City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, so we're about to begin. If I can ask everyone to please take your seats. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to your Pleasanton City Council meeting. Today is Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 at 7 p.m. And we're calling this meeting to order. If you are able, please rise. And Councilmember Eicher, can you lead us in the pledge, please?

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

Thank you very much. Just so that my fellow council members know, we are using the online portal. Roll call, please.

Council Members Eicher?

Present.

Nyberg?

Here.

Testa? Here. Mayor Balch?

Present.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm just going to do a few quick announcements, if I may, and go from there. So we'll go, if people know. Pleasanton Downtown will be the place to be this weekend for our first Weekend on Main of 2026. A huge thank you. I'd like to shout out to the Pleasanton Downtown Association, who's coordinating many of these events, although there's several other groups. And also, I'd like to just bring your attention to the Pleasanton Art League's competition that they are doing for the window decorating contest. which are mother-daughter teams competing against each other, painting our storefronts, and finishing by this Friday for Weekend on Main. Downtown is really going to shine bright. You may have seen all the events, but come down and experience our downtown. Friday we will kick off with Concert in the Park beginning at 7 o'clock at Lyons Wayside. I didn't pick the band's name, but it's Other People's Money. Saturday we'll have a trio of events with our Farmers Market in the beginning, Hot Rod Row midday, and the Longest Table by Pleasanton Connects in the afternoon-evening hour, which will have approximately 1,000 people eating under the arch all the way down Main Street. Sunday will continue with country fest from 11 to 3 p.m. On Main Street and Bubbles and boots again. I didn't come up with the marketing will be from 11 to 1 at various locations in the downtown I just wanted to point out that our downtown is shining bright. Pleasanton is doing so many events. That being said, a lot of trash will be generated. There was a trash plan in place. But if I can just ask our residents to help us keep ranked as the cleanest city in California by packing it in and packing it out to keep our downtown going. With that, we'll go to agenda amendments. Any agenda amendments by staff?

Thank you, Mayor. No changes this evening from staff.

Thank you. Any agenda amendments by my fellow council members at this time?

I do. I'd like to move item four to public hearing.

Okay. Item number four will be item number 14 now. Any additional comments or agenda amendments? Okay, seeing none, the only change to the agenda is item number four, the approved annual street closures for 2026 will now become item number 14, and the rest of the agenda will go as posted. With that, we're going to proceed to the consent calendar. Consent items is items one through eight minus item four. Items listed on the consent calendar are considered routine in nature and may be enacted by one motion. If discussion is required, that particular item may be removed from consent and considered separately. Before we go a little further for questions, I did want to point out to my fellow council members, I know it's our city manager's last meeting with us, so I'm going to provide space after the city manager update portion of the agenda for us, although public can speak during meeting open to the public, of course. Okay. Any clarifying questions on consent by any of my fellow council members at this time? Seeing none, if you would like to speak on the consent calendar, again, items one through eight, minus number four, and would like to speak, please turn in a blue speaker card. Do we have any city clerk? Okay. If you have not turned in a blue speaker card but would like to speak on these items, please approach the podium at this time. Hearing none, seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back to the council for action and direction or comments.

I move approval of the motion or the consent calendar minus absent item number four.

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion made and seconded. Any comments? Okay, I have a few comments myself. Obviously item 1A is the appointment of an interim city manager contract. I just would like to voice my thanks and I'm sure my fellow council members agree to our city staff members as the city is transitioning through this process to find our permanent city manager. We've started this process obviously with this vote before us today and are greatly appreciative of Mr. Calabrigo's interim service for the city of Pleasanton. I'm number four. I'll wait until we get to that. And then item number five is our landscape maintenance districts. I just as are my fellow council members know they're woefully underfunded. These landscape maintenance districts with insufficient revenues to address maintenance obligations. City staff has taken a hard look at trying to bolster them, and I just want to continue to lend support for that. This action tonight will do that, but just want to call those out. Okay, we have a motion made and seconded. We're going to be doing it via the electronic system. Please clerk.

I don't, am I signed in?

I think you just have to push.

Okay.

Do you need her to vote?

She does not have a prompt to vote.

I can take a vote by roll call if you'd like, Mayor.

Okay. Why don't we do that? Our system is working wonderful. Please.

Council members, let's see, Nybert? Aye. Pesta? Aye. Eicher? Aye. Gaydos? Aye. Mayor Balch? Aye. The motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much. All right. So we'll probably get to the electronic system for the next bit here. Okay, so we are now on to item number nine, which is presentation of a proclamation declaring June 2026 as Pride Month. Councilmember Eicher, please.

The City of Pleasanton proudly proclaims June 2026 as LGBTQ Plus Pride Month, whereas the City of Pleasanton is committed to fostering a welcoming, inclusive, respectful community where all people are treated with dignity and equality, and where discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression has no place. And whereas the founding principles of the United States affirm that all people are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that every individual deserves equal protection under the law. Whereas LGBTQ Plus Pride Month is recognized each June to celebrate the resilience, history, achievements, and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning individuals, while also recognizing the ongoing pursuit of equity and inclusion. Whereas the city of Pleasanton values and celebrates the diversity of its residents, its workforce, businesses, and community organizations, and recognizes that all people, of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences contribute to the strength, the vibrancy, and the character of our community. And whereas Pride Month serves as an opportunity to reaffirm the city's commitment to inclusion, belonging, respect, and equal opportunity for all members of the community. Now therefore it be resolved that the Pleasanton City Council hereby proclaims June 2026 as LGBTQ plus pride month in the city of Pleasanton and encourages all residents to recognize and celebrate the many contributions of the LGBTQ plus community. Signed by every member of the city council.

Thank you.

And do we have some speakers?

Do we have some speakers who would like to speak on this item to accept the proclamation? Please. Welcome.

My name is Lainey Paschal. I'm with PFLAG Tri-Valley. I'm joined here by Donalyn Harris, who is the founder of our chapter, and Nancy Denbroder, who is our current president. We just wanted to thank the city of Pleasanton and this board for this resolution. Pride Month is both a celebration, it's a reminder of our resilience and our joy. So thank you very much.

Do either of you would like to? You don't have to. I just want to provide the space if you would like.

Hi, I'm Donalyn Harris and I don't know which time, how many times it's been that I've come up here to say thank you to our community for recognizing families like mine and children like mine. I will say I have had children in the PUSD system for 26 years. Please don't do the math on that. And my youngest children just graduated from Amador PVA Middle College just this past weekend. And one of my children was a student speaker. And the entire audience was moved when my son was open and honest about his struggles, how difficult it was for him to find a place in school. And when Laney mentioned resilience, several folks came up after his speech to commend him for being so open and honest. Because it's so important for everybody to know that things like this matter. When students know that they are safe and respected and seen and understood, It creates an environment where they can really blossom as themselves. In our home, we've always tried very hard to encourage our children not just to be proud of themselves, not to say, oh, I'm proud of who I am, but to really recognize that pride is the absence of shame. And our children have no reason to be ashamed of who they are. And thank you to Pleasanton for the growth that you've shown. This effort has grown alongside my children and I will love and honor and be so grateful for that for my entire life. So thank you.

Thank you. Would you like a photo with us?

Yeah, maybe you could come up front and we can get a photo with you.

It's okay.

I don't mind. There you go. You're the... That's why I sit here. Be just like, okay. Good.

Thank you. Okay.

With that, we're going to proceed to item number 10, public comment regarding items that are not listed on the agenda. I like to read this bit at the beginning of this item so everyone knows. Good evening and welcome. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the councils on any matters that are within the council's subject matter jurisdiction but are not listed on the agenda. If you wish to speak for a matter that is on the agenda, please reserve your comments for when we get to that item. If you wish to speak now or in the future, please fill out one of these blue speaker cards, they're outside on their credenza, and turn them into the city clerk and they'll be randomly shuffled as they come up to me. I ask our community members to be respectful and help maintain decorum. Speakers may have different opinions and we want to hear all perspectives and viewpoints. To that end, please no clapping, booing, or other disturbances. If you would like to show your support with what the speaker is saying, simply raise your hand and we will understand that as additional support. Please know that this is your time to be heard. If you do ask questions, those won't necessarily be answered unless taken up by a council member after the conclusion of your allotted time or after the public comment period has completed. Speakers are hereby limited to three minutes and thank you very much for your cooperation. We currently have one speaker card at this time, Ms. Valerie Arkin. Welcome.

I AM HERE TONIGHT REPRESENTING ALAMEDA COUNTY SUPERVISOR NATE MILEY AND I HAVE A COMMENDATION FOR CITY MANAGER BODEN THAT I WOULD LIKE TO READ AND IT IS ON BEHALF OF THE ENTIRE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS. SO I'M GOING TO GO AHEAD AND READ THAT NOW. WHEREAS THE ALAMEDA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS PROUDLY RECOGNIZES JERRY BODEN FOR A SERVICE TO THE CITY OF PLEASANTON ON THE SECOND DAY OF JUNE 2026 AND WHEREAS Jerry Bowden has dedicated eight years of outstanding public service to the city of Pleasanton, culminating in his role as city manager and throughout his tenure has exemplified integrity, leadership, and a steadfast commitment to public good. And, whereas, Jerry Bowden served the City of Pleasanton as Community Development Director from 2015 to 2019 and as City Manager from 2022 to 2026, demonstrating exceptional civic leadership, vision, and a collaborative spirit, guiding Pleasanton through challenges with steady resolve and championing initiatives to strengthen the community's future. And whereas Jerry Bowden played a key leadership role in numerous major initiatives for the city of Pleasanton, including economic development projects that brought Costco and new hotels to the city, creating a new strategic plan, water infrastructure improvements, creating an asset management plan, the certified housing element, the Stone Ridge Mall framework, the creation of a public works department, launching the first community academy, the Wayside Park renovation, and the responsible management of complex budget challenges through data-driven, fiscally sustainable solutions. And, whereas, we commend Jerry Bowden for his public leadership and dedication to advancing community priorities which exemplify his care and compassion for Pleasanton and enhance the quality of life for all members of the community. And, whereas, Jerry Bowden's commitment to transparency, fiscal responsibility, and collaborative governance has set a standard of excellence that will inspire future leaders. NOW, THEREFORE, THE ALAMEDA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, COUNTY OF ALAMEDA, STATE OF CALIFORNIA, HEREBY EXTENDS ITS SINCERE APPRECIATION TO JERRY BODEN ON THIS SECOND DAY OF JUNE, 2026, IN RECOGNITION OF HIS OUTSTANDING PUBLIC SERVICE, OUTSTANDING PUBLIC SERVICE TO THE CITY OF PLEASANTON, AND EXTENDS ITS BEST WISHES FOR CONTINUED SUCCESS IN HIS FUTURE PUBLIC SERVICE ENDEAVORS. AND BEFORE WE, WELL, YOU CAN CLAP. GO AHEAD. But before we take a picture, I'm taking the county hat off right now. And this is Valerie Arkin, resident of Pleasanton, former council member. I just want to extend my appreciation for everything you have done for the city of Pleasanton. Serving for two and a half years on the council while you were city manager, I think you did an exceptional job. I think you have respect for everybody. You showed everybody respect, myself included, the council, the community. You engaged with the community. I think everything you did was based on facts, things that you brought forward, and you always did it with the best interest of Pleasanton in mind. And I know you inherited some issues that you had, complex issues, especially with the budget, as we all know, and I think you handled those so well. I think you're really gonna be missed. You've really left a positive mark on Pleasanton, and I will say the city of Alameda is very lucky to have you.

Thank you.

You're very welcome. Thank you very much for the kind words as well. All right. We have another speaker card on this. Miss Kelly Cousins. And again, if you would like to speak on matters not on the agenda, please fill out blue speaker card at this time. Three minutes, please.

Good evening. I just wanted to remind you that this Thursday we have a very exciting event in Pleasanton. It's the unveiling of the Don Lewis Harmonic Symphony and the Maestro, which is the sculpture representing Don Lewis in an abstract form. And it starts at four o'clock at DeLuke Park. I know many of you will be there and the mayor will be speaking. So we also invite the public to go and play on the six instruments. If you haven't seen them already, they're very engaging. And they're for all ages. And they look kind of like Dr. Seuss instruments. And Maestro is representing Don as the conductor of the orchestra. So it's one of the unique interactive ART INSTALLATIONS THROUGHOUT OUR COMMUNITY AND OTHER COMMUNITIES. I THINK IT WILL GET A LOT OF ATTENTION. IT IS ALSO REPRESENTING DAWN'S LOVE OF MUSIC AND HIS PASSION FOR PROVIDING ART AND ENGAGEMENT OF PEOPLE OF ALL AGES AND ALL ABILITIES. I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE. IT'S BETWEEN THE BATHROOMS AT THE FARMER'S MARKET, IF YOU KNOW WHERE THAT IS, AND THE BUS STOP BY THE DAIRY. IT'S NEWLY DESIGNED. I ALSO WANTED TO THANK JERRY BODEN FOR HIS SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY. duplicate what Valerie has said I think she covered a lot of territory but I do appreciate your service to the community and it's been great working with you good luck thank you very much okay that is my last speaker card uh is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item or matters open to the public at this time please approach the podium at this time

Hearing none, seeing none, we'll close public comment and proceed on with the agenda. Okay, so we are now at public hearing and other matters. We're gonna start with item number 11, approve the proposed sewer rate structure, sewer, oh, excuse me, sewer rate structure, sewer rate, and updated sewer connection fees to support implementation of the sewer rate studies financial plan scenario one maintained. Bit of a mouthful. City Manager. It is.

Thank you, Mayor. This has been many months in the making. So tonight, our Public Works Director, Xuqin Yang, as well as Nancy Fan from Water Resources Economics are going to handle the presentation. And we're happy to have any or answer any questions you may have about this item at the end. Thank you.

Thank you and welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and Councilmember. Thank you for the opportunity to present the proposed sewer rate structure, sewer rate, and updated sewer connection fee tonight. Tonight's staff has incorporated Council's suggestion into our presentation with additional graphics and illustration to help to explain our sewer rate study. The data remain the same as previously presented to the Council in the April workshop. In addition, staff will be presenting the proposed sewer connection fee for council consideration. Before we begin, I'd like to do a little introduction for residents who may have first heard about this topic. The City of Pleasanton owns and operate a wastewater collection system consisting approximately 253 miles of gravity sewer mains 4.9 miles of forced mains, eight siphons, 11 active pump stations, and approximately 21,000 service connections. On average, the system conveys about 6 million gallons of wastewater per day for treatment. Pleasanton doesn't have treatment plan. All sewage is treated at DSRSD treatment plan or Livermore treatment plan. The purpose of the sewer rate study is to evaluate whether the city current sewer rate generates sufficient revenue to support both operation needs and the future investment required to maintain a reliable sewer system. The study examines the actual cost of providing sewer services including operation and maintenance, capital improvement needs, infrastructure replacement, and regulatory requirements. It also considers inflation and other cost increases affecting utility operations. By conducting this study, the city can ensure that rates remain fair, equitable, and aligned with the cost of service while providing the financial resources necessary to maintain system reliability, protect public health and the environment, and avoid costly infrastructure failure in the future. Joining me today is Nancy Pan from Water Resource Economic. Together we will provide an overview of the rate study process, communication outreach status, and going over the cost of service methodology, proposed rate structure changes, proposed sewer rate that was presented to council in the April workshop, followed by discussion on customer impact and rates survey and sewer connection fee. Last, we will provide next step and upcoming schedule to finalize the sewer rate study effort. In 2025, the city completed its Sewer System Management Plan, or SSMP, and developed a long-term sewer capital improvement program. Together, this effort provide a roadmap for maintaining system reliability, supporting infrastructure sustainability, and reducing the risk of sewer overflow. This is the first time Pleasanton sewer rates have been comprehensively evaluated using a detailed cost-of-service methodology designed to right-size revenue and equitably allocate costs among customer classes, supported by a detailed management plan and CIP plan. Historically, sewer rate were adjusted primarily through consumer price index increases, which did not fully keep pace with the increasing cost of operating, maintaining, and rehab of the sewer system. As a result, significant infrastructure needs have accumulated over time. In February this year, the City Council adopted Scenario 1 Maintain as the financial planning framework for the sewer rate study. This scenario established the revenue requirement necessary to maintain financial sufficiency and support the city sewer system over the long term. With the financial plan, staff completed the analysis of cost of service to determine cost to serve each customer class. We have already completed the rate design, including developing sewer rate structure that is most suitable to meet city goals and objective, evaluating customer rate classes. In April, staff presented our work product on proposed rate structure and the proposed sewer rate in council workshop. We received feedback and suggestion from the council to our presentation material. Following tonight's meeting, staff will return to council in July with the final sewer rate study report and a request to approve distribution of the Prop 218 notice to customer. The Prop 218 public hearing is currently scheduled for November at which time council will consider adopting of the new sewer rate proposed to become effective January 1st, 2027. All of the information that are provided today is available on the City of Pleasanton sewer website and the City of Pleasanton sewer rate website. We have two different websites, one specifically to talk about the sewer system and one specifically talk about the sewer rate. Any residents who is interested to learn more about the sewer rate study or our general sewer system can visit our website and we'll continue to update the website to provide the residents the most updated information on the rate study. I also like to announce that the public work will be hosting a webinar in July. That resident can participate to also hear about the presentation and to ask question to staff member about the sewer rate. And in July, we will be also having a booth at the farmer market to promote and share information on the sewer rate study as well. At this time, I would like to invite Nancy Pam from Water Research Economic to present the technical findings and recommendation of the sewer rate study and sewer connection fee.

