City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. And it's a special meeting. I'm asked for roll call.

Council Member Little.

Here.

Council Member Sander. Council Member Polipotti. Here. Vice Mayor Budge. Here. Mayor Gatewood.

Here. And can we go ahead and ask for the video and playback schedule?

Yes, today's meeting is being recorded and will be available on the city's website at www.cityofranchocordova.org within 48 hours of adjournment of this meeting.

At a special meeting, citizens wishing to address the council for any matter on the agenda may do so at this time. The matter is discussed under provision of California government code. The city council is prohibited from discussing or taking immediate action on any item not on the agenda. To make public comment, submit a speaker card to city clerk, raise your hand in Zoom, that's the button in the corner, or press star nine to raise your hand, participating by telephone. Now y'all understand, please wait to be called upon uh by the city clerk when speaking listen i can't leave these horses home this is rancho once we hear your staff we'll invite you to public it's an equine virus to share their comments special stacy can you read the subject of this special meeting

Yes. Can I just, for the public, don't forget to submit that speaker card to the city clerk. Use the raise hand feature as the mayor shared. I already did that. Move on.

Stop trying to tell me.

And don't forget to press the asterisk in nine if you are joining by telephone to unmute yourself. Sorry, to raise your hand. Our special topic for today is an update on growing strong neighborhoods and proposed amendments to the Rancho Cordova Municipal Code.

Russ, staff report.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Gatewood and council members. Russ Ducharme, Neighborhood Services Director, here tonight with Code Enforcement Manager Brittany Mariscal, Community Development Director Darcy Goulart, Communications Director Maria Neistat-Chacon, and Housing Manager Stephan Heisler. So we're here to discuss our GSN group and all the good things that we've been doing as a team here. We're going to go through some highlights of the of the GSN group and then also start to discuss proposed amendments. We have a lot of collaboration that we do here with our GSN team. We have a lot of pieces here, our police department, neighborhood services, communication, community development. I would be remiss not to mention Public Works and GIS. They're not here on this pie chart. We do a lot with both of those teams. Albert and Maria's team do a great job with our city streets and public spaces. And GIS has really kind of turned the page on collecting all our data and putting into a dashboard that's nice and neat for us to analyze and provide some insight on. So we're going to start with Neighborhood Services, and Brittany's going to take it from here. I'm sorry.

And so I'm going to start with our rental housing inspection program, which includes proactive inspections of rental properties, short-term rentals, hotels, motels, dangerous buildings, and responses to resident complaints. Our approach is centered on education and voluntary compliance, where we collaboratively work with property owners and managers to identify deficiencies, explain code requirements, and establish reasonable timelines for correction. While enforcement remains an important tool, our primary goal is protecting residents and preserving the city's housing stock. One enhancement that we're currently working on is the use of a stipulated compliance agreement for larger properties or those with more significant maintenance issues. These agreements will establish clear corrective actions and timelines, creating accountability, setting clear expectations, and providing a more effective framework for managing complex cases and achieving long-term compliance. To give you an idea of the scale of work of the program and the impact that it's had throughout the community, here's what we have accomplished over the last five years. We've opened more than 4,400 housing inspection cases with the vast majority of those initiated proactively rather than through complaints. During that time, we've inspected larger apartment complexes, 209 of them representing more than 20,000 apartment units, along with approximately 4,200 single-family or small multifamily rental properties representing the additional 4,800 units. Combined, that's more than 2,500. 25,000 rental units inspected or attempted to be inspected in the last five years through that program. Our inspection schedule is based on property type with larger complex and communities inspected every three years and smaller rental properties every five years. We do adjust that schedule when properties have reoccurring complaints, repeated violations, ongoing maintenance issues, or other conditions that require additional oversight. We've also recently expanded the program to include annual inspections of our short-term rentals within the city, which there are currently 64 registered. This is also in addition to the inspections of hotels and motels and then dangerous buildings. Protecting our housing stock is one of the important missions of our team. Equally important in preserving the appearance, safety, and quality of our neighborhood as a whole. And we have the proactive engagement program next. Since launching in October of 2022, we've opened more than 8,200 proactive cases, allowing us to identify and address issues before they generate complaints or become larger community concerns. Approximately 62% of those cases are resolved after the first notice, showing that education and early engagement are highly effective. Nearly 80% of those properties remain compliant after their initial notice and their cases are resolved. These results reinforce that the proactive education first approach works and helps us maintain safer and cleaner communities throughout the city. Our philosophy is simple, education first and enforcement necessary. We proactively identify issues, work with residents to achieve voluntary compliance, and provide reasonable opportunities to correct violations. For the small number of repeat violators who choose not to comply, accountability becomes essential. That balanced approach allows us to support the vast majority of residents who want to do the right thing while promoting the quality within our neighborhoods. As successful as this program has been, it still relies heavily on officers physically driving the neighborhoods to identify violations. With more than 24,000 residential parcels, there are limits to how much ground that can be covered on any given day. For example, our team had to break the city into six equal parts, which allowed us to survey the entire city only twice a year. Next, moving into our slide regarding City Detect. City Detect is a tool that helps us take our proactive approach to the next level. Using AI-assisted image analysis, City Detect reviews street-level imagery and identifies property that have visible exterior maintenance concerns. This program allows officers to spend less time searching for violations and more time doing what matters most, which is working with our residents' property owners to educate and resolving issues and achieving compliance. The results shown here illustrate the scale of the analysis. Nearly 23,000 residential parcels were analyzed, and approximately 7% of those properties were identified as having some type of visible issue. Less than 1% of those were identified as having a more significant issue that warranted a higher maintenance indicator. It's important to note that City Detect does not issue violations. Every potential violation issued by the system is reviewed and verified by a code enforcement officer before any official enforcement action is taken. This technology doesn't change our philosophy. It slightly shifts and strengthens it. Instead of spending time locating violations, our officers can spend more time educating property owners, resolving cases, and focusing enforcement resources where they're needed most. Next slide, City to Help Detect also helps us identify and prioritize the most common issues throughout the city before they become larger problems. As you can see, the private property side, we're seeing common maintenance concerns such as overgrown vegetation, driveway issues, fencing issues, and exterior property maintenance. And then on the roadside indicators, we're seeing illegal dumping, debris, graffiti, and other public right-of-way concerns. This allows us to direct our resources more strategically, address issues earlier, and continue to proactively approach to neighborhood preservation.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Maria Chacon-Neistat, Communications and Public Affairs Director. I'm going to be talking about two areas that we are collaborating with the team on, and that is education and outreach and also beautification. I'm sitting in for Lorianne who couldn't be here this evening on the beautification front. First up is education and you'll see here. Some examples of some of the proactive publications and education pieces that we provide to our residents and our businesses. The Good Neighbor Guide is in its third edition and this provides our residents with direct information on some of the top 10 ways they can be a good neighbor and some of the code violations that we offer assistance to come into compliance for. As Brittany mentioned, strategy is for education is based on the challenge, and we always lean into information and in-person resolution. We also offer one-off, some of these are one-off opportunities, but we also do a lot of campaign-type work. Most recently is our campaign on and so we really leaned into that this last year and put most of our resources behind it. This included a direct mail piece to all residents, a media day where we partnered with neighborhood services, the police department, and Metro Fire and we had all of the Sacramento area broadcast stations and print stations out to cover the event. We also provided some amplification via our digital content that includes our monthly newsletter as well as a dedicated news alert, some social posts, website updates, and billboards. And then we did provide to the folks who were selling Safe and Sane, we provided them with point of sale information. So we had some flyers posted there, and then they also provided that to people who purchased Safe and Sane with their purchases. I have a question.

