patterson's future. Next slide. Tonight, we are asking council to consider the adoption of resolution number 2026-37 to place Patterson Public Safety and City Services measure on the ballot. I want to be clear that tonight is not about approving a tax measure. We are asking council to simply decide whether or not to place this measure on the ballot so that the voters can decide. If approved, the measure will be placed on the ballot this November. This will help council with their decisions tonight. We will cover the city's financial outlook, community input, potential uses of funding, accountability and measures. Ultimately, this is about transparency and giving the community the opportunity to decide how we move forward in shaping the city's long-term financial sustainability. City's financial reality The city is facing several converging challenges. The rising cost, slow revenue growth, increasing service demands. We continue to see ongoing pressure from public safety needs, aging infrastructure, uncertainty from state and federal funding. We've already made reductions where possible. We have made cuts in fund balances, but the reality is these options are not sustainable for long-term solutions. Why consider this measure now? Through our budget discussions, we have identified ongoing structural funding gaps, many of which have been exacerbated by recent state and federal actions. We've been able to rely on fund balance to bring funding gaps. However, that is not a sustainable strategy. Like our residents, the city has been experiencing rising costs post-pandemic from materials to labor to services, all while services demands continue to rise. Later in this presentation, you will hear more from our fire and police chiefs about public safety growing staff needs and service demands. The November 2026 election provides an opportunity to bring this decision to the voters. Other funding mechanisms have not produced savings necessary for funds. Before bringing this forward, the City has explored all available funding options, and that includes grants and earmarks. We have actively pursued state and federal funding for priority projects like water and infrastructure. We work with grant writers and consultants to stay up to date on available grants and to help us remain competitive. Community facilities district, CFDs. CFDs ensure new development contributes to its impacts. However, older neighborhoods and shared infrastructure still rely on general funding. Operational decisions. We have delayed purchases, deferred maintenance, and postponed staffing. While impacts have been limited so far, this approach is not sustainable. The economic development part. We've implemented long-term strategies like the Downtown Master Plan, but these initiatives take time to generate revenues and do not fully close the funding gaps. What we've heard from the community, the city conducted a multi-channel community outreach strategy to meet with and gather feedback from the community. Our outreach strategies included community presentations led by city leadership, Mailers sent out on January 2026 and April 2026 to go over 6,000 community members. Social media outreach through city, fire, and recreational social media pages. Online community surveys collected over 230 responses. Phone, text, email surveys worked with consultants and collected over 250 responses. This process helped ground this discussion into what the community is telling us matters most. Across all outreach, we have saw three priorities that were consistent, and these are protecting our drinking water source and improving the water quality, 911 fire and police response times, and repairing streets and potholes. These are essential services residents expect and rely on every day. House local sales tax work. I'm going to invite Finance Director Williams to walk us through how local sales tax works.

Thank you very much, City Manager. I definitely appreciate that. All right. So how sales tax works in the state of California. So in California, the state sets the base sales tax rate as well as the maximum allowable rate. So currently that rate is at 7.25%, and of that 7.25%, 1% is reserved for the city, and that is what we collect. So the local portion that I just mentioned of the sales tax stays local in the city. Revenue cannot be taken by the state once it's allocated locally. Sales tax revenue is generated from all purchases made within city limits, including those by residents, visitors, and commuters. Revenue from non-residents spending supports city operations and community services through everyday transactions like fuel, dining, and retail purchases. So as you can see on the screen, this graphic depicts where your sales tax dollar currently goes. So if I spend a dollar on something and it's subject to sales tax, I'm going to pay $7.875. So that's broken up like this. So six of those cents go to the state of California. A quarter of one of those pennies goes to the county. An eighth of one of those pennies goes to the county as a district tax. It goes to fund the Santa Claus County Libraries. Half of that penny goes into Measure L. And then one of those, the last penny comes back to the city as sales tax dollars. So, for example, if I were to spend $50 on an item, I'm going to pay a total of $3.94 in sales tax. Of that $3.94, $3 is going to the state, $0.13 is going to the county, $0.06 is going to the library fund, $0.25 is going into Measurel, and $0.50 is coming to the city. And now I'd like to give it back to City Manager Ulloa.

Thank you, Director Williams. Next slide, we're going to be talking about the estimated local revenue generated. The proposed measure could generate approximately $9 million annually. This is an estimate based on economic activity, and it may fluctuate, but it provides capacity to invest in the community. The revenues generated would stay local in Patterson and provide the city with long-term financial sustainability. Given our location along the I-5, visitors and travelers also contribute when they stop for gas, food, and shopping. What can this local funding potentially support? The following areas we have identified needs but lack sufficient funding. Water. It supports regulatory compliance and long-term reliability, helps avoid shifting costs directly to residents through the utility rate increases. Public safety. To speak on public safety, I would now like to invite Police Chief Casey Hill to further speak on Patterson Police Services' growing staffing needs and the services demands, and then Fire Chief Okola to speak from the Patterson Fire Department's perspective.

Hello. I was told to come to the podium, so don't be offended. I'm sorry. Just to speak on where we're at as police services for the city of Patterson, you know, there's a ratio that we use in law enforcement that's typically on the west coast of the United States, about a 1 to 1,000 ratio. And not a lot of people know what the 1 to 1,000 ratio is. That's 1,000 population to every one sworn officer that we have in our police agency. So as we roughly sit around the 26,000 population here in Patterson, we currently have 26 sworn peace officers in the city of Patterson, of which that includes myself as the police chief. So we are barely holding to that industry standard that we have of 1 to 1,000. And as you can imagine, as Patterson's population continues to grow, we would need to continue to grow our peace officer powers within that as well. Not only that, I think that Patterson is very unique in the way that Patterson is geographically located on an island, so to speak, out in the west side where their resources really rely internally here. And not a lot of people know how we deploy these resources here in Patterson. Of these 26 officers, you have myself as the chief, three sergeants for supervision. I have 12 patrolmen. Four detectives, three community resource deputies, three traffic enforcement officers, and one school resource officer. But you look at 26 officers, and they think they have 26 officers sitting at the station ready to go at every time. But do you know that the minimum staffing for the city of Patterson is two? So there's some times where there's two officers only in this area that geographically can be left on an island sometimes. So what would we do with more here in Patterson? I would look to increase the staffing numbers, especially during those graveyard hours where we know Patterson is referred to as sometimes a bedroom community where there's a lot of commuters. Well, those commuters come home at those hours. So I have much more bolstered population in the city during that time. I would really like to increase the numbers there and staffing on patrol. I also would look to technology. We've done a good job in bringing our drone program out here, and we have some new things coming forward with our detective program. But I would really like to do more proactive work, and especially in the area of proactive sexual predator and human trafficking things where When we react to these crimes, it's already too late. I would like to take a proactive stance to address those, to reduce the number of victims that we have in our city. And then when it comes to technology, the drone first responder program is just a huge program that's sweeping the nation in law enforcement. It's the number one growing technology where a drone is deployed in the city and on scene within minutes, seconds. to an incident before we can even drive there through traffic. So these are some of the things that I think the city of Patterson needs to stay at the current level. But even, you know, my goal is not to give them minimum services of 1 to 1,000. I want Patterson to get the best, just as we all care about our community members. So any questions for me on public safety?

