Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

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to order on 05/22/2025 at 03:08PM. We'll go ahead and move on to agenda number one, which is public comment. Go ahead and play the message, please.

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. And we don't have any request to speak in chambers today or and we don't have callers as well. Also, I just wanted to take a quick moment to recognize Sofia, from the UCR School of Public Policy. She's, shadowing me today, and, so she's get to experience her first economic development committee meeting. Yes. Alright. So we'll ahead and move on to discussion calendar and item number two, which is fiscal year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. City sponsorship program for July 1 to 12/31/2025 for monetary funding and or in kind contributions of $140,537 for the charitable and community events. And Cynthia Wright from Arts and Culture will be going ahead and presenting.

Good afternoon, honorable members of the City Council Committee. This this is very familiar to you. The city sponsorship program exists for local nonprofit organizations, and we provide both city funds and in kind services through several different departments. The summer application is the thirty first deadline which is coming up and I hope you both got emails to send out to your constituents so that we can get some people who might not necessarily come otherwise. This is for events produced from January 1 through June 30.

And the winter application, which is the one we're looking at today, is for events produced from July 1 to December 31. Table sponsorships are normally included in this when departments pay for their staff members to attend a specific event, but this particular round of funding, which is for the previous six month period, does not include any table sponsorships. And these are the requirements for the events and projects all about promoting the city as a desirable destination, enhancing quality of life, advancing the multicultural community, encouraging neighborhood identity and pride, cultural and artistic awareness, and to include a significant outreach component. All organizations must be five zero one organizations and funds cannot be used for operational costs. This doesn't mean that it can't be used for an operational cost that's part of the project.

It can't be used for the light bill necessarily, but it can be used for something that sounds like an operational cost but is really a program cost because it's affected it affects that specific program or event only. And here are samples of our various focal areas. We have health, we have pets, we have arts, we have, let's see, physical fitness right there in the middle with the two little kids that are getting ready to box, and we also have food security and other kinds of community events, as well as patriotic or veterans events. And here are some samples of current applicants. Some of their previous events, we have the Walk with the Animals from Mary S.

Roberts, pet adoption. We have the backpack giveaway resource event. And then we also have the Sycamore Canyon Cleanup, which is by a new organization called Baboon Stewardship. All applicants are invited to attend a city sponsorship one hundred one workshop and they do have to submit a written report sixty days after their event or project is concluded. These are the evaluation criteria which you've seen many times, so I won't read them all.

And the strategic plan priority connections as well with arts culture and recreation and community well-being. And our recommendation is that the economic development committee receive, review, and provide input on staff recommendations for the city sponsorship program for the six month period of July 1 to 12/31/2025. And we recommend that City Council approve city sponsorship support pending final budget approval for fiscal year 2526 in the form of monetary funding and or in kind contributions of $145,137,000 dollars for charitable and community events which are produced by local nonprofit organizations and authorize the city manager or his designee to make non substantive changes to the recommendations.

All right. Thank you for that report. And we go ahead and open up to 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.

Okay. Assuming you have no callers for item number two and no request to speak in chambers, we'll ahead and open it up to the committee. Does Clarissa have anything to say?

Yes. Thank you so much. Just wanna take a moment. I was looking through this, and I feel like always great recommendations. I know we have a lot of different requests that come in, and we try to balance it as best as possible. Always like to see where we can support with the in kind sponsorships, as those are very costly and important. And so the only item I wanted two things question to ask, but I wanted to flag. And I'm seeing here that for Division I gallery for the Day of the Dia de los Muertos event, which has a projected attendance of 100,000 people. I've we obviously many of us have been there. We see it draws a great I think it's about 50,000 people each day is what now COSMA is estimating.

But I see the cash request was 20,000, and the amount we're recommending is 8,500. And I noticed on the next slide, when I saw the Mission Inn Foundation, which is having a projected attendance of about 10,000, getting a recommended cash sponsorship of 8,000, nothing in lieu to that. I guess I just wanted to highlight the difference of the impact. And then I feel like I do know Cosmo works very hard. We're having a raise.

I've been able to over the years, I know he has to work very hard to get sponsorships. And just at a time when we know that because of the economy, I'm hearing a lot from nonprofits and folks that people are not giving in the amount that they usually are that they would. And so knowing that one thing I've caught was on the last page, it looks like we have a little bit more money that we could spend. It says the allocated amount that we could go up to is $152,000 And I'm not going say the whole number. But I estimated we could potentially give him another 11,545, if I'm correct, that we have available.

We do have some cash that waits for these sorts of situations Okay. When we need to make a switch.

Great. And I don't know if the member here would be willing to support the chair to see if we could support and put the rest of that into that amount, or if we wanted to look to see if we could distribute a little bit more there, and then maybe put a couple into another space where there's a large attendance that we see for a city event. But I did want to advocate for that one. I just know that, again, over the years, it's been an event that continues to grow. And it's kind of like the gift that keeps on giving for our culture in Cultura.

But even too, I really love to see how it brings people from all different backgrounds. But I just would love if we have that extra funding if we could support that or see if we can give another $5,000 and maybe another $3,000 could go to another group or even see if other council members when they look at this want to maybe have another amount that they could put to other things. But I would personally to see if the chair is supportive of us pushing the rest into that space just so that we can really support that event which continues to grow every single year.

Just to clarify, so it's $11,000 is that correct that's left over?

You know what I don't have that number in front of me. I will say that this round that we're looking at is the first half of the fiscal year.

Sure.

So, and typically the spring events have higher requests than the fall events do. So we usually sort of measure it out so that the fall events get a little bit less overall, the total, is less than it is in the spring. So we don't literally go up to that halfway mark and stop there. We do like to leave a little bit of wiggle room for the spring as well. Okay. But there certainly is a little bit of wiggle room for the fall.

And I understand the event that you're talking about is very important to you. Out of fairness to our colleagues, I think it might be appropriate just to email them and just to say, hey, is there an event or a priority that wasn't fully funded that we can, I guess, work with among ourselves? Just just out of fairness to the the the my colleagues because I just don't wanna see a like, extra 11,000. You know what I mean? And so I I would suggest that if I if if you're okay with that is to just send a quick email to our colleagues and say

I think the challenge with that is because it's a committee, so we can't connect. We can't communicate outside of the committee, I believe. Right? So we can't, but I don't know if staff is able to. No. I guess you would have to be the ones to do that, right?

I'm going to look over here for advice on that, but we certainly can, if we're allowed to, reach out and explain the situation and ask for some feedback from the full council. And this does go to full council

Right.

June as well.

And that's where I was making the recommendation because what we usually and what I understand, and I'm grateful to finally be in this committee. I've had I've been able to sub in before for some items, but the state sponsorships and the deliberation from I know is usually kind of had here and then it goes usually put on consent, It's not even put on discussion. So that's where I understand that's where but I guess you know, look at it. So I think if there's concerns it could always be pulled and then it could that conversation be had. But if we don't want that to happen then maybe could be that we do ask staff if they can reach out and highlight that I had raised about putting additional funds in Day of the Dead.

