Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good afternoon, everyone. Checking. Checking. Okay. Alright. Good afternoon, everyone. I am councilmember Stephen Robillard, chair of the Economic Development Committee, and I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Go ahead, and we're gonna start with our first item, which is 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.

We have some speaker cards over there. Okay. We have one speaker card in chambers today. And Errol Koschowicz, could we please come up? Yes.

You may. Let's don't have anyone over there. There should be that little outline there, the little tape works. Okay.

Now I've I've talked very highly about this the last years, and it's actually a vendor's list that actually pay vendors. The city of pays vendors. Now this was actually the fourth quarter report, April to June actually of this year. Now if we go down Now the one I'm actually concerned about is

our trash service.

Now the city of Riverside pays Athens trash service $1,300,000 in three months. Now Athens trash services, we gave donations out. You just basically I'm saying is you're basically money laundering money back and forth to each other. We got a lot of problems, guys, and I'll go to the second page because I wanna talk about the second page again. Now I requested public records.

This is the city of Moreno Valley's vendors list. Okay? This is what I'm asking the city of Riverside to do. You have failed to provide information of every vendor that you've hired for the last year. You're in violation of the Public Records Request Act.

I got this back from the city of Moreno Valley. It's highlighted list of vendors the city in excess of 5,000 from 01/01/2025 this year, signed by the city manager of Moreno Valley. And I wanted to go through some of the things that are on there, so I'll go back to the second page. The city of Riverside has failed to give me this information. Look at it.

I can go through it's 18 pages long, city of Moreno Valley. It's millions of dollars now. It's one of 14 pages. 14 pages. I can go down to the bottom page, and it's $208,000,000 of vendors list. Now this is all bribe money. This is all money laundered money, buying votes, buying property, buying everything. And the city of Riverside has failed to give me this list. For over a year, I've been asking for it. Over a year. Okay? And it's gonna get bad, guys. Okay?

Thank you, missus mister Koschowicz. Alright. We have no callers online, and so we'll go ahead and move on to item number two in the presentation section of our section here. So we'll go ahead and move on to Riverside rewards program announcement, small business Saturday.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, honorable chair, members of the economic development committee. We're so excited to be here before you today at the start of the holiday season. It's hard to believe, but here we are getting ready to celebrate the switch on ceremony for festival of lights, Thanksgiving holiday, and most importantly, small business Saturday, is coming up on November 29. Also, a a month long of shopping and celebrating our small businesses here in Riverside.

Currently, right now, we're faced with the challenge of sales tax revenue. We have many of our Riverside residents, also visitors to Festival of Lights with behavior of shopping online. It's hard to top convenience. However, we're here before you today with an exciting new technology based tool that will allow us to incentivize local spending and support our small businesses during the holiday season. We also have the successful shop Riverside campaign. Signage

you've

seen across the town, the printed coupon books, that is a two decade long program, and that program is continuing. We are here before you today sharing a compliment to that program that really is that tech based smart city tool that will be a pilot program. So with that context, I would like to turn it over to Simone Saunders on the economic development team who's done a great job as a lead with this program, getting us to implementation, and she will share more with you about the program.

Thank you so much, Miranda. Alright. Good afternoon, council members. My name is Simone Saunders. I'm a project manager with the city's economic development team, and I'm very excited to introduce our Riverside Rewards program.

Now, as Miranda said, this is a new digital shop local rewards program. It is launching on small business Saturday, which is November 29, and it will be a complement to the Shop Riverside discount card program, which remains available to residents. So let's progress. Alright, so what is the challenge here? Riverside continues to lose retail dollars to online shopping and regional competition.

Of course, that impacts the vitality of our small business community. Many of our small, independently owned and brick and mortar businesses face visibility challenges, and residents often want to support local businesses, but really don't always know where to go. So we need to strengthen our consumer confidence, and need to give residents a reason to choose local over the convenience of online shopping. Riverside Rewards is going to try to tackle these issues by addressing visibility, incentives, and simplicity. Now our solution.

This rewards program is powered by Blue Dot's Open Rewards application and it's going to offer 5% cash back on purchases citywide. On Small Business Saturday, residents who sign up will earn 10% cashback. The city is investing $25,000 rewards pool to support up to 500 participating businesses. These are small, independently owned brick and mortar businesses across all seven wards. For this pilot program, we're excluding chains.

As part of this, we are also launching two citywide seasonal activations. There will be a Riverside Holiday Gift Guide within the application, as well as a Hot Chocolate Trail that's going to feature cafes offering specialty holiday drinks across all wards. So this is going to be a fun, visible, neighborhood focused program. How does it work? It's pretty simple.

You download the app, you shop at a local participating Riverside small business, you upload your receipt into that app, and you earn 5% or 10% cash back. Again, 10% only on launch day. The best part, businesses don't need new systems, they don't need hardware, and they don't need training to participate. Everything is automated within the application. So why does this matter?

Well, it delivers benefits for all. Residents save and discover new local favorites. Small businesses gain visibility, customers, and repeat visitors. And the city tracks the data by ward, which is very exciting to me, business type and spending behavior, strengthening our ED work with measurable outcomes. So there will be actually a digital dashboard that will track all of the purchases.

Here's the results! Blue Dot was developed with the City of Walnut Creek's economic development team and since then has supported over 100 communities across 27 states. You can see that this model has delivered strong outcomes in other California communities, and these ROI numbers come directly from Blue Dot's partner cities. It really shows how these small, targeted incentives can generate large scale local economic impact. What are we going to do?

We're going to launch on November 29, Small Business Saturday, and in December we're going to launch our holiday gift guide and that hot chocolate trail, and that's going to drive visibility across all seven wards during this busiest shopping window of the year. This is going align with the Festival of Lights, and the pilot will continue through March 2026, so it'll give us a full season to evaluate the usage, the reach, and the economic impact. As I said, 5% base reward, 10% launch day reward, users and business caps will be implemented to ensure $25,000 pool will last, and our three month reward expiration is gonna help to circulate the dollars locally. We're gonna have dashboard analytics to track participation, spending, and engagement. Please join us on Small Business Saturday.

We have a robust marketing and outreach strategy to support this launch. We already have a Riverside Rewards landing page. We'll have a combination of digital and printed QR tent codes distributed to these participating businesses. We'll have social media campaigns as well as a newsletter outreach reaching over 20,000 subscribers. Then I'd also like to mention as a second incentive layer, we are collaborating with the chamber on their shop small Riverside program.

That's gonna run from small business Saturday till 12:19. They're gonna host three prize drawings totaling up to three fifty dollars in prizes, and that's gonna encourage residents to shop at any local business, submit their receipt to the chamber for a chance to win. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Simone. That was a great report. I'm gonna look over to my colleague if she has any questions. No. Thank

you. This is incredible. I love it. I'm just I'm was really happy to see the examples of the success for other cities listed. My only question was seeing the program duration. It says here pilot March 2026, conclusion of the initial annual phase. So we're looking to end it in March 2026?

This pilot will end, but we do have an annual contract. So we'll continue to kind of as we evaluate how this pilot does, we'll continue to reevaluate putting more money in the pool and kind of creating more programs around different times of the year.

And since it's annual though, wouldn't it go to the next year of the Festival of Lights? So it kinda seems like a six month pilot then versus a year.

Maybe I didn't clarify. So we have an annual contract, but this pilot will only last for three months.