Yeah. This letter, courtesy notice of violation,

Yes.

So there's a code citation and nothing explains what it is. How would the person who got the letter know what the problem was?

So that's the form piece of the letter. But if you have the other side of the letter, it tells you what the violation is. And then each violation is accompanied by an education piece. So for example, it might be the Good Neighbor Guide, which provides more information, as well as city programs that help residents come into compliance. In some cases, we have some fact sheets that we use. So if it's one of the top five code violations, then it's accompanied by one of those flyers.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure that this is not the only thing they received.

Yeah, I know it's a little bit misleading. Really, this is just up there to show that there's a collaboration between neighborhood services and communications. So we're not just issuing a government speak type of letter. Yeah, there's really some thought that goes into it so that our residents are well informed about what their violation is and also what their recourse is. Okay. Thank you.

I saw that in the slide as well. Hopefully that's not what a constituent would see even just on the front side. Because it doesn't even say really what that, I don't even think it says that this is a code section. It just has a series of four numbers.

Yeah, there's this little bitty line in the middle. It says...

This is our template. This is the template we use. Obviously, we would want to make sure the property owner information's on there, the tenant information's on there. We cite the code. We give them a quick code comment on how to come in compliance. But this is our template.

So it's just missing the, you've got a car parked on your lawn. Correct. Correct. Whatever the, whatever the thing is. Yeah.

Yeah. All the specific information. So it's just the template.

Yeah. I mean, I will say this is the form or though that'll look like this. It'll just have the particular information of the code. If this was this to somebody or, you know, somebody in particular, this was just a sample of the form.

So it didn't have an example of what the more explanatory, the better. Correct.

Have you guys never gotten one? I got one. Did it tell you what the issue was? Exactly like that. It said... No, it was a debris on my sidewalk or something. And I got a $1,000 fine.

Go sweep your sidewalk.

$1,000 bucks?

I had a tree cut down, and I didn't know it was there, and I cleaned it up as soon as I saw the letter.

It worked.

So the chain link fence item or any of these that we have up there, is this sort of a standard thing we have, or do we flip that up for different arguments? Like, do the people who have chain link fences in their yard get that? And then four months later, they get a, if you want your neighborhood to be safer. And then three months after that, if you want your housing value to be higher, you know, is it like a multi-point sell or is it just sort of that thing hangs out when we do a mass mailing?

So this wouldn't be part of a mass mailing. This chain link fence piece would go into like a notice and order or a courtesy letter and coaching folks on how to come into compliance with the assistance and the incentive programs. I do like what you're going towards, kind of an escalation piece on here's the base reason, here's the secondary reason, here's the third reason. We could work on that for sure.

You can have all the reasons on all of them. Just highlight a different one on each one. Try to grab their attention.

Absolutely.

Keep tapping it. Whatever the normal sales strategy is for something.

Yeah. So David has a really good point because originally we heard of the program in, I think it was Tacoma, Washington. And it was a series of three letters. And the first letter said, Dear neighbor, we've seen this, this, and this, and we would like you to clean it up. And the second letter said, you know, a mother still goes by and nothing happens. And the second letter said, Dear neighbor, we sent you this letter, and we really are hoping you'll take some action. And the third letter says, dear neighbor, you ignored us, so we're going to do this, this, and this. So it's kind of a staged approach to making sure that there's some action taken.

I agree with that. I agree with that approach. I think this is another piece that we want to talk through with the group is this philosophy kind of pivot is we want to educate and we want to do our outreach, but it's hard just being fully transparent to let a violation go on for an excessive period of time because then the narrative comes back as, well, you're not doing anything. And in the background, we are, right? So there's different philosophies here. We could be hard out of the gate and provide the outreach and education on the backside and then treat it as a fix-it ticket or have them come in and sit in front of a hearing board and talk to us about their issues. Like there's certainly different approaches to this. I think people on the high side aren't even aware of the violations, right? So the courtesy letter has been super successful. We're getting to this point where we've had a lot of touches in the city where we need to pivot to talk through getting to code enforcement solutions maybe a little bit quicker. Now, I'm not disregarding this approach. I think this is a good approach. but I think we need to have firm kind of borders and parameters to it. So we're not letting these things linger on, you know, these aren't chain link fence could be health, life, safety. It could not, it could be aesthetic, right. If it's in the front yard and it's just for, just for that resident, um, Laurie Ann did a really good job surveying some of the neighborhoods in the, in the, in the owners that it gives them a sense of security might not be the prettiest, right. But they, they feel secure. So, um, I agree with you. I think there is an approach here, but I also think that we need to talk through the potential of being, I don't want to say aggressive, but getting to that end result quicker. And then on the backside, walking it back or talking them through it. A lot of times if we see that people have made a just investment in bringing their property into compliance, we'll work with them 100%. But it's the people that just continue to dismiss our notices and our education and outreach and even some of them that become recidivism, and that's a problem for us. We've got to get to a point where we have a good, sharp fork in the road and we know which way to go.

There's a business I could mention that's close to my heart, sort of. They have landscape violations at least annually. Like every year they forget, oh, I got to mow the weeds, you know, or I don't have any landscaping out there and I don't water it. Maybe that's a problem. And for, I don't know, 15 years, this has been a problem, 10 years, like. If I mentioned the name, you'd immediately say, oh yeah, 40 times we've gone and talked to them. The amount of time we've spent talking to them about the same problem over nearly a generation is nuts. It should just be, guess what? You're on year 15, $1,000 up front. Because you can't remember to do what everybody else knows how to do.

It's just crazy. If you walk in the neighborhood, we all walk by some yard that is never kept. And even in the environment where there is an HOA, the HOA never seems to notice. So, you know, nobody, so X yard is never mowed.

Sometimes it's a choice. It's not a matter of I can't afford it or I can't do it or something else is in the way. It's just, yeah, that's a low priority for me. Well, it isn't to living in a suburb. It isn't. I think eventually on the sales part, it was enforcement on the left and sales on the right on the sales side. Eventually it's, you know, Diane's going to be hired to go out there and make the pitch and the sale for somebody. Right. Doesn't have to be internal. We might have an exterior partner. Yeah.

