City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. All right.

Volume on. All right. If anyone uh wishes to address the city council on any item considered at this meeting before or during the council's consideration of that item, please go ahead and enter your name in the electronic kiosk located in the lobby. The city council will allocate up to a maximum of 3 minutes per speaker for each agenda item. Staff reports are available online at the city's website, also in the public view binder located on the podium at the north side of the chambers. All right, we're going to call this meeting to order and we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance.

Jack, do you want to start? Sure. Aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. If you remain standing, our invocation by Patrick Leuitt

with this week's remembrance of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. allow me to recite one of his prayers for our invocation tonight. You, eternal God, out of whose absolute power and infinite intelligence the whole universe has come into being. We humbly confess that we have not loved you with our hearts and souls and minds. And we have not loved our neighbors as Christ has loved us. We have all too often lived by our selfish impulses rather than um a life of sacrificial love as revealed by Christ. We often give in order to receive. We love our neighbors and friends and hate our enemies. We go the first mile but dare not travel the second. We forgive but dare not forget. And so as we look within ourselves, we are confronted with the appalling fact that the life of our lives is the history of an eternal revolt against you. But you, oh God, have mercy upon us. Forgive us for what we have uh been unable to accomplish. We've failed to see. Give us the intelligence of knowing your will. Give us the courage to do your will. Give us the devotion to love your will. In the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Amen. That was good.

Okay. Moving on to public comment. Uh, pursuant to the Brown Act, city council cannot take action on We need to do roll call first. Yes. And you need to close the close session. Oh, that's right. Do we have anything to report from close session? Uh, no. The city council met uh in close session to consider items 3A, 3B, and 3C. There was no reportable action on any item. All right. Thank you. Let's start with roll call. Council member Adet here. Dr. Denuga present Muns here. Resner present. And mayor Lat

here. Okay. Now for public comment. So pursuant to the Brown Act, city council cannot take action on public comment items. The city council will allocate up to a maximum of three minutes per speaker for 30 minutes of total at the beginning of the meeting for public comment for non-aggendaized matters within the city's jurisdiction. The mayor will determine the order of the speakers. If 30 minutes is not adequate to accommodate all the individuals who have submitted their names through the electronic kiosk, the council will trail this item to the end of the open session agenda. The remaining speakers will address the city council at that time. Uh, Council Member Resnner, I think I see you on there. Is that right?

I was just wondering whether or not we could get a show of hands of how many people are sitting in the audience that are wanting to give public comment regarding the library. Anybody? The library. I'm sorry. The library. I'm wondering whether or not there is anybody in the audience regarding the library. Are we looking for volunteers or are you just wondering if somebody didn't sign up? No.

Um, I just know that there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the library and whether or not this board was considering closing the library and I didn't want to waste any member of the public's time um if there were a large group who were waiting to discuss the library. Um, that that is not currently something that this board is considering doing. I know I'm speaking for all of us. Um, but that's not something that has come to staff's attention or been asked to come to this board's attention or for us to address or even consider that topic. So, I don't want you to stay here all night if you were um wanting to give public comment on that uh topic or to hear about that topic. I just didn't want to waste anybody's time because I know there's been a lot of halaloo online. That's all.

And actually, I agree with Mr. Resner. This was a complete rumor which is has no legs. But if anybody would like to speak about the library and show your love for it, we by all means we would of course enjoy to hear your comments as the library is very very important and I think we all find value to that. So um we do have three speakers here. Um we'll have you line up on the wall over there just to save time so that way after one speaker is done the next one would be ready to go. Um I see Robert Sid will have you come up first. Paula McGomery, you'll be second. And then I see Connor or I'm probably butchering that name. I'm sorry, but uh it looks like Urban. So, and you'll go third. Good evening. Wanted to talk for on the nepotism policy, but I I that comes a little bit later. So, I just wanted to thank Mayor Latau for looking into the camp at Bachelli in Altamees Mesa. This was featured on the Reading Crime Site. And I appreciate the quick turnaround time on that, Mike. Uh, I also want to see if there's an easier way to be informed of controversial topics without having to wade through 978 pages of contracts and legal ease on the agenda. It was, you know, I it was a test of intestinal fortitude to on a smartphone to we we read through all that stuff and the contracts and the amendments and, you know, my eyes rolled back in my head. So I don't know if it's possible to have a separate email with you know like just basic stuff um apart from the not just the agenda where it says it but like backup for that but not you know not not contract stuff. Um the other thing was uh I saw Dr. Duke on the jumbotron this morning at the board of supervisor pitching the medical school uh being championed and pushed by a rogue supervisor. I'm not sure it's a

perfect use of your time when what we need are doctors now and making reading attractive to medical professionals and their families. Supervisor Long is the only one calling out the elephant in the room. The supervisor for district 1 obviously has no issue spending our taxpayer money on his pet projects. We can ill afford to fuel his non-existent legacy and agenda which Dale Wente will end in June. I feel it is a clear conflict of interest to have a vice mayor working on a medical school pipe dream while reading languishes and suffers with poor or lack of medical care. My suggestion respectfully is to focus on the job we elected you for. Lastly, any updates on changing the policy to make a way for council and manage and city manager to consult with the mayor and vice mayor in order to avoid another fiasco as occurred a few weeks ago. Thank you. May uh thank you. Just a quick comment, Robert. You on the website, the agenda is actually first outlined and you can click on each item so they can directly go to the background of that rather than going through the 960 pages. Just wanted to let you know

and I'll be happy to show you to you.

Thank you. And also we will be bringing up the item of uh what you are mentioning about the city council being consulted for the appointments. Okay. All right. All right. Paula, right? Good evening. I'm going to share tonight a story about a young man of 18 who grew up on a farm in Yurupa Valley. After graduation from high school, he visit his aunt in Alaska. While visiting, a knock on the door produced two uniform soldiers who quickly escorted him to the induction center in Anchorage. He found himself rushed through basic training approximately three weeks and then Fort Campbell for air attack training. Next stop was Panama for jungle training. Within a few weeks, this young man was assigned to special forces long range reconnaissance patrol in the 101st Airborne Division Screaming Eagles. This young man became a green beret. In Vietnam, he received two purple hearts within the first three months of his arrival. By the age of 20, this young man was promoted to sergeant, received a bronze star with valor, and an army accommodation medal for heroism. When he was recovering from his medevac

helicopter that was had been shot down, he returned to his hospital bed to find a silver star lying there. No explanation, no fanfare. When he inquired, his hospital roommates advised that a colonel had come in and placed a silver star on his bed. After many years of illness, because of his exposure to Agent Orange, he passed at the age of 75. His widow is now in danger of being priced out of their home. This is one story of a Vietnam veteran that lived in a reading mobile home park. Many of our veterans, men and women, are mobile home park owners or mobile home owners, excuse me. Imagine them being priced out because of corporate greed. Please do not let this happen. Imagine what it would be like if our heroes were priced out. Thank you.

Thank you,

Nick. I Nick, I see you signed up. You'll be after uh her, so you'll be next to go. And you're next, ma'am. Good evening, Mayor Latau and city council members. We are here again um requesting a pretty dire need for us uh seniors living in manufactured homes to acquire an RSO, a rent stabilization order for the city of Reading. Um, as expected, we did get a raise in sewer for the uh Redwoods Mobile Home Park. We have here representatives from Fair Oaks Mobile Home Park as well as Twin View. Um, this is happening uh at a rapid pace. And just to give you an example of some numbers, um, last year the base rent as well as trash, sewer, and property tax, the property tax was a pass through from the corporation that now owns Redwood Mobile Home Park. Um, and that was 712.85. This year it's 76263, not including utilities. Um, at this point it is an 8.5 increase not including utilities. Now for a single person on social security almost 42% of their income is just for base rent. My husband and I do live in the Redwoods mobile home park. Many of our residents have cut back on heating and cooling to have enough money for their space rent. Seniors should not have to reduce their quality of life to pay and accommodate corporate greed.

Uh we can expect to be notified soon that we will pay 100% of the trash bill. If we had an RSO, in addition to controlling the amount of allowable rent increases and any additional charges to our base rent could be oh boy, I always mess this up. Advertised over a longer period of time. This way, the percentage of our income dedicated to the total cost would not increase so dramatically. We who live in a mobile home park are a captive audience because we can't just pack up and move. Obviously, we here in Reading are trying to prevent from being priced out of our homes. In closing, we are again requesting that the city council consider an RSO um as an agenda item at one of your monthly meetings in the near future. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Nick. you're up. Uh just a request Paula and you would you please give me your information side. I would like to meet you guys later sometime. And after Nick, I see a name here. This might be an accident, but it says rename. So if anybody partly Lesie. Hey. Yeah.

I am dis I am in disagreement with Robert as far as a medical school goes. Keep going, Dr. Nanuka. They don't seem to realize all the satellite businesses and the economic boom uh assets that would come to to Shasta County and Reading. And uh it's just a win-win as far as I'm concerned. Certainly, it's not a a fix that's going to happen right away. So, maybe you could start an ad hoc committee and put Robert in charge of it. He seems to know what would attract doctors to our area. Maybe another chicken wing stop or a Mexican restaurant. I don't know. Uh, as far as Kevin Cry's legacy goes, he mentioned this morning that the, uh, Shasta County is in just outstanding financial conditions. Maybe you guys could get some tips from him. Thank you.

All right. Thanks for the arrangement, Nick. Thanks for the encouragement. Okay. or Lesie, are you under rename or did you I'm guessing because I went right after Nick. All right. On the thing. Okay. So, I thought I put Lesie. All right. So, I'd like to talk about leadership,

failed leadership. Um, if you're going to use your personal Facebook to address the Reading community, a message from Mayor Mike Latell, and then people are going to share it. But then you don't like when people question where you're headed with that. Maybe it's best not to put out a statement like that. Maybe, and I actually can't see Dr. Danuka's face clear without these, so I'm going to put this on. Um maybe my ask Tanessa, when you get an opportunity, if you'd like to make a motion to put Dr. Danuka back in the space of mayor. I think we need somebody who's ready for a leadership role because the way you're handling this, the way you're handling tonight's agenda, the way you're trying to skate around things being on here, we don't want to see the budget get kicked down the road again. We don't want to see these issues that need solving not be addressed. And we don't want a leader who's going to block people out of a message that is to our community. And then not only that, not only make the post private so only certain people have access to it, but you're blocking people on Facebook. Three of them I have screenshots. So when you are physically blocking people, you are not somebody who is ready to be transparent with the people. You are not looking to be a good leader. So, if somebody wants to make a motion, I think I as a citizen, and I'm sure a lot of the other citizens would like to see somebody step up that's ready to be a leader. Dr. Danuka, please step up and be the mayor like you should have been. I'd appreciate it. I've got more to say, but those items are on the agenda, so have a good night.

All right, moving on to the consent calendar. The consent calendar contains items considered routine and/or which have been individually scrutinized by the city council members and are anticipated to require no further deliberation. If a member of the public wishes to address an item on the consent calendar, please enter your name in the electronic kiosk located in the lobby before the consent calendar is considered. It shall be the prerogative of any council member before the consent calendar is acted upon to one comment on an item. Two, respond to any public comment on an item. Three, request the record reflect an absentation or name vote on an item. Or number four, remove an item and place it on the regular portion of the agenda for the delivery of a staff report andor an extended discussion or deliberation. I think we have two speakers, but before we get to those speakers, didn't know if there's any items on there. So,

you want to let them speak and then we'll talk. We can do that. Okay. I didn't know if they might want to speak on an item if it gets pulled or anything like that. So, but let's let them speak. I see uh Ann Wallich Thomas says Shasta Living I believe. And then after that, Gary Rickard.

Hi. It's been so long since I've been here to say hello to you all. Um, I just want I'm just here to speak a little bit about the Purus Topi project. Um, Michelle is here in the audience. Um, didn't want to speak, but um there I just I have a package here that I guess they'll send you an email tomorrow because my mistake I didn't make enough copies. Um but uh what it shows is um sort of how we ended up with that name. Um this is a project that's been in the works for probably about 10 years. The diesel horse to downtown being the most important trail connection in city of reading since it lets people get safely to the river trail to the north. Anyway, you know that part. Um so Purus Topi uh is a way of saying heart and reflection point. Um it is something. So when we took this to tribal uh council, the Wu tribal council, thank you Michelle of Northern California and asked for their input which you will see all the pictures. There's all these little stickies. So everybody like the idea of the name Purustopi uh will help people understand what it is. I think it's important to note that this is a native name for an actual native place. It's celebrating our uh native culture. Um we've put native names, which is awesome, to other places that are not necessarily uh a celebration of native culture. Um but that's what this project is.

Uh am I allowed to give you space for questions if you have any? Um we've got time. I don't know if there's any questions from here. I just wanted to say thanks for that um thanks for that work. I actually rode this trail yesterday um with my 11-year-old. And once we got into downtown and had ice cream, I just thought, man, we live in such a beautiful place. And I'm so stoked that you can jump on the river trail and ride your bikes all the way into I cheated. I rode an electric bike yesterday. So that counts. That counts. I cheated. I cheated. I didn't fully I didn't fully pedal the whole the whole way, but um it was just so it's just so fun. It was a be it's beautiful this awesome

and so I just want to say thanks for this work. All right, any questions? You you guys know how to find me I think through Travis. Thank you. See Gary, are you out there? There you are, Gary. I didn't start yet. Oh, good evening.

And thank you for allowing me to speak here tonight. My name is Gary Rickard. I am the chairman of the Win 2 tribe in Northern California, a 550 member tribe that is all indigenous to Northern California and primarily Shasta County. We appreciate everything that the city of Reading does for the tribe and has done. Uh, I know we worked on getting the win two signs posted. Uh, government uh, moves slowly, but they're up and now we will have um the the area named under a winu word and our words come from the pinutian language. How many people in here speak? Oh, yeah. Not a lot, huh? I didn't I didn't I couldn't find it at the DMV. Anyway, let me get one other thing out and and and don't think that the wind two people don't appreciate what you've done. You know, we do. We appreciate it very much. And we appreciate the time you spend serving the city of Reading. I know what kind of job it is. I've been a a tribal chairman for a long time and sometimes you don't get a lot of good old boys. The tribe owns a property on Oasis Road and off Indian Country Way. It's I believe 7 acres and currently it has an uninhabitable house on it, a garage. We have the opportunity through a native

only grant of up to $2 million to refurbish that. And it is in the city of Readings area. And right up next to us are all those big new homes that I must, you know, probably $800,000 homes. And there we sat in the middle with this dilapitated uh house. We partner with the city of Shasta Lake on many projects. In order for us to receive that $2 million grant, we would have to partner with the city of Reading. City of Reading would be the administrator. And of course, you would get 10% and if it was 2 million, get 200,000 which is going to pay for the people that you need to pay for what work they do with us. And so what I would like tonight is to get a name of someone to go in and talk to and try to work out a deal.

All right. Yeah, I think we should uh connect you with the city manager's office and uh either Jason or Carrie and then they can connect with you and see how they we can work with you. Talk to the city manager. Yes, please. City manager's office. either Carrie or Jason. And Jason is is he Jason is right there. Maybe you can talk with him. Talk to you. Yeah, he'll talk to you now. I'll talk to you right now. He's going to grab your information and we'll find a way to connect you guys to the city man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Uh, that's for a later item. Is that right?

So, another one. Okay. I Rebecca I think I see you here. Rebecca Olstead. Good evening. My name is Rebecca Olstead. I'm a resident of Reading and I'm also an employee of the Winnamom Wu tribe. I'm the project manager for salmon restoration. Chief Colleen Cis couldn't be here tonight, but she wanted to communicate the message to city of Reading that uh she supports resolution 411C. That's the resolution to authorize um a grant application to state of California Department of Water Resources. The ultimate uh goal with that grant is to get funding to uh modernize Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery. Right now they are in need of water filtration updates and chillers. And this benefits the salmon because since 2022, the Winnamon Winter Tribe has worked with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Noah to restore salmon to the Mloud River, which is a huge deal for Reading and for all of us in this ecosystem. And as those salmon get bigger, some of them have gone to the ocean and they're coming back. And right now they're actually stopped from being transported above Shasta Dam to spawn in their natural habitat because Livingston National Fish Hatchery does not have adequate water filtration system. So this is a huge issue of importance for the tribe and the tribe would definitely appreciate city of reading support in working with um Department of Water Resources to make those updates to the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery. So thank you.

All right. Thank you. Uh another speaker, Robert Robert Sid, you are right now the leader number two, keep earning those points. Robert unaware. So, it's okay to go to the nepotism thing that we talked about right now. Okay. Um, I want to thank Erin for hearing my concern about nepotism and cronyism since we already had a nepotism policy since 1987. I'm not sure how it was allowed for a council member to appoint her spouse to a committee position. Unless nobody was paying attention or the city manager and council were asleep, not you guys. It's before you. Moving forward, it looks like we citizens will be the ones to sound the bell when this happens again, which it will. I wish cronyism were touched on in an agenda to discourage the possibility of shady deals. Shady deals rewarding friends and associates and even perhaps between city and county officials. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Robert. Robert, what are you who you talking who was who's the is any council member's spouse on a committee right now? Not now. This was before these two were here. I'm sorry. This is before the the two the two here. This was a couple years ago. It was it was staff or a council member. Council member. Oh, okay. Who was it? Okay. Tanessa. It was Tanessa. I didn't. Yeah. You appointed your husband to the tree committee. I didn't. Well, no. I She Aaron appointed him and I was not a council member. Okay. And that and that tree committee was done by the time I came on.

Ah. me. He hated the whole thing. I see. He He I was He was done by the time I came on to the council. So, I'm glad he It's It's It's very much It's very much not true cuz my 16-year-old daughter got her first job where she volunteers at MLK and they told her she couldn't actually have the job there because she's my daughter. So, she volunteers there every Wednesday and has for the last two years for free. Because she's my daughter, she can't actually have that as a job. So, we do have a nepotism policy and obviously it's a part-time, you know, position, but still they've been very clear what you can and cannot do. So, I would I would never appoint a spouse or anybody.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Chelsea. All right. Thank you. I don't think we have any more speakers, right? Okay. So, we are going to um see if there's a motion on the consent calendar or if any action we want to take. I see. Um, council member Muns, you're up. So, well, um, I make a motion we pass them all, but I want to pull 4.15A. Was your microphone on so everybody can hear? Yes, of course it's on. Uh, I'm pulling 4.158. 4.15. Okay. So, that will become 9. You make a motion to fast the rest of them.

Okay. So, that will become 95. I'll second the motion to uh pass consent. Okay. All right. We have a first and a second. All in favor? I I I. All oppose? No. That passes. We're on a roll. 5. Okay. We're going to move on to That's going to stop soon.

A public hearings. Uh we have a presentation with public works. It's a public hearing to reconsider the resolution approving the city of Readings capital improvement plan for the fiscal years 202425 all the way to 2029 and 30. Michael, I think this is you. Is that right? Are you presenting? It is. Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council. Um this evening I'll be providing a brief presentation. Um and we'll be conducting a public hearing and upon conclusion adopt a resolution approving the city of Reading's capital improvement plan for fiscal years 2425 to 2930. Um now before I start to be clear this capital improvement plan did end June 30th of the prior year 25. Um we did go to planning commission um last year to get their approval. um to make sure that it was in alignment with the general plan, but due to our workload and everything going on, we were unable to bring it before this body until this evening. Um so, just thought I would mention that to avoid any uh confusion later during the presentation.

Thank you.

There it goes. Um so this evening I'll touch on uh the capital improvement plan or CIP for short background. I'll touch on CIP funding, touch on upcoming and pending projects, um, and then close with recommendation and conclusion. And of course, um, I'll be available for any questions that this body may have. So, quick overview again on a capital imp improvement plan or CIP for short. Um, this is a projection of the city's infrastructure and related needs and then the funding obligations that come along with that. Um, and think of this as a all-encompassing citywide list of capital improvements that are needed. Um, this covers our roadways, our bridges. Uh, it covers capital improvements within our parks. Um, it covers capital improvements within the city-owned buildings and assets, uh, fire, police related. Um, it covers assets owned by the the utilities, water, wastewater, storm drain, solid waste, and electric. This really is a list of all the capital improvements that the city um is contemplating uh for one reason or another, predominantly uh condition assessments. Um it is also a planning tool that is used by my team and I to plan and schedule and coordinate work to make sure that we have the appropriate amount of staff in order to deliver the plan as well as to take a long-term look at funding needs for those capital improvements. Um, it also identifies public facilities u to be constructed using development impact fees. Uh, you may be asking why am I bringing this to you this evening? Um, it is required by law by government code section 65403. Capital improvement plans need to be adopted by resolution of the governing body. That is the five of you. Um like I

mentioned previously, we did take this to planning commission um prior to bringing it before this body and the predominant uh role or function of planning commission in this scenario is that they confirm that the projects listed within the capital improvement plan or CIP are in line with the general plan. So you'll see later on in the presentation I'll highlight certain projects and how they touch on the elements that are sprinkled throughout the city's current general plan. Then I would just add one, it is a good business sense to have this plan and look ahead at the projects that are currently being developed and the projects that are in the pipeline. Um, it it helps us identify our staffing needs, again, long-term funding needs from a a capital infrastructure plan. Um, and just really wrap our arms around what's out there, what works coming, and prioritize it and make sure that we have the right resources at the right time to deliver these critical projects for the community. Here's a list of the projects that were completed uh between the 2023 24 capital improvement plan and this capital improvement plan which is the 202425 project uh excuse me capital improvement plan. You can see there are a number of projects that were successfully completed through there. I'm not going to run through all of them, but there there's a pretty extensive list of a number of projects that got to project completion and very proud of the the teams that were involved in that. You might be asking, how do we prioritize and select what projects move forward when? Um, obviously public safety is is priority one. Safety always uh wins that race. Uh so public safety and emergency repairs always rise to the top. Council may recall that um last year, not December, but in February, we did have a rather large rain event that caused us a pretty significant damage to

the existing large covert um underneath South Bonny View Road. Um that took a pretty large um amount of staff time and resources to make sure that that was replaced appropriately. And we had a number of other emergency repair type projects. So as I mentioned those in combination with public safety projects always move to the top. Uh second would be our regulatory mandates. Those are very important as well. One of the primary goals of of the engineering department as well as our other departments is to make sure that we are in compliance with all the state and federal uh mandates. Um third is our asset condition. Right? We're constantly monitoring the condition of each of the individual assets that the city owns, operates, and maintains. that goes from our pavement to our bridges to our coverts to our sidewalks, traffic signals, the utility assets, water, solid waste, storm drain, wastewater, and electric. Um, and constantly making sure that we're using the resources in the best available purpose. And then there's the strategic growth perspective where we're looking at um the growth within the general plan and making sure that when we're um developing projects, we're not doing something from a short-sighted perspective that may hinder us later. that we're try trying to plan for the future and support development and make that happen as most sustainably as possible. Uh this CIP um within the five years that it covers has approximately $720 million worth of projects. Um that's com uh compromised or comprised, excuse me, of 45 different funding sources. And you'll you'll kind of see here the makeup of that in this pie chart. And I'm going to touch on a couple of them just because I think they're they're good data points. There's roughly $360 million worth of projects that are funded by our utility rates. Uh there's about $14 million funded by impact fees. Another $34 million by the local streets and roads. Uh we have about a quarter

billion funded by grants. You'll see that just under 252 million up there. A little about 52 million general fund. We've got some airport um and a few other odds and ends things. But you'll notice that the largest contributors to the capital improvement program really are the utility rates and then the grants that we go after uh predominantly throughout all of the departments here at the city. Again, totaling about $720 million worth of work over a five-year uh span. You might also be asking yourself, okay, well, there's almost threequarters of a billion dollars worth of work. How is that divvied up? Well, the work within this five-year period is divvied up predominantly through nine city divisions. Uh you'll see again uh that with most of the funding coming from our utilities, you'll see a number of utility projects. 33 water, another 20 within the wastewater, 33 streets, four storm drain, 11 solid waste, seven of fire department, 14 RU projects, 18 in the community services, and 25 airports. So, a number of projects um just by count, but you can also see over to the pie chart on the left the the financial breakup approximately of those projects. Now, I do want to remind council that a number of these projects are nearing their final design and a number of the projects are also in what I would call initial planning and um conception. And when projects are in their initial planning and conception stage, I would say that their cost estimates are really more of an order of magnitude cost estimate until the team really gets down into the project and starts identifying the exact scope and the constraints. Um, conversely, when we have projects that are very near the finish line and approaching going out to advertise, um, we know a lot more information about those projects. So those numbers that you see there are comprised of projects

where we feel confident with our cost estimates and then there are also projects in there that are farther out within the fiveyear schedule that really have planning level estimates that would be more more of an order of magnitude estimate. Here there's a a table that breaks down um essentially our projects that have a fully funded financial plan and projects that do not have a fully funded financial plan. And I thought this was a very important slide to show council as we've had conversations in the past about unmet needs from an infrastructure standpoint. Um, you'll see here that again within the about $720 million worth of projects over the next five years, we have 127 projects worth roughly half a billion dollars that we do have a fully funded financial plan. That doesn't mean that we're going to see some of those costs move around as again as final numbers come in as we progress through the design phase and we get better estimates. But that means that we have roughly 127 projects where the team feels that our funding strategy is adequate and we are moving forward with those projects. Conversely, you'll see that we have 38 projects that at this time total roughly $200 million that do not have a fully funded financial plan. Um, and you'll see that the biggest one there, really the one individual project is in the water department, and that is the pump house one project. The reason that project is listed there is because we don't have a currently a fully funded plan. We do have revenue that the water utility has set aside for years and we have worked with this body to go after initial uh grants to to bridge that gap but we haven't gotten to the finish line there and technically we are still finalizing our financial plan. Um, but we will get there on that one. And then that will leave us 37 million or 37 projects,

excuse me, with with roughly about $140 million of of need there, if you will, to complete the projects within our CIP. I thought this was a useful slide to put this in perspective for council. So, now I'm going to jump into projects. Um again, these are representative projects that the the team has pulled out of um the capital improvement plan that touch on the individual elements within the general plan. So obviously, as we mentioned or I mentioned earlier, excuse me, safety is always of utmost improvement, right? So that would be um safe and efficient roads that's hitting goals T1 and PF11 within the general plan. We have our VCAT or excuse me, our Victor improvement and our Cypress ATP projects. We have a system systemic intersection safety project where we're looking at making operational improvements at intersections. We have the old Alurus Road bridge widening project, Shasta View North, and then we have again the Victor um improvement project. All projects that are checking multiple boxes, but do have many safety aspects within them. Then we've got the efficiency component as well. this the protected left turns and then the Churn Creek Rancho Victor roundabouts. Obviously, those bring operational improvements as well. So, this is just a snapshot of a few projects that we selected out of the CIP to demonstrate that we're hitting those uh safe and efficient um goals within the general plan. Again, that was the primary purpose of the planning commission blessing this document previously. Another big um plan or goal of the general plan is the transportation element. These would be goals T5, T6, and T8. Uh, bikes, peds, and calming. Again, we have a number of projects sprinkled throughout the CIP where we're doing that. We have projects along Oregon Street, but Street, the California Street project that's recently been completed. We have a project uh Turtle Bay to downtown, which

will be commencing construction here very soon. Then we have ongoing sidewalk maintenance and ADA improvements. Um then we also have our neighborhood traffic calming program that many neighborhoods have taken um advantage of where we can go out and install elements to encourage folks to uh follow the speed limit and not speed within our subdivisions. Um another element within the general plan is our road and bridge preservation. Obviously those are critical infrastructure um elements and we need those to operate and maintain. So we have a number of roadway projects. We have a uh airport road widening phase two project. Um we have our ongoing overlay and preservation projects that generally are in the five millionish dollar range much similar to Hartinell which was just recently completed maybe a couple months ago. Um there are some issues kind of there funding versus market realities that that we've touched on with this body before. And then bridges are another big as aspect of this plan. We have a number of bridges that are nearing their age um or nearing the completion of their lifespan. And we currently have a number of projects East Side Road over Only Creek, Old Alurus Churn Creek, Sacramento Avenue over Only Creek, and a whole slew of other bridges kind of in that southern part of town on the east side of 273 that are currently in the work plan to be replaced. And again, those are critical structures that provide connectivity between communities and and shopping and everything else. Then we have the enhanced air transportation goal T9. We have a number of projects out at the the airport predominantly RDD. We have the runway rehabilitation project. Um we do have the new terminal design and construction projects included in the CIP and taxiway reconstructions with electrical improvements as well. Um and minor improvements at Benton including security tenant and taxiway improvements. Um, very similar to a few of the the comments we received during a public

comment on the trails aspect, right? We have the new overlook um that council member Resner described writing by this last week or yesterday, excuse me. We have the Caliboo's Creek revitalization and then we have a number of park improvements um through Travis or Director Men's group in mind that we're working on as well. Then we have the utility side um specifically the electric unit. We have a number of projects out at the plant making uh miscellaneous upgrades out there to Director Zeel's power plant. We have commercial meter upgrades, communication upgrades, and just general system improvements. Then on the solid waste side for the utility house, we have a number of projects in the works really as a result of Senate Bill 1383 and the organic food waste recovery. Both receiving stations, um the materials recovery expansion, and a number of projects that should ultimately put the city in a better position to deal with that and be more self- sustained. Then I'm going to run through these pretty quick, but we have a number of wastewater and storm drain and water projects. again pump house one on the water side water man replacements um storm drain we have trash capture we had emergency repairs in wastewater we have a number of interceptors um and pipe replacement as well as the bioolids and paralysis project police and fire um with the fire uh division or fire department excuse me we have the replace of the we call them scuba but they're the self-contained breathing apparatuses so those are those are very critical to fire operations So that's included. Then there are upgrades to many of our fire station houses which um I believe city manager Tippen had outlined for this group. Uh many of those firehouses are old and in need of considerable maintenance and repair. So in conclusion, um I'm recommending that this body conducts a public hearing upon conclusion adopts the resolution approving the city of Reading's capital improvement plan for fiscal years 24 to

25 to 2930. Um, and with that, I'm available for any questions that this body may have. Okay, Michael, thank you for that. I didn't want to make you more nervous by telling you there was 24 people watching online, but you did a really good job. So, outstanding. Yes. Good. Um, we are going to open up a public hearing. U, we have one speaker, so let's get this going. Mike Mitchell, you're here representing all the mics of the world. Do well today. Okay. It's like a radio show up here.

