City Council - Regular Meeting

Afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting for 03/03/2026. I'm mayor Patricia Lock Dawson. I will call our meeting to order. And just as a reminder, that the city council conducts its meetings in accordance with resolution twenty four three one eight. It's if you'd like to learn more about that, that full resolution is available on the city's website. We will open our meeting as we always do 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.

Thank you. And this is for general public comment, which means it's to comment on closed session, consent calendar, and any matters within the jurisdiction of the city council. Alright. So I'm gonna ask our city clerk. These are all for this first. Okay. Alright. I have Ruben Gregg So to.

Good afternoon, mayor and city council. There's a movie. It's called Lady Blood Fight. It's in Asia or someplace and this American goes to fight American man and he's like winning everything. They they they do for death, they bet bet money. But he would go to the championship, but they kill him. Okay? And so now his daughter takes up after his footsteps and goes there and finds out what happened to him. So he tried to do the same thing to her, and this is about revenge what he says, which I agree. This church stuff is like facts.

Good people do nothing. Evil will prosper if good people do nothing. And that's what I've been trying to do everywhere I go and these truth people are evil and you know what? Now Robert Boss Otto did it again to me, got my car towed, and impounded because they're evil. I got them guys in trouble for for getting under the table, environmental stuff, all kinds of stuff, the whole neighborhood, and they're all Africans and Hispanics.

And now, I'm at this point, I need my car out. I don't have money. So are there any good people who wanna help me? So now, family law, same thing. They wanna do the right thing. I got the full $809,100 dollars of the whole case and they turn it around. So they they're gonna try to go through with this, my ex wife and a a new daughter and try to do what they did to me and I didn't know a sign. I got mental health issues. I've had it all my life from abuse from my dad, very traumatized. So now I'm at this point where I need help from good people.

I don't know. I guess none of you have good people because you don't wanna help me. Right police? Anyway, that's about all I got to say. I used to call the FBI on all of you, everything they did. I do right in the courthouse and they put a phony case on me and the ladies would only give me their numbers at first. I mean, yeah, numbers. Then they start giving me their names, Washington DC. I will record it and then send it to certain people. And then they found out and they get hang up and say, call it internal affairs. Well, I haven't done that yet, but I'm working on it. So if there's any good people who wanna help me with all the corruption, your evil, in your system and in the churches, I'm available. Thank you.

Thank you, mister So to. I like that scarf. Let's see. Next, I have Mark Elliott and then Brian McGrath.

Hi, council, mayor, city staff. My name is Mark Elliott, and I live and work on University Avenue. I'm here today because the last month and a half, public comment has been dominated by a reoccurring group of advocacy speakers claiming to speak for the community and for the University Corridor. I invited actual corridor residents and businesses to come here today to correct that record. And while I had a substantial group willing to attend, many expressed fear of backlash.

So I elected to withdraw those invitations. Residents should feel comfortable to come to council meetings. The corridor should not be silent because the people are afraid to appear in public or be associated with a position that advocacy groups may target. What we're seeing is not organic community input. It is a coordinated advocacy campaign.

These organizations operate as advocacy first and service last with their work centered on native shaping narrative, excuse me, shaping, mobilizing speakers, pressuring city decisions. Their incentives reward visibility, not outcomes. In that structure, which gets funded and celebrated is turnout, emotional testimony, media presence, and public pressure. Because of those incentive structures, the unhoused are often used as symbols, narratives, and moral leverage. This is not about solving homelessness in this corridor.

It's about securing a predetermined policy outcome. The lived reality of the corridor is not part of that calculus. They rely on emotional testimony, moral framing, and urgency narratives that make factual discussion difficult and frame any disagreement as cruel, uninformed, anti equity, and anti justice. And when necessary, they'll escalate through lawsuits, recalls, media campaigns, and we won't go away rhetoric. It the quarters lived reality deserves to be part of the public record.

The people who live and work here experience the daily impacts of these decisions. They are routinely displaced by advocacy driven narratives. The city cannot make effective decisions when the only voices being amplified are those incentivized to generate pressure rather than deliver results. Recognizing this pattern allows the city to distinguish between genuine community input and coordinated pressure and ensures that people directly affected by these decisions are not drowned out by orchestrated campaigns. At the 6PM meeting, will be delivering a petition signed by quarter business leaders, residents, and workers whose voices I believe need to formally be included in the public record. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Elliott. Alright. Alright. I have, Brian McGrath followed by, looks like, Anthony Wakid. Sorry if I mispronounced your name there. Hi.

How are you doing? Actually, I I went to my first meeting as a police commission, and I can't get a police report in this town. The only thing I've gotten actually is that cop kicking my ass before in February. He's arrested me for jaywalking. He said I got a a felony resistant arrest and for jaywalking. I don't know you get a felony resistant arrest. I don't know how get a resistant arrest if you can't be arrested. He lied in his report and the guy that addressed sergeant Emilion, was that his name? Sergeant Emilion, the reporter there? I can't get a police report in multiple murders and people being, like, tortured down here. It sounds creepy, but, you know, it's like I can't get a police report at all or investigation. I talked to the police chief. He sounds like a cool guy. I told him, hey, there's some cops that got involved. They had dragged in something above their head.

It has to do with nondisclosures, OJP or DOD, that high crimes are murder in the city. I went to I walked to LA. I lived in Skid Row. You know? And the people that went there, like, LA clinic there, now they're on a low salmone stoping receptor one. It has to do with, like, neuroscience stuff or something. I don't really know what it's about. It has to do with Nanoboss. And when was in DC, the UCR guy, Zang or something like that, he was in my WiFi. And I get back here, and he's at UCR. So all the, like, neuroscience stuff or, like, immunology breakthroughs, like RH and all our 50. I I never heard of blood type before till April. It you know, it's it's all crimes. And like Chad Bianco and others, your favorite I guess, you know. And He his buddies, Ron Kipp, they tried to set me up 11 times in my lifetime.

From the nineties. I could have captains tell us where you talk about that. Not all of them, but the legal investigation. I can't get an investigation of the police. I don't know who's corrupt. I mean, I assume cops are good. But like this guy behind me, don't know why he's here. I can't get a plane to him kicking my ass. I mean, how do you get resistant to arrest if you can't be arrested? The only thing is I talked to the chief, used to be his number. But when I go to the front part of it, the office, it doesn't work. I don't know why. I I get to a plane. But it's all it goes to all internal affairs. But it's like a homicide.

It's it's other complaints, not just for me, but for other people. I have key witnesses about it. Most of my my kid's mom, she can't talk to me because of the non disclosures. They say was like in a mental health facility or something like that, but I have a timeline of people getting, like, referred to people I know from grade school, and they can't talk to me because the projects are over. So I don't know what you know, it has to do with the UCLA brain mapping. I don't know what kind of projects they're on. You know? So I I was just saying, how do I get make sure that there's an investigation? And that's actually an FBI officer over there at 34 Irvine Street. I don't know if it is or not.

But, you know, it's I can't get an investigation at all. I have to prove every every part of it. So is there anything to count you guys should do to make sure I get this here? There's homeless people being tortured out here. That's what was saying. Yeah. So is there anything you need to make sure there's investigation?

Thank you mister Graff. And I I have to say when we, get speakers come before us we are not allowed to answer.

Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize. Yeah. The police commission thing to let the attorney say something weird like, I they couldn't ask me questions. I'd ask them questions.

Yeah. So

Which was weird. Mean, I thought

Alright. Thank you, mister McGrath. Next I have, it looks like Anthony Wakhi. Welcome.

Hello. Thank you. So I'm here to talk to you guys about social media because I'm from gen z and most of my generation spends nearly nine hours a day online, which I find is a huge issue. Especially since in Riverside, it's nine hours and nineteen minutes a day, which is higher than I anticipated since I spend like three or four hours a day. But social media while it is a very useful tool for connection has become a plat a platform that amplifies unrealistic beauty standards and impossible fitness ideals, which is something I found as I aged as well as me and my peers.

And I've seen the pressure, I felt the pressure on myself, and I've seen the effects of the pressure on my on my peers. So it also distorts how we see ourselves and I have a few statistics to back this up. So nine out of ten young women report editing their photos before posting, can be backed up by just a basic Google search search with the Harvard h Chan School of Public Health stating that social media is linked to body satisfaction, self harm, and in very extreme cases, suicidal thoughts. A lot of my friends say that filters are just for fun and but they set unrealistic standards for everyone. You know, faces are smooth, bodies are reshaped, likes become your validation, at least in my experience.

And there's also one in three girls and one in four boys that report body satisfaction when they internalize these standards. And social media normalizes extreme muscularity, extreme facial ideals, all which all of which all of which they force teens into thinking that they have to meet that status. There's also a very big biological impact, which this is just going off of what I have seen in myself and in my friends, is that the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for your judgment and impulse control, since it's not fully developed and social media triggers those reward pathways, it results into us falling into vulnerable reward seeking behavior, and that's according to the National Institute of Mental Health with the Harvard Medical School saying that the dopamine system is way more highly sensitive than we anticipate. With, the triggering of scrolling and likes and validation, it reinforces the addictive scrolling behavior which leads to those high screen times. And I also have a lot of statistics for you guys just that nearly half say that nearly half of teens say that social media affects their mental health in some way, which is up from thirty two percent in 2022.

And I don't know how we're supposed to fix that, but there are definitely ways out there. With forty five percent saying that they believe they spend too much time online. And also thirty four percent of teens said they use it to get mental health information, which shows that it can be a useful tool of information, but they have to make sure that the people that they're getting it from, they're getting it from people that have studied what they're presenting, not just some random influencer that they have just because they have credibility. So in my experience, this is not a lack of self control, but this happens because social media is designed to be addictive because at first when YouTube shorts first came out, it used to say you're all caught up now, and when YouTube crashed a few weeks ago, it said you're all caught up now. But now you can just stay scrolling and I actually my friend built a robot arm that just stays scrolling and the robot arm broke before robot arm made of Lego broke before the feed said, you're all caught up now.

Which shows that there's just infinite content that they're just feeding you after feeding you after feeding you. So it Oh,

thank you.

I appreciate you coming down and your passion for this topic. Share it with you so I appreciate that. Thank you. That is our last request to speak, so we will close public comment and we'll move on on our agenda. And we are at our council member communications. So I will start with Board one. Council member Falcone.

Thank you, mayor. Couple of things to look back on from the last week, and a couple of things to look ahead. We just this weekend celebrated one hundredth anniversary of the lawn bowling club in Fairmont Park. Been there in the park for a hundred years, and they had a great tournament this weekend to celebrate. This week is Read Across America, so yesterday spent a lot of time at Fremont Elementary, and then I, with the partial blessing of Councilmember Rovillard, made a step in award three this morning at Victoria Elementary and had fun time reading to the students.

We have now a change. Our farmers market, the downtown farmers market has been on Main Street between 5th And 6th for a number of years. It will now be permanently relocating to Main Street between 10th And 12th in the shadow of California's most beautiful courthouse. A lot more available parking, a lot more space to grow, and of course stretching the footprint of our downtown, which is very important to its success. Looking ahead, the Lincoln Park Community Meeting meets on the fifth, which is Thursday at six p. M, and then we have the Northside Improvement Association meeting Monday the ninth, 06:30 p. M, Reed Park in the community center there. Thank you mayor.

Thank you council member. Council member Cervantes.

Thank you mayor. Yes, we have one event that's coming up Thursday that I'm proud to be, on a panel of. This is called Mind the Gender Gap, and it's Life Beyond the Muse. It's gonna be an all all the artist panel discussion. I'll be on it along with Rosie Cortez, Mariam Traboo, Denise Kramer, and our moderator is gonna be Gregory Koehler and Barbara Simpson Lara. So we are very excited to have this. It'll be at the Civil Rights Institute at 05:30, and wanna invite folks to join us. Additionally, we have quite a few events coming up this Saturday. There's going to two women events that are gonna be over at Riverside City College. We have the Seroptimist International Riverside's Live Your Dream Conference.

If dream it, you can be it. I will be speaking on a panel there and then later in the day at the Empowering Young Woman's Conference. This is hosted by Adrienne and Dale Carmen Roberts and so it's a great event every year that we get to participate where hundreds of young women are able to hear from different women in different careers and able to of course ask questions but also hear about our journey and hopefully inspire them to be able follow their own path. We also have our legal observer training that is going to be at Casa Blacca Home Enabling Services in partnership with Councilmember Mills office, my sister, Senator Espinosa Bronte's office, La Vida Feen and Chirla, and that is going to be from eleven to 12:00. So please feel free to join us.

There is a registration online on our social media Instagram pages. All you need to is RSVP and then we'll send you all the details, but you could come and be part of a great training. Just trying to see looking for the week ahead because I'm trying to think we're gonna meet again. Those are the priority items and just wishing everyone, all of our city members, city staff, mayor, of course our city clerk, city attorney, a powerful woman's history month and just really grateful for the work that we are able to do here in Riverside to contribute, make a difference, and look forward to uplifting all of you every day. Thank you, mayor.

Thanks, council member. And, I think I missed the day and time that you're gonna be on the panel at Civil Rights Institute. When is that? Can you say that again?

Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. It is going to be this Thursday, the fifth, and it's going to be in the evening at 05:30PM.

Okay. Thank you. Sounds like a good panel. Councilor Mayor Robillard.

Thank you, Mayor. I had the pleasure of hosting Beans, is a Japanese clothing company that was influenced and started from the idea of California culture and and style, and very, very excited about the potential collaboration with them here in Riverside. I also got to go to the UCR Gluck Foundation event. It celebrated thirty years of the Gluck Family Foundation and the fellowship program they have for UCR student artists and helping them gain visibility and share their art with the community. We also did the Read Across America.

I stayed in Ward 3. And I went to Washington Elementary School where I got to read to two different third grade classes and I got to read all the places you'll go. And I got a lot of comments from the kids who said, You look like my dad. You look like my uncle. Because they all had beards. And so that became the focus of the day. And then looking forward to this weekend. It's Little League opening day this weekend for Pachapa Little League in Ward 3. I am coaching for the first time, so I'm very, very excited. My wife volunteered, voluntold to be a team mom, and it is incredibly rewarding to see a bunch of four year olds working together even though it may be chaotic.

It's a lot of fun and we have the league this year has over 400 kids participating this year and so growing very, very fast and it's a great thing that our community provides to give these kids some structure and opportunity to play their sports. That's all for me. Thank you.

Yes. Welcome to youth sports council member. Councilor Reconder.

And I'm jealous. I did it for ten years and I missed the living heck out of it. You're gonna have a great time. So yeah, Mayor, have couple of things from the past here. Last Wednesday the twenty fifth, we held our forum on homelessness. And I want to thank Michelle Davis and Megan Stoyer and the entire staff. The mayor was there with opening remarks. City manager was there. A lot of good discussion. And we're going to continue to work hard on ways to reduce the impacts of homelessness across the county.

On the twenty seventh, which is Friday, along with council member I'm off by date. I attended the what used to be the Grow Riverside, now it's the Grow dinner over in Norco. It was the farm to table dinner. It was fabulous. Again, it was Grow River's Day when we started fourteen years ago.