Right. Diane just got signed up.

I don't know if she was looking for more work tonight, but $50 finders fee for a, you know, chain link fence that you can find.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

I'm glad this all comes with horseback riding. Keep going.

So, Linda, on your comment with HOA, so in residential where this happens, where there is HOA, then there's a two-pronged approach, right? Send it to the residents and send it to the HOA. And so they will take much faster and prompt action and maybe even bring it to the city's attention if they're not doing it. So that'll be an additional step that we can take. I don't.

That's a lovely idea, but I don't think I've never seen any relationship between the HOA management company and the city.

So there's one, we have one, and it's actually in her district. And we've done a good job of bridging the gap there. There's been some issues that now you're 100% correct that in some of these neighborhoods, the HOA is all but gone, right? And we are coming in on the backside to do a lot of these maintenance surveys and enforcement. Um, I think the HOAs can be a little more nitpicky than maybe we can. Um, I mean, we could, but I think we have to, we have to meet a standard, right? Otherwise, right. But we've made one solid connection, uh, in the South area and it's, it's worked out fairly well. Um, But the other HOAs, like I said, there's not much happening.

I mean, even when there are, you know, management companies sitting up in Roseville and you've got a group of people walking around the neighborhood supposedly serving what's going on, they may send out a letter, but nothing ever happens, and that's the end of it.

Maybe you have an HOA meeting and have an HOA competition, like, Like the city of Folsom does whatever prizes for the best lights or something along those lines.

Diane, did you have a question?

Yeah. They've dropped way down, I think, like almost to $100. So HOAs are not going to be a source of funding. Anyway, there's a new bill that just passed.

Interesting.

Yeah, they've handicapped them. So that's what I was going to say.

Well, thank you for that feedback. These are some examples of some ongoing publications that we provide to residents. And again, there's some that are just one-off, there's some that are full-on campaigns, and some that are just ongoing for services for residents. So we're gonna switch now and we're gonna talk about Good Neighbor Days and these are in-person opportunities to educate and make, forge connections with our residents. We like to call Good Neighbor Days as, opportunities for us to bring City Hall to our neighbors in their in their own neighborhoods and this is a it can be it's not just for in-person connections but it's for information it's for city services it's also for some of our partner services we have the community council out there we have a lot of different opportunities to provide information but it's also for fun since that is a cultural focus for the city of Rancho Cordova. We have had one, we have a total of three in 2026. The first was at Dave Roberts Park on what I think might have been the hottest day of the year. And so it was lightly attended, and when I say lightly attended, we have a clicker that we use to determine how many people attend events. There were about 200 folks, but typically we get anywhere between 350 to 400 folks out at the Good Neighbor Days. We have two more coming up, one on September 17th in the Countryside neighborhood and one on October 15th in Rio del Oro. But these are fun events that encourage residents to meet with city staff, put a face to our city services, and really allow us to forge connections, find out who wants to stand up new neighborhood engagement groups, et cetera. So we've done them for now for a few years, and they're very productive and a great way to bring some of the city publications to life and also to bring some of our city services to life. And speaking of city services, this is probably another one of our very, very popular city services, our animal vaccine and licensing clinic. You can see from the stats here, we've been doing this since 2021 through animal services and neighborhood services, 28 clinics held, 2,926 animals. Served. Pretty cool. We have a goal of 100 animals per vaccine clinic, and we always run out of room. Residents absolutely love this. And the neighborhood services and animal services team, they partner with veterinarians and other folks to provide microchips, licenses, rabies, et cetera. And it's all run by city staff on a Saturday. And it's a drive-thru, and it's really very cool to see.

Our next one is Saturday from 9 to 12 if anybody's looking for services. Are we full? We are, but we take walk-ups.

Okay.

Yeah.

Walk-ins welcomed. Maybe I'll bring Benny. So let's switch here for a moment and talk about beautification and incentives. This is something that our community engagement team works on very hard. And you can see here, this is a recap of fiscal year 25-26. I won't go through all of these statistics. You can read them on the screen. But the Good Neighbor Assistance Program is really designed to preempt code violations. And so the idea here is to, when There's landscaping issues or fencing issues or junk and debris. Instead of issuing a citation of some kind, we go in and we help complete these projects. We also have our cash for clunkers incentive and tree stump removal. We have our urban forest program, and there were 412 trees planted in the last fiscal year. That brings the total number of trees under this program to over 4,000 over the life of the program. And then we do work with Rebuilding Together. These are income-based projects, and we have had 14 rebuild days. The Safe at Home program is a program that provides grab bars and other things that help people keep them from falling. And then, of course, critical repairs. This is not volunteer-based. This is where we actually go out and find a professional who can make those repairs, things like HVAC and roofing and that sort of thing. And you can see here we have had... We have to really hit the pavement and... get people to participate in these. Sometimes they think it's too good to be true. And so we have been holding incentive and beautification events. We've been doing a test and learn with this. And we've done three of them. The most recent was in Lincoln Village last September. And we are planning, we've had another one in Countryside. And then in June, actually, we had one in Taylor Park. And so we're planning another one for the fall. But these are needs based on the neighborhood that we're in. And they've been very popular. So just an hour. It's right after work. And people come. And we offer all kinds of fun things.

So public safety, kind of the Big piece of the collaboration that we do is with our POP team and our probation team. We've had the probation partnership for 12 years, and it's done nothing but strengthen our approach. Obviously, our POP team and our probation team are key pieces to our nuisance property enforcement. And our homeless outreach team over the past... Gosh, nine months, we've moved to seven-day-a-week coverage. So we have navigators in the cities seven days a week with RCPD officers. We've seen really good success in keeping things at bay. Things aren't escalating as much. Our community prosecutor, through the fortune of the county and getting that contract finalized, we've been able to salvage the community prosecutor. And Brittany mentioned earlier that we are tracking nuisance properties, and she's been very instrumental in helping us getting compliance going through the Penal Code 370 process. And she's a great partner for us. The community outreach that public safety is doing, all the teams, patrol, POP, the investigators, detectives, The Neighborhood Crime Watch meetings have really turned a page. Lisa with RCPD is doing a phenomenal job with the Neighborhood Crime Watch meetings and also the Business Watch meetings. Chicken with a Chief, Coffee with a Cop, the Citizens Academy was a hit. That was full this year. And next week, National Night Out on the hottest night of the week. It'll be great. It'll be fun. Right, right.