THANK YOU AND GOOD EVENING, HONORABLE MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBERS AND MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK. THE TWO SECTIONS THAT I'LL BE GOING OVER IN THIS PRESENTATION PERTAIN TO THE SEWER RATES AND SEWER CONNECTION FEES AS SUCHIN MENTIONED. THE SEWER RATES IS PRIMARILY GOING TO BE REVIEW FROM THE APRIL 21ST WORKSHOP THAT WE HAD WITH THE CITY COUNCIL WITH SOME ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK FROM CITY COUNCIL BEING TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION FOR SOME OF RATE SURVEYS AND CUSTOMER IMPACTS. THE FIRST STEP IS FIGURING OUT THE COST OF SERVICE METHODOLOGY. SUCHIN MENTIONED THE CITY OPERATES A SEWER COLLECTION SYSTEM, NOT A TREATMENT SYSTEM. SO THE WAY THAT WE ALLOCATE THE COSTS IN THIS SYSTEM IS TO ESTIMATE WASTE WATER FLOW BASED ON CUSTOMER CLASS. SO THERE'S TWO GROUPS OF CUSTOMERS, AND WE ESTIMATE WASTE WATER FLOW DIFFERENTLY FOR EACH OF THEM. RESIDENTIAL WASTE WATER FLOW IS GOING TO BE BASED ON HOUSEHOLD SIZE, BASED ON CENSUS DATA. and city specific data for indoor water use consumption. So indoor water use is used to estimate wastewater flow because that's likely the amount of water that is going back into the sewer system as opposed to being irrigated. FOR NON-RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS THAT WASTE WATER FLOW IS GOING TO BE BASED ON ACTUAL WATER USAGE DATA OF THE LAST HISTORICAL YEAR AND WE HAVE A RETURN FACTOR WHICH IS ALSO BASED ON AVERAGE WINTER WATER USE RELATIVE TO ANNUAL USAGE. The reason why again why we use average winter use is it's also a way to estimate indoor water consumption since irrigation is not happening during those lower usage months. So the goal of this cost of service process is to align the costs with the cost of the system with the estimated wastewater contribution by each customer class. So after we do this analysis based on the methodology that I mentioned previously, we can estimate the wastewater flow to three customer classes. That's going to be residential, commercial, and industrial, and institutional or schools. So if you can see in the last two columns here, we have the proposed cost allocation based on estimated wastewater flow and the current cost allocation based on the rates now. So compared to the current allocation after we DO THIS ANALYSIS, COSTS ARE SHIFTING AWAY FROM RESIDENTIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CUSTOMERS AND TO COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CUSTOMERS PROPORTIONATELY. SO WE'LL SEE THAT AS AN IMPACT TO THE RATES LATER IN A COUPLE OF SLIDES. The second part is looking at any proposed rate structure changes to the sewer rate. We have a couple of overarching goals that we have for the rate structure. The first is to simplify the rate structure and or match to your peer agencies such as DSRSD to make the rate structure more understandable, make it easier to administer. ALSO, WE WANT IT TO ALIGN WITH COST OF SERVICE PRINCIPLES. IT HAS BEEN QUITE SOME TIME SINCE THE CITY HAS DONE A FULL COST OF SERVICE ANALYSIS. WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THE RATES WE ARE PROPOSING ARE ALIGNED WITH WHAT COSTS ARE INCURRED BY EACH CUSTOMER CLASS. So the proposed changes to the rate structure itself, based on those overarching goals for residential, we are proposing to aligned condo and multifamily rates. There doesn't seem to be a measurable or meaningful difference in household density between those TYPES OF CUSTOMERS, SO TO SIMPLIFY THE RATE, WE ARE ALIGNING THOSE RATES FOR COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL. THEY WILL HAVE ONE COLLECTION RATE. CURRENTLY, THE SEWER RATE FOR PLEASANTON COLLECTION IS BASED ON CUSTOMER USE TYPES, SO BAKERIES, RESTAURANTS, car washes, et cetera. But because it's a collection system, it really doesn't, there isn't a measurable difference in cost to transport one unit of wastewater from a bakery or from a restaurant or from an office space. And so we are aligning that with the cost of service. And for institutional, there are two differentiating factors currently in the rate structure, and that's school rates by sub-metered schools and not sub-metered schools. Submetered just means that there is a separate irrigation meter so that we can measure what's kind of more indoor consumption versus what's irrigation consumption. And then not submetered, where they only have one meter for each customer. TYING THE COST OF SERVICE AND THOSE PROPOSED RATE STRUCTURE CHANGES TO EVENTUALLY WHAT IS GOING TO BE THE OVERALL INCREASE. WE HAVE FOUR YEARS OF PROPOSED INCREASES FOR THIS STUDY PERIOD. AS YOU CAN SEE HERE, THERE IS THAT TOTAL RATE REVENUE ADJUSTMENT. I WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR THERE THAT PERCENTAGE IS THAT IS RELATED TO THE TOTAL RATE REVENUE OF ALL CLASSES But because of the cost of service that we talked about with the wastewater allocation moving away from residential and institutional and towards commercial and industrial, in that first year, 2027, that's the year we do our cost of service analysis, you can see those percentages differ based on those three customer classes. In the latter three years of the study period, that's going to be adjusted across the board, so those impacts are going to be the same for all customer classes. AND, OF COURSE, JUST, YOU KNOW, ADDRESSING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, THAT 2027 NUMBER IS LARGE. IT'S GOING TO BE 100% INCREASE IN THE CITY COLLECTION RATE, BUT FOR CONTEXT, I KNOW THAT PERCENTAGE IS BIG. THE CITY PORTION OF THE TYPICAL RESIDENTIAL SEWER SERVICE BILL CURRENTLY IS UNDER $16 PER MONTH. Okay, so the next couple of rates or next couple of slides is going to be the proposed sewer rates for residential and non-residential customers. All of these proposed sewer rates incorporate the changes from the total rate revenue adjustment, the cost of service, as well as those proposed rate structure changes. So in residential, as I mentioned, condo and multifamily, those are becoming one consolidated rate. So you can see that they're starting in fiscal year 2027. and single family and single family with second residence will be its own rate based on occupancy. For non-residential customers, currently those commercial classifications are based on use type and now we are proposing to consolidate all of those commercial and industrial charges into one collection rate for the reasons I mentioned previously. Institutional will still have a variable charge per CCF based on sub-metered versus not sub-metered schools. The next two slides will show the sewer customer impacts. And we have a couple of graphics in the future slides about how this all shows up. So all of this information is included in the staff report. So if customers are interested in looking at that further, this has the customer impacts both on the current and proposed collection bill on the left side, as well as the combined bill with the changes to the DSRST treatment pass through as well. And same for non-residential here, this will be for commercial as well as institutional. Based on feedback from the council last time, we did include this graph in here for multi-year bills for single family. So as we mentioned previously, it's been quite some time since the Pleasanton collection sewer rate has been increased meaningfully because there hasn't been a cost of service study. That black line lower there is the Pleasanton collection rate for a bi-monthly single family rate for Pleasanton collection. And then the blue line is the treatment pass through for DSRST. As you can see, we have the collection rate from prior to fiscal year 2019 all the way to the end of this study period. So for the last 10 years or so, we haven't seen a meaningful increase above CPI and which is insufficient to be able to implement the sewer system management plan that Suchin talked about previously. So we can see here, we can see a jump up because of that right sizing of the system with this cost of service and rate study. TO PUT THAT INTO CONTEXT BETWEEN THE TRI-VALUE AREA, WE HAVE A COUPLE OF RATE SURVEYS FOR THREE DIFFERENT CUSTOMER CLASSES AND COMPARE WHAT IS THE PLEASANTON RATE VERSUS DSRSD VERSUS LIVERMORE. SO FOR SINGLE FAMILY BIMONTHLY BILLS, WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE MIDDLE RIGHT THERE, AND THEN WITH THE PROPOSED INCREASES, WE'LL STILL BE IN THE MIDDLE BETWEEN DSRSD AND LIVERMORE. And as I work through some of these rate surveys, we'll see that continue to be a trend where Pleasanton's bills, proposed bills stay within that middle range between the three agencies. Same thing for a full service restaurant. This is a typical restaurant using 104 CCF of water per bi-monthly bill. It's currently the lowest out of all the agencies and now we're moving towards the middle of And same thing for schools sub metered. They use a little bit more water at 172 CCF currently is the lowest. And then now we're still going to be in the middle of DSRC and Livermore. We have a multi-year rate survey for single family rates, bi-monthly rates that was requested by council last time we met. And so Pleasanton is the black line, DSRC will be the light blue line, and Livermore will be the green line. So for the past, let me count how many years, one, two, three, 10 or so, or I guess that's nine because fiscal year 2027 has two. Nine years Pleasanton stays, it starts off low because we haven't been increasing above and beyond CPI. And then we increase but still stay within DSRSD and Livermore in the middle there. And just keeping in mind that these Pleasanton, the Pleasanton bills right here are also inclusive of the DSRC treatment pass through. That is not something that the city of Pleasanton has control over because you don't treat your wastewater, but the collection system and the treatment is included in this data right here. Okay, so that is it for the rates. I will be moving on to sewer connection fees. SO JUST KIND OF A REFRESHER ON WHAT CONNECTION FEES ARE. CONNECTION FEES ARE GOING TO BE ONE-TIME CHARGES AND THESE ARE ONLY TO NEW DEVELOPMENT TO CONNECT TO THE CITY SEWER SYSTEM. SO THE PURPOSE OF THESE CONNECTION FEES IS TO ESTABLISH FINANCIAL EQUITY BETWEEN CUSTOMERS THAT ARE ALREADY EXISTING IN YOUR SYSTEM AND ANY NEW CUSTOMERS THAT WANT TO CONNECT TO YOUR SYSTEM. This recognizes that your existing customers have invested in your sewer collection system already and new customers have not. So the principle behind connection fees is that growth should pay for growth. And there's a difference between rates and connection fees, some key differences. Sewer rates are regulated under Prop 218. So that process that Suchin talked about at the beginning of this presentation, that pertains to sewer rates and sewer connection fees are under Prop 26. Sewer rates pay for the cost of operating, maintaining, replacing, et cetera, the sewer system for your existing customers. So in your CIP, your replacement CIP, your operations and maintenance costs that will be sewer rates. Sewer connection fees pay for capacity in the sewer system to serve new customers. And there are three different types of methodologies that are typically used to calculate connection fees. The first is the buy-in method. This is the most common. This is going to be used for agencies that already have additional capacity in your existing system. So the idea is that new customers are buying into the system and essentially refunding your existing customers that have built your system. The second is the incremental cost method. This is used for agencies that need to expand their system in order to serve new customers. So this means that we're investing in expansion related CIP projects to have more capacity in the system because there's not sufficient EXISTING SYSTEM TO SERVE NEW CUSTOMERS. THOSE NEW CUSTOMERS ARE GOING TO PAY FOR THE CAPITAL PROJECTS BUILT TO SERVE THEM. THE HYBRID METHOD, AS YOU CAN GUESS, IS A COMBINATION OF THE TWO. IT IS USED FOR AGENCIES THAT HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF BOTH. We're recommending the buy-in method for the city since there is additional capacity in the sewer system to serve new customers as well as there are no expansion related CIP projects in the SSMP that would be used to calculate the incremental cost method. So the buy-in fee methodology is, there's a couple of components here. I'll try to work through them quickly. The first is determining the value of your existing system, right? And so we have the sewer assets of your collection system based on replacement costs, less depreciation. That is a lot of words to mean that we're accounting for inflation as well as depreciation to make it the most defensible that we can. And we also include cash balances from the sewer funds. The second is to define what a unit of service is. So how many customers can your existing customer serve? How many do they serve currently? And for sewer that is considered an equivalent dwelling unit or EDU that is equal to one single family residence. So because as I mentioned previously, the buy-in fee is, you know, new customers are buying into your existing system. So the revenues from the buy-in connection fee can be used in the sewer enterprise fund to benefit your existing customers or offset future rates if growth does occur in your service area. So the buy-in fee calculation, your system is valued based on those components at just over $75 million. And we've determined the number of EDUs or equivalent single family units as just over 33,000, okay? And so we divide that and determine the connection fee per EDU, which is 2,250. There's going to be all the proposed sewer connection fees based on all of the different types of customer classifications included in the staff report. On this presentation, I just have the residential. So we have single family, townhome, townhouse duplex, condominium and apartments. Those have been consolidated to be the same, which is the same as we did on the sewer rate structure to be consistent. So any customers or members of the public that are interested in looking at the full connection fee schedule that is included in the staff report. And as a comparison between Livermore and Dublin, Pleasanton's connection fees, that portion that we just talked about is going to be the collection portion only. But there is also a treatment portion for the connection fees that is paid to DSRSD. So Pleasanton current is in the middle, proposed is going to still be in the middle, Livermore is going to be the lowest, and Dublin is going to be the highest, but only slightly higher than the proposed Pleasanton connection fees. AND THEN FINISHING OFF THIS PRESENTATION WITH NEXT STEPS IN SCHEDULE, TODAY IS THE COUNCIL MEETING TO LOOK AT FINAL SEWER RATES AND CONNECTION FEES. THE NEXT TIME WE'LL MEET WILL BE IN JULY FOR THE COUNCIL TO RECEIVE THE SEWER RATE STUDY REPORT AND THE PROP 218 NOTICE. WE HAVE A PUBLIC REVIEW PERIOD ONCE THOSE NOTICES ARE SENT OUT LATER THIS YEAR, AND THEN PUBLIC HEARING TO ADOPT SEWER RATES IS GOING TO HAPPEN TOWARDS THE END OF THE YEAR. AND IF ADOPTED, THOSE NEW RATES GO IN EFFECT STARTING JANUARY 1, So that is it for my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions or go back to any slides.

Okay, thank you very much. For our community members, I'll just mention that this is the sixth time the council has been working through the sewer rate. So I know Nancy and Suchen went through it a bit quickly, but this information is on the website. When you look at tonight's agenda, it's all there so that if you would like to see the detail again or in more detail, You're able to get that. And then just to highlight, I think I heard that we're going to have a webinar in July and be reaching out to our community at the farmers market for our community to give feedback. Correct.

That is correct.

Perfect. So we'll go with that. OK, we're going to start off with clarifying questions, as we always do. I'm going to go start on my left and going right tonight. So, Vice Mayor, thank you.

Just a couple of questions. Thank you. The updated sewer connection fee, at what point in the development process is that set? When permits are issued, when is that new fee attached to future development?

Yeah, the connection fee is calculated when the plans are being submitted when it goes to the planning department and engineering department. Michael Stella is here and he's our city engineer and he will review all of the plans that are submitted during the planning plans submittal phase that would be determined how much is the fee connection connection fee that needs to be collected.