Now, it's just kind of the Grow initiative. And I want to thank Norco and all the staff over there that put a great dinner on. Then on Saturday night, along with Councilmember Falcone, I attended what was called the celebration of America at Woodcrest Christian High School. It was pretty cool. They had people dressed up as Thomas Paine, as Thomas Jefferson, and they doing the words of what they did to help create this country was really a really great time and I really appreciate Superintendent Jim Sullivan and all the staff for putting that on.

Let's see. There's one more thing I had to talk about. Man, I forgot that one, but what I will say is tomorrow night at the convention center is the fourth Air Force trophy dinner. It's put on by the Riverside Greater Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Committee. There'll be members of all 19 units of fourth Air Force there, and the best of the best will be recognized at that event.

A couple of our Robillard said, it's opening weekend of Little League. I've got two I have to do at the both at the same time, so it's going to be interesting how I can stretch that. But thanks to the Parks Department for all you do to get those fields ready. And the kids, I guess you should call them student athletes, the four year olds, you're gonna love it. It's chaotic as heck. Five guys are gonna chase one ground ball and tackle each other, but it's fun to watch. So thanks, Mayor. It's been busy. We keep busy and enjoy working for the people of Riverside. Thanks.

And between doing cartwheels in the outfield because that's what mine did. Council member Bill.

Thank you, mayor. And, Litrusy, you said four year olds in chaos. Get a lot of training here, so you should be ready. Should be ready for that. Couple things we this past Friday, and we'll have more to follow on this, but the mayor, the city manager, our homeless outreach, our homeless and housing department along with our city partners, Jeff Van Waggenen and Jose Medina.

We went up to San Francisco, met with the team up in San Francisco, very thankful to the city of San Francisco for hosting us. There'll be more to come on that. It was an eye opening day there to say the least. This morning got to go to Casablanca Elementary School and read the four classes, I read the book Tomas and the Library Lady and TK, then I had second grade, then I got a sixth grade class, and then a fifth grade class. And I got to tell you if anybody knows anything about Casablanca, an activist community, and I can tell you that the next generation is already ready because when I was done reading, the kid says, hey, are you in charge of this area right here?

I'm like, Yes, sir. He says, can we get better equipment over there at the park? I'm like wow CAG's training them early, but it was just such an amazing time to spend some couple hours over there with the kids, and after talking to the kids in the sixth grade class, know the future Riverside is bright because they are going to hold us accountable and I was really excited to be there. One event we have coming up, this Saturday we have an event again, as council member Chervantes shared over the Casablanca Home And Neighborly Service. I want thank Jerry Paleto and the folks for hosting the council member, Senator Servantes and I for an event out there.

And again, you can go to our social media to sign up and we'll send you all the information. And we have on March 19, we'll be having a community connection along with our fire update for the community at Hunt Park beginning at six p. M. Thank you, Mayor.

Member Perry?

Thank you, Mayor. Like everyone else, it's Read Across America. So, I'm at multiple schools this week. The other thing I will share, if you love planting trees, we'll be doing it Saturday morning at Bryant Park, 08:00 in the morning. So, if you have that green thumb and you want to dig some holes and plant some trees, Saturday is your day. That's all for me.

Alright. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Rahim, you're here?

Yes. I was stoked to read at Stocco this morning for Reading Read Across some Doctor. Seuss. It's always good to read Doctor. Seuss. But anyway, yes, it was a great time. Great kids that had great questions. It sounds like there's a lot of ways to get involved with sports and green thumbs this weekend, so I'll just name a couple more. On Saturday, March 7, two opportunities, two events. Keep Riverside Clean and Beautiful will be hosting award seven beautification project at Rutland Park from eight a.

M. To eleven a. M. Volunteers will be planting doing some planting, some cleanup, and there's some free shirts while supplies last. So, we would encourage you to get out there from eight to eleven Rutland Park this Saturday, March 7. And then right when you're done there, you can run over. I don't know if Councilmember Barrobilard will be there coaching, but the La Sierra Little League is having their opening day at the La Sierra Park. And the ceremony starts at ten, but they have a fundraiser market that is from eleven to two. So, you can be busy all the way from 8AM to 2PM this Saturday out in Ward 7. We hope to see everyone there. Thanks.

Thank you, Councilor Henry. And, everybody kinda touched on everything, so I won't go over it. Just the one thing that wasn't mentioned that we had the opportunity to welcome students from Tohoku University, which is in our sister city of Sendai, Japan. And they were here this week with the Beams team and, we had a great, visit with them. They cleaned up the garden in the, White Park area and they're just always do a wonderful job and they're lovely to meet with and I love these cultural exchanges that we have.

So thanks to them for coming out. So that ends those comments. Oh, also just quickly, I wanna thank city manager and chief Gonzalez and Michelle Davis for the homeless forum. It was fabulous. I think it was really good to bring all of our surrounding communities to get together so that we're not just shifting the problem around, but we're actually coming up with shared solutions.

So I really appreciate you being the impetus for that, council member Condor. Thank you. Okay. We're now at item number three, and this is we have one presentation this week, and council member Cervantes already comment on this, but it is women's history month in the month of March. And so today, I've got a proclamation I'm going to read a little bit, and then I'm going to ask Adrian Lamar Snyder from Nurture Outreach Resiliency and Advocacy or NORA.

Some of you may know it previously as a Riverside Rape Crisis Center or say Area Rape Crisis Center, And they went through a rebranding and a name change a couple years ago, which I think has caught on, I hope. So I I'm grateful for them. It's a great organization, always worth supporting. And miss Snyder will be up to accept the proclamation. So but first, I'd like to just read a few lines out of our proclamation for Women's History Month.

Whereas women of every race, class, and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of Riverside. Whereas women play a critical economic, cultural, and social role in every sphere of life in Riverside. Whereas throughout history, the vision and achievements of powerful women have strengthened our city. Whereas through their stories too often though their stories too often go untold, all of us stand on the shoulders of these sung and unsung trailblazers. Whereas in Riverside, we have a long history of women leaders in different roles, including mayors, council members, superintendents, school board members, chamber presidents, and many more.

Whereas this month, we recognize the history of great women that have helped our city fulfill its highest aspirations. Now, therefore, we do hereby proclaim the month of March 2026 as Women's History Month in the city of Riverside and encourage residents of our community to join us as we commemorate women's past, present, and future contributions. So thank you. Miss Snyder, would you like to come forward please and just tell us a little bit about, what Nora is about and why you're here today? And thank you so much for coming.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor Patricia Log Dawson, members of the council, and community leaders. Thank you for this proclamation and for your leadership in recognizing Women's History Month. This acknowledgment matters. It affirms that in our city, the safety, dignity, and contributions of women are foundational to who we are and to who we are becoming. Women's history month, officially recognized nationwide in 1987 invites us to reflect not only on progress but on perseverance.

And this year's theme leading the change reminds us that leadership is not simply about holding a title. It is about shaping systems, challenging injustice, and building pathways where none previously existed. It reminds us that meaningful change requires courage, and that courage is often born from conviction. Women's history month calls us to remember the women who organized before it was popular, who spoke up even before their voices were amplified, and who built institutions before there were systems designed to support them. One of those voices, Hillary Rodham Clinton, reminded the world, human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights.

These words endure because they remain unfinished work. At NORA, formerly the Riverside Area Rape Crisis Center, we see what that unfinished work looks like every day. For more than fifty years, we have stood beside survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse in hospital rooms, in courtrooms, in counseling spaces, in moments of crisis, and in the long steady journey toward healing. But Nora exists today because women refuse to accept silence. One of those women is miss Jane Block, one of our founders and, of course, one of my heroes.

At a time when violence against women was hidden behind closed doors and rarely spoken of publicly, Jane and others made a courageous decision. The Riverside community would no longer look away. They were leading the change before the phrase existed. They built something lasting, not just an organization, but a promise. A promise that survivors would be believed, a promise that help would be available, a promise that safety is not optional.

That legacy continues today at NORA, and it works not only to respond to violence, but to prevent it through direct services, prevention education, and partnership because true social injustice is not reactive. It is intentional. It is sustained, and it is collective. Prevention requires collaboration. It also requires sustainability.

This year's significant reductions in victim services funding are impacting organization organizations across our region, NORA, even as reports of violence and the complexity of survivors' needs continue to rise. This need has not decreased, the demand has not decreased, and our responsibility has not decreased, which makes it more critical than ever that women, girls, survivors, and their families have a place like Nora, a place rooted in dignity, accountability, and hope. Leading the change means ensuring that justice is not situational. It means strengthening systems that protect the vulnerable. It means recognizing that community safety is not the responsibility of one agency.

It is a shared commitment. Thriving communities are built when public leadership, nonprofit partners, and residents work in alignment, not in isolation. Behind every proclamation, there are real lives. There's a mother finding stability again, a young person learning what healthy relationships are all about. There's a survivor choosing hope over fear.

Through our Building Hope campaign, Nora is working to strengthen sustainable resources so that safety, advocacy, and healing remain accessible until violence against women is no longer a statistic that we accept. Building hope is not symbolic work, it's practical work. It ensures that when someone reaches out, there is an answer. Women's history month reminds us that progress is never accidental. It is built deliberately, collectively, and with courage.

And when women lead the change in the pursuit of justice, entire communities are transformed. On behalf of Nora, I accept this proclamation with gratitude and with continued commitment. Let this not simply mark a moment of recognition, but a continued commitment to action. Because when a city decides that the safety of women is nonnegotiable, transformation follows. Thank you for your leadership, mayor Dawson, and thank you for standing firmly and publicly on the side of safety, dignity, and justice.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I would love to have you come down and take a photo and, say hello to our council and bring whoever you would like to. Oh, my crew. Come on, my crew.

Adrian, do you want some in your own?

Okay. Can you find it?

Alright. Here we go.

And for those of you that don't know, they have the one of the best gala fundraisers in the city in November. Thank you. Yeah. Alright. Next, we are at the communications portion of our agenda. City manager, do you have any Yeah. Thing you'd like to share?

Yes, madam mayor. Okay. Mariana's gonna give us an update on a recruitment. Mariana.

Hello, Mariana. Hello. Mariana Gonzales.

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Honorable madam mayor Mark Dawson, city council, city staff, Mariana Gonzales, deputy HR director. Just here to provide a brief update on the inspector general recruitment process.

The human resources department has been working closely with city council who has authorized the usage of an executive recruitment firm to conduct the inspector general recruitment the selected firm Bob Murray and Associates has finalized the recruitment brochure and as of today the recruitment is officially open the recruitment will be closing on 04/05/2026 and all qualified applicants and candidates are invited to apply the executive recruiter will be sure to advertise at various public sector sites to ensure a wide outreach and those sites include the city's website government jobs careers and government the Association of Inspector General, Western City, California City News, LinkedIn and others. So this is my update. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them.

Alright, thank you. We do have a question from councilmember Rob Lord.

It's not really a question, but I just thank you

for that update. Alright.

There we go. Alright. Thank you for that update. The the People have been asking, you know, why is this process taking so long? Why why don't we have it in general yesterday? This the reason being is that this is a brand new position for the city. There's not much of this in the state of California as a whole. So we are kinda on the cutting edge of this position and talking to recruiter. They've never recruited for this position before because it doesn't really exist, like I said, in California. So a lot of planning, a lot of effort went into defining what the role is, making sure we had the right ideal candidate criteria along, and that's why the process took so long.

But we're here today. It's going out today, and hopefully we'll have an inspector general hired very, very soon. But that's why it took so long. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you, councilor Merloy. Thank you, miss Gonzales. Appreciate it. And I'm gonna ask our AV team back there. I'm not sure why we're getting that buzzing if something if someone can I don't know? I don't know if the if we could There we go. Thank you. It was the aliens. Okay. Council members, do any of you have any conflicts of interest or ex parte communications you need to report on?

Yeah. Mayor, I'm gonna recuse right now on item five alpha. Sorry. Which one? Five a.

Five a. Okay. Thank you, council member. Anybody else?

Yeah. And, hopefully, this will be a last time, but I'll be recusing myself on five a.

Okay. Thank you, council members. Alright. So, council, we are now going into closed session and we will return after closed session at 06:15PM for our evening session. City attorney, can you announce our closed session items, please?

We will now adjourn to closed session to discuss items 5A through 5H. All information that's required by the Brown Act is set forth on the agenda today. Thank you.

Thank you. Ready? Hi. Welcome to the, city council meeting for 03/03/2026. I'm mayor Patricia Lock Dawson.

We will get started with our evening session. And to do that, I will ask let's see. Is supposed to do our pledge of allegiance and our invocation. So, I will just do that at the moment. So please, if you are with me, if you care to join me, please bow your heads.

Dear God, please help us make good decisions tonight with patience, grace, and keeping our wits about us as we think through decisions that impact our community in ways that are current, but also for future generations. Please, God, give us the grace to ensure that we use a firm hand, but one in which we use your wisdom. So we appreciate your grace, and thank you for your support this evening. And please, amen. Amen.

Thanks. Okay. Everybody stand in. Let's say pledge allegiance. Pledge of allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright. Thank you. Okay. We will start our evening off with public comment, and this is consent calendar and any matters within the jurisdiction of city council. Let's open 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.

Thank you. We have some requests to speak in chambers. Okay. Alright. We will start with Pete Benavides.

Thank you, mayor, and good evening to everyone. I wanna talk about an upcoming event here in the city of Riverside, and that's the ultimate appointment of the city's first inspector general. When I think about before the November, as chair of the Charter Review Committee, I wanna first recognize publicly the members of the committee, dedicated individuals who volunteered their time, who made a difference in our city's decisions. Unbeknownst to all of us, at the time we recommended the appointment of the inspector general to the previous council, the voters passed it with a 65% majority. I believe, and I would suggest to city council today, that sometime in the near future that the committee be recognized for their hard work in making a difference to our city.

It was a lot of hard work, but it was a clear example of civic engagement, of public participation with all of us resulting in what hopes to be good news for the city of Riverside. You know, I hear a lot in the community in my travels about boards and commissions, civic engagement, and many issues that sometimes our residents are are not happy. Or even 01:00 afternoon meetings or 03:00 or 06:30 is gonna be inconvenient for people. And I thought, in the city of Arts And Innovation, why not an occasional Saturday council meeting? Again, just an idea.

How it plays out? Who knows? None of us have a crystal ball, but I think having that opportunity or option for the folks that live here, just food for thought. But anyway, thank you mayor and city council, and I agree with the prayer. Let's see if all of us can work together for the betterment of our beloved city. Thank you very much.

Thank you, mister Benavides. Eric Koschowicz?

Hi, guys. I wanted to use

the overhead projector if I could. I wanna put up some things that I wanna discuss. Got a few pages that I

wanna discuss with you guys.

Now I asked the city manager, this will be the fourth time now, three or four times now. This is a consultant list from 01/01/2025 to fivetwenty twenty five. Now I've asked the city council to provide me a consultant list, who you've hired and you've provided for private vetting services. Now I've asked this, I got it back in writing that we, I'll show you another page that comes up, we the city council does not keep track of consultants. I think we got a lot of problems guys.

We need to see what you guys who you're hiring and providing money to. This was in last year and I've requested 10 times already, I wanna know who you're hiring. Now you're failing to provide information to me. Now you can go to the second page. Can we go to the second page?

I only got three minutes and okay. Now now I went over to Raincross Tower last week. Now this is I went in the building right here, 3801 University, and it's Raincross Tower. Well, the security guard in there says it's a private building now. I cannot go in there.