So not entirely to do with the day-to-day work that our team does with Growing Strong Neighborhoods, but definitely in line with our efforts to grow strong neighborhoods. We do have an opportunity to share, well, a grand opportunity to discuss with city council, particularly right now with the transformative climate communities. This is a program run through the Strategic Growth Council out of the state of California. that supports community-driven projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve quality of life at the neighborhood scale. So these are sort of meant to be larger investments into a focused area to help catalyze and improve certain areas. So the grant opportunity is up to $27.5 million for the implementation grants. They expect to make only three of those in this round of approximately 82.5 million total statewide. And we've heard that there were about 49 pre-proposal applicants, which we are one of, but we anticipate that that number will decline significantly for the final applications that are due September 30th. So these have to be focused on areas that meet certain eligibility criteria. So they have to be in the top 25% of the most disadvantaged census tracts, according to CalEnviroScreen. So I'm going to flip to the next page. And I apologize for the blurry image, but you can kind of get a sense of where the most eligible areas in Rancho Cordova are. which are focused along Folsom Boulevard primarily. So this is an opportunity to really kind of dive into that area specifically and promote some particular projects. So in this grant program, the focus is on affordable housing, active transportation and transit, urban greening and parks, or open space, public open space, renewable energy and resilience, and workforce development and economic opportunity. So this is a grant, again, that we're exploring to see if we can really be eligible for and qualify for. There is a very short application window to pull together a number of different project partners that would put together different project pieces with this. And so there is a fair bit of chance that our efforts this year might need to carry over into a much stronger application next year. but we are working on that over the next couple of months. And as we explore that, if it looks more like a positive opportunity, we intend to come back to the city council for a further discussion in late August, early September.

I understand. I understand the list of coordinated investments, but how do you create these things when you have an area that is fully built out.

So we have a couple of opportunity parcels, I think, that are of more interest, one being Mills Crossing. So putting that back on the radar, not necessarily in the same form that we were considering it as before, obviously, but trying to see how we can maybe repackage that to, one, be competitive in this grant proposal, but two, also check as many boxes that is implementing the vision that the city council has for Folsom Boulevard.

Yeah, that's kind of small.

The dark colors, yes.

So it would have to be. OK, I can see West Loma.

Just to give you a couple of cents of the range of projects that we're considering at this point in time, and we're obviously still brainstorming at this point, but we're looking at the Horn Road light rail station being a project that's already pretty well advanced that needs a little bit of gap funding to get to the finish line. We're looking at sort of the open space and plaza portions of the Mills Crossing project. That would be a lot more community serving. We are looking at maybe not doing additional affordable housing at Mills Crossing, but can we use this grant funding to catalyze potentially some additional vertical development at Mills Crossing? We're talking with RT about the Mather light rail station as well if there's additional opportunities there. Portions of this grant also include anti-displacement and economic workforce training. So we're talking to our partners at Rebuilding Together Sacramento who already do our critical systems repair program and can we juice that up with even more grant funds through this program. And then also our friends at Folsom Lake College, you know, kind of augmenting some of the AI training and education that they are already doing at Folsom Lake College. Is this an opportunity to push that to the next level?

You're being very creative. We appreciate that. Isn't the project that we have approved affordable at Mills Crossing?

Correct. Yeah, that one's already rolling. We've submitted a grant application for that. We're waiting to hear back probably in December for the Mills Crossing Affordable Project. So that's not really included on this list. I think we can highlight that project as something that we're already doing as sort of leverage for an application here.

It's sort of ironic. Because we're always talking about infill, but in reality, infill in a completely developed urban area is extremely difficult when you don't have space. And that's why everybody goes to greenfields.

So next we'll move into the proposed amendments. Throughout today's presentation and through the conversation that we've been having, we've been talking about how programs have evolved through proactive inspections, technology, continued focus on education and voluntary compliance. I think the data shows that this approach is working. Most cases are resolved after our first notice, as I mentioned earlier. And most properties remain compliant once their cases are closed. However, there are a small number of repeat violators that consume a disproportionate amount of city time and resources, despite our opportunities to comply. And to better address those issues, we're looking to propose updates to our administrative citation structure. increasing our fines from $100 for the first citation, $200 for the second, and then $500 for the third to be $250 for the initial or the first citation, $500 for the second, and $1,000 for the third citation. I just want to be clear that to the point that was made earlier, we do want to continue to provide education first with courtesy letters. The issuance of our notice and order is kind of that Second letter and that official enforcement process that started that gives additional time without fees. We're talking at least 30 to 45 days before there's any citations issued. This proposal doesn't change our philosophy. It just slightly shifts it. As Russ mentioned earlier, we're going to continue to educate first, pursue voluntary compliance when possible. But these updates would just simply provide a stronger accountability for those that choose not to comply after having the opportunity to do so.

Maybe I missed that. What happens if they don't pay?

If they don't pay? So for ongoing noncompliance and there are fees that continue to accumulate, we can put a lien on the property. We can do collection measures such as franchise tax board or lien confirmation. It just kind of depends on the situation.

It's a rental property?

I mean, they're renting? Same thing.

We would put a lien on the property. They wouldn't care, right?

They would if they needed to sell or refinance. They would ultimately care. But yes, but we still would send to franchise tax board or collections.

Okay.

And then also to Russ's point earlier about the collaboration with the DA, if it's something that's a very big issue and we're getting a lot of calls for service or something like that, that could be a process that we would utilize as well with the 370 and criminal charges potentially. Okay.

And I think you were curious about maybe the tenant wouldn't care, but from a sense of the landlord might care and therefore be an impact on their current tenant or leasing arrangement they have with the landlord from an impact standpoint.

So, for example, it's a tenant that's going and the mails are going to the address and then the landlord never receives them.

So we are required by code to send it to the property owner of record with the Sacramento County Assessor's Office. But there's also clear searches and other things that we do when we notice that people aren't getting our mail or we don't have compliance. We can contact utility billing companies to get contact information. We do clear searches to find if they're getting mail somewhere else, see if they have any other rental properties available. throughout the county through our systems that we have access to, we do every make every effort to try to make sure that we actually get in contact with somebody. And we make contact at the door. So if we notice that this property is a rental, but the county assessor's office says that they live there, we do every make every effort to try to make contact with the property owners.

Yeah, I mean, things like that always go to the to the property owners registered address, not to the site is addressed.

Are there cases where you could make it collectible in the current tax year?

Yes, so we can do a lien confirmation where we put it on the Sacramento County assessor's lien, and then they'll pay us on the tax roll, and then they'll get reimbursed.

Here's the fine you keep ignoring, and if you get a standard lien and they don't have to do it until they sell the property, they may not care. Never going to sell it. Right. Just hang out there with the mechanics lien or whatever that's called.

Right. So we would either do a franchise tax board intercept through their income taxes or we would do lien confirmation and try to recover it through the tax lien.

