City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I am mayor Patricia Lock Dawson, and I would like to welcome you all to the city council meeting for 02/10/2026. Today is not a regular city council meeting.

It's kind of a workshop more where we are gonna be discussing our goals and priorities for the coming year. So we'll be talking each department will be presenting book of work. So it's gonna be a long day hearing about all our goals and priorities. So we are going to start the meeting with public comment, and this is for any items within the jurisdiction of city council as well as those in closed session. And I think what we're gonna do is going to limit general public comment to two minutes today.

And so I want to ask our folks in the back there to make sure you are managing the time. Appreciate that. So we will start our meeting with public comment.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call (951) 826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Alright. Thank you. We will start with Eric. Welcome. Thank you. I'm sorry. That was Erin. I'm sorry. Erin. I

prepared three minutes. Alright, thank you. Last week I commented in the evidence and the benefit of Housing First. In summary, makes our communities safer and reduces homeless suffering. So basically I'm asking you to motion to reconsider the University Terrace Project. Now I'm gonna address the Raincross Gazette article on February 6 where council members gave their own reasoning. So I asked council member Robillard if he wasn't gonna take 20,000,000 for the state, what was he gonna do for the homeless? And he told me he couldn't respond to me. And I'm disappointed that you have not been asked this question enough that you have a one page executive summary. So I did my own research and found out that Riverside spent about $3,800,000 on what I assume is homeless services.

Because an estimate of what hospital costs alone would be, it would be about $4,500,000 So if this is correct, it's telling, right? We spend more on emergency room than we do on remedying the solution. Council Member Farcone, you are my ward rep and I think you're not representing constituents. You've told me you're a rule follower but I want to provide some examples of where I think you have misstated the rules. So I did not find in the University Avenue specific plan where it prohibits residential only development.

Development. And this is a plan from 1993, I'll also point out. In your statement to me in the press, Enterprise Resolution twenty four thousand three hundred eighteen does not require that the proposed work change substantially to allow a motion to reconsider. You say you are not opposed to Housing First, but if you narrow your approval to require treatment as you do in the Raincross Gazette article, it's no longer Housing First. And to be clear, Housing First is the rule of Riverside since 2018, a fact the ACLU has pointed out to the City Council. Councilman Mills, I respect your clarity on your position but I wish you weren't so laser focused on economic independence and would consider public safety. I don't have any more time so thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Konlisk. Alright, I've got Luke Lopez followed by Denise Stadelbacher.

Welcome. Thank

you. Good afternoon, mayor, members of the city council and staff. My name is Luke Lopez and I'm here to speak on the Housing First initiative on university. In recent weeks, it has become clear that this conversation is not only about policy, safety or location, it is also about people. People with financial stakes, people acting as intermediaries and people in positions of public trust who are being urged to influence an outcome.

I don't raise this to assign motives or to vilify anyone, but to name an important truth. When public decisions about housing our most vulnerable neighbors become entangled with private negotiations and economic pressure, we risk losing our moral center. I say this with care but also with honesty. Some of this has come to light through email correspondence that is now part of the public record. In those communications, unhoused people are discussed not as neighbors to be cared for but as leverage in a transaction, as a problem that will either be managed or allowed to worsen depending on how a vote goes.

That framing matters because the way we speak about people, especially when we think no one else is listening, reveals what we truly believe about their worth. What troubles me most is not disagreement. That is healthy in a democracy. But the suggestion that if this project does not move forward, conditions will intentionally deteriorate and that responsibility for that deterioration should be laid on the feet of those who oppose the sale. That kind of logic places the burden of human suffering on political outcomes rather than on our shared responsibility as a city.

And that should give us pause. Housing First is not a naive or careless approach. It is rooted in evidence, experience and a moral conviction that stability must come before transformation. It begins with the belief that dignity is not something people earn after meeting our expectations, but something we affirm by providing a door that locks, a bathroom that is theirs, and a place where recovery can begin. As a person of faith, I cannot separate this conversation from the words of Jesus that when we welcome the stranger and we offer shelter to those without it, we are not just improving corridor or resolving a dispute, we are encountering him in the question

Thank you for

your service to our city. I'm speaking in support of the University Terrace Homekey Plus grant and to go on the record that I hope a motion to reconsider the vote will be made so that the no votes that stop this Hail Mary influx of 20,000,000 state dollars can be resurrected in the name of the 114 community members and all who will follow can be saved and served by this grant. This vote carries more moral gravity than most council business that comes before you because the people this project aims to lift off the streets of Riverside, for them your decision is life or death. It seems much dust has been kicked up about who gets to be included and what designation of misfortune they must carry to be worthy of housing. But this is a win for anyone experiencing the trauma of homelessness, anyone, seniors, veterans, those suffering mental or physical disabilities or substance use disorders.

Any of these conditions should merit participation. And yes, there's accountability too with the involvement of caseworkers, security on-site and the tenant's own contribution of their partial income for rent. Absent this project, there's nothing in the wings to replace it and the immediacy of harm befalling those in shelter just measured in days, not years. So time is of the essence. Lives are on the line.

I volunteered to serve the homeless needs for twenty six years with Project Food Riverside, and I've met so many worthy people who need the grace of something good to extract them from their perpetual misery. Please reconsider a motion to vote again and accept the Homekey Plus grant money. And when you do so, think with pride of our city's symbol, the ring cross, the shimmery cross standing atop a platform and creating a shelter below. May we all act to represent this symbol's ideal of protection for all. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. I've got Rachel Williams followed by Harold Wesson and Jo Lacroix.

Hi. Thank you for listening to us today. My name is Rachel Williams. I'm 67 years old. I have lived all my life in Riverside. I live in Downtown Ward 1. I taught in this region. And I voted for you, Mr. Falcone. I thought in the age of inauthentic politicians everywhere who say anything to get elected that you were different.

I thought you were the new generation that was acting in good faith, speaking in good faith when you specifically gave your support to Housing First when you were trying to get elected and you said you were proud of your service with Mayor Bailey in that regard. I believed you. Mostly I've been happy with your service as a council person, beautification of Riverside, your sense of our history, your sense of inclusiveness to most people, to all people. But yesterday I came into this very room and heard you speak about in the land use committee and you seemed so concerned about some Riverside residents. You even suggested we could apply for a grant to help them.

But was it for those most in need? No. It was for a very niche, very privileged few, people with historic homes who might need a prettier fence than a chain link fence. And my heart dropped to the floor, my mouth to the floor that you would simultaneously turn down this grant for the most in need and suggest that yesterday. We learned from Minneapolis that we are all neighbors.

Do you guys? Do you all sleep in a bed with a pillow under your head each night? Shame on you for leaving some of our neighbors on concrete each night. I'm just here to ask you to please, please reconsider your vote and that we should take this grant.

Thank you. All right. I've got Harold Wesson followed by Joe Lacroix and then Robert Earl Bogan. If you're clapping, you can't hear your name. I'm sorry. So I just wanna let you know. Harold Wesson. Welcome, mister Wesson.

Hi. What's good, counsel? I'm a DJ and a event curator here in Riverside, and I love this city. I'm proud of the turnout here today opposition to the rejection of these federal funds in Riverside. Like every city city in America, house own house persons.

It's something to view as it's not something to view as a scourge or stain in our city, but something that we unfortunately allow to happen as a society. I'm not gonna sit up here and lecture you about morality or common sense because you're all adults. So instead, I'll just list a few bullet points that are just objectively factual. Fresno is a city of a comparable size and demographics Riverside and has lost its affordable housing funding from the feds due to rejecting grants just like the city rejected on the thirteenth. This now makes housing and the unhoused even more of an obstacle than it was before the grant money being offered by the feds was there.

Two, this room was full of people behind me, even though they may be up there in age who have a decent memory and will member remember to vote you out. You will work for your constituency, and this constituency wants you to grant this funding. We will remember you. They will remember you in how you voted, and remember to show up at the polls next year to make sure that you don't have a job. General elections are June 2, y'all. So Phil, Steven, Sean, and Chuck, if you wanna keep your job and not be in house yourself, I suggest that you reconsider. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. I've got Joe Lacroix followed by Robert Earl Bogan and then Patricia Verrill.

Hello, all. As I said before, when I was up before, I'm the broker working on the transaction. And it's very likely, as you've already been told, that if this deal is is canceled, that the owner's gonna lease the property. And I sent you this, which was then followed up by councilman Condor's ridiculous meme. But this is so that everybody can see what you probably didn't share with them, what it's gonna look like.

Then what's gonna happen is in ten years after this, the city's gonna buy the property and tear it down and then sell it to some developer for 50¢ on the dollar. So the worst that can happen if this is approved is it gets better immediately. The best that can happen if it doesn't is this and it starts quick and it happens quick. The fact that you talked about the section eight sounds like you're singling out those people and and and you can easily find out on Google that every voucher in the country is section eight. So you're literally discriminating against every voucher holder in the whole United States when you talk about them like this.

So, you know, I don't know what what else to say because, obviously, everybody appealed to your your heart, your kindness, your sense of whatever, reelection. There's absolutely nothing that moves you on this thing. You know, I think the only thing you left out in your meme is where you mentioned that they're gonna put a pizza parlor in there where they sacrifice babies because this is how ridiculous your meme was. And it's all based on lies, misinformation. So you can do what you wanna do. I can't believe with everybody breathing down you like the ACLU and everybody that you're holding fast to this and nothing seems to move you, they don't care. That's it.

Thank you, mister LeFon. Alright. I have Robert Earl Bogan followed by Verweil and then looks like Ada Sandoval? Alex Sandoval. Hi.

Hi, everybody. How are you doing?

First of all, I just wanted to say that I was thinking about I have addressed city council on a number of occasions about one people, one community, one world. And that's been one of the things that I have been emphasizing and also committed to seeing happening in Riverside. I would like to see Riverside be truly a community. And if you are excluding people that are, you know, who's homeless or whatever their issue may be, this is an opportunity to provide housing for some of those. I know that the city of Riverside had a mandate to have so many houses down within a certain time frame.

And I think that this is a golden opportunity to to meet that quota or to move it toward the quota. In addition to that, I just think that we live in such a polarized culture right now where people just don't seem to matter. Riverside has these core values, inclusivity, diversity, pride, and commitment. So this is an opportunity for our leadership to actually show what you are about. Are you about creating community within the Riverside City, or are you about appeasing some people that do not wanna see the homeless community in their the homeless community in their community.

I I'm reminded of how much of a fight there was when Saint Michael's was working on creating the apartments for affordable. And I know that there was a

lot

of, you know, information or things in the community where people were objecting. Unfortunately, or should I say fortunately, their prediction as far as what the housing is going to encompass was totally wrong. They everybody gets along. Give them a chance. Give the housing how people without housing an opportunity to have a safe place to stay.

Thank you, mister Bogan. Alright. I have Patricia Verville, Alex Sandoval, and Adam Wedeking.

Hello. My name is Patricia Verweil. I live in the university neighborhood. So I am right down the street. And I support the project fully, completely and absolutely. It distresses me beyond measure that people can post things and say my mind is irrevocably set. I will not change my mind. That means you are not open to information. And a lot of the information is wrong. Housing First is a supportive housing, affordable long term rental assistance paired with intensive services promoting housing stability.

It's directly off the website. It's also rapid rehousing, connected to affordable short term and medium term rental assistance paired with moderate services. The people that will be living in these houses are not coming from the gutter into the house. They have been through processes. They have been vetted. They will sign a lease. They will be responsible for their rent. They will be neighbors in my community. I cannot understand why anyone would object to that. Why wouldn't you want an apartment building as opposed to a weekly rental place?

Weekly rentals will bring crime. Now if you look at Nextdoor, Nextdoor, the app, everybody all over the city is posting. They broke into my car. They broke in. They stole something. They did this. They did that. There's crime. It's not restricted to the housing in Quality Inn. So to say that the Quality Inn residents will spread to Canyon Crest and break into our mailboxes and steal our stuff is fear mongering in the extreme and it's shameful.

It's totally shameful. I support the project irrevocably and so should you. Remember, it's okay to change your mind especially when you find out the truth.

Thank you. Thank you, miss Verweel. Alright. I have Alex Sandoval followed by Adam Wedeking and Chris Lovkin.

Mayor, I'm sorry. Is the timer sending at two?

Yes.

Oh, it's reduced?

Oh. Yes.

Good afternoon, mayor and city council. My name is Alex Sandoval, and I'm a resident of Ward 3. The first thing I'd like to say is abolish ICE. Our communities are under attack. Our city is under attack today especially.

And I just wanna say thank you to Clarissa Cervantes for actually, you know, using her platform to kind of raise awareness and to protect, you know, the vulnerable members of our community in this city. And I wish that other council members would do the same. Yeah. I am with no offense to Steven Robillard or Chuck Condor or Sean Mill, but I I kind of expected you all to take the stance that you did on this University Terrace Homes project, but I did expect better from you, Philip Falcone. And I wish that you had made a different decision.

It seems now that you are cemented in in the decision that you made, that's fine. You have to live with that and nobody else. One thing that I saw today was that Clarissa Cervantes had posted about ice being in the Casablanca neighborhood of Riverside. And on yours was on your Instagram, Philip Falcone, was just a a mural about America's two hundred fiftieth anniversary. And all I have to say is that we can't celebrate just the arts without the liberatory politics behind the arts.

And this University Terrace Homes project was another example of the way that you could do that. And you failed to do so. And so we look forward to doing all we can to vote you out. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. I have Adam Weddingking followed by Chris Lovkin and then Connie Ransom. Welcome, mister Weddington.

Good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name is Adam Weddington, and I'm the board president of the Universal Unitarian Church of Riverside. Our church is deeply disappointed by your decision to reject the quality and permanent supportive housing project. This chamber has been filled again and again with Riverside residents asking you to address our housing crisis with courage and evidence based solutions. Instead, the council chose to turn away 94 units of permanent supportive housing, one time state funding, and a project that's aligned with the city's own housing first commitments.

This decision was not just a policy disagreement. It has real life consequences for seniors, for veterans, for people living with disabilities, and for the credibility of Riverside as a partner with the state of California. I'm aware that following public comment today, you'll be discussing potential legislation litigation, sorry, related to this vote in closed session. The ACLU of Southern California has raised serious concerns about whether this decision aligns with your legal obligations under the housing element and fair housing law. Regardless of where that legal process leads, I want to be clear.

This community deserved better leadership. Permanent supportive housing works. It has an eighty five to ninety seven percent success rate in stabilizing people experiencing chronic homelessness. The city's own Housing First Plan recognizes this. Yet, the council chose to walk away from a rare funding opportunity and from the people whose lives would have been changed.

As a faith community committed to justice, equity, and love, we believe leadership requires listening, especially when the room is full of your constituents pleading for action. We urge you to reconsider this decision, to reflect seriously on your legal obligations, and to recommit to housing solutions grounded in evidence rather than fear. Riverside is watching, and we are not done showing up.

Mister Weddingheng. Alright. I've got Chris Lupkin followed by Connie Ransom and then Errol Koschowicz.

My name is Chris Lupkin, and I live in Ward 2. I'm a longtime Riverside and a longtime United Methodist. First, I know you are weary and that your job isn't easy. So let me start by saying thank you for how many hours you all spend in service on the Council. Here are the reasons why I just can't let the issue drop.