Okay. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, members of the community. Jeff Cole, your acting fire chief, just to talk about some issues that the fire department has here in the future. Like Chief Hill was speaking about earlier, we use NFPA as a guideline for all fire service-related stuff in our deployment models. So NFPA 1710 recommends 14 firefighters for a two-story residential fire inside the city limits of Patterson. We currently use six firefighters. on our daily staffing with one chief officer. So we're under the gun as we sit today, right? What we're looking to do with this public general sales tax is up our staffing to around the level of around 10 to 12, so we can get right close to that number of 14, and then hopefully rely on our mutual aid partners, CAL FIRE, who we have an auto aid agreement with that responds with traditional staffing as well as us with a captain, engineer, and firefighter that gives us an extra three personnel. They're not guaranteed, so we're looking to up our staffing in that way. So we can expand our services here in the city of Patterson. When it comes to equipment and facilities, I think the fire department is doing a great job right now of trying to seek resources to fund those things. So with our lobbying in D.C., our local lobbying here going on with our... assembly members and all that stuff. You've probably heard the recent contribution from Amazon that we just got. So we're doing our part. We've actually applied for three firefighter trainees through the SAFER grant through FEMA, and we did an AFG grant for $400,000 for all new SCBAs for our folks to wear inside these IDLH environments. Additionally, we did another fire prevention safety grant that is going to fund a assistant chief slash division chief an additional code enforcement officer and an additional fire prevention officer all funded for three years so we're doing our job but to get these extra numbers there to help us out and staff the fire department appropriately but that's the main focus for this tax is the staffing of the fire engines at a third company third station the ladder company which you guys the ladder trucks which is the one that has the big aerial you You guys recently saw last week the city of Tracy, right? They burnt their warehouse down. Over 200-plus firefighters were on scene at that fire. They had six companies there, and all of them were working, and it took everybody around them to come help them. We have six. We're going to ask for help. Don't get me wrong, right? And people will come help us because we help them. They come help us. But we are very thin when it comes to staffing. What else on that one? The roads is directly tied to public safety as well. If my fire engines can't get down the roads to go to the fire, we have an issue with that as well. So we are facilitated very well when it comes to our equipment. We have the best of the best due to our finance department agreeing with financing our fleet. We have a great vehicle replacement fund, and that is our fund. We lease our fire engines, but the roads will beat them up. So we have to watch those as well. So roads is a public safety issue as well. I think that's it. Barn, any questions?

Thank you, Chief Acola, and thank you, Chief Hill. I will continue on talking now about the infrastructure. Through the infrastructure, streets and deferred maintenance continue to be backlogged, and the longer we wait, the more costly the repairs become. Current funding for sources like Measure L, Gas Tax, SB1 do not fully cover all the needs. Some of the community amenities is support programming for youth, senior, and families in the community. Next slide. This measure includes strong accountability provisions. It will have a citizen's oversight committee, an annual independent audit, and public reporting. Funds will be placed in a separate account to ensure that they are allocated as directed These measures would be in place to ensure transparency and build public trust. Next slide. Without additional funding, infrastructure backlog will continue to grow. Costs will continue to increase. Staffing and recruitment may be deferred. As discussed in the previous budget conversation, the city is facing a structural deficit. We cannot rely on fund balance. This could eventually lead to the reductions in essential city services. On the screen, we have proposed the ballot measure language. This is the exact language voters will consider in the November 2026 ballot. The measure establishes the following. A $0.01 sales tax. Sales tax revenue could generate an approximate $9 million annually in local revenues. While this is not guaranteed, it does have the potential to increase. Additionally, the measure would include oversight, audits, and transparency requirements.

Next slide.

It is the city's recommendation that council move to adopt resolution number 2026-37, placing the Patterson Public Safety and City Services tax measure on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot.

Questions council may have. Questions, concerns, or comments from the council?

I HAVE A QUESTION. WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURES ARE INCLUDED, ANNUAL AUDITS, PUBLIC REPORTING, CITIZENS OVERSIGHT IN CASE THIS PASSES IN NOVEMBER?

CAN YOU REPEAT THAT, COUNCIL MEMBER HERNANDEZ? SURE. WHAT OVERSIGHT MEASURES IN ADDITION TO?

ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURES OR ANNUAL AUDITS OR PUBLIC REPORTING, CITIZENS OVERSIGHT.

At this point, yeah, we definitely have the annual added annual reporting and we will be providing as part of this a citizen's... Oversight. Yes, thank you. So that's what we have planned right now. There could be more items that we can include, but right now at least those are the minimum entry levels that we see moving forward for this tax measure to assure the transparency of the funds being spent.

Thank you. Could you explain what that board does? Oh, absolutely.

I'm going to defer that to our Finance Director Williams.

Thank you, sir. So for the citizen oversight committee is going to we don't have all of the details ironed out yet. Right. But essentially what it is, is that there will be a committee will be formed. And presentations will be given to that committee about how we're spending the money, and they will then be able to give recommendations to council, much like our other commissions and other committees, on if they should move forward with how we propose to spend the money or not.