Those are good tools to have. FTV is very effective. Sorry. Franchise tax board is really effective and people have no idea that it's coming. You know, we even know we notice them and let them know. But that's a that's a very effective tool for us.

while ago when we were doing a serious battle with bad landlords particularly apartment owners who were just bad actors slumlords basically one of the strategies was you call their bank figure out where the mortgage is you call the bank tell the bank what's going on figure out who their insurance company is call them it's like you start lighting fires underneath the bad landlord in a variety of ways so they can't dodge it i mean is that still a common thing we do

It is a common thing we do. Actually, the more effective tool, quite frankly, is sitting down across the table from the DA and telling the property owner that we are going to prosecute you for harboring a nuisance property. And the property owner lives somewhere not in Rancho. We've had very, very good success with that. It doesn't take too long to get to that point. We've done collectively as a team, we've done a good job kind of reining in some of those bad players. There's always going to be a few, no doubt. But having the DA sit in the room, people sit up straight, they listen, they get a compliance plan put together. That's very effective. The secondary tool of contacting the title company and figuring out where the legs are on the property ownership and who to contact, that's another tool that we've utilized. But calling them in and having that conversation with the DA definitely has immediate impact.

How often do you think we exercise that tool?

I would say two to three times a year.

That's it.

Yeah. And in our community prosecutor is, you know, she's really good she she goes out and she'll actually survey a neighborhood blind survey neighborhood that we know that there is a problem in that neighborhood they don't know why we're there to figure out, is this truly, is it truly a holistic problem or is it isolated. As a matter of fact, you know, she did a few last month for us, and it kind of gets to the bottom of the issue. A lot of times we get responses from the complaining party often, and we don't necessarily go out and survey the neighborhood to see if it's an epidemic or if it's isolated. But she did a really good job with that, and it kind of, you know, she gets to utilize that information she gets and speak to the property owner about it. So that's another good tool that she brings to the table.

We do letters as a step before the meeting?

We do letters on our side of the house. On our side of the house, we do letters, but then she sends a letter from the district attorney's office.

That's just two or three times a year. Yeah. When you started that sentence, I thought you were going to say two or three times a month.

Oh, yeah. No, it's not that high. And we meet. I mean, we meet with our pop code probation, our hot team. We meet once a month and we go over all of our... problem properties. We also, Daniel's the analyst over at RCPD, he provides all the high calls for service and we put that into our GIS dashboard and we kind of, we're able to pinpoint where the problems are. A lot of times you got to kind of weed through the call to see if it's, is it a proactive patrol call? Is it a criminal call? Is it a complaint call? and we can get to the point of a nuisance property. So it takes a little bit of time, but we've been able to head those off before we get to the point of sitting before a DA.

Our next section that we're going to look at and discuss tonight in terms of potential code amendments is our temporary use permits. So on the screen before you'll see two different lists. One of our exempt activities that don't need a temporary use permit, generally these are yard sales, fireworks booths, portable storage container. That's typically the storage container you put on your property when you're moving and you want to store your items in that, and that's a 60-day max. I think some examples of when permits are required are construction trailers, outdoor storage cells and display, temporary signs. This category for banners and flags would be an existing business that maybe wants to have a special sale for a max of 60 days and they wanna put out flags. We also issue them for grand opening. So if you are a new business or an existing business that changes ownership, you can have temporary flag banners for a max of 60 days without a permit. After that, you can get an additional 60 days with a temporary use permit. The purpose of our discussion tonight is where we historically see issues are with our large special events. So this arises that either they've obtained a timber use permit and they fail to comply with conditions. And this would be, we've provided them a warning. Maybe it's an event where we've had some calls for service and we have staff out there monitoring something we've given them a warning and they're still not complying this could also be they're not obtaining a temporary use permit we do have some larger folks that don't obtain a temporary use for it for their events this isn't meant to penalize folks where maybe they didn't know they needed it and they'll call us at the last minute we generally will try very quickly to turn over a temporary use permit A good example is on the 5th of July, San Juan Soccer wanted to do the drone show for fireworks. We turned over that timber use permit, I think, in two days because it was very last minute, but we wanted to get them through the process. So what we find is that when you're a larger entity having an event and you just refuse to get the permit or refuse to comply with your conditions, the fee structure that Brittany just went over, the $100, $200 fee, $500 doesn't generally phase them. We could look at the increase that Brittany just discussed, which was the 250, 500, 1,000. But what staff is really looking at is potentially putting special permits in a whole separate category and having a separate tiered fine approach. It could be that the initial fine is $1,000 to try to gain compliance. So the struggle that we see is the current fee structure just does not get us to that compliance that we're looking for. So we would want to suggest putting them in a separate category, potentially renaming the TUP just for a special event TUP, which kind of will shift them and separate them from all the other TUPs that we issue. And then coming up with a different fee structure. So for tonight, what I would be looking for from council is direction of, do you want to look at this increased fees that Brittany just went over, which would be the $250, $500, or $1,000? Or do you want us to explore a much harsher fee? fee structure which could be not as aggressive as the fireworks but we could start off with a higher fee of a five thousand or five hundred or a thousand dollar out of the gate fee so um that would be what i would be looking for from some discussion from council tonight on this particular item

i think i'm okay with increasing the fees as suggested um the way we talked about that in committee i think the the temporary use permit and these public events uh temporary use permit is something particularly on the special events side i wouldn't want to really increase a fee for them but that's not what we're talking about with the previous item right that fee is not proposed for increase for temporary use permit

for the standard temporary use permit? No, we would keep the standard at the current fee, yes.

Right. There is, I have some personal experience with this. When people try to sort out in Rancho Cordova how to get a temporary use permit for a special event, they immediately run into challenges. On our website, the forms they're presented with, how they talk to people at the counter, it's very confusing. To them, because it's the same thing as, I don't know, Garrett wants to put up file cabinets behind his office, you know, and store 25 years of paperwork out in the back parking lot. Or someone wants to have a drone show on Tuesday. It's like, these are really different things. One's going to draw an audience. The other is just an eyesore to problem or fire hazard or something. Right. I think if we could, in our website and in our materials, develop something specifically for special events and consult, like I'm sure the community council get these calls all the time from organizations who want to do things. And then I think we have like an unpaid side business helping people through that. But I think we could be a lot more supportive of special events and probably get more compliance and maybe draw more special events to Rancho Cordova if we could really Clear that up, make it really clear. So I'm all in favor of that change.

On a side note, maybe we could have an AI agent that could fill up this template.

Better idea yet.

So personally, I would like to add item four, that if the business, the violating business has a use permit, that the use permit be pulled.

Do they endanger their underlying use permit if they do an illegal use?

Continually.

Continually.

And I think we all know what I'm talking about. I just think something's got to happen to shut them down. And that's just, and so far, We haven't done anything significant. We've wasted a lot of police time. We've wasted a lot of neighborhood angst. And they continue to do it. Now, I know we had this same sort of issue to a different degree, not the kind of widespread impact that this current problem is having, but over in Lincoln Village. And ultimately that one sort of went away. But these guys are not going away.