Now, this is $14,000,000 we provided to Raincross. Why is the building private over there where a public person cannot go in there? But Raincross is getting $14,000,000. We have so many issues, guys. Like I've said before, I want everybody in jail here, okay? It is that bad. Sean, you could look at me all you want, but $14,000,000 and the building is private. That is insanity. All the money is going everywhere, but it's still going to Raincross with no accountability, no nothing. That is a building that is getting public funds.

There's no accountability. I'm gonna be asking Patricia all this coming up. I want all the purchase orders from everything coming up. That's how bad it's gonna be. I don't care. You guys are gonna answer me. Okay? You can do whatever you want and say, I have the right to know. Can you put over the next page? Thanks.

Sorry about that. Now, I wanted to say something else too about this. Now, this is the vendors that you guys paid under Joe Biden, but if you see right there, Riverside County District Attorney, now that's $499,000 you provided to the district attorney, and I've went over there so many times and I can't even make an appointment with a mic. That's the problem. I can go down a little bit farther to Riverside County Treasurer. $3,000,000.

Thank you, mister Kaushik.

This is crazy, you guys. We got problems.

Alright. Next Thank you. I have Rich Gardner followed by Ugochi Ombara Nicholson. Welcome Mr. Gardner.

Most of you have met Kim before but my name is Rich Gardner. Good afternoon, good evening rather Honorable Mayor Locke Dawson, city council members and city staff, Rich Gardner along with Kimberly Ann Nielsen, proud residents of Ward 4. First of all, I want to start out by saying from what I read in the Raincross Gazette, it was you Councilman Robillard that motioned to move this meeting to 06:00 and I appreciate that. And I guess Clarissa you seconded it and it passed unanimously. But I appreciate it being on this time frame which is good.

But I'd like to let everyone know that this is, and bear with me, de lamental disability awareness month, March. I probably said it wrong. And if we have our sales going upstairs, I don't know if they're fixed yet, but the color is orange. We would love to see some promotion. And on the twenty fourth, we're gonna have a proclamation in these council chambers.

It's slated for 06:30, so we'd like to invite everybody. And circling back to our first speaker, Pete, who does a great job. I'm excited to see the inspector general come into play. This from what you guys can research. November '24 was when it was And it was 65%. I'm not sure the exact number but you know, it's what the people voted for. It's what the people want and it's probably at this point long overdue as we're gonna have a vote on upcoming taxes. Now you guys are gonna vote the way you're gonna vote. Maybe some people will change somebody's mind. Who knows?

But it would have been nice to have the inspector general up and running let's say six months ago. You know to get a good thorough Six months, you can't get a thorough look in six months. Let's be honest. This is gonna take some time. But That's right. Two years. It's gonna take another two years before you can put the thing back on the agenda for taxes. I'm politely asking you guys to consider that. Let the inspector general do his job. Let the people know what's going on.

Earl brought up the Raincross Hospitality Corp. And you know, I don't have time to research all this stuff. Perhaps the inspector general does. But from what I can see, the Raincross Hospitality Corp generates a revenue of 1,800,000.0. That's what it said on their web page. So and I know we probably gotta pay rent for the building or what have you, so that probably brings the price up. But if they're only bringing in 1,800,000.0, I don't know why we're spending 14,000,000, which, you know, is an intriguing question. But I'm glad you guys moved this to this evening. It was nice of you to do that. And God bless everyone. And by the way, this is a great city. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Goodbye. Okay.

Bye guys.

So alright. Thank you. I think our ASL interpreter has frozen. I know they freeze when they switch over interpreters, but she seems to be frozen for a while here. Do we not have another alright. Miss Wagner, I see you. There we go. We got we have somebody back now. Thank you. I have Ugochi, Annabar, Nicholson. Hi.

Yes, hi. Good evening, Mayor Locke Dawson and the honorable members of the Riverside City Council as well as city staff. My name is Ugochi Anabara Nicholson. I am an attorney with the Public Interest Law Project and a resident of Ward 1. The Public Interest Law Project is one of California's qualified legal services support center programs, and we support the work of public interest programs in California by litigating, providing advocacy support, and training advocates in land use, fair housing, anti displacement, homelessness prevention and public benefits.

We approach this work with a race equity lens to combat the exclusionary practices that have allowed our housing crisis to persist. Earlier today, with our legal and policy partners at the Inland County Legal Services, ACLU, Councilmember Cervantes in her capacity as the elected representative of Ward 2, community advocates, and Ms. Mora, a person with lived experience, we held a press conference not far from these council steps where we educated the public about the need for the University Terrace Project to dent the rising numbers of homelessness in our city, the city's mandatory obligations to implement its housing element policies and programs, including its Housing First program and policies, and its mandatory duty to affirmatively further fair housing. We are aware that the California Housing Community Development Department has expressed concerns about the city's decision to reject $20,100,000 in HomeKey funding, particularly given the city's abysmal progress on its lower income housing regional needs assessment, the RINA permitting zero projects in its sixth cycle while permitting over 31% of its projects to meet its above moderate income RINA. These actions place the city's housing element certification and pro housing designation at risk.

140 people in the city of Riverside died without shelter last year. The city can reverse this horrifying statistic and avoidable loss of life by funding permanent supportive housing projects such as the University Terrace Project. We understand that you are meeting in closed session in April. We urge you to stand with the city's residents who are most in need and work with all who are involved to get the University Terrace Project from paper to fruition. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, next I have Alex Sandoval followed by Marilla Monroy and Cameron Delfin.

Good evening mayor and good evening city council. It's it's me Reya, the next person who's gonna speak.

Thanks, Oh, thank you.

Of course.

I'm just here again. At this point I feel like I'm a resident of Ward 3, Steven Robillard's ward and at this point I feel like you all recognize me. I've been here for several meetings to express my support, my ongoing support for the University Terrace Homes project and to accept this $20,100,000 from HomeKey funds. And I feel like I've been kind of lied to when I hear that you have in the six cycles, you have moved forward with zero affordable housing projects for low income residents when every time we come here and we bring it up, we hear that we already have many affordable housing projects in the works. We're already working on all of these affordable housing projects but that's obviously not the case for our city's most vulnerable folks with fixed incomes who are never going to reach any type of market rate.

So I urge you to reconsider your position on this. I know you all say that it's too late, but clearly it's not if you are having a closed session about it in April. So please reconsider and do the right thing. As our attorney from the Public Interest Law Project said earlier, this is about one hundred and forty people who died in the city of Riverside last year being houseless and we can save lives if we just move it forward with this project. Please do the right thing.

It's fiscally responsible and it's also just a humane thing. So thank you for your time and I hope you make the right decision.

Thank you, mister Sandoval. Alright. Miss Monroy, and then followed Cameron Delfin. And after that, I've got, looks like, Anna Gerser. Geiser.

Hi. My name is Medea, and I'm from Ward 6. The bad press that both sides of the aisle have given to Falcone, Roblar, Condor, Mills are all actually very valid. Roblar, reading your opinion briefs this morning was absolutely disgusting, mentioning the spread of incineration from supporters of the project and just saying, like, all of them are spreading that, when in reality, it's actually you who's spreading it. So saying that the money for the HomeKey project wouldn't go to Riverside, but how can that be when the developers are from Riverside?

On top of that, the services would be provided to Riverside's unhoused residents. On top of that, services that would be provided more than likely would be jobs for Riversideers. You're a liar and only care about all your private real estate and developer buddies because we all have seen the fact that you get a bunch of, like, money from them. I mean, if you check the comments of that article, everyone actually really hates you, dude. So and then, on top of that, I want to say, it was actually kind of funny, Falcone, the way that you were dancing around people's questions at your community office hours in the video that someone grabbed of you.

I'm actually going to make it one of my missions to try and recall you because, honestly, we only need 60 votes to recall you. You're you guys are both just doing a bunch of scare tactics in order to suppress people's voices and basically make sure that no one gets this project when it would actually help a lot of riversiders. We won't be quiet on this issue, and we'll continue to speak and inform people. This won't go away. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Monroy. All right. I have Cameron Delfin and Anna Geisert and then followed by Samantha Cheah.

Hello. My name is Cameron. I'm from Ward 6. I'm here to speak in regards to the supporting the University Terrace Home project. I had also just seen the article that was published recently by Roblar.

And just the claims that Riverside does not oppose housing solutions or helping people experience homelessness is something bold to say when you guys are pretty much shutting down a plan that would help do just that. Turning down this plan risks Riverside losing millions of dollars in grants and future projects. And also possibly losing the pro housing designation that we have. We have so many unhoused neighbors that could have completely benefited from this and there's so much more that we can do as far as affordable housing. We have so many low income people that can definitely benefit.

Especially being a city that has a lot of students who are low income and can benefit from affordable housing. Yeah. I don't see how the claims that this money wouldn't go back into Riverside when, like Maria was saying previously, the funds could have gone pretty much directly to contractors in Riverside to help with the project and which would provide jobs to Riverside residents and would basically just put the money right back into Riverside itself and help the residents of Riverside that need to have housing to keep them safe. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. I have Anna Geisert followed by Samantha Shea and then Alex Atalena Orozco.

Good evening, mayor Lock Dawson, city council members and staff. My name is Anna Geysert. I live in Ward 4 with my husband. I would like to comment on the rejection of the state grant for the quality in conversion in the University Terrace Project. I was totally blindsided by City council's decision. I had assumed its approval was a no brainer. I regret that in hindsight. I have not been available to attend previous meetings on this subject, so I'm taking this opportunity now to comment. First, there is no explaining away this decision. Second, please stop prioritizing the interests of developers over those of your constituents.

Back in April 2025, City Council approved the La Sierra Victoria development, a subdivision of a 9.91 acre parcel into 49 single family units, 40 of which are market rate and only three affordable. This was done without hesitation despite the strong opposition from the community. We were told at that city council meeting that city council's hands were tied. This was the actual phrase used due to state regulations that mandate adding to the housing stock. How is it possible that you cannot untie the knot for out of town developers but can when it comes to the indigent?

I would like to end by thanking council members Cervantes, Perry, and Hemenway for putting their constituents first. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, I have Samantha Che followed by Alex Atalana Orozco and Nathan Valdivia.

Hello, good evening. My name is Samantha. I am a resident of Ward 2, and I am a member of the UCR student body. So tonight, I wanted to express my desire to support the University Terrace Project as a student of the UCR student body. As a woman of the community as well, I would feel much, much safer if we had the project approved and going through instead of stopping it under the guise of, oh, this is to keep students safe. But I think as a student who has been there for four years, right, with all the experiences I have gone through, I think it makes much more sense and I think it would keep us much, much safer if we just supported the project instead of dancing around the subject. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Alex, followed by Nathan Valdivia, and then Urban Cross.

Hello, everyone. My name is Alex. I'm a fourth year student at the school of public policy at UC Riverside. And I wanted to come up here and speak to you all and ask for you all to reconsider the your rejection of the project home key funding, especially considering that there's gonna be a closed session about this over in April. It is very apparent that there's still a lot of time that we can do something about this.

It's really clear that the student body is very unhappy that you all are using, like, our apparent safety as an excuse to reject this project. The Highlander published an article about this and students keep on showing up more and more en masse here because, like, when we do have time, when we're not busy doing homework and attending other extracurricular events, I think it's very clear that, like, we we support this. And it's a shame that all of you are instead prioritizing business interests instead of caring about your community. Council member Obalard, in the article that you wrote, you said that $9,500,000 was a significant investment in in the community when in fact that's money that would go to saving people's lives. So it's nice to know that you are happy with putting a price tag on how much homes people are worth because you don't think that they're necessarily a benefit to you.

And I think that's something that we need to consider more because we need to build a community that's actually going to support its constituents and not necessarily throw them under the bus when it doesn't necessarily immediately create a big buck for people. And that's ignoring the fact that like supplemental supportive housing projects typically lead to an overall increase in in the tax base of the entire city because it provides additional services and provides jobs and also reduces the homelessness population as well, which has been very apparent in the other successful Project Honkies that have happened around the state. And that's also considering the fact that we haven't built any affordable housing at any feasible scale in this city. And it it's a shame to see that Riverside is sliding backwards out of the years of progress that we've made, especially coming out of COVID. And we're, like, we're we're supposed to be the city of we're supposed to be like the shining beacon of the Inland Empire.

And everyone else is moving forward and developing, and we're staying in the past and doing things that hurt our community. And it's something that we should really be ashamed about. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.

Thank you. I have Nathan Valdivia followed by Urban Cross and then looks like Lance Potter.

Good evening council. I'm a UCR first year student. I said, I'm Nathan Bolivia and I beg you to reconsider your stance on the project home keep. I would like to say like, we know the stat of that it's 15% of unhoused would be housed if this were to be built. And mathematically, that's a little under one in six and guarantee that there is going to be children or families in that group.

So I just have to ask one question in the sense after you did this vote. How can you sleep at night knowing that you just said to children, to families, no, you don't get housing? Even though stated several times that you guys are apparently for housing when you guys literally just said no to this housing. So that's it.

That's all I'm Thank you. Alright. I have Urban Cross followed by Lance Fotter.

Hi. I'm a student at UCR and I'm here in support of the University Terrace Project. I wanna make one thing clear. The students at UCR all want people to be housed regardless of income levels. We have wrote multiple articles in the Highlander talking about this issue and yet there seems to be no real action. Do not use us as a shield to defend your policies. And on the topic of shields, I've had to walk with friends to the farmhouse collectives as they feel scared about walking to the homelessness population. They will be there. They will always be there. It doesn't really matter if they're doing any vices.

I much rather people have their vices at home in the comfort of their own living so I don't have to see it. One last note I wanna have. If we're gonna open session with a prayer, then we should uphold the teachings of Jesus. Luke three eleven says, if you have two shirts, give one to the poor. Yet, we can't give any shelter to the poor. That's all.

Thank you. Alright. I have Lance Vauther followed by Patrick Maloney.

Hello. My name is Lance. I'm a UCR student and I just wanted to come here to express my support for the University Terrace Project and Project Homekey. Nobody is homeless by choice. I think that's very clear and it would be a shame to leave those people out on the street because a couple of nimbies don't recognize their humanity. You heard from a couple of my colleagues already that we all support this project. This is something the students support. That's all.

Thank you. Alright. Got Patrick Maloney followed by Mark Elliott.

Good evening honorable mayor city council staff. I'm Patrick Maloney. I'm from Ward 1 and also big thanks to everybody behind the scenes. You know, I come out here. I'm gonna change it up a little bit, be a little more pleasant and more happy more than most people. Or if you need to check your phones, this is your perfect time to check your phones. Alright. Big shout out to the fact that you did this tonight. Thank you for moving this. I'm not I was at city manager. Somebody did that. Thank you so much for moving this till tonight. Appreciate that. And also wanna say thank you to even if I disagree with somebody like mister Steven Rolobar, I appreciate you doing that write up in the Raincross. I like that the Raincross Gazette is focusing on local write ups and about stuff about the city.

We don't have that in the press enterprise like we used to with Dan Bernstein. So it's nice to see write ups. And I appreciate even if I disagree with you, I like seeing the write ups. So thank you for doing that. And by the way, if you wanna come to the neighbors of the Wood Streets meeting, we're actually doing something different this upcoming twelfth and Philip knows about this. We're gonna do a q and a. So our neighbors can ask questions. The whole night is just about questions and answers. We're not about showing any kind of like demonstrations or any kind of anything that night. All it's about is just neighbors talking to neighbors and talking to the people at the city.