Could you run by me again, or the public, how much, what is the rate right now and what it would change to?

So currently in the city of Patterson, the total sales tax rate is 7.875%. And if this ballot were to pass, it would become 8.875%.

Councilmember Hernandez to piggyback off of that information as part of the oversight committee The structure will be very similar and we'll bring back parameters for the council's approval But it's envisioned that it would operate similar to other committees with members being appointed by the council as part of this this transparent purpose of providing transparency to the public so the goal is for it to be made up of seven MEMBERS WHO ARE RESIDENTS OF THE COMMUNITY, AND THE GOAL IS THAT THEIR DELIVERABLE WILL BE TO THE COUNCIL AND TO THE PUBLIC ANNUALLY A PERFORMANCE REPORT ON HOW THE FUNDS ARE BEING UTILIZED, IF THEY HAVE ANY RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE CITY. BUT THE GOAL IS, AGAIN, THAT THESE FUNDS THAT ARE COMING IN AREN'T JUST GOING TO DISAPPEAR. THERE WILL BE A VERY STRICT ACCOUNTING FOR THEM, BOTH FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC AND FOR THE COUNCIL.

And they wouldn't be designated districts, correct? It would just be seven members of the community and the public? Yes. In general? Yes. Thank you.

All right. And I don't have any. So we will put item 6.2 out for public comment. Are there any members of the public present in the council chambers who wish to provide a public comment on item 6.2?

Quick question. Chief Hill, I didn't know if you said, do we have reserve officers?

No, we do not currently have reserve officers that work at a patrol capacity in the city of Patterson or for the sheriff's office. Very, very limited reserve program.

So the sheriff's office, the county, that comes from them, but we don't have that.

So our reserves particularly, they don't do a patrol-based function where they operate on a patrol level like some other agencies do. They do things like our background investigations, instruction at the academy, and stuff like that. So we do have a reserve program, but they do not work in a patrol capacity. Okay. Thank you.

Is there anyone else present in the council chambers who wishes to invite a public comment? All right. Seeing none, we will now close the in-person public comment period. Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wishes to provide a public comment?

Just as a reminder, if you're joining us on Zoom and wish to make a comment, please use the raise hand feature. If you're calling in by phone, you may press star nine. We do have a comment. Elias, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi. Elias Funes, former Patterson Planning Commission member, Parks and Rec Commission member, and General Plan Advisory Committee member for the 2012 General Plan.

Wow, thank you guys for bringing this item up.

I brought it up during the last public comment period that we're going to seriously need to make some decisions regarding how to fund a lot of these infrastructure projects and deficits that we're currently experiencing here in Patterson. Uh, one thing I was hoping to see though is, uh, at least some alternatives, uh, you know, uh, just to go right out with a one cent, uh, sales tax measure is kind of, uh, a big deal instead of, uh, you know, seeing what we could, um, get from a half cent sales tax, uh, even a quarter cent sales tax, uh, other, uh, things too that I was hoping to see was maybe, you know, um, what about a specific tax? Uh, you know, I posed the, um, uh, the, uh, ballot measure to apricot watch earlier and almost the majority of the comments were like what you know this is going into a general fund people were very very uncomfortable with just nine million dollars a year being thrown at the city to be able to do whatever they want with it and i know that there are some specific intentions but you know we should go a step further with our with our staff report and saying all right you know, 15% is going to go to XYZ program or need, and another percentage is going to go. That way, you know, things like parks, which, you know, I didn't see parks in the ballot measure, but that way things like parks aren't continued to be put on the back burner because that is, unfortunately, we are way, way, way behind in our creation of our parks. So, Thank you for trying to take a proactive approach towards this, but I do feel that this ballot measure needs to be very, very well worked out. And they mentioned the outreach earlier. In that outreach, was the intention of that outreach ever made public to those that we were reaching out to in saying that this is for data for a potential sales tax measure because I think that's important too when people are filling out those forms. So, you know, definitely I think taking some steps in the right direction, but I think we need to take a step back and really hash out where this money is going to go to. You know, there was a stipulation in there that said that the money has to be spent locally. Well, you know, I think a lot of people have an issue giving more money to the Stanislaus County Sheriff's And not to say that we shouldn't be trying to bolster our police services, but here's a concept. Maybe we should start, you know, trying to establish our own police department again. And we don't have to get rid of the sheriffs. It would be great to have multiple jurisdictions that are providing law enforcement coverage to our area. But to be giving more money to the sheriff's department, I just left the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors meeting. And, I mean, everyone was up in arms about the recent death of the individual in the wrap. And everyone's asking about oversight committees, you know, not an internal advisory council that can review instances, but, you know, an actual citizens oversight committee. And we know that that's not something that we're going to get with the sheriff. So thank you for hearing me out. And, yep, those are my comments. And take them as they will. Bye. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, is there anyone else online who wishes to write a public comment?

We do have Marco. You can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi, all. Mark Omada, City of Patterson. I joined in. I've been in and out of the meeting. I'm at home right now or at my parents' house right now. And from what I've learned from the presentation, very well thought out presentation and very informative. And I wanted to... just acknowledge my appreciation for that and all the information shared on that and breaking it down to bite size and consumable, in a consumable way for the public. As you know, I'm a big advocate of that. As far as putting this on the ballot, from what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is a vote to put it simply on the ballot. I'm 100% for it. I would ask, and I am curious, maybe somebody could answer me after my comment, if between now let's say if it was approved to be put on the ballot between now and the time of voting is the city open city staff open on holding i don't even i don't know if even calling it a workshop would be appropriate but just more continue to have more informational meetings like this and presentations like this where the public can come ask questions and learn more really for the sake of learning more and understanding um how the money could be utilized and the approval process because even though this gets approved let's say it goes on the ballot Even then, at that point, I'm sure there's a voting process, again, that gets brought up in order for the council to agree on if the money is okay to be spent on certain projects or topics. But I do want to take a moment. We are very lucky to have been at a 7.75% sales tax and a 1% sales tax, especially in California and so close to the Bay Area. We have to remember how close we are to the Bay Area. We've been very lucky in even bumping it up a percent. We should still consider ourselves very lucky. And in order for us to grow in the way that mass majority wants us to grow and keep it sustainable and keep it effective and impactful, we all need to chip in a little bit. And that 1%, even if we spend $1,000 on a new TV at Walmart, is minimal to what the... THE BIGGER PICTURE COULD PROVIDE FOR THIS. SO I WOULD ADVOCATE FOR COUNCIL TO PLEASE VOTE YES ON PUSHING THIS THROUGH, AT LEAST TO THE BALLOT, ALLOWING THE COMMUNITY MORE TIME TO LEARN MORE AND HOPEFULLY VOTE IN FAVOR OR AGAINST IT ONCE THEY HAVE MORE INFORMATION.