Right. Will these be, you know, proactively set for new developments? And sort of at what point would you have to submit your plans to get the old fees versus the new ones? That's just the information.

It's at point of completion. So when a project's deemed complete, then the fees are locked in at that moment. So if we have our fee schedule updated at that time, it'll be from that point forward. If somebody's in before, then it'll be the old fee.

Thank you. At the point of the completion of the project, you said.

No, application completion.

Okay, thank you. Second question, probably final question, is just regarding the connection fees in the Ruby Hill neighborhood, which is in my district. On page 7 of 15, the second paragraph talks in full about why it is that the residences in Ruby Hill have a higher sewer bill based on the fact that Livermore and Pleasanton are both involved in the connection. Can you just explain that briefly? And then my question would be, would there be a way to address that in any way to make it essentially a little more fair for them? They seem to be paying the high fee for the same service, and how would we do that if we could?

I'll start and then I think Director Young may continue with the answer. The first part of the question is really about the collection fees. They double pay for collection because there's a City of Pleasanton collection component and then there's a Livermore conveyance collection component and then Livermore does the treatment. So the fees are assessed based on the fact that both systems are needed to get sewage from Ruby Hill to Livermore. And so this was established when the project was built. It's been a long-standing, I will call it a frustration for the folks living in Ruby Hill. And if the council would like to take this up, I would recommend that it become a standalone item that has its own analysis. There are different ways to approach this. I believe we're a little over a mile. Michael Stella can answer this in a lot of detail, but it's a little over a mile to connect to Pleasanton's collection system. But because of the topography out there, we would actually have to have pumping happening, which is another cost on top of just the pipe. AND SO IT HASN'T BEEN, IT WASN'T THE PREFERRED APPROACH WHEN THE PROJECT WAS BUILT AND SINCE THAT TIME, AND I KNOW WE HAVE COUNCIL MEMBERS WITH EXPERIENCE WITH THIS FIRSTHAND AS WELL, IT IS, IT HAS BEEN A LONGSTANDING QUESTION, WHY DO WE HAVE TO PAY FOR COLLECTION TWICE BETWEEN, AS RUBY HILL RESIDENTS? AND IT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT WE TRIED TO TACKLE IN THE CITYWIDE RATE STUDY, BUT CERTAINLY COULD BE SOMETHING IF THE COUNCIL WANTED TO EXPLORE IT FURTHER.

thank you for the information i'd be remiss if i didn't ask so i appreciate the explanation uh those are those are my questions mr mayor okay thank you councilmember nyberg clarifying questions at this time yes thank you for the report not too many questions um i would uh direct your attention to slide number 17 again that graph that's there I noticed that the blue line, which is DSRSD, has a very slight slope going up. To me, that says it's barely increasing based on CPI itself. Do you know if that's true?

I don't know off the top of my head what percentages have been increased over the past several years for DSRC, but yes, I agree that there has been kind of some more steady increases.

Okay, as they've taken, I assume, an approach to their system similar to what we're trying to get to in terms of, you know, paying for the system as we go along to ensure that, you know, proper infrastructure is maintained and cost of future improvements are taken into account.

Yes, I can't say for sure since I didn't do their rate study. I understand. Yeah, they've gotten to, it looks to me based on this data that they've gotten to a point where the system is more stabilized.

Okay. Just to clarify, when we talk about the rates being on a bimonthly basis, that means six times a year. So if someone's trying to figure out how much more they would pay in one year, they'd multiply by six. Right. Okay. And then just one other thing. It says... One of the things that staff has undertaken, the Public Works Department has undertaken, is to get going on the necessary repair and replacement options, including inspection of existing pipes. This is information that was supplemental, that was received today. That's all admirable and good. One thing I noted was that This is the first comprehensive force main inspection effort undertaken by the city. So those are valves in the sewer system, right, that deal with the water that's under pressure, right?

That's right.

And how old are those valves generally?

My acting assistant director, Jeremy Cox, is here, and he could probably answer the question a lot better, and I think it's generally about 50 years or more.

Fifty? the length of time that it has been since Pleasanton's significant growth started back 50 years ago.

Yes, they have been in place for a long time. And you are correct. This is the first time that we do a comprehensive inspection program We have a lot of first-time inspection program that we have started last year that we are very proud of that we are slowly developing a program that meeting the state compliance.

Okay programs that never existed before I take it.

That's correct.

And you think some of these force main valves have been exercised for the first time since being installed?

We are just started in the inspection. We have not exercised anything. We started the inspection program to look at the condition of the force main system and do a full inspection and do a condition assessment and determine whether or not there is a replacement needed and how much will that cost.

Okay, great. This is a long overdue effort to make sure that we address our infrastructure needs and doing the first time ever inspections is part of that. Yes. Call that out. That's all. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. I'm going to just, if I may, real fast jump onto that, which is you responded in the supplemental, but one of the questions or processes was 30% approximately of the pipes had been inspected. There was a failure rate on that 30% or an age rate, and then we extrapolated to the remaining for the analysis, which is driving our rates tonight. Can you just, I know it's in the supplemental, but just verbalize that the continued CCTV work is going and the failure rate is consistent with our historical failure rate?

Yes, our target goal is to clean and inspect 190,000 linear feet of pipe a year. And we have been doing a good job to meeting goal for the last two years. And the failure rate, we do see failure here and there. For example, Danker Road is a good example where it is through CCTV that we identify where the major failure is and we took action and we plan ahead to include it in the upcoming cip to replace the pipe but the overall system failure rate is still consistent it's still within the assumption that we have proposed to city council under scenario one maintain yeah thank you i just since it was the item talked about by councilmember nyberg okay thank you very much councilmember tested clarifying questions please

okay well we've had multiple opportunities to get questions answered so some of mine are are taken care of i also appreciated some of the clarification just now but um i i'm kind of curious the um growth pays for growth that's always kind of been the way pleasanton has addressed growth but It's getting harder with state legislation. Are these fees threatened, the connection fees, by any of the legislation that is prohibiting development fees? No? I mean, ADUs, and one of what it said, multiple residents that have two, that second residence that's being referred to is most likely the ADU, right? Okay, and the ADUs, we don't collect fees, do we, or do we?

So we have waivers for certain kinds of development, but we still, you know, today we're still collecting development impact fees. We're still using Prop 26 to set these kinds of connection fees, and we're using Prop 218 to collect for the overall user needs and system needs. And so what I would say is today we are able to use the tools that are available to us but you all know you've you've heard the cal cities and towns and public affairs updates uh there are challenges coming for connect for impact fees related to new development right on on all fees there um yeah um okay so really that's all i have in questions thank you okay thank you councilmember eicher

Yes, thank you for your work on this. It was pretty detailed. And I know this isn't the whole package. We're getting it piece by piece. And there's been a tremendous amount of work that's gone into this. When you go back to the cost of service methodology, wait a minute. Why don't you go back to slide six? Let's start there. So why the shift of costs of service away from residential users to commercial users? What's the benefit in that, or what's the purpose in doing that?

Okay, so there isn't, if we're asking about benefit, there isn't a benefit. We're just aligning cost of service with what we're seeing in terms of the data. I will say with a big caveat here that current cost allocation is based on what your existing rates are collecting in terms of revenue. But as we mentioned a couple of times, it's been quite some time since these rates have been adopted. And so I'm not entirely sure what that current cost allocation is based off of. What I do know is that the proposed cost allocation is based on data that is specific to the city in the most recent form that we have it. And so what this means is that the way that I would interpret this if I assumed that the methodology was the same, was that residential customers are using less water, and so therefore they're discharging less. We've seen this throughout the state as well. So that's consistent with what we've seen. But every time we do a cost of service analysis, whether it's 10 years, five years, et cetera, we'll see some sort of movement, maybe not quite as drastic as this. But it's really just to kind of right-size the cost and the rates every time that we perform this analysis.

Okay, that makes sense. And the cost of methodology, cost of service methodology. So I guess the question I have is if the east side gets built out in Pleasanton, is the existing system able to handle the expanded GROWTH TO SUPPORT THE HUNDREDS OF NEW HOUSES THAT MIGHT BE BUILT OUT THERE. IT WOULD SEEM THAT THE INCREMENTAL COST METHOD WOULD BEST SUIT THAT PORTION OF IT IF OUR CURRENT SYSTEM ISN'T ABLE TO HANDLE THE ADDITIONAL HOUSING. Yeah, and I guess I'm trying to, you know, do we have capacity to handle all of that or not?

So the system, there's been a significant amount of analysis done. Michael Stella is here tonight, and if I don't hit this exactly right, he can help me out. But essentially, we've done the impact analysis and the applicant in that particular case, because it will be a pre-annexation and development agreement, is responsible for upgrading the system. And at a certain point, there may be a reimbursement that comes because they'll likely build a system that will accommodate future growth in East Pleasanton, not just for Arroyo Lago or that first phase of the project. And so in all likelihood, they'll build it out and then they'll be due credits back or some kind of a payment back as new development comes online. They'll overbuild it to meet the need.

Okay. I just, you know, I was... I was trying to wrap my mind around the two portions of it and to help people understand what that looked like.

In that particular case, the idea is that they will build the system that's necessary for the build out of East Pleasanton and then other developers will come in and pay their fair share as those projects come online.

Perfect. And for the public's benefit, can you articulate why the The bulk of the rate increase in future rate in, I'm sorry, I'm having trouble reading my own writing. The future sewer rates occur in the first year as opposed to spreading it out over time. I know there was a reason we talked about doing that, and I didn't see it in here, so I think that might be important to put out there so the folks watching have a good understanding of why we're doing that.

Yeah, completely understand. So you're right, we didn't have those slides that presented why we have this particular, you know, pattern with the highest increases in the beginning and then kind of tapering out in those latter three years. This is based on the funding strategy for the sewer system management plan. There's quite a lot of capital investment coming in the next five years, even for the maintained scenario. So that's the capital side, but we also have additional operating costs that are coming with that sewer system management plan as well. So in order to be able to fund that CIP, issue the debt to fund that CIP, we have to get to a place where we have that capacity to be able to even start that process. And so that's why we're seeing the highest rates or highest increases in the beginning, just to get that process started in order to be able to start issuing debt in the latter three years to fund all of that CIP that we need to get done in the next five years.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. My questions were answered earlier. Any further questions before we go to public comment on this? Seeing none, I have no speaker cards for item number 11. If you would like to speak on item number 11 and have not turned in a speaker card at this time, please approach the podium at this time. Hearing none, seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back to the council for action. Just to let my fellow council members know, the recommendation by staff is approve the proposed sewer rate structure, sewer rates, and updated sewer connection fees related, needed to implement the rate study financial plan scenario one, maintain, including, and then there's three items there listed on page two of 15 of the staff report.

I'll make the motion to approve it.

Okay. Any comments?

Yes. I mean, I will say, in making the motion, that we were presented three different options at the outset. One was very early proactive action. One was more risky. I think we've made the right choice to land right in the middle, and I appreciate staff's responsiveness. We've, I think we've enjoyed, our long-term Pleasanton residents have enjoyed low rates for a long time. Had we gently raised them, maybe we wouldn't have to do something so drastic, but what's going to be viewed as drastic, I'm sure, when the Prop 218 notices go out. But I appreciate staff's work, and I'm happy to make the motion to approve it.

Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Nyberg? Yes, I'd like to second the motion and just refer back to my notes from the April workshop that we did. Some of the notes I have there are, and I'd just like to call out these to everyone's attention the first is that we are stewards of the system not yeah not just the council not just the entire city organization but yeah all of us are stewards and those of us in responsibility for um you know, approving and managing these plans, take that responsibility very seriously. And stewardship is one of our highest objectives. There were three objectives that were discussed in the April workshop for taking the steps that we're taking. One was to get out of our operational deficit The second one was to meet our capital improvement project need. And the third was to stabilize the system. And I think throughout our discussion, we've noted how this new structure will address all of those. And just to remind people that the risk of not investing now, we determined, was too great. One of the objectives of being stewards is to lower risk. And so, having said that, I'll support the motion. Thank you very much. Council Member Testa?

I always appreciate the comparative survey. So, the staff report is very extensive in comparing Pleasanton to our peer agencies in the tri-valley and I think it's reassuring to see that even with increases we have been the lowest and it brings us up still comparative and in fact lower than one other city so we're right in the range it's even though it seems like it's a big jump and it is a big jump in in one fell swoop but It just keeps us still within the range that I think we can reassure our community that We're still being cost-effective as as much as we can be while bringing our system up to Needed improvements, so I Support the motion also Councilmember Eicher

Well, again, thank you, and I'll start off with I support the motion also. I think this goes a long way to helping us take care of some need in the future. It's a necessary cost so that we don't have additional expenditure in the long run. We have, I think the manager discussed earlier, not in today's meeting, but in an earlier meeting, close to $900 million worth of CIP needs, and this will go a long way to help addressing that in the sewer capacity just as water rate increases helped offset that cost in the Water Enterprise Fund. So I think it's very important that we get those under control, ensure that we have a safe community, water and sewer, I believe, in my opinion. And I think the way the city sees it, those are health and safety issues. We need to keep those maintained so we don't have problems in our community. And I think staff is on top of dealing with those issues. So I do support this.

Okay. I'll just echo a few final comments as well that my council members have done. I recognize that the proposed increase is a significant percentage increase when you look at it as we see in front of us. None of us enjoy increasing rates, but postponing it doesn't eliminate the cost and it doesn't address the system or the needs. So as Council Member Nyberg says, we are stewards of the system and it's got to be reliable, financially stable and fair. So a couple of things I want to point out that didn't come up. We have had five prior meetings. This is our sixth, like I said, to understand all the drivers as to why we are here. For our community, 23% of our sewer system is between 56 and 75 years old. When you drop it down to the next tier, 73% of our sewer system is more than 36 years old. At the same time, we all know the regulatory requirements upon us, construction replacement costs, CPI and all of the challenges we're facing and the revenues haven't been able to support the utility. So we're dealing with all of that. And at the second part, I want to point out is that we are taking $28 million of debt. Capital improvements will be funded with $28 million of debt that will incur interest costs. I shouldn't lighten that. It will incur interest costs, but that is the structure that allows us to Have future residents and businesses that benefit from the system pay for these long-term improvements instead of the current residents and rate payers. That's what the debt allows us to do. And secondly, as explained earlier, the rate structure will be adjusted to be based upon who generates the sewer flows, which is another significant upgrade or change to it. So with that, I'll also be able to support the motion on the table. Any further comments before we go to a vote? We have motion made in second. Okay, we're going to try to use the system or you're going to do roll call.

I'll do a roll call this item.

Okay. Roll call vote, please.

Council Members Eicher?

Aye.

Gaydos? Aye. Nybert? Aye. Testa? Aye. Mayor Balch? Aye. The motion passes unanimously.

And just to make sure I clarify, Vice Mayor had the motion and Nybert had the second.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. That completes item number 11. We're going to proceed straight into assuming no one needs a break. We're only about an hour in. Item number 12, provide direction on a draft resolution and draft ordinance for potential local transit or occupancy tax ballot measure for the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election. A little changing of the cards.