And again, it doesn't have to be the full amount. Would at least advocate for at least 5,000 just because knowing the target audience is I think it's the biggest, draws the biggest crowd of most of the groups that are listed here when we look at the projected attendance. So just knowing that that is, of course, what is, and all the sale that money comes directly back supports our businesses, supports the folks that then go and eat in downtown or hang out and do more for more events. So just really would love to see if we could support him a little bit more, knowing again just the challenge that folks are having with getting sponsorships in the general market right now. So I would hate to see us not have as strong of an event just knowing that that's a reality.

But certainly would be comfortable if we did want to ask staff to do that, kind of have those meetings. And then I guess if we move forward with the recommendation, I don't know if it actually makes sense then we say to see if it could be put on a discussion, whether it's afternoon or like maybe evening. So then that conversation can be had versus it being put on consent. I guess that would probably be the way have to go.

Yeah, I think we can make a motion that staff reaches out to the council members to notify them that there is this some money left over that can be used for community events and that to keep that in mind as we go bring it to city council if they wanna advocate for a certain event that is missing, lacking funding. And then we can advocate for that at the city council meeting.

Okay, I'll make a second to that.

Okay, alright. Passed. Alright, thank you for that, appreciate that. We'll go ahead and move on to item number three. And that is the Streamlight Riverside Refresh effort and implementation plan updates. And we're gonna have that by Chris Christopoulos, Deputy Community Economic Development Director, and Miranda Evans, Deputy Community Economic Development Director. Alright. Thank you.

There we go. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Honorable Chair, councilwoman Cervantes, members of the Economic Development Committee. My name is Miranda Evans, deputy director of community and economic development. I'm joined today by my partner and our other CED deputy director, Chris Christopoulos.

The two of us are working in tandem to lead and implement the Streamline Riverside initiative we're here to update you on today. However, we can't do this work alone or in silos in the city of Riverside. And for that, we are incredibly grateful for the efforts of the cross departmental team that comprises our one stop shop here at City Hall. We have members of this team with us here today in the front row, and we have worked hard together to make this a shared collaborative presentation for you today. But to start, I want to ground this presentation from the context of economic development because it's central to everything that follows.

When working to attract businesses to our city, no matter who it is, I can guarantee their most important needs when navigating the entitlement process are speed and certainty. Because of this, a city's entitlement process is a key driver of economic development. It can make or break our opportunities for future growth and investment. It creates our reputation and brand, something we'll talk about as the next item on the agenda, a brand and experience that is shared by businesses and our development community. So as we look to our future, one of the most critical challenges and an opportunity we face is ensuring that our development process is not only thorough, code compliant, ensures the public's health and safety and grows our community in a smart, intentional and thoughtful way, but also must be efficient, responsive and predictable.

In short, we need to streamline development to meet the needs of our growing population, a dynamic and evolving economy and to remain competitive amongst our regional, state, national and international, as we learned from SelectUSA, competition working to attract the very same business investment that we are. Simple, right? The city of Riverside is committed to being business friendly and development friendly. And one key principle helps us rise to this service standard, streamlined development. The way we will accomplish this work is through our Streamline Riverside Refresh initiative.

This extends beyond the Community and Economic Development Department and is a cross departmental effort, and we're grateful for the support of the Streamline and One Stop Shop teams. You all now know our mantra is we are all economic development. We all work together to collectively shape the positive experience for businesses. Key to this effort and here with us today are building and safety, please wave, public works, planning, public utilities, finance and fire. These permitting and regulatory partners and divisions are all part of our one stop shop.

We also have additional partners of the streamlined Riverside effort, including economic development. My team please wave, IT, who we could not do any of this without, and communications. Streamlining development is not about cutting corners. It's about cutting unnecessary delays, aligning our values with processes and positioning our city to thrive in a rapidly changing world so we can be competitive in our regional and broader economy. In Riverside, we want to be known for rolling out the red carpet and cutting the red tape.

Our streamlined development process encourages economic growth. This allows developers and businesses to start projects quickly, contributing to faster economic expansion and job creation that, in turn, attracts more investment, and investors are more likely to commit to projects in areas with efficient permitting processes. It fosters job creation. It boosts our competitiveness. A fast permitting process makes us more competitive because it reduces red tape.

It supports housing development, helps us address housing shortages, and allows residential projects to move forward more quickly to meet demand. It also improves project planning and execution and improves local government efficiency. And part core to this is that it reduces costs because we all know delays really increase project costs due to extended time lines. Right now, what we're experiencing when it comes to inflation and other additional So the quicker the process, the lower the costs, which developers love to hear. And all of this leads to reduced developer and business frustration.

Development is our economic engine. That's why we're here today. And last year was a banner year for us that we're very proud to celebrate for the city of Riverside. There was $390,000,000 in new building valuation that happened throughout the year, and this was the highest year for the city since 2006, outstanding accomplishment and a great indicator of the economic engine of development. We also added over 13,000 jobs to our local economy from 1,600 businesses, four of which major green tech wins attracted within the last six months.

And as you can see, all of this economic growth cannot be possible without our regulatory partners, our entitlement process and the entire streamlined effort, which is why it's so important, and we're working together here to share with you what those steps have been taken today. Now with that economic development background is the lens through which we're viewing this effort. I'd like to turn it over to Deputy Director, Chris Christopoulos.

Alright. Thank you, Miranda, and good afternoon, honorable chair and committee member Cervantes. As Miranda had mentioned, it really is no surprise that we often hear that time is money, especially when we're dealing with development projects throughout the city. The Streamline Riverside initiative has its past, present and future success has always been built on a foundation of partnership, collaboration, innovation and a culture of continuous improvement that, as Miranda noted, drives economic growth in our city. As we continue to build a better Riverside together, today, our one stop shop team will provide updates on what we call the streamlined Riverside refresh as our implementation plan continues to progress with exciting new programs and resources that we will discuss today.

But first, I want to go down memory lane a bit and give you some background. In 2015, the city and its external partners embarked on a journey together to establish a culture of world class customer service through a collaborative known as Streamline Riverside. At that time, the catalyst for launching this initiative included poor customer service, silos between departments and project delays that negatively impacted our service delivery. The Streamline Riverside initiative paved the way to implementing various development tools and strategies that changed the way we do business as an organization, which led to award winning success. And almost ten years later, the city and its external partners continue this journey together.

As you can see, the success of Streamline Riverside initiative includes various tools in the toolbox that best serve our customers' needs in a timely and expeditious manner. When utilized together, these critical tools truly are the keys to our success. Our goal is always about achieving excellence in everything we do. And when we talk about Streamline Riverside Initiative, the critical component is its guiding principles. These principles act as pillars that transcend our customer centric service standards across all services within the one stop shop.