Oh, Mayor Liddell and city council and city staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you. I've been here before, but it's been a long time. and it's been regarding uh my interest in the capital improvement programs and specifically the Churn Creek Victor Rancho roundabout. Um I've been a resident of Reading for 45 years and I've owned property in Churn Creek Bottom that's affected by this proposed project for over 23 years. This file represents my involvement working with city staff and county staff over the last 20 plus years on this project. And I'm pleased to say I'm I'm very happy with the preferred alternative of the roundabout that's been designed by the city. That isn't what we started off with. Originally, they were going to be taking some of my property. Of course, I wasn't real favorable about that, but the final roundabout design, I think, is a quality product. However, that being said, my concern is where we go from here. And I'd like to read this into the record and it's not to embarrass anybody, but to give you a little history on my involvement in um what's transpired here. And this was in response to a letter I sent the city back in November of 2010 regarding this project. It was first proposed to me in 2004. So we're 21 plus years down the road on this project. Good morning, Mike. Yes, I do recall your interest in the planning for the Churn Creek Victor Rancho roundabout project to get to the bottom line. It is the city's intent that the intersection be improved with a roundabout when traffic levels dictate a need for such substantial improvement. The city has approved four projects that are substantial enough that any one of them individually triggers a requirement for implementing a roundabout. These

projects are the Shastina Ranch subdivision Palomar Homes, Stonefare subdivision, Palomar Homes, Vital Shopping Center, Churn Creek and Bonaview, and the Lewis Pengress Shopping Center, Rancho and Shast. Now, several of those projects were not completed. However, they were approved by the city. All of these project approvals remain valid and are conditioned to require the roundabout improvement. A roundabout is a $2.5 million project and city staff has encouraged these project developers and others benefiting property owners to consider joint efforts in its construction. However, these discussions have lost impetus during the economic uncertainties. However, I wish to be very clear. It is still the city's intent that when the project these projects listed proceed, a roundabout will be constructed.

Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Mike, that's a good memory. I'd love to catch up with you if you'd ever like to. Was that 200? Did you say 2004 or 2009? What year, Mike? There was a question up here for you. What year was that email? I have a little hearing problem. You'll have to What year was that email? That was uh November 11th uh 2010. 10 and it was signed by uh Doug Lamali Damali who was the city planning manager at the time. It's amazing. Mike, thank thank you for all your involvement. So, Mr. Dukan, did you want to say something? No. Okay.

I'm sorry. you had a comment, just speak up. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mitchell, if you could, I'd like to get your information after the meeting or see if you could get that to some of my staff so we could connect with you and get you up to speed. Yeah. Thank you. And Mike, you know where to find me. I'd love to connect with you. So, all right. There are no other speakers. We are going to close the public hearing. All right. We're doing well. Uh Council member Denuka.

Yeah, I have a question for uh Mr. Webb. U on a slide when you show the funded versus unfunded projects, you your slide mentions that unfunded uh project for street will cost approximately 1.9 million. I'm I'm really encouraged to see that number. That's we are only short by 1.9 million. Are you sure about that? Because I think there's a lot of room for improvement in our streets. what that I'm sorry to say that, but you know, I just want to make sure that

No, you and I are uh um in alignment there. What that is showing is that we have one project that currently isn't fully funded. That is not saying that we need to have only one more project to get our streets into a condition that we need. Okay.

So, that to be very clear, that is that we have one project that is identified that does not currently have a fully funded financial plan. And to be clear, I've um addressed this council a number of times specifically regarding pavement and the current condition of that asset um which hovers from a network perspective around a 50 pavement condition index which is a scale from 0 to 100. And um we know that we need to start making significant improvements to that asset. and my team and I looking at the numbers, it would very likely be roughly $10 million additional per year to start getting in a a location where we would like to see our pavement trending.

So that's certainly one part of it, but I can also see a lot of uh improvement in whether it's widening the road or more signals or something. So what I would say is if we are right now if you only have 1.9 million unfunded I think you should put more projects in that bucket so that we can strive for better roads and then figure out how to get there.

Yes. So as I mentioned ear that's a great comment. Thank you. And the plan with the current CIP that we're developing now as this is a living document and an annual document is to find a way to provide that information because to your point this can be a smidge misleading and we would like to include the projects that we would prefer to have that would show us making an improvement in our pavement condition index and that will greatly impact that full uh excuse me um not fully funded information. to to your point

just to be clear I'm talking about in addition to the payment improvement index improvement because maintaining good infrastructure especially the roads is one of the fundamental jobs of duties of the city absolutely and not only that it's also important for us to do more improvement so there's more economic growth more development and less pressure on the private developers also. So I would like you to add something in addition to index improvement. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're you're welcome. My pleasure.

Um to expand his point and for those that might be tuning in at home. Um when I see 119 million there for streets, uh public perception might be thinking that we're just sitting on 119 million and we're ready to pay but we're just not doing it. So what what does that really mean? If you can explain on that. That really means that um on average currently right now the city receives in revenue to the streets department specifically for paving uh maintaining our sidewalks, our traffic signals, the intersection safety lighting and signs, all main um components that make up our streets. We receive anywhere from 12.5 to 13 million a year. and then we try to leverage that as much as possible to go after grants um to get that dollar to go a little bit further. So to me that really is an indication that the teams are doing a great job leveraging the limited funding that we currently receive from the state that the dedicated gas tax um and that we're we're really trying to do everything we can to get as much money and put it into the pavement as possible. But unfortunately given the condition of the asset to council member Dr. Duke's point um we need more if we want to start making an improvement in our condition.

Yeah.

And just to clarify to the public, I'm sorry if I may say that. This is an important perspective here because most of us don't probably realize this. State allocates and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but state allocates certain amount of gas tax based on the population of a city. However, our city is much more sparssely populated with a much wider geographical area. For the similar population in Southern California, you will have probably onetenth of the road network that we have. So, we have 10 times the network of some cities of similar size, but we get the same money from the state as a dense city in Southern California will get. And that's the problem which we face all the time, the limited funding we get. Right? Am I Yeah, Council Member Duka is correct. Um, a very good comparison because I think most folks can visually wrap their arms around it is Chico. From a population standpoint, Chico and Reading are very similar. From a network standpoint, Chico is roughly 30 square miles and has roughly half the lane miles of roads that Reading does. Reading is approximately 60 square miles and has roughly 100 center line miles of road to maintain. Um, so to council member Duke's point, we're receiving generally uh the same amount of gas tax revenue that a Chico would, but we're maintaining double

and probably 10 times uh size compared to a very small city with the same population near LA. Abs. Absolutely. Yep. Thank you, Council Member Mens. I realize funding is is uh part of our challenge. How about staffing? the staffing preventing us from moving forward on any of these projects?

Um uh thankfully I've worked with this council and through the current budget we um agreed to add three additional engineering positions which my team and I are currently um advertising and hoping that we we find some great engineers. So if any of you or community members know an engineer looking for a job, we would love to hire them. This is a great job. Um, and so we're hoping to get those positions filled so that we can deliver this vast amount of of projects. Um, as I've mentioned to a number of you just in our check-ins, every year that we delay these projects potentially due not being able to get one out the door through the engineering machine and through construction, we experience escalation and inflation and unknowns. And those really are the biggest um issues with projects of this magnitude. The best way for us to control cost is to get them through the process and out the door. When they sit and wait and they experience escalation, that that really has an impact on the overall program. So, I'm I'm confident that if we can fill those positions, we should be able to to deliver on time. Excuse me.

Uh do you want to give an update on Victor? I know we've asked you a couple times, but it's never bad just to keep updating. We are paving potentially this summer and roundabout. So,

so thank you. Yeah. So with Victor specifically, we have our VCAP project, the Victor Cypress active transportation project that we're currently working through with our consultant and city design team. We're hoping to get that out to bid later this year and start some construction later in the year, but it'll predominantly happen next year. I'm very excited about that project. It is going to perform some some real true blue pavement maintenance as well as uh some road widening um as well as include a roundabout. So, we we feel like that project will be very very beneficial to Victor once it's complete. Um, and and we've definitely been out there working on potholes. We've tried a number of new materials, even concrete. Um, and appreciate the community's uh patience while we're we're working on that.

Yep. Council member Odette, I'll make a motion to pass. I'll second. All right. Uh, no other comments. All in favor? I I. All oppose?

No. Okay. We're 50. All right, moving along on our agenda. Item 9A, the ad hoc committee consists of council members, council members Resner, council members Audet. We formed this uh ad hoc committee I believe in December. We've already had one report back and we're going to get a second report today and so we will let you guys take it away. Whoever's up first. Um so we have continued to meet with um supporters of the civic and also civic management and people on the board um to talk about some of the things that we have found out and um mostly to look for gap funding. Um, obviously this council has some budget issues that we have to begin to start working on. And so available cash is not one of those things that we offer at the moment. And so we've been um looking to see if there's going to be a possibility that community members or um other parties within the city would be willing to do some of that gap funding until we got a handle on our finances. Um, and having not been able to find that, um, we've just been speaking with shareholder shareholders in the community, people in the vicinity, um, asking for, um, conceptually different ideas and, um, have not really found a good solution, um, outside of, uh, um, of, you know, fairy godmother. So I think that um I think one of the other things that we had asked was um you know some of the people that we had approached were like well what's the the change of business plan moving forward that would make us feel like things would be different and that was money well spent and um we have not found that

there's a different model that's been embraced or um presented to us that there would be something different and so we seem to be at a bit of an impass. Um I will say um in addition to that like she said meeting with stakeholders we've also been meeting with directors who um are on that riverfront on the riverfront specific plan uh committee um because what I would say a conclusion outside of um there is no magical money at the moment um outside of that is how do we not end up in this situation again? um and riverfront specific plan. Um that's specifically the master plan relating to the northern um northern section of the riverfront. Um we has not come back to council a as of yet. So, um we are planning to have meetings relating to that with those directors with MIG and with um populace. Um as you can imagine, getting all of those people's schedules to align is a little bit difficult, but those are supposed to be happening um in the next couple of weeks. Director Pagan told me today. Um so I am hopeful that we can start at least having conversations about what does it look like 2550 years from now. Um however I think that we both have landed on the space of it doesn't feel like that they're uh at least at this point in time has been anybody communitywise who is willing to help in that gap funding space. um at least not that's come to us or that we've or that we've met with. And my personal opinion is that until we know what we're doing revenue and expenditures wise, it would be really difficult to say how much it is that this council or to make a recommendation

to float. I will also just say that on an ongoing matter, the oper the operational cost um now obviously we'll just I'll give a range because it could fluctuate, but it's it's around between 1.4 and 1.6 million a year. And the intent is that the c the the city would pay for all of that and that is just not in the budget. Um even even creatively looking at moving things around, we still would never get to that number. So um as far as trying to figure out what could be the gap funding, what could be a change of model? Would all of that bear out to be able to them to be self-sufficient, not making a profit, but just paying for operational costs? And then if not, would we be able to cover that gap? and and we just I I don't see at this point where we can get to paying 1.4 to 1.6 to sustain um operating it. So um and you know at this point I think it's in AR has to decide what they can and cannot do and I think they're moving in that direction. They they sent us a letter giving us their intent but um we'll continue till you know the final hour to figure out if there's some way to come up with that. But as far as the city's concerned, we're just in no financial position to be able to to recommend um spending that much or to recommend um the uh or having gap funding while while our own budget is being worked out. Um, I think that probably there more comments that or direction that could be given or asked or requested of directors when we get to uh item

I think you might be thinking of item 9.6 C. Yeah. Um, and I will also just note council's prerogative. We we do normally go in the order on the agenda, but it is council's prerogative to take items up in any order you feel is appropriate. You can take them together now. You can if that's what you want to do. Um if Travis is ready, we can combine that agenda item. So um 9.6 C.

So this is coming up later in our agenda. Um staff is going to come back and Travis, are you ready? Are you going to come up and present on community services item 9.6C? Give us an update and then we'll be able to get some direction from staff. So um um Travis, before you go, I'm glad you're ready. Um we do have we do have a comment from the audience. Lesie is up. So Leslie, if you'd like to go up and take your moment. Yeah, you're good. We've solved our problems. Here we go. Travis, here we go.

Thank you, honorable mayor. There we go. Thank you, honorable mayor, members of the council. Um, so we would be talking about 9.6 C. However, um, I had split up my presentation to address two different topics. one I thought would be more relevant to the ad hoc committee um because I had been at least approached about um what it would cost to shut down the civic. Yeah, if you want to that was what I was going to So I actually have two presentations. Um perfect. You do them in whatever order. So let's start with that and then this is more of the action. Um the other one's more informative. So I mean I don't think I don't know that we need a

a report on we're not going to charge them rent. for one more month or two or whatever. Well, the not charge them rent that does expire in January, so we would need to take action potentially. Right. But do you need a presentation?

Yes. Do we need a presentation on ending the the rent? I I mean, I personally understand kind of where we're at, but maybe we can be very brief. It was just recapping our previous action and asking if you would like to continue that and how long. And that concludes my presentation on that. Okay. Good job, Travis. The other would be discussing um what does it look like to essentially shutter a facility? What would that cost the city and our best estimation of that? So, it does not appear that this is the correct uh PowerPoint. So, I'm sorry.

I understand you were going to give answer some questions about what it would cost to shut her down. Yes, I'm going to, but it doesn't look like Oh, it's No, I'm stalling. I'm buying you time. So, um I'll give some context. Like I said, um we have met with directors who sit on reading specific or sorry, riverfront specific plan. Ask them questions. I um asked director many to um give us some info uh so that we were working with some data points of what would it cost um us to shutter that facility. So I do you mean I think I think I would like to the when we've discussed how much would it like maintain it if it's closed. Okay. Yeah. Um

close it but like to actually just maintain it if it's closed. All of the things I asked him I asked him today um if he got it had any data that this council should be made aware of. Got it. Um this is great. Okay. And he's got his presentation. So yes, he worked very quickly.

Yes. So um we were able to pull some costs on what it would look like to we're going to call it mothball a facility. So without an operator, something has to happen to the civic auditorium. Um this would be the option of essentially we're going to close it while we figure out what we're going to do. And so because the facility actually has some real assets, um there's equipment and um things in there that we would want to protect. Also the integrity of the building and the systems in the building. um you know that could be water, wastewater system, HVAC, things like that. Those all kind of require constant maintenance or use to continue to function properly. So, we went through and quantified what would be at stake for the city should we decide we're going to shutter that facility. So, there's some onetime costs and then there's some reoccurring costs. This all depends on how long the facility is closed, but the onetime costs are essentially um what unfortunately we would see is like a boarding up of the facility, protecting there's a lot of glass, so you'd protect the glass, secure the doors, things like that. Um we put a cost estimate together based on materials for that and staff time to do that work. And then fencing. So you would fence the facility to be able to secure it more effectively. Um, it is depending on how long you would intend to do that. Obviously, you'd be searching for a solution in the meantime, but it is vastly cheaper to own the fencing than to rent the fencing long term. I have numbers for both, but the cost estimate for about a year was um much cheaper to actually own the fencing. So, come comes out to a little under 1,200 ft, but we round it up. Um, that would be essentially going around the building. The ongoing cost for that, the big one is security. Um, it's not the big one, but it is a big one. Um, but it is a new cost for security. Um, this is a cost for one full-time like 247 security guard for the site. So, they're doing sweeps in the building, walking the perimeter, things like that. You could certainly go down, but in

terms of our recipe for mothballing a building, this is like season to taste and we would evaluate the needs of that building as we kind of went through that. But initially like um when we took over Big League Dreams and it became the Ring Sports Park, we actually did have a more heavy security presence because we weren't sure what was going to go on with that building. So we could feel that one out as time went on. But that is a quote from our actual vendor. So we know what those costs are. We have an hourly cost for that as well. Uh utilities. So this is the current utility amount, $250,000 that the civic auditorium pays every year. You could go down from there, but we don't know how far you can go down from there. You still have to run HVAC. A lot of building materials aren't designed to have big swings in temperature. That can be flooring, um, things that are wood or metal. They're actually designed to be in a temperature controlled environment. We've had experience with this when the senior center shut down. Actually, the flooring started to buckle because the building got too hot inside. So, you do have to have some level of consistency for those materials. So, we'd be able to adjust this, but I don't know to what extent it can go down from there. Does that utility cost include watering the lawn?

No, that is actually those that comes from city accounts. Okay. So, we do the exterior, they do the interior. So, that's just interior building components. Okay. Um run on their utility account.

Uh we also would have some other losses that aren't directly paid for by the city, but will affect revenue. So, these revenue losses include toot and sales tax. These aren't rockolid numbers. is not a great way to estimate these numbers, but we do have access to software through multiple tourism partners that can actually see where people come from, what they may spend while they're here. And we have visit or ticket holder data through the civic auditorium. So, actually worked with um with Julie Dyer and her group to get these numbers as well as the tourism groups to be able to get some level. If I would estimate them, I would say these are low numbers based on the amount of events that we have, but um these are conservative numbers that we can put toward the equation. We would also have an ongoing cost to maintain fencing. If anyone's seen a construction site, they know the fencing gets blown over, gets broken, gets cut, things are going to have to happen. So, we put that at a low $1,000 a month. We'd have to go out there and do some kind of work with that fencing. It could it could be much cheaper, but we need to have some budget for that. So there would be a lot of new spending, but also on the other side there is a loss in revenue. There's an more intangible cost. It's economic impact. So you see um groups like the Reading Rodeo say we had an 8 to10 million economic impact for their one event. Well, this facility is hosting many events throughout the year. So um their numbers would show a much larger economic impact. And that's essentially when one group is spending money in one location, that money then can get spent at another location and the city collects sales tax along the way. We cannot quantify that. I cannot say that $84 million uh comes back to the city. It obviously doesn't. It's vastly exceeding sales tax, but there is some level of economic stimulus provided by bringing money into the community. So that won't be part of our equation, but it is part of something we may feel down the road. Um, so our total ongoing annual cost, so we won't even include the top um the top couple bullets there

because those will be a onetime cost. It's about $1.24 million a year, and that's going to fluctuate. Could go up. Uh, could say plus minus, but um we're not 100% sure of the sales tax numbers, toot numbers, and that economic stimulus number really will contain some real feeling of sales tax loss should the facility be shuttered. There is also um some other things to consider. So we do also spend actually our ongoing maintenance numbers a little higher than this because building maintenance numbers they're not high but they're not really quantified in this. This is just staff time for maintaining that area. You may still choose to maintain that area but it's something to consider. You have um staff time for all the landscaping.

When you say that when you say that area you're talking about directly around the building or you're talking about that entire it's campus. most of the area is considered a park. So, it's really just the park itself, but it's not going to include like the boat ramp because that maintenance is grant funded. Okay? So, it's really just the parking lots, the surrounding um planters, things like that. So, anything that's like an a pertinent um feature to the facility.

Uh there's also a deferred maintenance backlog, five plus million that would need to be considered down the road. That's something that is not new news to us, but that includes the HVAC system, um, ADA restroom upgrades, and parking lot resurfacing or paving. Uh, there's also large scale impact to a lot of our community events. So, think rodeo, Fourth of July, uh, Memorial Day, State of the City, Cool April nights, all the fun ones. And impacts to our partners in the campus area. So, Turtle Bay, Sherin, and the Sundial Bridge itself. And then ultimately a boarded up fenced up structure does have some level of blight that will add to that area. Long-term um or maybe unknown kind of impacts the Iron Man event. Um that's up for consideration in uh next item or two here. The uh if you're if we're never going to get another operator, never have a business plan or choose to invest in it, are we looking at demolishing it? That's another potential future cost. And then should we have a different group come in or find a solution and this group comes back or whatever the formula is for reopening, there's a multi-year transition or operating gap. So a new vendor is not going to say, "Oh, I will run that facility and I've got a concert schedule for next Friday. These can take 6 months to 18 months to schedule a large act that could actually have a real return um on the investment for the facility." So we will still continue to feel those things like the toot and sales tax loss. So those are some of the impacts, but from what we can see in terms of revenue loss and spending that the city will have to do, it's about $1.2 million.

Um can you go back to that previous slide? Um, so 20 70 about 70,000 for one time, maybe 500,000 for ongoing, and then a and then a $700,000 loss to taxes, but it's only going to cost us about Thanks for doing that.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to ask to have done. Um, when would that 70 need spent? I I'll just be real. I'll be real, Frank. I I I would love if you came back to us with some uh short-term options of what this council could consider short-term and then I would like uh to discuss uh per our ad hoc and start those conversations of long-term solutions because I I think that I'll speak for the entire council that I would assume that councils in 20 years don't really want to be in the same situation that we are in at this moment and so I'd like to do the work now so that we're not in that. So I'd love that to come back come back to us or or start that conversation. Um that will likely take 6 to 12 months as I don't want to do that before master plan comes back to this council. Um so I'd love some short-term options to come back from staff and long-term options. Um, but being what our finances are, my concern is that March gap. So, so when I'm thinking about it, um, while personally I could say maybe we could find some, maybe we would feel comfortable potentially best case scenario in like April or May. Um, but I am concerned personally about that March. So that was the 70k versus I think 125 is what they're asking for per month.

I think per the letter there was a longer exit than just one month even if that's the Did you get the the email I sent? Yeah. So I don't think that that we boarded up in March. No, I'm just trying to think. So I think we have more time. Maybe we should have that as our next Yeah, sounds great. ad hoc and then bring that back. Maybe we'll just have you bring it back um as an agenda item again to lay out um given whatever the choice that advanced writing makes then what our options are from there that at the next meeting. Yeah. Okay. Or whenever they decide what they're doing.

Okay. Um should we not I believe what you were getting at is when would we need at least the top two bullets? Were you going to ask that? I I think we need to hear from all the council here and we'll collect the feedback and kind of see what the rest of us are thinking too. But council member Denuka, I think you're up right now.

Well, I run a business and I if I run it in loss, I have to no choice but to pay it from my personal pocket. But this is a public facility. I'm a fiscal conservative and I'm a hard-nosed businessman also. So business has to stand on its own feet. But the hard reality is that art, culture, these things make the soul of a city and they are easy to destroy but very difficult to build and rebuild. So we have to be very cautious before we just give up on this. And civic center not only provides this tax revenue stream to the city with a toot and sales tax but you have to understand that it also provides a reason for the people to live here and work here and bring their bring up their children here and all of that. I'm not prepared to lose it just because we can't afford it right now for a short term. I want to find a way to All right, let's let him finish. So I want to find a way to uh and I I mean few months ago when we gave them some money, I was the one who abstained because I felt well I want to see a long-term sustainance sustainable plan not just for 3 months or 6 months. So I would come back to that that I would really ask your group to make a sustainable plan which I'm sure you're working on which I'm sure you're working on but I'm just saying is

you mean us or advanced writing? advanced learning. Agreed.

Right. So, but at the same time, these things cannot I mean, historically in the history of mankind, art and culture always need patronization from the public, whether it's private charity or whether it's a public governance money. So, I see the value of it. I I'm not willing to say that, hey, here is $1.2 million and here is it and go play with it. But I would urge this council to really consider make it some kind of consideration and uh giving them some money to make this sustainable and maybe on an ongoing basis. Maybe if they are generating the tot tax then maybe we give them a part of tot ongoing basis. Maybe we uh consider that hey this is going to cost us $700,000 per year to just board it up. And uh we're not even talking about vandalism here, right? If there is some and you know we all all of those who have property know vandalism is a real problem and our police does a good job but still we face that. So that's going to cost money. I would say that we should really look at and I'm willing to propose that uh that I know the times are tough but still I think we should really uh give some money not all of it but some money and that probably will also encourage the private charities to donate. Maybe we can come up with a half the money. Maybe you know uh half of it we for the year we somehow earmark it for them from to money and half of it we ask them to generate and maybe we can condition that half the money if they're able to generate half the money from the private donors. So

are you asking staff to bring that back? No, no, no, no. I'm actually asking our council to give the direction to the city staff. So my my suggestion would be that if I mean this is what I would love to see. If advanced renting can come with the $600,000 for a year donations or raise somewhere then we will match if we are willing to match it from the city. Okay. That's what I would like to see. All right. Um can I comment on that um

from our ad hoc just because I that is ex that is because I do think that we have some toot money to play with for next uh fiscal year. So we brought that idea because that is exactly what we were thinking too. If we gave them the 675,000 for toot would that be enough? And I'm I'm happy to ask them again but they said they need the full operating amount. So I I we've already talked about that. So I would be happy to approach with them with that again and say matching type funds is an interesting way to put that. We didn't say matching but we just said this is what would be available come July 1. I'm willing to take that wasn't enough for them.