THANK YOU, MARCO. IS THERE ANYONE ELSE ONLINE WHO WISH TO WRITE A PUBLIC COMMENT?

NO OTHER COMMENTS, MAYOR.

All right. So seeing no one else online who wishes to write a public comment, we will now close the public comment period and bring the item back to your council for their direction and action. All right. Any final comments before we move forward? All right. Do I have a motion to adopt Resolution 2026-37, submitting a one cent general purpose sales tax measure to the voters for the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election?

Motion.

All right. Motions on the table. Do I have a second? I'll second. The motion has been second and requires a roll call vote from your council. Mayor Pro Tem Roke. Aye. Council Member Mora.

Aye.

Council Member Hernandez.

Aye.

And your mayor votes aye. The motion to adopt resolution 2026-37 submitting a one cent general purpose sales tax measure to the voters for the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election passes with a 4-0 vote. Seven, public hearings, assessment districts. Approved resolution numbers 2026-38, 39, 40, ordering levy and collection of assessments for BADs, benefit assessment districts, LMDs, landscape maintenance districts, and CSA 15 for fiscal year 2026-27. Staff report, interim public works director, Gugliarte.

Good evening, Mayor, council members. This item is the annual public hearing for the city's benefit assessment districts, landscape maintenance districts, and CSA number 15. The proposed assessments are based on the engineer's reports prepared for the fiscal year 26-27 and are used to fund maintenance and improvements within each district. staff recommends opening the public hearing receiving any public comments closing the public hearing and adopting resolutions numbers 20 2026-38 2026-39 and 2026-40 ordering the levy and collection of assessments for fiscal year 26-27 that concludes staff's presentation thank you sir question comments or concerns from the council

All right. Seeing none, we'll now open item 7-1 for public comment. Are there any members of the public present in the council chambers who wish to provide public comment on item 7-1? All right. Seeing none, we'll now close in-person public comment. Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wish to provide a public comment?

Just as a reminder, if you're joining us on Zoom and wish to make a comment, please use the raise hand feature. If you're calling in by phone, you may press star 9. No comments, Mayor.

All right. Seeing that we don't have any further comments online or in person, we'll now close the public comment period and bring the item back to your council for their direction and action. Any final comments before we move forward? None yet. Thank you. All right. Seeing none, do I have a motion to approve resolution numbers 2026-38, 39, and 40, ordering levying collection of assessments for BADs LMDs, and CSA 15 for fiscal year 26-27.

All in motion.

All right. We have a motion on the table. Do we have a second?

We'll second.

The motion has been second and requires a roll call vote from the council. Mayor Pro Tem Roke.

Aye.

Council Member Mora. Aye. Council Member Hernandez.

Aye.

And your mayor votes aye. The motion to approve resolution numbers 2026-38, 39, and 40. Ordering levy and collection of assessment for BADs, LMDs, and CSA number 15 for fiscal year 26-27 passes with a 4-0 vote. Item 7-2, Urban Water Management Plan Update. Receive an overview of the 2025 UWMP update. provide direction prior to July 21, 2026 adoption. Staff report, interim public work director, Gugliardi.

Mayor, council members, I'd like to introduce Maria Encinas, the city's water resource manager, and Chris Hughes of Woodard and Curran for the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council. Before we begin, I do want to clarify that although this is a water-related item, it is not the same item that we are trying to schedule a workshop for. That's likely going to happen later on in July, possibly July 28th. Once that date's confirmed, we'll publicly notice the meeting and advertise for the workshop. But tonight's presentation, it's focused specifically on introducing and providing you with an overview of the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. We will discuss the purpose of the two plans, some regulatory requirements, and all the major components that are included within the update before returning at a later date with the final document for council consideration. So as a brief overview, the city is classified as an urban water supplier under California law. Because of that designation, we are required to comply with the Urban Water Management Planning Act and prepare a plan every five years or in a five-year cycle. The plan serves as the city's long-range water planning document. It evaluates our current and future water demands, available water supplies, water supply reliability, conservation efforts over a 25-year planning period. The city is required to prepare and submit the completed plan to the state by July 1st of 2026. So to put the city's water system into perspective, we currently provide water service to approximately 25,000 residents through 7,900 to 8,000 water service connections. While the urban water management plan is a regulatory requirement, it's also an important planning tool that helps us evaluate how we're going to continue to provide reliable water supply to our customers both now and into the future. As part of that effort, the plan also takes into consideration several ongoing issues and regulatory requirements that could influence future water system planning. These include groundwater sustainability requirements, more specifically the pumping reduction plan under SGMA, as well as water quality regulations, including those related to Chrome 6, which the council will receive a separate and more detailed presentation on compliance at the upcoming workshop that was mentioned earlier. For this slide, rather than walking through each one of the chapters, the purpose of this slide was to illustrate the amount of information that is compiled and analyzed as part of this entire process. And to help the city prepare the document, we have partnered up with Wooded and Curran, a firm that has worked in the city and in the region for over a decade. And I do want to introduce, but for this plan, I do want to introduce Chris Hughes. Chris has worked closely with the city for several years on several water related efforts, including the annual water use objective reporting, the water supply and demand assessments, and water loss auditing. And also, despite having worked together since before COVID, this is actually the first time we've met in person. So I will turn it over to Chris to provide you with an overview of the plan, the entire planning process, and all the work that's been completed to date. I also want to note really quick, sorry, Chris, I DO WANT TO RECOGNIZE ONE OF OUR EMPLOYEES. SHE'S OUR PUBLIC WORKS MANAGEMENT ANALYST. SHE'S BEEN WORKING SIDE BY SIDE WITH CHRIS THROUGHOUT THIS WHOLE PROCESS ON AN ACCELERATED TIMELINE.