In business, they say don't leave money on the table. That's what we're doing here. This money will go to some community but it won't be Riverside. That is heartbreaking as I look around and see so many people on the streets. As a woman, I can tell you that I have been frequently underestimated, so the only woman on the Council brings the project forward, a vote of this Council allows her to go for the grant. The grant writers spend time on it. These are city grant writers. And the good news comes back: we won! Time to celebrate, right? Time to celebrate with her.

No, instead there is a new vote, a new majority forms, and a message to our ward two rep as well as our mayor that you have no power here, that you are in charge of these very capable women and you are going to demonstrate that by not accepting the grant. I get the part about people being absent the first time. That's only one person. But still, the Council voted in favor of this submission last May so stay true to that. I ask that whether you were at that meeting or not that you honor that vote.

I voted for Clarissa based on her priorities to find solutions to homelessness. You are stepping on her ability to follow through for her constituents. This project lies in her ward and I ask that you listen to her voice and let her try to make improvements for our city with this grant. If the result isn't perfect, we will work together to fix it. As you are well aware by now, Riverside has a lot of passionate people and a healthy nonprofit sector that can help when people are struggling.

Thank you, Ms. Lufkin. All right. I've got Connie Ransom followed by Errol Koschevitz and then Sammy Burgess. Connie, is Connie Ransom here? Okay. I folks cannot hear their names. I'm sorry if you're clapping, and it's it's very difficult. So, Connie, thank you.

You.

Oh my god, you must be tired. Thank you once again. It's nice to see you all. And I just want

to

speak about a personal thing that has to do with being committed to something really deeply and having to change my mind. About sixty six or seven years ago, I was engaged to a very nice young man named John. And he was a year ahead of me in college and he graduated and was going to graduate school. I was also in a small college. Everybody knew everybody else.

And I was also good friends with a lot of other people including a young man in my class whose name was Roger Ransom. And I also had a thesis to write and I was scared out of my wits. And I had to finally make a decision that I was fearful of making because I thought it would make me look silly or bad or and that decision was to postpone a wedding and possibly break an engagement. My father was not really in favor of that wedding and that made it even harder for me to change my mind. I changed my mind.

Roger Ransom and I were married a year and a half later, and we were married for sixty five years.

Thank you, miss Ransom. Alright. I've got Errol Koschowicz followed by Sammy Bruges and then Urban Cross. Welcome, mister Koschowicz.

Hi, my favorite friends again.

You

guys time off at the same time. You can't go

back and forth.

Now yes. Hi, guys. I wanted to say good afternoon to my future felons. I don't know what else to say here, guys. This is a vendor's list that I'm providing to the public. It's a 104 pages. Now their budget is fake. They don't have a budget. They just make up numbers what they wanna do. I'm providing this information. They hired the county of Riverside. I have 104 pages of this. Can you make it a little bit bigger if it's a possibility? There you go. Now this is the city of Riverside's vendors list.

Now it's a 108 pages, you guys. I added up to $38,000,000,000. Now they're hiring people. I have videos of going in private businesses and asking the business owners where the money has come from. They won't answer me.

They tell me to leave. They're getting public funds, which nonprofits should be against the law. I hate to say this, but why are we providing $205,000 to the County Of Riverside with no questions asked? The residents, I feel bad about the residents of Riverside because I live here and these are my resident people that I live next to should have some common sense and actually oversee what you guys

are

doing. You've committed fraud, you've money laundered, you've committed bribes, You have interfered with our local and state, county and federal elections. I have pages and pages of money. So your budget is fake and it's lies. Okay? And you guys have a blessed day today. It's ten seconds left, but I I did talk to Sean. I did tell Medina right now. Same thing what I'm telling you. You should be in jail. Thank you. You have a blessed day.

Thank you, mister Koschowicz. Alright. I have Sammy Burgess followed by Urban Cross and then Alex Orozco.

Thank you, mayor, council members, and city staff. My name is Sammy Burgess, and I'm a student at UCR. Most of you have voted again most of you that voted against this project have cited student interest and safety. Did you know that our student spaces need to be blocked at night because unhoused people seek shelter there? Have you asked students about their opinions on this project before using us to excuse this negligence of the Riverside community? This city promotes its positive position on housing first. Council member Falcone, you campaigned on a promise of affordable housing. Are our most vulnerable residents not deserving enough for you to deliver on those promises? Is it not fraudulent to campaign on a promise only to refuse to deliver? These past several votes on city council have shown that it is fruitless to hope that your minds will be changed.

But I do still have hope that the ACLU's investigation into this matter will produce better results than the majority of this council have. Thank you for all your time and I hope you reconsider.

Thank you. Alright, I've got Urban Cross followed by Alex Orozco and then Ruth Wong.

Hi, I am a student at UCR and I recently got an email about housing at UCR for next school year. Seeing the rates of apartments and how astronomical they can be, it's quite obvious how housing is one of the biggest barriers for students on their way to join the workforce. I know friends who have been forced into dropping out because of how unaffordable housing can be. So seeing when a project like this gets shot down, it crushes me. Especially when 20 of these units could have been available for students to apply for.

Falcone, I've read your campaign promises and I know that you want to make affordable housing just as available as I do. But if you can't provide housing for the most marginalized, then how can we trust you to make housing for students in Riverside as a whole? I just wanna remind you that it's okay to change your mind and I urge you to do so.

Thank you, mister Cross. Alright. I have Alex Orozco followed by Ruth Wong and then looks like Maribel Nunez. Welcome.

Hello. My name is Alex Orozco, and I'm a student at UC Riverside School of Public Policy. I'm here today to say that I'm very disappointed in the city council's decision to not go ahead and submit a motion for reconsideration for project home key. During my second quarter as a transfer student at UC Riverside, I was able to attend a forum that was that that were Philip Falcone, Steven Robillard, and Steve Hemingway attended. And I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to Philip Falcone afterwards.

And I asked them why it was so difficult in order to actually do something about the homeless situation considering how bad it's gotten in Riverside over the past few years. His answer to me was that it's difficult to find the funding. So considering the fact that this was a twenty point one million dollar grant that Sacramento was going to go ahead and hand over to us to build supplemental supportive housing that could have housed 15% of Riverside's unhoused population the day after it was built, I think that this is a massive shame, especially considering that you campaigned on a promise of building affordable housing in order to help the homeless situation in this city. On top of that, this program and these types of programs have been shown to successful. Redlands over in the Inland Empire has had a similar program of similar size, and they've gone ahead and had a 30% year over year decrease on their homelessness population, and it's been large largely attributed to the success of that program.

So considering the facts of the matter, it breaks my heart to see that we are not doing things to help our constituents and to help our community. And as a and as a student at the School of Public Policy, this is an example of bad policy decisions. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.

Thank you, mister Orozco. Alright. I have Ruth Wong followed by Maribel Nunez and then Janice Ruths.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I hope you you're the people of this room and all their loved ones are staying safe during these trying times. My name is Ruth Ouijin Huang. I spoke last week about my experience being unhoused. And I also recommend Steve Vorbilliard, Chuck Condor, and Sean Mills to actually look at me when I'm speaking, please, and pay attention because it is really apparent.

Afraid of?

Thank you.

I'm sorry. Please please no shouting in the council chambers. Appreciate it.

Council member Sean Mills, you said two meeting meetings ago to a concerned constituent who came forward, you bear as much responsibility for the failure of this as anybody up here. You made it personal. You were inept and disrespectful. These are your words. Council members Philip Falcone, Chuck Condor, Steve Verbilden, and Sean Reynolds, let's be clear.

It is a personal failing of yours, not the community's because we are here showing up. It is your failing as an elected council member to think and act for the best of all constituents, not just the ones that you provide funding for, but not the but not the ones that provide funding for you. Your inability to place the needs of the people you represent over your personal connections to the Bailey family are so transparently apparent, it is frustrating and it is embarrassing. Please look at me and not your highlighter. Mister Falcone, you ran your campaign highlighting affordable housing and its direct correlation to the growth of the unhoused population.

This is you. You stressed the importance of young Democratic voices on poll policy decisions. This is a golden opportunity to put your money where your mouth is, yet here we are. As others have said, the constituents of Riverside will remember your hypocrisy. Don't expect to be reelected next year. I I know many of you attend church, and let me leave you with this. My dad is a pastor. I have grown up in the church. There's a specific verse I have heard and over again. Matthew nineteen twenty four. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Think about your actions, especially you, the one that's looking down right now, sir Chuck Condor.

Thank you, Ms. Wong. Right. Maribel Nunez, followed by Janice Ruths and Ernesto Rangel.

Hi, everyone. Maribel Nunez, Ward 1 resident. We've been here since last year asking for this project. I think this previous city council, this city council, we've been looking at it for several months, years, you name it. I'm trying to figure out what else to say that I haven't said and want to be respectful.

But yeah, we were in the Housing and Homeless Committee. We were at City Council last year. So let's stay consistent on what we are voting for and not change our minds. And I understand that if there's new information, you're going to change your mind. We understand that.

As a Ward 1 resident and then someone that does get out the vote efforts, sometimes we do provide tough love in sending text messages, especially because I live in Ward 1. So it's tough love, Council Member Falcone. And Clarissa is running for a higher office. Whether she wins or not, she could be gone in July. So you as my council member, I want you to be there with us and you might be alone in advocating with us.

And so that's why we give you the tough love and no disrespect. We appreciated that you listened to us when we asked you to lower the rent cap to 4% versus real estate interest from these council members to go with what the mobile home parks wanted, the 5% rent cap. So that's why we're pushing you because we know we could work with you. As I said, Carissa has been with us for several years. You're the new council member. So you're the new generation that we're hoping that you can work with us. And also, we don't want litigation to be the reason. We elected you. We didn't elect ACLU. We didn't elect all these other entities. So litigation is going to have to be the way to go if we have to push it. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Janice Ruths followed by Ernesto Wrangel, looks like, and then Thomas Moore. Welcome, miss Ruths.

Thank you, mayor, counsel, staff. First, I wanna say thank you to the city staff for always working in earnest for the city of Riverside. Whether you live here or not, I really appreciate it. I'm sure most of the residents' businesses do. So I wanna say thank you.

I wanna ask you four council members to please reconsider. Now mind you, you had multiple times, one before this whole bid process went out to the state where we were one of five to get this money, we had plenty of time to reconsider those votes before people actually went out and wasted time and our taxpayer money to put all of this together and win it. Why didn't you do something before now? If you want to be NIMBY, I'm happy with that, especially about your own ward. But don't be nimby about somebody else's ward and what they think is best for them, because that would be wrong if they did it to you.

Sort of last but not least, this pattern of declining funds for social safety net programs is turning out to be more than just one offs and coincidences. It's starting to become a trend. I've reached out to our supervisor to hopefully put a task force together to see what's going on around the county. And I'll be reaching out to the state to see what's going on around the state. And I'm not saying there's something subversive, but this is a problem. But I would like invite you to come out at 6PM tonight at the UU Church. Thank you.

Thanks, Ms. Ruth. Alright, I've got Ernesto Ranghel followed by Thomas Moore and then it looks like Mirella Monroy.

Members of the city council, we are taught that government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. Yet tonight, it feels like it's of the powerful, by the comfortable, and for the Baileys. When I look up and see some of you disengaged on your phones not acknowledging the community, it sends a message. It says that for some of you, the facts don't matter. Concerns were raised, facts were provided, data was presented.

So I have to ask, are we immune to facts? Has Eagle grown so large that we cannot correct course when evidence contradicts our fears? In the Raincross cassette article, why four members voted against the university terrorists, every concern outlined has already been addressed with facts yet the vote stood. When objections persist despite evidence, it begins to look less like caution and more like discrimination. And from the sound of it, the ACLU agrees.

And for the mayor, you recently spoke about the civil the city leveling up, but refusing to house the most vulnerable among us is not leveling up. This is maintaining the status quo. True leadership requires courage, not comfort. If Jesus were sitting in your seat, what would he do? Would he would he house the poor? He would serve the marginalized. He would not look away. I urge you to reconsider this housing project. Lead with courage. Lead with facts. Lead with humanity.

Thank you, mister Rangel. Alright. I have Thomas Moore followed by looks like Marella Monroy and Becky Watley.

Thank you, members of the council. I'm gonna do a brief history of myself. I'm a third generation River City in. My grandparents ran Vivian's Cafe, which is now the mark at the original Stalder Building. I have very deep roots to this town.

My parent or my grandparents owned what is now the Del Taco lot after they got displaced by the Highway Act. So deep seated roots in this town. I'm deeply concerned about this particular location because I've seen in my lifetime maybe a dozen structures downtown that have been just left negligent due to the fact that, oh, you know, we we may not have the money for it or even when money is provided, individuals go, you know what? I'd rather not see this slight change. The most immediate what I could think of is the former utilities building behind the convention center that burned down to being left unattended.

It's not about whether or not you don't want the unhoused there. It's about if it's a structure that is sound that needs to be renovated in order to be occupied, that should be done regardless of whether or not unhoused or or disenfranchised people will be there. The goal is to get people in a home so that they have the basic fundamental rights that we all take advantage of. How many of us council members have walked these streets regularly just helping anybody they pass by? I understand you guys are busy, but there is a basic human connection that I feel that you guys are slightly lacking.

I regularly walk these streets. I helped an unhoused person who actively did a crack on my porch after I invited them to walk to get food. And I have no will will against that. My goal is to get them on their way. And my only goal is that you guys do the same for any available structures that are in this town. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Moore. Alright. I have Mirella Monroy, Becky Watley, and then Annabelle, looks like Navarez.

Hi. I have stuff to give you guys first.

Go ahead.

Hi. My name is Mireya Munroe. I'm part of Ward 6. Dear council member Falcone, other members of the city council, this is an open letter from artists in the community. We're writing to you as a collective of local artists, creatives, musicians, and culture workers who live and work in the city.

We respectfully urge you to motion for reconsideration of the 114 studio apartment or studio apartments, University Terrace, permanent supportive housing project as a lack of affordable housing and accessible housing has directly impact our ability and those of many others to remain part of our community. Riverside proudly distinguishes itself as an arts and culture district, and the title reflects many years of investment, collaboration, creative energy from working artists who have contributed to transferring neighborhoods into vibrant cultural spaces. Galleries, murals, and performances, markets, and festivals do not happen on their own. They are built and nurtured by artists who live in our community. However, the Arts And Culture District cannot thrive if people who create that culture no longer can afford to call this city home.

Artists are small business owners, educators, nonprofit directors, and contributors to the economic vitality of the community. We rent studio apartments, purchase locally, host local events, and mentor young people interested in the arts when housing is unaffordable. Artists are often amongst the first to be displaced. This was placed this displacement weakens our ecosystem that supports tourism, community engagement, and identity. Housing is a fundamental and thriving community.

Without stable affordable homes, artists cannot remain, invest in long term neighborhoods, participate meaningfully in civic culture events, building low income building low income and affordable housing is not only a response to today's housing crisis, it's an investment in the next generation of artists. Young creative emerging music talent, students, and rising cultural workers among are the most at risk of becoming unhoused. We have we need to afford we need affordable housing to begin our careers and build our roots. And this is signed by a 111 people, by the way.

Thank you, miss Munroe. Alright. I have Becky Watley followed by Annabel Navarrez, I think.