I'm willing to take some risk. Just me just clarify my suggestion further. So, uh, I'm willing to take some risk as a city here that, hey, we say that we're going to designate a $25,000 per month for next 12 months, plus another $25,000 per month based on matching funds coming from private foundations resources. And I'm sure they're very resourceful. We can figure out some way and I'll be I'm happy to champion that to the public personally in my personal capacity. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Um, think about the civic. I I've thought a lot over the past couple weeks of just looking at our budget as a whole where we put money. We we give almost $1 million to the library every year. Um, not sure what the economic impact is of the library, but it's also a very important asset uh that's important to the community. We think about the aquatic center. We give potentially almost a million dollars in our budget to the aquatic center. It's also a very important asset to the community. I don't know what we would do without an aquatic center. Everything we have in the city are assets. At the end of the day, we have to decide what assets are really, really important. What do we keep? Not everybody uses the aquatic center. Not everybody uses the library. Not everybody uses the civic center. But when you look at the math, and I understand business just like you, you're a business owner. I'm a business owner. Council res the business owner. We understand money as well. And you look at that toot tax, you look at the sales tax, you look at the millions of dollars of benefits to all the businesses in this community. We really do depend on a civic center to be able to generate that money and bring that money back in. If you think about all the money that leaves the city of Reading and goes to Disneyland every year, we're losing dollars, millions of dollars just at Disneyland where it leaves this community.

You have to think of a civic center as an investment. How do you bring that money back? That money has to come back. And the only way you keep bringing back money is you have to have, you know, assets. You have to have things that draw people from outside. We need that money back. It the civic center letting it closes. It is very much a damn if you do, damn if you don't.

If we let it close, we're going to spend the money anyways doing whatever budget from an extreme to a very mild budget, boarding it up. But the longer term impact as far as getting it back open again, we're going to lose sales tax, toot tax. We're going to lose an asset of what this committee really thrives on. You know, we have a sheritin that really, you know, sees a benefit from having a civic center. This is an asset that we just can't let it fail. But, uh, if I go beyond the budget a little bit, we keep saying we don't have the cash. Yes, but we are going to be going through this budget over the next two, three months when our new city manager gets here. And as we solve community problems and we consider the assets that we have to protect and we prioritize the things that we say we have to have, what's going to happen in that budget is money is going to get shifted around to be able to protect those assets as the council comes up with the priorities and says this is something really important that I can't see leave. So, yes, we may not be sitting on a pile of cash unless it's really hidden somewhere that I don't know about, but I wish we were flushed with cash, but what we're going to have to do is shift money around that's already being driven to other areas of the budget to be able to solve a community problem and keep that civic center open. So, um, civic center has become such a political thing over the past few months. you know, we we take hits up here, you know, and if we're so concerned about social media and the comments out there, you know, at the end of my four years, I'll be really proud to say that I helped save a civic center, but I'll be really disappointed with myself if I said under my watch and if I leave here at the end of my four-year term that I saw a civic center close on my watch. That is just disheartening to think. And so, I can take that hit. Um I I would like to give direction back to staff just to see our options. And I think we are running out of time, but um to see it come back on February 3rd at our next council meeting just to see some options, considerations, something we can vote on to at least um hear short-term financing, whether it's two or three months or hear an option to keep it going through the end of the fiscal year through June. Um but without options, we can't do anything February 3rd. And um but I just want to go on record, I fully

support the civic center. I am not going to let it close. And my vote is to keep it open. And we going to have to find a way to to to make this happen and shift dollars in our budget as we fix our budget over the next three months and spend less money in one area and spend more money because we're going to invest in this city and we're going to make sure we bring millions of dollars back in. That's my comments. So mayor, may I suggest as a direction that uh they consider a possibility of uh at least uh or not at least but something our estimated annual cost. So if we close it. Oh yeah. So

the closed so at least that I just want you to consider that option and have those conversations that whatever is going to cost us for the next year to close the center maybe at least that much we should be able to afford that 500,000. Yeah. Okay. All right. Councelor member Audet I saw you on here so you have comments.

Oh just for clarity just so we know the numbers we're talking about. So, um, from looking at our budget and cash flow and reserves and all that kind of stuff, I was hoping that when we go through the budget process, we possibly could be able to do that gap funding. Possibly April, definitely May or June. And those are each 120,000 per month is sort of their operating budget that they're looking for. March, April, May, June. and then once it comes to the next. So just just for number sakes, so if you're thinking about what does that gap funding look like, it's 120 a month um estimated and what we were trying to find is someone to do March is what we were looking for because until we kind of get our house in order to figure out what we have, we could possibly do April. I do think we could probably come up with May and June, but then when we presented that probably what we would be able to come with in the new year would be closer to 675,000. That just wasn't enough for them. So given that, what else do you guys think? Cuz if we can't do the 1.4

I think that they're I think that they're saying if I'm

uh speaking for you, what I'm hearing is you say you would like staff to bring that back. Um because you are considering and uh feel comfortable um looking at that roughly $400 or $500,000 spend prior to making revenue assumption decisions and expenditure decisions. So what what what my what what I would like to see is that we and I'm not saying there is any vote right now but I would be comfortable saying that we are willing to give city uh uh the civic center the money which we're expecting to spend on closing it for next year and I'm hoping that the management goes back to the public will say that hey city in good faith is trying to save this and that would hopefully ignite passion within the community to really work with the city and match those things. That's what I'm hoping.

Uh, council member Mun, we haven't heard from you, so I do have to say everybody's uh saying basically what I'm hearing. I think we're we've talked about our our revenues. We have some monies uh from the rancher that we could use. Um, we have uh, you know, I talked to uh Mr. Robinette and he suggested we had quite a number. I don't think we want to use the uh the money from the sales because we're going to be have to make that road. Um but we could have some money to keep it going until June till what Tanessa was talking about. So um I agree with I mean it seems like everybody's in favor of keeping it open. It's just how are we going to get there? So I think that that's definitely

Can we go to our city attorney? He wants to say a few things. So sure. Uh I I was just and I didn't mean to cut shortening conversation. I just want to make sure from the staff perspective that we're capturing direction accurately. And I think what I'm hearing is consensus to bring an item on the February 3rd agenda with multiple options for potential of funding um the civic in the short term. Do I have that right?

Can I Well, can I just add that I don't think that the cost this $500,000 cost per year would not be this year. So I think their ramp down and how they if they don't get funding for March and April and let's say we could do May and June or we can do partially of the next year and whatever. I don't I it's not we don't shutter it. I don't think March 1st. There's like a wind down. And so what I'm saying is when you're talking about this 500,000, which I I don't think that we have, but when you're talking about what type of funding and where it's going to come from, I think it'd be really great if you came back with act like what you think it would be in this month and this month and this month and what those costs would be so that we clearly know what the cost of those things are as we're considering, you know, what it's going to cost for this fiscal year versus next fiscal of this or of their co because their cost they've been pretty consistent with

us. So they want 120. Yeah. But I think you're going to have to put that in writing because I've already said it three times and it's so I think if it's in writing in there what they're asking for. But I also think I I want to be really clear. We may let's just say you guys think that oh we're just going to give 500,000 and keep them open for six more for four more months. there is nothing that would keep them open past that because they don't have enough operating budget to do that. So, we would just be putting money in for it to end just a little bit later. So, um I I would want more requirements than just what those costs would be. It would be what is it going to be to be sustainable? And does that mean it ends at four months?

Right. I just want to be clear that actually I I my suggestion and my desire is not to see that that to pay $500,000 right now and then over four five months after that we are back to the square. That's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is whatever money we allocate we're going to I would love to say that over next 12 months you'll get this monthly amount and go raise more and I'm happy to work with you guys and I'm sure city council will agree. Maybe we can go on a fundraising campaign with the community. Maybe we can come up with an auction that you have uh uh something something creative. I'm sure you guys are very creative, Julie, and your team that you can come up with some public fundraising options if city really puts what I'm saying is I'm willing to uh

have this council yeah present some ideas to really put our money where our mouth is and then that will give you something solid in your hand and then to raise the money from the community will be easier and that's what I'm offering.

Yeah. I mean, I'm having a hard time thinking the community itself is just going to want to donate to the civic center. I I think about the fundraising I did at the soccer park when we were trying to raise money for the turf out there. Uh we did fundraising for a year or two, begging the community to give money to prevent a closure of the soccer park. And in the end, I think the soccer park raised about $50,000 towards the $5 million cost. And we found the cost of the fundraising of the 50,000 was 50,000. So it actually raised nothing. But what we found is the what we found is the community kept saying over and over again is they didn't understand why you would want to donate money to a to the government. Who wants to give money to the government? I mean, that just takes some very big stakeholders out there, players of the past that have been very generous with their dollars, you know, supporting some of our assets. But I just if I took a show of hands out here of who would like to donate their $5 or $10 to the civic center, I don't think I'm going to get a lot of show of hands because we don't necessarily think as a community those small dollars are going to do anything very meaningful, but I don't think they just want to give to an asset and give to the government.

But this is they're not giving to the government. Turtle Bay does great fundraising. Yeah, Turtle Bay does great with the fundraising. So I'm sure the civic center can also do something similar because they're not giving the money to the government. and you know shuttle planetarium we wanted a new projector there and we raised quart million dollar and Shasta County put a condition on that was 5 years ago that hey you bring half of that and they will give us half and I like that idea. So I think that that feels part of the long-term conversation when I said staff should bring back a couple of short-term options and then we should begin that long-term work. I think that um advanced reading is Yeah, my time is my time is up.

My time is up. I'm sorry. Well played. Well played. I get it. I get it. Enough said. But can I can I just also Turtle Bay is underfunded. They are they they're underfunded. They have the sheritin to actually help them uh reach their fundraising goals because Turtle Bay is also one of the only museums not funded by the government. So, in Reading, we have these assets because we do have very generous community members. But one way to help the civic is to buy a ticket to a show. Um, can I I know that staff's up here and because advanced reading, just let the cat out of the bag that they were in the room. Can I ask them to come up here and just ask a couple of clarifying questions? Oh, yes. Correct.

And while she's coming up here, let's think about the Dr. Duka Civic Center. How about that? Let's uh let's what you can maybe it could be a medical school in the day and then a civic at we'll name it after we'll name it after the doc I rename it Dr. the nuclear civic center. I think it sounds more like a Dutch I know that this is like a Dutch. Oh yes, Eric, you're going to need to come up here also. Maybe maybe sounds more like a Dutch pros civic center. Dutch.

I want it just to be on record that you that you and your board are amicable and desire some changes in the lease that it is and how things are funded. I know that's very general, but how the civic is funded at this moment. Correct. I'm not I'm not asking you to agree to how. I'm just saying I just would like it on record that you guys have said yes, we don't like the way and the structure that this is now. We do not believe that this is sustainable long term. There needs to be some changes that are made. We're ready to be at the table to discuss what all of those changes look like.

Yes, that is true. Uh just a little we we had a tenant there for 14 years that subsidized all of the hard work, energy, and effort that was put into keeping the um readings civic auditorium open. And in they also funded us figuring out how to get real concerts here. Um big concerts, larger shows. And so now that that funding is gone, we are in a place where we, you know, we're we're looking for different ways uh to get that funding and we're asking for the city for help with that. Um Dr. Denuka's idea of going to the public to raise funds. We would be more than happy to work together to do that. I do think we would be a little hardressed uh to find people to donate to that unless we were able to kind of focus on that long-term northern riverfront redevelopment where we could then brand it uh ABC Company's convention space and then and so I think when I look at a future of real funding from the community and from businesses that would probably be that path forward. That was a long answer. Yes.

Uh, thank you. Um, and you're not at zero dollars. Cor, correct? Just I know that there was some like back and forth about windown and um gap funding and those sort of things. So, could you just clarify? Sure. You're not at zero.

We are not at $0. Um the board uh of advanced reading feels that if we do are are forced in a position where we have to close down, we want to do that. Well, that means we want to uh and have to refund tickets, which is a considerable amount of money. We have to pay artists uh because they are scheduled to come perform. We also have to pay employees and severance to employees and of course attorneys and tax and all those normal things of winding up uh operations of a of a business that's been in business for 14 years.

Um if I was to ask you what your specific ask is of council, do you think that you could give one? It was in the letter. I12 it's 116

$116,000 a month whether it's on a month-to-month basis that's how much we need what that does just to be specific that covers ordinary operations um then the concerts uh pay for them because the concerts we have to ramp up everything ramp up employees ramp up costs um we you know if we can get that funding on a monthly basis then all of a sudden we can continue to roll like we're rolling We got Foreigner coming uh here in a couple months with a live orchestra. That's going to be if you want to buy T that's going to be a great show. Um several others on the on the agenda as well. Yeah.

I also like to clarify. So um when we're talking operational funding that does not include the cost of goods for putting on any of the events. So advanced reading is um for programming our cost that we're on the hook for is four times it's overhead to programming cost of goods is a 4:1 ratio. So we're not actually we're not coming and saying we're coming with no match. We actually are matching because we're covering programming costs that normal operators our programming expenses that cost of goods would also be paid for by a municipality with a regular operator. So I feel a little bit like that has gotten clouded a little bit in the term operations. Um but we're talking about from a private sector kind of P&L our ask to the city is on overhead. there's still a whole heavy weight of cost of goods on that was that is on our our side of the ledger.

That makes sense.

Okay. One last question that may feel loaded. I understand there's only two members of your board that at least that I can like see in the sea of folks. if um that February 3rd meeting staff brings back an option and council decided that we were able to fund but we felt like we were unable to fund until that April May June's piece. Do you have enough operating uh gap threshold um to be able to uh keep the civic open or does making that decision? I just think that it's important for the public to know does council make that decision look like or sorry does it look like closure if the council made that decision? Can I clarify your question just so they know?

Would that mean making a decision in February to fund them for April or May or just punting this until March or April to then make a decision? No, I was saying if council made a decision February 3rd for that sort of Yeah. Uh for those months, could they float during that time frame? I understand I'm making real life real time real time calls.

It is it's very difficult with um the live entertainment component of our business model to give you an exact answer in that space. Like it it really is a rolling it's a rolling cash management day-to-day um spot that we're in. If we were to dramatically retract on programming and and cease to push forward, um I could get you a more specific number. Um in all transparency that momentum lost will take a long it's kind it it's almost from the industry side of things, it's almost as bad as it's not as bad as closure, but it has the same sort of net effect. It will take us time to ramp that programming back up, which actually makes our situation worse.

I think the question is tough though because if we did that, what we're basically asking you to do is burn through cash. Then we give you a couple months of funding. But then if we didn't do anything else after that, now you no longer have the money to refund tickets because we asked you to burn through the cash for February, March. And I understand the business side of it. understand the money, but like funding you for April and May doesn't solve the problem for no longer being able to refund money in June forward. So, it's just it's a better it's um our our concern, the board's concern um there's a lot of moving parts to, you know, scheduling shows and it takes us months if not years to get some shows. It's

blew me away when I first first started on the board here. But um our concern is if we have to wind up the business, we want to do it well, right? We have employees that depend on us. We have a um we have people that we we have people that have bought tickets. There's obviously we haven't talked to our attorney. There's probably some legal stuff around refunding tickets. I I know that Julie has a bunch of comments. you know, we there's certainly some obligations that we don't we don't want to show up in a way that that hurts anybody. And so that makes that really really tough. Um, and that's why we're kind of keeping that reserve to be able to wind up well.

And I hope Jouri is not listening because they're probably thinking why should we come right now? Like they may not have the money. I hope nobody's watching that as a ticket. There's 23 people online. I looked I have a question. So the so let's say let's say we can come up with uh April, May and June but then we get to July and if the only available money that we have available is let's just say we can we give you the tot money of 675 does that keep you alive for the next year or is that not enough either that's

yeah that takes a lot more conversation and and and thought I think there are uh you know we need to investigate all paths um I think getting somebody set it up there getting the support of the city in this because it this is another thing you know I don't know exactly how Turtle Bay works but I think they own some of their property you know this we actually don't own anything other than some there's some assets on our balance sheet maybe some sound equipment I mean I'd have to look but you know we we we don't own the building it's a city-owned asset and so we we it's not most big nonprofits that invest in in things like this like Turtle Bay or some of these other things. They don't want to invest in the month-to-month operations, they want to invest more into, you know, hey, owning property or growing growing assets on that property. And in fact, I've been on the board of some of these nonprofits, uh, the grant boards of some of these nonprofits, and and some of them won't even, uh, donate to people that don't own don't own their own real estate. So it's it's so it's your your question is very difficult to answer Tanessa and I appreciate it and understand it and Dr. Dr. Danuka, your your line. I think it's a great direction, but I think the heart if we can get some commitment to stay open. If we can do that, then let's work our butts off over the next 6 months and figure out a long-term solution and make the Reading Civic Auditorium, stay in business for the next 10 years while we do a master plan of the Northern Riverfront and really kill it.

Yeah. So, Council Member Denuka was up. So, just to clarify, Turtle Bay actually I'm sorry. No, no, can I just finish my question? Okay.

So, this is So, you're saying that the 675 that we would be able to offer next year wouldn't be enough. That's not the like So, do you know what I'm saying? It's like because I know that that's something that we're going to go over the budget. So, if it's not better next year, so if if they're still not available to get the 1.4 to do all of operations, And and there is a willingness on this part to get you an answer, but to answer it right now because there's been a request from council to relook at our business model and do to in good faith to do good proformas to be able to truly answer your question. That takes time and so it's not an unwillingness. I think 14 years of history is the example of advanced reading. We'll always choose to work with the city to the full extent of our capacity. That's been our commitment from the beginning and it remains our commitment today. And so this I'm not trying to deflect from an answer. It's just in order to give you good answers that then we're not coming back a little bit later with a little bit more information. It's like, oh well, we got it wrong. um that takes a a full vetted process that we are in the process of doing. Um and so I we we if we can get there, this organization is going to be an organization that's going to work to get there. I just can't tell you today if absolutely yes or no. If we can get to 675 is enough, we'll be the first to tell you that 675 is enough.

Okay. Council member Dika. So, uh, just to clarify, Turtle Bay, my if I'm not wrong, just correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that have a 99-year lease on that property. Sheraton owns the property. Sure. Because they bought that. So, just to clarify that, and maybe that's one thing to look into for long-term. If you have a long-term lease, how does that play in your budget? Question. And this is this is just my idea here. Can we forgo the monthly utilities for the civic center for ongoing for next 6 months 12 months or something? And will I'm just I know I I'm I'm not asking for the full answer but I'm asking this council here.

Are we can we technically do that? I don't will I think we can but we can technically do it through the same concept of giving them money that still offsets their utility costs whether if we do a grant funding that could offset their utility cost but I don't think we could. Is that possibility that can actually because the reason I'm saying is sometimes I have tenants and they run into rough times. Are you asking if REU can wave it themselves? Yes. Oh, I can. That's what I'm asking. So, you're asking essentially if the utility could be the one to to pay for part of subsidy. So, so what I'm asking is can you forgo the utility payments because I do that with my tenants sometimes when there are inter times.

Not unless you backfill with general fund money. Um the reason being that REU is funded through um the utility costs under Prop 26. Those have to be borne equally by by everyone. Yeah. Um you you can't essentially um raise the rates on other users to pay for the rates the char with what you're not charging to the um to the civic. Um so what you would have to do in that case is essentially put it would be the same result. You'd have to put forward a general fund amount.

Okay. Can I ask a question so that I can make sure that I hope that everyone on council understands? Am I understanding correctly and hearing correctly? Advanced reading needs 116 a month. 116K a month. I'm going to use the word into perpetuity or until we've all come to a conclusion of what the structure should be like and what the sustainability plan should be like that hopefully supports the master plan in the long-term discussion. Was that clear as mud?

Yes. But I think the answer is yes to your second the what our letter was intending to communicate is um and the and the conversations that we've had with the ad hoc committee um it's we understand the position that council is in to not make a long-term permanent solution at this moment. you have your fiduciary responsibilities to go through that budget process, but it is a commitment of funding so we can go through a long We also want any kind of short-term solution to feed into a long-term solution. Um, all of our work for 14 years has been about revitalizing an asset so that when our tenant left, there was real economic viability. There was real there was a real product getting produced out of the venue back to the reason it was built in the first place. But that's a that's a longer term process. But

yeah, I think it will likely take us six to 12 months at least.

Yeah. Ju just to add to that, you know, once we can Once we can figure out how not to to to die, right, then we can start, I mean, we've already started investigating taking over food and beverage to some degree. Um, you know, could could that work? We're looking at smaller outdoor concerts in some of the spaces. we're already having these conversations internally of additional ways to generate revenue that maybe when we had that long-term tenant in there were not possible to do. So, we're we are very interested in continuing down those paths and working directly with the city on uh on looking at those things. So, um I I don't know if that helps, Erin, but

that's helpful. That's those are all those are the only I have all the faith that you can do it and we will be with you supporting it. Well, thank you for being vulnerable and coming up and you guys definitely have the expertise to run this. You understand the entertainer entertainment industry. I wouldn't run this myself. I would fail it miserably as much as I understand business. But um thank you. And so I think we've given some direction. I don't do we need to clarify anything. I've heard you can come back with multiple options, but I would make a motion that we um forego this rent for at least the next three months while we're figuring this all out and it'll come back anyway.

I would make it six months. Sure. Well, let's make sure they're here. Well, it doesn't really matter if they're not here. If they're not here, they're not here. Let's make it six months. I mean, they're not going to pay it anyways, right? So, I mean, if if they're going to be closed in 3 months, they're not going to pay it. So, if they're not here, they're not paying it. I'll make the motion for 6 months. I'll second. Okay. I'm in favor. All right. Um, she needs to vote on that. I think so. Unless there's anything we add to the motion or we'll do a second one. Let's just vote on that. Get that one out of the way. So, that's all in favor. I Wow, we're doing good. Okay. Um, was there any other direction that you needed, Travis, from us or did you get the bullet points?

Are you looking for short-term and long-term options or was it just short-term? I heard both. I I think the I'm just saying yeah, we're right. I don't know if we're going to solve it long term, but we are sure is that going to try. I would just like to say publicly that we're going to start those discussions that the ad hoc is going to start those long-term discussions. Some of that we're already having, but um I will bring short-term options discussion topics begin. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Don't let him close, Travis. So, just to confirm that was consensus of the council. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Speak now or forever hold. Let's vote. I'm gonna

I think we all heard yes. I heard a yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I heard six yeses. Okay. Thank you. Good. Okay. SH also voted yes. All right. Okay. So, uh let's see where are we at. So, we are moving along. Now, we're back to 90. We are on um 9B. I believe we were going to consider consolidating 9B and 9.1B.

Um that was a city of writing bianual budget revenue a discussion meetings there. I we do have a we do have a speaker here. So I'm going to let Lesie speak. Lesie, are you here first? So Lesie, are you here? I think she you she would have been our leader tonight on the board, but okay. Lost your chance. All right, we have no speakers. So, um Okay, we have the city of ready and bannual budget revenue discussion, right? Is everybody up there on the agenda? Greg's ready. Okay. Uhhuh. Look how fast he is. Um, you

want an introduction? I can give you a drum roll. Seriously, Greg? Feels like it feels like it needs one. What am I doing? Well, I'm just I want to understand this. So, this is a discussion. Are we Don't we have a meeting on February 17th for this? No, we have a meeting today for this. Yeah. No. Well, I want to make uh do we pull it or make a motion that we move this to the 17th? So, this item

Yeah. es especially for the civic if we don't know where our finances are because on February um 17th we're going to get the midyear review all those changes that needs to happen needs to come from us so we need to give direction so that he can come back to us with those adjustments where we would vote to either do them or not do them from there we have to give him direction on revenue assumptions without this that next part doesn't happen which you don't know how much money you have to give to the civic or any other appropriation that is on this agenda tonight. Yeah. Okay. We also let's use the buttons here. So, sorry about that. But I think council member

Well, I my opinion is we need to wait for Mr. Tarbo to come. He will be here on the 15th, possibly earlier on the 4th, possibly. I got good news for you. I talked to Tarbo. He's watching and he has already given direction to Greg and he's perfectly fine with this moving forward and agrees it needs to happen now. So, let's go ahead. move to the 17th. Okay. I'm sorry. What was that? I said I'm still making a motion to move to the 17th. To the 17th. Okay. Um, councelor Resnner, you're up. So, we do have

um I'm not going to support that motion because we already gave consensus to staff to have a meeting about revenues uh during item 12, I believe last council meeting, that we wanted to hold a revenue assumptions discussion and there was consensus um from this body to hold those meetings. or or to have that meeting. Uh and

we need to vote. Yes, there was consensus and there actually is an email from our city attorney outlining how it was that there was consensus and there were zero objections that occurred. So if there is a new I objected. I said we should move let

let's go one at a time. Let's let her speak and then we'll see if anybody else wants to speak. Okay. Uh, I mostly just think that in my personal opinion, like I said about our last t our last topic, it is financially prudent for us to have discussions about how much money we are assuming that we have so that when we decide whether or not we're going to in this budget um take one time take a portion of onetime money and allocate half a million dollars to uh advanced reading that we know that we don't need that money for something else. And while I am very aware that uh I believe February 17th is or 16th is when it is that we're going to get that uh property tax or sales tax. I don't remember which one off.

Yeah, we we just got the property tax uh Friday.

We just got property tax and Q2 is coming. February Thank you. That's what you said. February 17th. That is when it is that we should analyze again. But it feels one uh wrong to move this when we already told the public that we were going to have that discussion. And then it also feels financially wrong. Just that that piece is my personal opinion to not know where we are at and to say we're unwilling to hear what finance says in regards to where it is that we are at for revenues. Yet, we're willing to entertain spending half a million dollars out of general fund monies on this thing over here. And we don't know if we need that. We know there's a gap. We know we're going to have to make adjustments multiple times over the next year, but we're unwilling to hear where we're at.

I'm willing to hear Council Member Adet, you're up.

Um, well, I will just say that this is our fiduciary responsibility. So, we were told in Q1 that we do not have a balanced budget, that um we are not going to end the year hitting our reserve 10%. And that according to council policy 412, in order for any other appropriations, which are there's plenty on this agenda tonight, you're going to need to have a financial plan for that. Um, and so part of the financial plan is that you have to start having these budget workshops to move towards figuring out how to get yourself a balanced budget again. And so this has to happen because it doesn't this is direction. So we're going to say the sales tax revenue should be changed. They gave us options for all the different tax revenues. We got this report back in December when we were going to have a December 18th meeting. And so getting that information means we have to give direction to staff. we think you should come in at this number for that. It'll go back. We will not have any anything solid. He has to go back with that information, run those numbers, and that modification can either happen the first week in February or it can happen at the mid-year review with a direction that we give them for changes to revenue. Um, we will also probably have to have that conversation again subsequently about cuts because it'll be very clear through the 10-year plan with the direction that we give them exactly where we are financially. Um, and all the a lot of decisions that need to be made will be violating council policy. You cannot appropriate general fund money when you have um a deficit and or you don't know your financial position for especially for your own budget. Our budget is over according to Q1. I don't know where it is for Q2, but it was for Q1 and our revenues were below 15%. So, we're going to have to make some adjustments. Delaying that is incredibly irresponsible and you won't be able to act on any of these things on your agenda because you don't know how much money you have. So, you can't promise money you don't have. And if we're going

to take it from another budget item, that has to be offered that they're going to give up some part of their budget, which is council policy 405. you if you're going to do budget or 409 if you're going to do budget adjustments, they have to come with what they're going to give up for their budget. So there's a reason why you have these policies is so we don't just make decisions as though this is monopoly money and and it has no we'll just figure it out and it's okay. We really do have to get a handle on our finances. So when on November 18th when we had that meeting, our finance director himself said you need to start with revenues and we should start sooner than later. So that's why we set it for December 18th that it continues to be delayed is only going to delay the city's business. Case in point, the gap funding, case in point, the um all this money that they're asking for for code enforcement for uh Iron Man, you don't have that money to give. You don't have that money to give. So to delay this is just fiscally irresponsible.