I see. Okay. I see Miranda.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember Cervantes. It also has to do with the rewards budget. So we're just using, starting with a modest amount of $25,000, smaller than the other examples you had seen on the slide Simone shared of success stories. We really wanna make sure we have strong ROI so we can come back and share the data dashboard and what the reach was and metrics were so we can evaluate expanding that pool of rewards funds if we are to continue with Blue Dot, which

I love that. And that's why I was curious to see the return was, like, how long did it take for them to get that? I assume it was longer than the pilot portion. So I think it's worth it, you know, very much so. And so curious, this wouldn't just be as isolated to the downtown. This is any small business. Oh, love it. This is amazing. Love it. This is we need this. One of my favorite things to do is to give my dollars to our small business community. We literally to keep their doors open here and that's why we are one of the most successful cities to have the most diverse types of small business community here in the region. So really proud of that and I I wanna thank you for your creativity. This is exciting and I look forward to supporting and shopping and giving them my money this holiday season and getting some of these incentives back. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Yes. I think this is the next evolution of our shop shop local or shop Riverside. It needed a digital update, because I never have that thing with me. And, you know, you you always have these, like, arcade coffee roasters as rewards programs, all these different rewards programs that you have out there.

And each one has its own thing, and it's kinda hard to kind of keep track of which is which. And I think this is a great way to open all businesses. It's a very low barrier of entry for the businesses because I know it's like pulling teeth, to get businesses participate sometimes. But I really think that businesses will see the value of this. And, I just, I would ask that you guys send the marketing materials to us so that we can send it out to our, constituents.

And, we're hosting a sweet moments in Midtown, very soon here and having QR codes and downloadables and little flyers and pamphlets and all the things so that we can get people to download this app and, participate and also get the businesses to participate. It's it's so hard to reach out to our business community, especially the small businesses out there. So if we can do our you know, we all have our connections with our local businesses, so reach out to our offices. We'll we'll send it out to them, make sure they participate. But, I definitely think this is an innovative way to bring those sales tax dollars back to our city and continue to grow that.

Agreed. I just wanna add to y'all to the marketing pit space. We'd love to see us, of course, make sure we can really push this out, especially ramping up going into the holidays so that we could hopefully see our our ROI be higher. And I was gonna encourage too just collaborating. You know, we have some really good, like, Mark from Riverside and, like, even, like, what's up in Riverside, like, some Instagram pages that have really, really good followings, seeing if we can collaborate with any of them to really push to get the word out. And curious if because I know it I was really like, can I download the app now? Is it ready to go? What even is there a way that, in the app system, could it be tied to our three one one app? You know, like, leads and takes you there so just people have a direct connection. So just trying to find any shortcuts, but I agree with you entirely, council member. I I never can get my, like, free, you know, threading of my eyebrows because I never bring my stamp card. So Right.

And so if we're we can have this as, you

know, digitalized as possible. I think we're gonna see it maximized. So I I totally just I love it. Thanks for the creativity and whatever we could do to echo on the marketing. Let's let's get the word out.

Thank you so much. I will definitely share those materials.

Alright. Thank you. Alright. We'll go ahead and move on to item number three, is our workforce development section, strategic initiatives, and next steps featuring Randy Solis and Michelle Davis.

You. Will give a brief introduction before we turn it over to mister Solis. In Q2 of this year, we were very proud to add workforce development to economic development. We have our five areas of excellence that we're all familiar with, but really the key piece of that is workforce development. And so we're before the committee today in response to a thoughtful referral that we received from the committee and really giving an overview on since Q2 what we have been up to when it comes to workforce development and the work we are engaging with as we move toward the future.

We're very happy to have Randy on the team and his talents and expertise he's contributed. And having that workforce development focus just really rounds out our areas of excellence and defines sustainable growth for us in the future of Riverside. So with that, I will turn it over to Randy who will give the presentation.

Thank you, Miranda. Good afternoon, Chair Rovalard, committee members. I am Randy Solis, and I proudly serve as the workforce development officer for the city of Riverside. And today, I'm excited to present our strategic initiatives and next steps for workforce development here in our lovely city of Riverside. Over the past few months, we've been working diligently to analyze our economic landscape, identify gaps, and build roadmaps for the future.

My goal today is to walk you through our mission and critical partnerships, both local and national, that will help build a resilient workforce for the future. So everything we do is grounded in a clear mission. As you can see on the screen, our objective is to empower individuals across our diverse communities with the skills, opportunities, and support needed to thrive in a dynamic economy. This isn't just about filling open jobs. It's about three core pillars.

Inclusivity, we are committed to ensuring that economic growth reaches every corner of Riverside. Resilience, we need a workforce that can adapt to industries shifting. And innovation, we are moving away from reactive hiring to proactive lifelong learning models. We want to ensure that a student graduating in Riverside today has a clear unobstructed pathway to career in Riverside tomorrow. Now, to be effective, we cannot be everything to everyone.

We must focus on regional strengths. We have identified our five areas of excellence where Riverside has a competitive advantage and we will be laser focused on these sectors and the career opportunities they bring to Riverside. These five pillars form the foundation of our training programs and employer outreach. To improve our performance, we are focusing on our five areas of excellence. We are making decisions based on real data regarding local talent trends and current job demands.

To reach more people, we are mapping out available resources and finding new partners. We are also reviewing our current operations to see where we can improve. Finally, we are building the future by finding new ways to recruit talent and ensuring our resources last for the long term. Now, no single entity can solve workforce challenges alone. We are leveraging a collaborative approach, bringing together public, private and academic partners.

Currently, we are focusing on three strategic partnerships. One, the Harvard Project on Workforce for world class data and policy research, which includes the Workforce Almanac, an interactive virtual mapping system of workforce entities. Two, the Sunstone Economic Challenge at the University of Southern California for research and data analytics, policy recommendations, business attraction methods, and job creation and finally, three, the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce task force on local talent retention for local stakeholders, engagement, and retention strategies. Now let's dive into those a little deeper. The Harvard Project on Workforce is an interdisciplinary collaborative project between the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Social Policy, the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work project, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Our collaboration with Harvard Project on Workforce is a game changer. We are utilizing their Workforce Almanac research to develop our workforce ecosystem mapping project through shared databases and resources. Our collaboration with the I'm sorry, Harvard is leading the charge nationally in workforce development, looking at economic mobility through a rigorous academic lens. Future collaboration with Harvard will help us identify the friction points connecting education systems with employer needs, ensuring our decisions are based on data, not just intuition. Now before we can build, we have to understand what already exists.

We are currently in a deep discovery phase. We are conducting a comprehensive inventory of the current workforce ecosystem. This involves mapping every agency, nonprofit, and educational program currently offering workforce development services in the city to ensure we aren't duplicating efforts. In the map displayed on your screen, data layers from the Harvard Workforce Almanac have been used. With help from our GIS team, we are building an interactive map that can be utilized for our business attraction efforts along with helping individuals who are interested in learning about workforce resources available to them within the city and surrounding region.

Next is our partnership with the Sunstone Cities and the USC Price School of Public Policy. This is the Sunstone Economic Challenge. This year, the city of Riverside was one of seven agencies selected as a client partner for the Sunstone Economic Challenge through a competitive application process. The initiative brings bright graduate students to act as consultants for our city. They provide high level research and analysis focusing on economic development.

Top team proposals from the Sunstone Economic Challenge win a cash prize after their pitch competition in April. This partnership gives us free, high level research, data analytics analytics and consulting, and it showcases Riverside as a prime destination for top tier talent and investment. This program is made possible by Sunstone Community Fund, USC's Sole Price School of Public Policy and the City County Management Fellowship. Now while Harvard and USC provide the macro view, we need a micro view. That is where the Riverside Task Force comes in.

This guiding principle the guiding principle here is simple: keep local talent local. We are convening a series of 10 strategic meetings between September and November, bringing K-twelve leadership, higher education leaders, public sector agencies, and private sector CEOs into the same room. The team's goal is to produce a final report with concrete policy recommendations for the mayor and city management to consider ways to stop the brain drain and keep our graduates here in Riverside. So what does the timeline look like? Before you, we have a flexible schedule of benchmarks that we are striving toward and are currently on schedule to meet.