THANK YOU, MARIA. Good evening, city council members and mayor. Thanks for having me this evening. So where does the urban water management plan fit into city water planning efforts? The city's water department does a lot of different work. We already talked, Maria already shared about the 2025 urban water management plan is this top circle. But as we kind of go clockwise around the circle, we've got the integrated regional water management plan. You may have heard about in the past. There's more of a regional management. water projects and programs program that meets both local and regional needs. It's a very high level. The groundwater sustainability plan and what Maria mentioned, the companion pumping reduction plan really has to do with SGMA or the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which is, again, another regional collaboration and has to do with operating within some pumping restrictions that we're going to talk about later today. The Water Master Plan is a city-specific document that is really looking at water portfolio options and priorities to meet future demands and is a lot more focused on infrastructure within the city. So this is a roadmap showing kind of how we've done some work on the urban water management plan. It's a roadmap running from bottom to top. So starting at the bottom, what we've been working on the last month or two is the blue update technical data section. We have been looking at future water demand projections. What does the future of the water supply portfolio look like? As well as comparing them together in a water supply reliability assessment. And like Maria mentioned, updating our water shortage contingency plan and demand management measures or water conservation. The yellow star showing us where we are today. It is between sort of the green and the black dots. So the green map point is preparing draft documents, the public review. We have done this. We've prepared draft documents. We've involved interested parties and water users and done some public notification about the ongoing efforts and posted them on the city's website for the last 30 days, culminating in a public comment period ending today. In black, upcoming as soon as we end today, me and my staff are going to be incorporating any edits we need to make as a result of today with the public comments and preparing and submitting final documents to the State Department of Water Resources by the required due date of July 1st. It's really important to be getting that document in and submitted on time for various considerations and potential grant funding from the state. But because of the timing of the meeting today and wanting to make sure we had a robust 30-day public comment period, this is where the schedule gets a little interesting. we will be bringing the plan back to the city council in around a month from now in orange up there on July 21st to formally adopt the plan. You notice that is after we have submitted it to the state. So again, like I said, it's really important to submit this, at least an initial plan to the state, but they do have a process in place for submitting amendments. And this is an approach we've successfully done with some other clients where the schedule gets a little bit tight at the end of an accelerated development process. So again, to emphasize what Marina said earlier today, this is informational today. It's a public hearing to get public comment, and we will be coming back to you for adoption in July. As part of the development of the plan, we did a lot of interested party outreach. So there are two notifications sent out, a notice of intent to prepare the plan for folks to be aware that this is starting. This was sent out to county and local agencies engaged in groundwater sustainability plan implementation. And there was also a notice about the draft plan being available for the 30-day public comment period, again, May 15th through today in June. We've put in notices in the local paper as well as the city's website and social media about tonight's public hearing. We have today's public meeting and public hearing to collect comment. And then finally, after we've finished the plan, it's made available to download on the city's website for interested parties.

All right, let's get into it.