All right, let's keep this conversation going. Uh Council Member Duka, you're up. Well, uh I'm just I'm not sure I'm I'm following these things here. The discussion actually uh first of all I just want to preface this that when we were setting the revenue projections uh way back in summer I was the one who wanted to be very conservative about it that we cannot assume 4% rise and we should really have not more than 2% rise assumption. So from that perspective I will say I agree with absolutely all of you guys that we have to be fiscally conservative and we have to reset our revenue projections based on the collections. What I'm not getting here is this discussion I'm truly trying to understand this last meeting we all agreed upon having a revenue projection meeting special meeting for that

and that's what I want like to see what we said at that time was we would like to have it as soon as possible but we did not agree on a specific date on that January no no no once let me just so we did not agree on a specific date and uh because that meeting itself will be worth at least a few hours No, let's let him finish up. Let's let him talk. So, okay. Thank you.

So, so my understanding impression with the consensus at that time was yes, we absolutely want to reset the revenue projections. Absolutely. Yes, it was a consensus. Second, we want to have a meeting as soon as possible. Yes. And I know you wanted a meeting in January but with the logistics and the time commitments of the city council members all of us uh not all of yours but some of us at least uh I know Aaron remember I remember saying that she was busy in this time and my schedule itself I don't think we agreed on a specific and not not I don't think I know that we did not agree on a specific date or a week or a month we wanted to make sure as soon as possible what the scheduling allows for all the five council members for a special meeting. I would like to have a special session on that which will probably last at least 3 hours.

It won't. I I mean and I would I mean I'm not sure if you have a recommendation. Greg has it. Let's let him speak. If if Greg has a specific recommendation that yes, this is you are ready to present to me today that yes, this is what you are uh recommending. Yes. To uh reset the projections to I'm willing to hear that. But I don't think that discussion can take place tonight. It can. And council member Aette like we we were gracious enough to let you speak and when we interrupt our thoughts out here, we take away like our train of thought. So let let him speak.

So So if if you think that you have a specific recommendation that you're making, I just want to hear from him. If you have a specific recommendation that you're making that yes, this is the revenue reset you're asking. I'm open to that. Otherwise, I'm more willing to go with uh uh what mayor has already set up for February 17th as well as how what Jack has mentioned earlier. Okay. Well, I think because the reason I'm saying that is because I think this whole discussion needs you to make because right now I don't see any recommendation. Yeah, it's right here. You have you have every one of these has let him let's let him finish

every one of them. So just if I'm willing to look at that and if you have that and that's public is aware of that and widely circulated before we vote that. So I want to see that what do you have? Okay. All of that that's all here. You want to see are you let him give the presentation. Okay. No no no just what I'm saying is are you do you have Yes. It's in I don't see in this packet recommendation from him. Look scenario one two. Can he ask his question? Let him ask me. He's he's talking to Greg up there. So,

may I jump in and just point out for clarity that as the finance director u Mr. Robinet's uh role is to provide data and statistics but not to make recommendations. Typically recommendations would come from the city manager uh which right now your interim city manager is an HR director

who does not have a financial background and I will not be making financial recommendations. Okay. What director Robin Robinette sorry I comb I combined Greg and Robinette and came up with a whole new word but what director of my email prepared to provide

are three options and this is based on information that he had pulled for the December 18th meeting that he had reviewed with the previous interim city manager and so we are prepared to provide options for council consideration But I just want for transparency's sake to be very clear that as finance director Mr. Robinette's role is not to got it ask for or not to provide recommendations but instead to provide you with information and then to receive direction from the council and adjust his production.

I got it. So I'm willing to hear the options you if you have the options because I don't see this in my packet. Am I understanding you correctly that you read your packet because the Okay, can I can I let me just complete this? If you have the options, I'm willing to hear that. But if and without the recommendation from the city manager, I don't think we don't need it. I promise you. I I but I'm smart enough I'm not ready to have a long discussion on this tonight. I would like a special meeting for that.

So, hold on one second because I'm the sponsor. This is my So, I just want to clarify on that really fast because this is my motion. I just want to say that um there are 10 different sections that that Greg and I discussed and I asked for to be on here. I personally think having gone through all of them, studied them, we probably will be changing four of them or really looking at four. Would you agree?

Yeah. So, I was actually going to point out I h I don't I didn't provide options on many of the revenues and that it wasn't designed to not provide council information. I think as you go through them, you'll see a lot of them, there isn't a lot of conversation to be had. I can certainly provide council many data points on those revenues. Um whereas the four or five major tax revenues I think are the ones you're referencing are the ones where options were provided um as part of the packet. Um but again, not recommendations, just to be clear. There were three different options, but there's certainly many other scenarios if council so choose to dive into different details or different options that could be discussed. So the

do you have those options listed in this packet? It was in the attachment to item 9b. Yes, it's in here. I'll show you as he goes through each of the items. You'll see what the options are. He's going to walk you right through it and you'll be able to see and choose. We're going to go in order. So he's asking you can look on page six for your first option. Councelor Resner. Yeah. Um I

scenario one, two, and three. would like to address because it's been said multiple times um at the end of and and I can probably say this just fine now cuz uh it's it's no longer an issue. But uh my husband was going to be gone for 2 weeks. So I it's been blamed on me multiple times when we've had this discussion that like oh she wasn't sure she was going to be able to make that work. However, the situation that happened is that staff originally emailed us dates. The very first options we were given were February dates. And that is in real conflict with the consensus of this board, which was that we would do our very best to make ourselves available before the end of January. So, where that came from was I was unsure what I was going to be able to agree with or uh yeah, what dates I was going to be able to agree to. However, I gave multiple dates to staff that I was available for in January. So, that actually was a null and void issue. That was actually not an issue. We were given dates in February immediately and were never inquired about um January. Then uh I found out today because I asked staff directly and staff has to answer and I believe that they're honest that they only actually received feedback on what dates we were available from council member Audet and myself. So, it feels a little bit like there's a game that has been attempting to be played where there are discussions happening outside of this room, which is a Brown Act violation if there were more than three. And I have reason to believe or more than two. And I have reason to believe that there were more than two

because of social media posts that were made stating that there was a consensus that was different than the consensus that was reached in this room. So, that should be a major concern to everyone. And my main issue in discussing this is twofold. One, it's what we agreed that we would do. And we owe it to the people to do the things that we agreed to do. Whether we all want to or not, it doesn't matter what our feelings are about the topic. We agreed to do that. So, we therefore need to do that because it's our job to honor what we said that we would do to the people. All right. Well, um

I also think that it's really important in my personal opinion because I would like to know where revenues sit so that when we have that discussion on February 3rd regarding the civic, I have some idea data pointwise so that I can make that educated decision. Okay. So that's all I want to clarify your concern there, but that the mayor has the ability to talk to all council members when talking about a special meeting date. So, when I talked about doing a February 17th date, um, that was the thing I put on the agenda and somebody asked me about that date.

Well, that was the thing that I put on the agenda, I felt is the best timing there. I will say, I'll add a little bit more color how I got to that decision. U, but I did meet the new city manager and we were talking about the budget. We were just talking about planning for the future. The thing I would make really clear is we spent a lot of time interviewing multiple candidates to hire a city manager. And we made decisions and with the understanding knowing that if we were to hire somebody internally, we could get to work a little faster. If we were to hire somebody external, the pain point would be it's just going to take longer for that city manager to get here and get to work. But we hired somebody that hypothetically should be smarter than us and more knowledgeable in budgets. And for me, I don't want to make big decisions. And I think it was kind of agreed in some discussions there that there wouldn't be big decisions made before he gets here. The communication I had with him said, "Mike, can can we wait until I get there to have these discussions? The real work really isn't going to be in two weeks or February 17th. The real work is going to be in March. Once I get there, I get a better understanding of the numbers. we're going to get the sales tax true up which is a really really important data point at the end of February that he was very very well of he says I need more information and that way we can really make some really good critical decisions in March we don't want to change revenue assumptions now change them again in four weeks and then get a really important data point at the end of February that true true up on sales tax so he's he's asked he's asked can you can you wait until I get there let me get to work you hired me it's going to be my budget I'm responsible for and I think I need to be part of the process to talk to the council members at a meeting. And that was his request is to wait. That's why I did February 17th, which is hard because that's his well second day on the job because his first day is on the holiday. Well played if you're listening out there, William. But um that that was the uh the rationale why we got there. We are anxious to get

to work and I can really commend all council members their eagerness to get to the data. We do have information already in our staff reports. So everything you're would hear today, you're already able to read on. We've had some of this data since uh December. We're just going to get a lot better data later. Um and it's my intention to hold that date out of respect for the new city manager come in. That's his request. He would like to do this February 17th special meeting before a regular council meeting. And I respect the process. We hired a city manager to come do the job. And um the real benefit we are going to get is when we make cuts, not when we look at revenue assumptions. When we start making cuts and shifting dollars in our budget, that's when we realize the full benefit. We're not going to get a benefit right now by changing revenue assumptions. I think they already have some understanding and guesses where it's going to be and they can get to work on that. But u from my position, I'll wait till February 17th. So council member, you're up. So

Okay. So So they c they have no authority to change it right now. The current budget that was voted on is we have a $2.5 million surplus. So we know that we're not going to end the year. We found that out in the very first quarter. We are not going to end with a $2.5 million surplus. You would not cut anything if you have no idea what you need to cut. So if you don't not know what your revenue assumptions are, you cannot aim at anything. So you can't very well say, "Well, it didn't come in, so go ahead and change that." They're not allowed to do that. We change it with our direction. This does not change the number. It gives them the direction that they need to look at these numbers with a reduction in what we are going to intake so that when Tarbo gets here he can actually know exactly what he needs to cut and that is a process. So the first process is we need to give direction. There are four items here that we should give direction on. It will not take that long to do it. It is worthwhile and it is our responsibility as the fiscal agents here. It doesn't matter who sits in that seat. The buck stops with us. It is our responsibility to do fiscal oversight and right now our reserves are negative. Our uh up until Q1 and Q2 and our revenues are below projections by 15% in Q1, probably more so in Q2. We need to start attacking that so that when Tarbo gets here and he wants to start making cuts, he has something to aim at. They have no authority to change our revenue projections. We need to do our job and give them direction.

Thank you. Let's move this along. We're going to have to figure out whether we do this tonight or we don't. But councelor Resnner has a comment and then I think you wanted to speak. Is that right? Okay. Council Reser, I just want to speak to I agree. We're not going to make any sort of expenditure like that. That is not part of this discussion. It merely is a presentation from staff of where it is that we believe that we are at in terms of of revenue. And I sort of want to say that we're going to fight about whether or not we're going to hear the data longer than it would take for Mr. Robinette to give us the data for us to say. Sounds good.

Okay. So, we've heard feedback. Let's figure this out real quick. Otherwise, we'll be here all night. One last thing I would say I would like to have a special session which may last couple of hours. I don't know right now. We're telling ladies please let's let's talk. We we do have a motion is because last we agreed was that we will have a special session. That's what I want to stick to. We should have a special session for this. If you don't like the February 17th date you would agree to the January 20 sounds great that day. So

let me just say this. If you want to have a date which all of us can agree on before February 17th, I'm fine with that. However, I would like to see in a special session for that where we have a longer discussions. We can digest this. Public can give this our input. My priority is right now to have a finance oversight committee. That's a more important discussion than we have this. So, I'm going to second that's on the agenda as well. I'm going to second I'm going to second Jackman's motion to keep it February 17th unless you want another date. First of all, nobody has it for February 17th. We made a motion. It's the only other date that the council that we were given was January 26th and that's what's on the agenda. Okay. So, we can vote if you're not going to do I'm just giving supporting his uh we consolidate those two agenda items

then I will make the motion that we um have the special meeting on January 26 and I guarantee you will not take you more than an hour because this is four items that you're giving direction to. Okay. So, well I I will say will not be here that date unfortunately. I have an event with my family. So, um you're not going to be at the Robba meeting? I will not be there. I'm sorry. So the um Can I ask one question? So I'm I'm seconding the motion for Jackman. This is wild. This is so Can I ask a question of director Robinette? Unbelievable. Yeah. I know that you usually go last and I know that you usually like to be really wordy. Do you think that this is going to take you a couple of hours to regurgitate to us?

So I prepared to present all of the dashboards. four. Yeah, but I prep I prepared to present all of them. So, if we went through my entire slide deck, it's like 65 66 slides. What I'm hearing council member Audet say is maybe that there might be a desire to not discuss all of them. Um, in which case it would be substantially shorter. Um, so but I am prepared to talk about every single revenue in all of the dashboards that council received uh on or around December 18th.

Okay. So, council member Odette asked for this to be on and she's asking for how many slides? I'm asking for just the first four um the sales tax, property tax, toot and the cannabis and other just those four and if you go through the slide then we can probably give direction on the sales tax give direction on the property tax give direction on t you know and then if they want to continue with the slides they can otherwise and that can be for the next special meeting because we will have to have another special meeting if it's going to come back before which could be your February other date. Okay. So, we we have a motion. Was was there even a second? I did. There was a second. Motion, but Oh, sorry. I'll second. I'll make the motion that we

Wait. So, I'll make a motion. Can I Can I just say this? I'm actually willing to go over the four slides. Okay. But I just I just think we need a longer discussion for giving them the direction. that I'm happy to see this try it out and get as far as we can get and not I'm just I'm just telling you that I'm not prepared at this time to give directions. That's all I'm saying. Can I just say that I think I'm willing to hear those slides. Can I just say he did such a good job of this that I think you'll be in a good spot to pick. So if you if you have four minutes fair warning, it is a few more than four slides cuz I think I have like three or four per revenue topics. No, four topics. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You said four slides. I'll hold you to four slides and 8 minutes. Okay. Otherwise, February 17th. Okay. So, we

So, can we do these? Can we do these four four slides? Four slides. Um, what do you mean? Okay. Four topics, not my preference. I'd like to hear all the information. And I think I like I need full information. I think William would benefit from hearing the entire presentation. And he is he's online. I talked to him. He said there's no reason to delay. And he's watching. I I I I'm not worried about what William says. I want to have a full information, full discussion in a public setting and public is missing. You already agreed to that and you already agreed to that. This is as soon as possible. We fulfilled it right now. So, let's let's move. Are you Can I Can I ask one question before we vote? Are you going back on your vote because you gave

I'm not going back on my board. I'm I'm sorry. I would like I would like the city attorney to read out the email that you gave. You can't read that out, can you? Um, well, we could rewind. We could rewind. It's documented that you said yes. It was actually council member Odette, you and myself. All of us said yes to a special meeting as soon as possible. This gentleman actually didn't. Let me help clarify this. It might help to our city attorney. Can the council table the item and change their mind? But in an item 12, if they want to bring it back, if they want to recons, they should be reconsidering it here because we've already voted on it. Item 12 the way I did in item 12, they can reconsider it then.

Okay, let's let him answer the question. So I um procedurally I do think that the council has the ability to um uh take whatever alternative direction it wants, notwithstanding prior motions. You do have the ability to to table. Um I will say matters of order are also up to the council. So you you can rule on any procedural question there. However, um uh you know really what we have at this point is two items. One is the presentation and the other is a question of whether you would prefer to have a special meeting on the 26th to hear the presentation. We just need direction as staff as to which way you want.

Okay. So I want the information. I just want the city manager to be here that that we hired and I I respect him. That's why we pay him the big dollars to be here. So we're we're gonna vote. So, um, all in favor? Well, I have to take you have to take the motion. You have to take first. Was there a second? I want to make a motion that we have it on January 26th. Okay. And I seconded that motion because that would fulfill what you already voted on, which you said as soon as possible, which is right now. Okay. So, that fulfills that. But if you're not going to do that, then we should do it by the 26th because by the way, these all of these appropriations that are being asked for, you cannot vote on these because you do not know the state of your clarify that later. Which motion did we vote on first? I'm sorry.

26. The second motion. Let's vote on that motion. So, all in favor and just to be clear, this is the motion to uh to hold a special meeting on January 26th. It's what we already voted on. Okay. And that just to clarify, it would not I would not be here January 26th. So, that I would like to be here for that, but I don't have to be here, but I think that should be considered. So let's vote in the second motion. All in favor? I I I. All oppose. No. No. Vote is a yes. So that we it passes. Council member Ms. Duka. I I can't. Oh, no. Well, what about January 29th? Okay. So, that motion. Well, I'll make a motion that we do it January 29th. Oh, you had a second motion. Let's go back to We're going to vote on the first motion.

We have to vote on the second one first. We did. No, I just made another motion. What about January 29th? Come on. Well, if you can keep doing this. Yeah. What about January second? Anybody have second? I can't do that. What about January 26th? I am gone. Okay. All in favor on the first emotion. Yay.

Wow. Okay. So, I have a question for you, Greg. If we don't give you any direction when we get to the 17th, you're not going to have that for the Q2. To be honest, I I wasn't planning on bringing the Q2 because typically the Q2 has until the city manager is here because I don't want to put our interim city manager in the position of having to approve because typically, sorry, let me back up. What what happens on Q2 is we send out budget requests all of our departments. We're in the process of doing that. Departments respond with enhancements that they may need to their budget. I'm hopeful and optimistic that there won't be a lot this year, but I still don't plan on completing that process until uh the new city manager uh William Tarbo arrives. And so therefore, I already kind of expected us to delay that Q2 update, probably try to coordinate it with a second workshop potentially. But yes, you're right. Without the direction, we wouldn't update revenue assumptions until we have that direction um from council. So, frankly, at this point, I don't I don't

It delays everything. It delays Q2. It delays any type of revenue assumptions. It delays us really knowing financially where we're at. So, by changing it to February 17th, you are you all have no idea what's going on with our budget. Our budget will continue to be to deteriorate and you will have no control over that. How are they going to vote on any appropriations? So, outside of council policy, if I have your idea on the budget when today? So, we've we've heard the opinions. We're going to move on to the next item here because we've already taken a vote. So, we're going to move on to 9.1 C. We're gonna uh Oh, did one person not vote? You should vote. So, use your vote. That's your power. Is hell no option? No. Okay.

All right. 9.1C. Consider resolutions for establishment of an audit committee and financial oversight committee for the city of Reading. Uh, who is presenting on this one? Wow. All right. Greg. Good evening, Mayor Council. As you all know now, I was a topic conversation last time, but director of finance and city treasure Greg Robinette. I'm here to talk about

your resolution audit committee resolution and the financial advisory committee resolution um that are included in your packet as draft items this evening. Um so to begin um the audit committee um as has been discussed previously with council, the city currently has an audit committee that has been meeting annually once a year in January to discuss uh the results of our our external audit that is conducted annually. um with our auditors and at they make a basically a motion to move forward um that item to the entire council um as we were researching for the audit committee item and as we discussed with council on December 3rd or December 2nd um that there is also an internal audit function that through council policy 425 is delegated to the uh finance department and actually in that policy it says that we should be reporting those results back to council. As previously mentioned to council, uh we we haven't conducted those since I've been here. Um I think it's frankly a resources issue, but um this would this resolution for the audit committee would codify um all of those activities which include the um final audit, the internal audit. Um the audit committee also considers changes to our audit contract and um additionally it would provide a mechanism to move forward internal audit items that a council member may wish to see um staff take on um through a dedicated meeting for that process. Um the resolution for the audit committee uh provides uh clearly outlines the two council members, the mayor and vice mayor who would be included on that committee and it provides uh for up to two non- voting members as discussed at the previous meeting um to be appointed

on uh two-year rotating terms. Um the important thing here that came up today actually that I think should be included in the resolution is in years past um we have had to have the alternate serve when someone is out of the office and actually we just heard today that the mayor will be out on the 26th and we have a planned audit committee meeting on the 26th so the external audit can come on February 3rd. So, one modification, and I apologize for the oversight as I drafted the resolutions, but one modification I would request council to make is to actually allow for the mayor prom to serve as an alternate in the absence of the mayor or vice mayor uh if necessary. Um I if it's better for council, we can pause and then talk about the financial advisory committee after. Um

if I could if I could just make one point on that. um for Brown Act purposes because of the potential for a serial meeting, we might have if the um alternate steps in to address an uh one item, that item might need to continue to be heard with the alternate um if it continues across more than one meeting. All right, that's very good. Um so we would need to accept a resolution with a modification. Um what happens if the mayor pro term can cannot attend? Then can we go Would it just go down the chain to the next person in line? Uh, we we can establish that. That's not what our current practice has been. That is our current practice actually. I don't think we've ever got further than the mayor protest.

Also, that's also true. Fingers crossed we don't have to, but um I I think that would be something we would look for direction for counsel because I think it's important that it's part part of this resolution. Yep. Uh frankly, I'm happy that we have a resolution formalizing the audit committee when this is adopted. Um because the lack of a resolution over the years has caused some frustration and Okay. Yeah. Council I did I saw you up there. Um I the only other change that I would make is that I would have it be chosen by the rest of the council um just to create balance. So if it's the mayor the and the mayor and the vice mayor, then the rest of the council can pick two other people to um two other candidates to be on that audit committee. um in you know,

are you meaning f the financial oversight? No, just for the audit committee. So, we're going to add two community members to the audit committee to hear when the mayor and uh vice mayor listen to the audit. Um and it says picked by the mayor and vice mayor, but I think for balance, we should have it be chosen by the rest of the council. Um, so that's that would be the only change that I would make to that that it would be a council vote, not a Can can I ask a question before I go to you president? Would that mean that we could bring five different nominees and we would have to vote on the five nominees here or what would that process look like if the council is going to be voting on that?

Well, typically, tell me if I'm wrong, but typically there's a pool. So, people can apply to that and let's say that you had five or whatever, we would vote on three or two. we vote on the two. Um um and I and I do want to point out, sorry not to jump in, but the these two members, it's an up to. So if if we didn't have applications because they're non- voting members, um we kind of made it as an up to. So at any given time, there could be zero theoretically and it doesn't affect the actual committee. Yeah. Um but I just want to add that point of clarification as you So the committee is going to meet. Yes.

If we can get some people from the public to actually be there to be a part of it, great. and it's the 26th, so we'd have to nominate somebody rather maybe informally. I don't believe the resolution can be adopted. And I'm I'm sorry, when the item came forward previously, the discussion was about um you know, whether we we'd be able to have it prep fully prepared as a resolution. There is some cleanup we'd still want to be doing on these. Um conceptually you could take action without the resolution and we could come back with something on that that subsequent but um this is not a whole lot of time to be able to that's fine but somebody could we could without that we could still have somebody

people so since it's an open meeting anybody except other council members canend can attend the meeting. Well, and and to clarify, Jack, you can't come. Um, other council members can attend, but they cannot speak. Um, that that's one of the specific exceptions in the Brown. Bad chance that's going to happen. I think I think we're okay with this may um because this may include up to two community members. That's fine. And uh I'm also fine if you want to change that to those two will be elected by the by the voted by the council. That I'm fine with that change. Okay, let's go to council reser.

I was just going to make a motion to adopt. So you can we can discuss any sort of changes. I don't have any and that includes the adopted changes of Yes. Is that correct? And then also the council would choose. So what are the what are the changes you are making? Just to clarify, mayor prom as the alternate member. That's fair enough. So So I the way I heard the alternates, I'll just try to synopsize them real quick. is that the we would go through an alternate progression list starting with the mayor prom and then potentially calling other council members if necessary if we needed to fill two seats for a meeting. Go ahead Chris.

And I need to clarify because we we don't have an order of priority for the other two council members. Um so we would need the if that's the the desire um we would need the council to establish some order of priority. I think just a mere program is fine. There are chances of we don't need the fourth and fifth will be too much work. Let's hear from councelor Monty's up next. Well, I'm just Are we changing policy? No, we're creating it. We're creating. Okay. So, but are we taking the authority away from May? They're still the They're on it. This is something new. Uh we're just to clarify, were you asking about the authority of the appointments of the two? Okay. These aren't appointments. This is a committee and the council by the Brown Act has the same authority as the mayor to select committees.

Mayor's appointments are different, but this is a committee. Okay. So, there's not an appointment, Mr. Christian. uh the you have discretion when you're creating essentially a new committee as to how you want those appointments to be filled. Okay. Thank you. And so just to clarify so we can make this clean. So you said it's up to us to clarify. I don't think we've clarified. So So the alternate is the mayor pro. I'll make a motion. No, as far as the committee members, the two committee members that are being appointed by the council. So it wouldn't be right now. No, I understand the process. Did you need direct direction as far as the the appointment of those two committee members or

um I think there's still two items I'm a little unclear on the direction on the first is the do you want us to go past the mayor prom or do you if there isn't uh if the uh if we have three members that aren't available do you want us to just reschedule the meeting it seems to be based on stop at the yeah you go to the next person go to the next person okay oh no I'm saying res if three if you can't have the mayor and you can't have the vice mayor and you can't have the mayor mayor prom, you should probably reschedule. I think they just mean I think they just mean the second. So you let's say you have the mayor but you don't have the vice mayor, you'd have the mayor prom. And if you didn't have the mayor, you'd have mayor prom and vice mayor. Yeah. And then if you didn't have if we didn't have

keep going. Agreed. It's just the one. Stop. Good job. All right. Uh and then the other point was um uh as to the process of selecting the other two members. Um do you want to change that to have it vote to the full council? Yeah. And then as a correlary to that, do you want any sort of nomination process or just have the full list in front of the council and then um you would decide via motions? I think that mayor and vice mayor should um appoint or should nominate and we can agree to those two people. Well, I think it should just be I think if it's a pool and then we all vote from that because the people are going to apply to create balance. Otherwise, it's going to be

Yeah, they can they we can they can apply I one suggestion this is hopefully this isn't too messy but if we're going to appoint two and they're two-year terms could we make the first two years one person is one year and the second person is two so that way we get another appointment the next year so that way we keep this rotating every single year. That's how the resolution was drafted. We have a We need a motion motion and I Sorry. Okay. All right. Omary, did you get the direction you need? I didn't get the direction. What do we Yeah. I I'm sorry. I didn't I didn't quite get that on the nomination process. The nomination process. I the mayor and the vice mayor, right? And then the whole council votes. Correct. Yes.

Okay. on those on those appointments. I just think that it could be pretty messy if we're like there are mayor mayor brings these six people and then you're like I give my two votes here, he gives his two votes here, he gives his two votes here and we don't do rank voting. what she's basically I think you're all okay that those two members will be appointed by the mayor but right it sounds like so it's you pick one you pick no they're saying you each pick one and then the full council vote if they're yay or no clear yes and then

and follow up on that and bear with me um if the council doesn't approve the mayor and the vice mayor have to come back with new nominations or does the council have the discretion okay yes well could could Do you then maybe just have an alternate vote so that we would be able to do it the same night? You don't want to have to come back. Um, we're good at coming back. So, we're terrible at coming back. No, sorry. Um, I think we'll bring two. It sounds like a painful interview process for a free position where where nobody's going to make a dime on this committee. So, um,

I think we can't take care of every possible scenario. This is fine. This is fair balanced heed by you. You can't just say that. This is why people hate lawyers. But um we do have to anticipate all of the scenarios where there could be a conflict because then if we don't have it resolved, then why don't we have an alternate? Then mayor and vice mayor will come up with the two names for the next meeting. Sounds great. They're going to be so solid and we have consensus on that. And when is that going to be done? Because the meeting is in January. Yeah. So, this nomination of people would be for the next January. You're gonna have a new mayor and a new vice mayor by the time that comes along. Okay. That that that's accurate. So, we're not going to nominate one for this year.

Um it it would be pretty difficult for us to have something together for this year. Um Oh, it's going to take you a whole year to do this. Uh no, no, I'm sorry. The audit committee doesn't come back again until January. January. So, are you gonna wait to do a nomination until Yeah. I don't know that we're gonna be able to get this done by January 26. So, um, what I would suggest is that we'll put obviously I meant for next year. Yeah. Are you going to have somebody nominated for you meet? So, this Sorry. Um, sorry, I I didn't quite follow. Okay.