And it's critical that the Citi team embrace and exemplify these standards each and every day. The Streamline Riverside refresh includes various strategic goals and objectives. Phase one of the refresh effort included meetings with our external partners and staff as we listened and learned about what was and wasn't working today. With that information, our Phase two draft implementation plan was created and includes new training programs, software upgrades, additional resources, a new marketing effort and communication tools that will help ensure Riverside remains an industry leader in delivering customer service excellence. Today, we will share updates on many of these new programs and objectives while also taking the time to plan and reset and celebrate the team who continues providing these outstanding development services in support of our community.

I will now ask our Public Works Engineering Manager, Chris Scully, to talk about some of the exciting training efforts that have been completed and yet to come.

Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon. Learning together truly is a key component to our team's growth and overall success. You may recall last year when we conducted a very successful Riverside Customer Excellence Academy at the Convention Center. This event was attended by over 700 city employees.

We will continuing we will be continuing that effort through our Streamline Riverside Academy. This is where all new and existing One Stop Shop team members will learn about the latest Streamline Riverside effort while completing training to ensure our guiding principles remain the top priority to customer service delivery. Additionally, we will continue meeting with our external partners to hear about their recent experiences and what we can do to continue to improve our processes and better serve them. More customer service training is also on the way through focused topics that can best prepare the team to handle any and all challenges so that we can focus on how to get to yes. Additionally, a focus on helpful proactive customer service is currently underway.

As Mr. Grosopoulos noted, our guiding principles will help to continue to build a culture of excellence. An additional focus area will be delivering appropriate onboarding training, a toolkit for our newest hires that will help ensure success as they integrate into our services. Implementing standard operating procedures is also critical to ensuring staff have guidance on what is expected at the counter or when they are in their office away from customers and completing the hard work needed to deliver projects in a timely efficient manner. Lastly, one of the most important training tools, which had been recommended by staff, includes the ability to cross train amongst the other departments so that staff have a well rounded understanding of what we do.

And we believe this will help us to better serve our customers. This includes what we call hybrid training and ride alongs with field staff. Some departments have already begun implementing forms of this training, but we plan to expand it across other departments and tasks. Now I would like to introduce our building official, Oscar Mancias, who will discuss some of the latest game changing programs and resources.

Hello. Good afternoon, Chair and committee. Nice to see you. Thank you, Chris. Another Chris.

Well, I'm excited to share some of our recent wins, launching some of the new programs as well as one as well as what's to come to improve customer service. During the past year, we launched a concierge streamlined team pilot program to help expedite time sensitive projects like the Farmhouse Collective. We did this by providing a single point of contact that helped guide the developers through the plan check and inspection process through regular scheduled meetings with our Streamline team, which facilitated a successful grand opening just in March, so a few months ago. Now we will continue this pilot program as well as continuing to refine the process to build capacity to support this critical program. We also deliver our highly anticipated ADU standard plant program known as Dwell Riverside early this year and plan to expand it to new ADU garage conversion standard plants later this year.

A plan over the counter day will launch next week on Wednesdays. That would allow same day permits for specific projects, minor projects normally projects that wouldn't normally go through a formal review process. So instead of, you know, five, ten days review, we can do it over the counter. So they'll get the permit probably within two hours or less. A plant staff is also working to deliver a first in kind building plan check self certification pilot program that further streamlines the plan check process for qualified design professionals that enable certain projects to move right to permit issuance process.

So just keep an eye for these exciting programs and more to come on those. Okay. As we continue to enhance our virtual services, planned upgrades to our permit and tracking software known as Posse Land Management System include web UI capabilities online that enables the use of our permit portal on all devices, a new intuitive and customer centric public permit portal upgrade, streamlined workflow enhancements and the ability to create our own customized permit types for each department that will further streamline the process without contacting IT to help. With the introduction of AI, staff is currently investigating various software solutions that will help streamline the plan, check clearance and review process, ultimately reducing plan check turnaround times and enabling permit issuance faster than ever before. Now coming soon to Riverside, please keep an eye on the web on the new web for our new chat box, Reebi, who will help answer questions virtually for our customers.

That's twenty four hours a day. I mean twenty four hours, seven days a week. So that's really going to improve our customer service. That is our road map. I'd like to introduce Principal Planner, Edgardo Caldera, who will share the latest on branding and marketing efforts. Thank you.

Thank you, Oscar. Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee. So, another strategic goal of our draft implementation plan is to step up our branding and marketing efforts to better tell our story and really provide greater overall exposure to Streamline Riverside as a whole. This includes development of a dedicated one stop shop web page. So residents, developers and the general public alike have a centralized location to obtain the information about our permitting processes and the various teams involved in those processes.

We are also updating the original Streamline Riverside promotional video and amping up our social media to better support our economic development team as they continue to work hard recruiting new business to the city. Other exciting improvements will include a refresh or remodel of the one Stop Shop third Floor, new gear for staff to provide a unified team image, and also putting together some various videos to help customers better understand the different processes and of course display those in the One Stop Shop as well as the new website. So another goal is enhancing our communication and reporting efforts. Staff will continue to communicate our progress and share the latest updates through regular efforts, regular reports to the City Council and the committees, ongoing staff engagement and outreach to the broader community. And that includes partners like the Chambers of Commerce.

Also transparent reporting of our development service goals is also key, so our decision makers have the data they need to help deliver the best services and at the same time ensure staff is as efficient as possible. And lastly, also underway is creating automated reporting tools that tie all of our service or software solutions together. This will allow us to launch various data driven dashboards that include critical information like permit issuance, plan check, inspection services, turnaround times and customer serve, just to name a few. But with that, I would now like to turn it over to our Fire Marshal, Garrett Corielle, and he will discuss the road map to delivering some of these new programs and initiatives.

Thank you, Edgardo. Good afternoon. Let's bring it all together. So here we have our streamlined Riverside roadmap. It's more than a timeline. It's a vision reflecting the collective efforts of all departments represented here today. The immediate updates are those that are already completed or will be delivered within the next ninety days. Many of these, like the concierge program, the pilot program and ADU standard plans, have already begun with great success. Short term goals are those that you'll see in the next three to six months, like the Posse Software Update 7.4 and the integration of AI to help the customer that we spoke about earlier. We'll see midterm goals in the next year and long term goals in the year ahead.

Each of these is aimed at the planning and building of resources that will deliver the best services possible. We've talked about what the plans are and the time line to see them arrive. What we haven't said are the other exciting enhancements like the refresh of the DRC process and code updates. Or one of our latest streamlined Riverside efforts, the forthcoming TIP or Tenant Improvement Program, which I believe is near and dear to Councilman Robillard for small businesses that we'd be bringing to the committee in July. We believe that each of these will greatly improve our customer service delivery.