I think there's two things. One is we have in the past put property owners, so we'll call it timeout, as far as like not the ability to get new use permits because usually it's a day, right? So it's a day, an event, and something happens. And we might need to think about how do we get that into the code because I don't know kind of where exactly that lives. But we have put kind of property owners on. You basically can't get a use permit for any event.

Okay, but they've got one.

So now let me talk about the other thing, which is a day of an event. Pulling a use permit is, you know, easy. Going out and forcing, you know, shutting down maybe a big event is a little more challenging.

The sheriff has a big law.

They do. They do. Yeah. Um, but I think there's, you know, kind of strategic and operational choices in that, that we have to kind of navigate at the kind of at the time. And so, um, I think where it makes sense that we can, you know, basically pull the use permit and shut them down. Um, but there will also be moments where that may not make sense at the moment. So I think that's a little bit of an operational choice we have to make in the kind of in the situation. But I hear, uh, I hear from the, um, from the sentiment, a little more aggressiveness in, um, when people are not doing what they should be doing or doing stuff outside without a use permit, more aggressive in the enforcement of even potentially using our CPD team to enforce.

Well, that's what cities have police powers for. I mean, this is perennial. This is not a one-off thing. And you can't stop it because of social media. So something has to be done.

I hear the intent and what you'd like to see, and we have to talk about how to strategically enforce that when the time comes. But number four is pull the use permit, which means shut the vet down, right?

You got it.

Because pulling the use permits easy, shutting the event down is hard.

Do you have what you need? You good?

Not a little pull the carpet under you. Yeah.

So last code that we'd like to amend at Neighborhood Services, the animal code. Primarily, the goal here is to modify timelines to get in alignment with our shelter partner. Also, to update some of the definitions based on state updates that have happened. So there's, there's some, there's a little bit of work to do to get our code up to, up to speed. Um, we're also needing to align our current processes with modified, um, general requirements with our PDA, our potentially dangerous animal and our vicious animal code. Um, Six years ago, we implemented a PDA permit and it's been very successful, but we've identified some gaps in that permitting process with, um, definitions of, say, a provoked animal or an unprovoked animal, owner of an animal acting lawfully versus unlawfully, and then standards that come along with these permits. We condition the permits, but we've identified an area where these should just be standard. So, for example, if we have a potentially dangerous animal in the city, their first time offender, they're going to get a permit to maintain that animal at that property. There are certain standards that have to be put in place. The property owner needs to be made aware. Additional insurance may need to be added. Different signage has to be put on the property. So instead of having these be conditions, we'd like to make them standards in the PDA section of the code. Also talking through sales of animals in public spaces, cleaning that up a little bit. We've had issues where people are selling puppies at Walmart or Safeway and we need to We need to get that cleared up so we have firm accountability and enforcement. And then to get in line with the state, the state dropped back the age to vaccinate animals or dogs specifically from four months to three months. So that's going to trigger some things in our licensing section of the code and also in our vaccination section of the code. So those are some areas that we'd like to essentially do a code clean up on.

lastly we have a just a couple examples of some some of the good work that we've done so just a couple of before and after pictures for a couple of properties success stories that we've had this particular property had become severely severely neglected and there was an exposed swimming pool excessive debris overgrown vegetation there was rodent activity in the backyard this property was creating additional safety and security concerns for the surrounding neighborhood and the adjacent school The owner of this property was deceased, so there was no responsible party that was able to correct the violations or the conditions. So the city ultimately had to take action to eliminate the hazards and restore the property to what it looks like now. The before and after photos show the dramatic transformation, removing the hazards and restoring the property. The neighbors were very excited with the improved look, the reduced health risks, and we prevented conditions from continuing to deteriorate. And then this second one is another success story where this resident, the property owner, was in dire need of help. They had became very overwhelmed with maintaining the property, which they currently lived in, and it just got so out of hand. The overgrown vegetation had become a fire hazard and was impacting the surrounding neighborhood. The vegetation was almost four to five feet high throughout the entire property. The Neighborhood Services Assistance Pilot Program, through that program we were able to coordinate the removal of the weeds throughout the front and the rear of the property, eliminating the fire risk and helping the property owner be set up for long-term success in maintaining the property and then kind of giving them a fresh start. these success stories reflect the balanced approach that we've discussed throughout today's presentation through education assistance proactive enforcement and accountability further promoting our goal to promote public health and safety preserve neighborhood quality and improve the quality of life for residents so that concludes the presentation ultimately we'd like to hear some feedback direction so we can come back at a

council meeting and propose the amendments to the ordinance at a later date but we're happy to to answer any questions and discuss further so just a couple of background questions um originally when we incorporated you know our big issue was the the disintegrated um condition of many of the original apartments And there was an awful lot of work done between economic development and code enforcement to, you know, either make sure that those owners, especially the out-of-town owners, either cleaned up or, in some cases, we'll find you a new owner. You know, those kinds of things. So is there any... I don't want to say consolidation, but is there any one group of ownership that is creating a bigger problem than others at this point?

Great question. I think there are some larger property management companies, and there's not many. I would say two or three that we've had to focus on. We've exercised the tools that we've had. We've had conversations with them. We are towing the line of accountability. They're starting to come around the corner. There's some ownership of hotels and motels that we are continuing to have to go back to. And we're working on those as well. The hotels and motels, we're very sensitive to the calls for service. We monitor those calls for service. So If they're a good player, we make sure that they have the tools to continue doing the good work. If not, we provide them with those tools. And if they take them, great. If not, then we go to step two. But we've identified a few of those owners that we need to kind of hone in on, yes.

So applying that to the potentially dangerous animals, do you find them... in all situations or is it mostly on the street or?

With the potentially dangerous animals, they're kind of, it's kind of a one-off, right? we have a big uptick of PDAs for sure. The PDAs just based on the COVID animals and the COVID purchases and the dogs and cats and all that. So we do have an uptick in PDA cases. In general, we've been pretty successful with our PDAs, but through our hearings, we've identified some gaps that we need to shore up on. Now, one of our blind spots is property owner who owns the animal versus a tenant who owns the animal. Just like in code enforcement, you kind of lose your leverage. Once you don't have the land to kind of leverage back against that property owner, you kind of lose a little bit of traction. There are other ways to go about it. I'm not saying that there isn't, but by modifying the code and bringing it up to date, I think it'll put us in a better position to hold those PDA recipients accountable. Any other questions.

All right, let's go ahead and see is. I've got some discussion stuff. You want to hear from public first? You can do that. Let's go ahead and hear from public comment, please.