Yeah, we're going to switch some staff. Arun Zavala, Assistant to the City Manager, is going to present this evening on the transient occupancy tax, or TOT, or hotel tax. This has been another ongoing discussion about how do we bring some new revenue sources into the City of Pleasanton, and the opportunity before us tonight at full implementation could bring about $2.8 million based on current levels of hotel tax. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Assistant to the City Manager, Arun Zavala.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight, I'm bringing you a potential transient occupancy tax, or TOT, a ballot measure for the November 26 election. This is a direction item, so I'll walk you through what we're proposing and how we compare regionally, and then ask for your direction to keep it moving forward. Briefly for the record, TOT is a tax on short-term lodging stays, 30 days or less, at hotels, motels, and other transient lodging. The idea behind it is simple. Visitors use city service while they're here, so the tax is a way for them to help pay for what they use rather than a residence. That makes it one of the few revenue tools that doesn't fall directly on Pleasanton households. It's collected by operators and remitted to the city and supports general city services such as public safety, parks, recreation, streets and infrastructure. As a quick background, the city is facing an ongoing structural deficit somewhere between 4.4 and 8.3 million dollars a year. That's before a separate $44 million annual gap in infrastructure funding. Meanwhile, our TOT rate has sat at 8% since 1983. It hasn't moved in over 40 years. The path here has been steady. In August 2025, council asked us to explore a TOT increase. In February 2026, you directed us to draft ballot language for a phase move to 12%. And tonight, we're asking for your direction on the draft resolution and ordinance. To get a read on the community, we use FlashVote. It's a scientific community survey service we use throughout this year, recently on things like city communications and emergency preparedness. Residents are verified by address, and the sample is built to represent the community as a whole, so that what you're seeing is the broad community, not just loudest voices. On the TOT question, 67% were in support, 13% were neutral, and 20% opposed out of 251 respondents. And their top priorities track closely with where this money would go. Safety first, then parks and recreation, local businesses, streets and sidewalks, and the overall look of the community. Here's how we stack up across Alameda County. Of the 13 cities with the TOT, 10 are already at 10% or higher, and five are at 14%. The lowest three are Pleasanton, Dublin, and Livermore, the Tri-Valley, all still at 8%. And here's the timely part, Dublin at city council meeting tonight was hearing a very similar item to ours. So the same 8% to 10% to 12% on the same July, 2027 and 2028 timeframe for the November ballot. So we're moving in step with one of our closest neighbors. The most recent increases that went to voters was Newark in January 2025 and Hayward in August 2025. And both passed comfortably at 80% and 72%. And even at 12%, we'd still be at or below most of the county. What we're proposing is a phased increase in two steps. The first, on July 1, 2027, takes us from 8% to 10%, which is about $1.4 million a year in new revenue. The second, a year later, on July 1, 2028, takes us from 10% to 12%, bringing the total to roughly $2.8 million a year. Both steps are covered by one ballot measure. and the election itself runs between 243,000 and $340,000. One quick point on the type of tax is that we're proposing a general tax, meaning the revenue goes to a general government purposes, and it passes on a simple majority, 50% plus one. We are not recommending this, but there's also a special tax, which locks revenue to a specific purpose, but needs a two-thirds vote. We're not going in that direction. We'll recommend the general tax, but I want to be on the record that that's another option. This is the draft ballot question, as voters would see it. In plain terms, it asks whether to raise the hotel tax from 8% to 10% in 2027 and 12% in 2028, generating $1.4 to $2.8 million a year for city services like police, fire, parks, and streets until voters decide to end it. The full legal language is in the resolution. If you give us direction to proceed tonight, here's what comes next. On July 7th, we will come back to you to formally adopt the resolution and approve the ordinance. That's what officially places it on the ballot. The county deadline to submit it is early August, and the election is November 3rd. So our recommendation is simple. Give us direction on the draft resolution and ordinance for a TOT measure on the November 3rd ballot. With that, I'm glad to take any questions. This is a multi-departmental effort, and so I have members of the city attorney's office, city clerk's office, city manager's office, finance department, and community and economic development department that are all here that can help answer questions as they come up. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that and appreciate everyone being here. Okay. Same direction, different starting position. So Councilmember Neibart, clarifying questions, please.

So we've discussed this hotel tax proposed increase for quite some time now. IN COMBINATION WITH SEVERAL OTHER PROPOSED REVENUE MEASURES THAT HAVE BEEN BROUGHT FORWARD IN THE PAST. THEREFORE, I HAVE HAD A LOT OF MY QUESTIONS ANSWERED ALREADY, AND I REALLY DON'T HAVE ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS. SO I'LL TURN BACK TO YOU. COUNCILMEMBER TESSA.

OKAY. Why are we phasing? I mean, that's the first year we're losing, what, almost a million and a half by phasing, right?

So our total potential, if we were to go from 8% to 12%, would be about 2.8%. which is the delta would be about 1.4. The reason why we've proposed the phase-in approach is when talking to hoteliers, that was their preferred option, or if they can phase it in over two years instead of jumping immediately to those that are staying at their properties from 8% to 12%, they thought it would be more palatable for any type of customers to go for the 2% rate to 10 and then from 10 to 12.

And I would just add, we did do a significant amount of outreach with the hotel industry and had conversations along the way to really in an effort to garner neutrality. We weren't trying to get support necessarily, understanding that a new tax on their business at a time when hotels haven't fully rebounded from the COVID years is challenging. And so this was a way for us to compromise with the hotels And so that is why you see the staff recommendation the way that it is this evening. We did include an alternative, which would go straight from eight to 12 earlier in the process. And so obviously the council has the ability to do that, but that is not the conversation we've had to date with the hotel industry as we've been sitting down with them and listening to their concerns.

Was it a significant input? I thought it was like one. We had one individual who came to prior discussion.

So we've had staff from our office and our community economic development department that have been meeting with hoteliers throughout this process starting in December. And there's a couple of hoteliers that have come in our closed session meetings and brought up that concern.

And Council Member Testa, I think what you're remembering is the individual who came and spoke against the item at the last meeting. He did come publicly. We have met with him a couple of times since that meeting, and he's not here this evening. We're back to having neutral partners at this point, neutral hotel industry engagement on this topic, which I think from a city perspective is really a best-case scenario for us.

On top of that, I think part of what the benefit of the city was in having these outreach meetings is building that connection as well. I know that Melinda Dennis and Abraham Salinas, as part of our economic development team, were actually able to go on site and to further develop those relationships going forward as well.

Okay, so the survey that went out to the community, it was less than 300 responses, but what was the percentage of support?

So we had 67% of respondents that were in support of a TOT increase.

and only 20% were opposed. So we didn't get the actual information that was given out on the survey, did we?

Is Heather Tiernan still here by any chance? Yeah, so Heather posted the flash vote. And I'm not sure if folks get the full question by question response. I think if you take the survey you did, but do we post it as well?

Yeah, the information from the flash vote survey was posted on social media and anyone who took the survey would have received the results as well. So and it's the full results. This was just a graphic that we created for social media to share the results to catch people's eyes, but the full results are available online.

WE DIDN'T GET IT. IT DIDN'T COME TO US.

WE DID INCLUDE AN UPDATE IN THE FRIDAY BRIEFING. I DON'T KNOW IF IT WAS ALL OF THE QUESTIONS.

WE CAN CHECK AND MAKE SURE IT'S SHARED, BUT ALL OF THAT DATA IS AVAILABLE. WE CAN MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT IF YOU HAVEN'T RECEIVED IT.

67% RESPONSE AND SUPPORT IS GOOD, BUT I WOULD STILL EXPECT A STRONGER FROM THAT, WHICH IS WHY I'D LIKE TO SEE WHAT INFORMATION WAS SHARED. Yeah, for questions. I'll stop with that. I have some. Yeah, I have. I'm very reluctant with the phasing. I just think we're giving, you know, we have a speaker on this a million and a half is something that we should not give away if we can avoid it. So okay.

Councilmember Eiker clarifying questions Aaron thank you for your presentation and thank you for being thorough you answered the two questions that I had so no need for additional questions

Okay. And mine is maybe for our finance director, but I think you'll be able to handle the city manager. We've had quite a few budget conversations, obviously. The 10-year forecast is something we are, I think, all better aware of. That did not factor in a potential TOT or other revenue measure, correct?

That's correct.

Okay. Thank you very much. Any further questions before we open it for public comment?

I have none.

This is what I hate when I start in a different spot. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'll catch that. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay. Public comment. So I have one speaker card on this item. Ms. Kelly Cousins for three minutes. If you would like to speak on item 12, the potential for the hotel TOT tax, please fill out a blue speaker card and turn them into the city clerk. Welcome.

Good evening again. I urge you, I did take this survey and I did see the results. So that was very informative to me to see who was against it. It was a lot of people were confused about what a TOT tax was, I felt. So I urge you, I think this information is very clear and it's very helpful to the public to know more about it. AND I URGE YOU TO PLACE A DIRECT INCREASE OF THE TOT FROM 8% TO 12% ON THE NOVEMBER 26 BALLOT RATHER THAN PHASING AN INCREASING AMOUNT OVER TWO YEARS. YOU'VE DONE A GREAT JOB WITH OUTLINING THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT WE WOULD MAKE IN THE FIRST YEAR AT 12% FOR THOSE OF US WHO ARE LOOKING AT CONCERNS ABOUT REVENUE AND WE NEED TO GENERATE REVENUE NOW IN OUR CITY. DOUBLIN MAY NOT HAVE THE CONCERNS THAT PLEASANTON DOES, BUT I FEEL LIKE THE PROPOSED HOTEL TAX INCREASE MEETS ALL THREE TESTS. FIRST, IT AFFECTS VISITORS, NOT RESIDENTS. UNLIKE A SALES TAX OR A UTILITY TAX, THE BURDEN DOESN'T FALL ON THE COMMUNITY, AND I UNDERSTAND THE HOTELIERS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THAT, BUT I PERSONALLY FEEL LIKE PEOPLE WILL STILL STAY IN PLEASANTON REGARDLESS OF THE TOT TAX COMPARISON. AND SO IT'S ONE OF THE LEAST BURDEN SOME REVENUE OPTIONS FOR THIS TO ADDRESS THE FISCAL NEEDS THAT WE HAVE. SECOND, THE TIMING IS RIGHT. STAFF SURVEY OBVIOUSLY SAYS THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARE IN FAVOR OF THIS AND ESPECIALLY IF IT ONLY TAKES A SIMPLE MAJORITY TO PASS THIS. AND THIRD, IT MOVES MORE REVENUE INTO THE CITY IF WE CONTINUE TO GATHER THE REVENUE AND MAKE THAT $1.4 MILLION INCREASE THAT WE WOULD HAVE LOST IF WE WAIT UNTIL 2028. SO THAT'S WHY I THINK DELAYING IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. AND THOSE ARE FUNDS THAT WE NEED DESPERATELY. I AGREE WITH SOME OF THE CONCERNS AND QUESTIONS AND I APPRECIATE THE EFFORT ON OUR BEHALF TO FIND ALTERNATIVE REVENUE SOURCES. GIVEN THE CITY'S FINANCIAL NEEDS, THE STRONG VOTER SUPPORT, AND THE REVENUE LOSS THROUGH A DELAY, I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU TO VOTE FOR A DIRECT INCREASE FOR GOING UP TO 12%. NOW ON THE BALLOT FOR 2026. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. MY SECOND SPEAKER ON THIS ITEM IS MS. VALERIE ARKIN. THIS IS MY LAST SPEAKER CARD FOR ITEM 12. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ON ITEM 12, PLEASE FILL OUT A BLUE SPEAKER CARD. WELCOME.

Thank you. I wasn't planning on speaking, but I thought, listening to it, have some input here. So Valerie Arkin, resident of Pleasanton for 33 years. There's a significant structural budget deficit that you're all faced with. The forecasts presented show that the situation is getting worse. We all know that. And it's been over two years. We had Measure PP that was on the ballot, the sales tax increase, and that failed. That was unfortunate, as I've said before up here and said many times. But I think everybody should now be aware that city staff didn't lie about finances and about any of the challenges. And there was no hidden money anywhere. And now you're faced with something that's a really hard job for all of you. AND I THINK YOU NEED TO INCREASE REVENUE, OF COURSE, OR, YOU KNOW, YOU'RE ALREADY MAKING BUDGET CUTS AND YOU'LL CONTINUE TO DO SO, BUT FINDING WAYS TO INCREASE REVENUE OR FACE MAKING MORE VERY SEVERE CUTS TO PROGRAMS WE VALUE AND SERVICES LIKE POLICE AND FIRE AND OUR PARKS AND SO MANY OTHER THINGS, WE DON'T WANT TO SEE THAT HAPPEN BECAUSE WE VALUE ALL OF THOSE THINGS. SO I THINK YOU DO NEED TO SERIOUSLY CONSIDER PUTTING THIS MEASURE ON THE BALLOT AND FOR NOVEMBER. I WOULD ALSO LEAN TOWARDS NOT PHASING IT. I THINK IT'S NOT A LOT OF MONEY. IT'S NOT GOING TO SOLVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS, BUT IT WILL CERTAINLY HELP, AND I THINK YOU SHOULD DO IT. BUT GOING TO THE 12% TO ME WOULD PROBABLY BE A BETTER WAY OF DOING IT. BUT REGARDLESS, I THINK IT SHOULD BE ON THE BALLOT FOR NOVEMBER, AND I HOPE THE COMMUNITY WOULD SUPPORT IT. SO THANK YOU.

Thank you very much. That's my last speaker card on item number 12, the TOT. If you would like to speak on this item and have not turned in a blue speaker card at this time, please approach the podium at this time. Seeing none, hearing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back. Councilmember Nyberg, leading us off for comments. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, just to follow up on that one speaker, has the staff considered what it would look like to propose just one increase in one year, and that is going to 12% immediately? And are there any complications to go to that approach if we wanted to right now?

Do you want to talk about the slide, Aaron?

Yeah, so we do have an alternative slide based off the staff report. So the alternative would be to go from 8% to 12% just in one move. So kind of trade-offs, the revenue would reach the full $2.8 million a year sooner. For operators, it's one rate change to administer instead of two. And for guests, it's one larger increase rather than a gradual step. So same structure either way, general tax, majority approval, and the single ballot measure.

If I may, maybe what we could do is see if there's a consistent support to putting at least one of the two options on the ballot, and then we could, and I'm just proposing since you have the floor, then we could decide phase versus all at once.

I think that's a good approach, sure. Okay. One step at a time. Or all at once. All at once. Apropos. I've got my question. Oh, I was just going to say that I made a reservation for a hotel in Anaheim today, later in the year. And I know we're not in Anaheim. But I was quite, know fascinated to see that the hotel tax there was 17 and of course they have all those resorts there and uh but uh yeah eight percent that we've been at for the past 43 years um yeah it's it's those type of rates are long gone and i think a lot of the hotel years would realize that uh people who stay in hotels here have been getting a pretty good deal compared to where they could be staying

um so okay before you make a motion maybe if you're gonna do a motion uh maybe we let everyone go with comments first and then I think if I may it'd be great if we were unanimous on this right so maybe we could then work through the phasing or all at once as a second round so sure is that good for first round comments for you yes okay Councilmember Tessa um

Yes, I think it would be advantageous to all be unanimous. That certainly was a negative on our sales tax measure that we were not. So I do absolutely, I think it's a no-brainer. I think that the concern simply is that it's still not enough. It doesn't come anywhere near what we would have been taking in on an annual basis from the sales tax that was 10 10 million or plus. So by even reducing this by half in the first year, it just it doesn't make sense to do that. It really just doesn't. And we need that money. I'm sure the Hotel industry wants Pleasanton to be as healthy as possible. We need the funding in order to do that. So, yes, I do support putting a tax measure, the TOT, in some form. Hopefully, yeah. Okay.

Thank you very much for doing that. Council Member Eicher. Sorry, I had to finish that thought.

Since our city's TOT tax rate is lower than our neighboring jurisdictions in Alameda County, I believe this modest increase will align Pleasanton with our regional market standards without significantly impacting hotel demand. It will ensure our city captures a fair value for visitor activity. while remaining competitive for tourism and business travel. It allows our city to generate new reoccurring revenue without raising taxes on local residents or local businesses, and it will help diversify our city's revenue base and reduce reliance on volatile sources like property tax or sales tax. And to be clear, this is just one of many methodologies this council is undertaking to stabilize our budget moving forward and is intended to have the lowest possible impact to our residents. In addition to this modest revenue generation tax, we will need to continue our efforts at growing our city's economy while aggressively managing our budget to ensure future balanced budgets while meeting the service needs of our community. And in regards to the hoteliers, I'm sensitive to their concern and the impacts to their businesses because they are rebounding from COVID. So I am sensitive to that. Where I think it's our responsibility to also measure the weight on the businesses that we're going to impact in addition to our financial concerns. And I think the The two year transition to this weighs that nicely where I think jumping right into it disregards their concerns and puts our burden on their back sooner. So I think it's important that we weigh both sides of this and who are we here to serve and that's our community. Not just the residents but the businesses also. Thank you.

Vice Mayor?