So, hope you can make it out there and if you're a Ward 1 resident or you live in the Wood Streets, please come out. And I know tonight's tax stuff. I'm surprised I'm not hearing more about tax stuff. So, I'm sorry for on that one. My only note is, hey, nobody loves taxes but if it goes to the right places, there you go.

On another note, the other day an RTA bus collided with my park van and thankfully the RTA said they will respond accept full responsibility and hopefully, I get everything paid out. But it is terrifying downtown that RTA bus driver said it's scary driving downtown. So we need to make sure it's a little bit safer for the buses, make sure it's safer because the gentleman was trying to pull over to get somebody out of the the bus that was handicapped, and they just actually got too close to my van. So it was an accident, but these things happen. And it's it's a bummer though because I can't afford a new car and the fact that this happens is you just wanna make sure everybody's safe, that kind of stuff. But it's it's it's stressful. So I understand where people are going, you know, it's hard to get housing. It's hard to get your your cars taken care of. Everything. It's it's very stressful for right now.

So, I see a lot of people getting angry or excited. It's because times are tough and times are tough in downtown. Times are tough throughout Riverside. But, I truly appreciate that, you know, if you go and try to do something and try to fix something, they'll do it. On that point is I am bummed out. I keep getting parking tickets for loading zones. And anybody who sees me, I take twice as long to load my open mics or karaoke nights. And I've gotten three tickets in the last couple months. And every time I come downtown, I just wanna pay it in person. They don't let you pay it in person. So if we can change that where we can pay in person again, that would be very nice. I would appreciate that. Last but not least, Battle of Bands coming up next Saturday. My last Battle of Bands had over 200 people, five incredible bands, indie bands, rock bands, Chicano bands, everything in between. It was an incredible night.

Please come out to Packing House 4PM to 9PM. No cover charge all ages. And last but not least, appreciate your time.

Thank you, mister Maloney. Alright. I have Mark Elliott followed by Kevin Bernard Burnett and then Vir Sinha. Welcome, mister Elliott.

Thank you. Good evening council, mayor, and city staff. At the 3PM session, I spoke about the difference between coordinated advocacy pressure and actual corridor input. For the evening session, I wanna focus on the work the city is already doing and the direction that produces great results. The city is already doing a lot of the work when it comes to the homelessness problem. They have outreach teams, community policing, but they are very been highly effective in my opinion. These teams know the individuals in the corridor. They build relationships, and they engage directly and consistently. What has been missing from the public record is the voice of the people who live and work on University Avenue. I might have mentioned that once or twice.

Many choose not to speak publicly because they fear backlash or being targeted for taking a position that advocacy groups may oppose and may target. Their silence is not agreement. It's self protection. And for the record, legal action that was repeated recently in a recent coverage never existed. You know, we we keep talking about city faces lawsuits, you know, in this kind of language when it's just absolutely not true.

There's been a couple of warning letters and I think that we also had what was this guy, Hawksworth, Faces a multimillion dollar lawsuit is what he said about the city this last time, threatening to remove pro housing status. Both claims are factually incorrect. It's just absolutely not true. There's no lawsuits. We don't have a pro housing housing status on the line.

They probably send an inquiry inquiry letter is what I understand, and it doesn't have neither one of these things are okay. It's sensationalizing stuff, and I just really care for it. Tonight, I'm submitting a petition signed by University Avenue residents, workers and business owners, all that are in within half a block or to a block of where this project would be. I've got a stack here. And what it is really says on this petition is that they're thanking the council for their decision.

They appreciate you looking out for us. And that we would like to be included in anything that comes forward in the future, that we would like to be a part of it so that we can participate. I live, literally live, less than a half a block from quality and so I don't think there's anyone more qualified to talk about this than I am. We have three other facilities in my neighborhood. I can see them from my front door. I don't think this was the right spot and I don't think it was the right project. I ask that this petition be included in the public record as a documented voice of the people directly affected by these decisions. I can leave I'll leave this with the clerk. Alright.

Yeah. Thank you, mister Elliott. You can she'll grab it from you. Thank you. Alright. I have Kevin Burnett, and we're gonna give you six minutes. We need interpretation for mister Burnett.

So and

yeah. You're on for six minutes. Alright. We need interpretation. Can you not can you not speak, interpreter?

We need yeah. But we also need her to speak to us though. Tell us what you're talking to him about. About But she needs to talk to us so we know what she's what he's saying because that is the interpretation. Alright. As I she has her she's muted. This is what I'm trying to get to. Can we make sure that our interpreter is live with sound, please? Thank you. Thank you for your patience, mister Burnett.

You need to mute unmute on your end, ma'am, our interpreter. Okay. We're gonna move on, mister Bernard, and then we're gonna come back to you. We're gonna try to get this sorted, please. So thank you for your patience, and we're gonna move on. We'll come right back to you. Thank you. I have Vir Sinha and then Ernesto Rangel.

Hello. My name is Vir Sinha. My name is Vir Sinha. I'm a student at UCR, I and wanna extend full support for this council's reversal.

Bring your mic up

so we

can hear you. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Vir Sinha, I'm a student at UCR. And I wanna extend my full support for this council's reversal of the unfortunate rejection of $20,000,000 for the supportable housing project. I have made efforts at UCR over the past month to educate my friends and peers on campus on this issue, and I've observed two recurring responses. Apart from the students who showed support and empathy for our communities least privileged and want to see them housed, there are many who are less sure.

These people didn't just dismiss the subject or make unwarranted claims though. Instead, they said I'd have to do more research because those are the kinds of minds and leaders that we are shaping at UCR for a brighter future. So if this council wants to claim to represent UCR by protecting student safety, I implore you to think like a Highlander and do more research. There's ample ample amount of research that shows there's no statistically significant relationship between affordable housing and crime. This means you can't make a causal relationship between between affordable housing and crime.

However, there is ample research showing the benefits that affordable housing projects like this could bring not just to decreasing homelessness, but also to the community the surrounding community. So if you want to represent the UCR campus, please make more of an effort to implement evidence based policy as most of our student body would suggest you do. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Sinha. Alright. I have Ernesto Wrinkle.

Good evening mayor and council member. I wanna respond to a narrative that has been circulating about the Quality Inn project because residents deserve the full truth. Not half truth and misleading statements as the ones that Robillard spewed in the Raincross Gazette. Litigation shouldn't override democratic votes on university terrorists. Believe that's what the title is.

That statement that statement from the get go is is wrong. To say that this process was democratic, right, means that the council would weigh the facts but it's obvious that from the get go, this process all has all been for the Baileys and the Farmhouse Collective. This project is not stained and there's still future and there's still hope. One thing that will be stained is your reputation when you run for reelection. We also keep hearing that the phrase private nonprofit developer as if it should make the public nervous.

By this organization partnering with the city has been serving Riverside for thirty seven years. It was founded by the city's former redevelopment director and is governed by respected local leaders like Rose Mays of the Fair Housing Council, foreign mayor Rusty Bailey and former council member Andy Melendrez among many other. Right? These are Riverside's residents who decades of experience address housing challenges in this community. Other cities are doing this successfully. The city of Redlands converted a hotel through the HomeKey program and saw a 31% decrease in homelessness. Riverside had the opportunity to do something similar. We fumbled. Right? Not sure about the dude who lives on university.

I live on university. Never saw your petition or anything. Kinda curious to see what questions you were asking him to gain support with your petition. But I also live in that community. I run through those businesses and I've talked to the people.

I step over the homeless people as I'm running through and it's just sad to see the the lack of empathy that we're seeing here. We claim to be, you know, God church people but we're far from that if we can't house, right, the homeless. Again, if we're gonna talk about democracy, right, because that's what this country was based on, I'm a history teacher, that's what I try to teach my students. They've been following this and there's been nothing democratic about this. If we want to inspire the future, then let's do the right thing. Right? Because what you guys are showing them is that the people with money are the ones that run this here. Right? And that's what they're seeing. I could have them up here speaking but right, they're high school students so we'll let them do that.

Let them be the lessons as they will be the future of tomorrow and probably be unseating you. So more community members again smoke spoke in favor of this project than against it. Right? If we are democratic, we listen to the people. Right? Obviously, that that's not happening here. Many of the opposition speakers were connected to Beverly Bailey, her family and the farmhouse collective against the interest of one family. We're putting the interest of one family, right, for the 114 that can be housed in this project. Okay again, when you ask yourself, right, am I a church I do. Right?

Alright. Let's have Let's try our ASL interpretation again. Did we get ASL interpreter, can you please speak for a moment and see if you can unmute?

I am unmuted. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can hear you but we can barely hear you. If you could speak up just a tiny bit, that would be great. Alright. Okay. Is this better? Better. Much better. Thank you so much. Alright. We're going to ask Mr. Burnett to please come back up to the mic and we will give you six minutes, sir. Thank you so much. Okay.

Does everybody have

this printout? Yes.

And then can we put the picture on the screen, please, if we can use the projector? This first page, this picture here. Okay. Is it clear? Can you see me?

Yeah. Are we ready to proceed? Okay. I'll get started. Mayor Dawson and council members, thank you so much for this presentation today. This morning, I stood up and talked about the cross streets and the bike road. I'm sorry. There's been some freezing on my end, so it hasn't been clear. I'm missing some information. We had some volunteers.

Alright. Now, we can't hear you again. Can you speak up a little bit? Sorry. We heard you initially and then now we can't hear you. So perhaps we can try the other interpreter and we'll stop mister Burnett's time and maybe we can switch to the other interpreter. Thank you. Let's see. She's gonna be frozen for just a moment till she gets up and running. Alright. Can you can

you hear me well?

Yes. We can. Thank you so much. Alright. Alright. We can restart the clock and mister, Burnett, please go on.

Okay. So the picture here shows, I wanted to show the city manager this picture. Okay. So now when I've already given this photo to the city manager and my city council members, Thank you very much for having me here. And I'm here regarding the the Water Street.

I'm sorry. And now locally, since 1993, volunteers on has left the area, they continue I am so sorry. I apologize. Hold on. They axe they want the full access to the area where they're walking.

In the picture I see on the freeway, you can see I've shared the picture on there. Obviously, it's a beautiful picture. And my name is Kevin Burnett. I'm deaf from West 6th, and I'm new from public health from the university. And I've been here for twenty four years for communication, and I have been exactly involved with the access and running.

And so I I'm from the California Department of Aging and Experience and Managing Board of California Public Health Agency with the developmental role. And we've seen the city and tonight for your consideration up to a 106 access for, the voting. And plus now, we're doing plans to donate 508,000 for senior citizen programs and less half less than half of that, a $108,000,000. So lots of people have lost homes, but they continue to build. But there's no offices for deaf and disabled.

One out of four Americans here and adults are disabled and deaf. So I wanted to ask you, members of city council, to provide the numbers for to res to have a resolution for tonight, a, b, or c, regarding this council member. I think it's 20.3, the deaf and disabled programs. What are you putting towards that? And the funding is under the AI, 22,600,000.0.

So what is the 2.5? What are you doing with that building? Is it fully staffed with the deaf and disabled support and providing interpreters and disabled and deaf access? And are you providing the state and federal, services for that department? I haven't seen anything that for DSS that hasn't been running, it's kind of been putting away.

You know, we we haven't hired you know, new, it's only been, like, for the police department and fine arts and things like that. We've put a budget for them and for ADA. And I wanted to ask you about that to build a new firehouse, build a new police quarters, build a new library. But today, I'd like to pick one, but not later, because I'm not asking to put anything more expensive, but we're asking for you guys to put, like, business owners business owners, I'm sorry, excuse me, for, deaf and disabled in here in Riverside because we're very culturally well known in the arts community as well. And I'm I'm not sure if you know that, but, you know, obviously, within employment and it moves on.

We spend a lot of money than having to pay taxes and we're not $2,500,000 And then plus here in our hometown and then through our environment. So I'm asking if you would support this. Thank you very much.

Thank you, mister Brigham. Thank you. Alright. Thank you, interpreter. I appreciate that. Alright. Our next public comment is online. Let's have our first caller, please.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Thank you, mayor. For those to my, once these residents get elected into office, they become the government. Right there, there is an immediate conflict of interest. They are incentivized to do what the city agenda is. Now there is a big business like the Riverside Chamber of Commerce and other businesses that they fight.

Sometimes they come into conflict with some of the residents' issues like it's here today. This was something that was voted by the city council. So if you are unhappy with the city council members, you have to organize call list together and get them voted out if you are not happy with your representation up there. Because once they are elected into office, they become the government. Now the reason I called in tonight is because the pledge of allegiance that you guys spoke tonight is currently bombing another sovereign nation named Iran.

Innocent men, women, and children are dying. Why? Why are we in war? We have had eight battles. We have bombed eight countries since Trump has been in the White House.

This is not sanctioned by God no matter what your religious beliefs are. Our tax dollars need to stay here in America first and not any other country like Israel first. And that is not antisemitism because there are plenty of Jewish citizens that do not agree with our bombing Iran and Gaza. This is a government of Israel and the government of the United States that are perpetuating these terrorist acts abroad. Thank you, mayor.

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

Council members and mayor, this is Ash Davis from Ward 5. I first want to address how several council members have been responding to the public. When I hear the term disingenuous thrown around by elected officials, it gives me pause. In what way are hundreds of people consistently showing up to demand action disingenuous? In what way are dozens of dedicated experts advocating for this housing disingenuous?

In what way is advocating for housing the unhoused prioritizing their human needs over others' inconveniences disingenuous? This is how democratic action works. And if it's uncomfortable for you, then it's working. What feels disingenuous to me is rejecting this project because the charter only prioritizes seniors and veterans instead of serving solely those populations, as though one ideal outcome of this project is not having enough on house seniors and veterans to fill the available spaces, making them available to others, not locking out a potential population. And that's putting aside the fact that there is already an approved list of residents.

What feels disingenuous to me is claiming to be taking notes during council meetings but posting to Facebook. To be frank, that also feels unethical to me. What feels disingenuous to me is delaying considering the legal letters that you got last month as far as you possibly can out to late April to continue avoiding this. I imagine the hope is we'll all lose steam and go away, but that won't happen. You can and should bring that consideration to the soonest able council session in March.

What feels disingenuous to me is claiming projects like this don't work, ignoring the myriad successes within our local area and across the country. Also, it feels disingenuous and frankly inhumane to dismiss human rights concerns as sensationalist as though there are not also hundreds of people who still need housing. Not in my backyard indeed. Jesus would be proud. I'm sure he too would have wanted the homeless to live far away from him, ignoring the fact that most of for most of his ministry, he was homeless. Right? The ACLU is currently on the other side of the table from you, and that should give you pause. The ACLU doesn't just send emails for fun, it doesn't target people. When civil rights advocacy organizations are disagreeing with you, that is generally not a good thing. They tend to stand on the right side of history.

I said before, no matter the outcome of all this, this moment will be historic. We still get a choice how this moment will be remembered. The option to reopen communication with the state is still there. The cost of inaction in this moment would far exceed any cost of potential risks of the project itself. Frankly, I don't really care about the people that live in that neighborhood. These people need homes. The potential in choosing to approve the project, however, is incalculable public good. Choose to house the people who need it. Just bring it forward. Find your humanity. That's all.