As you can see, much has been accomplished, and there is so much more on the horizon as these programs are implemented, all of which are tools and resources that will ensure Riverside remains at the forefront of the industry and delivers the best results possible to the customer. We will continue our tradition as leaders, innovators, cutting the red tape and building a better Riverside together. With that, I'd like to introduce Daniel Sanchez, our Business Tax Supervisor, who will take a moment to talk about how we plan to reset and celebrate the team. Thank you.

Thank you, chief. So they say that a team is only as good as the sum of its parts. And no team delivers more than the one stop shop who serves over 80,000 customers annually. Their dedication is evident each and every day serving our customers. Whether it be at the permit counter on the 3rd Floor, issuing over 7,000 permits a year.

During the plan check process, completing over 30,000 reviews annually, of which 80% is electronic. Through our virtual public permit portal, which makes up over 56% of our customer base or in the field during the construction process as we complete an incredible 70,000 plus inspections a year. So as we continue our model of continuous improvement through the Streamline Riverside refresh, we are planning to reset the OSS with a grand reopening while also celebrating our team later this year. We hope you can join us during the reset and celebration. I would now like to introduce Chris Gross, our senior water engineer.

Thank you, Daniel, and good afternoon. It really is a team effort. As you can see, partnership between city staff, our external partners and city leadership are all key to the overall success of Streamline Riverside, which enables our customers to dream big and allows staff to deliver those important wow moments that lead to customer service excellence. None of this is possible without that team effort, which led to award winning success in the past and will into the future. I want to take a moment to recognize the entire team, which includes the fire department, public utilities, finance, public works, community and economic development, parks and recreation, and our outstanding support teams like Human Resources, Innovation and Technology, Police Department, Marketing, Communications, General Services, and the City Attorney's Office.

It takes the whole team to get the job done right, and this is no more evident than here in Riverside. And now I turn it back to Chris Christopoulos.

Thank you, team. Gratitude to all of you for being here and helping present this to the Economic Development Committee as well. With that, this update aligns with 2025 Envision Riverside's strategic plan specifically priorities three, economic opportunity and five, high performing government, as well as all the cross cutting threads. And the recommendation is that the Economic Development Committee receive and file an update on the streamlined Riverside Refresh effort and its implementation plan. And we are here to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. We'll go ahead and open it up to public comment.

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

Alright. Assuming you have no callers and no speaker requests in chambers. I'll go ahead and come back to the committee. And I just wanna say, smile, everyone. That's exciting stuff. I saw a lot of serious faces out there. No. This is very, very exciting stuff. This refresh is a refreshing thing to hear. And I'll say some of my comments. Don't know if Clarissa has some comments, I'll defer to her first.

No, thank you. Just actually had a question about the AI chat box. What I guess, is that so folks go on, ask questions, what is it gonna pull from? Is it like from our website, I guess, for information? If you could speak to more to that.

Thank you for the question. Yes, exactly that. We're really excited. The IT department is in test right now for Rivi, what we call Rivi, which is the the chatbot, and it really just pulls from all the data that we have online, ensuring that all that data is accurate right now as part of testing process. All the teams are going through their websites to make sure it's accurate information. But I was testing it myself literally a week ago and asking it questions like how much is a water heater permit or how long is the plan check turnaround time and it was providing accurate answers, and we're really excited about what that's gonna do to help augment our team and also reduce the volume of the high volume of phone calls that we get at our one stop shop counter.

Oh, great. So it's not gonna be issuing out permits or anything like that?

No. And in the future, ultimately Not yet

is what the

answer Oh is, no, I'm just kidding. I was just making sure it's always, I'll just share, Chris, I'll let you finish and I'll make a comment. Sorry.

Chair, if I could just add a little bit to that. It is also learning, which both excites me and scares me. So what we've been asking our internal team to do is test the bot, right? So give it a question, and even things like how do you bake a cake. And then we can correct it to, well, how would you bake a cake in Riverside?

And so not only is it searching CED's website, but everywhere where we have repository of information about our permitting system, our regulatory system. So it really isn't just a FAQ where it's static. It is learning as it goes, and as we train it, it learns more. So we're excited to have that come out of beta testing, and if you would like to play with it, let us know, and we can invite you to that as well.

Amazing, thank you. Now, I was just to say, know that AI is having an impact in a lot of different ways, some good, some bad. So just knowing, wanting to assure, of course, thank our staff that their jobs aren't going anywhere. It's my priority. But no, thank you. I was curious just to know what was kind of if it was actually specific only to the department or to the but I'm glad to hear so could someone potentially pull up, can you provide me the meetings for this council meeting? And should it potentially be able to pull or provide something like that if we get good at it?

Yes. Ultimately and if you look at the long term goals once we have enough resources in place, we're hoping to have real time answers too through the chat bot solution and with messenger as well where our virtual team is talking and chatting with the customer in real time similar as if they were at the counter.

Okay, that's cool. I think that, and I love, because I think for me that's where accessibility and transparency is like, that's money. That's amazing. I think that to me is amazing for folks that I assume it will hopefully will have a translation options as well. And even I think accessibility, honestly, for our ASL community. Because that's been, I think, a challenge that we've also discussed for them coming in and needing answers and having to schedule in advance for someone to come to be there if they wanted to do in person. So I do think this could I don't know if it's being marketed or shared for folks as something in advance, maybe beforehand. Just a thought. But I just want to say thank you for answering the questions. That's the only thing I was a little curious about.

But overall, I really love to all of you being here from different departments. It's kind of different to see you all and sharing your pieces through how this would impact you and also streamline the work you're doing. So thank you for the partnership. I feel like I see that here with you all here today. As my colleague said, it's nice to have you all with us. And it is exciting stuff. So thank you for the work you're doing. It looks like there's no motion, but just thank you for the receiving file.

Thank you. And, yeah, got a few comments. Just very, very excited about Streamline Riverside coming through finally. As someone who's worked in the development field for ten years, I've been on the other side of that counter. I got my experience from that, and now I'm on the the both sides of the counter essentially.

And, it's been really eye opening to, see the dedication and work from the economic development team and what you guys are trying to do and trying to get to yes and trying to assist our development partners in growing our city. And, I just gotta say that the word is getting out. Riverside is a hot place to be, so you guys are getting gonna have a lot more work I anticipate in the future, which is a good thing. And and that's where I see the AI component as a force multiplier, not a replacement. You get more people doing more work, having the freedom to clear your mind space for decision making versus doing the research and kinda the remedial type task.

You'll be able to take care of that instantly and then be able to make a decision and communicate that to the partner quickly. And I think that's a a very, very good thing to have. The I'd like to hear more about the AI plan check implementation and how how that's gonna work.

Thank you for the question. Mhmm. So we're we're in discovery right now. There are several software solutions out there. Arcastar is one. I think you may have read about that's helping LA right now, with the, fire, that occurred over there to help streamline, getting the review and approval process. There's another one called Blitz that we've, that we've interviewed. We're really looking for the right solution that'll work here in Riverside. A lot of these are very, very new technologies that are still working their way and evolving within the industry. So figuring out the budget, can we include the entire one stop shop?