I do not have any speaker cards, but it looks like Diane Rogers would like to speak. I'm also looking at Zoom, and I do not see any hands that are raised. Diane, if you'd like to come forward and speak into the microphone.

a different view.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber of Commerce. And after taking the opportunity to look at today's agenda and speaking with both Rush and Micah, I'd like to talk a little bit about feather flags and related advertising. This is something, an issue that gets brought up to our chamber members or to us through our chamber members on quite a regular basis. And by way of example, many of you remember Burger IM over on Sunrise and in the shopping center there, they wanted to introduce a, they were struggling, they wanted to introduce a new product of breakfast. and thought that that would be an ideal situation for Feather Flags. Now, I have subsequently learned and understand now much better about the rules and how long they can have them. They were not aware of the rules, but unfortunately, that business did go out of business. And then for another example, well, there's lots of examples. I'm sure many of you have heard about those same things. I'm not actually asking for any changes this evening, but respectfully ask for an opportunity to take some time to gather some data around this issue. What I'd like to do is survey our members and some other businesses within the region to determine if this is actually a significant marketing issue or if we're just hearing from a few folks about it. And as a result of that, ensure the validity of their complaints and that or whether this is truly a valuable marketing tool to them or again, as if we're just hearing from folks. I'd like to put to a group, a small working group to then go through and review and understand what's actually on the books and how we can, what, what might or might not be able to be done. And then that the data demonstrates that we'd prepare some suggestions for council's consideration. We use the feather flags very, very regularly at our special events. And thank you, David, for separating out special events from the different kinds of marketing opportunities. But what I also want to share with you is things that we won't do. We're very proud partners and the look and feel of our community is important to the business community as well as it is to residents. Few of us want to patronize a business that presents himself otherwise. And we also don't want to do anything that would ever compromise safety or health in any way, shape or form. Those feather flags can be an extraordinary valuable tool. They are not cheap. They run about $425 a piece. And very rarely can you use just one. So if you're willing to do so, I'd like to work with code and neighborhood services. And if we do agree to that, there's some changes might be made. We are willing to commit to helping get that message and spreading that message about feather flags. And I don't know if there's other things in that same code section, really, I'm just talking about feather flags. We would be able to work with communications and others to help get that message out. We have many vehicles and tools embark new member events all different kinds of resource fair things like that we can help get that message out but they are valuable tools they're simple tools and i'd like to have the opportunity to explore if it's really a true issue or and it could be done around it so that would be my ask can i answer any questions okay thank you very much

Yeah, I think this is an issue that is really core to the existence of Rancho Cordova. It's probably why we became a city, is to clean things up and sort of save the community from what might happen otherwise. If people weren't paying attention to the details and sweating the small things that make life unpleasant for some or make us feel dangerous or unattractive to others. So... I think up front, when we took this on, we recognized that we can't fix the macroeconomics. We can't fix broken families. There are certain things cities can do, but there are things we can do. We can do things like make sure that our streets look good, that our corridors appear clean on the civic infrastructure side. We can make sure and help our schools look good. We can help education. And we can certainly make a big difference in visual blight. which is the main factor that probably affects how people perceive a community. So visual blight, that's all those things we didn't really necessarily talk about. We just talked in general about them. You could probably come up with a ranking of worst visual blight to least visual blight, and each of us would order things on that list differently. Generally, if it involves humans, it's worse. So homelessness or prostitution or public drug use, those are probably like big, big, big things at the top of most people's list. Bottom of the list might be a more debatable item like litter. How dangerous does litter make you feel? The psychology out there is pretty clear. If you see these things that are disorder, most of us recognize as disorder, we automatically sort of tip. our minds at some level and say, that's a slightly dangerous place because I just saw something that is a disorder for me. And it varies a little bit person to person. So we've come a long way. I can't believe it's been almost 20 years of this effort growing some neighborhoods. I think it got launched the first year I was mayor, which was 2007, which means we have a big anniversary coming up next year, 20 years of this effort. And I think hopefully at the time we said, this is a generational effort, not a one-year program. We're approaching a generation having worked on this. That said, I think there still and always are options for enhancement of what we do, keeping that big context in mind and keeping a lot, a lot, a lot of success that we've had along the way. I won't go into that because it's just too lengthy. But I'm curious about options for enhancement of what we do. So we had a discussion in our committee Gronk Center Heads Committee about a proactive sort of sweep or standard setting along Folsom Boulevard that would be pretty and commercial quarters, but more frankly, that would be more comprehensive than just we're going to go out and enforce signs or we're going to go out and enforce landscaping. It would be, you've got a permit. It was approved with this sort of landscaping. We're holding you to that. You never don't have a permit or pre-existed the city being here. But here's our standard for landscaping. We're going to financially help you get to that point property owner or a higher enforcement of the sign code. Because currently you can have multiple types of signs on, for example, one building. Technically, our sign code says those are supposed to be coherent with each other, like in style with each other. but we have some signs broken, some signs poorly maintained. Those are visual blight signals, right? That something's not right in this community. And then there's, you know, all the other stuff, boarded up windows, graffiti, homeless camping, all those other things. But I'm curious about how we anticipate rolling out a campaign or do you bring it back to us before you do it that would focus on commercial corridors as an example? Micah, I don't know who wants to answer that, but I think it's, we haven't discussed, you know, growing strong neighborhoods at city council in any depth for a while. I think something framed around a couple of campaigns like that might be a way to talk about it.

You know, there's a couple of things. One is just, you know, the ongoing work that continues will go. And I think as you talk about the generational impact of growing strong neighborhoods, it is one of our strategic framework guiding principles now from a, from a, city standpoint. So I think that kind of solidifies it as something that we're going to continue to do and work on and get better. So I think when you think about, you know, kind of the different initiatives, what they might be, we have to think about, is there areas that we can move away from focusing on to focus on those things and whether that might be, or is this something that needs additional resources to add to the equation? So I think we can, as we kind of think about, you know, kind of budget seasons and the different things that come in, we can start really thinking about that now for the future, but also talk about what can we do in the meantime to be ready for those future conversations. So I think that's something that with... kind of the direction, you know, of the council, just, you know, thinking about how we're prioritizing our own resources and what we're focusing on. There might be tools that we brought to the equation, whether it's city detect or other things that create some efficiencies for us to focus on some of these different items. And so I think if there's, you know, kind of a consensus around, you know, kind of focus on strategic We'll call them commercial corridor, you know, focus areas or what does that look like? We can, you know, develop some sort of program and what that would look like from an implementation standpoint is the way that I would frame it.

And I don't know, I hear from the team kind of what some different options are.

I think there's always a question of prioritization. I think we bounce that word around a lot, you know. So it's just getting it lined out and getting the budget to support the priorities and implementing. If the commercial campaign is a priority, then... we got to figure it out, you know, are we going to take something away? Like Mike has said, take something away. Are we going to add a special program? Prioritization is always key. That's how we decipher how we do our work. That's how we decipher how we deploy our services. So definitely open to it, but we, we got to have a conversation around it.