Thank you. Alright. We have another caller. Hi. Go ahead.

Hi. How much time do I have?

Three minutes.

Okay. Gotcha. Alright. Hi, everyone. My name is Andy Siegel. I'm from Ward 1. I'm here today. I'm calling because I heard that the city council is petitioning to reject the Homekey program during this meeting tonight. I strongly urge that the city of Riverside utilize this affordable housing program because, essentially, this is the type of program that I want my tax dollars going towards. Okay?

What I'm hearing is you know, I did my research, and this is, like, especially a giant bag of money from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, money that was collected from constituents across the California constituents here in Riverside that it's your job to represent the constituents that you are accountable to. Our money essentially is going towards the development of permanent supportive housing for veterans, individuals at risk of experiencing homelessness, and individuals with mental health or substance use challenges. You all know that you have no good justification to reject this money. This is the least you could do for the unhoused people that you are failing and abandoning year after year. According to the point in time count conducted by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness increased in Riverside by 14.1% from 2023 to 2024.

This is because we're being priced out of housing here. If you looked at the apartment rental prices obtained from apartmentwoods.com, you would see that the average apartment rental prices in Riverside County increased by 30.88% since the pandemic. And in this economy, we are simply not making enough to sustain living here. When comparing the data of the average wages of workers in Riverside pre pandemic to now, according to the US Department of Labor, wages in Riverside have only increased by 20.14%. You all know that you have no good justification to reject home fees because you know that this is a much more financially responsible solution to homelessness than what you've been spending our tax money on for years, which is illegally throwing away unhoused people's property.

If you can waste our money on uprooting an entire person's belongings from up under them year after year, then you can invest in permanent supportive housing. In conclusion, at this point, the only reason you all have to reject Holmes Heath is simply out of the evilness of your heart, and for that, you will be dealt with.

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

Hi. Good evening. I'm calling as a resident from Victoria Grove Community in Riverside. Our community is located off La Sierra Avenue, and it is across from Lake Hills. We've been here for twenty years. I have reached out already to two council members, mister Falcone and, council member Perry, who I ran into today, to let them know that the new neighborhood that you approved to go in at Victoria and La Sierra has decided to use the name Victoria Grove. Well, that would create a lot of confusion now. They're both off of La Sierra. They're less than two miles apart. And like I said, our neighborhood, Victoria Grove, has been here for over twenty years.

So the fact that they were allowed to name their community the same name as us without even taking into consideration that another Victoria Grove already exists. I it's something that I would like you to look into. I know that several of the residents here are upset. We just found out when they put their sign up this week, and everyone's been talking about what can we do to get that changed. So I would hope that you would reach out to the developer that you allow this project that we were all against because it's gonna completely tear out all those orange groves, and let them know that a Victoria Grove community already exists less than two miles from them and that they need to change the name.

And I would hope that council member Mill that you would take this up since mister Perry informed me that that is actually your ward. And, again, the community, we might not be in the city of Riverside, but we shop in Riverside. We work in Riverside. We, you know, do all kinds of stuff in Riverside and pay taxes. So even though we are technically a mile out of the county unincorporated area, we would like that you would still, you know, take this into consideration and reach out to the new developer that hasn't built homes yet. So thank you.

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

Good evening, mayor and city council. This is Lewis Allen from Ward 4 Slash 2. Considering you've got all this interest from all these agenda items for the last few weeks, I suggest you might rethink item seven basically, to cancel the meeting on the seventeenth and rethink about doing that meeting, even if you just open it up for more public comment, because it sounds like people have a lot of interest in things and want to make comments.

That's it. Have a good evening.

Thank you. Was that the last caller? Do we have another caller? That was the last caller? Yes?

Yes. Okay. Thank you. We'll close public comment and we will move on on our agenda. We are now at item six through 18, our consent calendar, and I'll ask our city manager if you have anything you wish to pull.

Nothing, madam mayor.

Alright. Ward 1? Pass. Ward 2? Pass. Ward 3? Pass. Ward 4? Pass. Ward 5?

Pass. Ward 6?

Pass. Ward 7?

Pass. Move to approve. Second.

Alright. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. Please vote.

Motion passed unanimous.

Alright. Thank you. We are now at item number 19 and this item is for the council to this item is for the council to consider weighing some options regarding extension of measure z and potential property tax. I need that. I need that. Microsoft. I mean, I'm in Muted. Who's ever on there? Please mute. Thanks. Okay. So we will open public comment for this item.

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 very much. And with that, I will ask our city manager, Mike to please give us a presentation on this item. Mister?

Thank you, madam mayor. Mayor pro tem and city council members. I come before you today with a proposal to add an item to the June as a revenue measure for the city. You may recall that we were here at a workshop, a discussion item on January 27 to get your feedback and your direction relative to a potential revenue measure on the June ballot. A reminder that under the California constitution, we may only bring, revenue measures to the ballot in the same year that we have city council elections, absent some special circumstance such as a fiscal emergency.

That certainly does not apply here. So we have an opportunity in 2026 to place something on the ballot. If counsel would choose not to do so, our next opportunity would be 2028. The deadline to place something on the ballot is March 6, today being March 3. Today is that opportunity should you wish to do so to place something on the ballot.

First, I wanna take some time to talk about why we might consider a revenue measure. The city of Riverside has a solid budget. We are able to pay our bills. We are able to manage the level of service that we currently provide, and we live within our means. I think council is aware we are preparing the budget for next year which starts July 1, and we will begin presenting that to boards and commissions in about thirty days.

That budget will show approximately $17,000,000 in budget cuts to our budget, and that is because we have rising expenses in the way of insurance costs have gone dramatically up, our animal control costs, our technology costs, the investments we must make in cyber security so our expenses are higher plus we anticipate revenues to lag as the national economy appears to be a bit sluggish. We know that property sales have slowed and so we are anticipating a drop in revenue for next year, but we have tightened our belt and we will present to you a balanced budget by trimming 17,000,000 out of next year's budget. We live within our means to deliver the level of service, excellent service that we currently provide. We look at where does our current budget go? 56% of it, $210,000,000 goes to public safety, police, fire.

I think for every city in this country that is their primary focus. Number one focus is public safety and it is the exclusive responsibility of local government. There are no federal grants. There are no state grants that will build us a firehouse or help us police our streets. After that parks, after that public public works.

Public works actually has a much larger budget but most of it is fed by grants from RCTC for example the approximately $80,000,000 grant to build the 3rd Street at rail crossing which will begin construction in about a year, but most of it already goes to public safety. Now within our general fund budget is all of the Measure Z money. Approximately ten years ago, the city passed Measure Z to provide additional funding and this is where Measure Z goes. 70% of those funds labeled as Measure Z go to public safety right now. You have a big chunk going to public works.

A lot of that is potholes and street paving, then we have tree trimming, median, and sidewalk repair. The next largest is parks, and that is park maintenance. So if you look at our overall budget, 56% goes to public safety. If we zero in on measure z, 70% of it does go to police and fire right now. Again, we have a solid budget able to manage what we currently provide.

So why would we consider a revenue measure? That is because of the emerging needs that fit outside of our current budget. And right now, the most urgent of that is with the fire department wildfire prevention and what we must do to protect this city against some of the catastrophic fires we have seen in the last twelve months. You can see from this slide, we've had a steady call for, increase in calls of service for our fire department. We topped 47,000 in 2025, and we are on pace to top fifty thousand nine one one calls responded by our fire department this calendar year.

That is a 35% increase in calls in the last ten years. In addition, the state released its new fire maps last year, more than doubling the number of high risk fire areas in our city to well over 13,000 parcels by state law, our fire department must inspect every one of those parcels. And to the extent the private landowner is not complying with state law to clear brush and other fire fuel from that, the fire department will send letters and there'll be an enforcement action. That is appropriate. We need the public's participation as we protect our city from wildfire, but it adds an even greater burden on our fire service to meet that need.

We have our new fire chief. I still call you the new fire chief. I'm sorry. I think, you just hit the sixteenth month, as the fire chief. Response time is seven minutes and thirty eight seconds. A year ago, it was seven minutes and, I think, ten seconds. And every year that we delay in adding people and equipment, it will continue to rise, and that is basically putting our community in danger. Seventy percent of their calls are medical calls. If you're having a heart attack, a stroke, you have a auto accident with injuries, you fall off a ladder, the person that's gonna come help you first is a paramedic firefighter, and the same standard applies. They must be there within six minutes.

Why? Brain injury begins at four to six minutes without oxygen if you have a cardiac arrest. When you have a stroke, every untreated minute, 1,900,000 neurons die. Speed of response means life or death when it comes to medical calls and the this is our first responders. And again, we're not meeting this standard and it is because we don't have the assets to do it.

Then there's the issue of overload. If we could guarantee there there would be one emergency at a time, only one fire at a time, only one auto accident at a time, we the fire service could handle that. That is not the reality for a city that's 325,000, not including the 60 to 70,000 college students we have every day. We're all proud that UC Riverside had record enrollment this year. They do not have a fire department.

We are the fire department for UCR and those students and Cal Baptist and LSU and RCC. We take that and we do it, but it just adds to the load. So what does overload mean? If you can see from the slide, overload is when you have multiple fires or emergencies at the same time. Critical overload is you have so many that you cannot respond because all of your assets are committed.

This was 2024. We did have 2% critical overload. The fire chief related the story from last year. I'll relate it again for those that may be watching. A large fire in Ward 7, council member Hemingway was actually on scene for that. And then suddenly, there was an industrial fire in Ward 2, and it took the remainder of the assets. And then then we had a fire at Hole Lake, which is by the airport, and the fire department made an educated decision to not respond to that fire. They had no one to respond, but they knew the wind conditions. They knew the location. They said we can just let it burn and we'll get to it when we get to it.

Frankly, we were just lucky in that sense that the winds were not, blowing on that day. If we do nothing, the incident of overload and critical overload will continue to rise and rise again with the number of calls. So another reason that we must act, not just that we're understaffed, not just that we don't have enough fire stations or engines, but a city this size, we have multiple emergencies happening all the time. So the study did come with a solution, a phase one and a phase two. Phase one, we need right now today 84 firefighters to get down to that six minutes that we need to be.

Now we're not gonna hire 84 firefighters overnight. It will take some time, but we need to start down that path and catch up. This is the consequence of eight years of not hire hiring hiring a firefighter. We are catching up, on this standard. But I think equally importantly is a phase two.

We never wanna be caught in this situation again. Riverside will continue to grow. There will be new residents built. There will be new businesses here. The fire department must, year over year, slowly grow just a little bit to keep up, and that's phase two, which shows that in these incremental years as the population increases, we should add a few firefighters to keep up, and we'll never be back in this situation again.

There is a funding component to it as well. Alright? We understand the problem. We understand the urgency. There's a solution, a phased solution provided.

What is the cost of this? To get to phase one, it is 17,400,000.0 for the personnel and then 8,700,000.0 a year for the binding bonding out for the new fire stations. Basically, we're gonna borrow the money, build the fire stations like you might your home, thirty year mortgage, that's the payment. Then you can see as the city grows and the fire department grows, they have gamed that out as well. So now we know, alright, we have the issue, we have the solution, this is how we might fund it or this is how the need.

And again, if we do nothing, this is our future. So, we get asked a lot and we should cover. Well, we do have Measure Z. Why can't Measure Z pay for it? We do a five year budget for measure Z so what is available it says fully committed that is because the current budget has that allocated.

We have a 160 police and fire whose salary is paid out of Measure z. Again, 70% of Measure z is already public service. But you can see in some of the out years as we pay off some indebtedness, as some programs roll off, a surplus does begin to accumulate in Measure Z in the out years. Really, when you get to about 2033, you have enough money to start moving using Measure Z funding. Then the question becomes, it's 2025.

Can we wait eight years to start? I would suggest no. Plus, as you can see, current currently Measure Z ends in 2037 completely. So measure z, if extended, could provide the funding for phase two, which are the out years when the city grows and will grow slowly. But right now, measure z does not provide immediate relief.

We do have other emerging needs that we know will arise. The police department, encampment cleanups, working with our p set. We know as a city, we have a large expenditure coming as we pay to clean up our own land. We, the city, own lots of property, and it is our obligation to get out and clear the brush, clear the dead trees just like we're requiring homeowners. Continuing tree trimming and my goodness, paving.

We've made great strides in the last two years in paving. We have a long way to go. It is high, almost number one potholes in complaints. We have other emerging needs as well that over time we will need additional funds for. So how do we get this done?

Options were presented at the study session on January 27. As directed, we have brought those back to you as actual ballot measures, and it is staff's recommendation that we go with option a, which is a two part option. Number one, extend Measure z. You saw earlier that Measure z expires in ten years and drops off completely. If we extend Measure z, that will allow us in the out years to continue rightsizing the fire department as it grows.

It's a predictable revenue source and essential for maintaining current public safety levels and it is an extension of an existing tax. And part two, increase our sales tax from 8.75 to 9,000,000. This provides immediate funding, 21,000,000, that we can get started on this today. Well, actually, it would go into effect 01/01/2027 if passed by the voters on January on June 2. But we would immediately start planning and be ready to go.

On a $100 purchase, that's 25¢. It does not apply to groceries, although it does apply to candy. Does not apply to prescription drugs, medical devices, insulin, haircuts, which I don't care. Gas. There is a gas tax but this has nothing to do with that. Utilities doesn't impact that. Rent, farm equipment, or feed. The basics of grocery prescription drugs has no impact on that. That is the staff recommendation is this two part double whammy phase one, phase two funding. There were some other options presented on the twenty seventh and council asked we bring those back.

Well, first, here's where we sit on the sales tax ranking amongst our peer cities. 8.75 that would move us to nine, which we feel is still competitive in the area. So, this is the actual ballot language for option a. It is one question, one up or down, renewing the existing City Of Riverside voter approved transaction new sales tax at an updated one and a quarter rate providing approximately 106,000,000 annually until ended by the voters requiring audits, spending disclosures, all funds controlled locally be adopted. It is a general tax, but staff will manage this funding as it does measure z in a separate account with transparency so that the public can easily see are we or are we not spending this money as promised in this ballot measure.

There's a second option if council wishes to go another direction that is simply straight up increase the sales tax 8.75% to 9%. It has the same financial outcomes as option a. It is not counsel's or it's not staff's recommendation because at some point between now and the next ten years we will need to go and extend Measure Z. If we're going for the sales tax measure we should extend Measure Z at the same time and that would give us the predictability in the future to confidently go build the fire stations and hire the firefighters but it is an option available. And this would be the ballot language for that and it's in your staff report as well.

There is an option c which is extend measure z and then the hotel tax. Increasing the hotel tax from 13% to 14% generates about $640,000,000 a year. We do have a little over a thousand new hotel rooms in the pipeline. So with that, it can generate a significant amount of money. When counsel directed that we come back with this one, I did reach out to our hotels.

I met with the general manager oh, no. The owner of the Marriott, the downtown Marriott. I met with a representative of the Mission Inn. Met with a representative from the other hotels. They are generally supportive of the hotel tax in 2028, and that is because they see it as does staff as an integral part of the convention center expansion. The convention center yes.

Just so you don't scare people that might be watching, 640,000

Oh, did

I 40,000,000.

Oh, well, we're doing that.