There are three significant changes from the previous 2020 version of the plan, and I'm going to dive into each of these in the next slides in more detail, but just to give you a little flavor of what's coming. Number one, there are increased demands. We're seeing significantly more water demands from the Zacharias Baldwin development. Number two, we're seeing on the other hand, reduced pumping capacity, significant reductions to groundwater pumping capacity due to the Northern Delta Mendota pumping reduction program, which really resulted in quite a different and expanded water supply portfolio than we've seen in previous plans for the city. Number three really combines number one and number two. It results in changes to the reliability analysis, which basically says under a drier scenario, what do demands and supplies look like? How are we going to address potential water shortages under those conditions? So let's talk about number one. This is a graph showing future water demand projections shown in the plan. The horizontal x-axis runs from the current demands in 2025 through a planning period of 2050. The vertical y-axis shows volume in acre feet per year. We're gonna see a lot of that term throughout today's presentation. It's common volume used in the water planning industry, basically one acre of area at a depth of one foot. So a football field is a little bit bigger than an acre, so you can imagine that with about a foot of water across it. Future demands for water are calculated in two different ways, and we've called them out in different colors on this graph. One method was used specifically for the Zacharias Baldwin development that we built in the future, and that is shown in blue. And the second method is basically covering the rest of the city, the existing service area and the volume for these future demands associated in that area, and that's shown in green. For that green area, the city's existing service area, we essentially analyzed the build consumption for all of the various accounts, single-family homes, multi-family homes, commercial, all that, and came up with average water use rates for each category, and then multiplied that out by the expected growth projected in the city's existing service area, which came from the county's regional transportation plan. And they assumed about an average of 0.6% increase in growth, which is less than has been used in the past. But it's the most recent available information we could get. For the Zacharias-Baldwin development shown in blue, we relied on the build-out demands estimated in the 2020 water supply assessment prepared separately for this series of projects. I will note that the demands are slightly lower than what was published originally in that water supply assessment due to some subsequent adjustments to align this with some aspects of the new water use efficiency regulation requirements. Note for both of these categories, this includes both potable and non-potable demands. The table on the right is really just a reflection of the actual numbers represented in the graph. So you can see Zacharias-Baldwin development is 1,824 acre feet per year by the time it's expected to come online or assumed to come online in 2045, whereas the existing service area in 2050 will have about 4,800 acre feet per year. Onto number two. This slide walks us through some conceptual bar charts that represent the water supply sources that the city may use in the future. In the top section of bars, each colored box represents a different kind of water supply. And so in past iterations of the plan, the water supply portfolio for the city has been exclusively based on groundwater and assumed that the city would have enough groundwater to always available to meet future growth in the city. But like Marie mentioned earlier, the groundwater sustainability plan has been developed due to SGMA. And it's resulting in some changes to basin-wide groundwater management that affects the city and neighboring communities. Specifically, local parties involved in the GSP have agreed to reduce pumping from the lower aquifer where the city gets most of its water supply from. This pumping reduction plan has a lot of numbers in it, but essentially, ultimately restricts the city's pumping to about 2,626 acre feet per year in the long term. If you compare that to even just the current demands of 33 900 acre feet which are again like i just showed in the last graph going to go up that is clearly not enough water i know there's a lot going on in the city right now regarding what the future water supply portfolio is going to look like but we had to make some assumptions right for the purpose of this high level planning document that's due to the state right now as part of this five-year update so let me walk you through what we're currently showing is the assumptions in the plan We've already talked about that dark blue bar, the lower aquifer being a limited groundwater pumping volume. The next bar is the orange one, the Del Porto Creek Recharge and Recovery Project. It's anticipated to recharge groundwater basin using stormwater captured during rainfall at the future Zacharias Baldwin development, as well as other future surface water supplies. Right now, for the purposes of the plan, this is assumed to come online at the end of 2030. You've probably heard previously from staff, the city is actively working to secure funding for multiple sources to implement this project soon. In turquoise, we've got a skinny bar relatively. It's labeled upper aquifer groundwater pumping with treatment. This would mean that city may add treatment on some of the wells in the shallower upper aquifer that's currently only able to be used for non-potable irrigation purposes. This is reflected in the plan as a short-term measure to be used when needed as demands start to creep up with new buildings coming online. In the meantime, the plan also describes more in the long term. The city may be looking for additional surface water supplies to supplement. The plan assumes this wouldn't come online until 2040, and there's a lot of unknowns to be figured out about what that will entail. Having expanded diverse water supply portfolio like this is also beneficial, not just in addressing the increased demands, but also addressing the water quality challenges that you heard about in the previous presentations about the budget for the city. The city is facing these, which aren't described a lot in this presentation today, but are featured in the plan. If we flip the supply portfolio over to the non-potable supplies, this shows, and the bars below it reflecting the non-potable demands, you can tell these are a lot smaller, right? The bar is a lot shorter. The plan basically assumes that one of the three existing non-potable wells in the upper aquifer will continue to pump groundwater and serve those non-potable uses. That's the turquoise box. But the light green box, again, is showing a new short-term surface water supply would likely take the form of as-needed purchases of surface water specifically for non-potable uses, since some of those non-potable wells were assumed to be used for other purposes on the previous slide. This would be done, again, on an as-needed basis as new non-potable demands come online from new developments that require irrigation. So bringing this together, number three is our supply reliability. I've got some overview words here and then some example graphs to try to explain it a little bit better. So we just talked in the last few slides that there are new groundwater pumping limitations. This basically means the city will have to be less reliant on what we've previously called a drought-proof groundwater supply and likely more reliant on surface water supplies that are subject to reductions under dry conditions, unlike groundwater. This is going to require a lot more reliance than the city's water shortage contingency plan to call for reductions in dry years. What we're seeing right now in the plan is an assumption of around 10% to 20% demand reductions on a temporary basis for the extended years of a multi-year drought period that the state requires us to look at. I've got a busy slide here that's showing an example 2035 projected potable shortage. Let me walk you through it. Our vertical axis, again, has the acre feet volume we've been using throughout the presentation. The horizontal x-axis has two scenarios on it. We're going to walk through an average year as well as a dry year. In this case, we're looking at year three of a multi-year drought. On that left side, the average section, you've got two stacks of bars. In light blue, we're basically seeing the total demands expected in 2035. They're a little bit higher than what we see today. And there are three bars stacked next to it that describe the type of supplies we just explained and that are just enough to meet the demands in a normal year. The dark blue is our deep aquifer, lower aquifer pumping. Turquoise is the upper aquifer pumping with treatment. And the orange is that Del Porto Creek Recharge and Recovery Project. On the right hand side, you can see the same bars, but it's under a drought condition, specifically after a couple of years. The dark blue and the turquoise bars are exactly the same. That's our drought proof, right? It does not change during a drought year. We haven't experienced that in the past. However, that future Del Puerto Creek orange bar is expected to be much more subject to change under dry conditions. Stormwater, surface water suppliers are often reduced in dry periods. If we compare that to the light blue bar on the right, you can see hatched in red is the difference, right? Our demands are a little bit higher than supplies, and that would represent a reduction in demand that's needed, and we'd carry that out according to the water shortage contingency plan. The story is a little bit different if we fast forward to 2050. The outer edge of our planning horizon is the same graph, but you notice right in the middle there, there is a bright yellow bar on each of the graphs. This represents our potential future surface water expansion project, sourcing water from either California Aqueduct or the San Joaquin River. This would involve construction of a new centralized surface water treatment plant, and some options have been studied in the city's draft Chrome 6 feasibility study. For high-level planning purposes, again, for this urban water management plan looking at 25 years, the plan assumes 6,000 acre feet per year are available in an average year, and decreasing that to about 50% in the middle of a multi-year drought. As you can see by the chart on the right, even with significantly reduced surface water supplies during a drought, the supply column is still larger than the demand. So no formal demand reductions would be necessary. That feasibility study showed that new surface water represents viable long-term options to diversify the city's water supply, but it's definitely subject to future evaluation, water supply agreements, regulatory approvals to make it happen. But for now, I just wanted to share with you tonight the assumptions that were described in the current urban water management plan we're putting forward. I've mentioned water shortage contingency plan a couple of times. This has been updated to be a standalone document that's an appendix to the urban water management plan. It used to be a chapter in the plan, but the state has preferences to have it separate. This is really just an operational plan that guides the city's response to shortage situations. There are six shortage stages or shortage levels you can see described in this table. Each stage has a variety of defined water use prohibitions and measures implemented depending on how severe that shortage is. So some of the shortage response actions might be something as simple as expanding a public information campaign where folks become more aware, voluntarily reduce their water usage from education to more prescriptive things like limiting landscape irrigation to two days per week, incentivizing reduced water use with a drought rate structure or penalties for excessive water use as we go further and further into a severe shortage. Just wanted you to be aware also there is a section on demand management measures or otherwise known as water conservation or water use efficiency. As opposed to the short-term measures that I just mentioned for the water shortage contingency plan, this is more about long-term measures that have a long-term reduction on water use and have been successful in reducing long-term per person water use in the city. There are a number of categories which are shown here. For the sake of time, I will not read through every single one of them. But the general categories described in the water management plan cover the water waste prevention ordinances that is in place all the time, water metering improvements that the city has undertaken in the last few years that vastly improve information on water usage to customers and staff. public outreach and education, distribution water loss, that includes both fixing leaks in homes as well as, well, this one focuses on distribution water loss, this is leaks in the street, right? And the city has done some leak detection surveys that have successfully reduced this in the past and is doing annual water loss audits to the state, as well as a bucket that covers all other measures like your turf replacement program and high efficiency toilet rebate program and water use surveys. So thank you for your attention today as we kind of give you a very high-level overview of the urban water management plan and explain some of the assumptions as they impact long-term, high-level water supply and demand for the city. To recap what's going to happen over the next few weeks, we're going to hear some public comments tonight. We're going to next take those and some comment letters we've received and incorporate edits to the draft plan. That plan is going to be finalized and submitted to the State Department of Water Resources by July 1st, coming up quick. And we'll be coming back to you July 21st to formally approve the documents and immediately submitting those approved, adopted versions to the Department of Water Resources immediately afterwards, getting copies as required at the California State Library and making the final documents publicly available probably sooner than 30 days after they're being published. With that, I'm happy to take any questions, and we will ask the council to eventually open it for public comment. Questions, comments, and concerns from the council?