We are wrapping up the initial workforce inventory and resource mapping and plan to complete it by the end of this month with a soft launch of the online map in the 2026. Additionally, the Chamber's think tank group for retaining local talent will conclude their meeting early next month with a draft policy providing recommendations submitted by the end of the year or in the 2026. Next, the work by the Sunstone Economic Challenge teams begin in early twenty twenty six. Teams are currently developing their proposals and client partners will select their teams by the end of the year. Once teams are selected, they will begin their work based on the scope of services agency submitted in their initial proposals.

Some of these items include analysis of workforce needs, trends, top jobs and requirements, analysis of best regional practices for hiring incentives of local talent, and finally, a study where Riverside residents are working and what jobs they have and who is commuting to Riverside for work and what type of professions they're in. Finally, the city is working with Accelerator for America to synthesize all data, research, and information gathered from these efforts to develop an inclusive department action plan for implementation. And this concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time and leadership. We believe the strategic framework positions Riverside to lead the region in workforce innovation.

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the specific initiatives in this presentation.

Thank you for that presentation. I'll go ahead and reach over to my colleague here.

Yes, no, thank you. I mean, this is fantastic. My favorite part was looking at the last slide and just seeing all of the university logos and partners laid out. I think it's a testament to show the collaboration here to make this reality. Only logo I didn't see, and I was curious, is where does labor come into the discussion for our local Inland Empire Labor Council and Riverside Building and Trades?

Yeah. So that's have had these are just highlighting the major strategic partners that we have, but there have been extensive meetings with labor groups. Inland Empire Labor Institute is the one, for example.

Great.

Yes, I have been pounding the pavement and making as many connections and partnerships at every institution here. So at this point in time, I've made it to every single campus. I'm kind of learning. With the larger institutions, UCR for example, their career services, each of the school have their own liaisons. So finding out who the correct players are has been kind of the initial challenge, but a lot of great contacts and collaboration efforts have been made.

I love it. So the premise then is that after having a lot of these, like, input sessions and looking at getting getting it all put together. I wanna just say I really appreciate the breakdown of the quarters and kinda what the meetings look like because often we you know, people are like, what's moving? What does it look? What are what's even happening? And I feel like you did a just a really great job cut putting it all in one place to lay out what this is what it takes to actually have and to lay out these type of plans. I saw that it does say at the end to come back to council mayor. So, what is the hope or intent for us to be able to give further input on or to take action on anything?

Yeah, that's really the goal. What I have learned in a very short period of time is workforce development is an ocean and there's been days where I felt like I'm out there on a rowboat, rowing my way through this ocean with waves. But what I'm trying to do is in a very digestible way break down who those partners are, what are the recommendations, what are best practices, becoming the workforce development officer, then like I said, learning from others examples.

I love it. I read a quote literally yesterday that I loved and I hope I get it It said, I want to be like the ocean. I want to be able to slip through people's fingers and also hold up a ship. And so, I just want to say that what I hear right now being put together is the power of holding up a ship and like this workforce, this space here in our sector. I love that analogy. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for your hard work. This isn't easy and it's hard to get all those right people to the table so I commend you for doing that and learning who these key people are so we can get decisions and start guiding these conversations. So commend your hard work and look forward to coming to council in the future.

Thank you. Thank you. And if we look at the back of the room right now, Angel Sanchez, he is our workforce development board for the state of California and also is leading the way when it comes to the narrow diverse workforce and how we implement them and then integrate them into our, companies regionally and across the state. So would be a resource, I think. The Phoenix gateway would be we'll be talking about a little bit later today. Would be a resource for this workforce development piece. Thank you for that. I I understand the ocean that you're in. We've been trying to do this. My office has been trying to, we became aware of this need, very early on as a city council member.

And what is setting us apart from a lot of our cities in our region is our tremendous talent pool of work work work age related, adults who are, median age in Riverside is 33.

Mhmm.

And we talk about all the institutions of learning that we have in the city. These companies are blown away by that. But it doesn't mean anything if we can't connect the dots. And I think that's what we're trying to do here is connect the dots between the institutions and the employers and making sure that we have that talent pipeline coming through. Very, very excited about where this is going.

This is just first steps, but, continue to rely on my office and the council members' offices because we are having these conversations with our these partners, all these partners you mentioned with. We talk to all these people as well, and it's about who you know. And it's always been my vision to have the city be the connective tissue between the institutions and the work and the companies who need to find these employees. A lot of these, especially kids, have no ideas no idea what jobs are out there. They don't know that this is a is a possibility for them they can aim for.

Mhmm.

And if the earlier we can get in that phase of saying, hey. These are all these jobs that are available to you in your city, I think it'll be go a long way to kind of getting these career paths started early versus wait until later in life to figure out what they're gonna do. So thank you for this. We'll be talking more about it, I'm sure, but, thank you for the work so far.

Great. Thank you.

Alright. We'll go ahead and move to item number four, which is the tenant improvement innovation program tip. Update, long time coming. Very, very excited to get the updates on this, and we'll have Miranda again go ahead and kick off this item.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, honorable chair, members of the economic development committee. It's a pleasure to be here today to kick off to councilmember Robillard's point this long time coming discussion about strengthening the tenant improvement process as part of our broader streamline Riverside initiative. This item returns to you in response to the committee's referral, taking a deeper look at how tenant improvements are experienced by businesses, and importantly, how we can make that process more predictable, efficient, and supportive of the economic growth we are working to promote. As you know, a smooth and timely tenant improvement process is often the difference between a business opening its doors on time, on schedule, or facing costly delays.

When we eliminate challenges, we remove barriers to investment and promote job creation and local entrepreneurship. So since we received the referral over the past several months, staff's been working diligently to map the existing process, identify challenges, and explore opportunities to better align our regulations and processes with our economic development goals. That work brings us to today's presentation. Team restaurants that we're working to incentivize and promote. This team has has collaborated closely to examine how we can deliver a more seamless, business friendly experience while maintaining the health, safety, and environmental standards that our community relies on us for.

Whether you're a bookstore, barbershop, or brewery, or any other business for that matter, our goal is that Riverside is known as the most business friendly city, the city of choice when it comes to opening your business and making an investment in our community. We are the community where entrepreneurs come, where they choose to turn their dreams into action. The ease at which they can navigate the permitting and tenant improvement process is a direct indicator of our economic When the path to opening is clear and efficient, investment increases, jobs are created sooner, and our commercial corridors can thrive. That's why it's critical we minimize delay and reduce unnecessary challenges throughout the process. The faster we help them move from concept to construction to opening day and their ribbon cutting, the faster they can begin serving customers, hiring local, and contributing to growth in Riverside.

We also need to ensure we address delay, unexpected cost, and frustration so that we reduce that and address common issues when it comes to the permitting and entitlement process. So in preparation for today's presentation before you, staff diligently met with a barbershop, coffee shops, small restaurants, and even an office to hear diverse perspectives from several different business types. And this slide summarizes the nature of their feedback, which largely included items we already know and are working to address through continuing to build upon and continuously improve our Streamline Riverside efforts. Businesses expressed a need for clearer guidance and having predictable timelines when they go through the permitting process, a desire for stronger communication, hearing back from the city, and interdepartmental coordination, hoping that whether you get comments back from building or planning or environmental compliance that all of those are working together and the applicant has a clear direction and path forward so they know the time it will take to open and the amount of funds they will need to be able to put up front to open. Also, the importance of consistent interpretation of codes.

Those are some of the key pieces we received in hearing from the business community. Now it's my pleasure to turn it over to Edgardo Caldera, Caldera, Principal Planner, who will speak about the process.