My name is Becky Watley. I'm a Ward 1 resident. I have zero optimism that any of the four of you who voted no will reconsider your vote. You have dug deep in research to find justification after your vote to be able to sprout plausible reasons to make you look and sound as if you are acting in good faith. Some of you have claimed that seniors and veterans were not actually the intended residents.

Councilman Mill, you claimed in a letter to the Raincross Gazette, and I quote, these populations were not specifically designated, reserved, or protected in the grant language or terms. As council members, we are required to vote on what is written and enforceable, not on messaging aspirations or assurances made outside of binding documents. Councilman Ficoni, you posted on social media that this was a bait and switch. Do you realize that this amounts to you calling your city manager, your director of housing and human services, and your nonprofit partner liars? The staff report clearly stated priority will be given to local residents who are seniors and veterans.

Ms. Davis and RHGC both assured you that this could be included in policies for improving tenants in writing, but that didn't make sense to include it in the grant application itself tying our hands for fifty five years. What if unhoused youth needed services in twenty years? City staff presented you with a slide, a real time count of 68 eligible residents over the age of 55. That's more than two thirds of the available units.

The intention was there. They would have put it in writing for policies. Intention and integrity on your city manager, city leadership, and your experienced trusted nonprofit partner should be enough to reassure you. I am concerned that you are calling in question their integrity, their honesty, and their professionalism. Your hubris, your I know better than you all do attitude does not bode well for the future of our city.

Thank you, Ms. Watley. Alright. Let's see. I've got Annabel Navarrez and then Dan Hoxworth. Welcome, Ms. Navarrez.

Thank you to our council members and to the mayor Patricia Locke Dawson for listening actively and making sure that we have decorum in the chambers. Let's make sure that we have that decorum with the dais as well. My name is Annabel Navarrez and I'll address you Philip Falcone since you're my council member. I live in Ward 1 and I'm also the vice president of Riverside County Young Democrats. When you ran in 2023, my chapter and myself actually supported you for many reasons.

Personally, what was especially great was how you touted your expertise and experience with affordable housing, something that is very close to my heart since I became homeless in 2008 when the housing crisis happened. So for me, I really love that you supported the housing first model and you you touted your connections with businesses to be able to move forward these proposals. So right now what I'm finding and I'm really disappointed with your failure to follow through on a lot of those claims and if anything it shows that instead of improving or facilitating your help for creating those projects, it's actually being an obstacle for how you're able to show up for your constituents and how you're able to show up as a leader for my ward. There are many affordable housing projects that you have been able to take shovel ready photo ops for or that you've come at the end of the project. And that's not just a project that you started.

These are projects that our predecessors started, all the council members, not just the ones that are here. You guys are able to follow through and continue projects that have been started before that. So it's not just yourself, but this is one of the projects that you really can be a leader on for this. And we're really disappointed that you made claims during the endorsement process for RCYD and I can only imagine what claims you have made to unions, to other groups that you're not following through right now. So it just raises that question for a lot of us who supported you and I really hope that you reconsider this and that you bring this forward for reconsideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. I have Dan Hoxworth and then we will move to our callers. Welcome mister Hoxworth.

Thank you honorable mayor, council members. I am deeply concerned about the present state. We have declined $20,000,000 in state funds. This is fiscally irresponsible for Riverside. We have no plan for the Quality Inn.

We're going to invest police resources to deal with all the issues there. That costs taxpayer money. We are also gonna use taxpayer money every time EMS goes to help these 94 homeless individuals. We're gonna use taxpayer money every time one of these 94 show up at a ER because they don't have access to healthcare. And, what are we gonna do to monitor the lives of these 94 individuals who are denied housing?

Last year in the county of Riverside, one hundred and forty homeless died on our streets. That is unacceptable. But we're feeding that. We're denying seniors who on the streets, it's like living dog years. It ages you. It ages you quickly. How many seniors won't be there when there's a new solution? For them, nobody's proposed anything in the pipeline that will address their needs. Are we going to track them with Riverside County? Get quarterly updates on their health, so us as riversiders can know what our council decided to do to human beings?

I want that accountability on this project and this denial. In the meantime, we have the Quality Inn, which the old Riverside Foundation has shown and written a letter to say how awful conditions are there for them, yet we do nothing. We deny 20,000,000 in state funds. So nine

Thank you. You.

Mister Huxworth, thank you. Alright. Let's have our first caller, please.

Good afternoon, council members. This project is not an experiment. It is a state funded evidence based housing program for seniors and residents in need. Funding was secured, waitlists existed, and rejecting it is not prudence. It is obstruction dressed as caution or NIMBY concern. In his own statement, council member Falcone said, where do we go from here? Let's look to the next project. A community accepted community led project echoed mayor Locke Dawson. That is code. Code for a developer who prioritizes profit over people, delaying housing while need grows.

That is not weak that is not leadership. That is deflection right there. It is weakness. Claiming too many disingenuous things were happening with this project is funny because the United States Department of Justice reported that Stronghold Engineering Incorporated and its owners paid 2,500,000.0 to resolve federal investigations, yet they continue to develop locally. Documenting evidence points to much more happening beneath the surface in Riverside socially, politically, and economically, like how the Department of Justice and other public records demonstrate.

So what is disingenuous really? A state funded housing program for people in need blocked by incapable leaders or federal investigations tied to developers with ties to city government officials? Public office exists to confront structural inequity with structural solutions. Instead, fear, hesitation, and outdated thinking are winning over residents and community needs. That is policy disguised as prudence.

Declining funding for viable housing while homelessness persists is a choice that the electorate will hold you accountable for, which is why I'm speaking today because the public demands coherence between words and actions. Right now, that coherence is missing. Capital continues to carry disproportionate influence in the Inland Empire, and refusing innovation only deepens that record. Any attempt to create nuance on the issue is fancy cloth talk for political thought that is high school level at best and a joke to democratic ideals when this

Thank you. Can we go to our next caller, please?

Hello. My name is Storm. I'm from Starting Over Inc. I just wanted to talk about how first, abolish ICE and happy Black History Month. I work directly in outreach in our communities. I do not just see numbers on a report. I see people. I hear their stories. I see their exhaustion, and I see how much harder it is it has become to survive without a place, a safe place to sleep. Housing first matters, not as a theory or a buzzword, but as a lived reality. Without housing, everything else falls apart. Health declines, stability feels out of reach, and survival becomes the priority. The Quality Inn is more than a building. It represents safety, dignity, and a starting point. When people are housed, even temporarily, we see real change.

People rest, they engage, hope returns, and trust begins to rebuild. Housing First is not about removing accountability. It's about creating the conditions where stability and accountability are possible. The need is real and the urgency is now. Every delay has a human cost. Every funding gap keeps people outside longer and makes it harder to house than later. I ask you to prioritize the funding for the Quality Inn and for housing efforts that work. When we center humanity, our community is stronger. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's have our next caller, please. Go ahead.

Hi. Yes. My name is Alex, and I'm actually not a Riverside resident. However, I would like that to emphasize that you never know who is paying attention. We are paying attention. So thank you council members for hearing me today. I've called in to urge your support for this project because it reflects what decades of evidence have shown work, a housing first approach paired with wraparound services to address the issue of treatment. Housing first does not mean housing only. It means housing first then services. I would also like to ground this conversation and reiterate something simple but essential.

The people we are talking about are your neighbors. They are seniors, people with disabilities, possibly veterans, and longtime Riverside residents who have fallen into homelessness, not because they lack worse, but because their lives took a tough turn and housing has become increasingly out of reach. Please consider that you yourself are likely closer to homelessness than you are to the wealth of any corporate interests. University Terrace Homes recognizes the fundamental truth. People cannot heal, stabilize, or rebuild their lives without a safe place to sleep.

Housing first starts with that truth. It does not deny the importance of treatment. It acknowledges that treatment works best when people are housed, safe, and treated with dignity. This grant money could bring a program like this to life. It is unconscionable that you have voted to leave this money behind. University Terrace Homes offers permanent housing with wraparound services, including on-site case management and social services. That means meeting people where they are, respecting their autonomy, and offering care that is trauma informed rather than coercive. For many people who have experienced years of instability, trust is built not through force but through consistency and respect. Housing First,

which is Thank you. Alright. Let's have our next caller, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Veronica Garcia, and I'm the housing practice group director at Inland County's Legal Services. And I'm here respect respectfully to urge the council to reconsider its prior vote rejecting the Homekey Plus funding. I wanna note for the record that earlier today, just around 12:30, the city council should have received a formal letter from Inland County's Legal Services along with several other organizations, outlining the serious legal concerns related to the city's rejection of this funding. And we believe that the letter contains new and significant information that could help the council members make the decision to reconsider their votes.

The city's rejection of the more than $20,000,000 in Homekey Plus funding raises immediate concerns relating to the housing element compliance, the city's pro housing obligations and its duty to affirmatively further fair housing. It was brought to our attention that Riverside is significantly behind on its RHNA, so that's Regional Housing Needs Allocation, for those who may not be familiar with the lingo. And they have permitted or you all have permitted 0% of very low income RHNA, while permitting more than 31% of above moderate income RHNA. Now this isn't simply a policy disagreement. Cities cannot deny housing based on fear, speculation, or stereotypes about homelessness and disability.

And today, council does have the opportunity to correct course and avoid significant legal and financial risks moving forward with an evidence based project that could create 114 units of permanent supportive housing. I respectfully urge you to reverse the prior decision and accept the HomeKey Plus funding. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. Can we have our next caller, please?

Hello city council members. In the previous meeting, I referred to you as esteemed and considering how you've treated the complaints of your constituents, I will no longer consider you so. The concerns of the individuals here have been pushed aside for reasons that, frankly, I have not heard justify the decision to reject what is essentially a grant to fix a concern of our city. It's been stated multiple times by people here today and in previous meetings. This was approved previously, and the concerns have been met.

So why the backpedaling? At the eleventh hour, your decision to switch has been disgusting and, frankly, insulting. How are you going to protect and please go outside and see the state of your city because it's abysmal? Farmhouse collective may have you in a chokehold, but it sure doesn't have me in one. Get off your phones because I can't see if you're even paying attention to me through the Zoom meeting, and give us a legitimate reason you can't vote for this. It's absurd. And frankly, it's absurd that the four of you who even got this far said no, and I'm sure you will be up for reelection soon enough, and I will look forward to not seeing you here next time. Thank you for your time.

Alright. Thank you. Any more callers? Alright. Let's have our caller, please.

Go ahead. If you're online, you wish speak.

Okay. Joanne McKee. I live in Ward 3, and, thank you to the mayor and the council members for listening to all of us. And to Mr. Robillard, who replied to my email about my concerns.

And thank you for that response about the university tariff project. Your concerns are valid, but hopefully not the reasons our city will miss out on this project. I think we owe it to the 90 plus veterans and seniors on the approved qualified waiting list to proceed forward with the grant as a huge starting point if not only just for doing the right thing for our veterans, but a step forward in reducing in one day, if not eliminating, but at least greatly reducing the homeless situation in our city. This may be the only opportunity our city has to receive this large funding. Is there anything that can be reconsidered or negotiated that would make this project move forward?

Thank you for your consideration for this matter.

Thank you. Alright. I have Ash Davis. Welcome, mister Davis.

Thank you very much. I'm Ash Davis. I am from Ward 5. I had something written, but now we have two minutes and it won't fit. Listen, I just wanna say, this has been a frustrating experience for everybody. I have reread the Gazette article in which all of you made your comments as to why you are declining this funding, why you have concerns. I understand. I work in business. I deal with dollars and cents and numbers, and I deal with ROI. In fact, I sell to local governments, and I deal with local government agencies and state government agencies and all of their challenges.

I understand that this is a risky project. I understand this project was not exactly what everybody wanted. It does not seem to be the perfect project. We do not have enough perfect projects. We just don't.

We have to make this project work. And frankly, the reasons that are given in a lot of cases are both ignorant and inhumane. They do not match with the copious amounts of research on what does actually work to solve problems within cities that have issues with homelessness that do not affect people who are prostituting, doing drugs, selling drugs, are strung out, or in other ways doing crime. There are people who are completely and utterly like you and me who just don't have a house. And this is the kind of housing program that is funded that would provide that.

I am just begging you at this point. This is an important project. The city of San Bernardino has already moved forward with it. We will be seeing them in headlines. And this cannot be the legacy of this council in 2026. It just can't. Please. Please. That's all.

Thank you, mister Davis. I'm going to close public comment, but I see we have one more. We'll take this last public comment, and that will be our last comment. Thank you. Barry Doss? Yeah.

Welcome. Hello, everybody. I'm here again. I'm very, very upset because I've been looking at the videos, and I've actually gained about 25 pounds. I watch them, and now I'm like 25 pounds heavier. Thanks a lot. I

don't know

if that makes sense. That's kind of a joke, but trying to loosen things up. We have proceeded to really upset a lot of groups. The senior citizens, artists we've upset, veterans we've upset, our community we upset, and hate to say the one that's probably the most important is the young people. And they mobilize. I'm so thankful that you guys are here. I'm so thankful that you're being proactive on this. This is pretty much all I could say. I wanna thank Jim Perry for our district. He's a wonderful councilman.

Steve Hemingway. Also, Candy likes you. And I know I know you know Candy, so you you're in good good shape. And then Clarissa, you're amazing. You're absolutely amazing. What a gift. You know? To be able to spearhead this against all this opposition is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm gonna leave on your heart again. But again, we're taking profit over people. We're taking property over people. We're taking future value over people. And now we're taking your pride over people. You guys gotta get it together. You can't be self centered.

I have a real estate background. Somebody's driving this whole cart here. I'm assuming it's you. You know? So and, Sean, I don't know about you. You seem like a decent person. You guys gotta be able to do the right thing. You know? Why don't you just stand up and be what you should be doing? Standing up for the people. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Doss. Alright. Alright. We closed public comment. I'm sorry. So we are done with public comment and we're gonna move on on our agenda. So we will move on to the next item on our agenda. I gotta find my agenda. Oh. Oh, that's right. Okay. So, now, we are going to go into closed session. I will let Conner, city attorney, please to make an announcement regarding closed session.

Thank you. We will now adjourn to closed session to discuss item number two a and all information required by the Brown Act is set forth on the agenda today. Thank you.

Feel honored.

The City of Riverside Public Works Department provides high quality trash and recycling services for our customer.

City

Council has returned from closed session. So we are now at item number three, which is our workshop. So we're this is the review of the 2025, 2026 book of work. So it's gonna be, I think, a little bit of a backward, but also mess mostly forward, I think. And so I will open public comment for this item, and then I will turn it over to our city manager.

Public comment is now open for this item. Available in both English and Spanish. Call (951) 826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Alright. Thank you. City manager Mike Futrell, would you like to kick us off?

Yes. I would. Thank you, madam mayor. Mayor, mayor pro tem, council members, thank you for joining us today in what's, we believe will be a forward thinking optimistic look at the future for the city of Riverside. But, also, we will take a moment to look at the hundreds of accomplishments that this team managed in 2025.

So we introduced the concept of the book of work a few years ago as a means of looking ahead a year. Where do we wanna be a year from now in the city by department? So we did have the Envision 2025 plan, which you may recall we closed down last year in 2025. And the Booker Fork this year acts as a bridge between that plan and our next plan, is the general plan, which is still under development. But it still serves the same purpose, and that is to have each department not think about three one one calls and just what we have to do today.