Thank you. I'm certainly supportive of putting this on the ballot. And I would much prefer to be unanimous. And I will make the comment that when we reached out to our community, to the Chamber of Commerce, to our hoteliers, we polled for a phased, phasing the increase over the years. Because we had done that, we had those conversations and I remember them coming to meetings and weighing that out and indicating while they understood why we needed to do, they appreciated the phased approach. And while I think there would have been support for unfazed approach back then, but in sort of fairness to everybody, we put it out there. That's what we were thinking about doing. Got the polling data based on that. Told that to our businesses. And maybe to do something different now, even though it may leave a little bit of money on the table, may not be the... most measured action, but I'm certainly supportive of putting it on the ballot and I'm happy to join a motion to do so.

Okay, thank you. I'll also round out to say I'm definitely thinking this has to go on the ballot. We'll be supporting something going on the ballot. I think our community understands the work we've done, the belt tightening we've done to this point. We have definitely been reducing expenses and looking for revenue opportunities in a variety of ways. And this is now where we are at, asking the community and the voters to consider this. So I definitely will be supporting that. Phased versus not, a lot of comments raised. I agree with all of them. But I probably am going to be supportive more of the phased. Dublin, as reported by staff, is considering a phased. And one of the conversations we did have was in the Tri-Valley. Those are our direct potential competitors to our businesses. I think our businesses are the ones that came up with a, and maybe staff can correct me, but I believe our businesses are the ones that asked us for this potential pathway early on in the conversations. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Yeah. And I'm a little worried about softness in the market, which will alter any of these numbers that we're anticipating. But having no business opposition and having this pass is a personally, I think a it's a bit more conservative, but it's a bit more prudent of a path, I think, that would lead to success. And I also agree, we polled for a phased. We had all the conversations for a phased. So at $1.4 million, I will assert that there's a potential that we could use the general fund reserve to bridge that if we absolutely had to, hopefully we would not. And it would still set up that in year two, we're there. So Again, I would like this to be uniform and unanimous. So welcome to have a full and frank conversation about it. I'm going to go back around. So Councilmember Nyberg.

Based on what we discussed a few minutes ago, I'll go ahead and make the motion to approve the staff recommendation as stated here, but I would like to come back afterward and consider the single-step approach. I would just also make the comment that, as you mentioned, Mr. Mayor, we've had pretty much unanimous neutrality on this topic from the hotel industry in Pleasanton, and in fact, letter from the Chamber of Commerce that we have in our supplemental material right now maintains that neutrality and asks for something to go to the ballot so citizens can weigh in. And I absolutely agree with that. I would just, you know, I want to be sensitive to businesses. I just want to remind people that businesses don't vote and residents do vote. So having said that, that's the motion I'm making. Staff recommendation.

Yeah, but they need a phased or not phased.

Well, staff recommendation, as I understand, is the phased approach.

It doesn't say that, does it?

The staff recommendation is the phased approach. It is. It's where we've been with our outreach, and it has been what we've discussed in prior conversations, including Chamber of Commerce and hotel managers throughout the area. I appreciate the clarification. I think the mayor looked to me mostly because the follow on, there is unfortunately fortunately a deadline for these actions because we do have to move our written materials to the county early August. So that would put us in the first meeting in July coming to you with the final ballot language for approval. So we're working from tonight to July 7.

So we need a phased or not.

Phased or not is really what we need from you, and then we'll bring you that final language this evening.

So your motion is the phased?

If we can come back and talk immediately after the vote to consider the unfazed approach.

But that would then be not the recommendation. You would not include the phasing in your recommendation if we're going to still discuss it.

Okay. The motion clarification, the the recommendation provided by staff is the phase approach. So if you're moving this item, that you are moving the phased approach.

Okay, I understand that. And my understanding, based on what the conversation was a few minutes ago.

Oh, yeah, sorry. It was a straw poll. We are five to put something on the ballot. I'm sorry. I should have helped us get there. Yeah, five to put it on the ballot. Now we're on phase two, which is phased or all.

Okay.

Well, I also see I'd like to see unanimous vote Are we talking about a straw poll vote or I think we should well, I think we should I think we should show our community that we can work through Yeah phased or not So yeah, it sounds like if I may it sounds like there's two of us that would like to go all to old full and Three that would like to do phased. I think we can work through the issues But in the end we're gonna need a compromise here to get to unanimous. I

Well, the one that's unanimous is the staff recommendation, so... Which is the phased approach. Which is the phased approach.

That's not...

I mean, I'd prefer, you know, the single step, unfazed, but... Are you willing to compromise to the... I'm willing to compromise.

Okay, okay. So then you would move staff...

I see that's going to lose, so I'll make the motion that is going to be carried unanimously.

Appreciate that.

I think there's a valid argument both ways and that's why I was trying to provide the space for so thank you very much Okay, so we have a motion made for the recommendation including the phase approach just for a point of clarification councilmember Testa I Don't certainly the businesses would say they prefer to not have attacks at all and Higher tax prefer not to I don't believe that I DON'T BELIEVE IT PUTS A BURDEN ON THE HOTELIERS OR I THINK IT'S JUST WOULD THEY PREFER, SURE, THEY WOULD PREFER TO NOT RAISE IT AT ALL. WE'VE BEEN AT 8% SUBSTANTIALLY BELOW THE for TOT taxes. Anytime I travel, I mean, it's always over 15, 20%. And yet, This money would mean a lot to us. I don't believe it creates a burden. But it does mean a lot to us it would it would help us to have that extra million and a half. It's still not enough. It still doesn't bring us the 10 million that we don't have from a because of a small amount of dissension in that tax. No, I won't support the phased approach. I think it is I think it's irresponsible. I we need the money and it's not going to be a burden. It's not going to be a burden to the businesses and it's not going to be a burden to the guests who stay in our hotels. But it would mean a lot to our budget.

So Councilman Riker.

Well, it looks like we're going to struggle to get through this, so maybe I... We have a motion for the phased approach on the table, but we're waiting for a second. Yeah, maybe I make a recommendation that we vote on just the ordinance to move the tax forward and then come back and do a vote on which of these we're going to choose. which I think might make it cleaner.

Well, that way we could bifurcate the motion. That's fine. We just bifurcated it. And if you don't mind, out of respect, Council Member Nyberg, I believe, was trying to do that. So why don't we do that?

Okay. So I'll change my motion to bifurcate it. And first move that we consider.

We do put on a tax.

Yes, do put on a tax on the ballot for hotel tax and and then the second part of the bifurcation will do that later.

Okay. So you made the motion to put in the tax on the ballot council member to us out of respect. Would you like to second that?

I would like to second that. And while I have the floor, I would like to ask, do we have a slide with the language that would be if we went directly to the 12%?

THERE IS LANGUAGE ON PAGE 2 OF THE RESOLUTION. THANK YOU. HERE'S THE DRAFT BALLOT LANGUAGE. WE WOULD ESSENTIALLY STREAMLINE THIS LANGUAGE TO HAVE THE TOT TAKE EFFECT FROM 8 TO 12%, AND WE WOULD PICK THE EFFECTIVE DATE. I WOULD RECOMMEND SOMETHING MARCH 2027, JULY OF 2027, SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO GIVE US TIME TO IMPLEMENT. the hoteliers as well, and that would go to the straight $2.8 million. So it would be this language, but cleaned up and streamlined for one step all the way to the maximum.

Would that put us behind? Would we still be able to meet the deadline to get it on the ballot?

Yes.

Oh, there we go.

Okay. Motion made and seconded. Council Member Eicher, any comment on this motion?

I'll support the motion.

Okay. Vice Mayor?

Yeah, I support it.

Okay, and so do I. We'll call vote, please. Part 1.

Council members Eicher? Aye. Gaydos? Aye. Nybert? Aye. Testa? Aye. Mayor Balch?

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

And for the record, Nybert and Testa made those motions first and second. Okay, now second part, which is phased versus full. Back to Council Member Nybert.

Okay, well thank you for the opportunity to bifurcate the motion. Second part of the item that I would propose and make a motion on is to adopt a single phase approach going from 8% to 12% on July 1, 2027 and not the two-phase approach. And that would be my motion.

Okay. Councilmember Testa?

I would second that motion.

Okay. Councilmember Eicher? I don't support the motion. The reason being is that all of our conversations that we've had with the community and with our hoteliers has been about the two-tiered rate increase and not about doing the 12% immediately. I think that's a big change in direction where we should have had that conversation much sooner in our process instead of waiting until the last minute to change direction.

May I please make comment on that before the conversation goes further?

Excuse me, Council Member Testa. Council Member Barker, are you complete?

Yes.

Okay. Council Member Testa, you would like to?

I have been very consistent. every conversation we've had, I did not support a phased approach and I believe that Council Member Nyberg and I both were very vocal about that. So this is not a last minute decision. The majority just swept it and took it, but I just, leaving that money on the table is irresponsible and I'm not going to support that.

Okay, thank you. I'll point out that we don't have the money, so it's not leaving it on the table if you don't actually have the tax passed. Vice Mayor, did you... We'll go back around. Vice Mayor, did you have any comments on this second motion here?

Yeah. Could I just ask... I want to make sure the record's clear about... Maybe the city manager can help me out here about what was the... know level of outreach and conversation uh for our discussion with the chamber with the the hotel um the hotels i just i wanted you know informative to the motion is to understand you know what what the conversations were um and if you could help me out i'd appreciate it yeah

Arun Zavala is going to help me with this answer, and our economic development team and Arun made the rounds. So he's going to give you an overview of the outreach we've done.

Yes. So I'm also probably going to call Economic Development Manager or Deputy Director Melinda Dennis as well. In late fall, so around November, we did outreach to all of our hoteliers, and we started to set up meetings prior to our February staff report discussion. So we were able to meet some of them in person, but also virtually, and talk about TOT increase and what a any concerns they might have. And so one of the concerns was making that jump from 8% to 12%. And I know Melinda was able to talk to the Chamber of Commerce as well through separate conversations and kind of standard meetings that she typically has.

Welcome.

Hi, good evening. Melinda Dennis, Deputy Director of Community and Economic Development. And yes, Abraham Salinas, our Economic Development Manager, and myself, we reached out. So we have 14 hotels here in Pleasanton. Two are under one general manager. One is unfortunately up for sale and then one is without a GM. So we have a total of 11 general managers that we reached out to and we received responses from seven and we did meet with all of those seven hotels, some in person and some virtually. And we did go over the options, of course, with the phased approach and also even a single approach. As Aaron mentioned, they are continuing to rebound from pre-COVID. And the main reason is the business weekday stays. Prior to COVID, that was really our, that was our bread and butter for our hotels, were the business trips during the week. The weekend, we would see lower rates. lower occupancy. And because of post COVID, people are not traveling as much as they used to. They're doing more virtual meetings. We have not rebounded. Our weekend stays, according to Visit Tri-Valley, our weekend stays are up with some of the sporting events, fairground events, those kinds of things. But we are not up to our pre-COVID. And some of the hotels are really barely hanging on. And like we've heard, one of the hotels is actually up for sale right now. And so that is why they would prefer to have the stepped increase. They acknowledge, yes, it is very low at 8%, and an increase is inevitable, but their preference is, of course, for this tiered increase.

Can I ask you that, Has there been further conversations? I know, obviously, their preference would be to go in a step. Have we indicated to them that's what we were putting on? And also, and maybe this goes back to the city manager, I understand Dublin is discussing or has already decided to put a similar measure on their ballot. Is there interest for us in keeping in step with our bordering neighbor city to do the same thing?

WE DID PROVIDE THE SEVEN GM'S AN UPDATE OF WHAT WE PRESENTED TO COUNCIL, ALSO WHAT WE PRESENTED TO THE ECONOMIC VITALITY COMMITTEE FOR FULL DISCLOSURE. EVC RECOMMENDED THE DIRECT INCREASE TO 12% AS WELL. WE DID PRESENT THAT INFORMATION TO THE HOTELIERS AND AGAIN, the feedback was while we understand they're still taking a hit, their occupancy is lower and they are requesting this tiered increase.

Could I also add, Dublin is, our understanding, I'm hearing things secondhand. I haven't had a chance to check in on their meeting. But my understanding is that it did not move forward tonight. They were considering similar language to what you're seeing on the screen this evening. Not exactly, but very close to this tiered approach. And I think that they're still evaluating that option. So that's the Tri-Valley piece. With respect to the staff recommendation this evening, there is an alternative. We did not slam the door on a one-time eight to 12 percent increase. But really, what we're trying to do is address the feedback that we heard from local businesses in a way that um you know i'll use the the cliche about threading a needle but we're trying to make sure that we don't inadvertently trigger um uh opposition to something like this locally and so that that was the balance we were trying to strike i i understand and i i agree with Councilmember Testa and Nyberg, and I think everyone up on the dais this evening knows that we need the money, and that is the conversation. I only sat in a couple of the meetings with our hotel industry, and when you talk about providing public safety, when you talk about safe, clean parks for the folks who are in town for the soccer tournaments, they all understand why we need the money and what we're trying to do with it, which is why I think we've got neutrality up to this point. And we're just really trying to find the balance for them as you heard from Melinda and from our own as they deal with their own lack of a full rebound from the pre-COVID hotel stays that we were seeing in the community. So I hear what the council is struggling with. It's our struggle as well. A million and a half dollars is not going to solve all of our problems, but is money that we would like to have. But we're also trying to make sure that we don't inadvertently garner opposition to this. My understanding is there was some opposition for folks, for some of the hotels in Dublin this evening. Again, I'm hearing that secondhand, but that's a bit of a concern for us.

Yes, and to what Jerry just mentioned, Dublin received a letter of opposition from the Chamber of Commerce and they received a letter of opposition from one of the hoteliers. We have not received any letters of opposition thus far.

And just if I may, so point of clarification, when we talked to our Chamber, we talked to them about the phased approach and we received a letter basically saying they're having weighed in on the item but would like to let the voters decide.

I think Melinda might be able to clarify exactly what was spoken in the Chamber of Commerce, but to your point in the letter, they did suggest putting something on the ballot for the voters to decide.

Do you want to clarify what we talked to the Chamber about?

Yes, so we did speak with the chamber and we did not speak with the chamber board. We only spoke with the chamber staff. And again, when we met with them, explained the options, the direct increase or the stepped increase, also gave them the feedback from the hotel GMs and they respectfully were requesting to stay neutral and we're not going to provide a letter of support or a letter of against.

Thank you. Yes, thank you. For the reasons stated before, and I know the city did outreach, just in fairness to the conversation we've had to this point, I would support the tiered increase rather than going to 12%. I think we need to maintain our credibility and the healthiness of the two-way conversation, and I support staff's recommendation, but wouldn't support going from eight to 12 in one step.

okay so i'm going to ask councilmember nybert for a friendly amendment to modify your motion to the tiered approach otherwise you can see the votes are going to be against it well yeah that's what i said before it's going that motion would lose um so why have it on our record why don't we go ahead and and a mod if i may ask for a friendly amendment to modify your motion to a tiered approach

Well, I understand the concerns that have been expressed. I understand that despite my previous comment about businesses not being voters, I do want to be very sensitive to the needs of businesses and especially the hoteliers in this case. I don't think we'd be perceived as pulling a switcheroo on the hoteliers necessarily, unless you correct me on that and decide that it would be, or inform me that it would be a very unwelcome and negative thing. You did mention the possibility that we didn't want to turn a neutral approach on the part of our businesses into some sort of opposition. I'll accept the friendly amendment. I do really think that we need as a city to generate as much revenue now as we can in addition to going along with our cutting of expenditures and trying to solve our structural deficit. $1.4 million in the coming years nothing to sneeze at you know it it it will help but um in the interests of uh the compromise and where it looks like things are going i'll go ahead and uh accept the friendly amendment thank you councilmember tested you accept the friendly amendment no okay i'll second the motion with the friendly amendment that it's a tiered approach any further conversation before we take a vote yes

Council Member Testa.

So somebody, I was hearing that Livermore was also working on a TOT, not at all, huh?

Not this year.

Not this year, okay. So Dublin does not have the structural deficit that Pleasanton has right now, correct?

Yeah, that's correct. I think they were looking at this as a proactive way to stay ahead financially.