Thank you, Miranda. Good afternoon, Chairman, members of the committee. So this first slide just serves to a graphic representation of the tender improvement review process that we have right now. So the first step is the application and plans are submitted to the building safety department via our portal or in person at the one stop shop. Side note, currently, about 90% of these submissions occur through the online portal, so we get very little walk ins or in person submittals.

So just wanted to make a note of that. Once the building technicians check a building application for completeness, it goes to the next step, which is forwarding the plans and applications to the planning clearance process. And I also want to make a side note on this, that in most cases, business owners, applicants do due diligence and check-in with planning before submitting any sort of TIs. So just wanted to point that out as well. Once the planning clearance occurs, the plans then go and get routed to the various departments for concurrent review.

Review times vary depending on the scope of work and can take up to twenty business days to get that first round of corrections with subsequent resubmittals taking about half the time, five five to ten business days. Ultimately, I would like to point out that the overall review time is really contingent on the amount of resubmittals as well as the turnaround time it takes for an applicant to resubmit something. So once review and approval of the plans is completed, building permits are issued, inspections occur according to the progression of construction, of course. And once the building inspector issues final occupancy, of course, the building the business is able to operate at that point. Okay.

And in the next few slides, each department will be going over common challenges as it relates to tender improvements, starting with the planning division. So late identification of site and land use issues. So with this challenge, early coordination is key. As mentioned earlier, the majority of in the majority of cases, businesses complete their due diligence and conduct a land use check prior to submitting any sort of plans. But to further offset this challenge, planning staff ensures that all land use requirements are clearly relayed early on in the process whenever an inquiry comes in at the counter or over the phone or email.

In the rare instances when a business requiring additional review does move forward without this process or without this step, staff works closely with them to find solutions and employee streamlined options, such as offering concurrent plan check review, whether entitlements are being processed, as well as offering expedited review for resubmittals. Complex entitlement and zoning processes. So staff is always looking to further streamline use approvals wherever it's possible. So taking a discretionary review process, which requires a public hearing, as you well know, to a ministerial process, or even allowing a use by right in the appropriate zones. Also, as part of the Streamline Riverside Initiative, we're working on updating the Streamline Development Review Committee to more effectively process those entitlements that we do have to process.

And lastly, another challenge is dated code requirements for certain uses. So to offset this, we've done what we've been doing and continue to do is regularly reviewing and updating our zoning code. This is based on feedback from the business community, of course, as well as effective processes that might be in practice in other jurisdictions and reviewing those to see if we could implement those for our city. But with that, I will turn it over to Oscar Macias, our buildings official.

Good afternoon, community members. Nice to see you again, twice in one week. Alright? Alright. Let's get to my slide.

Now, before I get into my slide, as I said before, I've been in the public sector for about twenty one years within building and safety. And I've been blessed and fortunate to be in different roles, different disciplines from home counter, inspector, plan review. And that's why as a building official, I see my department as a as a facilitator, a partner with the community in economic development, which are key to our growth. Now whether it's helping a small business open a storefront or assisting a major commercial renovation, our mission is to make the permitting and inspection process as smooth, predictable, and supportive as possible. Building and safety is often seen as the technical side of the development.

But our department is also in service. We serve the community. Once a project receives planning approval like Eduardo mentioned, we step in to guide the applicant or the developer through the permitting process and inspection process. We work to ensure that projects are not only safe and compliant, but also deliver efficiently with minimal disruption to business timelines. We understand that many first time business owners navigating the building codes and the permitting process can be intimidating, which is why we focus on education, communication, and partnership, helping applicants move forward with confidence.

Now, based on my experience, one of the most frequent delays that we see in tenant improvement submissions is missing details such as egress, accessibility, features, structural, and sometimes just minor information whether it's the wrong city, the wrong address, codes from the 1990s. I mean, things that are important, maybe not to the applicant, but for the permanent record we need to have right information. All these things can lead to delays and multiple rounds of revisions. It slows down the progress and it costs them money because time is money and we know that. I can tell you from experience that a high quality set of plans is more than just a technical requirement.

It is a business asset. It reduces redesigns, it keeps projects on track, And it increases the likelihood of first round approvals. Now, like I said, I also spent a few years on inspection. And I know that inspections are sometimes viewed as a barrier to progress. But in reality, I can assure you that they actually safeguard. You know, they keep property safe and the community safe. We protect the community and the business owner's investment because ultimately that's you're doing. When you're starting your business, you're investing in something. Not just in the community, but you're investing in yourself. So we help protect those investments as well.

Like I said, a well executed inspection catches small issues before they become costly repairs. Ensure systems are installed correctly and identifies potential issues early. It helps them avoid costly repairs down the line. In other words, the permitting and inspection process is more than just a cost to endure. It is an investment in safety, quality, and long term value.

So now let's go into what we're doing to help with some of these issues. Our goal is to make the permitting process more predictable, supportive, and easy to navigate. You may ask, well, how are you doing this? Well, I'm going tell you right now. We're actively implementing tools and services that make the permitting process more predictable, transparent, and business friendly.

Now, here are some of the few initiatives that I know are already making a difference. First one, we have the pre design consultations. Early meetings to clarify requirements thereby reducing cost and surprises later. I know from my years even in construction before I came to the public sector, those pre construction meetings and pre consultations are so important to just address the niches ahead of time. The next one is QR code appointments.

We have a QR that the public can use to schedule appointments through Outlook calendar with any building and safety member whether it's the front counter, plan check, or inspectors. If they have any concerns, issues with a project, they can meet face to face with that person and discuss any concerns or corrections that they may not understand. The next one that we have is expedited review pathways. These are priority lanes for projects to fast track their timelines. Of course, there's a cost to it, but it's available to anyone that's willing to pay for the expedited review.

And it costs, well, in reality, it's gonna cut down your review time from twenty days to maybe five or seven. The next one is over the counter reviews. I know this is something that we talked about before but these are quick approvals for rechecks when prior comments are already resolved. So, going back to the appointment based system, if you have a recheck and the plan checker knows that it can be reviewed within an hour, that person can bring in their pre submittal and it can be approved over the counter. It's also available for other minor projects.

The other one is self certification which we presented just a few weeks ago. Qualified professionals can certify their own plans and bypass the technical review process which also cuts down their timeline in just a few days from 20 to probably less than five. The next one is temporary certificate of occupancy. Allows businesses to open when only minor corrections remain. We just did that with Das Brothers today.

Had some public works issues. They were okay with the occupancy and they're gonna open tomorrow. You know? So that's just a testament to some of the things that we're doing to help businesses open the doors and, you know, contribute to the economy. The last one is we're exploring AI assisted plant screening.

What it is, it's just a compliance tool that can check the plants before they get formally submitted to Building and Safety. And it's a different platform. It doesn't integrate with POSI or permitting software. But it would point out all the deficiencies and gets them up to like 75% before they formally submit. So that will eliminate a lot of the back and forth, and it will get us a, you know, fairly complete set of plans. And with that, I would like to introduce Deb Lores, deputy fire marshal, who will talk about fire prevention streamline strategies.

Good evening, council members. Good evening. I'm David Lores, deputy fire marshal. To piggyback on building and safety, we work hand in hand with building and safety on the fire side of things. We do have a lot of the same programs in place as building and safety when it comes to some of the challenges, plans not being submitted to completeness, or details being left out, which caused a lot of this back and forth.

And to solve a lot of those issues, we too offer free consultations with the business owners or building owners to come in, review their projects, get them all the information that they need prior to submitting. We also do offer the expedited plan review as well. We do have guidance material handouts that we do offer. It's on our fire website that we can guide them, give them direction. And a lot of that information helps them to put into their plans so they know what they need to do ahead of time and what our requirements are that we're looking for.