Those are important, but also to think ahead and what are the projects and initiatives that we should do in addition to that so that a year from today, we can look back and say, we moved the needle forward in the city of Riverside in every department. And as I have gone through their work for 2025 and as we go through the, presentations, I must say with all sincerity how proud I am of this team, of the people behind me, and the teams that they lead when you look at the hundreds of things that they did accomplish from the 2025 book of work. And then if you look at the entire book of work, the ambitious 465 initiatives across all departments that they are gonna try to accomplish this year. I've asked them to include items without fear and to be ambitious, recognizing that there is no punishment for failure as long as you're trying. As long as you're trying to move the needle forward.

We will not accomplish all 465. I think that's probably a fair statement. Budget Permitting will come into play. Other issues will come into play. But what you see behind me is a team of dedicated folks that are really striving to move this city forward.

And that will show in each of these presentations. So I'm proud of you. Thank you for the work that you committed and have done and have committed to do. So the cadence today, if you will join with us, is we'll go through each department and then stop and ask for your comments, suggestions, reactions, additions, subtractions so that we as staff are accurately fulfilling your vision. And that is the big picture of what we're trying to do.

Collectively, this council has delivered a vision to the community and to staff. We have translated that into specific actions, and we wanna make sure that we're getting it right, that these projects actually reflect what you would like us to do in 2026. We also know this is a living document and that opportunities will arise throughout the year. We will certainly take those, and challenges will happen. We're also very transparent about this book of work.

Right now, you can go on to our website, and the 2025 book of work is there, every item, with a status report on what happened on every item. Once the 2026 book of work is approved, that too will be uploaded to the website for the public to view, for you to view at any time, and staff regularly updates the status of each of these items, again, to be very transparent about what we are trying to do. So, with that, the first up is, the city manager's office. We are Excuse me.

I'm sorry. Mike. I just I just also wanna make sure council and public knows too. We're gonna hear from you and department heads first, and then we will take public comment. And then we will come to council, and there will be a discussion of their ideas and priorities. And then that's what I have on my agenda.

Okay. So I am am understanding that we will go through every department Yes. And then come back.

Yeah. That's what is on the agenda. So because you are item number three, and then item four is city council ideas and priorities for 2026 by ward.

Understood.

Mayor, if I mayor, if I could, I'm sorry to kinda put a mess in this plan, but I think it might make more sense. I don't know how we could work out with public comment to go department, then feedback from the council, then department. That way we're not expecting all the department heads to sit and wait until the very end to hear it all. I don't know how public comment would work, though. But if there's a way to do it where Mike does his piece, then maybe public comment, then each of the presentations.

Well, I think what could do is probably take public comment at the end of Mike's presentation.

But I think the city manager is going be doing just a couple of slides and it's going to go from department head counsel feedback, department head counsel feedback, department head counsel feedback. It just looks like it's a marathon to have all 17 or whatever departments present and then all

of our comments

at once.

Feedback to the department head as

they speak. What did we decide, Steven? I think and we talked about this in agenda setting.

Well, so I think what we talked about is to let city manager's office do his presentation. We have public comment. We give feedback. And then next department comes up, and we and we do that because I don't I don't anticipate a ton of public feedback because there's no one here. And so not to tempt anyone, but I think that it'd be really more beneficial to the conversation if we're able to give feedback

after So we wanna take you you do so the is it the council's pleasure then to take to give the department heads feedback after every presentation?

The city manager's presentation looks like it's only one slide though for himself. So No.

I think after every so like we can and then we can take public comment at the end, I think. We can do public comment for the whole thing.

Yeah. That'd that'd be good.

We could

do that. Let's do that.

May I

ask for one clarifying thing as well? Is there public comment on workshops?

There is.

Yes, there is. My only concern is just it was agendized as one item. So, having the discussion back and forth, I was conferring with the city clerk on that because it is agendized as one item. So we we didn't have the in between back and forth. So give us one second.

Okay. Well, Mikey, how much do you anticipate? How much time will take it for each of your department for the whole the whole group?

Depending upon feedback from city council, it's probably gonna take about an hour and a half. Okay. When you get to the larger departments like public works, parks, they have more to cover than say the city manager's office which is just one slide. So maybe an hour and a half total depending upon discussion on top of that.

Yeah.

The council meeting rules state that for the order of discussion it goes, the staff comment, information, and reports followed by some questions from mayor and council, followed by public comment, and then city council discussion, motion and action. And so the way that we were reading it is that there could be some question and answer for each department but with no direction provided.

Exactly. And Mayor that's where I'm looking at it. I want to be able to ask Jennifer a question. And then when the time comes in, I can say, Jennifer, have you thought about this? Could you do that? I need to ask the questions first.

So Alright.

That's fine. That's fine. Let's let's go with our agenda as it is. And we will do questions for staff after their presentations. Then we will take public comment on that whole thing. Then, we will move to council discussion. And then, I think what we talked about too was we had We've got a ten minute limit on council comments but we're going to suspend that for this meeting so council can speak for hours and hours and hours. But, JK, we wouldn't do that to y'all. So that would be the Okay. Trying to get efficient, Mike, so y'all to and and I would hope the department heads would all stick around for the entire discussion. So k. Thank you.

Thank you, madam mayor. The city manager's office, as you know, provides leadership direction and support to the city departments. We have in our core group in the city manager's office, we're down to just 10 people now, which I think is the appropriate size. But we do have reporting directly to us several action departments, if you will, including the airport, and the audit division. But otherwise, our role is to help these leaders be the very best they can to interpret your vision, to make sure that we are following that vision, and then to clear roadblocks away.

When we look at, for the 7th Floor, partner with local art organizations to empower and expand arts and culture activities in the community. I intend a lot of work this year with the Riverside Arts Council as we transition the Festival of Lights and and working with the chamber and the Mission Inn and others. It will require management from relationships with outside organizations, some of which many of you sit on like RCTC and otherwise, scag, a c d c a c d c. There we go. So that we, as a city, have a seat at every table and are getting everything we can from those organizations to expand employee internal communications.

I think you've seen some of that recently. Data collection, analysis, and display is a high priority, so we become a data driven organization, collaborate with city council. On the new 7th Floor, we will start construction on the 1st Floor, I think, in just a few months. General services can give you an update following which we'll all have to decide what we do on the 7th Floor, collaborate with each of you on your ward specific projects, and then coordinate across all departments to facilitate development and alignment of the book of work, which is our guiding instrument going into 2026. So, it is just one slide, but I think, there is a lot of activity and work that is contained within that, and that is the city manager's office if there are any questions specifically.

Next up would be the airport. First, because it begins with the letter a, but also because it is nestled underneath now the city manager's office. I I will say that is one of the best things that we have organizationally, and I think Daniel has grown as a leader in that. And thanks to partnerships with you and councilmember Robillard, the airport's really grown up, I think. But it is still nestled under the city manager's office. So any questions, from you before we move into departments?

We do have a couple. Council member Oblard? Did did you have a question? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sorry, go ahead.

I just wanted to thank you and your work that you've been doing on the City Manager's Office being efficient. I also just want to give shout out to Rafael Guzman, who was with the city for a long time and was instrumental in getting to the airport to where it is. And thank you for making that change that needed to happen to to have more visibility, and I'm excited to work with interim city manager, assistant city manager Gil on continuing that work, but that that was a big part of what happened at the airport was Daniel and Rafael working together to to make that happen.

Yes. Absolutely.

And council member Falcone.

Mayor, just a clarifying question. And, Mike, I think this is right. Just wanna be sure for anyone who might be following along or reading the report. There in the book of work, there's not a specific section for the airport because it falls under the city manager's office. That's why in the book of work, there's airport related items under city manager's office. Is that correct?

That is correct. If you go to the actual book of work, which is very long

I print out that one.

It is nestled under city manager's office because that's where they live

organizationally. Organizationally. Okay. Thank you.

Alright. And speaking of the airport, doctor Daniel Prather, our general manager, is up next. Daniel.

Good afternoon, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Daniel Prather, and I am the airport manager, your airport manager, and happy to share with you some highlights of the airport. We have a 550 acre facility that is an FAA designated reliever airport. We have more than 200 based aircraft. We have a federal contract control tower, six flight schools, and typically average about 400 daily aircraft operations, which includes takeoffs and landings.

So we're a busy airport on an upward trajectory with ever expanding plans to gather future of aviation in Southern California. Some accomplishments from 2025, we secured two FAA grants, one for $105,000 to fund an airport pavement management plan, which will help us really have a good understanding of the condition of pavement airport wide and develop a plan to continue to maintain that as well as $284,000 for the design of Runway 97 erosion control improvement project, which is on the north side of our main runway. We also entered into a new 18 acre land lease with Manheim Auto Auction. They currently occupy 40 acres at the airport. They are a great partner and generate significant revenue through that land lease to help us maintain our financial stability.

Also completed airport rebranding to include a new logo, a new name, if you will, Riverside Airport name change, window graphics and a number of other things that has really helped us elevate our brand. We completed the installation of air filled emergency generator. In case we lose city power for any reason, we can still power all of our air filled lighting. So that's a benefit for us there. We renovated our downstairs terminal restrooms, which was sorely needed.

So they're very nice. And now we have an eye on upstairs restrooms, which I'll share with you for the accomplishments we have planned for 2026. We finished painting of our terminal, airport terminal, so it's had a facelift. And then our rose, which was painted by volunteers, the ninety nines, is a nice visual and kind of a vintage look to our ramp just north of our terminal. So those are some accomplishments from 2025.

And then looking forward to 2026, we are actually in the process of a very large roof replacement project at the moment to include the replacement of the roof on our terminal building and one of our main hangars, one of the original hangars on the airport. We will be installing a new airport marquee to replace the one that is currently inoperative at the entrance to the airport on Arlington. We're actually currently reviewing bids for that project. And our Taxiway Alpha rehabilitation project, Taxiway Alpha is our main taxiway that parallels Runway 927. That project is actually about 90 complete already.

That was an FAA funded project, about an $800,000 project. Thankfully, the FAA prioritized that for us and we were able to get that project funded. We have plans also to renovate now our 2nd Floor restrooms which don't look as nice as they once did compared to the downstairs restrooms which look extra nice and brand new now. Also we have plans to renovate our former FAA flight service station facility. This is a 10,000 square foot facility that has been vacant for several decades.

And I will give a nod to Councilman Robillard and our Lyft initiative that potentially may may find a new home there at that former FAA flight service station. We also continue to really engage the community which is a priority of mine because I know when the community comes out to the airport and leaves with a good feeling about aviation in the airport, we can generate community support and hopefully avoid going the way of Rialto and Santa Monica and some other airports that that have closed or will be closing in Southern California. We're looking forward to hosting our fifth annual Planes and Treats event in October, our second annual aerospace expo, will be here pretty soon in in April, April 11. We held an art gala this past Friday night to highlight an art show for students of Ramona High School. And then I mentioned Lyft earlier.

So that's what we have planned for 2026. Happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you. I think we have a comment or question from council member. There are supposed to be questions at this point.

Yes. Just questions. Reported the master plan study. I know we kicked that off. It wasn't mentioned in the it's part of the book of work, though. Right? It's not mentioned in the report. But

It is part of the book of work, and that is in process. It started in November. It's about an eighteen month long process. The only reason I didn't include it in 2026 is because I don't know if it will be completed quite by the end of this year. We're looking at probably 2027, but they're making great progress. And actually today, we had consultants in house who are working on our economic development plan and economic impact study. So they're very, very busy putting that together for us, but hoping to finish that in '27.

Thank you.

Thank

you. And also we I I think we're pursuing a grant or other options are available for a new air traffic control tower as ours is very old.

Indeed. We have the eighth oldest control tower in The United States right now. So it is very old. And, yes, we are pulling out all the stops and exploring every possible source of funding to potentially build a new control tower at

some point in the future.

Alright. Thank you. I'll leave the rest of my stuff for

Alright. Thank you. I have a question regarding the Lyft program because I apologize I wasn't here for that portion of council a couple weeks ago. We have a strategy and a work plan in place to ensure that that program is successful. We've got timeline of things we wanna do. I'm not sure who to ask about that.

Yeah. I'll kinda I'll kinda step on that. So we have the MOUs. They're all signed with all the different education partners. They are we call it phase zero right now as just trying to work out what assets we have available to us and what assets do we have to develop.

CBU has the most urgent need right now to expand, and they'll be the primary driver of outfitting the 10,000 square foot facility that doctor Prather mentioned. So that's happening first. We're also meeting monthly with all the different organizations to make sure we don't get off off track. And currently, way it works is the city's leading it because it's a very tender state right now. It's it's and it's not just a building. It's a whole it's a whole brand and programming, but assistant manager, city Gil Gil Hernandez and my assistant, Raquel, are the day to day, including doctor Prather, on kind of keeping these meetings going and making sure we get that off the ground.

Great. I would like to see that be successful. I appreciate that. Alright. Thank you, doctor Prather. Thank you. No other questions.

Mhmm.

Next up, I see Jennifer Lilly approaching the podium. Welcome, miss Lilly.

Thank you very much, madam mayor, members of the So I am going to present for you community and economic development. And we've got a couple of fun things to go over. So I wanna share a brief overview of community and economic development, which is difficult for me to do because there is so much to be able to share. What we're gonna cover is what we delivered in 2025, how we're positioning Riverside for success in 2026 and beyond. So at its core, CED advances Riverside's economic prosperity, quality of life and long term resilience by aligning planning, building, code enforcement, our real property services and economic development into one coordinated customer focused system.

Our work is guided really by three principles, predictability, speed, and transparency. Whether someone is opening a business, building a house, or just maintaining their neighborhood, we wanna make sure that we're consistent across all of the needs in our community. So let's talk a little bit about our key accomplishments. And I kind of didn't follow the rules a little bit because one slide just really couldn't handle all that happened in 2025. So in 2025, we focused on execution and measurable outcomes.

First, our streamlining development and improving customer experiences. Through Streamline Riverside and the one stop shop refresh, we expanded express permits, over the counter reviews and self certification was kicked off as a pilot program. We modernized our workflows and improved coordination across divisions, reducing friction for residents, builders and businesses. Second, protecting neighborhoods and public safety was a key focus in 2025. Our code enforcement team opened more than 10,400 cases and more importantly closed over 9,500 of those cases.

They completed 18,000 inspections to protect the public health and neighborhood quality. We removed 15,000 illegal signs from the public right of way and strengthened nuisance abatement through close coordination with the police department and our city attorney partners, including complex vacant property cleanups. Third, managing city assets and enabling infrastructure. We completed five fifty property inspections, facilitated 28 property acquisitions and negotiated more than 120 right of entry and right of way agreements to keep critical capital projects moving. This work generated $1,350,000 in total value and secured Caltrans right of way certification for the third street grade separation.

This was a key milestone for that construction. So for this slide, I'm gonna ask Miranda to pass out a little gift council. This is about driving economic growth and elevating Riverside's profile. In 2025, we launched the economic development implementation plan, which we are passing out to you now. This is a 100 actions in eight strategic sections.

It literally requires a book. We've turned that into what we like to refer to as the coffee table book. We do have one available for the public if they would like to peruse that as well. We launched this plan with the actions in place to deliver more than two forty business consultations, attracted major employers like Hyundai Rotom, Omeo, and Green Power Motor, and more continue to come. We hosted and supported Riverside's first international FDI mission to Japan and South Korea, the first annual aerospace expo, and earned multiple national and statewide awards, while dramatically expanding Riverside's economic development brand and reach.