Right. So their businesses could afford to take a different perspective. And Pleasanton businesses, residents, everyone understands that there is no hidden money. We have not fixed our structural deficit. We are looking at future impacts to our community with further cuts. I have a hard time when we're talking about a hotel that's really struggling to stay afloat. When we had an 8% tax, this discussion has nothing to do with that. this discussion is not bringing down any. And what we're talking about is not going to have, I mean, there are going to be businesses that are challenged, that's independent of this discussion. The amount, the impact on those hotels and the guests is minimal, and yet it is somewhat of a lifeline for us. It's not enough, but it is. And I do believe the businesses, if this had been brought to them with the full realization of that million and a half It doesn't fix things, but it certainly has value, a lot more impact on us than it does there. So I think it's irresponsible to not just do the full amount. I think the same people who, well, OK. No, I won't support the motion.

Okay. Does anyone else on the council would like to say any comments before we take a vote? I do have comments, but I want to make sure I provide opportunity. Vice Mayor, do you have any comments?

Well, I'd hope that we'd get unanimous support on one of the motions considering there was a 5-0 vote to put it on the November election. But here we find ourselves. So no other comments other than that.

Council Member Nyberg, any further comments?

i just said i think councilmember testa makes some very persuasive arguments um i myself do feel that way um so we will see okay councilmember tessa you had a chance anything further i nope i think i've been clear councilmember eicher

Nothing further.

Okay. I'll round out my comments to say and implore my fellow council members to try to have a unanimous vote for this tiered approach. It may not be the best path that you would prefer, but a path to success is critical. No doubt. So slow together or fast alone. This is a path we've talked to our businesses about. We've talked about the softness in the market, neutrality in opposition at this time, and we have consistently had a phased approach conversation with our business community and residents. We polled on that. doing a faster approach is not something that we've talked to the community about. Maybe we should have in hindsight. Maybe that is more prudent. Maybe we wish now we would have done that. But This is the communication we've had. This is where our businesses are at. This is what they've asked. A partnership forward for ultimate success is critical. So I would just ask us to take a moment to think about if we can have a unanimous vote on that, but I understand if we can't, but I will ask, implore, and plead, and with that, roll call vote, please.

I will make final comments.

I thought you had no further comments.

Well, I do now.

Okay, Council Member Testa.

Again, I've been consistent. And in fact, in the staff report, we have discussion of the alternatives. Please explain again, you said that we did not close the door on a direct 12%. And so has it been a part of the discussion? And again, it should have been.

YEAH, WHAT YOU'VE HEARD FROM OUR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, OUR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WHO'S FOCUSED ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND OUR ASSISTANT TO THE CITY MANAGER IS THAT WE DID BRING AN 8% TO 12% DISCUSSION TO OUR HOTEL GENERAL MANAGERS. I mean, we weren't consulting with them in a this is what we're doing approach. We were asking for their input on how we would move forward, frankly, without opposition. And what we came out of those discussions, so we certainly talked about going from 8% to 12%, and we talked about different scenarios to get there. the thing that we heard over and over again was that if we could ramp up to this or step up to this rather than just jump once, that was the preferred approach. And so that is why you have that as the staff recommendation this evening. It's taking the input that we received from our local hotel general managers and turning it into something that we felt we could bring to you. And frankly, The idea of having opposition in Pleasanton at a time where we came off of a revenue measure where there was local opposition, we're trying to do this a little differently this time. And so that is why you have what you have tonight. So it's not that the conversation didn't happen. It's not that we didn't explore it. It's that we were trying to find a way forward without opposition on this particular item.

And I can understand that because opposition from one council member changed the course of our tax measure in our last effort. So that is a legitimate concern.

We'll see if history repeats itself. All right. Roll call vote, please.

Council members Eicher?

Aye.

Gaydos? Aye. Nybert?

Aye.

Testa?

No.

Mayor Balch? Aye. The motion passes 4-1.

Okay. Thank you very much. That concludes item number 12. I appreciate our community having the choice for that. That will come back in July with the final wording. All right. It's 9 o'clock. We're going to take a five-minute recess before we begin items number 13 and 14. So it's 9-0-9. We'll just ask to resume at 9-15. Thank you. Good evening and welcome back to the continuation of our June 2nd, 2026 meeting. It is 919. We have two items remaining on the agenda tonight, item number 13 and item number 14. We'll try to go through them with haste. So with that, item number 13, adopt a resolution approving the City of Pleasanton's 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. City staff, please.

Good evening, Council Member and Mayor. Thank you for the opportunity to present today the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan. Joining me today is Colin Dickson from EKI Consulting and also staff member Rita DiCandia and Todd Yamello that is going to be here to answer any question at the end of the presentation. and Jenny Gaines from EKI Consulting as well. Tonight we are gonna have an overview of the urban water management plan and Collins is going to walk us through the work product on the urban water management plan that talks about demand projections, supply projection, reliability assessment, water shortage contingency plan and also next step. Urban Water Management Plan is required under California Urban Water Management Plan Act, and it evaluate reliability of water supply to meet projected demand over the next 20 years. It is required for the city to update every five years, and this year, 2025, is when we are required to update the plan. Now why is the Urban Water Management Plan important? It is a prerequisite to receive state funding such as grants. It also supports assessment of sufficient water supply with new development. The Urban Water Management Plan is a key document that articulates long-term water planning strategy to the public and governing body and promotes the value of water. It documents the process of water shortage determination and options in the event of a water shortage. As you will see in the staff report, it's over 200 pages long. It's a very detailed, comprehensive plan that we have to put together every five years for the city. So without overdue, I will pass it to Collins to present our work product.

Hi. Thank you, Suchin. So first looking at what did this process look like for the 2025 urban water management plan cycle? So comparing it to the last cycle in 2020, there were actually very few changes. And so the urban water management plan requirements did not change significantly, which means the content and the structure largely stayed the same, but of course was updated for the 2025 data. STATUTORY CHANGES CHANGED SOME OF THE DEFINITIONS AND SOME OF THE GUIDEBOOK CHANGES CHANGED A LITTLE BIT OF HOW WATER STORAGE WAS REPORTED AND THE ONLY LARGE CHANGE THAT IMPACTED THE CITY'S REPORT WAS A NEW TABLE FOR REPORTING THE WATER LOSS STANDARDS. As you are probably aware there's also been some state legislation on new water efficiency standards that includes the making conservation a California way of life And then also the non-functional turf ban neither of these were added to as requirements in this report But we do discuss them and how they relate to the different demand management measures already discussed in the report In terms of the actual kind of timeline and process that we took for doing this, we started working on this kind of in the end of calendar year 2025. And once the preparation was fully underway, we notified both the relevant water agencies in the area, as well as the community organizations in the city. Once the public draft was finalized, we posted that on the city's website for the public review period. And we sent notices again to those same contacted groups. PER THE REQUIREMENTS IN THE CALIFORNIA REGULATIONS, WE ALSO POSTED TWO NOTIFICATIONS IN THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER FOR THE TWO CONSECUTIVE WEEKS LEADING UP TO THIS PUBLIC HEARING. TONIGHT, WE ARE SITTING HERE HOLDING THIS PUBLIC HEARING WITH THE INTENT OF DISCUSSING THE KEY FINDINGS OF THIS URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT PLAN AND THEN SEEKING ADOPTION OF THE URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT PLAN AND THE WATER SHORTAGE CONTINGENCY PLAN. AS NOTED IN THE STAFF REPORT, SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF THE PUBLIC DRAFT, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO MINOR CHANGES THAT HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED, AND THEY WILL BE REFLECTED IN THE FINAL REPORT. THEY DO NOT AT ALL CHANGE THE OVERALL OUTCOMES OR THE KEY FINDINGS. THE FIRST IS A MINOR CHANGE TO THE REAL WATER LOSS STANDARD, AND THEN THE SECOND IS SOME MINOR CHANGES FROM ZONE 7 IN TERMS OF SOME OF THEIR FUTURE WATER PROJECTS. BUT AGAIN, THEY DON'T CHANGE THE FINDINGS OF THIS REPORT. So the first step in this process was looking at demand projections. And we start with looking at the historic demand in Pleasanton. What you see on the graph is water demand in blue and population in orange. We like to look at both of these because they both are certainly correlated with growth and development in the city. But what you see is that they do not mirror each other. There's definitely variation in water demand. which is impacted by conservation efforts, droughts, new regulations that limit water use. And so while they do certainly go together, we don't wanna just purely base our water demand based on population growth. So what does that mean looking forward? Well, looking forward, the city really wanted to focus on a land use based projection method. So what this means is looking at different land use planning documents that the city has already undergone, including, for example, the 2023 housing element, which looked at the potential residential growth throughout the city and what development would be needed to meet the needs of future populations. And so this is really looking at kind of that higher level development scenario that might be needed and what that kind of higher level water demand might be. The city also reviewed other planning developments for planning documents looking at both commercial and industrial developments and included those in its projections. When we look at how this parses out across the different water sectors, you get this graph here. And so starting down on the bottom in blue, we have the two residential sectors. And you'll see those are the two drivers of growth moving forward, especially the, well, both single family and multifamily growth is kind of the main drivers. The commercial and industrial sectors see some growth but are relatively stable. And then you do see some growth in the landscape irrigation, but that is really because it's associated with that multifamily development. Finally, it's worth noting that there's a little bit of growth in the recycled water. And that comes from the fact that along the existing recycled water system, there's a few customers that still have the potential to be added. And if we add those, that would increase recycled water demand, which is great because it then offsets some of the potable water demand that can be used elsewhere. So after looking at demands, we then start looking at what supplies are available to the city. So as you are probably aware, the city has three main supplies. First is the purchased water from zone seven, which is the largest portion of Pleasanton's water supply. And then the next is Pleasanton's groundwater supply, which is rough, which comes out to about 3,500 acre feet per year, which is what's considered kind of the sustainable quota that Pleasanton can pull on average from the Livermore Valley Groundwater Basin. That third supply is recycled water, as we discussed previously, which Pleasanton gets from both DSRSD and the City of Livermore. If we look at those supplies into the future in order to meet those demands, you see that we aren't projecting any groundwater for 2025. And the reason for that is because in 2022, the Pleasanton had to stop production from its groundwater wells due to PFOS, also known as forever chemicals, detections in the groundwater. Pleasanton is working closely with Zone 7 on what's called the Joint Groundwater Wells Project, which will work to drill some new wells in the sub-basin of the Livermore Valley groundwater basin that is currently outside the PFAS plume. With this project, Pleasanton will gain access to its groundwater rights once again by 2030. So what you see there is the groundwater rights coming back online in 2030 and reducing Pleasanton's reliance on Zone 7 a little bit. So now that we've kind of looked at the two sides of the coin, the demand and the supply, we can then perform what the urban water management requirement calls the reliability assessment. So within the Urban Water Management Plan Act, it's required that the city looks at if water supplies are sufficient to meet water demand in a normal hydrologic year, a single dry year, and a multiple drought, a multi-year drought, which in this case is a five-year drought. Kind of jumping straight to the conclusions, we have projected that in both a normal year and a single dry year, Pleasanton should be able to meet 100% of its projected demands. In the fifth year of a five-year drought, so that last year of a five-year drought that starts in 2045, there is the potential for a 10% shortage in the city's ability to meet its water demands. This really comes from a shortage from the Zone 7 supply. So they did some extensive modeling for their water supply evaluation, which got integrated into their urban water management plan, which looks at historical dry conditions and how it impacts their water supplies, as well as future impacts from things like climate change and changing operations at the State Water Project. and they determined that there was the potential for a 14% shortage in what they could provide to their retailers. Pleasanton does, like it shows here, Pleasanton also has its groundwater and recycled water supply, which kind of buffers that shortage a little bit and brings it down to that 10%. For both groundwater and recycled water, they're considered reliable in all year types, which means that Pleasanton can get that full 3,500 acre feet and the full recycled water in all of the scenarios shown above. So if there is a drought and if there is a potential water shortage, the plan also includes what's called the Water Shortage Contingency Plan. So this is a separate plan that is adopted alongside the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan. Its intent is to address shortages caused by a variety of concerns, including drought, but also water quality concerns or another natural disaster or other emergency. It's very much intended to be a dynamic and adaptive plan that can be updated and changed based on the nature of that emergency. What you see on the right of the slide is an example of the communication the city put out during the 2021 and 2022 drought as a part of its implementation of this plan.

So what does the process of this plan look like?

It starts out every year with the annual water supply and demand assessment. This is a report that the city submits to the state every year on July 1st, looking at the potential for a water shortage. If they do find a potential water shortage, because of course you're looking into the year ahead, they will declare a water shortage stage and start enacting the associated actions. It's the city's job to communicate with the public what those response actions are that it's implementing and monitor the effectiveness of those actions and refine them based on if additional conservation is needed. And what are some of these tools that are available to the city? First, I would actually, before I started, I would just like to say this is the unchanged from 2020. So they're the same tools that were available back then and were used successfully, like I said, in that 2021-2022 drought. So first looking on the left, they're grouped into six shortage levels. So you start with the least severe being one and the most severe being six, water shortage of about 10% all the way up to greater than 50% shortage. When you start in the less severe levels, they're considered optional. Then at level two, the city has the ability to go back and forth between an optional or a mandatory one. And then it goes down to mandatory for the more severe levels. There are kind of four key tools at these levels that the city can implement. The first are demand reduction actions. And these are things that are meant to curtail some of the customer's water use. And they're codified in Pleasanton's Municipal Code Chapter 9.30. There's also excess water use charges. So in the mandatory stages, there's the ability to put charges on any water above the mandatory conservation levels. The third tool is operational changes that the city can implement. So this might be things like reducing line flushing, which reduces water loss in the city's use. And you wouldn't want to do it long term, but during a temporary drought, that is a way for the city to reduce water use. And finally, in the most severe drought stage, if we get to shortage level six, there are water supply augmentation actions. And this would be primarily asking zone seven for increased groundwater rights to pump more water in order to meet some of that water supply shortage. So thank you for your time tonight. That has been the summary of what the kind of the key steps are in the urban water management plan and what the findings were for this 2025 urban water management plan. And I will pass it back to Suchin. Thank you.

Thank you, Colin. So for the next step is our recommendation. Staff recommends City Council to adopt a resolution to approve the City of Pleasanton 2025 Urban Water Management Plan. And also, I always forget the acronym for the WSCP. It's Water... Supply contingent contingency plan the water shortage contingency plan water shortage contingency plan Thank You Colin and adoption of this plans aligns with and support the city related goals and plans including investing in our environment and Safeguarding our city by assessing the adequacy of the future water supply and strategic planning for action implementation during a water shortage Pleasanton climate action plan 2.0 and also Pleasanton 2023 to 2031 housing update. So this is our end of our presentation and we like to open the discussion with council and take any question.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay. So same order, different starting position. I'll remember the tail end. So council member Testa clarifying questions on item 13.

There was a letter from Zone 7 and a response to that letter. I was having a hard time digesting it, so if you could just highlight what their concerns were. I know the conclusion was that it didn't alter the recommendation or outcome, but if you could give a very brief overview of the main points and how they were responded to and Did we hear back from zone seven after we responded?

The comment that we received from zone seven, they are all considered minor and it's, it's, um, the numbers that they, um, requested to adjust is, um, very minor. It doesn't affect our overall recommendation. Um, we basically accepted the, uh, suggestion and, uh, modified our and incorporate into our final report.

Okay.

Good.

Okay. That's fine. That's all I have. Thank you.

Okay.

Councilmember Eicher? Yes, I actually have a couple. One out of curiosity, are the UWMPs a requirement for all state grant funding or is it specific to specific types of grant funding?

I would maybe ask Jenny if she knows more about that.

Welcome. Is this on?

I believe it's for all grant funding and loans.

So you have to have it on file for any type of state grant funding?

Yes.

OK. Thank you for that. That was educating me. As an option to ensure adequate water supply, why has Pleasanton or why can we not contract with additional water providers like say East Bay Mud or Cow Water?

I'm happy to take this one. So there is an inner tie. You may have inner ties with neighboring water suppliers, and yet your Zone 7 contract requires exclusivity in terms of the water supply that is provided to the city. So for potable supply, you have the two supply sources that we showed in the presentation. So purchases from Zone 7, as well as your GPQ, your groundwater pumping quota. Beyond that, there is flexibility to develop local supplies in the way of recycled water that is provided by retailers. That could also be purified water in the future for something like potable reuse, if that comes back on the table.