Um, so, um, uh, yeah, I mean, that would be helpful in terms of, uh, the direction from the council as to whether you'd want to do the appointments at that time or whether you'd want to wait. Um, frankly, we could also put that off and have you decide on that. We wouldn't have to put that in the resolution. um you could decide on that as to whether or not to the the mayor and vice mayor bring forward an appointment item and if so you could vote on whether or not you want to um hold off on that until the new mayor and vice mayor are appointed. Would there be any chance that they'd have to meet a second time during the year or I think the only reason for that would be if there was an internal audit um because they are taking the internal audit function. Yeah. So that's a good one.

Exactly. I mean that the question I think for council I mean we could do our best to you know start meeting this this year um with the committee um but I'm I'm not sure we have anything to really update them on internal audits that have taken place in the past 6 months. So I we could have one meeting maybe to discuss topics of consideration for potential internal audits as we start to prioritize workload around the internal audit function. Um, I I don't see any other needs for meetings this year other than the one that was previously discussed with council member Adet. In my mind, we would have a meeting in December when the new mayor and new vice mayor are selected as an onboarding meeting and to discuss what the the meeting schedule will look like over the next calendar year. Um, so I could definitely see us meeting in December and maybe potentially sometime in the in the summer months.

Um, just to kind of get a priority of maybe workload considerations to consider. Okay. Okay. So, based on that feedback, I'm hearing it might be good for us to point two people this way. I think so. So, okay. I think I agree. I think so, too. All right. Do you need a vote for that? Do you have enough feedback? Uh, on on that one, I believe we do. And just to be clear, our intent at this point would be to go make modifications to the draft and bring this back on consent. If there's anything that you you see that you think doesn't reflect your direction, you can always pull it off of the consent. Sounds great. All right. Do we need to uh we have a motion and did we get a second? I do not have a Oh, yeah. Mr. Mon second. All right. Let's see if we can get to a 50. All in favor? I I We love each other again, guys. I love it.

And then I might turn to uh Director Robinette as to direction on the um the second committee. I'll give a quick overview if that's all right for council. The financial advisory committee and most council. I know you're on a roll. You're on a roll. You're speedy today. We're almost to that.

So, the the financial advisory committee um a lot of good discussion at the at the meeting on December 2nd amongst council and we did our best to again codify that within the resolution that's in draft form in front of you. Um it would it would provide a advisory role to council non uh they would make non-binding recommendations and they would provide perspectives to the city council on a number of items around budget development, financial priorities, long-term sustainability. Um but again, they would have no decision-making authority um or providing direction to staff. Um as discussed at the meeting, it has a balanced composition. It would contain two council members that would be appointed by the mayor. Um, and then there would be five community members appointed by each council member and voted on by the council. Um, and then the goal, and this is where I'll point out, we did our best to include the items we heard council discussing, but I don't believe it was a all-encompassing conversation. I think there was some conversation of, hey, we'll talk about this more when it when it returns back to council. But the goal was to provide I would call it an aspirational content of what we would hope that the members would include, but it was non-binding in terms of requiring that they have any of those said criteria in terms of maybe being a CPA or being um a CFO or a CEO or something of a a company. So the criteria is aspirational but non-binding. Um, the term alignment, I do also want to point that out because that was a little tricky. I know council had some opinions as to how they wanted that to play out. The way the resolution is drafted is the terms would align with each council member and there would be that the new council member if you were to be replaced as a vote wouldn't appoint somebody new for a year into their term. So they wouldn't appoint somebody in December. They would appoint

somebody the following December. Again, we can make any change to that recommendation, but I um I felt like that would provide greater continuity to the members of the committee so that they're not um just leaving the committee while we're doing important work. Also, an important other item is the meeting schedule in the resolution. We we gave pretty broad flexibility to meet the needs of the committee if there was something they were working on. But we did call out the banual budget development process as a as a time where they might have additional meetings and needs of the committee to meet um to consider and discuss um items that may be presented to council as part of the budget development. Um and then there's a two-year uh sunset provision or re-evaluation clause built into the resolution. With that, um I'm available for any questions. Um

I don't have any questions. I super liked this. Thank you so much. Uh, councelor Odette has questions. Okay. So, I just want to make sure the city manager and the finance director are not on this committee, but you're going to staff.

We're we're there as support for the committee. Uh, if the committee had something they wanted us to provide information to them on. Uh, frankly, one of the items where I I think you would really see involvement from the city manager and the finance director would be around the budget development process as we're uh working on revenue assumptions and getting feedback from this committee as to the revenue assumptions that would be brought to council is an item where I could definitely see involvement from uh the finance director and the city manager. But I it's not mandated participation. It's basically saying, "Hey, if there's a meeting, we expect you guys to be available to the committee if they ask you to or you guys just plan to come. Is there going to be a staff member that's there? How is that going to work exactly?" I

I would envision it being the city manager and finance director unless there was some reason that they did not want us there. Well, yeah. I mean, I would think that uh that they would not necessarily be there unless they're presenting something. Don't I mean that's sort of their job is to pres Yeah, they can present but then if they're going to discuss things they would not have them there for that. So I mean they're not on the committee. No, they're not. They would be giving Yeah, they'd be giving data whatever information they're asking just like our participation.

Okay. So I would just change a couple of um uh I think that the council members should be a vote of the council, not an appointment of the mayor. Um and then I think are so if I read this correctly each member of the council is nominating somebody. Yes. And then we all agree on and then we all vote on that. So each person gives a recommendation and then vote same as the other. And then um

I think that the it says council members serve the committee concurrent with their committee assignments at the pleasure of the mayor and city council. What does that mean? So, to be honest with you, I think I misworded that. I think I learned that actually at the last meeting when um you actually stated that um he makes his appointments and so I think I thought council votes on it and that was what I was saying when I typed that but it I think actually council member you pointed out at the last meeting that it's like a high five item to the mayor. Good job you appointed them. Um but in this case uh

I think it should be the city council. Yeah, like a vote of the council, not a not an assignment, but like we vote on that. And what if what about making that a two-year term that if you're going to commit to that, you make it for two years. Obviously, if you go off council, you go off council, they can fill it, but it's it's pretty heavy um learning curve. So, I don't know that one year is going to do it justice. And also, if you're in a 2-year budget, you might want to see through the two years

to see it come and then, you know, it in action um to sort of see what you created and then how it goes. Um I think would be helpful. So, I'm wondering if the term for council members could be two years unless someone leaves instead of it being the entire time because it says council members shall serve the committee concurrent with their council. Oh, like indefinite. I don't want to do that. I think it's I think I think it could be really helpful for people to be a part of it. It may be that one person is obsessed and wants to be on it forever. I'm not naming names. Um and it could be that other people want to rotate and want to get off of it as soon as possible.

Jack Muns. So that's my input on that one. And then um I feel like it may be valuable for an assistant city manager to be part of that um discussion. Um, but we have a new city manager, so maybe he's gonna want to be a part of it. But t typically, um, even our audit committee, we invite the assistant city manager, um, as a optional attendee. Yeah. Um, in the years past, I think they on the audit committee side, they almost always attend. Okay. And then, um, as far as meeting schedule,

I know you kept it very open, but I would assume quarterly. Is it realistic to think that you would have your quarterly reports for them? Yeah. What would be the soonest? It would be pretty challenging. Yeah. Um, as I I think we talked about on December 2nd,

it would be pretty challenging for us to because I think it's super important that those get to council on the cadence that they typically are delivered to council. And I I would hate to delay that process. And so, to be frank with council, us um getting those reports to council is a pretty tight turnaround for staff. I mean, I know it's six weeks from the the end of the quarter, but we have a closing process of each quarter, and then we have to actually go through all the numbers, make sure all the entries are made, and there's no issues with the information that need to be corrected. And so if we were trying to fit um the quarterly reports as an example into um that I would say would be challenging. But certainly maybe after it goes to council, they could review it and to provide feedback to staff to say, "Hey, have you guys considered um changing this presentation so this is more clear, that is more clear, and helped council make better decisions?" I could see doing that. So almost after council to provide feedback into that loop of uh the information that council's receiving.

Okay. Um All right. Well, then I would make them Oh, sorry. Yeah. I'd make a motion to if we would Well, I don't know if you guys want to go with the changes that I'm asking for. I sure I like that. Could we go through those one at a time? Yeah. um should be taken or whoever the mayor should that the committee will include two members of the council by vote of the council. Does the mayor the mayor says these are the two and then we all vote?

No, just we should just pick. We did this for so so my example of this because Brown Act says that committees can be formed by a vote of the council or by appointment of the mayor. Yes. Um, so but my my thing is the at home. So for the at home we sort of just said who wants to do it and then that's how we started that out and then in June it'll come back again and if somebody wants to do it we'll you know we can swap and whatever. We just it comes back as an item. It says hey is this what the council wants these two people to still be representing for this. And that's another reason why I'm saying two years because you kind of set it and then

No, I like that. I like the two-year I like that two-year portion. Um, you're just saying you don't want the mayor to volunt tell two people. No, I I think I think it should be a vote of the council. Also, you should volunteer. This is not something that's like everybody's going to want to do. So, if you want to do it, that should be your first thing and then and if the council is good with that, you know, I think we should definitely sure appoint and consult. I mean, I think the idea is to make it as least political as possible. So, that's second motion. That's the goal. Let continue to let the mayor whoever the mayor he doesn't he doesn't. So this is a new motion. Okay. Okay. Okay. So

you made one and now I'm in the middle of making let's clarify. You were already doing your motion. Let's finish that. So um the it would be two-year terms by vote of the council and yeah I think the rest is sort of can be done by the committee. It

it might be better to wait for this clarification until council votes. But I I do have a clarification on uh the two-year terms. Would you like to see those um kind of overlapping budget? So you would be appointed the like this year and you would serve two years through the next budget or would you like to see them perfectly aligned with you would start with the beginning of a banial budget development process and then you would kind of stay on the committee through those terms because I think that'll be an important thing if we are going to go that direction of two-year terms

well to get that alignment right. It's like either you get the first year is the performance of that budget and then the development of one or you start with development and then you end on performance. I almost feel like it might be better what we're starting right now that you actually sort of are living through a budget. It it will make you more wellversed for when you actually develop a budget. So if we did it now that's just where where we're at. Can I ask your per can I ask you to weigh in on that? I I could argue both I could argue both things that she just presented. I could argue why both of those were a great option. So I'm wondering

of course you put me on I was trying to put council on the hot seat but uh I I could see value to both because I I think one definitely educates you as you lead into the budget as council member Adet uh articulated. the other one there's you know maybe some buy in and thought process of this is the budget that was adopted and now how can I best understand the way this budget is performing so they're just kind of two tales of a similar coin to be honest with you but I think it's at coun it's really how what council collectively feels would be best

to that point what if it's the fir it's split so the so one of us let's well it's me and Aaron right now so let's say Aaron is the one year and I'm the two-year right now just because that also works with what Forgot about that. Yeah. If it's if it's Aaron is the one year and I'm the two-year and then it swaps. You know what I mean? And then that way you always have one or the other. That does make some sense too because then you have uh you're you're blending opinions at that point. You have different perspectives. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Councelor Duke has been patiently waiting. So yes.

Well, the financial advisory committee was something which I was my idea initially. So I would say that u we should because we have five council appointed members not not sorry five members community members which will be voted by the council. So therefore I'm okay with two members being two council members being appointed by the mayor himself and I would keep it that way so that we have a good mix of uh council representation. See, out of seven members, five are going to be appointed by the council vote. I get it.

Well, we would have a new mayor every year. So, that would mean that they'd almost be one-year terms with your suggestion. And um that may not provide No, two years can be two years. I understand. I see every it has to be staggered every year. You would appoint one. So, we 5.1 and then the mayor appoints two people. Right. Okay. I second that motion. The thing about it is it just the idea is that you make this as least political as possible. So if it's put in one person, if it's a vote of everybody, then it's a vote of everybody consensus. See, the reason I'm comfortable with that is because out of seven members, five will be community members appointed. I'm not talking about the committee. I'm talking about us. Yeah. So yeah,

and by the Brown Act, it's not like I'm asking for something that doesn't exist. This is this is how these work. I was just seconding his motion. So Okay. Okay. So, we've had Do you want to finish your motion, council that? It was just It would be by vote of the council uh two-year terms and it would and staggered and um what does staggered mean? Specifically, she'll be the one-year term and I'll be the two-year term. Okay. And then next year, the next mayor would need to put or the council would pick one more person. Yeah. And then the next year, if I could suggest um please

could we take up the the the term length and the staggering separate from the appointment process just so we're able to get clear direction on each issue? Sure. Okay. So the council members talking about the council members council member terms what um one year and a two-year one year two started. Yeah. Yeah. How about one and two and then there'll be two-year terms but we'll start with a one and two which means we'll have another appointment in one year. Yes. Understood. That's good. Are you good with that? I'm good with that. Does that make sense? I'm good with that. Because I like to get some rotation in for that one part. Yes. Um, so a one and a two to start, but they will be two-year terms ongoing after that. Correct. I'm a yes on that. Yes. You have a five vote. Okay.

Okay. The second one is serving at the pleasure of the mayor or the city or is that really what you meant to say or no? I mean, most people want to reward it since I'm given the opportunity. I think it's pleasurable to serve at the mayor, but I so from um from my perspective, it really is just a question of um authority to remove and um uh my understanding was the intent was essentially the council would have the ability to remove. Um it would not be the mayor's power to remove. It would be that the council council puts it on, council takes it off. And we'll we'll put that in more legalistic language when it comes back that the council puts on, the council takes off. Yeah. Well, we'll five of us vote for our people and then the mayor will put two people on. Right.

That's what I'm voting for. No, my mot Well, Paul's was after you, so we vote on that one. The second one is something different that the separate than what we're talking about on this side. So, um the and sorry, I'm getting a little bit lost in the conversation, but I So, the we still need to resolve the appointment issue. So, we got the terms resolved. need direction on the appointment. In terms of the removal, I think I hear consensus that it's the full council that has the authority to remove. Is that from your Okay. All right. So, we have to vote. Do you want the council to vote for the person to be on or the mayor to appoint the people on? The mayor to appoint and the five of us can vote.

Yeah. Mayor to appoint two, five other to be voted by council. Yeah. And the two two it's a four. It's a 41. May I ask clarification? When we're talking about this item, are we talking about the council members that are serving on the committee? Okay. Mayor appoints them. Okay. And that's for the two and then the next five each of us would appoint one person. One person and that will be voted by the entire but the council. But is it appointment and then council votes? Uh, so your default process under your ordinance would be simply it would be a council assignment. Um, we could do it that way. That means we don't vote. Yeah. Or you could do it as a nomination and then a vote. And then a vote.

Nomination and a vote. Okay. I would say assignment is fine. I would say nomination and a vote. I'm okay with assignment because there are five other members which we'll be voting on. Okay. I think I've heard two assignment and vote. One just assignment. So you want Yeah. I'm sorry. I I need I need clarity. I'm saying assignment. So, can you clarify the assignment? I'm sorry. Yeah. So, so the the question is are the two members that are appointed to the committee assigned by the mayor just unilaterally or does the mayor assign and then it comes for confirmation um to the council? I think assign and confirm. Assignment on the other assignment only. I I I'm hearing three for assign and confirm. Yep. Yeah. Okay.

I think we have given you enough clarity for one minute. Can we move on? So, do we need a vote for this? Do we need to vote for these changes? I will make a motion to except as changed. Accept as changed. Yes. Yes. Second, but you need to for the record. Second. Second. Okay. I already voted. Voting for you. Y. Okay. Also voted for you. 50. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Can we move it faster pace? Faster, pace. Well, let's see where we're at. We have only 15 more items here, it looks like. So, um, no, we don't. 9.1 9.1. Uh, the the center

memorandum of understanding with Reading Tourism Marketing Group. This should be fun.

Jason, let's see if you can build up a better audience. We only have 18 right now. We're down from 24, so it's all on you. Well, good evening, mayor, members of the council. Before you tonight is anou with choose reading that outlines the logistical coordination and supportive services to host an Iron Man event for the next three years. The first event will be held this August. If you recall on October 7th of last year, the city manager's office presented a host venue agreement from the World Triathlon Corporation. That is the corporation that puts on the Iron Man events. We were proposing to sign that agreement directly with them, but after further review, it was determined that it was not in the best interest of the city. Um, this iron man race will incorporate multiple jurisdictions. It's going to start at Whiskeytown Lake where there will be a 1.2 mile swim. From there, it will be a 56 mile bike ride on state highways, county roads, and city roads ending at the civic center. From the civic center, there will be a 13.1 mile run. it will cross the Sundell Bridge and go along the Sacramento River Trail and return back at the Civic. So, we continued working with Choose Reading um and they took the lead and signed that host venue agreement and we continued working on anou to kind of outline our roles and responsibilities. So, the roles that the city is proposing to cover include expediting city permits, providing law enforcement personnel and command post coordination, street maintenance and trail maintenance, sending notifications to impacted city residents, coordination of shuttle service that gets people from the civic center to Whiskeytown Lake to begin the race like street cleaning and waste management services. and choose reading will be taking on roles that include providing complimentary hotel rooms, coordinating

ambulances and medical services, providing infrastructure equipment for electricity, lighting and internet, portable restrooms, setting up volunteer coordination and other roles. Choose reading has also committed financial um commitment to the Iron Man Corporation. um that includes a uh $200,000 payment each year for the next three years. The expected city expenditures for entering into thisou with choose reading to provide the services I listed is $95,000 this fiscal year. That's specifically for trail and road maintenance. And then in fiscal year 27 and 28, it will be $128,000 and $73,000 in f fiscal year 29. The city will see an increase in transient occupancy tax for this event. We will be seeing a lot of racers from all over the country and even international racers. There are currently over 1,000 u registered racers as of today.

Oh wow.

Um and that capacity for this event is at 2500. Racers will be bringing their families and friends and um we are expected to see our hotel at hotels at capacity. Total toot for the for this week is estimated to be at to be at $345,000 and that is an increase of $152,000 from this week historically that the race will be held. Sales tax is also expected to increase, but um it being 1% of all sales, it's pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Um we do know that Iron Man operates a merchandise tent the weekend of the event and they typically see a million dollars worth of sales. So from that, we estimate we receive 1% so $10,000. And this doesn't include what the um the local uh businesses seeing people eating out and shopping at our local retailers. We just know that there will be a bump. It's just very difficult to estimate it. And that concludes my presentation. Um staff does recommend that council authorize the mayor to sign theou and adopt a budget resolution. I'm available for any questions. also available um is choose writing staff. Thank you.

Okay. Uh councelor Resnner. Yeah. Um I have a question actually I have a question actually for uh director many and likely for uh director web. Um, my question, so you can think about it on your way up, is that do we have that 40,000? Did you already have that 40,000 budgeted in community services? I'm assuming the answer is no to that.

No, these um came after the budget process. So, this is not part of any planned expense that we have for these items and they're very specific to the Iron Man event for the most part. Um, so then will you need to be taking that out of we'll need to be taking that out of general fund that wasn't we'll call it general fund slush fund or are you going to need to uh not fulfill other projects that you had already budgeted in our budget cycle?

So this spending would wipe out our O andM that we have for the remainder of the year for regular park maintenance. Okay. Um, we do have onetime capital money that we do use, but those are typically for larger capital projects that we can't afford on a day-to-day basis. And those were selected and planned with the city manager. So, we've actually begun to make those purchases, begun to set up those contracts and start those efforts. So, it' be a lot of undoing of those, but those are typically like risk based assessments on we need to invest in this now versus invest in it later when it could cost us or have a claim or something like that. So, we choose those projects wisely. Um most of those ends up end up being no when we ask um for those funds but um we do have some money there but again it would be problematic for us to unwind that.

Do you have an idea of the types of things that you'll now be saying no to or hypothetically would now be saying no to?

Yeah. So um Kids Kingdom port and place surfacing is on our list. Um we did get a a very severe budget cut in utilities. So, we have to be able to reduce our water consumption, but we also have to install different types of irrigation controllers which will allow us to monitor our water usage more closely. Uh, right now it's like one guy with a series of valves that makes an adjustment. Then we wait for the bill to come in. We see what happens and then we adjust some more. Then we wait to see if the lawn dies. So, we need to be able to be more scientific about it. So, it's a lot of upgrades like that. And then a lot of security upgrades. We actually had um pretty big copper theft um which disabled a lighting circuit that we would like to repair. We've got um numerous complaints about um you know perception of safety along some of the trail corridors. So Mhm.

Yeah. Okay. Same question. Uh Director Web, I know that your budgets are not comparable, but

um similar similarly to director many this these are not activities that were originally budgeted. However, conversely, the streets department has millions of dollars of activities within the budget, and I would anticipate that there will likely be potential savings or overruns through those projects. And at the end of the day, it is very likely that we're able to find the budget to do um additional pothole repairs and other things around those routes. However, I can't guarantee that. And so from purposes of the streets perspective, this is essentially getting budget authorization to do this work. And then at the end of the day, as projects get to completion or activities and we see what streets funding is available within the current authorized budget, obviously we would use that funding first. And if there is an additional need outside of that, once we have the budget authority to do that, then we would simply reimburse ourselves from our streets holding account. I hope I'm using the correct terminology, Director Robinette. Um, assuming those activities are reimbursible, which is my understanding that they are. So, at the end of the day, the the public works activity should have very little to no impact whatsoever on the general fund other than potentially fronting the costs until Streets simply reimbures those activities.

Um, is there a reason why Streets is not paying for the entire thing? I'm not following. Sorry. um that 40 is there a reason why that 40,000 that is coming from community is not solely being held through by streets? It it's my understanding that the 40k is specific to along the river trail which is an asset that public works is not responsible for and therefore wouldn't be something that we could legally spend streets resources on. Okay, makes sense. Councelor Audet. So,

um, so I did some math. So, we have a thousand hotel rooms in the city of Reading. And we have over 660 short-term between short-term rentals and hosted home stays and vacation uh rentals. And if every one of those was booked for seven days during this time, that would bring in a whopping $300,000. Um, so this is not necessarily going to be a money maker for the city, but it is going to be good for businesses within the city. Um, if sales tax is 1 million is 10,000. So this is this is an investment for the city as a whole as far as our businesses in our city for economic development, that that type of stuff, tourism, all that great stuff. All those people are going to come here and then never want to leave. Um, but we're not offsetting costs here. Um, so I'm very unsure how we would be appropriating. This is the 101. So this is a general fund expenditure when we don't have general fund cash to give. I would assume this would come out of your guys' budget. So why are you guys not using it from your budgets and then reimbursing yourselves if need be from your own budget? Because we don't have general fund dollars to give. So, I would think this would need to come out of your budgets.

Uh, public works and community services who just spoke. And I just want to mention um, Choose Reading can elaborate on the amount of hotel rooms. I believe we have over 3,000. The city of Reading has 3,000 hotel rooms. Correct. The city of Reading has 3,000 hotel rooms. Since when? I'm seeing a lot of nods in the audience. So, I see Todd. I'm looking at you back there. Okay. Well, so let's have 30,000. Let's let's stay in order. She had some questions, so let's answer those first and then we'll we'll move on. So what?

So So council member Odette, to your question, essentially you're correct. From the streets perspective, it's very likely that we would have savings within the original within the budget. But until I know that, it makes sense to prepare the resolution and appropriate the funds. Um, and then it would be no different than any other streets eligible cost that when they're completed, there's a check to make sure that they're eligible. Then we work with director Robinette and his team and and the streets um account reimbures the general fund. Well, but the general fund doesn't have the money to do that. So, and and we don't even know exactly how much they have because we didn't do the budget meeting. So, right now, if you want to change an amendment to the budget, which is our current budget that we have, you're going to have to allocate something from what we don't have. And if you're saying we don't have that, we're going to go to reserves. We actually don't have the reserves to pull from that. So, I'm not sure how that I don't where's that money coming from because that's not our policy. If you're going to pull from reserves, um, then you're going to have to have a plan on how you're going to replenish that. And I don't see the plan to replenish, um, for any of these appropriations. So,

Gregorette, director of finance, city treasur. Um, so I I'll leave I'll leave you guys to discuss the the policy impacts, but I did want to clarify the resolution a little bit. Um, the resolution is for the first two fiscal years. Um I think it's about $95,000 in year one and $128,000 in year two. Yep.

Um and as you pointed out um it's pulling it from reserves. So we took a what I would consider a conservative approach given the um assumptions that we we were given from some of uh the other agencies that we partner with visit reading and choose reading in terms of hopeful potential increases. So there could be some revenue increases as you point out. There certainly could be some positive impacts to our economy, but we took a more conservative approach with the resolution by by using fund balance. I certainly hear your concerns over our fund balance. I echo your concerns. Um

and I think that's for council to discuss. There is some one-time money that council could consider um that is not part of the adopted 10-year plan. Um and that's the the money from the rancheria and potential property sales if council so choose. But um that that those are council decisions. I just wanted to explain the resolution. The re and the other thing sorry that the reason we put it in in a specific account um knowing to director Web's point there is no um assurance that they're going to save that level of money that will then be available for gas tax reimbursement. This is again taking an extremely conservative approach that we're going to have to come up with all of it out of what we would call a special events project account. Um so we have a number of those uh events that we support throughout the year. Uh Reading Rodeo, um Fourth of July, uh Big Bike Weekend, I'm trying to think of the other ones. Those are just name a few. Those are the few. So we we wanted to account for this very similarly to those. And I would um I would agree this is a very conservative approach and I would uh ask council to discuss the policy decisions of whether they would like to spend that out of their reserves.

So we have a we have a special account. It's an it's an account to track the expenditures. A lot of times with events like this it helps us for two reasons. One, it helps us to convey the level of effort that the city is putting in by centralizing those costs so that a partner such as choose reading in this case, we could easily pull a report for them and say, "Hey, here's the money that the city spent to support this event." But, um, that's a little different. And this is the other point of clarity that I you actually just reminded me of. If council wanted us to move money amongst from different accounts, the resolution would look very different and we probably have to bring that back to council for adoption because it it would be very different than the resolution before council this evening.

Right. I would think that because we're delaying all the budget talk, we should be delaying any type of appropriations or any type of spending in the general fund. If we're delaying all of our discussion on budget, we are not sure of where we are, and we are behind in our revenues, behind in our reserves, and we are exceeding our expenditures to spend again, not knowing exactly how far in the hole we are and where we are at financially. I don't know how you can appropriate more money out of the general fund. I mean, not only do we not have a plan, we don't even have a clear view of where we where we sit today and how far off the mark we actually are. We just know we're off the mark. So, I don't know how as a policy we can even make decisions like this on appropriations. But when you say special account, you don't mean that there's money set aside. You mean that there we we would put this into the account.

Budget would be put into a specific account dedicated to the Iron Man. Yes. Got it. So that we could track it and easily report out to our our community partners that expect certain things from the city. So that's the reason it's in one specific account. And I just want to be abundantly clear and I think you understand this that the resolution would look very different if you're saying Travis and Michael, you need to save money to fund this operation.

Well, yeah. I would say for a budget amendment in in council policy 406, it does say that you basically if you're going to change it, you have to take it from one thing and put it in another. You can't just come out of out of nowhere. So, when it comes to the um the current where currently we are financially and what monies we actually have to give, we don't even know if the 3.2 million from the rancher would even cover our whole. We don't even know that because we haven't gone over any of the budget items. Okay. So, we don't know if that's enough to cover both our bills, our budget, and any extra money that we would be spending on anything.

All right. Council member Odette, thank you. We're gonna try to move this along. I just have one question and we might lead to a motion. What are the dire consequences if we table this to February 17th? I had a excuse me, I had a brief conversation with Choose Reading earlier and it could impact their agreement with the World Triathlon Corporation. Um, I don't know how big of an impact February 17th would be, but if we delayed it further, um, it could impact the contract, which would mean maybe potentially cancelling Iron Man.