We also offer pre designed construction meetings, or pre con meetings as well. Whether it's on-site or during a construction phase, we go out and try to solve issues that arise out in the field to help expedite these changes that do come in. And a lot of the times, we can make these corrections in the field and wait for Asbos to come in at a later time just to keep the project moving forward. That's it on our part with fire. I'll pass it over to Edward of Philadelphia with Public Works.

Good afternoon. My name is Edward Philadelphia. I'm actually the Deputy Director of the Wastewater Division. And I'm here to talk about grease interceptors, which is probably, from the perspective of business development, we're actually probably a small part, but we're probably almost probably the biggest pain for some of the businesses. And let's see here.

So with public works, when downtown makes a determination or they look at it and they know that they most likely might need to have a grease interceptor, it gets handed off down to our environmental compliance department. And they provide them with the information that's needed. We do have standard plans and designs to help speed the process along of selecting the grease interceptors. But there's two pathways that go down. There's the pathway where the business comes in and they're identified during the planned development stage.

Those go a lot smoother moving forward. Where we do have a lot of the problems is that when businesses that come in maybe after the fact, or it's a late discovery of grease control or pretreatment needs. And unfortunately for the wastewater division, our regulations are actually driven by state regulations and by a permit. So we have a regulatory compliance that sits on top of this of certain things that we have to do. And one of these items here is our FOG program, which is fats, oils, and grease, which we're required to try to pull out of our collection system.

The grease interceptors are a very important tool for us to move those out. So with that being said, we try to streamline and make things as easy as possible for customers. Especially when it comes in, pre application consultations, we have staff that comes in and will meet with the businesses and work with them in trying to get the right system put in. Also make the determination if they actually do need a grease interceptor or if they're able to not have one. And we'll also give suggestions to them that will kind of push them away from having to have one, and there are certain things they could do in the way that they operate their business in order to not be required to have a grease interceptor.

The plan reviews happen at the same time as the rest of their businesses when they're moving through. As I mentioned, we do have standardized forms that we use. We have published criteria that we provide for them on the acceptable grease interceptors. And then there's cross training between downtown and our EC department section on how to do these reviews and stuff or directing them towards us so that we know that's coming. And then there's the case by case solutions that we have to deal with that pop up periodically.

And looking at the business interests and trying to help them along. And one of the major things that I think that's kind of different that we already do, back in 2010, we started the sewer benefit program, but grease interceptors weren't included in that. And we started to recognize as our developed our FOG program that we needed some kind of program to help out on the grease interceptors because a lot of these requirements are going on to small businesses and grease interceptors are 20,000 to $40,000 They can go up as high as $80,000 depending on how complex the system comes in. So we went back to City Council, and in 2015, we asked if we could include grease interceptors in the sewer benefit program, which basically allows us, once they install the grease interceptor, that we'll reimburse them up to 50% of their costs that they put in. And it isn't uncommon that I approve $20,000 30,040 thousand dollars checks for these businesses that put the grease interceptors in under this program.

And we look at this as a really good program, we do offer it to them, especially in the part of the consultations and stuff when we move forward with it. The success of the program is there. It's been seen. Since 2011, we've seen a 80% reduction in sanitary sewer overflows. Most sanitary sewer overflows are usually caused by fog.

Fog is kind of, it looks like, if I brought a picture for you to show you, kinda looks like cholesterol in an artery is what it looks like. And builds up and it basically causes sanitary sewer overflow. So with that, some of the common challenges is, as I mentioned earlier, grease interceptors, the upfront costs. Some are very complex installations. If it's new construction, it's designed in.

If it's leasehold improvements and the restaurant coming in that's bringing in something that requires it, they can get a little more complex. We have had to address issues there. We do have a zero lot policy for downtown for grease interceptors that kind of moves away from the traditional in ground grease interceptors. We partnered with the county in coming up with a program that allow, that the county on the health department side would allow a grease interceptor inside. So with that, the limited awareness of the program, it is on our website.

Generally, the EC inspectors, when they see a grease center service required, they will tell them about it and hand them the brochure that we have on it or send them to the website. And that's pretty much all that I have right now. And I guess I'll go ahead and do the closeout. So the recommendation here is that the Economic Development Committee receive and file the Tenant Improvement Program report. So I guess we're all opened up for questions right now.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the reports. And I'm sure we'll have some questions for you guys. I'll have a colleague give her a minute here.

I just had a brief comment about the grease type interceptors. One of the things we're noticing, and this is a particular case, is that the on these older buildings that are looking to retrofit to install a grease trap interceptors, especially in ground grease trap interceptor, The location near or around the building is very difficult because they're attached to neighboring buildings, access to the alley, or access to the back. And in this case, the parking lot is owned by a separate property owner. That's and where he had to install his grease interceptor. And so then he had to, like, negotiate with the property owner of the parking lot.

Hey. Can I have my grease interceptor here? And the first one was yes. And so they're moving forward. And they go to the property and said, oh, wait. Never mind. I want you to lease that for me for $2,000 a month. And he said, no way. And then now they're in a property dispute all over this grease shop interceptor, which needs to go in. And they're now he's gonna have a they're looking to purchase and carve out a tiny little piece of this parking lot so they could have his grease receptor interceptor in there.

And I know that there's state regulations and everything else about that, but I think we need to be mindful of the these older buildings that are attached, especially where you have limited access to put it in outside of the building footprint to put a grease shop interceptor, an in ground one. And what options do customers have or businesses have of above ground interceptors?

Okay. So with that, that requires us to do some coordination with the county. Okay. Because they have their own specific regulation about above ground grease interceptors. The kind of our relationship is theirs is that the county wants to protect the health of the people going into the restaurant. And our job is to protect our in ground assets, is the collection system.

And

from our perspective, long as we're able to pull that grease out, we really don't care where it comes in, but we have this balancing act. One of the things that is explored options with the county. It was a while ago and that's how we came up with the zero lot policy where the county would sign off on their health permit with a mechanical grease interceptor. And there's one that's been installed and it's downtown in area. We're going down the point of a case by case business.

Your particular incident there, this is the first time I've heard of it. I don't know if it was communicated to anybody in my staff that

there's this Yeah. It wasn't just because of timing.

Okay.

They're like, we're already move they already started their construction of the renovation, and then the property adjacent property owner said, hey. Wait. Never mind. It's too late. He already has the his staff on on leave while he's doing all this work. I he's like, he can't change plans now. He's trying to bring back the staff as soon as possible. And so he's that's not your fault. That's you know?

Well, I wasn't it's just that that this falls under what I call the case by the case by case scenario. And generally, how these things happen here is staff will come across it and it gets elevated up to the manager or even comes up to me where it comes in to make a decision trying to figure out the solution to help the business, help us comply with what our needs are and also help them get their business. I think a program that we should probably try to do is that there are places that probably aren't suitable for restaurants that produce a lot of grease and fat. We should probably try to identify those and help them locate to a location that's more suitable for what we need them to do and also gives them the lowest cost installation to come in. But like I did say is that I am gonna be starting in the beginning of the year.

I'm gonna engage the county and try to press on them what other solutions there is. The only problem with above mechanical grease interceptors is sometimes they have odor issues. And sometimes the restaurants don't discover that till after the fact.

Yeah. And and I guess one of the, you know, the the common case I hear all the time is coffee shops that are required to put these in ground interceptors in, and they produce such little fat and grease that it's it's like putting a it's a huge, huge it can handle a lot more grease than these these coffee make these coffee shops are creating. And so that I I and oftentimes coffee shops are try are very, very low cost in most ways to get started, and that one piece blows it out of the water for most of these coffee shops to get started. And so is there any kind of solution that we have for these really, really low grease producers?