You said finding efficiencies and do innovation, automation, et cetera. So I really appreciate that. I assume that's, we're always doing that. That should be in our DNA. Yeah. That should be just a normal reflex. And then measuring how effective officers are, how many cases are we doing, what's bogging us down, what's the bottleneck, all that kind of analysis. I assume that's always done. But I think we can talk about and have to talk about resources at some point with this. Another level of campaign I would suggest, this is one I had a dream of for about 25 years now, I think, is a mow your lawn campaign. I think, I don't know, we could survey this. We could try to scientifically figure this out. What is the single most important impact we could have on our neighborhood in terms of its appearance? People driving down the street for the first time. If you see a bunch of unmowed lawns, is that worse than a lot of other stuff you might see? Is that the easiest to touch? I think close to that would be something like plants get more aggressive about planting trees. Not necessarily code enforcement's responsibility, but we can certainly identify where all the stumps are. and deal with getting rid of more stumps and getting more replacement trees. I think that those might be lower hanging fruit in terms of a campaign. And last comment I'll make about this whole topic is probably not often noticed or recognized is this idea, and I don't even know if we've voiced it here before, of like these protective things that we do for our neighborhoods as a city that directly impact on code enforcement. So I've been doing some reading in this area, and I found some chapters and some books that I think I've overlooked in the past, because I was more like on the law enforcement side, this, this, this. But we have really been influenced by this. And they're generally referred to as like protective factors in neighborhoods. And these are things we've worked on. You try to build strong families. You try to create effective schools. You try to create mentoring relationships. These are like in an order of effectiveness. You use youth sports and youth arts to create those mentoring relationships, support families, and help kids where they are. You tap into faith communities and civic organizations. You look for employment options for your community, and you're sure that you have walkable and safe spaces. Those are all things that build a sense of safety and tend to decrease the sense of disorder in a community. So I thought tying those objectively to this might be something we could think about in terms of framing. That not only are we on the enforcement side, but we're also on the not obvious carrot side of this equation of trying to make Rancho Cordova the most attractive place to live in Northern California.

So David has some really good ideas. I like the beautification ideas. The other thing that the city is doing that I have noticed, and I think it's kind of in the gardens area, there are solar-powered streetlights being installed at intersections. And I have to say that for those of us who live in a neighborhood where streetlights are common, and they were not common in the majority of Rancho Cordova. Sacramento County did not... require streetlights until 1970 or something. But it's very nice to see all of those news streetlights at intersections. And it's a great place to put them. If we go back to the question about signage, it won't surprise any of you to know that I would be quite tolerant of feathered signs. I am not tolerant of electronic billboards. And I don't appreciate electronic billboards. I really think the two things that we are doing probably that make the most difference in terms of safety and security and the health of neighborhoods are the streetlights and the introduction of sidewalks over here. Those are the kinds of things, I mean, You're right. There are neighborhoods, you know, where they have class three streets out in the rural South County, out in the vineyard, whatnot, and they don't want sidewalks. Okay, that's fine. But a lot of us don't live out there. And so the more sidewalks that we can introduce in our neighborhoods, the better that is. There's no question, it promotes safety and security and places for little kids to roller skate. In terms of code enforcement, as I said, we just need that item four, where if we have perennial violators, who are simply thumbing their noses at everybody. There needs to be a way in which those people get shut down.

I think if I can, Mayor, before going on to any other council comments, just to address a couple of things. I really like the connection of, and I will call it kind of our CIF programs and things to the Growing Strong Neighborhoods effort as not just the individual neighborhoods, but the programming and the schools and things that go along with that. And so, Somehow thinking about how to capture that image there would be great. I think some of the programs, I think, Vice Mayor Budge, that you talked about are actually opportunities within the TCC grant. Some of the different things like streetlights and things that are, you know, different things that could be a part of that program. I don't know if you'll recall, but those street light solar lights were part of the ARPA dollars that we allocated to the street light program, which was actually through a community process and conversation with the community about what they were interested in. I will say not everybody likes a street light next to their house, but some people do. And so we work through that. And so I think those are all things that we're very much paying attention to. And I think what I'm kind of hearing from the group is a, kind of a direction or kind of to bring back kind of different conversations or different amendments of the code that might lean in a little bit more on the penalty for bad behavior standpoint. And, you know, still doing education and doing some of these things, but when there is bad behavior, whether it's a TUP or some regular code violation is making sure escalating that we have the tools to be impactful with those enforcement needs when they come.

Micah, can I interrupt with one important thing? We used to do facade rebates.

We still do, yeah.

Do we? Okay, that's good. Those were, I know you all, David will remember, the county told us we couldn't apply for any more facade rebates at the chamber because we'd used all their money.

That was Linda's program, by the way, that she started back then.

It was, it was a great program.

She broke the bank with our success in that.

I think just recently approved one of these. It's not on a corridor, but Murphy's Magic just got a facade improvement grant recently that they utilized the program. So we are still implementing and actively marketing that to folks. I saw them improving.

It's nice to know that's why. But we see things on Folsom Boulevard where it's an approved plan. We did it. They had grass. They had trees. They had shrubs. So they turn the irrigation off during the drought. Everything's dead. It's a dust bowl. Plants are out there. Oh, they poured some rock on it to make it look better. And it's like they're so far off from where they started. You know, the community is damaged by it. It's now a blight.

But that was why we had to keep changing the county code. Because first of all, we had to say, oh, well, you need to have landscaping. And then we had to say, guess what? It had to be live. And guess what? You had to irrigate it. et cetera, et cetera. And it was just an evolution to get people to clean up the fronts of their storefronts. I mean, Folsom Boulevard was never a handsome place. And we did not have the kinds of really nice buildings with bones that you see on Del Paso Boulevard or City of Elk Grove, Old Town Elk Grove, something like that. We just had basic concrete structures. And so we really had to work hard to clean those up.

Well, it was designed as Highway 50, right? Highway 50 supported uses tiny little parcels.

And a gas station on every corner and a motel on every other corner.

Which is why I think if we came back with a grant program and on one hand we're enforcing the rules, on the other hand saying we'll help. That might be the magic to trying to turn that street around. And others. Others could benefit from this too. You can call beautification if you want. But basically, it's just trying to uplift those old commercial corridor communities. Grab stuff again.

I do think I heard also direction to come back with some sort of implementation plan or something around commercial corridors from a enforcement and education and incentive approach to what would a program like that look like for commercial corridors?

I actually have a framework for that. But it was all based on signage. Not just Folsom Boulevard, but Bradshaw and Sunrise. You needed use permits for freestanding signage.

Yeah, we'll look into this.

All right. Do you guys got what you need?

I think so. I think we're good. Thank you for the conversation. We appreciate your time.

All right. Meeting adjourned.

Thank you.