That's what scared people. Sorry

about that. No. $640,000 by 1% increase in the hotel tax. As council knows, we are moving forward with expansion of the convention center. It is two marketing studies as it's great for the city, and we should do it.

But realistically, it would be 2029, maybe even 2030 before we begin construction of that. So the hotel tax is more appropriate at 2028, but our hoteliers in the downtown are supportive of it because they believe they will benefit from the expansion of Riverside Alive shown here. And this is the study that hotel nights would grow to 32,600 annually. So, it would benefit our tourism, our employment base, but this is still a few years off. Comparing our hotel tax to others, going to 14% does not place us out of character with those around us.

Should counsel wish to go this direction, it's actually two ballot questions. One, extending measure z and the other adding the hotel tax. This is staff's recommendation considering the emerging needs that fit outside of our current budget. Again, if if we were staying with our current level of service, our current budget does the trick and we have trimmed the budget to live within our means but we have some extraordinary public safety needs in the city that I suggest need to be addressed and the staff's recommendation is the one ballot measure, one question extending measure z, increasing the sales tax by just point 25%. And again, does not apply to groceries, prescription drugs, and other items.

So, we can go through all the recommendations for this which is written by the city attorney's office to keep us straight. Thank you very much for your wonderful cooperation. This was a heavy lift to get this all done. So our recommendation is with at least five affirmative votes, attach the adopt the attached resolution calling for municipal election to be held 06/02/2026 for a measure entitled City of Riverside Services Renewal Measure and requesting consolidation with the state statewide election. Then in your packet as well as here, we also have the rest of what's legally required for that.

We also have the recommendations if you choose to go this way for options B and option C for that. With that, happy to answer any questions. I'm assisted ably by our fire chief, Steve McKinster, as well as our assistant city manager and chief financial officer, Edward Enriquez, whom I also thank for the heavy lift to put this together. And we are available for any questions.

Alright. Thank you, city manager Futrell. We have some requests to speak in chambers and then we'll come to council. And I wanna give a heads up to our interpreter that I will need you to interpret for my first speaker. So please be ready to speak, and I would like to call Kevin Burnett upfront, please.

I'm I'm wanting the ballot to pass to contact you through the community, and I was wondering what can the city do to contact the the deaf and disabled large peep a large amount of people in this city. There's over 55,000 signers and deaf people in the community of Riverside and all throughout the surrounding cities. So I was wondering what can the city do with that ballot to give information to our community members of who can benefit for whatever on the ballot we decide for June 2. So those are questions to you guys.

Alright. Please let mister Burner know that we do an educational program if and when the council supports this, whatever recommendation is made and this goes to the ballot. There will be an educational effort that will be very broad and diverse and we would welcome the input from many of our community members.

Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Alright. Thank you. Errol Koschowicz is here. Let's see if mister Koschowicz left. Okay. We'll move on. Richard Moslenko?

I I withdraw my card.

Okay. Thank you, mister Moslenko. Okay. Mike Gardner? And after mister Gardner, I have Michael Detoy and Justin Scott Co.

Welcome, Gardner.

Thank you, madam mayor, council members, staff, community, I'm Mike Gardner. I reside now in Ward 3, although I didn't move. The boundary moved. So still still the proud owner of the same house. I am here to very strongly recommend that the council support option a is presented by mister Futrell.

I I've worked fairly closely with the fire department for many years. I was volunteer, not as a firefighter, but did a lot of other things for the department for many years. Spent while I was on the console, I spent a lot of time working on fire department issues and have continued to stay in touch with them. The situation we have for the firefighters today is that they're they're getting worked really hard. They're they have mandatory overtime to keep units staffed so the units don't have to go out of service, And they can't keep that up.

We're gonna hurt a firefighter. Somebody's gonna die. Our and that's just to maintain our two slow response times that we have today. We have to do something quickly, and I think that new quarter cent increase is is the best source of the funds to accomplish that. If we don't, we're gonna hurt firefighters.

We may kill a firefighter, and we are gonna lose people in our city who are sick or injured or trapped in a fire. So please put that on the ballot. Give the community an opportunity to support it or not as they choose. We all know that it's a bit of a lift, to say the least, to get the community to support this. Nobody likes taxes. I don't like taxes. But if you want services, sometimes you have to pay taxes. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Gardner. Michael Detoy. Good evening, Mr. Detoy.

Good evening, mayor, council members, staff. My name is Mike Detoy, and I'm the president of the Riverside City Firefighters Association. First, thank you for your time today and your continued consideration for how to keep the residents and businesses of Riverside safe. Ensuring the fire department is properly staffed, protects lives, protects properties, and increasingly helps residents and businesses maintain their home and business insurance in today's changing environment. The city of Riverside has been strong fiscal stewards of the tax dollar.

We understand that financing a full service city like Riverside requires careful decisions, and we recognize the difficult budget challenges you face. But among those competing priorities, none is more urgent than ensuring our fire department has the staffing and resources needed to respond to our community when they call 911. The AP Trident master plan confirmed what firefighters have been experiencing on the ground for years. Demand is rising quickly. When I was hired in 2011, this department had just crossed over 30,000 calls for service.

As we heard last year, we responded to 47,000 calls. Yet despite this dramatic growth, Riverside has not added a new fire station or frontline apparatus since 2007, even as emergency incidents have increased by more than 70%. The study also shows how Riverside has become one of the lowest firefighters per capita staffing levels among our comparable cities. As you heard from the city manager, we need to add 84 firefighters today with increase with additional increases as the city continues to grow. At the same time, we also heard about the wildfire risk increasing and updated fire severity maps that the state puts out with over 13,000 additional riverside parcels going into higher risk fire zones.

We also recognize the fiscal reality the city faces. Measure z has played a critical role in restoring services since voters approved it, and we appreciate council's commitment to allocating those funds responsibly. But the reality is Measure z alone cannot meet the needs identified in the AP Trident study. Without additional funding, the gap between demand and resources will continue to grow. And for that reason, the Riverside City Firefighters Association strongly supports staff's recommendation of option a, which is extending Measure Z and updating it to 1.25¢.

This approach allows Riverside to preserve essential services, continue to pave the roads while generating the resources need to improve emergency response capacity, strengthening public safety staffing, and investing in the infrastructure required for a growing city. Most importantly, it ensures when someone calls 911 in Riverside, help arise quickly. And the AP Trident study gives Riverside a clear data driven roadmap, and option a provides a path to begin implementing it later this year. We respectfully ask the council to support staff's recommendation and continue investing in the safety of our community we all serve. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Dottori. Justin Scott Coe followed by Brian Potter. Oh, sorry. Brian Potter. Sorry. Good

evening, honorable mayor, city council members, and staff. My name is Justin Scott Cohen. I'm speaking to you today as president of the Raincross Group, a local advocacy organization dedicated to promoting good government, economic growth, and leadership for the city of Riverside. Our members are community, business, nonprofit, and institutional leaders across our city. We first wanna pay compliment to city staff for their engagement with us and other community organizations on this important topic.

At our last meeting, we received the same information you have received regarding the financial requirements for our fire department to provide life saving services at the level our community expects and needs. They answered our many questions and engaged in a robust discussion for which we are very grateful. At the same meeting, the Raincross Group took action to voice our unanimous support for the Riverside Fire Department's AP Trident Master Plan Study recommendations, and we strongly urge the city council to find a means to fund the associated expenditures. We look forward to our ongoing engagement with the mayor, with council, and staff as you consider and implement potential funding mechanisms and cost saving measures to meet this challenge. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Scottco. Alright. Brian Potter. Sorry about that.

Good evening, council members, city manager, and staff. My name is Brian Potter. I'm a firefighter paramedic with the city of Riverside Fire Department. And I'm also a husband. I'm a father, and I coach youth baseball in the community that I live in.

Over the years, I've spent a great deal of time paying attention to Riverside's development, its economic drivers, and the kind of investment that helps the city grow responsibly. At one point, some of you may know or may not, I worked with previous leadership exploring the possibility of bringing a multi use arena and professional hockey team here to the city of Riverside. While that project ultimately did not move forward, it gave me a deeper appreciation for for the complexity and the decisions that this council must make when planning for the future of our city. One thing that became very clear through the experience is that the strong public safety is one of the foundations that allows our city to grow with confidence. Recently, the AP Trident study showed that we are short 84 firefighters today.

Businesses continue to come into the city because we're growing. It's a great city to be in, and we're grateful. I am grateful to work in this city, but we can't continue to meet the needs without the support. And I understand it's a tall ask of this council and the taxpayers to help fund this. But at the same time, we need to meet the demands of public.

We as firefighters are facing challenges every day, and I work at one of the busiest stations here at the city of Riverside. If you wanna continue to be on the forefront of the city, then we must make sacrifices. Because I know each and every one of us do each and every day for our families, but we do it with a heavy heart knowing that we're doing something for everybody else. So when someone calls 911, they deserve a fast and professional response from this team and the staffing equipment and training that's necessary to help us along the way. Measures like the one being discussed tonight will help ensure that Riverside stays on the front of those sides rather than retroactively and after the fact.

From where I sit on the front lines of emergency responses, the residents owe this or owed this from us. They simply expect us to show up, trained, and ready to go. The decisions that you make tonight will help ensure that the expectations continue to be met for the residents of today and for the future generations that will call the city of Riverside Home. Years from now, people will look back on how Riverside prepared for the demand of a growing city and moments like this that you are left with to meet the needs of today and tomorrow will truly shape this community. I'm proud to serve alongside the men and women of the Riverside City Fire Department. It truly is an honor. But I hope that you support this measure in its entirety. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, mister Potter, and thank

you for

your service. Appreciate that. We have some callers online. Let's take our first caller.

Good evening, everyone. This is Aurora Chavez. We had passed measures e for our fire department. We trusted our fire department to do a good job, and that's why we voted that way. What we didn't vote for was for the city to put their fingers into the pie of the firefighter fund or first responders fund for things like pickleball or other things that the city needed.

But that money was supposed to go to our fire department, our first responders. That's what we voted for. And that's not how it hurt how it comes. Now it's now you wanna increase it because the city needs money, I guess, and wants to use it again for their own purposes. We've like been lied to before.

This is the second time of a lie. No more. We've gotta stop this, especially since the city doesn't want to explain to us how they're spending our money. If there's going to be any increases in sales tax and whatever, put it in a separate fund so that we know that that is where the money is coming from. Our money that you're going to charge us with to do that, to put the money in there. And then you're saying to us that you're going to cut 70,000,000 out of the budget. Well, there goes the money that would have been for the firefighters and for hiring the firefighters and the equipment that they need. Oh, you know, you're going up the wrong tree here. You've lied to us before. We're not gonna take any more lives.

We want accountability. That's one of the biggest things that Riverside has not done, accountability, especially to the residents to when we're asking for information. We should be able to have explanations galore. And on the seventeenth, we should have a workshop about this. Why are we not being told stuff that we should know? Why is the city paying off stuff that we don't know about? And why if the city doesn't wanna tell us? And if there's been an error and we have to pay for it legally, definitely, we we have to do that. Okay? We understand that.

But the way it is now, I don't wanna put any money into Measure Z because the city has put their fingers in the pie. If you're gonna put another sales tax, keep it separate. Keep it all separate so it's accountable. Because right now, I don't see us being very accountable in our business affairs. We don't we get even when I see what Earl puts up and there's no information as to what those payments are for, it's just really surprising that there's no coding or something like that, that tells us what those expenses are for.

So I'm sorry. And I've talked to the new fire chief. He's very knowledgeable. I have very much respect for him. But if the city didn't keep their fingers out of it

Thank you, Ms. Chavez. All right. Let's get our next caller, please.

Hello. Jason Hunter, ward one. I feel like it's deja vu all over again. I distinctly remember hearing the exact same arguments ten years ago in order to justify passing measure z, our existing sales tax. I checked in the ballot measure language is almost exactly the same.

Measure z is currently bringing in twice as much money as was first predicted, an extra 45,000,000, which is which is well past the inflation rate. So what happened? Well, measure z was designated as a general tax. And despite any promises made by staff and elected officials at the time, that money could be spent on anything a city could legally spend money on. And what did our elected officials, with the recommendation of staff, spend it on?

Well, I'll tell the public unearned raises for staff, pension bonds, a new library, and many other things that were never discussed before the passage of Measure C. And that is how these potential tax measures are also being designated as general taxes. Right? If the you know, general taxes can be spent on anything out of the sun. If the councilcity wanted to actually spend money on the things it mentioned in the presentation, they would designate these ballot measures as special taxes, not general taxes.

But I doubt they will. In fact, I'm almost sure they won't. And that's why whatever happens tonight, no one should vote for these new taxes. We will absolutely get bait and switched again because there will be no controls on how the money is spent. Regardless of whether even this council wants to spend it correctly, there'll be councils thereafter that will spend it incorrectly for sure. So if we want control and we wanna actually boost and buff up public safety, we have to get a special tax passed, not a general tax like what is being proposed tonight.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, mister Hunter. Let's have our next caller, please.

Good evening. So we live in a state where everyone right now is experiencing tax fatigue. We pay property taxes. We pay income taxes. We pay sales taxes. We pay a card tax. We pay a gas tax. Now they want to hit us with a mileage tax. We already pay Measure Z taxes that you already increased, and now you want to increase them again. Again, we have tax fatigue.

We don't want any more taxes. People are not going to be voting for any taxes or bond measures or anything that the city and the districts wanna come up with. So you guys need to figure out how to budget your money and how to spend accordingly. The minute you guys got measure z, just like mister Hunter said, you guys spent it right away on giving raises and on, paying pension obligations. Those are things that you should not have done.

You you gave your employees raises far above what the taxpayers that are paying for measure z get in raises. You know, when the average person is getting 345% raises, and you're giving out 20% raises, there's a problem there. Learn to live within your budget We all want to make sure that our fire department is taken care of, but that means maybe you should start looking at that 59,000,000 for parks, art, and culture. I was shocked by that number. I can't imagine that the parks cost that much to maintain, so a lot of us are pretty much muraled out.

We're done with murals all over our city. So I know you guys always say, wait, no, this is all paid by donations and grants, but what is that 59,000,000 being spent on? I think it might be time for me to do some record requests because that was a shocking number for it to be that high. So I'll be taking a look at that. But maybe you can find, you know, money elsewhere that you can use for our fire department, but definitely not another tax. And I know the voters will not be wanting to approve this. Thank you.

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

Good evening. This is Tom Evans, resident of Ward 5. What wasn't clear to me was whether this is a general tax or specific given the fact that the recommendations all relate specifically to fire personnel as well as fire stations. So is the threshold the 50% plus one, or is it a higher threshold to approve? And then I'd like to just reinforce the issue of paving the streets.

The city of Riverside streets are actually in deplorable condition. You just have to go a block from the City hall in front of the county building, and it's extremely rough. University Avenue in front of back of the grind is extremely rough. You have people swerving out of one lane into another in order to avoid potholes and rough pavement. So I would suggest, and this is a little off topic, but I would suggest you put the street paving program under economic development as a goal rather than just leaving it as a civil engineering problem.

Because if you go to buy a house and you drive up and you find the driveway all broken up and rough, you assume the rest of the house is the same way. Well, that's the impression that the city of Riverside gives based on how bad the streets are in major areas. Victoria Avenue from Washington to Van Buren is horrible. So I I would just reinforce need to re to reconsider how streets are being paved and prioritized and look at it from an economic development standpoint. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That was the last caller, so we'll close public comment and come back to council. Councilmember Falcone.