Yeah, and your mayor has none. Just thank you very much for such a thorough presentation. There's a lot of information. Now we'll open item 7-2 for public comment. Is there anyone present in the council chambers who wishes to provide a public comment on item 7-2? Seeing none, we'll now close the in-person public comment. Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wishes to make a public comment on Item 7-2?

Just for the record, Mayor, the City Clerk's Office did receive correspondence from Rutan and Tucker LLP and Lacey Timmins regarding the item prior to the meeting. Copies were provided to City Council and made available to the public.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

All right.

Just as a reminder, if you're joining us on Zoom and wish to make a comment, please use the raise hand feature. If you're calling in by phone, you may press star nine. We do have a comment. Elias, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi there again, Elias Funes. I just wanted to say thank you for that report, which was pretty thorough. And I'm glad to hear that in there, there is some consideration possibly for tapping into the California aqueduct. To me that seems, you know, like, you know, we've got fresh flowing potable water going through our community that we don't tap into. We know Diablo Grande had made a deal for it, some of that water in the past. So, you know, other municipalities can do the same, I think. So it's good to hear that that was something possibly being considered for the future. And thank you. Thank you, sir.

Is there anyone else online who wishes to provide a public comment?

There are no other comments, Mayor.

All right. So seeing we have no further comments online, I'll close the public comment period and bring the item back to the council for any final comments. Any final comments before we close this item as it's not an action item? Yep. Nothing further. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. Moving on. Item 7.3, General Plan land use amendments and housing element implementation adopt resolution 2026 41 approving land use element amendments and policy establishing priority water backslash sewer service for affordable housing introduce ordinance number 888 first reading staff report community development director stice present the powerpoint presentation and staff report

Thank you and good evening, Mayor and members of the council. So tonight for your consideration are amendments to some of the city's guiding documents in relation to the recently adopted housing element. So we'll review what's triggering these changes, the changes themselves and the next steps. As a bit of background, in December 2025, the city received a letter from the State Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD, indicating that the city's draft housing element complied with state law. And in January 2026, the city executed a contract hiring EMC Planning Group to assist with implementation of of some of the programs that were included in the draft housing element. And in May, about a month ago, the city council adopted the six cycle housing element. With that adoption, there are programs and policies that were included in the housing element. A lot of these are reaction to state law. The state has done a lot of work recently adopting legislation to make things friendlier, to increase the amount of housing in the state through various methods. And so... Tonight represents a lot of the work required related to municipal code changes that are required, not all of them, but the majority of them. There are timeframes included in the housing element for when various items need to be accomplished. So the housing element outlined several programs and policies that required adjustments to comply with the state's requirements with the focus of reducing barriers to housing development, ensuring that municipal code aligns with state law, facilitating affordable housing production, and streamlining the city's permitting processes for housing. And the amendments before you tonight respond to several of the programs outlined in the housing element, and we'll walk through each of these a bit. Housing element program 1.10 outlined requirements to increase the development of multifamily and affordable housing and to make them more feasible by increasing residential densities, increasing building heights, reducing setbacks, and reducing parking requirements. Related to density and height, the density increase is considered for three zones and increases the minimum and maximum densities in the high density residential neighborhood commercial and the downtown core zone here. It's mainly a commercial area but also allows some residential uses. the proposed changes would allow up to 35 units an acre in the high density residential and the downtown core zone with a maximum height of four stories and in the neighborhood commercial zone up to 20 units per acre with a maximum height of three stories the uh Also included in requirements for change are proposed changes to setbacks and distances between buildings. A setback is the minimum distance between a structure and the property line. And the state is requiring reductions in front and rear setbacks in the high density residential zone to 15 feet. Changing the minimum distance between buildings to 15 feet and reducing the space between a living room window in that zone and a wall of another building to 20 feet. And again, this is only related to the high density residential zone. The state's also requiring a reduction in the required amount of parking spaces for housing developments. And the biggest change here is related to apartments where approximately half a parking space less would be required per apartment. And so as, for instance, a one-bedroom apartment would have a requirement of providing one parking stall on the site rather than what we currently require, which is 1.5. A two-bedroom apartment unit would trigger 1.5 parking spaces rather than two spaces and so on. Density changes were discussed previously, but they're located in multiple city documents. And so what we discussed previously with the zoning code would also be placed into the general plan so that those documents align. There are some changes to what housing types and other related land uses would be allowed in residential zones to be consistent with state law. These include allowing residential care facilities in all residential zones, allowing emergency shelters in the downtown core, allowing low barrier navigation centers, which is a homeless shelter that provides provides assistance in finding more permanent housing in mixed-use and non-residential zone subject meeting requirements, allowing supporting housing anywhere that multifamily housing is allowed, and defining single-room occupancy units in the code and allowing them in mixed-use zones, as well as updating the employee housing definition to align with state law. Program 4.1 discusses providing reasonable accommodations for housing needs consistent with fair housing law. Program 1.2 requires that the city include provisions for replacing housing that might be lost because of redevelopment of a site. Program 4.13 requires the city to develop a policy that prioritizes water and sewer allocation for affordable housing units if there's a limited capacity for those. For our next steps, pending the council's approval, this item would go before the council in July for second reading and adoption, and the ordinances would go into effect 30 days following adoption. And so staff's recommendation is that the council adopt resolution 2026-41, which would adopt the general plan amendments and the water sewer policy And a second action, which is to motion to approve the first reading and introduction of ordinance number 888, which would approve the amendments to the municipal code. That concludes my report. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Questions, comments, or concerns from the council?