So, let's just get clarity. I mean, um, the whatifs, right? So, we're we have our special meeting February 17th. We're doing revenue assumptions. We will have budget discussion. Is is there major harm to punt this to our regular council meeting on February 17th?

Okay. Well, I'll make a motion we delay it. Second. Okay. So, let's let's ride through the motions. Let's see where we're at. Uh, councelor uh Munz has motioned to accept the resolution as stated. Is is there a second on that motion today? Okay. Um, Council Adet, you were making a motion or no? I'll make a motion to delay this till we have our budget meeting. Um, okay. So, that specifically, are you comfortable making that motion February 17th or do you have a date? So,

um, if if I have a question. if the budget meeting for the 17th, what is that going to entail? Because if you're going to delay the Q2, we're still not going to know what our starting cash is, what our um what the what the assumptions going to look like. We still will not have a clear picture by Yeah. The direction I heard from council is we would discuss revenues on February 17th. Okay. So, when can you do Q2? because we were going to have to have a Q2 in order to know what our cash reserves are and where

my my thought would be first or second week in March based on the arrival of the new city manager uh having him review consider and make recommendations to council on any potential budget modifications typically those are on the expenditure side right of course um so that I would think that that would be first second week in March if we wanted to align it with maybe a second budget workshop where we talked about expenditures um that we we've done that in the past. I think it makes a lot of sense, but I would I would leave that to council and the new city manager. Okay. So, Jason, would would the last week in or the the third Tuesday in March be too late? I need to hear I'm looking at choose ready because they're they've been work working directly with Iron Man.

I want to hear what she says. So, and may I ask a great event one more question as well. How much time do community services and public works need to get the work done? So if the item is delayed to approve the expenditures and we receive direction from council at the third uh week in March and then at that point direction is provided to community services and public works to move forward on completing the work. Is that enough time to meet the contractual obligations for the event? Okay. I have a wild Go ahead. You can

mean by that. Are you going to do the street Mike? Yeah. Yeah. So, I can director Webb, I can talk to Car's point there. From a public works perspective, there would be adequate time between March and the event. um if council so chooses that uh more time's always better but it's a couple weeks worth of work um that we can do in-house so we can make that work. I mean can I ask you a quick question? Yep. Go ahead. I mean is your like two of you are proposing this to postpone it? Your contention is there's a do you think there's a possibility that 3 4 weeks later you might say no we're not funding it?

No. On principle, Mike, on principle and based on what council policy it is, we need to have discussions about revenue assumptions at least to start there so that we can decide how much money there my personal so that we can decide how much money it is that we have to spend and then I feel comfortable allocating funding for things once I know how much money it is that I am working and where it's going to come from. No, I understand that part. What I'm just saying is because the amount they're asking for is what uh.1% of general fund or so or less per year.

Yes. Or it's the or it's the month of March for the Civic. No, I'm just I'm just I'm just see but this is.1% compared to Civic. You're talking 1.2 million versus 100,000. I'm just curious because when I run a business, if I make a budget for a year, sometime things go up and down. they go in cycle they go in waves and if I delay every capital expenditure or every small expenditure which is.1% of my revenue just because last month's budget was revenue was less than expected

I can tell you my business wouldn't be able to run so I'm just curious are you guys contemplating that there is a possibility even if it is very tiny one that yes you may actually not fund it it's not about if is about where it's coming from. You have to decide where it comes from. It's either going to come from community services or it's going to come from public works or if we have money in the general fund, it could come from there. But we don't actually know where that money is right now. As of Q2, your your cash reserves are negative 11.4 million. So, we're not in a good financial place right now. We have to know where we are. And because you guys keep punting on actually finding out, you don't get to spend money. You don't you don't have

I'm just saying that this this kind of indecisions and delays can actually hurt our longstanding reputation. Correct. Which is why you're supposed to have a budget meeting. Let's go one at a time here and and go at a time and that is why that is why I think that we need to really have this is like a big ocean liner. If you make certain jerky movements in an ocean liner, you can be in trouble. So for that reason this is a very.1% is a very small amount of our total revenue. It's not it just sends you absolutely do not have to agree with any of my principles. It's actually fully within right please don't interrupt me.

No you are interrupting me right now. Please stop absolutely gave you enough time to speak but you're interrupting me right now. Counselors counselors when we go one at a time it it allows this emotion and everything. So let's let one person speak and then we can have very fluid and good conversation here. So I'll let him finish and then we can go to you. Is that okay? That works for me. Right.

So my feeling is that these things are basically wasting our time and delaying the projects and creating uncertaintities. If we keep doing this, this is not a good look for the city governance. And for that reason there is a I can understand those decision to be delayed for a million dollar or $2 million worth of $100,000 for iron man event which in my opinion is everybody wants it. It just looks silly to me. Okay, council reser.

I'm merely saying you're allowed to second. Please feel free to participate and second Jack's motion so that we can then vote. I'm also allowed to second council member Aette's motion to wait until we have a discussion about the general fund because of what council policy is and because I believe that it is prudent financially to know how much money that I'm assuming that I have to work with before I'm spending money. Okay, that that's a very general. I just want to be clear that if you would like let's use our buttons if we need to just gohead since it's cancel our debt. So

I just want to be clear that our reserves are negative 11.4 million as of Q2. So I I this is not coming out of nowhere. We do have to get a handle on our budget and that is not how we're going to end the year but it is a indicator of the health of what's happening with our finances and we should be moving forward with dealing with how much money we have and having that discussion. So delaying the budget means you delay budget decisions. These are budget decisions. So, I make the motion that we would bring this back up March 17th um for reconsideration then on March 17th. March 17th or February 17th.

March 17th because he said he's not going to be able to get us our financial Q2 doesn't happen till then. And you if you don't know because by by then you'll know what your reserves are, if you have reserves to actually fund any of these things, okay? um and where it's going to come from in the budget because if we don't have the reserves, he's going to tell these guys they've got to find it in their budget. Okay. And or the Let's let's see where we're at. We do have a motion and which is why I asked Jason, would March 17th work and that's why they said yes, March 17th would work. Councelor Aette, thank you. Um we Let's see where we're at on this. Uh councelor Muns, we do have a motion. Did we get a second on Councelor Mun's motion? Was there a second on that?

I'll second it. Okay, we did have another motion on the floor. Uh, Council Adet wants to move this to March 17th. Uh, was there a second on her motion? Would you cons Can I ask a question? Would you consider if we had revenue assumptions earlier? So, that's why I asked the finance director, what's a what's a good time for us to really know if we what we have in the general fund? And he said that was going to come back in March. Okay. So, is that a no consideration or yes? So, uh, on Greg's, um, recommendation that we wait to actually know where we are with our So, we're not our reserves. So, then is what we have.

So, because they because they moved the budget meeting to February 17th, we will no longer get a Q2 February 17th because they have to do the work that happens on the 17th. That pushes it to March. Okay. So, we're not going to get our Q2 report until March, which is going to tell us what our tenure is, which is going to tell us what our deficit is for this year and what it is for next year. So, we'll know how much money we have. So March 17th, I'm fine with February 17th considering this on February 17. You just wouldn't be able to know what your reserves are so you would know if you could spend from your general fund. There's not a second on hers. Would you like to make a motion for February 17th? I'll make a motion for February 17th. Okay. I will second that just to carry conversation forward. Um I can I can support that. Support that.

What I'm let me let me like add clarity here. as long as we are discussing the things like we were going to supposed to be discussing this evening. Yeah. So this is this the reason why you have the meeting right now is because then on February 17th you'd actually be able to have the conversation about where we are but because they've delayed that now you won't know where we are till March 17th.

Okay. Councelor everybody has made very good points here and you know from my perspective I I I see what uh councelor Duka has also said is we I don't want to politicize this thing. This is something we probably would have said yes to anyways and we'd be kind of nutty to really not allow this event to happen and and see a waste of 2,000 athletes coming through here potentially millions of dollars of spendings. So without politicizing this just because of earlier decisions today, I think we should be realistic and said we were going to say yes to this anyways and um we would have found a way to do this. So we do have a motion in a second to table this to February 17th. We're going to take a vote all in.

So, what happens if you violate council policy about spending on reserves you don't have? How does that work? You just Nobody cares. It's a violation of policy and it doesn't matter. Let's let the attorney answer that and then we'll So, no, there are no consequences. Oh, sorry. No, no. The the policy doesn't have any teeth to it, if you will. Um it is direction to staff to go ahead and make sure that we're bringing forward um uh you know recommendations that are in line with with the council's uh desire but ultimately is the council's prerogative to decide what it's going to do on the reserve levels. Okay. So if they just want a deficit spend they can do that. He he he answered his question. I'm going to vote yes. And has everybody voted council or death? No.

Okay. So councelor reszer that was your motion to move and I just voted against myself. Yes sir. Just clarifying I I'm allowed to do that. Paulain from Absolutely. You're allowed to do that. Thank you. That That's like a Mark Councelor Mark Bazano. It was a Markana move. I love it. I love it. Turn back the clock. Okay. Um let's move on to our next item here. So, um this is development services 9.4A. I promised we did vote yes. I promise we're getting to the racetrack soon, so hang tight. Um development services 9.4A. Consider budget resolution regarding nuisance abatement for 825 industrial street by the city of reading. Okay, let's get through this.

Yes, good evening, honorable mayor, members of the council. Just quickly to tee up the discussion, then I'm going to pass it off here to code enforcement supervisor Seth Dressler. But um certainly just want to indicate that staff understands the precarious nature of the budget and wouldn't be coming to you tonight uh otherwise unless we thought it was sort of an urgent need. And so just a few points. The building condition is rapidly deteriorating. Um, we see an escalating drain on city services that um, you know, our police chief and fire chief can speak to. We've had two fires in the past year. Um, there's a pending tax sale at the county in in February that we were trying to get out in front of as well. Um, there's zero dollars budgeted for abatement. We do have an abatement account in our department, but currently uh, no money budgeted to do this activity. Um, but the department has held two positions vacant now for some time. So, there is some salary savings in the department that could potentially uh, offset some of these costs incurred. So, um, we have emerging information as of just Friday after the agenda went out regarding the receiverhip item that, uh, Seth's going to outline for you, though. So, that might be a more favorable option that we'd like council to weigh in on and give us, uh, some direction tonight. So, with that, I'm going to pass it off to Seth and we'll, uh, quickly brief council and look forward to getting direction from you. Thanks. Greetings. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of council. Seth Dressler, code enforcement supervisor, city writing. As Jeremy stated to the item, I'm bringing before you tonight as a request council to approve bud budget resolution to fund nuisance of a 825 industrial street, a public nuisance property that's escalated from co-compliance issues into persistent public safety hazard. I have some slides here we can work through.

Five Red Bulls. I found it. Took it took a second to to find itself. So,

all right. Thank you. So, as you can see, uh some photographs of the property here in its current state. Uh these photographs were taken um just this past December um after a a pretty big fire that occurred on the property. Um this property has been known to uh be vacant and unsecured. Uh properties like this are magnet for repeated occupancies, fires, and emergency responses. Um this property here we might all know in the past was an entertainment venue, a bar, a nightclub. For the past uh decade plus it has been a public nuisance draw. So a little more on the background, multiple fires over several years. Um just this year alone we've um had two major alarm fires where we had uh multiple staff show up to put out fires you could actually see from the street and fire has uh fire has told me fire administration that they've had actual smaller warming fires that they've had to put out over time out within the past 10 years. Um, again, this property has has been repeated uh unauthorized has excuse me, I'm a little nervous, council, repeated unauthorized entry and ongoing hazardous activity. Um, every time I've shown up on site, there's been uh homeless people residing inside um bringing things in, starting fires. uh structural deterioration has continued to worsen um after every event fire major event that occurred uh on December 16th which you'll see here in front of you. Uh this was a large fire that used 24 fire personnel, five fire apparatus uh in the way of trucks uh and

more than two hours of firefighting resources. um one day before the administrative hearings board meeting where we were taking this forward to get the order that you see uh attached here before you with the staff report on December 16th. We had a large fire that occurred at the structure. Uh structure was occupied by at least 5 to eight people. Um and like I said that took 24 fire personnel over two hours early morning hours um to put out that fire. Uh that was during a rain event too. Uh, moving on. So, as you can see, a few more pictures here just to kind of show you the severity of the event. Um, the remaining pieces of the structure, I'm actually calling them pieces. Um, there's not much more left to the structure. Um, and as time goes on, it's it will continue to deteriorate. Um, so some abatement options that we've considered here. um rather than just coming to you and asking for money, we we've done a little bit of research to try to come up with some other options. So, first option is direct demolition, and that would be, you know, to eliminate the long-standing nuisance quickly, right? We're reducing that public safety risk. Uh we're going to relieve ongoing and unbudgeted demands on police, fire, and code enforcement because after all, um once this has been declared a nuisance, it's no longer really budgeted for. Um, so two, our second option, uh, outside of giving us that money to spend on direct demolition, uh, would be to wait for the tax auction to take place. Um, this would be a highly uncertain option, um, as we don't know who's going to take the property, um, what means that they even have to, uh, abate the nuisance on the property, how willing they are to work with us. And what this also doesn't do is it doesn't address any immediate safety risks um as as a direct

demolition would. Um and the property will continue to be uh occupied, increasing the likelihood again that we're going to have to run back out there to put out fires uh or respond for other emergencies or public service responses. Um and then further uh the expected slowdown of just having a new owner even if that owner is willing. So a third option and this is kind of I think maybe potentially a little bit of a pivot point here. Um so some developments have occurred and since I wrote this staff report to you the receiverhip um that I had mentioned in there has actually shown uh potentially to be much more viable option than what we had seen before. Um so since the staff report was finalized those conditions have evolved such um after meeting with a receiver who said she's totally her group is totally willing on taking on this project. Um a perceiver a receiverhip is a legally viable. It's a little bit slower option than a direct demolition. Uh it's definitely a faster option than number two or waiting for you know a tax auction. Um but it's a little more resource intensive. So, we got to get this in front of superior court. Um, but once we get this in front of superior court, largely the balls in their court. Um, and we just we watch them work this into compliance. Um, so the fiscal impact here on on this is so code enforcement is requesting 40,000 based on uh the budget that we had for demolition. Um, excuse me. Based on um the uh cost of demolition, we got a couple of um proposals and those came in about 30,000. And so for demolition, dis debris disposal, and reasonable contingencies,

uh we're requesting $40,000 to cover all of those. Um these costs while they are eligible to be recovered um in the case of actually doing the direct demolition um and being up in front of the tax sale, it would be less likely that we would recover the entire amount. Um again, this pushes us over, you know, to to go back to our number three pursuing receiverhip. Um however, I wanted to bring this to council so that you can make a decision. uh help us make this decision here. Um so a little bit in closing, right? There's a clear clear and ongoing public safety risk whether we act or not tonight. U the city does have the lawful authority to act right now um and directly demolish this. Um the costs are reasonable given uh what the current state of the property and the ongoing draw. Um, you know, we're asking for 40,000 now, but this could remain for years and eventually, you know, we would probably spend 40,000 on that tag. Um, so this action directly supports two council priorities, right? Public safety by improving the safety where people live, work, and play. Um and then government of the 21st century uh by trying some some new options here with receiverhip or just going ahead and getting things done uh with the direct abatement. So uh based on recent developments staff's anticipating receiverhip as the most viable and effective strategy uh if a receiver receiverhip is utilized those costs are expected to be less than those associated with direct demolition. In fact, they could be zero depending on what we find. Um, and in any case, uh, if we're given the money tonight, if that money is not used to abatement because we do pursue receiverhip and we find that to be the best option, uh,

those monies would be returned to the general fund. Available questions. I I've got one question. Sorry to pick on you, Chief, but I I know we've recovered a lot of drug money, and if this is a public safety issue, are we able to direct some of that money collected to be able to take care of a public safety issue? Is that a creative way? I think you're referring to asset forfeite funds. Um, those are limited by statute in terms of specific uses. I couldn't tell you the full um range off the top of my head, but I believe they're specific to law enforcement uh rather than code enforcement. Council Datad, I see you're on here. So, Seth, you did a great job.

Thank you. And don't let my next comments diminish that great report. You did a great job. Um I don't think we have any money to give you. Um why why aren't we using abatement? Comments. Don't we have a fund specifically for this type of thing? Um in the past, we did have a fund um in which I have used that money and largely I that would be an autonomous venture. I would never even need to bring something like this to you guys to make a decision on. Um, however, um, those funds, well, that fund is empty because you haven't. So, we used some of that fund. Um, however, um, the remaining dollars in that fund were taken um by the city manager for some other reason. My question,

what was what was in there, if you don't mind me asking? I I think there was probably about $60,000 left in there. Maybe 80,000. Yeah. So Greg and I are are consulting over here. He's got some additional detail regarding that. He says it's not a separate fund. It's within the general fund. So I'm going to let him speak to that. But is it sort of earmarked for abatement type things? And does it get collected from code enforcement?

So two points of clarification real quick. First, yeah, we this type of activity we would put in a dedicated account much like the previous conversation around the Iron Man for tracking purposes also frankly so we could put it on the tax roll if and when that became necessary. um through a nuisance abatement lean assessment. Um the second part uh I know Jeremy mentioned earlier they have some salary savings within their department. If council wanted to explore re rediverting salary savings uh that would require a different resolution for consideration. Okay.

Uh the resolution we brought would require us to use uh just general fund reserves but um we could bring a different one if council so chose to utilize salary savings. That's not something that our we administratively could do through the council policy. Um the council policy that allows appropriation transfer. Um while it can be interpreted somewhat broad, generally speaking, um it does not allow you to use money that was intended for one purpose for a completely different purpose. And in this case, that would be salary savings that you're now using for nuisance abatement. They they're nothing similar. So that would require at least in the same department, just not the same use.

Yeah. Exactly. That's why it would require council action and then we could not do it administratively because it's not the same use. But but you have that in the budget. So would it be possible to bring that back? If that's what council would prefer for us to look at and bring back in that form, we can absolutely do that. Well, I would make the motion that we bring it back from savings from that department to cover that cost. Okay. Council reser. Um, maybe I missed this, but have we gone over I mean, sorry, have we gone after the property owner? I know that that's a precarious sort of situation at the moment.

Yes, extensively. So, um, while he was still alive, um, we we were on him on every single thing we could get, citations, phone calls, emails, trying to get voluntary compliance. Uh, largely he he could care less about anything that we tried. Um, and now now he's a deedent owner. Um, actually it's it's owned by Fossil LLC. Um, to only have the one managing member of George Summers who is deceased. Um, so yeah, it's been tough moving forward without having anybody to try to work with. It would have been far easier fire just let it burn to the ground instead of being so

aggressive. Um, can we use this as a training facility for another fire for them to work on? I mean, can we can we Okay. All right. There's not a lot of bite left in that building. All right. Yeah, it still cost you money. So, that's some clarification. Yeah, council. Uh I my motion is that they bring back bring this back with it being paid for by code enforcement's department with their um savings but it's within their department different use but within that code enforcement department's budget bring back the third bring back as soon as possible. Yeah, as soon as you can. I'll second that motion. Could you bring that back on the third set?

We got Yeah, that should be doable. Okay, bye. And um yes. Yes. All in favor? Yes. I I I moving along. We guys um if I could just clarify um I believe that the intent would likely be to bring that on consent given that this was council direction. So sounds great. That's fine. Okay. All right. Okay. Moving along. Let's keep the energy going. So um we have a couple more items to get through. Longest. We have a 9.6D. 6D consider second amendment to the design contract for Panorama Park in the city of Reading. Welcome back, Travis. You could just put the cart club.

Thank you, honorable mayor. Members of the council, I am back. We will bring the energy up as much as we can at nearly 10:00 here.

Get this PowerPoint going and roll right through this thing. So, I'm going to start with kind of a high level overview of our project and remind you um what we're up to and why this has been important and how we've got here today and what we need to move forward with this effort. So, uh start with this brief update here. This is actual rendering of the project itself. Uh the Panorama Park um yet to be named as we learned with our uh naming policy earlier. That will come to you at some point. Uh this is the project site. This is at 950 Lake Boulevard. Um for those that have been here forever, the uh I think this works. Oh jeez. That down there is Buckeye uh middle school. Now it's Rocky Point Charter School, but it was Buckeye when I went there. Um and so there is a huge neighborhood that surrounded this area. It's an older um annex area for the city, but it has not been developed um sort of to the same standards that we have seen throughout the rest of the city. So, it's park deficient. So, we have been working on building a park site since 2006 here. This project is sort of the culmination of those efforts. Um brief look at the timeline going forward from this point. We expect to have construction plans complete April 2026, which puts us in hopefully a summer 2026 construction season. That project is going to take up to 18 months to complete and we hope at the end of 2027. We are doing a grand opening and everyone is invited. This picture is to remind us of how long this has taken unfortunately that that is during the pandemic. Uh my daughter's in that photo. My son I don't think could walk and um here we are today getting close to going out to bid. But construction projects sometimes have a long story and this one has many twists and turns. So scope of that project is that is a 10.53 acre site. It has a 22,000 square foot resiliency center which we'll talk

a little bit more about what that means. Playground, dog park, sports field, skate plaza, splash splash pad, shade structure, all the normal park amenities with some parking, lighting, and a disc golf practice area. Many of these are components of different grants. Each grant requires you to do something different, but we're able to use their money to sort of unlock uh more of the project budget and make this less reliant on city funding. So, to date, we've been able to secure $23.75 million in outside funding. So, that's money that was otherwise going to go to LA or the Bay Area or somewhere else. We were able to bring that into um Reading specifically. And we have leveraged all of that with just 1.5 million in park development funds. uh to remind you, park development funds are not funds that we can use on maintaining parks. They only used to add capacity or develop new parks. So, hit that button one more time. Oh, uh this approximate $5 million in need. So, this is something that we're going to talk about. Um this is hopefully something we can talk about February. Um there's still a gap. We have not been able to close that gap with other grant applications. There are other programs out there. we've not been successful in that, but getting four grants to fund the same project is also a feat in and of itself. So, I'm proud of the progress that we made there. Um, this is the sort of remaining piece. It's not going to rely on the general fund and I'll bring a funding strategy for council to consider in the future that again does not affect the general fund, but um also once we are able to do that and kind of secure that, a lot of local funders like to be last in so then we can go shop it with some local funders as well to kind of reduce that. So, um, this is just sort of a list, uh, well, it's exactly a list of why we've considered this project in the past and what this project will do for the city of Reading. So, first and foremost, this is going to function as a purpose-built evacuation center or shelter. It is designed specifically to do that day in and day out if it needs to, but also be a

recreation center um, day-to-day if it if we are allowed to. So, we don't have that many emergencies, but as we saw just a few weeks ago, we did actually fire up an evacuation center, which then transitioned into a shelter. That shelter relied on an outside third party group to come basically unlock the facility and the Red Cross to activate it. But if we have our own center, we can actually do that sort of work oursel. We have the plans in place. We're familiar with the facility. We know what contracts are in place. Um, it's not that we aren't able to do that in a third party facility, but having control and having the keys yourself speeds these sort of things up and allows us to have good planning models and good ways to execute on projects like this. Um, which always come at the worst worst time. You know, it's midnight on a Sunday and we're going to fire up an evacuation shelter. So, having our own space is definitely helpful. And as we learned in the car fire, having multiple spaces is key to our success in serving the community because during the car fire, we started at Shasta High School and then the fire got close to Shasta High School. So we went to Shasta College. So having multiple options is key. Plus the state has found that we need to prioritize projects like this and continually invested in this over multiple grants because in times of largecale evacuation, you can have mass migrations. think uh events like not that we're going to have a hurricane Katrina, but think about Hurricane Katrina. They had a sports venue full of people. Um we do not have capacity in the North State for that. So this again will be the mo the only purpose-built evacuation center in the north state. So this is going to be very key at some point down the road and we will be thankful that we have tackled it and got tons of basketball games and youth sports along the way and taken advantage of a pile of state funding. So, what that center would do is offer uh immediate need or immediate aid in emergencies. So, that's food, water, shelter, and long-term programs uh that um essentially build resiliency in the community. So, that could be counseling, it could be health programs, could be recreation. Um it's sort of a community hub. And as someone who grew up on Lake

Boulevard, I can tell you there's not a lot of resources provided by the city to that group up there. So, this would be a worthwhile investment in the northwest quadrant of town. We also have a severe lack of gym space in the city. So, this project goes a long way to addressing those needs. Uh we actually have a standard that has been adopted since 2004 of one gym per 10,000 residents. Currently, we're at one gym per 17,000 residents. That includes the sports park and it includes some partial credit for schools, but we don't control schools. So, um, it it accounts for what we have available, but we only control really one facility. So, this will bring us to a ratio of 1 to 14,000. So, taking us some way to addressing our need in full. And it fits a lot of the youth sports needs. So, we have two indoor basketball courts. We know um that we've done some studies and work with council in the past to actually look at doing largescale basketball facilities. This is something that's more our speed. Um, but we still have a huge need. This actually won't even address it fully, but it is a good start. Uh, like I mentioned earlier, we are park deficient in that area. If you were to grow up in that neighborhood, it is a threemile trek to get to a playground. Um, that's that can be very difficult for some families, especially in this quadrant specifically. I think it is that um there's hundreds of of homes without access to a vehicle. So the state actually provides you metrics on that, but also that the um I believe it is like apartments and mobile homes are the predominant housing type in that area. So it's again um we're dealing with a lower level of income and that can be another barrier to access when you have to travel to a facility. Uh and all of those reasons and the priorities that council has set has led us to including tonight bring this item to council over 15 times now. So, we've heard a lot of discussion about that. Um, we'll take one little look at our funding matrix. So, I had this uh made

up so that we can actually see where all the funds come from. These are all the specific grants that fund this project and what they fund specifically. So, the uh first, third, and fourth are all state grants. The second grant is the one that we're here to talk about tonight. That's the ORLP outdoor recreation legacy partnership program. That one is a partnership between state parks and national parks. And I bet you can guess how well that works sometimes. So, um the state has had um limited office hours since the pandemic and the national parks offices were gutted during the uh Doge era. So, things have really slowed down. So, that's impacted us and that's why we're here tonight. But um I'm happy to provide this matrix if anyone wanted to look at it or or needed some additional information from it. But it does help show what we've been able to leverage with our small investment of $1.5 million in park development funds. Here's a little bit of the site layout. Um I've also included a little higher level. Um this is kind of actually what it would look like um from an aerial perspective. So we have on-site parking. What one of the really cool things is, if I can get that to work, is that this actually can function as a food distribution or vaccine type thing if we ever had to get back to that where the whole site has one way through and the traffic can leave without even crossing over itself. So, it has this highle emergency response built into the actual site itself in a way that we don't see in school campuses and and churches and things like that. So, we've been very cautious or very deliberate on how we've actually designed this, knowing where vendors would go and exactly what Red Cross needs and who's going to do what. And then it eventually gets built into the city's EOP, and we understand exactly how we're going to activate this facility in the future. So, we did a lot

of work with fire, with the sheriff's office, with Red Cross, and other groups that respond to emergencies to make sure this is going to function in the future exactly the way we intended to. Um, again, here's another rendering that we saw on the opening slide. I know it looks um pretty complex, but it's actually kind of a an easy um well, I wouldn't say easy, but a a more budget focused build in that it employs a metal building. So, it's a kit that you order and then it's dressed up. So, we're able to find a way to make something look nicer than it really will be. Um, and again, having the state come in as a funding partner is very helpful for us. Uh we actually have some other funders on online that are building material suppliers that we'll be bringing back to council as well that can help contribute to this project by providing things like windows and doors at either a discount or subsidized price. But uh we'll be bringing that to council when we talk about funding options. Here's an interior shot from that metal building. Um I'm sad to say my one of my favorite parts is that fancy ceiling that actually got um value engineered out. Uh, so that's no longer part of the project, but it would have been a very quiet gym had we been able to afford it, but it's not um wise for us to just keep spending money on updating renderings. So, um maybe not quite as nice as this rendering looks uh when we get done with this project. So, what we're here tonight for specifically is we need to continue progress with this project. And so, when I talked about that grant, the ORP grant, we were actually awarded that grant in June 2024. It has taken this long to get a contract and I was just told today it's great news that I should see it in two to three weeks which has made me um I'm more hopeful for how long I'll have hair because it has been getting stressful the timeline that we are under with um all of these funding timelines from all of the various grants. It is very hard to layer that many different requirements onto one project. But as we wait for that full

authorization for the $4 million grant, we need to continue progress with the project. And so that means that we need to continue our design efforts to be able to get our plans ready for bid in April. And that's sort of the magic date that makes everything else in the schedule work. So I have to hit that target. So what I'm asking for is to we already have one funding source which was outlined in the st one funding source which was outlined in the staff report which is the EHCP grant that's funded it's budgeted it's good to go we need additional authority to amend the contract for that grant and then we need a temporary funding source while we wait for our contract from OLP to be able to fund the design work that work will all be reimbursed by the grant agency as soon as we get our contract and we will be able to hit a construction timeline if we award that work and continue our progress. So, we're asking for a contract amendment and a use of money that we will be otherwise reimbursed in the future from that grant. And um that's really it. I know it's somewhat complex sounding, but it allows us to keep moving forward on our project. um basically for the $75,000 that we need to temporarily utilize until we can get a reimbursement and that's it. I am available for any questions.