Thank you, mayor. City manager, thank you. Chief McKinster, thank you. The last couple calls, city manager, sparked a few questions. And a few of them, they are related to parks and public works, but I think that you or interim city manager Hernandez or assistant city manager, excuse me, interim assistant city manager or assistant city manager Martinez can answer these questions. Do you know how much it costs per mile of road to repave a road?

Gil, it's well over $1,000,000.

Correct.

So full repaving, which is majority of the roads in Ward 1 are beyond reproach. They need a full repaving.

Council Member Frakoni, thank you very much for the question. So it actually depends if it's a local road, if it's a collector road, if it's an arterial road. So it definitely in excess of $1,000,000 if we're looking at a collector or arterial road.

So approximately $1,000,000 mile How of many miles of road do we have in the city of Riverside?

The city has approximately eight eighty miles.

And right now how many miles of road do we pave each year?

It depends because of the pavement treatments.

Or how much money are we spending each year in road repaving or road treatments?

You know what, per the August 2025 report, I think we were showing approximately 25,000,000.

And has this, and this you can maybe just speak in broad terms because this is asking probably for too many numbers. How long were, when you were public works director, how long did you serve in that capacity?

I served approximately six years in Navarro.

And so almost over the course of six years, and this was all post Measure Z? Post 2016? Correct. So maybe this might be a question for Chris. The difference of cost investment in roads prior to Measure Z, post Measure Z, and then I want to compare that to of course the cost increase as well, which that part I'll do. But how much have we paved more per year pre measure Z and post measure Z?

You know what, I think I can answer that question. So before measure Z, our annual budget was approximately $13,000,000 So with Measures E, the budget almost doubled to close to $25,000,000

And then you the comparison of taking that towards how much road repaving has increased year over year just because it's California, it's expensive to do construction, materials are expensive, all just the various elements of doing work in this state. So I think that we've because of measures we made historic investments in roads. However, our roads, at least I can speak in Ward 1, are still in very poor condition as the city manager shared that we have a long way to go. So the investment in roads has been quite historic. Thank you to Measure Z.

Thank you to the voters for passing that of course. But it hasn't gotten us to where we want to be because there's, you could, you know, put hundreds of millions of dollars in road repaving and it's still not be enough because it is such a high request of residents. Then, related to parks. I think we have, what is it, 60 parks in the city of Riverside?

We have 65 parks. 3,000 acres of trails and open space, seven public pools, four senior centers, I think seven community centers, as well as the Bourne's Youth Center. Is an extraordinarily robust quality of life offering for our residents.

And very high per capita. You look at the city of Anaheim, is fairly similar in terms of population, the city of Riverside, but significantly higher in terms of median income and sale tax generation. Thank you Disneyland. But they have less parks and much higher budget. So considering the budget that we have for our parks department and the number of parks that we have in facilities, it's actually quite modest. I would imagine that with 60 parks plus the additional dozen or so facilities or more that you listed and trails that you listed Mike, I would imagine that maybe $50,000,000 is not unusual for deferred maintenance upkeep of those park facilities?

That is correct. There's actually a huge need in parks for park maintenance and to upgrade. You talk to any Little League coach, they're gonna tell you these fields are not what they need to be, and they're right. Luckily we have

a Little League coach on this council So here at Lake I would go on the verge to say that less than $1,000,000 a year in maintenance of parks. Fairmont Park, for example, I believe is hundreds of acres. So I think that again, we have, in my view, an under investment in roads and parks there. I'm gonna leave that there and move to fire. So I think I have to continue, I guess, the Ward 1 tradition of Councilmember Gardner, that Ward One is deeply passionate about the fire department.

I spend a whole lot of time at fire stations and the condition of many of our stations and the work that is being asked and the call volume. Mean of course the numbers paint the picture. I'll share more anecdotally, but the data of course is there. That what our fire department is going through on a regular basis is truly astonishing. Astonishing in their great work ethic of course, but astonishing in what we're expecting of them.

And for anyone who questions that, I challenge them to a ride along to see it for themselves in particular at a Ward 1 station, and even Ward 2 station, to see all that Station 4, Station 1, and others go through. So I think that it's not much, in my opinion, to ask 025 per $100 but recognize that it is true that in California we are tax fatigue. We are in a time of great inflation and great unaffordability to live in not only the state of this country, but the reality is something has to give. We can't continue to kick this can down the road based upon, despite Measure Z's success and despite Measure Z passing in 2016, we just compiles with inflation, compiles with the cost of construction, compiles with all of these things. We have 160 employees, police and fire, funded through Measure Z.

These things can't just vanish. These things have to continue in some form or fashion. And so I think that where I'm at on this particular topic is that the need is great and the residents of Riverside deserve this. Mean this is different from the gas tax and the property tax and all these other taxes that in many cases our residents don't necessarily get a direct benefit from as we would with a sales tax. Whether that be a continuation or a raise in a continuation of that.

So I think that all that to say that I trust in our voters enough to know that when you have a million dollars per mile of road to pave, when you have over 100 park facilities, and the great need for maintenance, when you have a fire department that has not been invested in at a proper rate in two decades, that something has to give. And that what we have now simply is just not enough. And so I think again I go back to, before I'll make a motion here, mayor, and then stop talking, is that $0.25 for 100 is not going to break the bank. I recognize though, again, that tax fatigue is real. But for that $0.25 if it can ensure that we have a fire department that can meet the needs of a growing population, a city that is growing and developing despite maybe what we heard tonight.

A lot more housing, least in Ward 1 I can see it. We're breaking ground on significant amounts of housing and money is needed for those services. So I trust the voters to make that informed decision, and I say it can't hurt by us putting it on the ballot, going with staff's recommendation, and allowing the voters to make the decision if they want to continue to invest in roads and parks and the fire department and those things that are so critical. It's the number one thing I hear in my office is all about roads and public safety. So with that I would move staff's recommendation. Second.

I heard a motion by ward one second by Ward 5. Sorry. I think that's what I got. Yeah. Alright. Councilor Reconder.

Thank you, mayor. Being the son of a banker, my dad taught us very, very young to take care of the needs first. Take care of the needs, And if you're lucky, you can take care of some of the wants. Last fall, when the city manager first talked to me about the potential of a minor tax increase, I did tell him that I'd have a hard time supporting it. And then in January, our fabulous fire chief stood up here and he gave us the strategic look at the Riverside Fire Department. He talked about having the need for more firefighters as you saw on the presentation by city manager. We're at the bottom. And he said, I need 84. I asked him, is that enough? Do you need more?

He goes, no. That'll put us about in the middle and I can we can handle. That's what we need is 84 firefighters. And then he talked about his capital improvement program. Number one priority is a fire station, a new fire station Ward four.

If you drive out to the southern part of the ward, down Cromeria, down Lauren, down Mariposa, and you see the hundreds and hundreds of houses built out there, the response times up there on the hill can exceed twice what the regular average is in the city, and I am not going to put my my folks up there in that kind of danger. I'm not gonna wait seven years to guarantee their safety. Now I'm a product of this, ladies and gentlemen. Six years ago, I had a massive heart attack. When they got to me, they told me I had about two minutes left.

My vision was down to about to hear. I was on my way to go see my wife. They got there in time. Now six years ago, we didn't have the number of houses up there. We didn't have the number of traffic up there.

Had they been two and a half minutes late, I wouldn't be here. I'd say thank god the firefighters and the paramedics got there. I don't want any resident in this city, especially war four, where my family all lives, to have that anxiety of somebody caught in a fire in a house, fire in a car, heart attack, stroke, bleeding out, choking, can't breathe, out there with that anxiety of where are they, where are they. I just can't put up with that. So after the Chief's presentation, I sat with the city manager and I went over the financials.

If anybody say that the money is there to build these things, it's bullshit. It's not. We need the funding for this. And I sat with the Chief, went over again his CIP, what he did for his capital improvement and he explained more and more about where we need. Now Station 15, I guess that would be if you build that, will be a Ward 4. You saw the Station 10 that needs to be rebuilt. They call it the house. It needs to be, I think, relocated personally. Needs to be relocated closer to Casablanca. It needs to be brought down a little bit more because that has expanded down there so much.

No one should fear not getting public safety there in time. We don't sell public safety. We provide it. And to provide that level that we need, that they deserve, we have to have resources, we have to have manpower, we have to have them in the right place to to function the best that they can. This fire department provides world class world class fire safety, but we're burning them out.

Somebody, whether it's a citizen they can't get to in time or a firefighter who's just too damn dog tired, is gonna be a casualty, and we can't do that. No one likes taxes. I from Taxachusetts. That's what we call our state, Taxachusetts. And as I got older and learned and listened to my dad and my mom, we paid very, very high taxes, but we got the services. I'm telling you, we got the greatest services. If you want the good service that you deserve, we want that world class service, we have to pay for it. As Kevin Falcone said, this is a tax that you're going to see the benefit on. We're going to see that benefit. I'm not a great mathematician, but I haven't bought a car in six years.

But if I went down to the Riverside Auto Center and $50,000 in my pocket to buy a car, I got a damn good car. It's going to cost me an additional $125 My daughter's got me drinking Starbucks chai tea latte. I go there once a week for a year. Once a week, that's $299 That's twice what it would cost on that car. It's not a backbreaker.

I don't like taxes. It's not a backbreaker. Again, I just can't imagine somebody waiting because somebody is having a stroke and they've called 911. And trust me, they're trying their damnedest to get up that hill and get out there, but the traffic, the distance is just not right. And I'm not gonna subject ward four personnel to that delay.

As commander Falcone said, this is up to the people. If if they want 14 times, it's on them. If somebody passes away because our guys can't get there, it'll be it'll be blame discounts. It'll be a blame on the voters that do not understand what it costs to put this fire department out there every day, every day, 20. At 03:10 this morning, somebody's going be out there, one of these trucks doing something.

They're out there supporting us. We need to invest and support them. So what I'd like to see, and I know we will, we'll get annual reports where the funding is going. We'll be able to watch it, but it needs this extra $0.25 sales tax needs to be passed to go to bring this fire department where it deserves to be. And then finally, on the Measure Z extension, Councilman Falcone hit all the points.

If you go back and read the ballot measure that was in 2016, it was to prevent cutting police, firefighters, paramedics, non emergency services, any drug and drug programs. It was for senior school senior and disabled services for local streets, potholes, and infrastructure. All of that's been done by Measure Z. And I know the city has pulled money every year he's been here out of Measure Z for the streets. I agree that a lot of them are busted up.

We seem to fix them and traffic breaks them up again. So again, Mike, you did a great job presenting this. I really think you did. As I said, when you and I first talked, told you I was going to have a hard time supporting it. But I sat down, went over the financials, went over the numbers, sat with the chief, sat with you, have talked to my colleagues. This is the right thing to do. This is the right time to do it. Fire Department has been the stepchild for a while that, you know, other other agencies got more. And when I go to bed and I know I'm safe because I got those guys out there, I sleep better. And this is our responsibility to bring this information to the public.

And what the public decide, that they need to know what the facts are, what the mathematics are, what the numbers are, what the distances, the traffic. This is what we need to do. So I'm in support of this option a, and I'll be looking forward to talking to my residents and giving them the facts of what's going on out there. That the Riverside Fire Department for nine years has been slowly, slowly drifting backwards because of a lack of funding. And that's not gonna happen on my watch. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Reconder. Council Member Perry.

Alright. Thank you, Mayor. And I'll try to cut to the chase as much as I can because everybody's on the board here. I I think our our excellent fire department has been doing far more with far less for just far too long and changes do need to be made because we're working these individuals to death and they're out there to protect our safety and our health all at the same time. We do need more firehouses.

Workforce is in need of a new firehouse. The firehouses that are still there, I don't think we've had a new one since I think 2007, 2008. I think I'm in the ballpark there, but the others are very old and they're just they're outdated and the working conditions there. We make do with it. They do the best they can, but there needs to be improvement in that area. I say all this. I do have some concerns. I think we all have concerns in some form or another. We come and we ask for more money. Nobody likes higher taxes.

I'm a little concerned are we going to the well too many times. That's something we need to realistically think about when it comes to Measure Z. There is some buyers remorse out there. I think what will help in all of this is I think there needs to be some additional accountability for this funding if is passed. There needs to be some protection to Naren. And mister Enriquez, maybe I don't want to throw you right in the spotlight here, but do we have the ability to encumber funds to ensure that these funds are going to be used on the items and the issues that we're discussing tonight?

Councilmember Edward Eriques, thanks for the question. Yes, short answer is yes, there is a way. We will also receive the funds separately from other funds, so it's easy to identify. So yeah, definitely as we account for Measure Z in a sub fund, we can do the same thing for this particular item, allocate it and then report out as we do in the quarterly report the status of each of those funds, which this would be another one.

Sure. That's good to hear. And balance language does need to be clear because council is going to change, admin will change. And there's always different interpretations to that. And then there's always the concern of budget shortfalls and gaps and special projects. I think with this we just need to ensure it's predominantly talking about the fire department. Parks has been mentioned, paving has been mentioned. What hasn't been mentioned is something that affects all of us, every single one of us in the city is cybersecurity protection and technology. That's another another service we provide in the city that we need to stay on top of. There needs to be a robust community engagement.

We have a we have a community engagement policy and we really need to make sure that we step up and engage our public and residents because we have taxes and I wanna make sure that that we're fully upfront on the taxes that they are paying. And some have been mentioned tonight, but heck just last in January we had a 2.3 increase in electric rates, and again in January that'll go up 2.4%. Water in just July year it'll be a 6.7 increase, and July 6.6. Trash in July is going up 6.5. Next year in July it's going up another 6.5%, And of course the the sewer sewer rates are hanging out there.

And none of this is no fun, but I just wanna make sure as we engage the community that we're completely upfront on on what's coming so we don't blindside blindside them at the same time. But the bottom line is every registered voter in the city is going to have a voice. It isn't going to be the seven of us making a decision that The seven of us are gonna make the decision to put this on the ballot, but it's going to be each and every registered voter who's going to have an opportunity to voice their opinion and cast a void, cast their vote whether this is accepted or not. So I would think I will end there. And Thank you, Merritt.

Thank you. Council Member Perry. Good comments. Council Member Robillard.

Thank you, Mayor. As was mentioned, I am a little league coach. He uses the parks quite often and as well as many, many other kids and parents. I've the grass hasn't been mowed at Bon Aminio Park for two and a half weeks. I was rolling balls to the kids, and it wouldn't go three feet because it just got stuck in the grass.

And the constant you you look at the park's maintenance, and I have lot of my a lot of my parks are located along the riverbed, and we have a consistent issue where we replace the we we have a bathroom at a park. The next night, every single copper pipe gets ripped out. Every single wire gets ripped out. The whole bathroom is just completely trashed. Pathway lights, sprinkler controllers, everything at all these park, all these public places get ransacked daily, and that is part of a bigger issue.

But there is a reason why these costs is not a one to one ratio. As population grows, it's not matching inflation. Costs get more complicated. We have so many external circumstances that are contributing to these rising costs, and it's not a simple oh, we have more populations, we get more revenue, so we should just it should just pay for itself. The the the costs are increasing despite that.