None at the moment.

Your Mayor has none, so we will open Item 7-3 for public comment. Is there anyone present in the Council Chambers who wishes to provide a public comment on Item 7-3? All right, seeing none, we will close the in-person public comment. Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wishes to provide a public comment on Item 7-3?

Just as a reminder, if you're joining us on Zoom and wish to make a comment, please use the raise hand feature. If you're calling in by phone, you may press star 9. We have no comments on my mayor.

All right. So seeing there's no further public comment, we will close the public comment period and bring the item back to your council for their direction and action. Any final comments from the council before we move forward?

None.

Okay. And your mayor has none. So do I have a motion to adopt resolution 2026-41, approving land use element amendments? And policy establishing priority water sewer service for affordable housing. Introduce ordinance number 888, first reading.

I'll motion.

All right. We have a motion on the table. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

The item has been seconded and requires a roll call vote from the council. Council Member Mora.

Aye.

Councilmember Hernandez?

Aye.

And your mayor votes aye. The motion to adopt resolution number 2026-41, approving land use element amendments and policy establishing priority water service for affordable housing, introducing ordinance number 888, first reading passes with a 3-0 vote. City staff reports. Item 8-1, November 2026, Municipal Election. Adopt Resolution 2026-42, calling for the election, requesting consolidation with Stanislaus County, and requesting election services. Madam Clerk, Allegri, you have the floor.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. This item is before the City Council to adopt resolution number 202642, which formally calls the November 3rd, 2026 municipal election and requests consolidation with the Stanislaus County general election. The election will include the Office of Mayor-at-Large for a two-year term and council members for districts B and D, each for four-year terms. The resolution also requests election services from the Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters, including the use of county election facilities, equipment, personnel, and services. The City Clerk's Office will continue to handle candidate nomination procedures, required legal notices, and the duties assigned to the city elections official. The fiscal year 2026-27 budget includes... Funding for this election and estimated costs are anticipated not to exceed $89,600 for the regularly scheduled municipal elections. Staff recommends that the City Council adopt Resolution No. 2026. That concludes my report, and I'm available to answer any questions.

Questions, comments, or concerns from the Council? All right, seeing none, we'll open Item 8.1 for public comment. Is anyone present in the Council Chambers who has provided public comment on Item 8.1? Seeing none, we will now close the in-person public comment. Madam Clerk, is there anyone online who wishes to provide a public comment on 8-1?

And there are no comments online, Mayor.

All right. Seeing there's no public comments, we now close the public comment period. Any final questions or concerns or comments from the Council before we move forward?

Yes, ma'am. Perfect. I concur.

Do I have a motion to adopt resolution number 2026-42 calling the election requesting consolidation with Stanislaus County and requesting election services?

I'll motion.

All right, we have a motion on the table. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

The item has been seconded. It requires a roll call vote from the council. Council Member Mora?

Aye.

Council Member Hernandez?

Aye.

Mayor votes aye. The motion to adopt Resolution 2026-42 calling the election requesting consolidation with Stanislaus County and requesting election services passes with a 3-0 vote. Moving forward, City Council items. We have appointments on the table. Appoint two members of the Economic Strategic Commission, term April 2026 to April 2028. It is my recommendation we appoint Vanessa Marks and Robert Manford to the Economic Strategic Commission for the term of April 2026 to April 2028. Are there any comments, questions, or concerns regarding the recommendation?

None.

All right. Seeing none, with the consensus of the council, Vanessa Marks and Robert Manford will be appointed to the Economic Strategic Commission for April 2026 through 2028. Do we have a consensus of the recommendation?

Yes.

All right. So moved. I agree. Council Member Hernandez. Yes.

Only update I have is that we will be meeting every other month with the Stanislaus Homeless Alliance Commission, and I have not met for the other commission yet. That is all.

Okay, great. Council Member Mora?

Nothing to report.

Okay, and for myself, we had the Stanislaus County Mayor's meeting here in our downtown just this last week at the Elder Water Office, and we had our nightcap at the Central Valley Craft House, so that was a lot of fun. They didn't want to leave town. I practically had to kick them out. They were having such a good time. And then as far as Stancock, we have our meeting tomorrow.

Other matters? Council Member Roque asked me to read a statement for him since he had to leave for a flight. So bear with me because I'm just seeing it myself. His words, I want to reaffirm my commitment to serving the residents of Patterson in a manner that is consistent with the city's government structure, municipal code, and the city council member handbook. Chapter 9 of the council member handbook explains the roles of elected officials as it relates to working with city staff. Council members may request information directly from staff when necessary to fulfill their responsibilities as elected officials. Municipal Code Section 2.16.040 also provides that individual council members may request information from staff but may not direct staff in the performance of their duties. This framework is intended to ensure accountability, maintain clear lines of communication, and allow staff to effectively carry out the policies established by the City Council. Accordingly, with communications with City staff are obtaining information, seeking clarification on City matters, and better understanding city issues that may come before the council. I do not direct staff work, assign projects, establish priorities, or otherwise involve myself in day-to-day management of city departments. As one of your council members, I take these guidelines seriously and remain committed to conducting myself in a matter that respects both the professional role of city staff and the administrative authority of the city manager. I value the dedication, professionalism, and expertise of our city employees and appreciate the work they do on behalf of our community every day. That is all.

Do you have anything for yourself? Okay, and neither do I. So with that being said, I will move for adjournment.

Yes, yeah.

And so we're going to adjourn the open session, and we will now go back up to the closed session to finish our work up there. So the open session is now adjourned.