So where are we headed now? Looking ahead for 2026 is about scaling what works and planning long term impact. We are launching Streamline Riverside two point zero. This includes a rebranding of the one stop shop, expanding our concierge service and ombudsman services and new over the counter plan review days, self certification pathways to expand that service and exploration of next generation permitting platforms to focus and really improve speed and accountability. On the planning side, we'll deliver general plan 2026 milestones as that effort continues to roar forward.

We have advancing our place making pilots in Ward 6 And 7, moving corridor strategies forward and continuing implementing our housing element programs, including adaptive reuse, missing middle housing and faith based housing tools. We also are advancing major city shaping projects from Riverside Alive, the Adventure Sports Resorts to the convention center expansion, Garage 8, student housing, and public safety facilities ensuring that Riverside is ready for growth while remaining fiscally and operationally responsible. In economic development, we're pursuing our IEDC accreditation, expanding our Riverside Realize programs, hosting national and international events, growing business support in every ward, and strengthening our real property and successor agency strategies ahead of our 2026 deadlines. In closing, CED is focused delivering transparency and outcomes, supporting neighborhoods, enabling investment, and positioning Riverside to compete and thrive. We really appreciate the council's continued partnership.

This is a very strong book of work and we thought last year was a little crazy, but we were able to maintain and continue driving forward and working together with you, we believe we can achieve our priorities in 2026. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. We have some questions from council. Councilmember Mill.

Thank you. Thank you, Mary. First, let me say to Jennifer, thank you to you and your team for all you do. Amazing amazing team. You're someone I know that might doesn't matter when time of day I can I can always get a hold of you whether it's Friday afternoon at five or Monday morning at eight?

You're you're very dedicated. And I knowing how our economic development department was prior to, it's it's it's something that it just brings me a lot of joy to see that you guys are there, and and I I just think you're in a you're you're done an amazing job. But now I get to give you a hard time. One, I do wanna thank you. Know, the Arlington revitalization has been one of my key goals.

I just want to again, want to point out for the people at home that when I got up here on the dais, I think our vacancy rate for retail and commercial in that area was 14%. Here we are about two years later, it's down to four. And that's that's a testament to the to the hard work of of your team, the revitalization. People are people are coming back to the area, so so thank you for that. Now here's where I get to give you a hard time. We talk about speed and streamlining things. Where are we at on on dispensaries? I mean, we've we've talked about dispensaries since then. This council finally ripped off the Band Aid and said, let's let's move forward. And here we are.

Again, I think I've been here close to two years, and we're still waiting for the first dispensary. Where are we at on that? Because every year I see on the little line item in the budget talks about the money we anticipated coming in, and then we have to cross it out because it didn't come in. So where where are we at on that?

Correct. Thank you so much for the question. So as you know, we did reset the clock last year towards the end of last year. And because of some of the changes in our process, we had to reopen and bring everyone forward with the top seven applicants. The quick answer is I think we have our top four in order of ranking that have been moving forward.

And I believe one and two are in plan check and ready to no, I'm sorry, past plan check. And they're moving forward with their agreements that will come back to this council. So given where we landed last year around October, November, the mind has a funny way of taking away any challenge. So I think it was October, November. We're moving rather quickly, and also we are at the mercy of the applicants to move their along as well.

I will give a big shout out to the team. We're being very proactive in communication and coordination, and ensuring that we're keeping our city partners informed because we have police and fire and city attorneys and public works and everyone involved on the fiscal side as well to review those applications.

Last question. Code enforcement is under your auspices. Correct?

That is correct.

Okay. You know, it's long, again, long been a belief of mine that that our PSAT operations should probably fall under the auspices of of of code be under that umbrella. Would that I'm just asking, just spitballing here. Would that be a lot to ask? I mean, I mean, we moved it from our I look at our PCET team as as an enforcement tool.

I find code enforcement to be more of a they're a reactionary thing. And so I just getting your thoughts on moving PSAT to under the umbrella of code enforcement where it is today. Would that be something that you think would be doable?

I think we, of course, are here to serve pleasure of the city manager at the direction of the council, and if that were determined to be the appropriate place, that would be great. Currently, we work hand in hand with Michelle Davis and her team in PSET. I think we have some different functionality that complements one another. If that were set to come under one roof either way, I'm sure Michelle and I will arm wrestle over which shop that ends up going to. But I think it would be manageable as it is to complement or under one roof.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Councilmember Falcone.

Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Mill, he said under police department, public safety engagement team. Two questions for you and then we'll have some comments later. One is in the book of work, there's quite a few things that identify quarter one twenty twenty five, quarter two twenty twenty five, October 2025. Why does in the 2026 book of work, why are these items still labeled as for 2025?

For an example, on Page 10 of the abbreviated book of work, the 404,000 page one. The abbreviated one there is the last two items for example. Standard building policies as well as the weed abatement and defensible space. Both of those being in 2025. Were those completed?

I think what much of the narrative is meant to do is to explain why they're not completed. So if something shows in progress, we want to show what that progress was and then explain what comes next. So if that's not clear enough, we can certainly clean that up in the notes. But it was meant to show that things have moved forward in 2025. Some of these items are multi year efforts, so 'll continue to show up as in progress but we want to keep those notes fresh.

I see. And the other question, this is something you may not be able to answer off the top of your head because it just came to me as I was reading this in meeting right now but something maybe we could discuss another time. Other cities that, I don't even know where we fall in terms of other cities in California with the number of successor agency, redevelopment agency, whatever properties that we had at the onset of the dissolving of the redevelopment agency if we were high compared to other cities all those years ago and then now where we are and compared with other cities with how many properties we have because I know we sell a lot of properties. And is that normal? I don't know enough about what other cities do when it comes to former redevelopment agency to know if we're in a standard place with the number of properties we still have.

So I'm gonna speak to the number of properties that we haven't disposed of yet because that's the one I've got my eye on because we need to move those along. So we set a goal to ensure that we have disposed of all of our properties in 2026. And I'm happy to report last year, we had 12 properties that were still in some form moving through that disposition process. And I believe I'm safe to say, as of today, we're down to six. So we're moving ahead rapidly.

In terms of where they sit, once we've disposed of them, whether they've gotten their entitlements, whether they've started construction, that's our next level of priority to ensure that those properties don't just sit vacant, and we're moving those along through building, planning, and with real property services to check-in on those.

So it would be six remaining across the whole city?

Across the whole city for successor agency So not everything that we own, but what we are required to dispose of through the redevelopmentsuccessor process.

I just see a lot of city rivers had for sale signs but I guess that's not an all inclusive way to think Exactly. Of successor

Yeah, yeah we're a much narrower window of what actually hits that title.

And so maybe for the properties that wouldn't fall under that, who would be, because I can think of six properties in Ward 1 alone that have a for sale sign on them right now, City of Riverside branded for sale sign. So if they weren't successor agency, they would be perhaps a different department that owns?

They could be our utility company. They could be city general. They could be under all sorts of areas. Our real property services division is an internal customer oriented. We support all of the departments in the city in land transactions.

So if there was a property, for example, that was owned by public works, for example, the sale of it would still go through your department?

That is correct.

Okay, thank you.

Councilor Robart.

Thank you, mayor. Just a couple of questions. This year, or this past year, we finally had an international foreign investment I don't if you call it a strategy yet, it's becoming a strategy. We kind of fell into it and it grew very quickly and successfully. Where are we at on kind of a more formalized foreign direct investment strategy?

Thank you for that question. So you're not supposed to give away the secrets. We make it look like it was planned all along. Right? So, really, the the end of my little summary of we're really looking for 2026 to formalize what's working to ensure that we can thrive in the future.

And foreign director investment is a great example of that. So we've identified how we're going to move forward. We're looking at a strategy that takes a go to them and come to us year over year so that we are reaping the seeds that we plant one year rather than continuing and go out seeding every year, if I can stick with the grow analogy. So we are about halfway through formalizing that strategic plan and how we'll implement into the future. So we should see that in the next, hopefully by q two of this year.

Thank you. And under the planning for the future, you have faith based housing. I know we had our the mayor's faith based summit a few months ago, more than a few months ago. And then can you guys kinda elaborate what that what that means?

So in in coordination with our Housing and Human Services department as well, CED is working, has brought on a consultant, and we're putting together a faith based housing handbook. Workshops have been held and that handbook is being put together once again to be presented to the council first in committee and then to the full council mid year.

Another question, it's kind of piggybacking what customer I thought Cody was talking about is improving the city property disposition and activation tools. We have successor agency. We also have city owned properties. They're all in various stages of development or escrow or whatever they might be. What do we have any kind of guidelines on this property has been sitting tied up for a very long time. Nothing's really moved. What how do we evaluate whether it's something that we continue to proceed with the current buyer or go and find a new buyer for it?

You have just described the last three years of my work here when it comes to real property services. And the answer is a little bit complex because, yes, we have overarching policies and procedures that relate to how we sell and or manage or lease property. But then as we've gone through the disposition, each of those have their own agreements. And in those agreements, you would performance measures. With those performance measures, there's the ability to cure, there's the ability to extend, and there's the ability to enforce.

And so what we've really been putting together over the last year is where do we sit in all of those agreements? And what we need to do is provide on a case by case basis what should happen with those properties that have been sitting for some time and maybe don't have the ability to move forward or haven't moved forward.

That's all for me. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, council member. And, before I move to council member Perry, I just, I have to step away for just a bit, council, for, a quick meeting I gotta take. And then, so mayor pro tem is gonna take over. So, I should be back, I don't know, pretty soon, hopefully. So, alright. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Couple of questions that I was going to ask have been asked and answered. So, that that helps us out there. One of the continuous things that we continue to hear throughout, I think probably throughout the city is too much fast food. We need more sit down restaurants.

We're the car wash capital of the world. What advances are we making in these areas expect, you know, and not to be comparing us to other cities, but it seems like cities around us, especially Eastvale. And I think Eastvale is probably one of their success is probably due to them having a new a new city that probably attracts a lot of it. But when it comes to looking at sit down restaurants, what progress are we making? Specialty supermarkets like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, are we making what advances, if any, are we making?

Well, I I like to think that when we when I first came on board and what I heard from several of you is is chicken and car wash. It was the c's, right, that we were no more of. It is not as though the team goes out to market for any one specific item. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your way of thinking, the private market really decides. And a private property owner can go out and solicit for any business that they think would be the most viable for them.

However, hopefully what you've seen in the last couple of years with the efforts of really the entire city team is trying to raise the message of Riverside of what our needs are and how we approach those needs. Going to efforts like ICSC where we reach out to those businesses directly, let them know about the growth happening in Riverside, has really changed the dialogue. That we are a city that is open for business, We are looking for responsible growth, and we're looking to meet the needs of our residents. So we've really started to see the change in the development that we're seeing come forward. What we're seeing with Fleming's coming to downtown, although slow, at least by my perception, because we want everything to happen yesterday, right?

But that's an idea where instead of that sitting vacant, we've got a white tablecloth sit down restaurant coming to our downtown. We've seen others out celebrating grand openings with new Italian sit down restaurants where there might have just been a strip center and smaller shops coming in. The other part that I didn't talk about in great detail is our tenant improvement program, that we really tried to identify what is it that's creating perhaps a barrier for businesses to move in, especially restaurants. And so working with our team in public works and our utility, removing some of the impediments or streamlining those impediments to grease trap interceptors yes, you knew I was going to say it today. And also just the process in general to make it more affordable for businesses to come here like sit down restaurants.

So we're hoping that what you'll see in the next year is that continued growth in those markets moving away from car washes and chicken places. Though those are appropriate in some places.

When appropriate, and I agree with that. My my last question is a good part of the city falls within the foreign trade zone. What are we doing to promote that, how are we using that to our advantage?

Excellent. So we actually have a business resource guide that was put together last year. We couldn't give you all of the handouts today, but if you haven't seen that yet, happy to provide it. We've translated that into other languages, and we're bringing that out to our local business community, as well as to our business attraction events. We're also creating a partnership, because it's not just a city effort.

We have to work with the county and with our partners in the foreign trade zone to be able to explain the process to those that are interested. So we're really developing a how to guide. We're creating those partnerships, and then we're making sure we market it because that is, again, one of those things we do not wanna have the best kept secret. We want that to be out and explained so that people see Riverside as an advantage.

Councilor Hemingway.

Thank you.

Councilor Perry asked the good questions, but I can tell you if we get a car wash that serves chicken, that's it. We're drawing the line. Most of the questions were asked about the faith based housing. I did have two though. The recession relief package, what would something like that look like?

Amazing, thank you for the questions. So we have been looking at our codes and processes to find what things, again, that are impediments, or extra time, or extra cost along the way. And so our staff has been very diligent to look at the code and to find things that are currently discretionary, that could be ministerial, so it saves time. That also could save costs, because if you have a conditional use permit, for instance, that costs money, and it turns into an administrative review, that would save money and time. So we have been putting the pieces in place and bringing small changes to the council, but we're moving forward with our bigger opportunities.

Also, things like when people pay their fees. If they have to pay their development impact fees upon their first building permit or their grading permit, they may not have all of their financing in place. And as they're releasing the phases of a housing project, for instance, they may get additional financing from the bank. Paying some of those fees as they receive CFO would incentivize and help them finance their program. So recession relief package was really an idea overall to look across all of the facets of the work that we do to help businesses.

And it's a little bit of a marketing tool, right? But not just during a recession, but really at all times.

Gotcha. Thank you. So it helped us and the businesses become more efficient, make projects feasible. That's really helpful. And then the last one in this section was just, I see this portion here, a UCR Arena study, a performance arts center, CBU campus improvement. What is the city's involvement with, it looks like, expansion or work being done at our institutions of higher ed, asking for a friend.

So, I think that is a miss on our slides. We really have been focused in 2025 in strengthening our relationships with all of our higher education. And so I wanna tout and thank my team for really working on that. So I think what we're looking at in terms of what's happening on the West Side Of Town or the East Side Of Town is how do we bring that into the economic development picture and make sure that we're working together. I love now we have a crosstown rivalry in our sports.

And so how do we capitalize on that? How do we study that to make sure hospitality keeps up with that demand? So where we can and should be involved and support, we are doing that. So you see that listed as some of the goals for studies in hospitality, in sports, and entertainment, and really how that aligns with our areas of excellence.

Perfect. Thank you. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Bershak Conder. Jennifer, most of my comments will come

when we get our ideas, what we think you should be doing. But I do have a question. We're coming up on about ten years of the one stop shop. And I'm a metrics guy. We used to have those buttons down there. I see people where they've punched in nine, nine, 10, getting the things up. We've stopped those buttons now. What are we doing to still check the metrics and see how people are doing? Because I'm getting some guys that are calling me saying wasn't a good day on the 3rd Floor. So are we still trying to do a metric and talk to the developers and the people?

We are. And, actually, a a little preview into 2026. We are coming back from twenty twenty five's customer service training and focus, and we're really honing that down into our forward facing, front counter, and our operations. We're bringing in kind of a panel of frequent flyers that can tell us what was their experience like maybe ten years ago and what are they seeing today. But we do do that on a regular basis.