Is it one one phase launch where maybe it's the planning clearance and getting into plan check and then you add building fire and the other components? We're a large city. We have 11 different departments and divisions that can review a development project. We have it as a midterm goal. Figuring out the budget for that and how to bring it forward is definitely key and it's one of our priorities because we continue to hear from the mayor and council and from the outside as well on what AI is doing.

The only thing I would add to that based on the last question is this is not meant to be replacement. So imagine if you will, if we send things out for self certification or for a consultant that provides that, we still need our technical team to have quality control and quality assurance on that. So it's really to relieve the day to day pressure, streamline, keep things moving quickly, but it would not be a replacement for staff. It will help relieve that. And hopefully, with all the new development that continues to come, we'll just be able to meet that demand.

And, yeah, for myself, Google was a great thing because it narrowed down to the Internet for you and it found what you're looking for. But now these days, even that's not good enough and having chat GBT ask the question to chat GBT, and then it does Google, and then it gives you the answer, which is even even better. So I I definitely see the the, I think, the potential for Riverside. We are the city of arts innovation. We are, as as our team was out at SECUSA last week, we're talking to so many international companies and talking to other states and other cities in California.

I think we're in a really, really good position to kinda be leaders in this field and, finding an AI partner perhaps that would be a beta test for low cost, on some of those plan check things or maybe other things they can implement on the AI front. That is we can get our own new story about how we implemented AI in our city to expedite growth in our city, I think is a good thing for us. And the you know, one of the things that I struggled with on the in my in my private life was the the the thought process of we're worried about if the development doesn't go through, what's gonna happen to the property, and so we're having these step this step, this step, this step to kind of ensure, ensure, ensure, but all those steps added time, and then that's pushing that project more likely to not being completed. And so that's that was my experience. And, I really like the over the counter days.

I think that's a fantastic idea. Getting face to face with individuals and say, I just gotta do a bathroom remodel. Can I just get this signed off, please? That'd be fantastic. And, my what I would like to see is the taking the on the staff level, the remedial stuff, the time consuming stuff that's not busy work, but it just takes a lot of time. And, if we can streamline that, have the AI take care of that, and also just the customer service part of it is a big part of that. Right? It's talking to customers. They're calling. They're they're asking questions.

Sometimes they don't wanna dig through all the code and try to figure it out or even for staff as they're trying to memorize that code and get familiar with it, being able to just ask Rivi real quick and say, hey. This is what Rivi says. You know? I think that's a huge as again, I said, force multiplier. When computers came out, everyone had, you know, everyone thought their everyone's job was gonna be gone when computers came out, and jobs did go away. It was secretaries. Right? We had secretaries for everyone, and that was for typewriting and letter writing, things like that, and those computers took those jobs. But those people didn't lose their they weren't not in the workplace anymore. They went and became their own employees, and they had their computer helping them to expand their businesses.

And I think AI is an expansion. It's a force multiplier, and it's gonna grow our city and make us a lot faster. And so very, very excited about this this streamline Riverside refresh, and I'll be screaming it from the the rooftops. And I think it's a big thing for our city to be so focused on economic development. But thank you guys. Alright. Now we'll close on item number three. We're gonna move on to part two of that basically, which is item four, which is economic development rebrand update by Miranda Evans and Michael Berger and Christopher Kern.

Perfect segue into this item. Thank you so much, Honorable Chair and Committee Member Cervantes. I'm excited to be here to share an update with you on the city's economic development branding effort. Marketing is what you say about yourself. Branding is what people say about you and our city when we're not around.

A city's economic development brand is our strategic asset. A It's not just about an image, a very exciting image you see on the screen before you right now. It's about crafting a compelling, consistent narrative that aligns our economic development goals with the values and interests of the businesses we work so hard to attract and retain. When done well, it acts as a long term catalyst for sustainable economic growth for Riverside. Over the past several months, we have embarked on a mission to define who we are as an economic development team and how we represent ourselves in the regional and broader markets we are competing in.

As I shared in the previous presentation, we want our economic development brand to be known as the city who rolls out the red carpet and literally cuts the red tape. A critical part of this work is our image and having our own brand as an EVO. Before we drive into the fun parts and reveal, I wanted to share some background about the importance of why we embarked on this effort to create a brand. In this very competitive market, we need differentiation. This helps us stand out from competitors and communicate our unique strengths, of which we have so many here in Riverside.

A strong brand instills investor confidence, helping to attract more investment. It helps us look and function like an EDO and adds credibility. Right now, we're embarking on an accreditation process that's very competitive and rigorous through the International Economic Development Corporation, and having our own stand alone brand as an EDO is key to that effort. Also, this is part of the importance of positioning the city as a business partner. We want to have a strong b to b appearance.

We want to enhance site selection and economic development outreach. So when companies and consultants are evaluating locations, as we've connected with at SelectUSA, ICSC, and other opportunities, they rely on first impressions formed through websites, marketing materials, and proposals. A city with a sharp b to b facing identity is much easier for businesses to find relevant, accurate, and compelling. It reinforces responsiveness, professionalism, and alignment with business goals. Our goals as a city and as an EDO are aligned with our businesses.

We move at their speed, we support them, we work very hard to bring them in here, retain them and help them expand. It also avoids confusion and helps to build trust with them during their evaluation process and site selection. So to help us with this effort, we worked with Compel, who are the creators of the mark you see before you today. I would now like to invite up Michael Berger with Compel to share about this new brand and the process we embarked on together to get here today.

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee. My name is Michael Berger. And with Compel, we were engaged to design really the brand and the advanced identifier for other cities who might not know of us and businesses. So what we want to do is pay homage to our culture, our architecture. I apologize in advance that you're going walk around now and say, oh, keyhole arch. So it is something that we take seriously. We want people we want something bold that will travel really well. So not only is it a bug, there's a secondhand story behind it. It always points back to us. I believe it's the red button.

Thank you so much. So what we do is, in most cases, for thirty years, we've looked at businesses. And generally, sometimes people don't know who they are. They're doing well, they don't know why. So what we want to do is put the mirror back on you and say, this is what we see. This is what's attractive. We're not about promotion. It's about attraction, drawing people in for a conversation, that they might look just a little bit further at Riverside as a solution to the problem or a new home. Literally, if we look at the NFL, we're larger than 13 city host cities, and it's a big deal. So we should act and look that part.

So what we did in the very beginning is we look, we see architecture, we understand that economic development is a pathway to dreams, whether you're a mom and pop or top 50. So we have everything. We have access and everything we're going to need to help people flourish. So we're the pathway. And what we did is we designed a logo that acts like that pathway. We wanted to bring in the r into it so you would see it among other cities and have the r in Riverside stand out. We use bold colors that will travel everywhere. K? We're also a bridge. We're a partner.