Council on debt, when do you when do you expect that reimbursement? So reimbursements um can be made. Each grant has a different reimbursement schedule. Some are kind of as you choose to do it. Some are quarterly, some are monthly. So, as we move um into construction, we will just be seeking reimbursement based on the schedule provided by that grant. Those change over time, though, so I can't say specifically when, but we do timely reimbursements as often as possible. So, no less than quarterly normally. So, it could be just a couple months. Huh. So, in like two years? No, it would be in less than a couple months. So, essentially

less than a We're going to construction in a few months. we'd be going to construction this summer, but you would be asking for reimbursements quarterly or monthly. So, we had a grant meeting uh last Thursday and that grant agency said, "Okay, now that we're getting to construction, as soon as you guys start getting more and more invoices because the city starts to put more and more on the line, we then do C or monthly reimbursements." And so, we're just constantly sending over invoices as uh pro progress payments come through the public works team. They come over to us, we get the invoices, we tie them all to the appropriate funding and then we send in a report and we say this is essentially what we are owed by that grant. They typically take a retainer 10% until the very end of the project and at the very end of the project once you do the closeout and all your paperwork's in, then they hand over the rema remainder of the cash. So that's like the very typical

when you say that it'll be reimbursed. If this 75,000 is paid, you'll be reimbursed in a few months. Yes. Okay. So why not use your own budget and then just get reimbursed yourself? Community services doesn't have this kind of money allocated to it. So we would not be able to use any bud. We don't have a budget to I think Greg wants to help. He's gonna

Greg has identified a place for it. He's going to answer the internal finance questions. I've got the external ones. So, I I discussed this item with Travis in advance of the meeting and Travis I my question to Travis was well what if O RLP am I getting the acronym right? RLP doesn't approve it. Who is funding this? And Travis said well that unfortunately would be park impact fees. So the resolution is utilizing park impact fees. The expectation is that we will receive a revenue as soon as we have a signed contract. So, in the absence of that revenue, I I think is the question that you're asking, we would utilize park impact fees. So, it would not impact the general fund, but it it would reduce the amount of park impact fees available to Travis's staff moving forward.

So, this actually doesn't tell me what fund it's coming from. I just noticed that my staff didn't have me review it. Um, I don't know if it's an issue with what was displayed or if they just didn't put it on there. I'm not really sure, but I'm a little Well, is it park Is it park funds? It's kind of Yeah. If you look at the general fund. No, it's not general fund. If you look at the um top little ribbon uh right above that table you're talking about, it says 152. Do you see that? It's Yeah. Well, yes, that's where the increase is. So, that's what it's going into. Yes. That's where you're appropriating money. That's where I'm taking it from. It would be from fund 152 park impact fees.

Well, no. This this isn't this is all wrong. Just it's all wrong. But the source the source of funds just says fund balance. It would be it would be from the park impact fee. This is not coming out of general fund. No. So it is coming out of the park park impact fees until which time they are reimbursed from the grant. Okay. So it's not general fund. It is not general fund. Okay. I did notice that the account the account description or the account descriptions are there but the account number is not there. And I don't I'm not really exactly sure why, but um the I know what incount it's intended to be. Well, it's t Well, because it talks about being absorbed by the general fund, so I was unsure of where the money was coming from. Yeah, don't worry about that.

Okay. As long as it's not coming out of does not come out of the general fund. That was confirmation I made with Travis leading up to this. I'll make a motion to I'll second. Uh, councelor Duka, I just have a quick question. Just a quick question because one line mentions here on the second page uh

fourth, I think say third or fourth line. It is expected that construction costs will exceed current allocation by several million dollars and staff anticipates returning to council in the next couple of months with funding options for the remaining needs which will include loan options that utilize whatever right. So that several million dollar extra you may end up asking us again.

Yeah, this has been the case with this project for quite some time that we know there's going to be a gap at the end. Um and that's what I would eventually be coming back to council for essentially taking uh just to kind of reveal where we're headed. Using our park development funds that we acrew in the future today. So you would be taking a loan at out against your park development fund and then as fees are generated by new construction in town, you would be paying off that loan. That can be an internal loan or an external loan. It's something that's happened in the past and it is a way that we can build this project out now. it will stifle some future park development. But if there's no appetite for um filling or building new parks, you know, in the short term as we go through our budget issues or or these discussions, well, then maybe it is to your benefit to use those funds now. So,

okay, council,

would you be also funding its maintenance with that as well? Because where is this extra $230,000? If you can't water anything, how are you going to pay $230,000 a year to maintain this? And so your park development funds cannot fund maintenance. They can only fund um essentially new parks or adding capacity to existing parks. So that would be an additional uh concern that we would have to address with council in the future. I will say that nearly every time we've brought this item, we've made that known and we've actually been able to tighten up those costs as well. This is actually one of the um you know in terms of community services projects, this is one of the ones where you've seen the most information about what it will actually cost to maintain a project where it has an actual reserve that's set aside for future roof replacement things that we don't do for this building or that building or police department or any other building, but we're trying to give you the full picture. So, this is this is the time that we've done that and we want to make sure that um those are those costs are fully understood. UA can certainly be adjusted, but this will be a revenue generating building. Um, it will also have um we also have partnerships and things like that. Um, and it'll be our newest building, so maintenance costs, you know, kind of tend to take off over time, but um we've been trying we've been fully uh sharing that information along the way. And um council has again over 15 times uh coming to this body said continue to do this project. So that's

I would like to see in the future that maybe you can try to figure out how do we reduce maybe some of the features in the building or the park maybe cut to reduce the cost. Nothing for you to decide right now, but Oh, I can't. Yeah. Yeah.

I I mean I I totally get that. I can't at this point. We're that we're locked into the scope. Um what we do do is we make smart decisions about the materials we use. We use a good roof. If if a grant's going to pay for it, we're using concrete. we're using, you know, good products. We're not doing things that are going to cost us down the road. Those are the sort of decisions we make when we have a community services budget where we have to do, you know, a very light touch on something. So, we try to use stuff that's hardy, that's proven, that we know that we'll be able to maintain in the future indefinitely. That's why you see the same concrete bench everywhere in town because we know that bench is going to be here long after the city. So, we we do the things that we can when we can. We make strategic partnerships. We try to reduce costs. Uh, and we also, you know, we have new programs. I would hate to tie up all of our um our great uh donated money, but we have money that's been, you know, that's starting to trickle in from our roundup program and things like that. We're going to be able to offset things. We're also going to add a facilities fee to fac uh programs at this facility, which will generate some, but not a lot. But we're doing everything that we can to lessen the burden on the general fund. But this is that area's only real investment. So we think that this is a crucial project that fills a lot of needs as we went over earlier and we think that ultimately this will be seen as more important than the 200ish thousand that it costs every year.

All right, council reser we can't reverse landscape maintenance district. Correct. Like we couldn't go to that entire neighborhood that that butts up to this and you can ask you can't impose. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, they can select or elect to do that themselves. It is highly unlikely, but I have one neighborhood that has asked me in all of time that I've ever heard of, and we're working with them, 25 houses,

and it's still a lot of work to get it done, but um they can. So, it's it's not unheard of. I just feel like this is a this is probably in your entire time in the city is always the like how do we set aside funding and and I know that LMDs have

been the way in which that we've gone with new parks and neighborhoods. Um I'd love to see us find a solution because this has been a reoccurring uh issue since um Miss Nemer was up here. Um, and I know that you know that that's an issue. I also will just say uh to second what you said about this area and section of town. Um, I believe that Judy Salter sat on SESAC before I did and that was a drum that she beat all of the time about um just certain sections of town just don't have park access. So I I do think that it's that it's a worthy project, but we do have to figure out some way in which that we even if it's small amounts that we set aside.

Mhm. Start with a dollar today. Some This sounds like a sales guy. But anyway, uh do you need a motion to adopt the resolution and authorize items one and two? Okay, I'll second. If we didn't already do that, I don't see any other discussion. So all in favor I I All right, moving along. Okay. Um we are on to 9.6E. Uh consider update regarding the Reading Motorsports Park lease with the city of Reading on Reading Regional Airport property. I think we asked our last council meeting to bring this back. So,

so, um, I'm going to kick this one off being the, u interim airports director, which I think is a fun and exciting challenge, and I'm learning a lot, and I think Andy's great. Um, but I want to just just kind of intro myself to what's left of the crowd. Uh, we had kids here, and everyone kind of um, I think recognized the time, but I will try to be quick, but I want to let you know this is a complicated issue. I'm learning so much. Um there's so many like people that are super passionate about their public facilities. Uh I see a lot of parallels with the way community services works and uh the way that these um facilities are working. But as I've dived deeper into this, it is complex and I just want to say that like I really appreciate how how much effort um Andy's been putting into it. Airports has a very small staff. This is a very big time commitment. Council's made time commitment to this. The community is very curious on what's happening, but I've learned that this is not going to be easy and it is not going to be as simple as do what you used to do. There's no going back to that no matter what. We are able to change and tweak with how we move forward and that's due to a lot of unique things. I'm going to do a very quick background and then we'll kind of get to the road map ahead. So there are three tracks um that we need to discuss in this area. So, first being the motocross track. It's actually kind of escapes this issue a little bit having its own access and being able to carry its own insurance. There's the Reading Drag Strip, which um is probably the biggest player uh that I've noted in the in the um conversation, and there is the uh cart track or the Super Moto track down at the bottom. And so this unique layout being on the east side of the airport is probably not something I would recommend if we started this project again because it has limited access and a lot of

strings attached to anything we do out here. So one of the big issues and you're seeing my animation skills is that access from the to the cart club is currently through the dragstrip. So if you have a lee and you give them the key and say this is your facility but but also these guys also have a key and they're going to use your gate and it increasingly becomes open for issues and and problems. So we don't want to um have a lot of user conflicts. But we also have uh the unfortunate part that the end of the dragstrip is connected to the cart track. And so in some racetracks like Pomona they have a sand trap and things like that. I'm not a dragstrip expert, but I've I've been trying to do some research and ours just has a kind of a funky layout because it's been kind of homegrown and we have these guys that have worked so hard and their families out there to try to build these facilities up over the years. And really what it needed is like a master plan to start with and then we would go execute that. But we have this unique set of circumstances that we have to deal with now. And that has led us to these like very specific uh issues that we need to address with access and lease, who gets to lease what. And then on top of that, we have the FAA that's come in with uh restrictions. There's just restrictions on land that was purchased with federal funds, and they're going to require uh an appraisal and fair market value. And guess what? Oh, your appraisal was too much, and now we need a second appraisal, and good luck finding two appraisals. That's a six-month process. So we are just stuck in this loop of like one thing after another and tons of things that are not in our control. The things that were in our control were things like insurance requirements, but those are complicated and the city is in a hard spot where we can't insure a racetrack. We can't host car races. We can't do that sort of thing. So council has to make a decision on what level of insurance and risk they're comfortable with. And so we're trying to grapple with all of those

things and formulate an agreement all the while again stressing that the airport staff does not have a ton of resources to be able to tackle that issue. So they would love to see that sort of tightened up and maybe deal with one operator or um somehow make this a little bit easier. And so we've been trying to figure out the best way to move forward. I won't say that we have it, but what I've tried to stress, I had at least one conversation earlier, is that unfortunately, I don't think everyone's going to walk away happy at the end of this thing. We're going to have to find because you can't go back to the old way because you you can't you have to appease the FAA at this point. And so, we're never going to go back there. So, what's the best thing that we can all do together now? And that's what we're trying to figure out. I don't think the conversation's by any means over, but we're trying to work out through everyone's insurance documents and what is this lease potentially going to look like and is council going to be happy with that. And there's going to be some some I don't think there's going to be an outright winner, but uh some people say like if everyone walks away feeling like they lost, maybe we did a good job, but I want to find the best lose that everyone can have. Like we're going to have some concessions to make to each other. And I know that doesn't sound palatable, but I've probably spent I don't know 12 hours on this in like a week just trying to figure out how to move forward. And I know Andy spending a ton of time on it. So I just want to let the community know we're really putting a ton of effort into this. And um we're going to give you a road map on what's coming a what's coming up and what are some of the roadblocks and how we can move forward together and some of the things that we need. So I want to bring Andy up here and he's going to give us a rundown.

Thank you Travis. That was a great explanation. Mayor, council, staff, and uh community members. Appreciate uh those club members for sticking around and staying the long haul to be able to listen. I appreciate it. Appreciate you being here. Um I want to get this done as quickly as possible. I have been wanting to do that and because I have an airport to run and yet the timeline if you look at things the reason for delays or not being able to get things finished is because we have an airport to run. There's been a lot of things happening a lot of it's it's almost one step forward two steps back because of different things that were unexpected. One of them was a change from a draft license agreement which we had almost finalized that switched to a lease agreement. Well, that changed some of the rules in the agreement itself. So, that was determined in March. We had closed sessions in March with in March with city council as you are aware and that's when we were also informed by the FA that we needed to start and have an appraisal for fair market value. That was something that did happen. Let me clarify a few rumors that I've heard out there. Oh, the airport's dragging his feet dragging their feet. That's not true whatsoever. um that we're trying to wait and see if these clubs just sort of go away. That's not true whatsoever. We've been always encouraging to have club participation, involvement, a say in what's going on and be a part of the process. City council has been on the emails that happened all last fall and through the winter. Um in April, working through insurance questions, new agreement was pulled from the CC agenda for close session. In July, we created the first draft of the lease agreement, but then realized that there was more things to still do. Uh we did receive our first appraisal in August. Once we that was shared with the FA, then it was determined that we needed a second appraisal. The reason why we couldn't really finish the lease

agreement was because the information from the appraisal was going to determine some of the rate structures and other language within the lease agreement. So, that's why we held off. So, now we're in a position where we have to get a second appraisal. I just found out last week that the person who is going to perform that work um decided he's not going to do it. So now I have to find an appraiser to do the work. These are that's an example of some of these hurdles that I've been having to deal with unexpected. Um so as we got through into September, October obviously we had some major projects going on. We had a lot of focus on that. Tried to keep things moving as best we could. Uh and then we get in November that through just questions and curiosity about permits. So then we have to look with city inspection related to permits and inspection purposes. We just got the report today and so that's where we've been at for the last year trying to keep things moving forward. So where do we go from here? Next steps is we do have a final draft on city attorney's office. At this time, we do need to finalize the insurance requirements because um in your packets, there's some information in a letter from Tony with uh Reading Motorsports Park to with some concerns related to insurance, some examples. We have to remember also this is not an applesto apples situation with other racetracks. We have three different tracks in the relatively the same area. two of them kind of impeding which prevents them from operating at the same time. Other tracks are not like this and we um are requesting you know the insurance will need to be evaluated. I think there needs to be more discussion on that to uh finalize that within the agreement. We still need to get a second appraisal.

At this time, we decided to move forward with the agreement with language or at least a financial structure based on the first appraisal because we believe the second appraisal is not going to adjust it much. If there is an adjustment needed, we will then make an amendment to the agreement. And then I've been requesting racing schedule, which I've not received as of yet, but I'm encouraging all the clubs to provide what they want to do for this next year. Um, I'm hoping you'll give an opportunity to for any club members to maybe share some of their concerns. Um, as I'd like to hear them as well if you have any questions. Okay, we have we have a bunch of speakers. So, uh, let's go through those and then we'll go through discussion after that.

Okay, very good. All right, so just so we can keep things moving along, if we can have you guys line up on the wall so we can go from one speaker to the next. Um, we're going to start with Jeremy. Uh, after that looks like, uh, Shye, Ezekiel, Rhonda. Okay. So, we just have Jeremy out of the four. Is that right? Seriously? Hi. You're holding it down. Is this Are you Jeremy? Is that right? I am Jeremy. Yes. Hi, Jeremy. Hello.

Hi. Are you ready? I am ready. I am Jeremy McNeely. I'm president of Trinity Touring Club. Um, we are an autocross club that's been doing this over 40 years. Um, we are nonprofit. Uh, since 2016, we have uh raised and donated over $22,500 to local charities uh such as Haven Humane. Oh, I don't have my glasses. uh Carfire Relief Fund, Good News Rescue Mission, Northern California Veterans Museum, Toy Choice for Tots, Adopt a Family, Chest County Child Support Services, Backpack and School Supply Drive, among others. We are family event. We get kids in go-karts all the way up to We have I don't know, Larry Nelson's got to be in his 80s. Comes He drives down here from Medford, Oregon. Uh we have people that come over from the coast, people that come up from Sacramento, all to race with us. Um when we as a club, we've been trying to get on the track for many, many years. We were lucky enough in 2023 to get out there, spent about $1,000 for the weekend, had a great turnout, everybody had a good time. We were able to do it again late 2023. Um, again in 24. Same thing. Great venue, lots of turnout. Sacramento, Medford, Pomona. I mean, from all over the place. Our club charges $37 32 to $37 depending on whether you're member to race. We don't make a lot of money. We're there to go fast, to have fun, and make money to be able to donate to charities. Um, when Tony came into the or prior to Tony getting there, I'm aware that Super Moto and Cart Clubs, they didn't really have

any issues getting on the track. Um, drag races were at this point maybe in the afternoon. Cart Club, Chasimoto was out there early. when we went out there was the same thing. We weren't interfering with any of them. So, I had contacted Tony to try and get some some of the logistics of what's going on. He's like, "Yeah, we're going to take care of this. We're going to make this work. We're going to change the track. We're going to update everything and it's not going to be a big deal." Uh, I guess there was a meeting that was supposed to happen. I called them. Hey, when's that meeting supposed to happen? Oh, yeah. It was an emergency meeting. We did it tonight. None of us were invited. So, I said, "Okay, well, I want we we want to get on the track." All right. Um, it's you're looking at $6,000 for the weekend or we'll do $4,000 one day. Um, on Saturday, if you guys want to do it the weekend, six grand. That's out of our budget. I turned and walked away. So, that's where I stand. Um, I believe that we should all have the opportunity to be there. We're not drift cars. We don't make We don't bring that money in. We're not a spectator sport. It's just us.

All right. Thank you, Jeremy. Can you repeat your organization again? You said you said Trinity. Uh can you repeat your organization again? Just cuz I was writing it in notes. You said Trinity. Um yeah. Uh so Haven Humane Society. Oh, no, no, no. Not not where all you've donated your your club. Sorry. Oh, Trinity Touring Club. Okay. I missed the middle word. Thank you. All right. And we said Shye is gone. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Uh, Ezekiel's gone. Ezekiel. Yeah. Okay. And Ronda Moore. Sorry, Ronda Monroe. Okay. And then we have Mark Monroe. That's you, Mark. I have a feeling you are related to Rhonda. So,

yes, sir. All right.

Hi, I'm Mark Monroe with Shasta Super Moto. We've been operating out there for 12 years. Right alongside of the drag strip before Tony was Charlene. We never had a conflict because we're all done by three. They don't start till 4. We've worked that way continuously over years and years and years along with the car track and they get their two weekends. They get one weekend a month. We got one weekend a month. The drag strip got two. That's how it always has been. Now Tony's come in, made all these promises, said he was going to if we went under a lease agreement with him that he was going to get four races a year with his drift cars and he was going to resurface the track. That's how it all started. So, we were going to get a new track all cleaned up and pretty if we gave him his little four races a year. It's gone from that to a complete hostile takeover. He is now offering us 4 days period, four days a year with a 500 nonrefundable deposit with no question of how much it's going to cost us, but we were talking last time it was 2500 when I saw you guys six months ago. And he said, "Be patient. Let's see how this goes." We've been patient. Now we're into the next season. He hasn't got any race dates from us because we don't know if we're allowed to race. We have an evergreen contract that was signed by all of you guys. The only one who can cancel an over an o an evergreen contract is you guys. But somehow the airport manager was le to go, you're done. He superseded you. Now who's the boss now? If our insurance was terrible, it has been in place for 12 years for us, 35 years for them. It's been in adopted all across the United States, all across California. I can go to the fairgrounds with the same insurance and they'll accept it in their state. I don't know what you're going to do about everybody getting 10 billion dollars worth of coverage, but they don't write it. Can you find 10 billion dollars of coverage

for the state of or for the city of Reading? No. Come on. I need help from you. You got to let us lower this down so we can be affordable. Who can afford 10? We're all nonprofits, guys. And we're being shoved out hostily and I don't Andy, I'm sorry. I got respect for you, but I don't got respect for the way you're handling. That's all. All right. Thank you.

Uh Rex, are you Rex? And then we have Chris and Doug. If you're here, sir. Chris Brooks. I'm the president of the Cart Club since the beginning of 2025. I'm going to make it real easy on you guys. Uh tonight's been a long night for you guys. I see that. Um I've probably had more one-on-one conversations with Tony than everybody combi combined. I've been in contact with him. We were on weekly calls together trying to figure out uh issues as far as security or access to the property. Now, we ne I always agreed with Tony that running during his big events was a non a non-go. We weren't going to do that. He runs an eighth mile on his track, which gives him plenty of runoff room if something were to happen. We even walked out there and figured out if something were to happen, what would we do with the cars? If we put the the cement barriers at an angle, it would it would angle the car off the end of the track and into a dirt area beside the cart track. We even offered to reconfigure our races while they're going on. Access has never been a problem to that track. Tony and I came up with an idea that the return lane seems to be a talking point now. There's enough room of a gravel road to the left of the return lane that we have always used. He himself said in a Zoom meeting that, "Hey, you guys just pull to the side like you've always done. Let the let my cars go by and you get back on the return lane and go down." But we can actually travel the whole length on the dirt lane down there. Now, Tony and I, we thought we were going along really well. I've been to numerous back door or closed door meetings. I've had private meetings with Andrew and it always seems that they're pushing it towards Tony. We are a 501c3. We do not charge anything for anybody out there. We don't charge for admission for people to come and watch. We we support the

community. The the track was built with our money, no money from the city. We are not asking for any money from the city. We can operate the track just fine how we've been doing it for 37 years now. As a as a new council member, I'm I'm getting caught up on a lot of things that I'm not aware of, but I'm finding out, you know, that that Tony has constantly um offered things and then backtracked on this stuff. You you were you were given photographs of the condition of the way the track is to this day. The thing is devastated. He has taken the cart's access the communities the community's property and he's destroyed it. There are 47 barriers that are destroyed out there. Dr. Denuka was kind enough to come to one of the meetings and I listened to him. He said, "You guys need to work with Tony and do it." I went to Tony and and thought I had something worked out with him until Tony came up to me and said, "Carding is not going to happen if I am the master leasey there." So, this is it guys. It's very simple. If you go with Tony, Super Moto, the carding is not going to happen out there. We are walking away from the track. You can just go ahead and give it to Tony if you want, but be assured the community is aware of this. I have over 2,000 people that are following me that are watching this happen. And if you let this hostile takeover happen, maybe something will happen in voting when it comes to voting down the road. Okay. All right. Any questions? We we'll get there. So, um Okay. Let's get through everybody else, but thank you for speaking. Appreciate it. Um are you Is this Rex right there?

Rex, it's your turn.

My name is Rex Bower. I have Bower Powersports here in Reading. And so I've been riding out of the track for a long time, even before Shaft just open up. Uh the cart club has allowed us to go out there and and be there and participate. We take care of the place. The one thing that I hear about this whole this whole meeting is fascinating. It's all about money and millions and millions. There's no money that's spent out there. Zero zero dollar is spent on the cart track. Thank you, Cart Track. And so we we're just so lucky to go out there and do this for so long and we haven't had any problems except for Yes. the access is not favorable. There's no question about it. We We can't get in there. You know, the way it used to be was totally awesome and it was We knew it couldn't last. I get a gate code and I can go in and ride whenever I want. That's insane. But we were able to do it and it was beautiful. But anyway, it's for responsible people to be able to do that kind of stuff. So anyway, it's simple right now. You guys haven't spent any money. You don't have to. Everything is volunteer out there. Everything. Everything we do is volunteer. Everything. It's city property. I like Andrew. I know he's working. He's trying to help. But you can't have Tony out there running the whole sh it it just can't happen like that. He he's his own entity and and he can run that that part of it if you guys want him to run part of it. But our part of it is, you know, completely separate cart stuff. Thank you for allowing us to go out there. But it doesn't cost you guys

anything for us to go out there. Yeah. It's your property. You're allowing us to go out there. Thank you. Thank you. I I I mean it's just amazing. So we all we need are you guys. There's no calendar. There's no calendar. There's no dates. When somebody has an event, what kind of insurance do they have? Do you guys know what kind of insurance anybody has? Nobody knows what kind of insurance they have. How can they have an event and you guys know you guys don't know what kind of insurance they have? So, it needs to be transparent. How much is it going to be for us to to be out there for a weekend? We need time to prepare the track. When he talks about the track was destroyed, it is. It's ruined. So, we have to have days to go out and make sure everything's safe. Yeah. For everybody to have fun, right? The F-word. Many F-words here. fun and it's free for you guys.

Thank you. We invite you to speak many times. That was so positive. So, thank you. Doug's first and you're up.

Hey, thanks for your service. It's uh sometimes a thankless job. Um so, my daughter got into carding. Actually, both daughters. One one it it took off and uh now my wallet's drained. Um, my other daughter dirt bikes, so I have two racers in my life. Um, the Carter practices, I asked her today, "How many times a month do you practice?" Four to seven. She goes to regional races. The difference between last and first is like under a second per lap.

That's how that's how much practice kids need to be competitive in carding. The proposal is challenging for me. there's just not enough dates to practice. Um the uh the condition of the track has and and the space. Um I'm seeing what regional races are. They're at Soma. They go to Vegas and turn a parking lot into a track. Um I've been to U Winchester. K1 made a huge circuit down there. This track is probably never going to be a regional big race track, but there's a whole lot of little promoters that have desired this. The Gold Cup was one that would come here and rent the track from the club. Um, I was asked by the club to uh engage with Andrew, uh, Rodinger, um, others, and it's been a challenge. It's been, you know, over a year. Uh, I I get it that the ball was dropped on the FAA. Uh, I think the staff report today is so vague I could barely pull out anything that they're wanting direction from you. But I think what's clear is Tony's asked for lower insurance. I tried to find insurance when it was 10 million and uh, no, I think it was 5 million per occurrence and 10 million overall. No one would quote it. Um the insurance that we used before was spread over multiple tracks. Uh your lawyer has issues. Um but Prairie City uses it. A whole bunch of other carts use that type of insurance. Um you know, maybe you need a different opinion from an attorney. Um but I think everyone can agree, including Tony, the limits that uh we were told were just unobtainable. Uh so that's been all close session. I think that all needs to

come out as an open session item. Uh I'm running out of time. Uh I think you know, as Chris mentioned, we've engaged both parties. Uh Tony has just never wanted to put anything in writing and uh you know, I get he wants to run a business, but the carding is a nonprofit, you know, so I think it's up to you of what you want. And my ask for direction to staff is not just look at this one uh lease master lease. I think you should entertain a proposal from uh possibly the uh super moto and cart club just taking over that track. We've rented a Tony before. Um I think you guys deserve to see some options and staff has never allowed us to do that. So that's my ask. uh the two asks lower insurance and uh give us the ability to present to you another option.