It's part of how we've really identified some of the glitches, I'm nicely referring to them, in our permit portal. And it's really helped our team be able to be more responsive and able to solve those problems along the way. So yes, we do continue to measure. Actually behind the scenes, just so you know, there's not a button in the lobby, but behind the scenes we still have Happy or Not. And it is collected electronically, and so it really does measure where that information is coming from, where to your point, if somebody was pressing the button who knew who that was and how But they were measuring it electronically, internally, I was merging those two words, we can see the user, the date, the time, and really what their experience was.

It actually encourages them to write notes. So we're able to see on a monthly basis if somebody didn't have a good experience, what was that issue? Was it the wait time? Was it they couldn't get done what they needed to? And then we're able to address that with our team.

Excellent, thank you.

All right, Councilmember Fakotia.

Sorry, was two more quick ones that came up during conversation. Jennifer, about a year ago, we did the update to the sign code. And we were looking for a vendor, I believe, to help us with the sign design handbook. Is there any update on where that is in the process? I think we were struggling to find a qualified consultant, I believe is where it was. That has been almost a year now, I think.

I'm gonna see if I can do this without looking behind you.

But

I believe the vendor has been secured. I believe that we are almost complete with And our now I'm going to

Now there you go. Matthew Taylor said yes.

The only other one

I have is on here on page 12 of the shortened version it says to create a standalone website with a new domain. Why would a city department need a standalone website when we do everything in house website wise?

I'm looking very quickly.

Page 12 of the shortened version it's the second one from the top. And it's a new item it says.

I think this is related to our economic development. So this would really be about our economic development focus. And typically you'll see with an EDC, which we are not, but what we like to function as, has its own branding, it has its own presence, and it really does have its own way to measure and monitor and be able to report. So whether or not we can do that with our current platform, exploring. But if we cannot, we wanna make sure we have all of the tools and resources that we can build in.

Okay, thanks. I'll give comments on that later. Thank you.

Yeah, just clarification because this was presented to the Economic Development Committee a few months ago. It's kinda like the Visit Riverside website. It has its own website because it's a very specific function. EDC is such a huge department. It covers so many things from, you know if you're focusing mostly, but particularly on attracting business and attracting economic development, that's I think the focus of that standalone website versus here's the planning department, here here's the billing services, and that sort of thing.

I have a lot of thoughts, but I'll share later.

Alright. Considering thoughts in place, we'll move on to the next section. Thank you so much. Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry. One more. Claire Cervantes has a question. Council member Cervantes. Thank you.

Thank you. You. Thank you, mayor. Just an item on a flag and appreciate the comments from my colleagues. You know, think there's a lot that's been asked and said. I wanna just start off by saying thank you to your team. Amazing work, community economic development. Grateful for everything you do daily. One thing that's listed here on hold, it's the create a Spanish version of the business resources guide published in December 2024, and I see it's marked continued and on hold. I wanted to ask, why on hold?

How can we move on hold to in progress? And also, I've raised this before, but I'd love to know again, what are we doing at the One Stop Shop to assure that members of our deaf community, since we have a very large deaf community, I've heard from my deaf commissioner specifically but from other commissioners on the Commission of Deaf that they have had challenges and kind of feel almost that they've tried to go and walk in before, but because of that barrier of not having someone that's fluent in sign language available immediately, they're usually told they have to schedule the appointment, come back, and feel there's more delays for them in the community because of that need to schedule versus someone who could just walk in right and be able to have a direct service. So what are we doing to I guess be more accessible for not only our deaf community but even including our Spanish speaking community.

Thank you. I know we have steps in place already where someone with Spanish speaking needs are able to be served immediately. Even our staff that may not have that certification able to step in, and across counter. So it doesn't matter if you're not there for planning. If we have someone planning that can speak Spanish, they're able to go over.

Do really appreciate the feedback on our deaf community. I do speak sign language, but certainly not fluent. And to be able to speak permit processes is a whole different type of translation. So I'd like to take that feedback to the team. I don't have an answer for you today on what we're doing specifically, except what you've outlined is being able to schedule in advance so that we have somebody prepared and ready. But it feels like we can do better.

Yeah, there was a tool raised by a commissioner that they felt it could be a quick solution. Again, just to flag that, this is it's like an iPad that could have a direct access to interpreters that could come on, kinda like almost a Zoom, and that the you pay for a service and that someone could come on pretty quickly. They're not, like, right in queue, but at least that usually within a request made, it could take a couple minutes for them. Almost like when they have someone call and then they have to connect to service. So I think I hope there could be a, you know, quick remedy. It just depends what the cost is, but I know that was raised a potential solution. So I'd love to see if you got to look into that and see if that's an opportunity for us to be able to bring that on board and just make sure we're being accessible again as much as possible.

That sounds like a great solution, and it sounds like we can apply that across many needs. So thank you for the suggestion.

Of

course. No. But thank you again for the hard work and looking forward to seeing the progress made in many of these areas.

Thank you.

Okay, I think we are all ready to go on moving on to the next department, finance department. Looking at, yes, we'll go ahead and get the presentation on the finance department.

Good afternoon, members of City Council. Just gonna move this ahead. So, I am Julie Nimas. I am the interim finance director, and it's my honor today to present a brief overview of the finance department as well as the finance department's key accomplishments for 2025 and our priorities and initiatives for 2026. The finance department serves as a steward of the city's financial resources, overseeing the financial activities of the city, including revenues, expenditures, investments, purchasing, budgeting, and debt management.

Our department ensures the security of city assets by also providing accurate, timely and transparent financial information necessary to support effective decision making and the delivery of municipal services to our community. Through dependable and efficient financial services, the finance department supports city departments, city residents and the local business community, maintaining high standards of fiscal accountability and professional excellence. For 2025, the finance department had many accomplishments during a very busy year. However, I will be focusing on six key accomplishments achieved by the team. In May 2025, the finance department presented and city council adopted a comprehensive update to development fees and charges, the first comprehensive update in over ten years.

This update will better align development fees and charges with city costs while still supporting development. The business tax division in partnership with HDL implemented a business tax discovery program intended to help identify noncompliant businesses and bring them into compliance. To date, the program has generated over 1,000,000 in new revenues for the city. The Debt and Treasury Division facilitated the formation of the Sage Crest Community Facility District to support costs of the housing development and generate ongoing revenues to support city services. The risk management division has established an interdepartmental risk management working group to develop strategies for reducing the city's overall liability and to help foster a culture of organizational safety.

This ongoing effort will continue into 2026 and on. In 2025, the finance department, in collaboration with Public Works, refinanced $139,000,000 in sewer revenue bonds, which will deliver over $21,000,000 in savings for the sewer fund over the next fifteen years. And finally, the finance department has received multiple prestigious awards for excellence in financial practices and transparency from various professional organizations. These awards demonstrate the department's commitment to responsible stewardship of public funds financial and procurement practices. There are several significant priorities and initiatives that the finance department has planned for 2026, starting with the strategic procurement and contract management reform project.

This is an initiative that began in 2025 and is currently well underway. The project enhances the city's procurement and contract management processes by transforming how the city manages these processes to include the creation of standardized processes, procedures, digital workflows, and stronger oversight with the inclusion of a dedicated contract management team. In addition to the procurement reform project, there initiatives started by the purchasing division in 2025 that are also well underway. The local vendor preference program enhancement is intended to lower barriers to entry for local businesses, streamline participation processes and increase opportunities for local vendors to do business with the city. Initiatives for 2026 include bimonthly vendor workshops, networking events and continued process refinements to increase local vendor engagement and opportunities.

The second initiative under the purchasing division is the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program Enhancement, which is intended to expand equitable procurement opportunities, increase participation among underrepresented businesses and strengthen community engagement. Initiatives for 2026 include finalizing program policies, launching dashboards, hosting vendor sessions and strengthening performance reporting. Another significant priority for the finance department that started in 2025 and will continue into 2026 is to execute a phased ERP system replacement in partnership with the IT department. This project will modernize financial and operational processes within the city and improve service delivery. It will also prioritize strategic resource planning to support implementation while ensuring continuity of essential city functions.

A new priority for the finance department in 2026 is to optimize Central Stores operations. In collaboration with Riverside Public Utilities, Public Works and other city departments, Central Stores will continue its enhancement of operations to streamline inventory and distribution functions, improve operational efficiency and ensure timely, reliable and high quality service. The last three priorities for the finance department are initiatives from 2025 that are ongoing into 2026. First is conducting development impact fee studies to include both updated and new fee proposal recommendations to establish and maintain a reasonable relationship between new development and the resulting demand for public facilities and infrastructure. Second is the P Card Compliance and Efficiency Project Phase one, which is intended to strengthen the city's P Card program and ensure effective and accountable use of public funds.

This is a two phase initiative with Phase one focused on compliance items to include recommendations stemming from the city's internal audit report. Lastly, the finance department plans to collaborate with community and economic development and public works to facilitate the research and creation of special districts to enhance funding mechanisms and support economic development for the city. This concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. I will go ahead and go to Councilor Rivell. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for your presentation. I want to just talk briefly about the local vendor preference program. I've long championed that. I think we tell our residents to shop local. I think it's just as important that we as a city shop local. And it's more than just having a policy language. I want to see it translated into actual contracts and real dollars going to our local businesses. So I just have a few questions in regards to that, if that's okay. One, specific changes shows that currently it's marked as in progress. What specific changes have already been implemented since the program started?

Thank you for your question, council member. If it's okay, I'd like to bring up our purchasing manager, Jim McCoy, answer your question. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council members. So, for local vendor preference, we actually started looking at various things starting in 2023. But for 2025, we did a vendor survey which closed March 2025. April through May, we surveyed the analysis that was completed. And then May through June, we executed briefings conducted with finance leadership and ELTDLT to discuss our findings.

And then Q3 through Q4, we roll out sequenced deferred due to staffing vacancies. It was kind of put on the side a little bit. Have finalized administrative policy and updated some SOPs internally in purchasing. We prepared to deliver more ELTDLT rollout materials in the near future. We have implemented the good faith effort form, and we have revised it also.

We issued more training on that to get staff to utilize more local vendors. And we did the staff training, and we are still working on the implementation process. We do have a local vendor event tomorrow to get all of the departments. They are all going to be there at their own tables. We are providing a list of opportunities for our local vendors to bid. We have almost 300 vendors registered for tomorrow's event. So we're hopeful that that will really produce more progress on LVP.

Do you have a timeline for full implementation for the program?

We're extending the contract. We were going through March 1. But we extended it for three months to ensure that we have full implementation. There's a fly driving me.

Yeah. I see it.

I'm like, trying to focus. It's not working. So the we're looking to have everything finished by June for the DBE LVP and the procurement reform.

Do we have any statistics since we started with the local vendor preference? Like what percentage of city contracts or total procurement dollars are going to Riverside based vendors as compared to prior?

Not yet. We were actually discussing that with a consultant last week.

Okay. My last question on that would be, so you mentioned some of the things that you're doing. Is yeah. Is that can you just give me an idea of the the outreach, the total outreach? Because I I I think it's really important for our local businesses to know that, you know, that that this is happening.

So, you know, what besides the the the other events, what other things that we've been doing to to ensure that we're getting outreach and letting our local businesses know? Because I would much rather see us, you know, putting money in the pockets of Riverside businesses because that money gets spent right back in our community. It's a gift that keeps on giving. What programs are you guys really doing to make sure that our local businesses are aware of this?

What we've done so far, we've vendor we started the vendor workshop, which reaches all of our vendors that participate in bidding. For the local vendors, we have the event tomorrow. We've advertised all of these through social media, Instagram reels. We have sent e mails to all of our local vendor reference that have registered with business tax. So they have all been notified.

And we continue to send notifications out on Planet Bids to ensure that if they are registered, they are getting notified as well. We do have the small business district coming into the event tomorrow to give them guidance on how to fill out our forms to be successful in procurement when they are bidding. So those are the areas that we've done so far. And we've gotten some really good feedback from all of the vendors on what we're doing, so we're hoping to continue that and grow based on that.

And outreach with do we do outreach to the Chamber of Commerce?

We do. They've been contacted. We're doing an event with them shortly to go over our new RFP documents so that way they can teach other vendors as well that are interested.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. Councilmember Hemingway.

Everyone is beating me to the questions. Councilmember Mill will beat me to the question. So I'll just do one follow-up and it may take Jennifer to come back. But because I remember when we were first talking about this, but my brain is getting old and it's been a few years. But there were some barriers, some legal challenges of what kind of vendors or folks we could use for local vendor preference, if I remember correctly. And so have we navigated that? Or do we feel comfortable with what we have in place now that we can kind of extend? Or are there specific types of businesses that we can and can't have that preference for?

So the local vendor preference will not apply to certain types of projects like construction. Certain rates, like the utility, we cannot authorize a local vendor preference for that in our bidding process. But we looking at we've completed our study, but we don't have all of it together. We're pulling together a report right now to present to ELT on increasing the percentage and the outcome if it would benefit us or not to increase it from 5% to 10%. So we are looking at that as well.

And for the limitations that you're also talking about is DBE, which is another portion of our project that we're working on. So there are limitations on what we can do on giving preference for those disadvantaged businesses, But we haven't gotten as far into that one yet as we have been with the local vendor.

Okay. Yeah. That's what I vaguely recalled. Certain types of, what you said, standard or utility type businesses and construction, which I think if we can find a way at some point, obviously, that would be helpful. But that's sort of what I remember. The scoring metric that we were trying to do to favor those local vendors might get challenging. But it sounds like we've gotten most of it resolved except for those few categories and it's moving forward. So that's great news. Thank you for that update. Okay.

No problem.

All right. Councillor Malfalconi.

Thank you. Jen, don't go far. I think this might be for you too. Essential stores is one question and then related to bids and contracts, the other question. Shared this with the city manager earlier this morning. So they're both somewhat hypotheticals I think. But I think it helps better understand the way central stores and our bid process work. So I believe for most of the items we have in central stores, there's, I don't know what the proper terminology is, but like a threshold. We don't want to get below the certain quantity of a I particular always use the analogy of light bulbs because it's kind of it's easy to picture. You need to have a minimum of these 75 type of light bulbs in stock at all times, you don't want to drop below that.

When it drops below that, how do we know to buy more? This probably seems like a very remedial question, but it's one that, through a ride along, I experienced when I was with RPU one day. Is it on that employee to flag, oh, we are now below the certain threshold of what we need on the quantity of that particular item? How would we know when we need to buy more of something?

So the current process is a very manual process. The system, we have minmaxes set in the UAM system, Oracle. And once it gets to the minimum, then it is flagged on a reorder report. And the supervisor pulls the reorder report to see what we need to order. There are some limitations to the system as it stands.

It doesn't flag us. We've created some Power BI tools to try and improve the process, but it's, like I said, very manual. So it doesn't necessarily flag them if they have an order already on place. So we've created some documentation to kinda monitor where things are at. But there's no real solid

Like automatic trigger.

There is no automatic trigger. So they have to pull a report and go through each stock code to see if it needs to be reordered.

I think it's a matter of efficiencies. Absolutely. And I don't want to get into comments. That was the question. The other question is somewhat similar to our bids and contracts or our contracts, I should say.