We're the key, And this logo actually sits as a keyhole. We are a guide through all the processes. There is the keyhole arch, and of course, to help with ideas and partnering them.

Yes. Thank you. We'll tag team it a little bit. Another part of this discovery process was taking a step back and sampling what are the leading EDOs across the country and even internationally doing. What is their brand? How do they represent themselves? What are their physical and digital assets? And really, when we took a look at it, and most importantly, our competition. What are they doing? How do we top it and do it much better for Riverside?

So that was really part of the discovery process and more to that b to b approach I was speaking about earlier. When you think about leading corporations, Amazon, when you think about Disney, they all have a very prominent leading letter mark. I'm sure in your mind if I say Disney, you picture their magical d font. And I picture when I say Amazon, you picture the lowercase a serif font. So really that was something we envisioned for Riverside where it's sharp, simple, but also recognizable and indicative of our community and our brand.

And I did want to nod to Michael's point about the keyhole, and really it is as economic development, it is our job to unlock opportunities. And especially with our attention right now on the green tech and EV space, I will say some of the vehicles have keys, some are keyless. But it's a little bit of a nod to our effort as well in leading EV and green tech as well. So just wanted to add that.

Thank you.

As we go, it's not only a mark, it's a language. So you start to recognize the language, always pointing back to the logo. The logo can sit by itself again as an advanced identifier. We want it to travel well across technology and messaging. Not only does it sit on paper, it's going to sit on websites, AI. It's going to sit in different areas. It will also be a marker for businesses in the community as a partner of the economic development through stickers and whatnot. And that was it for? Okay. Thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it. Thank

you so much, Michael. So for next steps, we're really excited. We'd love to hear your feedback, your thoughts. On the design too, I wanted to share we selected orange because it it feels very connected to the energy and the vibe of our community. And when you look at color psychology, orange is the color of innovation.

And we wanna tie that back to being the city of arts and innovation and especially all of the work that we're doing in economic development. So our plans for next steps are to, in June, kick off our effort to build out a website. We want a standalone, streamlined, easy to access website that we were also working with Compel to create. It would include all five areas of excellence. Business assistance resources, we want to make sure we're very focused on providing assistance to businesses we have now, so we can retain them and help them expand in our community.

We also have a new workforce development component that's very important to the work we're doing on our team. So we want to be able to share Riverside has talent. We have so much talent, and that is what we hear from employers when they're looking to locate here. So we'll also have a talent and attraction component on the website as well and are looking to digitize our business resources guide. So make it very simple. I am a restaurant. How do I open? And then it comes up with all resources for you in steps. I am a EV manufacturer. How do I locate and what are the steps?

So our goal is to really make things extremely I'll stick with the theme of streamlined, extremely streamlined and easy to access and to showcase our brand and who we are. And this is something we can take when we go to SelectUSA to ICSC, but it's also a tool we can use to be very competitive in the region and beyond. So with that, I welcome your thoughts and your comments and look forward to answering any questions you may have.

Thank you, Miranda. And we'll go ahead and open up the 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.

Okay. Seeing we have no request to speak and no callers on this item, we'll go ahead and open up to the committee. And, Guegresa, you can go ahead and go first.

Thanks, Steve. So I'm going to

look here. I I love it.

I do. Can I make Am I crazy though? Am I the only one who sees like yellow or kinda golden yellow, not orange?

It's just green.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I was like, I've had this argument for a people. I'm not sure if it's my eyes or something. So it's more is more orange, I guess. Okay. Thank you. I wasn't sure. I'm not gonna lie. Kinda the the yellow and the blue is kinda giving you CR and kinda looking at our flags. So I think it could work too. I don't know. I was actually gonna say my recommendation or would only be as variations of I was thinking one that could be more because this is artistic. But what the art piece may be colorful.

So I think variations of them, which I saw on the other side that had different so changing the color tones. But certainly would love to see, I think, yeah, just different variations of it. Even if celebrating different I know we have different celebrations, different months, different cultures that were recognized. And it'd be nice to just see that be able to be translated, right? Whether that's again for Juneteenth or our black community, we know that's right, the green, red, black, and white.

And of course, we have pride. So I know every I don't know if each pride, depending what we all want to see, each council member might ask for something different for what they want to do to their brand and how we promote, what we uplift in our communities. And so I think that would be the thing I'd love to see is different ways that this can be highlighted and can be shared. But I really love the story. And I feel the keyhole arch is really powerful. And I really like the different ways that you explain the symbolism. And I do agree. I mean, symbols are everything. Right? There's always something behind it. And so as an artist, I do appreciate the thought that went into this and the intention. I could see it's very much there. And I do feel it's a powerful reflection of Riverside. So thank you for the work and the piece behind it.

Thank you. Yeah, I recognize this is strictly for economic development. Almost every department now has their own logos, which I think is, indicative of the need of I I'll say it a thousand times that I think we need a new city Riverside logo, and I'll keep on pushing for that. I know it's got a lot of money and a lot of thing work that goes into that, but I think our city Riverside logo is a little dated. But I I do recognize the need for an economic development office logo and branding as, the SelectUSA conference was a huge learning opportunity for us, to see how our competitors and call and peers in this space and how they operate and seeing, what stood out to us and what was, something that we could implement ourselves.

And one of the things that, we were experiencing is that for most other states, the states are the representation. That's how you know them. They're that's the biggest name is the state. In California, we're so big that a lot of city it's city led less than state led. And, it's really important for us as a city of Riverside to have our own identity within the state of California, especially at these conferences and when we're talking to businesses.

Because as I heard a few dozen times over the that last week, so many international companies view California in a negative light, and that is painted by, some big cities and not necessarily indicative of the entire state and cities within that state like us. And, having that differentiating factor, I think, is very, very important for us, to go out there to be recognizable as a brand as economic development. And I see our office of economic development being a front piece for the city. We have our police officers, which is very internal. We have a firefighter, which is very internal.

This is usually what people see when they think of the city, maybe RPU, as well. But economic development is very outward focused. It's it's going out. It's bringing customers in, bringing businesses in. And so in that effort of going out and grabbing people, you need to have that identifiable brand.

I like the colors. I think it would look good on a little lapel pin, magnetic, of course, so that it fits on a woman's blouse without poking a hole in it. But these are I think it's a investing in our economic development team, making our like, in the office its own stand alone office as a that's how we bring business to the city. That's how we make generate more revenue for the city is by growing our businesses. And I think this is a a great example of the thought and effort that went into it to be that forward looking piece.

And to Clarissa's comment, I I think the artistic piece in that orange there, it could be changed slightly to our five areas of excellence, green tech, aerospace, you know, arts and the the the five spaces, I think, that could easily be branded in that space for each, on our little brochures that we have on our folders and and websites as we're targeting those certain industries because I think it really shows a lot of, makes a company feel welcome and like, hey. We're a biotech company. Great. We want biotech and, like, here's everything geared towards biotech. It's a great, great way to kind of sell the city, and I think that's a this is a great great opportunity.