And so, you know, I as as many up here have said that we we don't like taxes. No one likes paying taxes. But when I know that my taxes are staying local, that they are not going to a faraway land, and hopefully a percentage of it comes back, that this is a 100% going back into my community, I can be supportive of that. And I know that I've said this before, but when the LA fire department gave a similar report to the LA city council about the status of the department, about staffing, equipment, stations, Nothing was really hap nothing really happened in re in response to that, and we had the wildfires that hit LA. Now there's a lot of reasons why those fires are as bad as they were, but we can certainly say that staffing was a part of that reason.

And we had the Horton Hills fire, the examples that, city manager gave about having multiple fires in different parts of the city. Our residents deserve the the short call time, and I think that this is something that, voters are we they're smart people. We can lay out the numbers. We can we can say, we trust you with this decision. This is your decision to make on your outcome for your city.

This is not this is talked about democracy tonight. That is democracy. And, I think that the the opportunity is here to make sure that we are not just taking care of a short term problem, but a long term problem as well. And as I mentioned earlier, we are cutting $17,000,000 from our upcoming budget. We are tightening our belts ourselves, And, this is not a, oh, we'll just ask for more money and keep on living fat on the hog. It's like, no. We are cutting budgets, to make these demands despite how hard it is to cut those budgets by $17,000,000. It's not a significant number. So, again, I'm supportive of this. You know, it's unfortunate this is the world we live in, but costs are rising, and we need to to to meet the demand.

And that's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Cervantes.

Thank you thank you so much. And a lot's been said, so I'll try to be concise. And a couple things for me, and I will say that I'm I'll just open up with saying, I lean in favor and I support the staff recommendation minus a potential caveat in the language. And so I'd like to ask Edward and then our chief on this. There's one portion that just for me is a little bit of a uncomfortable stickler and it's in the ballot language states that it would provide the $106,000,000 annually until ended by voters.

And it goes on to say requiring audits, spending disclosure, all funds controlled locally be adopted. But the portion of being until ended by voters, I think for me is a little hard to to stomach because everything that has been said about the right now, the current cost of living is really challenging. We're we're living in a unprecedented times as we often have heard, especially when it comes to the economy. And so and we don't know, foreseeably, how that's going to shift. My question would be is if we were to set a sunset on this, what year could work so that we could assure that we can move forward with everything in this plan, set the fire department up for success, not just, you know, to to the items listed, but then looking ahead.

So I wanted to ask Edward if we were to put a sunset on this because I'm seeing in the report, originally, it listed that this would have sunsetted in sorry. Let me go back to the year. 2040. And when I do the math for the timeline when this was approved, that looks like we have about twenty four years that measure z was approved by the voters. And so if we were to move forward with renewing that again, that would bring us to sorry. Let me

do my math real quick.

2050. And then whether that's actually putting the year 2050 or if it's saying extending it for again, twenty four years, what would would that get us where we need to be essentially for our fire department to be fully staffed and for us to be able to plan accordingly for the future without having to become reliant on measure z as we've heard from members of the community. We actually also heard from some members of our budget engagement commission when this went to them.

If you don't mind, we were conferring. Let me first comment on that. We debated that a lot. We also took from the study session had with council January 27, we heard, to not put a timeline on it, but we went with until ended by the voters instead of an expiration date, if you will, is because the greater majority of this money, as with measure z, will go to salaries, and there is no end to that. We will not get if all we were doing was building a building, we could get a thirty year mortgage, and after thirty years, the mortgage will be paid, and we don't need the money anymore.

But in this case, that is not. The the study shows and has shown in the presentation that the greater majority of the funds each year will go for those 84 firefighters, and then a program that will go on really as long as the city continues to grow, have the resources to add a few firefighters every few years so we never end up in behind the eight ball as we are today. So for that reason, staff and and I don't recommend an expiration because we will always need to pay for those firefighters. For the buildings, typically, you'll see a thirty year because, like, when you buy a home, you have a thirty year mortgage, and you bond it out for thirty years. But in this case, because, the plan is, heavily focused on adding personnel, we would not recommend an expiration.

Okay. And if there was one though, if council had wanted to have a date set, is there a year that you've determined that we could consider or you'd recommend if we were to have to

put one?

What I have seen other cities do is say they want to bond out to build a library or build a building. It's thirty years.

Thirty years.

Okay. And and that I think is the typical for a homeowner as well as a city looking to mortgage and build.

Chief, would you mind I'd love to hear your thoughts. Again, if there had to be a sunset, have you internally as a fire department or fire union discussed what that could look like? What time you would need or a year to make sure we can get you where you need to be?

Good evening, honorable mayor, staff, city council, fire chief Steve McKinster. No, I have not. That direction comes from city management related study that we work with AP Triton to produce. So that's their expertise.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. And just to share, I had consulted and checked in with our fire union president, who was here, and it seemed that it could go either way. But that wanting to assure, he asked me to clarify, you know, with the city teams about what that bond could look like and get clarification. So I wanted to know where the union stood on this and kind of also hear again from our chief.

And so just my thoughts are this, and I'll kind of close-up on this piece here. I wanna just share as we were going through this presentation, if you looked at the general fund fiscal expenditure year for 2026, only 1% was allocated for housing and homelessness. 1%. And I want us to think about that as we've been talking a lot about housing here in the city of Riverside and what we're doing to invest in that space. And what we're asking to go to the voters and what's listed in the ballot statement and the language actually says addressing homelessness.

So I think we're gonna have to do a lot of work there, especially when it comes to trust in the community given some recent decisions here. But I will say on the side of caveat to that, I representing war two, which has I think after is war four, but we have one of the biggest red areas and zones at the highest here in the city riverside. I one of the biggest issues I hear from my constituents is the risk of losing their fire insurance for for property homeowners and even the risk of exposure to those with fires that have taken place in Sycamore Canyon, Box Springs Mountain, now going up over into the Mission Grove area. And so I just wanna share that I recognize the urgency for us to assure that we can move forward with this item despite the challenging conversation in the state of the economy that we're living in. And so I was really happy to see where it was approved by voters, that tax wouldn't affect critical issues and items that we need every day.

Medicine, groceries, gas, medical devices. Those are essential needs that our residents need to make sure that they can still afford. So that brings me a little bit of comfort. What I do get concerned with and when we think about the bigger narratives of Riverside as a whole, as a city, and when we have move forward measures and different things, is us becoming right, on these on these various measures that does put that burden in a sense on the taxpayers. But the power I do believe that exists is what has been said by council member Perry is we are putting it on the ballot, but the voters will make that choice.

And so for myself, that's where I feel leaning and willing to be in support of this today because the decision will fall on our residents in the city. But I wanna share, and I'll be I'll be very frank as well. The people who tend to vote tend to be those who are have higher income, who have our or have higher education. So we know again the burden of those who are most vulnerable, low income, either may not cast a vote, maybe working two jobs or even three, and may not, this may not be a priority for them and something that they catch. So I do hope in our campaign that we do as a city, we do everything in our power to reach and educate everyone again who will be impacted by this decision.

And the last thing if I can, chief, just to have you come up again to speak. Can you just please share for those who maybe didn't hear the last workshop that we had or who weren't available? Again, why this is so important for our fire for our fire department to assure that we can service our city, especially with the growth that has been happening over the last several years. And can you just please share from your experience as a fire chief why this is essential for hopefully us as a council to consider tonight and moving forward?

Well, think as I explained to everybody on January 13, that the fire department is unable to keep up with the demand that's occurring within our community. And I think the biggest example was council member Hemenway and myself sitting there that day, which a pretty heavy moment for myself to know that your fire department is stretched to a limit where it can't provide more. And even with resources coming from outside with the mutual aid request, to know that we have a fire that is going to have to sit on its own for a few minutes until resources are available. But as the city manager again explained, the call concurrency and the busyness of the city has just overtaken what we currently expressed on January 13, I don't want to be here at another time saying we didn't meet the mark.

No. Thank you for that. I'll just share that in closing, folks, most people who don't know that with War II, we have UCR, University California Riverside. UCR does not have its own fire station. They do not pay into our fire fire department for our fire stations.

There is about approximately 30,000 additional people who are on that campus majority of the time throughout the year, and they are continuing to look to grow. And for myself, that's almost just to share, it's almost almost a ward in the city. We have about 45,000 approximately each of our wards. And so when I have to think about the decision for war two, the future, and how we could protect our communities as a whole, because I will say I care about the entire city, all of the residents and all of our wards and how we could service and provide and assure that we are not just protecting homeowners, but we're protecting all residents and all portions of our communities. That we are protecting our firefighters, you that are on the front lines.

I will say as well just to to some callers, I I wish there was a little bit more guardrail we could do. I did ask some questions about could we say like 60% has to go to fire, this percent has to go to this department. I was told that not something you usually wanna do, also to kinda set those parameters. But, I would say that I would just mention, I know there's some more people on the board that I don't know if there is a desire to add a sunset of thirty years just so that my fear is this, and I'll just say it out loud to get it off my chest. It says here that until the voters sunset this, but that would require a future council to put it back on the ballot again.

And I think it's harder it's easy for us right now to put it forward and say, hey, the voters get to decide. But later, a new leadership or whoever may be will have to take make a harder decision to send this back if this is something that they feel we have to pull back from. And I just think that that's a much harder lift to carry. And so if we could plan accordingly ahead, looking ahead, if we wanna set a sunset, then we are coming back and again can plan accordingly if we want to look to send it back to the voters to continue to extend it. We could show them and let them know this is what we've delivered.

These are the marks we've met. Look at what we've done, and we wanna provide that service to our community and I feel that's how you build trust with our community and that's how we rebuild trust from what we have seen even in previous times with different measures. I'm still leaning in support of this today but would love to hear from some of my colleagues and do appreciate all the hard work by our teams behind the scene.

Thank you. Councilmember Mill.

Thank you, Mary. I'm trying not to beat this thing to death. First, I want to say thanks to Mike and the team for putting together. I want to thank all my colleagues for their comments here this evening. But most importantly, I want to thank our firefighters for keeping us safe.

When you look at the numbers, what you guys do is absolutely it's mind numbing. Last time, Councilmember Perry was right, good memory, last time we built a fire station, because I was looking it up while he was asking the question, was 2007. 2007, Riverside's population was 290,000 people. Today, we're about 324,000, that's 11% growth and we're still twenty years and we still haven't had a new fire station. And as my colleague, Councilmember Shivanti says, we worry about all our awards.

What I think about most when I think about this measure is Ward 4, how much growth they've seen up in that area in the last thirty years. And a firehouse is desperately, desperately needed up there. I think to myself, I'm worried about how we've outgrown Station 2 and we're having to store things at the city yard because we can't store all of the equipment we need to functionally operate functionally at Station 2. But at least I have a firehouse right there and I have Station 12 right there. Folks up in Ward 4 up in that area desperately need a firehouse.

I don't think without this measure that that's fiscally possible. And I couldn't live with myself. I really for years I've really thought that Ward 4 needs that station and I think it's more important than anything that we can do as far as firehouse and fire services in my area, they need it more than we do. We have Station 2. We have Station 10, which is good and lowered.

We need a new Station 10, but we need a new firehouse up the hill first. Station 10, and I agree with Councilmember Condra, I'd love to see it closer to Casablanca. We need to do something about the like how we've outgrown Station We must ensure our firefighters have the resources to do their job. That includes when we talk about making sure that we our employees have a good quality of life, all these things that it's not just about paying them big salaries, not about that. It's about making sure that when they're at work, they're not being overworked constantly and these firefighters are just I mean, when you do the math, it's amazing that they're still standing.

And, you know, we need to get more firefighters. You just look at the numbers. We're not even, you know, at the cities around us. So thank you again guys for for all you do, guys and gals. Sorry. You know, So at the end of the day, I kind of understand the frustration of some of those folks that called in, felt that they didn't get what they were promised. I feel their frustration. And these are general purpose funds, but it's gonna be incumbent upon us. And I've talked to firefighters too. Some some some retired guys feel that, you know, maybe we didn't get everything we were supposed to get last time.

Well, it's incumbent upon the people that are sitting up on this dais to make sure that Ward 4 gets a new firehouse, that we hire the firefighters that we need, that they have the equipment. It's incumbent upon us to do that. And you can I'm not happy about some of the things how the money was spent last time, but I wasn't here. And I can't fix the past and I'm not going to relitigate what prior councils did. All I can do is what we're doing, what we can do to go forward to make this community the best place to live and to make sure that our fire department is the best department that it can be, that our firefighters have all the equipment, they can do their best job.

I'm fully in support of Option A. But that being said, we're just putting the ballot we're just putting it on the ballot. The people of Riverside will make the decision, and I trust they will do what they see fit. And again, I want to thank Mike and the team and I want to thank all my colleagues for everything they've said here tonight. But I think that the best thing for our community is to put option A on the ballot and let the chips fall where they may. So thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Hemingway?

Thank you, mayor. I'll be brief. We've heard the need here. And I wanted to say, chief, how many times are you gonna make me relive that moment? It was helicopters flying over mutual aid and then knowing there were many other fires and it was two in Ward 7 that the second one that turned up. And to imagine that there wasn't I thought it was a joke at first. I thought when you said, no, we can't send anyone out. It's not a funny joke. It's a good joke, I suppose. But it was real.

And so I that's there's definitely a need. And we've heard about it. But it's not just that. There's many needs that we've outlined here for a growing city. And I appreciate the city manager and our CFO and the entire team to look at where we can get more efficient.

Dollars 17,000,000 is noteworthy. And yet, it doesn't really get close to where we know the need is. And I know all that's been said. So I'll just add one other piece because as we take it to the voters, one thing that has constantly stuck with me when we've talked about this is this regional cap. And, you know, being the county seat in the largest city here, I would argue we have tremendous need.

And so, Riverside voters should know that this quarter percent, it can come here to Riverside. Or it may very well. If we don't do this here, it may end up somewhere else. I think that's an important thing to consider. But ultimately, as we've heard, it's essentially putting it in front of our constituents and the voters. And I think that's the responsible thing to do. So, thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the information. And look forward to voting.

Thank you. Councilmember Condor.

Last If

you can

pop back up to the mic. I've been saying that ad nauseam, you've shown it. The World Forward needs it. If this passes, how fast can you get fire support up there?

So we're going to present to the safety, wellness, and youth. And we're going try to hit March, but we're going to get April 15. And we've outlined that in a phased approach for phase one. So we're looking at what a temporary fire station would be and how much that would cost, and that would be within this next year. So hopefully the following year, 'twenty seven, 'twenty eight, would be our target to have a temporary station up in that area. Because that peninsula, as we've discussed, it's tough for us to reach. Twenty seven, twenty eight, that's our goal.

Yeah. That's a lot faster than having to go through NEPA and CEQUA and all the things it would take to build one. So, temporary. That's a great idea Steve. Thank you so much. Alright.

Thank you. Alright, council you have a motion and a second with staff recommendation. Please vote.

Motion passed unanimous.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you, council. Thank you, city manager. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, chief McInster and everybody who spoke out tonight. And it is up to the voters at this point. Okay. We are now at the end of our agenda. Item 28, I will ask our city attorney please to report out on our closed session items.

No reportable action. All right.

Thank you. Council members, any items for future agendas? No? All right. Thank you. We are adjourned.