We can look at those.

Okay. So I I like, I just I think in particular, we can have a coffee shop specific

Mhmm.

Ordinance or working with the county about the grease interceptor piece because I think that is a very, very common thing that we see and it'll come up again, I'm sure.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, so the key on the grease interceptors is we have to expand our relationship with the county and satisfy their needs and also satisfy our needs. Yeah. And, you know, the in ground grease interceptors, they're the lowest maintenance. They don't cause a lot of issues and they work very, very well. That's why they're probably the preferred technology to go put in. But on the flip side, they are expensive.

Yeah, thank you. Yes,

thank you so much. Now, this is a really great presentation. There's a lot in here to unpack honestly. So, I'll be quick. I just had a couple questions and areas for us to consider and look at. One I actually wanted to ask about and I think this would probably be for you for Public Works. I've actually had some businesses reach out that are in sometimes shopping centers, and they share that they're and and this is where I don't know where gets a little complicated on where where our role is, but with trash, trash pickup. I've heard variety of complaints whether it's trash overflow, not having it be frequent enough, and they were not knowing again, do we call the city to report this? Do we go because then they try to go to the business owner. They're not getting right the proper response or they're not getting a response they really like, but that it does impact their business or they're being told they're gonna be cited.

So, I just don't know what that looks like. How do we monitor or manage something when it comes to trash for businesses that are having a contract with shopping centers but then they're not being compliant? I don't know if it's something we could look into if we haven't.

I can discuss that with Christy.

That would be great.

Okay. Because those are franchise, the commercial, they get to pick who they do their trash pickup from. Right. And so, if the contracts aren't being honored, that's something that Christy could probably step in and take a look at.

Yeah. It sounds like what I'm mainly hearing, and it's varied from different shopping center communities, the ones I'm talking about mainly are WAR two that have raised some of these issues to me. It's just mainly hearing that they've raised it. Either there needs to be more pickup, but those folks are telling them, you know, well, you need to pay more if you need this, but they're like, that's not in my contract. So it's very odd, so I don't know where we have to step in as a city for situations like that. Or what I've heard too is that they're not it wasn't in their initial contract as a lessee to have to pay that it was being absorbed by the shopping center but then now they're being told no, it's an added cost, you do have to pay. So it's like how do we again make sure that we're where our role is in that space? And so, but mainly my thing is just sanitation in terms of the shopping center and Well, the communities around

bigger picture with that is that the trash, if there's trash flowing out, it becomes a storm water issue and that's the city's problem.

Yep, absolutely. So, yeah, it's a variety of things that come up front. So, that was one. I just wanna flag if we can look into that, that'd be great. The other one I wanted to ask about, and this is one, I saw Michelle Davis here, think she might have left. It's unique too, I didn't see it in the presentation, but one recent call we've been getting from small business and private property owners is about encampments or unhoused people on their properties, and the city is saying, we cannot go on your property to do this clearing, and they're being cited and fined. I'll be very frank. That's our job. Like, I I don't like getting calls and being told our hands are tied. You know, these businesses shouldn't have to be paying out of pocket hundreds or if not thousands of dollars, which we've had some calls with those situations to try to clear encampments.

And so this is something I actually I have somebody because I wanted to bring in housing and homelessness, it's, like, it's related to economic development committee and kinda feel like this is part of like, so I don't know if this portion with this tenant, you know, this whole presentation should come to that committee where we could then discuss that item. But just wanna share that's a really important piece that it's come up in several constituent calls and cases the last couple like, two, three months we've received, and we we need to figure out a solution and what that looks like. So wanted to flag that. And then the last thing, I did wanna ask our fire marshal to come up really quick. Had a I had a quick question.

Just for clarification, I'm I feel like what I heard from you was it sounds like we made improvements in this because one of the other biggest calls of complaints I've received mainly from, I feel like, the restaurant spaces and sometimes it's been other types of small business owners, but has been that when and and not I'm not you know, I don't know who they're talking about. I'm not gonna name names or anything. And I don't know if I'll be frank. I've though there's been some retirement or shifts in the department too, so I don't know if these folks are even here. But I've heard of when they're having to come out to do the reviews as you said.

I appreciate your comments saying that if something comes up there, we're gonna address it. We're not gonna, like, come back out again because that's what I've heard is that folks someone comes out, you know, looks at one or two items that they need to review, but then is like, oh, this is something here. And then they say, well, can you address it now? And they said, no. You have to book another appointment again. And that delays the time. And then every time something's delayed, that's a cost to the business for for them to usually get their doors open or reopen. So could you speak to what that has maybe been in the past? Maybe that's what led to the correction or how we're improving those kind of concerns?

Yeah, so those have been past practices and a lot of that had to do with staffing levels at the time and staff being able to have the knowledge and the ability to do stuff like that in the field. Our staffing levels have come up since. We have more qualified staff now that can work the field on the construction side of things to where they can make these calls out in the field and be more proactive and try to remedy these situations prior to only doing one or two and then say hey, gotta make another appointment and come back. So we're trying to do our part and help the customer out to the best of our ability and what we can provide. But there are some things that do have to come back unfortunately because it could be bigger than what is actually that they're looking at in the field.

It may require additional review or plans and code requirements to look at. So

I appreciate that. And that was gonna be my last question to almost, like, every department, or I don't know if Jennifer speaks at Boaz is are you truly staffed, and do you have the support that you need? Because I think that is what I've understood has been the biggest Oscar shaking his head. No. I knew it. Because I and that's it's okay. I want the honesty. And by the way, Oscar, I like your sweater. I I just wanna share that that to me is what I hear. It's that's where I think the the main challenge comes from then is the staffing.

Right? Because the the demand is there, but we can't service the need and meet meet the need of how many requests coming in to then keep that window on the first slide that we had under maybe like a thirty day period. So I just wanna share that if there's anything we need to do to really make sure that we can meet that need, that is how we're gonna ultimately successful with this whole this this wonderful changes because we could we could figure out how to make improvements, but if the staffing is still not there, and those who, again, are I think bring coming in with great expertise, I I think we're gonna still hit a little bit of wall. So let us know truthfully. I'd love in the future. I don't know what's coming to council, but if there are recommendations that need to be included to say increasing staffing in some of these areas, I would be happy to support that. So thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. So we'll go ahead and move on to number five, which is our foreign direct investment update, the Italy EcoMundo. Ciao. Ciao.

Thank

you so much. Mister chair and members of the committee, I was able to attend Eco Mundo twenty twenty five. This is the premier international conference for the green and circular economy. It brings together industry leaders, innovators, policy makers, as well as international delegations, which I was lucky to be a part of. And this really comes out of our work that we started at SelectUSA.

We made some great connections there and we were invited to attend this wonderful event. What makes it so interesting for a city like us is they pay for us to go and meet with these companies. And so it really gives the city a unique opportunity to go into a space where these companies are. We were the only representatives from California there. Funny enough though, I met an Australian company that I'll talk a little bit about that is doing work in Orange County.

So I had to go all the way to Italy to meet a company from Australia doing work in Orange County. Go figure. So let me tell you a little bit of what was happening here. EcoMundo had 3,800 business meetings. That's what they've calculated with 120 different countries represented.

They covered all of their convention center and they had 1,700 exhibitors, which represented about 17,000 participants. And for those of you that have attended, this is very much set up like an ICSC where businesses are meeting on a twenty minute business meeting model. So those meetings have to be scheduled in advance where either the delegate requests the meeting with the company or the company requests the meeting with the delegate. So it's not really one where you can just pop in and sit down and have a conversation. It really is intended to be focused business attraction and business retention or purchasing.