Alright. Thank you for that presentation. That was very, very we had a lot of exciting presentations today, so I'm I'm very excited about that. Last thing or, yeah, actually, a couple more things. Okay. Communications number five, proposed amendments to Title 19 general signed provisions update. We have Paige Montello, senior planner.

Hello chair, committee members. My name is Paige Monteau, senior planner. I'm here to discuss the update to our sign ordinance and just provide a progress report for this project. So we'll start with the project timeline and an overview of how we got here. This started back in 2024 last year when the land use committee asked us to present our current code and just go over the existing rules and regulations for all sign types.

At that meeting, we were given direction for possible items to explore for some updates and we returned in December with options and ways that we could update the code per the committee's direction as well as regional best practices. With that amendment package, we were directed to go to commission for their consideration which happened in February. The commission was generally in agreement with all amendments but did continue the item and asked staff to return with information specifically on nonconforming signs as well as clarifications on the transparency standards. That happened back in May earlier this month and the item passed so now the item will be tentatively scheduled for a public hearing with the full city council on June 24. As you can see intermittently throughout the lifetime of this project we've also had a number of public information sessions and we will continue to have these public information sessions.

These are for discussing the temporary sign rules and regulations with business owners of what is allowed, what isn't allowed, and how they can obtain a temporary sign permit. We've heard some good feedback at these sessions, mostly a need to have more flexible standards for window signs, a need to differentiate between primary and secondary storefronts, and lastly, a need for a sign handbook. It seems generally folks want to be able to follow the rules. They just need to know what the rules are. So a little bit about what the amendment package actually contains.

So the first is to establish standards for blade signs. Our current code does not have any existing standards or a way to permit blade signs. They're identified in our city design guidelines as an attractive sign type. So this amendment package would introduce some rules and regulations to allow and permit blade signs within the city. The second is a codification of existing design guidelines.

A major limitation of guidelines of any kind is that they're not obligatory and really they're just meant to be met to the fullest extent possible. We have seen though through our research that certain design guidelines can or often are codified amongst our peer cities. So codification of existing design guidelines such as prohibition of exposed raceways, prohibition of cabinet signs, and tenant identification as the primary purpose for wall signs are included in this amendment package. The third is to address nonconforming signs upon change of use or occupancy. This came from the Planning Commission.

They asked us to return with several options to address nonconforming signs. Currently, nonconforming signs can be up until the event of destruction or proposed relocation, expansion, or if the property is abandoned for ninety days. The amendment package will propose to also include nonconforming signs to be addressed and updated to current code standards upon the change of use or occupancy. For example, if a business were to come into a tenant space that has a nonconforming sign, they would be required to update that sign prior to operations. The fourth is a clarification of our window sign standards.

Our code currently has window sign standards however they are not streamlined and not easy to follow or enforce. It's currently one window sign per public entrance at a maximum size of 25% of each window area. We are proposing to streamline that to be 25% of the total window area point blank period. In tandem with that, are also proposing transparency standards. This is to enhance the aesthetic appearance of our street frontage as well as support public safety.

And lastly is a establishment of a creative sign permit. This is to allow for flexibility in the application of our design standard or of our development standards for signs in return for high quality, well designed signs. Our next steps, as I mentioned, is our City Council meeting on June 24. And we are currently working on the sign handbook production and publication. We're in procurement right now with our selected vendor.

Once that agreement is signed and the project kicks off, there's an anticipated timeline of about six months. And we will continue to do these temporary signed public information sessions at different locations across the city to ensure that we're capturing all businesses across Riverside Citywide. And that is it. Staff is available for any questions that you may have.

Thank you for that presentation. And we'll go ahead and ask my committee member if she has any questions.

No questions. Thank you for the update.

Yeah. So I I do have the the establish the creative sign permit process. So this is unique signs that don't kind of fall in but they want a special exemption. How does that work?

Right so this is for really iconic signed proposals that may not fit into the box of our development standards that we have currently. The proposed amendments include specific findings as far as design quality, architectural compatibility and site compatibility. So, the proposal would have to meet all those findings in order to be approved. It's not a simple, I want to break the rules and can I please break the rules?

Maybe if I could add. One of the things that we heard, I'll use an example of downtown, is somebody may have wanted to do an above canopy sign. The location was suitable for that. If they did some creative lighting and location technique, It could have been a really cool sign but our code is very specific about canopy signs and the not allowance of it. And that's because it's hard to apply site standards across the board with different contexts. So this really helps get at some of those site specific locations to yield something that has awesome lighting technique, maybe creative shape and something like that that just doesn't quite fit the box that development standards provide.

Gotcha. And I know feather signs are the bane of some colleagues' existence. And the outreach to businesses on the temporary signs, how's that been going so far?

It's been going really, really great. I think we've had folks come. They're very receptive to listening to the current rules that are on the books. We've gotten good feedback. And like I mentioned, I think generally the consensus is that they're willing to follow the rules, they just need to know what the rules are and hopefully the sign handbook could be a really great tool for that.

Yeah,

think Paige is correct. It has been going well and what we've generally heard is everybody wants to follow the rules, they just don't know what they are. And because maybe there was loose period because of COVID or what have you, they just didn't know something was allowed because they've had it up for years. So one of the things that we are also trying to establish is that communication loop that we're encouraging. We don't want you to purchase something you can't use, so reach out to us.

So putting a face to kind of the code and how they can ask questions about their specific business and what's allowed, I think has also helped. There was a lot of sentiment that they are excited for this sign code handbook, so it could be a little bit clearer about how to translate the code to them.

So

Great. And the the transparency on the windows, the window signs, I I you know, there's a couple of ways that could happen where, you know, I know of, like, for example, gyms. Well, they'll they'll wrap their windows because people want privacy, you know, when they're working out. They don't wanna be having people someone outside staring at them. Is that fall into that, or how how would that fit into, this this window sign code if if someone used essentially wrapped their sign making it solid and and and is a sign that those are windows. How how would that affect does policy affect that?

So as proposed, the code would require that 75% of the window storefront be transparent and be see through. Up to 25% of it can be covered with opaque material including allowable signage.

Okay.

So window signs are tough. Like I said, it's hard to do a one size fits all. And you try to create a standard that might be helpful to everybody but it's not gonna cover everything. So it's either you allow something or you don't allow something. However, the standard is really intended to be able to see through. It still allows for some level of tint so long as you can see through it. Some of that is subjective, it just has to be because how do you say what's see through, what's not. But part of it is are you fulfilling the intent of what the transparency standard and signed code allows.

Okay.