I know we have so many. And do we expect or rely upon different folks in different departments to know when their respective contract is coming near the end? I want to use an example, but I don't know if I should, but I'm going to tree trimming, for When it's its expiration, so to speak, when we have to go back out to bid, do we there's no automatic trigger that flags saying, oh, you or a countdown clock saying, okay, there's a year left, there's ten months left, there's nine months left that we need to start our act together to go back out to bid on these particular contracts.

That's a great question. That's actually part of the contract purchasing reform. One solution system we use does allow us to set a reminder to a specific email. So if a requester submitted, the system will upload that email address in there and they will get notified. The issue is that system hasn't been utilized and was never rolled out to all departments.

So there was really dependence on the departments to monitor their contacts and their expirations. One of the functions of this new contract management team is to have them make sure the data in the system is accurate and setting those reminders based on the type of work and if it would require an RFP, for instance, they would need more time to be able to get contract in place. So that's part of the new function of this team to assist with that.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Don't go away, Jennifer. Don't go away.

This is something

that made me rethink. You said that the preference cannot be used for construction. Now is that for the major contractor who oversees an entire project or for all the trades within?

So right now, we award based on the prime contract. So if it's a construction project, we do not apply a local preference. So that 5% that we would apply for a service or a professional service, we cannot apply it to construction because we have to award to the low bid.

So that would be, again, for the major contract?

For the formal procurement, over $50,000

Okay. Yeah, I'll talk more about that after. Thank you. Okay.

Assuming we don't have any more speakers, we'll go ahead and move on to the next department, which is fire.

Good afternoon, mayor pro tem, council, and city staff. Thank you for having me here this afternoon to discuss our overview, key accomplishments for '25, and then our initiatives for '26. The fire department is committed to our mission to protect life, property, and environment and by providing exceptional and progressive all hazard emergency services, public education, and safety programs. I think as we well know and discussed quite a lot recently, we have 14 fire stations. We have a robust investigation, prevention, and office of emergency management that all provide key services to our community.

The fire department has maintained our centers for public safety excellence and ISO accreditation. And the department continues to advance our vision of being a world class leader. Key accomplishments and we have six here, but there's many more, obviously. Obviously, a key part is responding to over 47,000 incidents to our community. It's a 5.22 increase from 2024.

We completed the major study from AP Triton for the fire department master plan. We have developed a comprehensive defensible space program, including adopting a defensible space ordinance. We have hired 21 personnel with the support of HR and promoted 14 members within our department, completing over one hundred thousand hours of department training to keep our members up to speed and ready for the services for our community. We have participated in three forty four community events and engaging and educating more than 100,015 residents. And through the Office of Emergency Management, we've conducted two full scale exercises, delivered 50 classes, and also training more than 1,000 emergency service professionals and community members.

And then some of the key initiatives for 2026: develop and implement a plan for a timeline for phase one of the fire department master plan, which was presented in January 13. Integrate the fire department's plan into our strategic plan, which will likely be a complete rewrite of the twenty three-twenty eight strategic plan to ensure alignment of goals, priorities, and performance measures implement the defensible space program and strengthen citywide vegetation management and wildfire risk reduction, conduct a comprehensive community outreach on defensible space requirements, and FireWire's community principles, which will be delivered to council on February 24. And we've also been in, I'd say half of the communities, Ward 6 And 7, was January 15. Ward 2 was February 5. We will be in Ward 4 tomorrow, February 11.

Ward 5 on March 19. And Ward 1 on April 16. And then Ward 3 on May 11. All can be found on social media and our website so we get the participation from the public. We are looking to launch another public information campaign to increase awareness and enrollment in emergency notification systems for the community. And then we need to operationalize the Starlink units to ensure resilient communication during disaster and major incidents. And that concludes the presentation and open for any questions.

Thank you, chief. I'll go to councilmember Fauconi.

Thank you. Thank you, chief. I have a question that I I don't know if it's really for you or for general services, but two of my favorites, so I'll hit them both at once. Yeah. The AB fifteen seventy two was passed in October 2023 and requires turf removal at all government buildings effective 01/01/2027. So I believe that we're starting I guess the question is are we starting the process at the fire stations to ensure all turf is being removed, grass is being removed?

Yeah, I've talked to Lee and they are taking the lead. And they're assessing all the grass within the whole city. And I believe they're prioritize from that point.

Okay, and then Lee can answer that when it's her turn next Yes, time thank you. Have a year to get all that stuff gone. Thank you. Yes, you bet.

Okay, that does it. That wraps it up for our fire department overview. We'll go ahead and move on to our general services overview.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, honor able mayor pro tem and city council. I am Lee Withers, general services director. I'm happy to be here today to provide a look back and a look ahead to you today. The general services department provides internal services to other city departments, including admin services, such as managing citywide contracts for custodial and security guard services. We maintain over 1,300,000 square feet of city facilities and nearly 2,000 vehicles and pieces of equipment.

We manage 44 cell towers on city owned property, and we're currently managing several capital projects which are under construction, and we have many more preparing to break ground this year in 2026. 2025 was very busy for general services. This slide highlights several key accomplishments achieved by the team. We broke ground on a number of capital projects, including the renovation and expansion of the museum, construction of the new Eastside Library, and renovation of the neighboring Cesar Chavez Community Center. The concrete foundation for the new library is scheduled in coming weeks, and both projects at that site are moving along at a good pace.

We have two improvement projects currently in construction at the Hewlett Place campus. Tenant improvements that are funded by the county at its transitional housing facility, and interior renovations of the city operated access center. We're nearing completion of improvements of the city attorney's office suite at Mission Square, which includes an expansion of the multipurpose room, new furnishings, and new flooring throughout the suite. Design work continues to advance on new police headquarters, a project many years in the making. City Council recently approved an agreement for construction management services with Tilden Coil Constructors, They are hitting the ground running with the construction team.

General Services completed ADA improvements at the Boardwalk Park parking lot in 2025. Finally, we expanded the city's fleet of EV vehicles through the purchase of new Ford Lightnings and Vault two trucks that we expect to arrive sometime this year. 2026 is going to be busy for general services, another great year coming up as we continue to advance capital projects and other initiatives. Several projects are expected to reach completion in 2026, including the Eastside Library, the construction projects at the Hewland Place campus, and the city attorney's office improvements. We have a number of projects that are slated to kick off this year.

A few are noted in this slide, including police headquarters construction, installation of a new fuel tank for the police aviation unit, modernization of the elevators at City Hall, renovation of the City Hall lobby and relocation of the city clerk's office to to the Main Floor of City Hall, and exterior painting of the Fox Entertainment Plaza and Garage 7. Fleet will continue to focus on reducing a sizable backlog of surplus vehicles. Since I started in general services nine months ago, we reduced the backlog vehicles. There are, as of today, two zero one awaiting surplus. 52 of those are just about ready to hit the auction block within the next couple of weeks.

Look for those vehicles to post on govdeals.com for auction very soon. Last but certainly not least, myself and my new deputy director, Joe Viera, and the general services department managers will continue to invest in staff development through training, certifications, internships, and educational opportunities. We're in a bit of a rebuilding mode while we recruit to fill vacant positions, and we're committed to providing staff with the resources they need to be successful in their current roles and to prepare for future advancement opportunities. Mayor Pro Tem, that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take questions. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go ahead and go to Councilmember Falcone.

Lee, know what my question is going to be, I just asked the chief about turf removal and one other question. It.

Yes, we are advancing turf removal at the fire stations and also at the courtyard. We have taken measurements at all, the way that the process works, we take measurements and application and a number of exhibits are then submitted to Metropolitan Water District. They come out, they do their own inspections, they take all of the measurements, they confirm the exact quantity of turf that needs to be replaced, and then they let us know the rebate amount that we qualify for. That process is going a lot slower than expected because they have received such a large volume of applications. The Courtyard, for example, received its inspection, I think it was December 1, and we're still waiting to hear on our rebate amount.

So it's going a little bit slower than they had anticipated. I would expect that maybe their timeline will get pushed out a little bit. At the Courtyard, we're gonna remove 80,000 square feet of turf. So that's not something that we can do overnight. So we're hoping for a little bit of grace to be able to remove all the turf that needs to come out.

Of course. And if it wasn't for the state law, we'd probably just be leaving it this way. The only reason that I one of the reasons besides the fact that I don't know what the state will do from an enforcement perspective, but the other piece being that I don't know how long the rebates will be around. We just went through this in our office with a site with the Parks Department, and we wanted to get it in while the rebate was still there because I hear people are applying so much so because they see the law is coming and the rebate pool might be shrinking. So that was that one.

The other thing, I don't know if you would have this on hand and if it requires too much staff time, it's not worth it because I want you to be focused on what you have here. But do we just have an inventory of just all the city facilities that you manage? I saw the square footage and all of that, but all the buildings and facilities that your department manages, do we have a spreadsheet of that that we could see?

We do. The last master inventory that I saw was dated 2017. So it's gonna miss some facilities like New Main But we're working on reviewing that and making sure that it encompasses everything. But I'm happy to share that with council.

Thank you. I'll have a I have comments for you later on. Thanks, Lee.

Thank you.

Do have a question for you. We we talked about this recently about the city owned electric vehicle chargers and how many do we have, how many do are working. What's the status of that study?

Thank you for that question, council member Roblaard. We just completed our inventory. I believe the final count was 19 chargers. 12 of them were not operable. We're gonna look at removing those because I think it's better to have no charger than to have a charger that's not working. We're working with RPU to assess the cost and electric infrastructure needs to upgrade those to be fast charger capable. So more to come on that. But that's the current status of that assessment.

Okay. And to follow-up on that regarding fleet, as we electrify in our fleet and everything like that, the need for chargers and infrastructure as well to support that, what's the status of that?

General Services commissioned a study that wrapped up in late twenty twenty four. They hired a company called Black and Veatch to do an assessment of citywide facilities infrastructure. They gave us some high level cost estimates. For example, they felt that the corp yard will require about 5,000,000 worth of electric infrastructure upgrades. RPU believes that the actual number may be closer to $8,000,000 get the courtyard ready for EV chargers. That's the largest city facility with the greatest impact for EV chargers. Hopefully But that answers your question and gives you a little insight into that.

Yeah, we don't have get into all the details here today. Councilor Mammel?

Sorry, Mark, I had a question for you. Reducing the backlog of service surplus vehicles.

Where are we at? I when when you go over to

the corporate, there just seems to be an overabundance of just inoperable what where are we at on that? And how can we expedite that?

There is a lot of treasure at the courtyard. As of today, we have 201 vehicles on the surplus list. 52 of them just crossed the finish line for processes so that we can be allowed to auction them. Govdeals.com is scheduling with staff to come out and photograph all of them. They do little write ups of the condition, and then they post them for auction on govdeals.com.

The next batch of vehicles that the team is working with finance to process, I think it has 91 vehicles in it. So we're very aggressive in 2026 to get surplus vehicles as low as possible. Our goal is to never have more than about a dozen surplus vehicles at any time. We we desperately need the space at the courtyard, and we are kind of our own worst enemies right now in terms of the clutter.

Alright. That wraps up general services. We'll go ahead and move on to housing human services overview.

Good afternoon, mayor pro tem, members of the council and city management and guests, it's an honor to be in front of you to present on the Housing and Human Services 2025 accomplishments and priorities and initiatives for 2026. The Housing and Human Services Department plays a critical role in supporting Riverside's most vulnerable residents. Our mission is to promote safe, stable, and affordable housing while delivering essential support services that strengthen our community. This work directly impacts homelessness prevention, housing stability, and overall quality of life throughout the city. Housing stability is foundational.

When residents are housed, they are healthier, more connected, and better able to contribute to their neighborhoods. Housing and Human Services coordinates housing programs, homelessness response, and supportive services across the city, working closely with our internal departments, community based organizations, nonprofit partners, and regional agencies. Our approach is rooted in prevention, access to housing, and long term stability. Our department's twenty twenty five key accomplishments reflect significant progress across policy, programs, and housing development. First, we have completed the revisions to the mobile home parks rent stabilization ordinance.

These updated strengthen the tenant protections while maintaining operational suitability for the park owners. We also implemented two new senior rental assistance programs supporting senior mobile home owners and unhoused seniors through rental assistance programs and case management. These programs reflect our commitment to helping seniors remain housed, avoid displacement, and navigate increasing challenging housing and fixed income realities while also connecting them to supportive services. In addition, the city executed a contract with Caltrans to address encampments located within the state right of way. This partnership allows us to responsibly address encampments in sensitive areas while maintaining compassion.

Outreach teams prioritize engagement, service connections, and shelter placements prior to any enforcement actions. On the housing development side, we initiated construction of the Mulberry Gardens family apartments consisting of 150 affordable rental units in Ward 1. This development represents a significant investment in family housing and long term affordability. We also have the Mulberry senior apartments under construction consisting of 59 affordable senior housing units shown in the upper right of the screen. This project responds directly to the growing housing need of the older adults in our community.

Construction has also begun on the Sunrise at Bogart, a 22 unit permanent supportive housing development in Ward 7 that's serving individuals with complex needs through housing paired with on-site supportive services. The project rendering is shown in the middle right of the screen before you. Additionally, this fire has completed construction,

which is

located in Ward 1. That's provided 32 permanent supportive housing units for our homeless youth, and that's shown in the lower right of the screen. As a result of these combined efforts and strong cross sector collaboration, the city of Riverside has achieved functional zero for homeless youth, meaning youth homelessness is rare, brief, and non recurring. In our priorities and our initiatives for 2026, first staff will complete the rehabilitation of the Riverside Access Center which will include a new case management conferencing rooms and a dedicated training for city staff and our community partners to use. We will also review the homelessness action plan that was adopted on 10/11/2022 with the Housing and Homeless Committee to assess the progress and refine outcome based goals to ensure the plan continues to reflect reflect current needs and best practices.

The department will also reconvene the Regional Homelessness Forum where California League of Cities will provide updates on proposed state legislation and state budget. City staff will also present an asset mapping of outreach, shelters, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and affordable housing resources across Riverside County, identifying gaps in programs and services and discussing strategies to establish fund these programs and projects. Homelessness does not stop at city boundaries, and regional collaboration strengthens outcome through shared accountability. We will also add three new affordable housing projects to the development pipeline to support long term housing supply. Staff is also seeking to apply for round four of our pro housing incentive program funding to request 1,400,000.0 to support affordable housing development here in the city while continuing to advocate for sustained and ongoing funding at the state level.

In addition, we are identifying funding opportunities with Habitat for Humanity to develop homeownership units on Garden Street in Ward 5 that will expand affordable homeownership opportunities and promote neighborhood stability. To enhance transparency and accountability, the Department has developed a HHS performance outcome infographic which will be updated semiannually and published on HHS's website and the city's social media platform. The infographic for fiscal year twenty four-twenty five has been completed and we're in the process of getting that uploaded to our website. Staff is currently finalizing the infographic covering the period of 07/01/2025 to 12/31/2025. HHS continues to deliver measurable progress with a continued focus on prevention, housing creation, and regional collaboration.

These accomplishments reflect strong leadership, dedicated staff, and meaningful community partnerships. We appreciate the City Council's ongoing support as we continue building a more stable and equitable riverside. That concludes my presentation, and I'm available to answer any questions from the Council.

All right, thank you, Michelle. Move to customer Perry.