In the case of the city of Riverside, we had over 35 meetings in two days. Jet lag was real. We actually met with over 11 countries. I went back and recalculated. We talk about eight on the slide here. We covered 22.9 walking miles, yes that's right. And we brought back for you six real leads. In addition to the conference itself, being one of the only city governments there and from the great state of California, we were actually invited to go and meet with the country of San Marino, which is in Italy. But don't be confused. It is not Italy.

And they will remind you often that they are their own sovereign country. Really interesting history there. But we did meet with the director of tourism who had just come back from Japan at the World Expo and shared quite a lot of what they brought back in terms of arts, culture, and tourism. We also were lucky enough to meet with the ambassadors to Brazil. There was a lot of international conversations happening there.

We met with their director of the Chamber of Commerce, excuse me, and the ambassador to Thailand. Part of that portion of our trade mission was really around how their country inside a country is focused on attracting visitors year round, how they work with importing and exporting, and being another country not in the EU, how they are looking to be able to onshore into countries like The United States. So that was kind of a surprise addition to our work that we did. So this gives a little overview of some of the meetings that we were able to attend, and I'm gonna get into some of the fun parts of what we were able to talk about. So we met a company from Italy called 10x.

They are 100% electronic street sweeping and street cleaning. Everything from our large street sweeping vehicles down to little ones that could run around in our downtown or in midtown and some of our other place making and keep our area clean, but also do that in an eco friendly way. We also talked to a company called N3. They're a technology firm. This is really one that we made the connection with UCR to bring to The United States.

They were gonna go and talk to a place like Stanford. Well why do we want them to go there when they can come to Riverside? They are leading the industry in finding out life cycle assessment for manufacturers. Really just talking about their waste products for steel, for wood, and for other things, and connecting them with manufacturers who need those products to use them to upcycle them. They source that, they connect the businesses, and they also suggest what products they could be making.

This covers all of the businesses that we met. However, the company that I talked about from Australia, they are quite unique in their water filtration and retention. We have already made the connection with this company with our two potential projects on the North Side where we are looking for options for how we deal with water filtration and retention on those projects. Cost savings and actually returning the water to swimmable conditions once it's retained. That's something that we can't do here in The United States today.

So that is the company that is already doing this work in Orange County. They have a proven model. It is green and clean technology that hopefully we'll be able to not only see implemented here, but gosh, wouldn't it be great if that company could come here? In those leads we are looking for visitations in December and January. We have two meetings coming up in April.

One is with a company called AirClean. They actually measure air quality. And gosh, again, when we talk about places like CARB and UCR, everybody's bells go off and say, We want to come to Riverside. So it really was an amazing mission. We had such incredible connection, and we are continuing to put Riverside on that international stage.

Staff today would definitely, although this is just a presentation, I highly recommend that this is added to our strategic list of trade missions that we continue to do. I'm also going to be introducing the Office of Sustainability and RPU to the next mission that comes up in April, and that is all about clean and renewable energy. So I'm very excited for this opportunity, glad to have scouted it out for the city, and hopefully we will bring a much larger delegation to bring back more businesses. And I'll be excited to report out on how these visits and business meetings go in the future. Any questions?

Grazie. So, yeah, I I I've I've I'm sorry I couldn't make it. Too much travel this year, and although Italy is very, very tempting, two small kids kept me home. And so, yes, the this is, something that I was looking forward to see how this turned out. We kind of were like, this is we've never done this before. We don't know anything about it, but the cost was so low to us. They're like, okay. Well, let's go ahead and do this. So I'm very, very happy that we had such a good success on it. And I think just it underlines the importance of us going to these world stages to go out to talk to these companies directly because Riverside is not out there.

They don't know who we are, and we have so much to offer. And when people are at and I've I've had questions from residents about, you know, all these foreign businesses coming here. You're doing a lot of work. What are you doing to get them here? We're talking to them. That's it. There is no special incentives. There's no special treatment that they're getting. All our local businesses get the same treatment from us. We're just talking to them, and they just don't know who we are. And everything we have to offer is unique and special, and so it makes the sale easy because our product is good is a good product. So thank you for this. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes from here.

Thank you. Well, I will say I could've gone on this trip, so I'm very upset. I've not been invited. So next time, let me know. I love you. But, no, I'm so happy you all went and took the opportunity. It's so cool. I would say it's so cool to see all the different logos, honestly, just to see the diversity again of the interest of the conversations. But keep it up. Great work. And next time, invite the other committee members. Thank you.

Thank you for the reminder. We definitely will. And if I can just say, reason a lot of people will say, well, what the heck? Why Italy? And the the side effect of what we were able to do by meeting the folks who run their conventions and tourism is this is a business model for this community. So the country actually built out this convention center, and they invite all of these delegations to come on a weekly basis. So as we were rolling out, a wine and food convention was coming in. So here you are in this area that would normally be shut down. The restaurants wouldn't have any business. The hotels wouldn't have any business.

So the conventions are what are drawing. So once again, we're connecting them with our convention center to say how did you grow that model and be able to build into this larger stage. So all sorts of things that we get to learn. And yes, you will be on the list. Thank you.

Okay. We'll move on to our next thing, which is discussion calendar. And we have item number six, which is our fiscal year 2526 city sponsorship program for January 2026. And we'll have that presentation by Marjorie Hoff.

Yes. Sorry. It was going to be Megan Easton, but we needed to make some staffing changes because rain, festival of lights this weekend. So I am here to make the presentation on behalf of Arts and Cultural Affairs. So council members, thank you for letting us be here to talk about city sponsorship.

I feel like we do this pretty often. So I'll go over some of the key parts. So our city sponsorship program is for local nonprofits that are 501Cs. And we have our summer application, which the deadline was this July 31 for any events that are happening between January 1 and June 30. And then our winter application, which is the deadline is January 31 for anything July 1 through December 31.

So also as part of the report, we have added in over the last few years any sort of table sponsorships that staff attend for the previous six months. So in the report, you'll see there were three table sponsorships totaling, I believe, dollars 3,200, and that was for January 1 through June 30 of this current calendar year. So city sponsored projects must promote the city as a desirable destination, encourage neighborhood identity, promote cultural and artistic awareness, and include a significant outreach component, if not a whole public, open to the public piece of this. All applicants, as I talked about, are 501Cs, and these cannot be used for operational costs. So it can't pay for me as staff time, but if, let's say, I had to hire the council member to run an event just because it's event related, you could do that.

A sampling of some of our current applications in this cycle. We have the Riverside Arts Academy that does great outreach with students all across our city. We have the Spanish Town Heritage Foundation with the Tamale Festival coming up this spring. And then we also have just an image of Riverside African American Historical Society who does the MLK walk throughout our city. So what are our applicants promoting and supporting?

They're promoting cultural awareness, artistic abilities, sports, vets. We've actually had several vet organizations, probably the most we've had in this time we've been doing, which is exciting for us to see we're tapping into that demographic. We're also talking about mental health, seniors, and different things like that, and pets as well, our lovely furry friends. Applicants are invited to attend a Sponsorship one hundred one workshop that really explains that process and applicants are required to submit a written report after their event. The Sponsorship one hundred one, we will be sending out something to you around the holidays.

We will be having that in January prior to the next deadline. Some of the criteria that we look at: attendance, history of service to the community, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and part of that equity is where the events are. We try to give a little bump in some way, shape, or form for events that are not necessarily happening in Ward 1. So our recommendations today are receive, review, and provide input on staff recommendations for the city sponsorship program for the six month period of time, recommend that the city council approve city sponsorship support, receive and review table sponsorship report and authorize the city manager or as a designee to make non substantial changes to the recommendations.

Thank you Marjorie for the report. I'll go ahead and move on to our public comment section.