Complete coverage or complete not see through is what it's not allowed by code. If it's something that the council wants us to look at further or change, that's certainly an option when we come to you before the

on the twenty fourth. The because the specific example I'm thinking of is it's two female owned gyms and have they're right on the sidewalk. And so anyone walking by and it's a high traffic area can just stare at a bunch of women working out. Obviously, it's not a great thing to have as a business. And so see, they have the opaque branding. It's very beautiful, very well designed. It's not a bunch of, like as I've seen in other their entire menu of the restaurant is in different stickers on their windows. So I wonder if there's some flexibility there of wording that when you're doing it for that purpose. Yeah. I know. This is tricky stuff.

I'm making a face because that's where we get into a bit of amendment issues. You can't single out one particular use per se. However, we hear the sentiment and if there's some things we can look at with There are ways to still achieve some level of opaqueness with the 25%. They can concentrate it to the center of the window for instance. We can also look at percentages if you wanna increase the percentage above 25%. That's also something that can be explored. But it really has to apply pretty What's the word? It has to apply across the board. It's tough to do with use bytes.

Is is there a way so there is there isn't a way that we can write it to the code that it's up to the there's some discretion allowed? Because I know that's hard. I know that. Looking at the attorney, he doesn't like his discretion. But, yeah, I guess that I because I I can know several businesses are gonna be affected by this negatively and it's I think their business and that the way they're using the window tint is not the intent window intent and intent of the the this new sign code.

Well, and if transparency is something the the council doesn't because of this issue, right? It it honestly, with with signs, it's it's hard because it honestly is all or or none. And that's where we try to get at percentages or things like that to try to accommodate almost everything. And those can be adjusted. So it's not typical in most codes or other codes that we've researched to be that granular about it. I don't even know that we can and I'm kinda looking at the city attorney too.

Well, another example of this is right here on downtown, Community Arts And Culture District wrap around that office building. That allowed?

It's different.

Yeah.

Different. That's really public information messaging versus promotion of a business, right? So we're in two bit different realms or way finding for specific to government entities and things like that. So we're a bit in different space. But the transparency standard is just one that we put forward to address something that the committee raised. If there's a different way you want us to look or do it, we're happy to look and explore.

Maybe I can suggest this is that if the sign if the window signage is part of a cohesive one big sign across many windows versus I think that it's the aesthetics of it. Right? Is that that's what we're trying to trying to accomplish is the aesthetics of having a bunch of stickers, and and this looks really messy. If there's a you can see there's a branded effort to wrap an entire frontage of a building that's part of the, essentially, the architectural style or the the aesthetic of the entire building, or sensitive use cases for privacy doctor's offices. There's there's a thousand different ways you can probably look at this, whereas I I just see there's a lot of there should be a lot of businesses that are gonna be negatively impacted by this.

And so I I I know we can't solve it right here, but maybe we can just discuss it further before council meeting and just think about it a little bit more.

Happy to.

Okay. Alright. Do you have anything else to add? Okay. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm talking too much. Okay. We'll go ahead and move on to item number six. Oscar, you got four minutes.

Four minutes? Sorry. No. No. That's fine. Let's get to it. I don't know if my presentation, it's I know I didn't upload it, so I apologize for that. Miranda, did it again? Okay. I guess we haven't started in four minutes, right?

Just

waiting for the presentation to load. I'm sorry.

Okay. No problem. Is no presentation.

Oh,

there is no presentation? I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Well, maybe I can just go through my talking points if you don't mind.

Well, listen.

Okay. Well, just in case you forgotten my name, it's Oscar, and it's great to be here with you. Now I just wanna start by saying, you know, our built environment has an important role in our communities. And and the theme of of my presentation was Building a Safety Month and building means business. And it's not just a catchy phrase, it emphasizes how safety and economic development go hand in hand. Our division is here to help, you know, not to hinder. We don't say no. We we ask how can we help you. That's my goal. And and this approach allows us to focus on safety, efficiency, and helping projects breakdown break ground.

You know? So let's explore how our mission connects to economic growth. Our mission is built on three pillars, protect, safeguard, and enhance. We protect life and property by enforcing health and building health and safety codes. We safeguard the built environment to ensure buildings are resilient and insurable.

We all know that insurance companies don't like unsafe buildings, so that's important. And we enhance Riverside's quality of life because well built communities attract investment and talent. Safe buildings are the foundation of long term economic growth. I mean, I was in the private sector before construction, before I came into the public sector, so I have a a pretty good understanding of the importance of meeting schedules and getting businesses to open their doors. So and then how do we make this happen?

What what is it the building and safety does? To me, it's not just what we do, it's why we do it. You know, on a day to day operations, we focus on four things. As I mentioned earlier, health, safety, access, and sustainability. And we do more than just review plans and inspections.

We prevent we help prevent fires, structural failures, and barriers that hinder access to the disabled community. Know, and to support growth, we offer pre construction meetings for any project in our residential, especially commercial big projects. I know Bill Riverside was pretty much the key to this where we offer preconstruction meetings with developers, where everybody was involved to help them get to the finish line, address kind of issues ahead of time. We offer next day inspections, you know. 9094% of our inspections were next day.

I mean, we're not perfect. There's always issues with staff, but for the most part, everything was next day. We do express permits. Trade permits are issued the the next day. And we're also doing the over the counter reviews, you know, which that's also gonna streamline our processes and help in our customers.

And we also offer virtual inspections, Of course, we can't do it on something complicated, but reinspection, minor stuff, we do offer that to our developers and it also helps time like we said earlier. Let us focus on more complex and complicated projects. So these services save time, reduce costs and drive progress. Think of it as think of a building permit as a domino. It triggers design, materials are purchased, wages, new homes, businesses and eventually tax revenue.

That's the building and safety effect. On my next slide is I want to look into the cycles that fuel economic opportunity. Safe buildings attract investors and lenders. That's why resilience matters, not just safety, but economic confidence. Safety buildings keep infrastructure reliable, ensuring cost stable and reinvestment flowing.

Last year alone, like Jennifer said yesterday, we issued approximately 6,500 permits supporting jobs, sales and tax revenue. Now our express permits and over the counter reviews will allow us to approve projects under ninety minutes, as I said earlier, giving us a competitive advantage over other cities that are not doing this. So let's see how we sell it. And the next one was about Building and Safety Month. So how do we celebrate Building and Safety Month?

Building and Safety Month has been around since 1980 and it honors the work building and safety professionals do to keep communities safe. And why does this matter? Well, it matters because building codes minimize losses after disasters. They they do save lives and protect investments. You know, the the codes that we enforce are not really slowing things down. You know, we're building a stronger future. Building and safety is not just about regulating the built environment, it's about creating a foundation for economic growth because, you know, a safe city is a is a city where people wanna live, work, and build. Thank you. All on all under four minutes. Right?

Yes. Thank you so I I love that presentation and and conscientiousness to my committee member. We're gonna go ahead and accept that report and close item number six, and the celebration of Building the Safety Month. Items for future consideration. No questions, sorry. Alright. Yep. And that's it for us today. We'll go ahead and close it. Our next meeting is scheduled for July 17 at twenty twenty five at 3PM.