Okay, thank you.

There are some other complicating factors. I won't go too deep into it, but for each supplier based on California law, there is a place of use specification in water rights. And so East Bay MUDS supply is specified for use within its distribution area, whereas the city and Zone 7 are specified for state water project.

So if you're near the distribution site, you can be part of their system, but if you're not, don't count on it.

Unless there's an extreme emergency, in which case there are interties to serve that purpose.

Okay, thank you. Why hasn't Pleasanton implemented any stormwater recovery systems or encouraged our residents to do so? Yeah, because I noticed in the report it says Pleasanton does not implement any stormwater recovery systems.

Yeah, it is not currently in our CIP plan. It's something that we can look in the future, but as of now with the budget that we have and what we have go for with the water rate and our CIP plan, it's not in our planning.

But if we had the funding to do it, would that be something that would help secure our water supply or help enhance it? I'm just curious.

We can look into it. We have not explored that option.

There's a the the stormwater system management plan is the third leg of the stool for our water and sewer utilities And that has been paused at this time But that is an opportunity that we could explore further in the future the royal we in this case and and I guess the only other piece that I would say is that the building code has been encouraging folks and there are opportunities to capture rainwater and things like that on private property with new home construction and with modifications to existing homes. And that is something that we have proposed and promoted at our planning counter over the years.

Okay. I just, I figured that might, you know, that would actually reduce some water usage during drought times if, you know, residents were able to capture and then utilize that water or even if we did that to some degree. You know, so I was just curious as to why it wasn't in here. So, but thank you. That's all I had. Okay. And thank you for your work on this.

Okay. Vice Mayor?

Thank you. Just a couple of questions while we have the consultants and their expertise here. One of the last things you mentioned, you said increased groundwater rights. And I'm looking at the 2016 Zone 7 Groundwater Sustainability Plan and the average acre feet per year pumped out from our aquifers going 3,500 allocated to Pleasanton, 3,000 to Cal Water, and then lower amounts to DRSD fairgrounds. What factors weigh into that calculation? And can you just expand a little bit on what increased groundwater rights would look like and how would that work?

Yeah, I think what what was referred to there would be very much a temporary increase in the pumping allocation. I think what what you see with the 3500 acre feet per year comes from what Pleasant from what Zone seven considers the sustainable yield. And so that's kind of if if if you just take out the sustainable yield, you don't impact at all the the amount of water in the aquifer, because that's kind of what's being naturally recharged in a simplified way. And so they could pump that forever and it would be fine. I think what they're saying is they have a fair amount stored that in very short term uses, they could pump more than that and not substantially degrade their groundwater storage.

And we obviously haven't pumped are 3,500 acre feet for many years now, I imagine because of the PFAS issue. Usually there's, I think there's carryover credits if you don't use it all. Yes. Okay. I just wanted you to expand on that a little bit and I can inquire more. you know outside of a hearing about that i just was curious about how that affects you know what your recommendations are and and you know whether there is a possibility for a carry carryover considering we haven't pumped that water for many years now so yeah yeah i would say the the carryover is uh is limited i think to 700 acre feet okay so so you can only get a little bit more than that um

AND ALSO AGAIN, THAT ASKING FOR THAT INCREASED GROUNDWATER WASN'T THAT VERY SEVERE. SHORTAGE LEVEL 6, VERY SEVERE SITUATION.

SURE. I ALSO NOTE, THIS MAY BE OUTSIDE OF YOUR AREA, BUT THAT 3500 ACRE FEET AND HOW IT'S ALLOCATED, IS THAT BASED ON POPULATION OR NEED? BECAUSE I KNOW AT THE TIME THAT RECOMMENDATION WAS MADE FOR THE 3500, THERE WAS A RESIDENTIAL HOUSING CAP IN PLEASANTON OF A CERTAIN, WE ASSUME THERE WAS NO MORE THAN 29,000 I think units of residences in that number may not be perfectly accurate. Do you know how that affects that calculation?

I do not, that is an interesting question.

Okay, thought I'd ask since you were here. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Those are all my questions.

Okay, Councilmember Nyberg.

Interestingly, Councilmember Gatos, I noted that it took almost 20 years after that housing cap was put into place and we all know it was later struck down, almost 20 years after that, to reach the 29,000 units of residential housing, just as an aside. Thank you for the presentation. I do have a question in regard to the forecast over the next 20 years and the city's water demand. Would you, How would you characterize that as far as any assumptions that were made? Is this a conservative approach here, or what are we looking at?

uh yes i think i think calling it a conservative approach would be accurate um the intention here is really to look at um i wouldn't maybe say the maximum but definitely the high level potential water demand in the future because again this is really um this is really a supply focused document so do we have enough supply to meet you know kind of that potential higher level development um okay and i think one um and so there's some assumptions in here about kind of What you can see on the historical side of the graph are two kind of big dips in water demand during 2015, certainly, and then kind of in the mid 2020 to 2025 range. They both correspond to some drought years. And so that's some expected decrease in water demand due to conservation efforts. There was also obviously the COVID-19 pandemic that happened around that second dip. And so part of that increase that you're seeing between 2025 and 2030 is an expected rebound in water demand, both as people kind of come off the drought conservation use, and as there's some rebound in population and water use after the COVID-19 pandemic as well.

Okay, thank you. One other question I noted in the supplemental material, And this may be getting down the weeds a little bit, but I'm just curious about some of these items that are mentioned. Zone 7 has the capability of banking water storage. And it sounds like there's something called Semitropic, which is a water storage program, it sounds like, that's run, I don't know, maybe a company's name is Semitropic, I don't know. But since they're allowed to store a certain amount and they have access to a certain amount of what they have stored, does that come into play in projections of what is available to pleasant and especially in that last year of the 2045 situation you mentioned.

yes it does come into play and and they do factor that in in those projections i know one of the ways that they do that is they they looked at what is the driest five-year period on their in their hydrologic record um and they look at what supplies were available to them back then based on uh based on some of these same operationals and systems and and they were able to see based on what happened then, what might be available to them in the future. And that includes those non-local storage banks. And maybe Jenny wants to speak to that a little bit more, I don't know.

Sure. So the Kern County groundwater banks are south of Delta. So they're much further south of this area, meaning that when the State Water Project is shut down, zero allocations, Zone 7 can't move supply through the Delta and so can't retrieve the withdrawals from the bank because the bank relies on the flow from the Delta, which goes south and doesn't have an ability to pump back north.

Right.

And so Since 1989, since Zone 7 first joined these banks, there has been one year where Zone 7 was not able to withdraw. That was in 2021 based on a zero allocation from State Water Project. But typically it is something that is an in lieu transfer.

Okay, so those potential withdrawals can be subject to the state water project restricting them. It sounds like so what you said?

Yes, in an extreme 0% allocation scenario. And now that is part of the reason that it is justified for Zone 7 to pursue expanded storage like sites reservoir, as well as the local project for chain of lakes. Another supply project that Zone 7 is pursuing is the Delta conveyance project, which is a much more controversial project. And so it is not included within the modeling that was conducted to inform the urban water management plan. And so that is why we see in 2045 that potential shortfall of 10% or 14% from Zone 7 purchases in the fifth year of a five-year drought.

Okay. So Sites Reservoir was, I think you just said, was considered in this model. What year was it assumed that that would come online?

I believe that that year is 2033. It's in the report. Okay, yeah.

Pleasant Zone Jerry Brown better get to work. I know he's doing a great job. He certainly is. Friend of mine. Okay, what does, just one last kind of technical question or nomenclature. What does a 10% leave behind?

yeah so in that in that situation that uh if so let's say pleasant uh still in seven puts a thousand acre feet into these groundwater banks for various reasons they can take out 900 acre feet So the 10% leave behind means that they have to leave 10% of whatever they put in in the bank. And that's both for the kind of sustainability of the aquifer, as well as the fact that some of that water is kind of lost. You know, aquifers, the water in there is not stagnant, it's moving. And so when you put it in, it doesn't necessarily all stay there. And so that's what that means. I see. Okay.

Kind of like the... my Starbucks auto reload of $30. Starbucks has $30 of mine perpetually. Okay, thank you.

How do I follow that? I have a few quick questions, if I may. Probably not quick, so I misled you here. I am old enough with the city to remember when we could not withdraw from the water bank. I remember the presentation. I was in the audience and there was a situation where we could not withdraw from the Kern County. You said 2021, but I think it was a little older than that because that was only a few years before I was elected. The nuance of it was that we talked about, in partnership with Zone 7, wheeling trucks of water up Highway 5 to deliver water, and it was just fiscally unsustainable. So the question I've got with that is, similar to Councilmember Nybert's ask, I know we rely on Zone 7, but these water banks south of us where the flow is south, we rely on water flow to basically withdraw from Delta supply. And when there is no supply, we don't have the water, right? So I guess I'll just ask the experts, our resiliency is truly dependent on if there's a flow, right? And Zone 7's ability to negotiate, because I remember that vividly in that situation.

I I think that is true I I would I would add that I think zone 7's primary storage is the Livermore Valley Basin right so these these non-local ones are additional storages that that can help them um you know kind of maneuver water around more strategically but but that primary storage is the local Livermore Valley groundwater Basin and that's where they can get most of their water from

I might just step in to clarify that what Colin is describing and what you're asking about with the groundwater bank is excess supply. So in years when the state water project is flush and Zone 7 has more supply than it needs, then it stores it in the local groundwater basin and or sending it to Kern County banks. And so that way, in times of drought, when there's a need, you can withdraw. There are times though, that that withdrawal from down South can't happen. And I think that you might be referring to 2014, 2015, 2016 drought, which I believe that that year started out as a 0% allocation for the State Water Project. And then it was bumped up to 5%. So there was a transfer eventually, but there was a, I believe a short period where a transfer could not happen.

Yeah, so my question to that is, so have we learned from that? I mean, listen, and you are the experts, but the State Water Project has never delivered 100% of allocated deliveries. In fact, we all know it's somewhere between 18 and 45 to 50%, right? So we're factoring that in to our plan, right? And do we need to work with our partners further to develop more local supplies? It sounds like that's an obvious yes.

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. So that's that's one. The second I've got and I've converted the numbering is on page two. For us, it's on page 411 of 632 in the urban water management plan. It talks about the population growth and demand growth as Colin has outlined. It talks about 41% potable increase in levels over 2025 and then 25% recycled demand increase. So just these are the expected increases. My understanding is that we are fully utilizing our recycled water 100%. For example, my understanding is DSRSD, who does the recycling for us principally, doesn't have enough effluent to even clean to give us additional water. So is this a valid, I don't want to say invalid statement, but can I just understand how this statement is made? Is it just, I get the offset to potable, as I think you explained in your presentation, but do you mind explaining that further?

Yeah, I think a couple of things to note there. One, 2025 was actually a relatively low water use year for recycled water. So it actually kind of dipped for 2025. So it looks like a bigger increase, but really we're just kind of expecting it to go back to more normal levels.

Gotcha.

UM I ALSO THINK THE THE LIMIT ON DSRSD IS DURING REALLY THE HIGH PEAK SEASON IN THE SUMMER WHEN THE MOST LANDSCAPE IRRIGATION IS GOING OUT AND SO THEY'RE THEY'RE LIMITED BY ON LIKE THE PER DAY DEMAND THAT THEY'RE ABLE TO SUPPLY BECAUSE WE FILL UP THE TANK AT NIGHT AND WE COMPLETELY EMPTY IT DURING THE DAY RIGHT AND THEN IT HAS TO FILL UP EVERY NIGHT AND THEN WE COMPLETELY EMPTY IT SO I'M JUST MAYBE I'M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE YOU KNOW YOU TALKED ABOUT DEMAND SIDE SUPPLY SIDE SO ON THE DEMAND SIDE WE EXPECT THE DEMAND TO INCREASE

But I guess I'm maybe more asking, there's going to be potentially no supply available, right, to meet that demand?

I would like to clarify the 25%, the way that it is calculated is in our staff report under section 4.5.3 and footnote number six. The analysis is based on 2020 actual usage data, which is 1,228 acre feet per year. And the increase for 2045 is 112 acre feet per year. And the total increase is 9% from the baseline. And the baseline is based on 2020. And based on our buy in demand capacity, we are within the range that we will be able to have enough to meet the demand increase.

Yeah, because I understand we've bought more supply or a capacity to treat, but again, we're not giving them the sewage to treat because we just aren't producing enough with all the low flow everything, right? Okay. I think we're there. i'm a little concerned if we overstate um what we'd be able to deliver on the recycle demand and then my last question which is on page 4-6 it's on page 440 to us uh water supply loss if i just want to make sure i'm reading this right uh real volume of total real loss acre feet 862 acre feet of water is that an annual number that we're losing

Yes, I believe that is correct.

Okay, so that's a huge amount of water, right? I mean, that's a huge amount of water. Are we trying to combat this, to conserve, to save, to reduce? I mean, I get it's a part of the presentation, right? But we are working to reduce our water loss, right?

Yes, that's required by the state that we have to reduce the water loss. And I would refer to Todd to talk more about our water loss program. And we have been working with another consultant to establish a plan on the water loss.

If I can also ask Mr. Umele, as you're approaching, could you just help us understand how you're losing 800

Sorry, I got new glasses and it's not working 862 acre feet of water Annally, yeah, so we're losing approximately 10% which is Believe it or not. That is pretty much in line with kind of industry Standards and that's why the state is trying to lower that that down so there is a water loss program that every agency has to participate, including us. They define a standard that's very specific to each agency. We recently just adjusted that standard with the state to make it a little bit more accurate and realistic for us. AND THEN YOU HAVE DIFFERENT WAYS THAT YOU CAN MEET THAT STANDARD. SOMETIMES THAT STANDARD, THAT LOSS IS MISLEADING. SOMETIMES THAT IS OVERREPORTED. SOMETIMES WE HAVE METERS THAT DON'T READ ON THE CUSTOMER SIDE THE FULL DEMAND, AND IT'S NOT ACTUALLY LOSS, BUT WE'RE NOT ACTUALLY SEEING THAT METER, NOT SEEING THAT REVENUE, BUT IT'S REPORTED AS LOSS. So projects like the AMI replacement project will make hopefully meters more accurate, give us a better production on that. Other things that we'll look into is leak detection methods to where we can start pinpointing where these leaks may occur. And then when we do our infrastructure improvements, we limit those. So that's in the process. There's kind of multiple milestones to go through, but

would say that our loss is is not you know something that is um abnormal from the industry right now well it's abnormal from sitting right here i'll tell you lose 862 acre feet of water a year so okay well i appreciate the clarification with that so okay uh that's all my questions any further questions before we yeah councilmember nyberg just kind of follow up along on that the uh

The amount of water lost may not seem like, well, it may seem like a whole lot, but I agree with Mr. Yumello. It's kind of like industry standard. Water lines throughout the decades have not been quality controlled the way you say natural gas pipelines are. Natural gas pipelines must not leak. Therefore, it's very expensive to do the weld inspections, metallurgical inspections, pedigree of steel and so on. Whereas water lines, I mean, it's just water. I know we can't say just water 50 years ago and 100 years ago in San Francisco. I mean, the water pipes were put in cheaply, and they do leak. And so I agree. People see the numbers, the amount of leakage, and think, oh, that's a pretty high number. But it's been lived with for many, many years. And so the state of California, I guess, is trying to decrease that.

yeah okay thank you all right any further clarifying questions before we go to public comment i have a speaker card on this all right see none uh we'll open up to public comment i have one speaker card miss jamie e welcome to speak on this for three minutes if you would like to speak on item 13 please turn in a blue speaker card at this time welcome

I SUPPORT THIS URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT PLAN AND THE WATER CONTINGENCY PLAN. WATER RELIABILITY IS REALLY IMPORTANT IN OUR COMMUNITY. IT IS A REAL RESPONSIBILITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT, AND I APPRECIATE THE LONG-TERM PLANNING AND THE PARTNERSHIP WITH ZONE 7. I THINK IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, AND AS YOU ALL KNOW, IT IS EASIER TO PLAN AHEAD AND PREPARE BEFORE THERE IS AN ACTUAL CRISIS, BECAUSE REACTING DURING A CRISIS IS NEVER A GOOD THING TO DO. I AM ENCOURAGED THAT OUR PLANNING CAN'T READ MY OWN HANDWRITING. I AM WITH YOU THERE, CRAIG. SHOWS RELIABLE SUPPLY UNTIL 2045, BUT WE SHOULD NOT BE COMPLACENT. I SUPPORT THE MOVING FORWARD WITH THE STRONG PARTNERSHIP WITH ZONE 7 AND ADVANCING WATER PROJECTS, EXPANDING THE GROUND WATER BANKS AND OPPORTUNITIES. THAT WE CAN GET THROUGH ZONE 7 AND OTHER PARTNERSHIPS, AND IT IS A GOOD THING TO IMPROVE OUR DROUGHT RESILIENCE OR PAY ATTENTION TO OUR DROUGHT RESILIENCE, AND I THINK THIS HAS BEEN A LOT OF WORK, AND I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THIS WORK CONTINUE, AND THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS. I KNOW OUR PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT HAS BEEN A BIG PROJECT FOR THEM, AND THIS IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING WE NEED TO MOVE FORWARD WITH. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. That's my last speaker card on this item, number 13. If you would like to speak on item 13 and have not turned in a speaker card, please approach the podium at this time. Hearing none, seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring it back to the council. The recommendation is to adopt the resolution approving the urban water management plan. Councilmember Testa, comments, questions, or a motion, please.