Alright, thank you and thank you for all the work that you do on a daily basis with all these tough issues. I got probably just two questions for you and then I'll save probably a half hour worth of comments for later on without taking a breath. We've had some conversations in the past about an educational program regarding residents, individuals wanting to give money to the homeless, providing services to the homeless outside of city and county services. Where are we on that program, and when will you see it maybe established and go public with it?

So we're working with marketing. We did post one recently on social media, and I think it missed the mark because there was a picture, it looked a picture of the food pantries versus somebody feeding out of their vehicle, and so people that were perceiving that message might have seen it in a different way, but we are working with the communications staff to do the next step of putting a social media posting and messaging out to the community and businesses where we can work with the chamber on getting that message out of how we can help in more effective ways in supporting our non profits that are actually connecting individuals to services, and we already have started a webpage that has a lot of the non profits on there that our residents can donate to.

Alright. Thank you. My second I know you're working on a proposed municipal code, and I think several of us have our fingers in there. And, you know, just this afternoon, we heard about one particular city and how great they're doing with their homeless with resources. But that same city also dumps in our city, which probably makes their program that much more successful. I know we're working on a municipal code regarding drop offs and let's face it, dumping in our city. We had spoken the latter part of last year of trying to get it to committee by the end of the year. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. And now I think it's on a fast track to to come to the entire council. Can you just kind of provide an update and a window period when we may see that as a council?

We're having a follow-up meeting with the city attorney's office, but we wanna also include the Riverside Police Department because that proposal will have to be managed and overseen by the police department, so we wanna get their input into that process, and then we'll be taking it to the safety committee first to of vet that process, and then whatever comes out of, if it does come out of the safety committee, it'll go to the full council.

Alright, thank you. And again, thank you for everything that you and your staff do.

Thank you.

Alright, so we'll move to Councillor Rommel.

Thank you, sir. As you know, many of the folks we come in contact with on the streets, there's a narcotics situation. And what I noticed, one of the items you have here is the allocate opioid settlement monies on treatment beds. And and I've been a big proponent of, you know, using the tools the state's given us to try to get folks that are out there on the street suffering from addiction into some sort of treatment. So is there any update as to where we are on getting that money allocated for that?

Yes. We're currently in conversations with Riverside University Health System Behavioral Health with Ryan Miller and his team to get status updates on their treatment beds to see is there a backlog and if so, can they expand? If they can't, then we're gonna reach out to MFI Recovery who's a local provider here in town of how can we expand those services and then buy those beds that could be facilitated through our PCET and Outreach teams.

Okay. With the I know we have the review of the homeless action plan coming.

Do we know is it

I I I think council member Chavant has said we may be canceling that meeting.

The February meeting's being canceled. We've asked to cancel that one because we are going to be holding the homeless form at the end of this month and then we have the San Francisco trip where we're gonna be looking at some of their programs. We wanna be able to absorb what we've learned in San Francisco but then also hear from how we're gonna do some regional collaboration with the other cities in the county and maybe incorporate some of that into the plan.

And just just for maybe some of the folks up here, they don't maybe I know where we're all going up to well, not all. Michelle, myself, the mayor, I think Jose Medina, city manager, we're going to San Francisco to kind of study some of the things that are going on up there as well, just FYI. When we do the homeless action plan, will we be talking about prop 43?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay. Because I know that that's kind of new, a new tool. So I think that's something that we need

to Yeah.

The gravely disabled too, we've incorporated that within our survey. So when Riverside Police Department, if they encounter a homeless individual, we're trying to collect that as well as our outreach If we're able to connect them with a gravely disabled through that definition, get them connected to ETS so we can see what that outcome is. If they're denied, why are they being denied?

Right, got it. You and I, since I got here, I've talked about trying to identify sites within my ward for affordable units, in particular senior affordable units. Where where are we at? I I know we have

a I have somebody interested in California, so I do need a they're gonna submit a proposal. So I wanna be able to meet with you once we've got that proposal to

take a look at.

Okay. Because I I know that we we have some surplus land as well.

Which is a California one.

Right. So we need to.

Okay. Lastly, the Garden Street project. I think that's gonna be an amazing project. Where are we at? So

we're trying to look for what funding sources that might be available at the state and local level. As you know, the permanent local housing allocation will be starting to work on our five year plan. The state is requiring that we're gonna have to earmark 60% of those funds towards home ownership because the state didn't meet their mandate under the non entitlement cities. So we're gonna be able to tap into PLHA funding for that project.

Is there a timeline? No,

what happens is the state collects that $75 recording fee that's placed on real estate. They collect it, and it's not like every January they're gonna release a NOFA. We have to wait until the state, so the state sits on our money, and I hope we get that interest back. But there's that money and then they'll release a NOFA and then we have to apply for our own entitlement funding.

So Habitat, can wait until we're ready, right?

Yeah. And we'll work with them because they may be able to tap into Bank of America, other foundations, resources that might be available, so we'll still be in contact with them to see what opportunities might

open up.

I'm excited for that project to come, so.

I am too, and I will be reaching out to all of you to raise a nail and a hammer and put some framing together.

Thank you, Michelle. Thanks.

Hello, I'm back. Thank you. I'm sorry I missed your presentation. I saw, Steven, you your hand raised.

Yeah. I didn't hear you raise my hand before, but now I do. I'm back over here. I have just a couple of questions. The I guess, do we have a complete count and quantify our assets that we have for housing regarding whether it's affordable housing or permanent supportive housing or shelter, like, I guess, of beds total. Do we have a complete kind of, like, number for that?

So the shelter beds, we have an inventory. So we already have 90, PathLife operates a 90 bed shelter on Healen Place. So we actually have dedicated 60 beds there. And then at the recuperative, or not recuperative, at Hearts, but adjacent to that is our bridge housing, which is our non congregate. We have 23 beds there and then we also have a LaMation Foundation that has 50 recuperative care beds and then we have the family shelter.

So we're doing an inventory of not only what we provide but countywide because I also have a staff doing an inventory of other cities because a homeless individual calls that city, they will refer them back to us. So we're trying to do inventory of that. Affordable housing, have over 3,000 units. It is listed on our website and we continue to update that and then we also have the projects that are in the pipeline that we do present to our housing and homeless community on a monthly And basis as I

wonder if it's possible to also include, I guess, capacity for treatments. There's a lot of private and faith based organizations that do various forms of treatment and rehabilitation and everything like that. Is there a way to kind of quantify that capacity for a number of people we can support?

Yes, we're already reaching out to RUHS and MFI. We can start identifying what other treatment centers that are located in the city and then see what their capacity is right

now Okay. Well. Yeah. Because there's all these different kind, like we have the people that are operating at the hotel and other booth. I don't know what the size of that is, but there's a lot of these kind of private operators that don't really necessarily have to report to us and so we don't really know the full

Yeah, and a lot of times when people go into treatment, the only exit is shelter or sober living. They can't go into permanent supportive housing or rapid rehousing because once they go into treatment program, if it's more than 90 days, they lose their homeless status, their chronically homeless status and they have to start over again which is a broken system that we need

I'd to really appreciate a quantifiable breakdown of all the research assets that we have regarding that. And then I know we've mentioned this before. We have received asks from the county or other organizations outside of the city for funding for either its beds or as far as a type of project they're asking us for funding, and we typically say no because it's not in our city. Correct? Is there a way that we are able to say yes if we get to access that resource once it's built even if it's outside of our city?

We could release for HAP dollars. We could do a NOFA and release that, have that opportunity, and I just got in my email box today, there's a bill that might be proposed that will allow the continuum of care open up more dollars too for cities that are under the 300,000 population that doesn't get a direct allocation. So if that's the city's desire, we will be presenting at the homeless forum the opportunity to do sheltered collaboratively. A lot of cities don't wanna build it in their city, so how can we build it maybe in unincorporated areas and how can we collectively contribute towards those so that everybody can contribute towards that and be able to access them as well.

Thank you so much. That does it for me.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Cervantes.

Thank you. Looking through this, you know, great work again to our housing human services team, all that you do. I guess I wanted to get a little more clarity on I didn't see where do we fall in coordination? And I know we've discussed this a little bit, Michelle, but with the school districts. Because, you know, I've in my conversations, especially when we started exploring the discussions of a safe parking program, the you know, we looked to see if we could prioritize those that were families in RUSD or Albert that were impacted.

And I guess one might you know, I personally know my discussions with, again, groups, nonprofits that are servicing our families, particularly those that have children enrolled in the school districts. You know, these are folks that maybe don't meet the criteria of being homeless exactly because a lot of them are actually in those situations of couch surfing. They are there are many that are living in their cars. We just don't know about them. So I get sometimes a little uncomfortable about us talking about being at a 0% for youth when we have actual, and what's it called, I apologize, I always forget what it's called, the group that helps to work with these families inside the school districts?

They have homeless coordinators, the resource coordinators. We currently work with RUSD and Alvord, so anytime they have somebody that's gonna become homeless, they reach out to our team. We recently placed one with Family Promise. We are recently housing a family that got placed there for our home federal tenant based rental assistance program. So there's resources to help the folks that are homelessness. It's when couch surfing because they don't meet the program guidelines under the McKinney Vento Act.

Yes, and so we know these folks are there though, and I think that I just don't see on here where there's overlap with the school districts and then kind of helping with that portion. So just in the future thinking of what that objective looks like. Because, yeah, we know they're there, and I just feel like they're sometimes missing from the dialogue. And so in my conversations with Family Promise and some other groups that are capturing these folks, there is like a what is the city doing? And I know they're doing with with you, they're working, but it's not, like, listed in our in our items that we're actively which I know your team is doing stuff, so I feel like it needs to kinda be in writing where there is that partnership partnership and collaboration to serve and capture those families and get them also the support they need.

So I just think, you know, it's like I feel like it's almost one that's kind of an in progress here and as a piece that we are working on. So if we could just ensure that it's it's included in the future so we can track, measure, and see where that progress is also moving or do we need to look in the future to put more effort, support, funding, or other things in place to support the the other groups in the community that are helping us in this space. So but overall, I know there's so much that's being done here. And I guess I'm trying to think here what else. I'll I'll come back, but thank you for that.

Alright. Councilmember Faccony, you have a question?

I know we're just doing clarifying questions. I'm saving comments for later. A clarifying question, Michelle, I think it tags along with Councilmember Robillard's question. I heard the response of about the where the services are kind of mapping out in the city. I'm wondering if we could then take that data and really make it like a heat map of the city and see. I believe Ward 1 has the highest amount of affordable housing in the whole city, but I don't I I know that more anecdotally because I know what the city has, what the county has, but there may be of course other entities that I'm just not 100% sure of because we don't interact with them every day, or I don't at least. And so taking that information and applying it to a map might be, could that be something that we could do so we could see it visually.

We'll definitely do that. I know Ward 6 was number one but then redistricting happened so you acquired a lot more so you probably are at the top. We'll definitely do that.

All right, that was the last request to speak by council so we'll move on. Thank you, Ms. Davis. Who's up next? Human resources. Hello, Ms. Goldman.

Good evening, honorable mayor, city council, city staff. I'm Renee Goldman. I'm here to present on human resources and our department overview. Our department supports a citywide workforce of 2,800 employees with a dedicated team of just 43 full time staff. We're structured into nine specialized divisions.

This high performing team exemplifies innovation and efficiency in delivering essential services across the organization. Essentially what HR does is we leverage human capital to advance and achieve the values and strategic mission of the organization. It was really difficult for me to contain my presentation to just three three slides. My deputies and I, we've chosen some things that we think align with your key priorities as well. So looking at our accomplishments for 2025, we completed a citywide engagement survey to gauge employee emotional and psychological connection an employee has to their work, their team, and the organization so that we could strategically address employee culture.

We also hosted four employee appreciation events. Were wonderful events with the support of this council and the city manager's team. This year we were able to expand participation to include a lot of field employees and employees that do shift work for staff that previously were unable to attend such events. We enhanced the program by increasing accessibility and inclusivity and overall engagement across all of the departments. We've also worked to expand the wellness program to include additional wellness webinars, physical activities.

We've also incorporated blue zones into our wellness program and financial acumen this year. That was a request from Edward and we made sure we got that done. We also reduced total recordable injuries to one hundred and nine. This is the lowest number in a decade. We provided 21 in person safety trainings.

This includes Stop the Bleed, Defensive Driver, Confined Space, Entry, Situational Awareness, and Active Shooter to enhance a culture of safety and to reduce risk. We hired 44 police officers and police officer trainees in 2025. For our priorities and initiatives for 2026 looking ahead, we are going to work on improving the employee experience through streamlining our off boarding and retirement guidance. So really looking at the employee trajectory from higher all the way until they leave the city. We're implementing a formal exit interview process to assist us with this goal using our Qualtech software so that we can capture again that employee experience.

We are working to develop a strategy to continue to embed the Power Nine principles of Blue Zones into our daily principles and daily work life and we also are going to develop a sustainability plan for other city locations that will also go through the Blue Zone certification process. We are going to work to create and deploy a GIS map for all of our ADA locations throughout the city so that we can respond if there's any safety emergencies. And we will be utilizing our workers compensation and safety data to be more intentional on our training to reduce risk. This will help us plan and guide training curriculum, all of our policy updates for safety and any safety initiatives, again to strengthen that culture of safety that we've worked so hard to build. And we're working on implementing an electronic request and tracking system and information page.

And that is my presentation. I am available if you have any questions. I want to thank city managers team, council and the rest of city staff for supporting our initiatives. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, Ms. Goldman. Counting down the departments. Nobody has any questions for you because you're so fantastic. Thank you. No. Thanks. You are the heart and soul of this city. Thank you. Alright. So we have, I think I'm counting, more nine more departmental overviews. So I will invite George Khalil to do our information technology.

Good afternoon, honorable mayor, city council, and colleagues. My name is George Khalil. I'm your chief innovation officer. Our department, we are tiny but mighty. We are budgeted for 63 staff members. We're about 57 filled right now. We're supporting more than 9,000 connected devices. We have 72 city locations, 2,800 employees plus, and then adding another three to 400 volunteers, interns, temps, contractors, contractors, and we're supporting them daily. For the last year, we had about 30,000 service requests that came through IT. So I'm gonna steal a page out of our awesome fire chiefs book.

That's about one service request every four and a half minutes during business hours coming into the IT department across the city. And we managed to do that with a 95% excellent service rating. We do a survey after every ticket that comes into the IT department. We're an internal service and we focus on making sure that we have customer satisfactions. And the partnership with all of our colleagues of how can we improve, how can we streamline operations across the city.

Some key accomplishments from 2025: Alignment with the City Council priorities. We published a new high risk fire zones that was published for the fire department to try and optimize and improve risk within the city. We supported economic development by upgrading our permitting system, phase one for the one stop shop, to version 7.4. That was roughly three to four months initiative from 2025. And this one, it's really something to be proud of.

We're techies, but the internship program that we had, I would say we probably had about more than 50% placement from the folks that have come on board, students from RCC, from UCR, from some of our local colleges that they spent some time internship in IT. Some of them end up getting jobs in the city. Some of them got jobs somewhere else but based on the experience and what they learned in the department. And that's something we're especially proud of and we want to continue doing. We continue to assist.

I know there was a question about city surplus properties earlier. We launched the city owned property map. So under the real property services, there's a GIS map called vacant properties. So not just the properties that are up for sale right now. There's a complete public facing list right now of all city owned vacant properties that we published in partnership with our economic development team and really all the departments across the city that support those properties.