Okay. Thank you, Doug. You're welcome. Um as far as discussion, one of the questions I've had is I I assume we're going to go we'll have to take it back to close session to talk about insurance limits again because I think that's going to be ongoing conversation that we might want to visit again.

Yeah. And if I could just add there there was a meeting um uh uh the the airport did set up a meeting uh with the the proposed LEI about a week and a half ago um where some of this information was provided. Um I did commit to reviewing some of the documents that they had provided and and reaching out to some of the other organizations and then then bringing that information to council. So um that's that's in process and and we plan that to be bringing that back. Um, candidly, we might want to wait until the new city manager here just since we're two meetings away. Um, but um, uh, we should be able to get that relatively soon.

Okay. Um, I I've also heard feedback or comments about maybe one of the best um, actions could be that we just take this to RFP in the future. I don't know if groups out there would be opposed as to putting this out to RFP and trying to see if we can settle everything to see if one person can come back with a proposal, but um amongst the parameters that we set such as making sure that multiple groups can have access to the uh to the tracks itself in the most fair way possible. But uh perhaps that may be conversation the council has today to see if an RFP might be something of entertainment. Councelor Denugo, I'll let you go. Yeah, couple of comments. First of all, I just want to clarify. One of the commentators said that's your land like pointing to us. It's not our land and we don't consider that it's a public land. It's your land. It's community's land. We just want to be good be the best possible steward as we could be for that. So, I just want to make sure that you understand that in my mind, everybody's mind, I'm sure it's your land, public land. U but the insurance part I do want to be very cautious that we whatever insurance limits we set are a fair balance of uh what protects the city from unearned liability and also what's obtainable in the insurance market and uh you know we have had some kind of a um conversation in the closed meeting but we can have those again to see what's obtainable. So those are the two principle guiding us. Uh the third thing is uh the question I have is where is Tony? Is he here? Why is he not here? And I have never seen him in the city council. So I I definitely have significant concerns with that. And I have been to the the racetrack as well as the go-kart and I try to understand

the difference between whether it's how thick the asphalt is and uh the go-kart asphalt needs to be doesn't have to be very thick versus uh what they're running on that. And I I I'm not going to comment too much on that, but my understanding is it was being used for bigger cars than that asphalt could handle and that caused certain damage and which was not repaired in a timely fashion or properly. So there's a lot of concerns here which I have with the whole dynamics. Andrew, I really admire that you have put your time and effort in this because you have a clearly an airport to run. And my position on this is that if people can't get along well with each other as you guys were doing for 20 30 years, something seems to have changed and that from that's the what was happening with a good community effort. Now something seems to be have changed that somebody for some reason that's community spirit is gone from that. So maybe we need to really really bring the hammer down on this that either they play nice with you and everybody plays nice with each other otherwise we either shut it down or go to RFP for completely you know maybe we should have those all those options maybe doesn't have to be a single lassie maybe it will be three different lassi with the common entrance I'm willing to consider all those options especially it I I don't see Tony anywhere I don't know why is he not here why is he not defending his positions. That seems to be a big concern to me.

I could answer that for you. He called me earlier. He did want to be here. He needed They are have been grinding the drag strip this past weekend. They needed some parts. He had to drive down to Concord and was driving driving back this evening.

Well, it's 11:00 p.m. So, he could still make it. So, yeah. I mean this have been several meetings before also but uh the overall picture seems to be that people who have been invested in this for a long time with the time effort and community are not being heard and that's not something which as a I'm not speaking for everyone else but for myself I'm not willing to accept that. Okay. Councelor Reszer. So,

uh, I was going to ask a similar question to Mayor Latau. Um, based on what that last speaker said, is it too late for us to consider something like an RFP? Too late in the process? I don't think so. Are you asking me that question? I don't think so either, but it doesn't matter. Either of you could answer. We We can RFP at any time. The reason for the direction of a lease agreement was under the impression a year and a half ago or whatever it was

to go under one operator with one lease. You can just have one lease. That was sort of the complication if we were to consider multiple leases with sharing sort of the same area, same entrance. I don't know what that would look like. But in hindsight, had we done an RFP a year ago, that would have probably solved the problem. Yeah, it feels like that probably would have solved the problem. I don't remember if Dr. Januka remembers, but we had that conversation in close session multiple times about how do we have this work for all three entities. It very clearly wasn't working. There were multiple discussions that were happening attempting to make that, you know, everyone play well in the sandbox together and then council directed staff to say go figure it out with one person because it very clearly doesn't seem to be working well in that with three separate entities and everyone wanting different things. Um, I am not sure that you're wanting a specific. I I understand it says consider an update, but at at this point in time, I I would love to hear what staff if staff at this point, Director Manny, if you could weigh in, council member Rodet, go ahead. That's can Well, is it okay?

Yeah, I think we should have you speak first. Council, do you want to speak?

Oh, I didn't know who um I So, I was here for this original when it originally came. it came to us and we didn't have an airport's manager I believe at the time and so there was Tony was I don't think he was new but relatively newer and so that's the difference here is that we have a different operator at the dragstrip and um staff wanted to go to one lease because we didn't have an airports manager so Andrew inherited this negotiation that was happening rod was asked to kind of step in and tried to negotiate. But I I know from the very first time it was brought to us, it's like, well, okay, if you want to go to one, if it works for everybody, but what we've seen for the last year and a half is it does not work for everybody. So, I know consistently we have said as a council like, yeah, if it works great, like let's make sure it can all work. And I sat on a zoom call with all of the everybody. So I sat with the airport both airport managers and the assistant city manager in charge of it and Tony and cart all all these people and Tony very specifically said no if I have the lease I I you're my competition so I'm going to do what I got to do. So he is in direct competition with the cart club. So if he's running the drag ship if he has the lease he's going to make the most money. And this is a club team. It's a club. It's not a money maker like the drag strip. It's not they're not charging entrance and that kind of stuff. Um, this is a club. So, it's a club sport. They fund themselves. They practice. They do their competitions and they've always made it work. And so, if if Tony comes in and good for him, he wants to make money and he wants to capitalize on the whole thing. but to displace the group that has literally

built it, poured money into it, maintained it, and created this culture for their families um to race. Like, I don't understand why we're working so hard to prevent them from doing that. And that's what's been the result. Whether it was the intention for the last year, they haven't gotten to race. And so, we're talking about insurance, but Tony doesn't have the insurance you guys were talking about. And he's out there running races. And so I don't there's just seems to be a real gap here in what's required but then what's actually happening and then time and time again the car club is the only one that's basically had to stop being out there and the car the tracks being used that they paid for that's being used all that asset is they're making um Tony's making money on it and somehow they're still having to wait and not get to be out there. So, I know for me as a council, I am not interested in one lease. I'm interested in it working out there. And it seems to me that the effort of a year to make one lease work is not worth the effort. If you want to get back to work, then let's get to an agreement where everybody gets to be in their zone and is the most successful that they can be. And if they want one race a weekend and they are able to practice when he when Tony's not running races, then let's go back to what has worked historically and make it fair.

Uh let's can the can the staff come back? So I I listen I know you're new to this. I appreciate your effort, but it's not difficult to get out there. You're not on the racetrack to get out to their facility. I've been out there. uh that that's not accurate. And the damage that they've caused is that's crazy. But there's a way to make this work if it has to work. And the only person unwilling to make it work so far has been the dragstrip management. That's it. Those are the people that have been unwilling to give them access and to make that work. So if they need a certain insurance, which we also talked about should not be the same as the insurance of the drag strip because it's a completely different liability their what they're doing and how they're racing than a drag strip. So, is it possible that we um have our private conversation about lowering insurance, but that also you come back with options because we've talked about this. Oh, he Oh, Tony's going to have the lease, but we're going to work out the details. Well, $6,000 is ridiculous. $2,500 $2,500 is ridiculous. This is not for profit. So, I don't think that that's working either. So, I would I would like you to come back with what are the options to give them their own agreement for them to be able to operate as a nonprofit negotiating calendars, but they then get to remain over the the the cart the track. I

if I could ask um who would be the tenant as to the the cart track because I believe there were a few groups right now. There were three different groups that were using the the track. Who had it last? Who had it last? Who was the license? We both have our own. Yeah, actually you have three different groups that have had a license agreements. Yeah. Well, you the all those cart groups can be a Okay. So, them we would entertain a proposal from them as a conglomerate. Yes. And I agree with you 100%. I think that this that this should be re-evaluated. Yeah.

And that we should look at a multi- um component thing. The access issue is something that I'll go investigate. Um it's a concern as Allessie, you know. Um we have this issue at the rodeo grounds where you can't have boat ramp traffic going through the rodeo grounds and there's always some issue. We can address that. We can work with them. There is an alternate access. It might not meet city standards, but we can address that, too. There also are code issues at the tracks that we have to address. I'm willing to commit. We're we want to solve this. We want Andy to be able to focus on other things. If we establish the right sort of agreements, these issues can be mitigated down to hopefully negligible. And I think that we can move forward uh in this way. We already think we can spin off the motocross track. I think that we can separate these two if we address these issues. if everyone's willing to commit and if we get clear direction on what is in the insurance requirement and what you know what we're willing to accept and make sure that y'all are ready to commit to getting exactly that. Um but then again there's still fair market value and all those other things that I can't get out of and so those we will have to address but

hopefully we can work through that. Yeah. And that is another piece of this that I feel like we need either in close session or not more clarity because these are not equal pieces of land. So that is it is absolutely inconceivable to think you're going to charge the same amount for both of these types of things. No. Yeah. And I'll get some more detail on the actual appraisals. They should be split out. Um I think there's no bathrooms, there's no water, there's no like there's nothing out there. I could explain the rate's going to be the same because it's the same amount for land no matter what is there. So the square footage of the usable area based on the rate is what you're is going to be charged.

So let's be clear, land that has water and power and all of those things cannot be the same as land that doesn't. There's no way that appraised at just um uh basic land. That's what it was appraised at. Yeah, raw land. Just the raw land. Just so we already have the appraisal and it was very high. Well, obviously

there's also a way for us to subsidize that or to wave that because it is a nonprofit. So, I would also like to to talk about because as a government when we are dealing with nonprofit to government, we have the ability to lower rates and that type of stuff. So, I'd like to look into that as well. it. And I just want to clarify, you can do that, but because this is um subject to FAA regulations, you would need to be putting general fund money in to cover the difference between the fair market value. Well, I'd like to look at that

and the for that exact thing with the FAA and it was denied. I'm happy to look at that process and kind of see how that went. Um I'm also will be looking at the eval the um actual appraisal as well and see if those can be split off or what they evaluated. But we are ordering a second one which we are required to do and it could be a wholly different opinion which opens up a whole another um can of worms if they're completely different. But um once we get the second appraisal we'll know more. FA is requiring it no matter what. Um it's always good to have two opinions anyway. So I'm I'm happy to go through that process. Um that's something that we're tackling now. difficult to get those, but we're working on it. Um, but again, we will need some clear guidance from council on those limits.

I think I mean, if you're talking Yeah. So, I I I would like whatever that assessment is that they be made aware of that so that they can determine if that is going to be feasible and then they have to decide what that model is going to be. But it should they should have the first right of refusal. It's their track. Okay. Uh, council me.

Um, I agree with everybody. Whatever you've decided has not been working very well. Um, as I recall though, the big sticking point, as Tanessa and others have said, it was the insurance. That was the that was the one main reason that we went with the the one operator. uh

and that and and the assessment that he was the one more I I don't put anybody up in but more capable of running the whole thing which he hasn't been doing. So I mean but there's been some talk about insuranceances out here is is have things changed? Um so there was some new information that was provided. Um I have committed to review it and then to to bring it back to the council. Um I can't say at this moment that things have changed. I'm I'm happy to to do the analysis uh and come back. Um uh in terms of the um the reason for one operator, I will say be that actually was the direction before the insurance issue had come up and I believe that had to do with with the the use issues. It is relevant um uh to the insurance in that someone has to carry the premises liability. At the end of the day, there's got to be um some policy that that is effectively covering the um the operator as land owner. Um and what had been and I believe that actually was in the prior license agreements, but what had been provided was really only covering um some limited operations of actually conducting the races. So, when other people would be coming onto the track or um if you had something that was outside of the scope of the coverage there, there there was just nothing um that was in place. I I agree with Tanessa. We need options and we need to to do it, you know, as soon as you can.

Councelor Danuka.

Well, yeah, I would. So, bring us options including this multiple ones, including multiple leases, separate leases to keep the go-kart and super motor there, but also to see if we need to go RFP on the drag racing itself. So, Tony is not our only option there. uh because uh what I from what I heard that he has gone public declaring that he has got the lease in his bag and then he's going to get rid of the present operator from uh drag racing and uh bring someone else for a compet for for a competition. That is just insane for him to do that and uh I think Andrew you need to let him know or let the public know that's not true. That rumor is not true. Council Reser,

I was just going to say I was just going to say, Travis, I feel like you negotiate these sort of things in parks all the time. So, you got it. And I have full faith that you're going to bring us back some uh options. Feel like if you can work with advanced reading in the rodeo, you got this. Yeah, we'll be working on it. And I just want to um you know, I know Andy's put a ton of time into it. And you know, if we've sent him down the wrong path, at least we've got that work done. But I want to you know, just thank you for We're aware he inherited. Yeah, it's been quite the saga and having been on that side of it before, now being part of it, like this has been a story that, you know, um has gone on for a while. So anyway, um we're going to be working on we're bringing back some options. When would you like to see that? Um

well, as soon as possible because they've not been able to be on track for over a year. They're they're probably going to have like we could probably do like a here's a hypothetical, but they're going to have administrative stuff to work out if they're going to do a conglomerate and pull insurance policies and things like that. So, if I can get clear guidance on insurance, um, which I'm not sure if Christian has everything or if we're going to need to meet on that again, and then we can go back and say, "Here's the exact requirements we're going to need you to meet. Can you do this?" They can give us kind of a hypothetical, yes, here's a road map to our success, hopefully inevitable success with that. And then we can come back with, you know, followup of here's exactly how it's going to work. Um, this is an agreement, here's how we can move forward. So that might that's going to take a few meetings

just to speed things up. I'm I'm sure you've already done some insurance quotes out there, but I mean I'd be interested in seeing all the options as far as your costs if you can come back and show us what a million costs versus why 5 million is so hard. I mean um I think that'd be I think the higher you go in limits, the harder it gets to find it. You already have. So um they already have three. Just bring it back. Just bring back some just bring it back to us as soon as possible. Can you give us a little bit of understanding that how many weeks do you think we can see this again in? When can we expect to see this again? Just give some rough idea. I'm not going to hold you to it. We'll try to hit the second meeting in February with something that's, you know, worth talking about. Um, give us a couple weeks to work on it.

Okay. That would give us time to put a staff report in because otherwise they're due tomorrow. So, okay. La last question. As I keep hearing Tony has access to the track but may not have insurance. Is that real? Is that is that real? Is that something we need to validate? And that's Go ahead, Christian. Yeah. Um no. Um there is insurance. Um the the limits under the existing license agreement were lower than the new numbers that were being requested. And I believe that's what was being referred to.

Yeah. If I may add, the clubs were operating under license agreements. When it was decided for those agreements to expire is because a couple of the clubs did not meet the requirements of everything that was eligible. The dragstrip did meet other requirements. That's why they've been they have been able to continue to operate. It's been unfortunate that we haven't been able to come to an agreement to get the other clubs on board, but they don't have an active license whereas Dragstrip does. They do. They do. So, there's a question about Evergreen. They had a pre-existing um agreement with the city. Was that terminated?

There was no Evergreen agreement. It was on an annual basis per license, right? So, okay, we'll need to address this also maybe in a close session that exactly what was a pre-existing agreement and uh uh what was the basis for non-renewal or termination whatever it is because the way it seems like is that uh Tony is able to do everything he wants and he's able to shut them out completely and that was not the intent of the city council. I can assure you that. Well, yeah. And that I mean, if there's really a social media post almost like taking victory laps, you know, antagonizing the other groups, I mean, that really does need to come to a stop. That doesn't really show agreed.

You know, it doesn't really show like partnership and hey, we're raising and I I think Tony should really take that under advisement that I don't think the council is very pleased on that and that is not very helpful in our decision. And I would ask uh the clubs here to also quickly figure out the best possible insurance can you you can get and afford so that we can resolve this quickly. And my desire would be to get you back in there as soon as you have the requisite insurance which is acceptable to the city and just just let me just complete and as soon as you have it I would like to see you guys back on the call. Okay.

Okay. Have we we it it it's tough for us to interact with the public. I mean, first of all, you're not at a microphone. I'm really sorry. Yeah, I understood. Thank you. Have we given staff enough direction? Do we need to make a motion on anything or you you got it? Okay. Wait, do you have it? Do we need to vote? Uh I I I believe we're coming back with options. Yeah. And we're going to make sure they can actually get on to the private options and and we said are you going to do a close session with us about insurance that that was the entire Okay, great. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you everybody and thank you for your patience out there. Like I

Wow. You know, um I I really should have moved you earlier if I was smarter at this. He's new at this, guys. Give him some grace. He could have moved you to the beginning. He didn't realize it until last item. I she should have just punched me in the shoulder and said move him up and I'm That's okay. We suffer together. So, thank you. Okay. Uh let's see. Uh we public works consider m 9.11d consider mitigation fee act report update and adopt a resolution making findings concerning unusended funds. I read the report just summarize it quick.

I mean I think we have all read the report which is in the uh packet. So can I ask uh do we need to go through the report or can we make a motion? Are you giving a report? No. What I'm clarify what you're asking. I'm sorry. We have I'm saying we have all read the report here in the packet. Do you have anything extra or do you need to accept? I'll second that. I I mean I'm willing but I say the public hasn't heard it. Is there anything that the public should really hear? Um just to give us a quick summary. No mic's not quick. Okay. Be quick.

Yes. I will be very quick and brief. Um good evening honorable mayor, members of the council uh before you. I have a consideration for the mitigation fee act report update and adopting of a resolution making the findings uh concerning the unexpected funds. So really at the end of the day, in the spirit of attempting to be very uh brief at council's request, um what this is is this is an annual requirement of the city having a development impact fee program. As each of you know, as development occurs, the city collects traffic, fire, parks, um and a few other um development impact fees. We collect those. Um and then each year we have to report on the beginning balance uh new uh revenue that was deposited, interest and expenditures. Then we have to have a list of projects um for each of those pots of money if you will or development impact fee accounts on how we plan on ultimately spending the resources in alignment with how we've collected them. So this meets our government code requirement section 66,000 and all the sub subsequent um sections and makes all the appropriate findings to be adopted. And uh I would be happy to entertain any questions that council has or jump into detail in any specific item. But in the spirit of being brief um that is my uh 90 explanation

or presentation. You exceeded 90 seconds, but I motion to accept it. Second. Well, we'll give the second because she said the word second. So, okay. So, all right. All in favor? I move on. We do um from consent agenda. From consent agenda, we pulled back 9.15D. So 4.15 nepotism 4.15A nepotism. Would you like to hire yourself? Well, it turns into nine. Oh, okay. 9.15A. Yeah. Learn that. You're doing great, mayor. Let's go.

Almost. So, um, councelor Muns, you pulled that item. Do you want a presentation? Do you have questions or Well, I can start and then we can discuss it from there. Okay, let's

um basically there's different policies for different organizations within the department. You know, you got one policy for RFD and I've talked to uh Harry about this, you know, when one different policy for the police and I think they should both be the same. And um it's I mean it's I mean we say we don't want to discriminate, but that sure seems like discrimination if you're allowing one group of first responders or whatever to do it and you're not allowing the rest of them to do it. May I provide some additional context, please?

Yeah. Um, so both police and fire do have exceptions within the nepotism policy to allow for certain uh I want to say numbers of employees um to be related within the department um within the different structures. Um, one of the reasons that fire is written differently is that there are three distinct shifts, um, which allows for more opportunities to ensure that relatives are providing supervision for one another. Um, whereas um, police does does not have that same level. We can certainly receive information from council and bring uh, proposed changes back. Um it would be a meet and confer item though and so there were certain elements of the nepotism policy that we felt needed to move forward quickly. Um particularly council had requested that there was clear language um stating that we would not council members would not appoint relatives of council members to commissions. So that was one of the reasons why we wanted to bring it back quickly as well as information regarding romantic relationships um because our our policy has been silent on romantic relationships. But um what we are learning

in I'll say real time is that that can also create problems and liability for the city. And so those changes were prioritized, but if council would like to provide direction, um, we could explore meeting and conferring with the unions and bringing back further amendments to the nepotism policy. Well, I mean, the police has at least five different shifts, different shifts or divisions. Shifts. You said shifts. Yes. You said the fire department has three different shifts. The police department has five. human division. They're not the same. Yuba City has where you can hire blood relatives. Red Bluff has it. CHP has it. Shasta County has it.

So, they got Anderson has where the blood and the department I came from has it. It just it doesn't seem to make sense. Um there are different departments which means one can work in the detectives unit while one person can work patrol. So maybe they get a few options as well. Um RPD does change their assignments. Um, yeah, fairly frequent often. Okay. Well, with a couple of years, not necessarily. No. Chief to my question was going to be why it was that those departments got exceptions at all. But you answered that and said because those careers tend to be generational

similar to military service. police officers in them tend to have family members that also aspire to be police officers and firefighters. So there are exceptions that apply to police and fire that don't apply anywhere else in the city. So they already have exceptions. They do already have exceptions. First personally, I would like to bring it back. So we have some comments from the police chief.

So we do have uh three divisions, administration, investigations, detectives, the name of it now in field operations. Um, so detectives that is usually about a five-year tour when you're in that division. Um, we do change shifts. That's patrol. So, as Mayor or I'm sorry, Councilman Muns mentioned, we have five shifts uh that we have. I think the main thing is supervision. If all the agencies that we told in the north state that allow nepotism, um, which was all of them, that they just don't they don't allow supervision. So, if your brother spouse uh if you work the same shift, you can't supervise that that person. So, it is industry standard uh that they allow nepotism in both fire and police.

And we also allow it just different, right? So, no, we don't at all at the police department. No nepotism at all. So, if you are brother-in-law, sister-in-law, um all the way down. What if you're a cousin? Cousin is allowed. Okay. But yeah, can we clarify councelor Mun's either motion or request? I'm making a motion we bring this back to close session or whatever to Yeah. go over that policy again. Yeah. Um it's the industry standard and everybody else is doing it. It makes no sense.

So um we can certainly do that. Um I'll I'll note um just conferring with um uh interim city manager Kibler. Um the language that's in the draft that you have now for um uh uh police and fire I believe is the same as the existing language. It's just been moved in terms of its location. Um if you want you could either pass this which would enact the other changes and then go to close session to allow the negotiation or you could just put off the whole thing until you pass it. Relative, what was that? Can they hire relatives with the new policy? Uh it didn't appear so. I I I would move to accept it as as it's written.

Would this make the current exception allows for police officers um for relatives to be hired, but they can't be employed in the same uh department or division? Would uh if we pass this today, would it make it more burders burdensome or restrictive while we're ironing out these details to come back? So So they No, it does not make it more restrictive for RPD. It maintains the current exceptions for both police and fire. It only changed the format and allow uh adds the information about romantic relationships as well as the clarification from council that you shall not appoint relatives to commissions.

Yeah. Uh so they can hire blood relatives. No, it's current. It's just it's keeping the same thing that we have now. Okay. It's just that they moved it into a different deal. So I I'll make a motion that we accept it as written. Well, I'll make a second motion then to bring it back so we can change it. You already made that motion. Okay. So we we have two motions without a second. Let me just see get clarification. The policy states sworn police officers and or CSOS that are relatives cannot be employed within the same department or division. So let me just uh seek a clarification. How does the fire do it? Well, let's uh we'll let council Duka go. And

so I'm just unclear about it because my understanding was that right now the policy couldn't hire the relative within the entire police department. But what you're saying is the policy is actually they cannot they can be in the police department but not the same division. Yes. Because this says department or division. So could you please just explain that? So what you say? What do you mean by department versus this is entire police department? Yeah. Chief, could you please I'd like the chief to clarify. So, right now, uh chief, do you want to speak at the microphone so the public can hear you? We have at least five people tuning in. So,

sorry. U Yeah. So, we can't hire department is the entire department. So, the reading police department, no matter what division, we we can't by policy hire. That's not a good idea. So that statement is bit unclear this department or division the whole state we definitely need to clarify that. Okay. Ryan what you're saying is the whole state can do it except us

so far. So the the the agencies that I've reached out to so far um use Lexiple same policy manual that we do and their policies and the chiefs that I talked to all allow that. Reuba City has a commander and a lieutenant that are brothers. Uh the red bluff chief, his son is a police officer there. So it is happening up and down the state. As you move further south, it it is more prominent. So the larger agencies all allow nepotism because again law enforcement and public safety is a is the family roots run deep and so you do have that a lot.

All right, let's see if we can move this along. Otherwise, we have to have another add another date to our agenda. It's a two-day meeting. So, um we do have 11:4 we have we have uh two motions. We have a motion from councelor Muns, a motion from councelor debt. Is there a second on any of their motions? I will second councelor Mun's motion just so we can continue conversation. So, okay. Uh that's bringing it back. It sounded like that there needed to be that there actually did need to be some clarity in what it was that we have to have. Anyway, interum kiblers. You can't h there is no nepotism in the police department. That's what that says.

So, we want to change I am interested in changing that. Yeah, I'm bring just to be clear that that will be a meet and confer. So, we we can bring that back in close session. Um and I will say you can be that bring that back regardless. The question is essentially do you want to delay the other changes until you've had a chance to incorporate um uh those the the new changes into the policy as well? No. And we are in a close contract with RPD. So we are not able to impose the change.

So it would delay the implementation of the other changes that had been previously requested by council um as well as the disclosure of romantic relationships until we could reopen. Um, well, we can always we can always speak to the unions to see if they're interested, but they aren't required to agree to any changes until we reopen our contract. The motion. So, I would say that we can accept the changes as proposed and we can bring this for discussion another time to have the different options as soon as possible.

But I do want to clarify one thing here. the policy which says department of or division. Do we need to correct that for now or not? Yeah, I I believe that's the existing language in the the prior policy. So, um any change there would also need to be part of the meet and confer. But I do think frankly I do think it's a good idea to clarify that. Um but for now, let us let us revisit that another date. But for now, I would make a motion to accept the changes. Uh is if your motion is accept the changes and bring back is that what I heard? Yes. bring back for consideration. I'll withdraw my sec councelor Mun's motion, but I will second your motion. Is there any other motions? No, we're good. Um, let's let's vote. All in favor? You voted for me again.

We did it. We did it, guys. Um, all right. We have uh 11 council travel reports. Does anybody want to report travel? No, I'm traveling tomorrow, though. Okay. Well, can't wait to hear all about it. So, um, item 12, suggestions from council members for any future topics. I heard nothing. We're adjourned. Told you to do it today.