I'll make the motion to adopt the resolution approving the urban water management plan and water storage contingency plan.

I'll second. Motion made. Seconded. Councilmember Eicher. I'll come back if you don't mind.

I really don't have any additional comments, but I guess I can say the plan itself ensures we have long-term water reliability. It provides clear action during droughts and emergencies and supports compliance and access to state and federal funding. I think they've done a fine job on it. So those are my comments. Thank you. Okay. Circling around, Vice Mayor.

I'm supportive of the motion. I have no further comments.

Okay. Councilmember Nyberg? I also support the motion. Okay. All said, like people that haven't had to impose drought rates, but since I've had to impose drought rates, I think you and I both have had to do that. The reality is for me is we're very reliant on Zone 7. The plan should basically show you and we know we've talked about 100% of our water is coming from Zone 7 right now. Supporting them and finding diversified water supply is as critical for us as it is for them. So thank you very much for the hard work to get us here. Appreciate it very much and getting to the item at this time. City Clerk, we have a motion made and seconded. Can we go ahead and have roll call vote, please?

Council Member Eicher?

Aye.

Gaydos?

Aye.

Nybert?

Aye.

Testa? Aye. Mayor Bulch?

Aye.

Thank you. The motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much. That concludes item number 13. And now for item number 14, previously known as the lonely item number four. I don't even know the title of it. Street closures for 2026. city staff for any presentation. You already have it, so I'll go back to council member, or excuse me, vice mayor. You pulled the item.

I did. Please. Yeah, there's a, I would like to add, make a motion to amend it to add that on Halloween this year, which falls on a Saturday night, that we include the closure of Second Street between Cottinger and, um, Neal Street, including Arendt, and then from Neal Street down to Angela, allowing East-West traffic on Cottinger and Neal for cars going through. But every year, the street has been closed in the past for certain years and not others. It's not usually an issue too bad, although during the week it's certainly an issue but there there's upwards of i i think each house last year that stayed open gave away you know three to five thousand pieces of candy um and it If anybody chooses to drive down the street on that night, it's terrifying. I personally had to get in front of cars, stop kids from getting hit. It's just a flat out public safety issue. In the years that the city has closed it, it has been a huge difference. So I would move to amend this list to include second street on on that night and maybe it might even be best to go all the way down to abby and close between angela and abby but allow it's not an issue going i think east and west it's just second street itself going north and south if there's cars on there it just presents a really really terrifying combination of crowded streets and cars so that's my proposed amendment to the list that's before us

Okay, can I ask City Manager if you'd like to give us some background on this from your perspective, please?

Yeah, appreciate the opportunity. I'm not sure if they're a public comment. I know I had Jamie ask me a question at the break. She may want to add something to this item as well since we're moving into item 14. Alexa Jeffers is prepared to speak on this item. I do appreciate the heads up from Vice Mayor Gatos on this. And I'll turn it to Alexa for a moment the council would allow us to do that. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Vice Mayor Gaydos and City Manager Bowden. So yeah, I had a chance to briefly check in with staff about this before council tonight. And I think the answer really depends on how the event is classified. So what we have before us in the item that's under consideration is street closures for special events. There's a few different categories that could cause street closures. One option is a block party that's managed by residents. So I think... as opposed to a special event with a private organizer, like something like a PPIE fund run, or a city-sanctioned event like Hometown Holiday. So after chatting again very briefly with staff, the block party managed by residents would be the preferred option, just due to cost and liability and staff time. And a block party requires resident signatures, so it would require the signature of every house on the street, and it could be a series of block parties depending on the block, you know, how many blocks.

require a special events permit with insurance and everything. In addition to the, for the block party? We don't have a block party.

It's either a special event or it's a city event. And if it's a city event. Are you sharing that?

Okay, so I'm standing corrected by the city attorney. Sorry, we have late breaking news. So I guess in either event, it's a special event. So I guess the option then here, and then maybe the direction and the clarification that would be helpful from council tonight. is is the direction to add this as a as a special event um that that would have like an organizer that could submit an application through our special event permit process or is the direction to add a city sanctioned event like hometown holiday i'm proposing it as a city sanctioned event there there was one year in the last 10 years that the residents when we asked the city to do it um

Actually, I was at the meeting with one of my neighbors, and we were encouraged to get signatures of everyone affected by the closure. We did so one year. One of the neighbors bought an insurance policy, but in the paperwork, the city asked the resident to sign it. It indicates that... You know, you're throwing a block party and you're responsible for everybody's safe passage to and from this block party. I know that I don't invite anybody on Halloween, yet there's three to five thousand people. So I don't know that anybody, any citizen is fairly asked to say that, you know, you're responsible for the block party. And I had a meeting, you know, when I wasn't on council with city staff and members of the police department. And we kind of went back and forth and they were saying, you know, this really needs to be your idea. This really needs to be you asking us. And I was like, okay, I'm asking you. And they're like, okay, well, do we need you to sign this? And they slipped the thing over to me saying, I was inviting everybody and I went, whoa, I'm not sure I could do that. So I'm not proposing it as a city event just for strict public safety. It is often more busy than the weekends on main.

So if I may, since I have a public speaker card, let me open a public comment and we can bring it back for council. Any clarifying questions before we do that? Well, everyone knows what we're asking if Second Street closes.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. I think there needs to be a discussion, but I don't think there should be a decision about it tonight.

Okay, so we're still at item 14, so we're going to open up to public comment. Any clarifying questions, Council Member Tessa? No. Council Member Eicher, any clarifying questions? No.

Council Member Nyberg? No.

And Council Member Gatos, I think you've clarified. Clarified. Okay, so we'll open up to public comment. Ms. Jamie Yee? IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ON ITEM 14, FORMERLY KNOWN AS ITEM 4, PLEASE FILL OUT A BLUE SPEAKER CARD. WELCOME.

TWO THINGS. ONE, I 100% AGREE THAT IT SHOULD BE A CITY EVENT ON SECOND STREET. IT IS CRAZY HOW MANY PEOPLE COME TO IT. NOBODY COMES TRICK OR TREATING ON MY STREET BECAUSE EVERYBODY GOES TO SECOND STREET. I ALSO THINK THAT WE SHOULD DO A COMMUNITY SOMEHOW A COLLECTION OR PEOPLE GO AND DONATE CANDY OVER TO SECOND STREET BECAUSE THOSE FOLKS REALLY, REALLY OPEN UP THAT STREET AND TAKE SO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY, AND IT'S DARK, AND THERE'S PEOPLE WHO AREN'T FROM HERE THAT COME AND VISIT THE STREET. IT'S A GREAT COMMUNITY EVENT, AND I THINK THE CITY SHOULD REALLY SUPPORT IT. I DON'T THINK IT'S FAIR TO MAKE A RESIDENT BECOME AN EVENT PLANNER FOR AN EVENT THAT DRAWS THAT MANY PEOPLE. BUT THE OTHER THING I WANTED TO BRING UP IS I NOTICED FOR OCTOBER, FOR THE WEEKEND CLOSURE, IT ONLY LISTS ON THE AGENDA REPORT OCTOBER 2ND, AND I BELIEVE IT'S THE WHOLE WEEKEND THAT IS CLOSED. SO IT'S SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, THE SECOND AND THE THIRD. SO JUST WONDER IF THAT WAS MISSED OR IF THE THIRD IS NOT CONSIDERED ONE OF THE CLOSURE DATES. AND THEN I ALSO THINK IT WOULD BE HELPFUL, WOULD HAVE BEEN HELPFUL IN THE STAFF REPORT IF THERE WERE COST ASSOCIATED WITH EACH OF THE CLOSURES. SO I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT IT COSTS TO HAVE THE CITY TAKE OVER AND HELP WITH SECOND STREET. SO THERE'S NO COST LISTED ANYWHERE TO GET AN IDEA OF THAT. THANK YOU.

OK. THAT WAS MY LAST AND ONLY SPEAKER CARD. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ON ITEM 14, PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS ITEM 4, PLEASE APPROACH THE PODIUM AT THIS TIME. SEEING NONE, HEARING NONE, WE'LL CLOSE PUBLIC COMMENT AND BRING IT BACK. CITY MANAGER, I JUST HAPPENED TO COME PREPARED. I BROUGHT THE COST SHEET THAT YOU PROVIDED US FROM A YEAR AGO, AND SO I DON'T WANT TO STEAL YOUR THUNDER IF YOU'RE GOING TO ANSWER THE QUESTION.

THAT IS, I WILL CONTINUE TO BE THE BEARER OF BUDGET NEWS. The reality of community events is that there's a cost, and so I would encourage the council to include a budget discussion in your next opportunity to fund an additional community event if that is the desire of the council, and we can come with a THOSE COSTS IN A MORE FORMAL WAY. I UNDERSTAND THE CONCERN. I HEAR THE INTEREST IN CLOSING THE STREET, BUT STREET CLOSURES DON'T JUST HAPPEN. THERE IS GOING TO BE OVERTIME ASSOCIATED WITH THAT, LIKELY FROM BOTH PUBLIC SAFETY AND PUBLIC WORKS AND POSSIBLY OTHER COSTS ASSOCIATED. Continue to you know, it's a challenge where there's there's a quality of life community expectation that comes with a lot of the things that the city does and unfortunately the the thing that's been rarely talked about in our you know in in our Medium term history is the cost associated with those things and so is not currently budgeted There is no dollars for that. The mayor has the summary sheet I don't have that summary sheet in front of me tonight, but I believe it's it's it's

Yeah, it's still around $8,000.

Sorry, if I could, sorry.

Yes, please.

Well, I was just going to say that staff, you know, they didn't have a lot of time to do estimates, so I think respectfully the request from staff is that there would be a little more time to understand. It's very helpful to have the scope of the closure that you outlined, Vice Mayor, and I think respectfully staff asked to have a little more time to go back and do the analysis because it will involve overtime, as the City Manager said, from the Police Department and the Public Works Department, just to understand the full scope of the cost.

THE ONLY OTHER PIECE THAT I'LL JUST BRIEFLY RESPOND TO BEFORE I TURN OFF MY MICROPHONE IS IT IS A WEEKEND ON MAIN EVENT, SO I BELIEVE THE INTENT WAS TO CLOSE FOR THE SECOND AND THIRD, BUT I'LL ASK OUR LIBRARY AND RECREATION DIRECTOR, HEIDI MURPHY. EVERYBODY'S NODDING YES, SO MAYBE I'LL SAVE HEIDI THE WALK TO THE PODIUM, BUT IF YOU CAN JUST CONFIRM THAT. I THINK IT'S SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH, CORRECT?

It likely is, we've not received that special event permit from them quite yet, so that's a placeholder.

Okay, so we'll say second, third, and fourth, because the second is the Friday. Okay, so let me make some, if I may weigh in, it's a safety hazard, there's no doubt. So I'm amenable to doing something personally. To give the context of the cost from our May 30th, 2025 memo that I somehow have at my hand, August weekend on Maine cost $17,908. This is obviously in 2025 dollars. Foothill High School Band Review cost $20,850. Spirit Run cost $9,405 based on the route they took. The Veterans Day Parade, which we all know goes down Main Street, again, $20,000. $483. Hometown holidays cost $80,000 approximately. And December weekend on main back to that $17,900. So we're somewhere in that. approximate range. Why don't I open it up? You start off, Vice Mayor. Any further comments before we go around?

No, I'm happy to give you the time to do it. I'll note that the last year that the city shut it down, there was, you know, just road blockers at the ends of the roads. There was one community service officer at the intersection of Neal and Second Street.

Shut down light. We'll call it.

I'm sorry.

Like a shut down light, like light cost.

Yeah, that was the extent of the city involvement that I noticed from walking up and down the street. So

Can I ask a question then from what I hear? Would you be agreeable to have item 14 go forward and a matter initiate a street closure to come back urgently or we'll call it urgently for the Halloween?

Yeah, we have plenty of time. However, whatever's convenient for staff. we can we can provide that information pretty quickly of course uh it's uh yeah appreciate the uh alternative offered by the mayor and certainly happy to follow up if there's three votes for uh matters initiate on this one sure so yeah i can initiate the yep and do you want to move item 14 then yeah also i'll move item 14 uh let's move to approve item 14 and then at the same time second motion initiate um staff putting this on the agenda and just getting us a cost to add it to 14 in the future

Councilmember Divert?

Sorry, I'm pointing at you.

I apologize. Yes. I think the motion is item four as is, right? To approve that? Yep.

14 first, and then we'll go around for the second. During matters initiated? Yeah, we can take it then, either way. Okay.

Yeah, I'll second the motion.

Okay. Councilmember Tessa?

I was there the weekend that you're referring to, or the Halloween you're referring to, where there were community service officers, and I absolutely do agree that it's a wonderful event, and it absolutely does rob every other neighborhood of any trick or treaters. I got so didn't want to throw away all my candy, so I took it all down and stood on Second Street and just gave out my I had whole candy, big candy bars. They were giving away little tiny things. I had whole candy bars, but nobody had come to my house. So it it is a really wonderful event. I had a lot of conversation. There were a few neighborhood meetings and, you know, there was an offer of restructuring it because people But the residents, on one hand, it's a burden, but on the other hand, they love it, and they don't want to give it up. So I would like to find a way of supporting them, but it really shouldn't be a full, the offer was to move it on to Main Street if they didn't want the responsibility on Second Street, and of course, nobody wants to do that, and I understand why. So I would absolutely support a discussion, but I do want to, why are we making a motion on a matters initiated? I thought we're not supposed to have this in depth of a.

No, we have to move item 14, which is the motion on the table, which is previously known as item four. So item four, and we have a motion and a second. Vice Mayor made a comment about matter initiated, and we've clarified that will have to be a future point. Okay, I apologize.

I get it, because it was four, and now it's 14. Yeah. Okay.

So, okay. Council Member Eicher?

I'll support the motion.

Okay. I just want to point clarification for all of us that the October 2nd is actually to imply the 2nd through the 4th with that correction. And I assume that's agreeable to both of you. Yes.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. We have a motion made in second and roll call vote, please.

Council members Eicher.

Aye.

Gatos. Aye. Nybert. Aye. Testa. Aye. Mayor Balch.

Aye.

The motion passes unanimously.

Okay. We're moving quickly along to the exact next thing. Matters initiated. Vice Mayor, do you have something to add or initiate?

Thank you. I'd like to initiate agendizing, adding Halloween Second Street street closure to the next agenda or whatever agenda staff can get to.

Okay. I will be supportive of that.

I'll support it as well.

Yep. I'll support it. And Council Member Tessit? Yes. Okay. There's sufficient support to matter initiate that item for staff, please. Okay. Any additional matters initiated by any Council Members at this time? Seeing none, Council reports. Brief reports on conferences, seminars, and meetings attended. Council Member Eicher, you're leading us off on this.

On May 20th, I attended a ceremony at the Pleasanton Police Department where the Alternate Response Unit received an award for their outstanding service.