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. We have a couple of speaker cards in chambers. First up is Nancy Parrish.

Thank you. I am the representative for Old Riverside Foundation. And I want to thank you for this opportunity to tell you about our event that we had last year and thank you for prior years of sponsoring us. I think this might be the sixth year that we've asked for $750 to act as seed money to begin our vintage home tour that we have this Saturday after Mother's Day Sunday. And I hope whoever we thanked and gave tickets to that you had the opportunity to attend or to gift them to somebody else because they're a hot commodity around here.

I want to tell you that we maxed out our ability to sell tickets. We sold 1,000 tickets. That's to people generally, probably 75 in the River Side area, but we do have people outside in Orange County and in the Desert area that put this on their calendar every year. We thank you for the ability to receive this grant because your support of our event allows us to put advertisements in libraries, senior centers, police and fire stations around town. Without that logo, they wouldn't entertain letting us advertise.

So I want to thank you again and hope to see you. Oh, and I do want to add that I want to make mention that Cynthia Wright who has recently retired has made this process absolutely painless even though it's many pages of application that we have to go through and I look forward to working with her protege Megan Easton. Thank you.

Thank you for that. We'll go ahead and move to our next speaker, Stan Fry.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. I have a big voice, so I'll try to be quiet. I'm here representing the Riverside Flower Show. We've been in Riverside doing this for like seventy seven years. So we have a lot of knowledge that we share with the community about horticulture, flowers, plants, citrus, all kinds of things that relate to flower shows and just the general vicinity and everything that's grown around here.

We've had 1,500 people at our max attend the flower show. The flower show is free. We have a home tour that is $10 for people if they wanna go tour homes. We have six homes on the tour. They are from all over Riverside, general Riverside area, and different wards.

My home's been on on the the tour in the past, and that was before I even was a member here. So we are basically trying to We're asking for money to help with an issue that we have. Everything is very expensive right now, and we are trying trying to help the children. We basically have programs for the children. We have a lot of different things that the children do when they're at the flower show.

And what we do is we have money that we give to them for attending and doing their projects and stuff like that at the flower show. We've had as many as 200 entries in one year. Last year, we had 75 entries schools and different K through 12. So we are just basically trying to give back to those schools and to the children from the funds we are asking for. Do you have any questions about the flower show? Are you familiar with it at all that I might help you?

We can't really respond to public comments. Oh, okay. Yes.

Oh, I didn't know that. This is my first time here so I'm a little shaky.

Okay. Alright.

So basically, have I have several other people here that came with me today. But we have events. We have booths. We have vendors. We have a lot of different children's activities and stuff and things for them to do at the flower show.

And also we have service to the community by utilizing Master Gardeners. And the Master Gardener program is a big help to us. They basically help with the people who are having their homes on the tour to explain the plants and things that are used at those homes and how they may incorporate them into their gardens. And we also specialize in not just normal flower show gardens and things like that, but Waterwise locations and things like that to basically keep the cost down. And water is a very precious thing to Riverside. So I just wanna say thank you for letting me speak today. And

Thank you for that. Yeah. Unfortunately, we cannot respond directly. It's not a conversation. We can just listen and and take it all in. Okay. Yes. And we can ask questions afterwards when we get past the public comment section. Okay. Next public speaker is Amy and Charles from the Riverside Concert Band.

Thank you, and good afternoon to our council members and the committee. I'm Amy Foti. I am a French horn player and the current secretary and chair of our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary committee for the Riverside Concert Band and with me is Charles Anderson, our President. We would like to thank the committee for recommending support and city sponsorship for our hundred one and fiftieth anniversary band festival at Fairmont Park. The Riverside concert band was established in 1876, technically before Riverside was officially a city.

We were one of the oldest concert bands in the country and we believe we are the oldest in California although Long Beach likes to argue they are. We chose to do the festival at Fairmont Park to celebrate our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary because the band shell at Fairmont Park was actually built for the original concert band. Well actually White Park first and then over to Fairmont when Fairmont was put together. We are thankful for your support with our first annual festival. We're hoping that from this big celebration of our one hundred and fifty years that we can make this an annual event so that we can continue to support and keep music alive in the city of Riverside.

So we want to thank you very much for your support and I hope we can do it again.

And I'll just say a couple of things too about the band, but I want to express my appreciation also for everything that the city of Riverside has done for us, especially the city council and the parks and recreation. But our band, as Amy had mentioned, we're going up on our one hundred and fiftieth year. And just a couple of events through the years that you've probably heard about, we were there playing. Not us personally. We're not quite 150.

When Riverside was a community before a city, they actually got together to celebrate the big centennial of America at that time. That's how the band actually was formed with volunteers for that celebration. And they've stuck together. New members have always come and gone, but we've consistently been around for the hundred and fifty years. And we were playing at the opening of the Victoria Street Bridge, which is well over 100 years old.

We were at that grand opening. We also played when Theodore Roosevelt came through Riverside for his campaign. We played when the courthouse was built more than a 100 years ago. And several other major things. The Easter sunrise service on Mount Rubidol. We were there for

the first one. That's the

I'm sorry about that. But thank you very much for everything. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Thank

you. Bye bye.

Thank you for that. And I don't believe there were any callers online, so we'll go ahead and close public comments. We don't do we have another speaker in chambers? Oh, I see the cards. Sorry about that.

Alright. We'll have Russell Ward come up, please. You can stand next to each other for emotional support if you'd like to. Good

afternoon, city council and members of the committee. My name is Russell Ward. I am the co chair I am the chairperson for the Riverside Black History Month Parade and Expo with the Adrian Dale Carmen Roberts Foundation. Our president will expound upon this event a little bit more, but I'm here for moral support. And I am the chair, as I mentioned before, I've been with the event for the last forty six years, chair of the event for the last five.

And it's an amazing event for the city. It's culturally sound and inclusive. And I'm looking forward to, well first I'd like to appreciate the support that we've received from the city over the past years for our event. It's been very helpful and instrumental in putting on this event. And I'm looking forward to this year's event coming up 02/14/2026. And thank you for your time.

We'll go ahead and move on to our last speaker card, Carmen Roberts.

Council people and to everyone. My name is Carmen Roberts, and I'm here representing the Adrian Dell and Carmen Roberts Foundation. We are in support for funding for the city sponsorship. Also, we would some of the things that the funding supports is our forty sixth annual parade and expo coming up in February 2026. Without the support, we would not be able to to create a sustainable activity for the city of Riverside.

We our parade showcases diversity, and and really, it's it also showcases the best of Riverside. So we thank you, and, hopefully, you will approve the funding. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Now we can close public comments. Okay. Just briefly wanted to thank all the speakers tonight. And the French horn, I learned. I watched as at the LA Philharmonic for my ten year anniversary, and I watched the French horn players constantly dumping out the whole time. And I and then because it's so many twists, I was like, what is he doing? And I'm like, oh. So anyways, that's my little fun fact without a French horn. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But that's it.

Thank you. Thanks, Cher. I love the story. Just wanna say thank you for hanging in there. I know this is a little bit longer committee meeting. We had a lot of presentations. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Before you make your recommendations, the Black History Month did not mention they missed the deadline, so if we were going to support them, we would need that as part of a recommendation.

Happy to do that. Thank you. Thank you for flagging that. So with that, I will I will say thank you for waiting. I know many you all have so many wonderful events. You contribute to our community, our cities to our city, but, you know, it inspires other cities and brings people in from other communities. Just so proud. Thank you for what you do, what you contribute. I'm excited to see the list. I would move to recommend the, what's in front of us to include also, though, the Black History Parade as well.

Okay. And I will second that motion, and we'll go ahead and vote.

Yes. Yes.

I don't know if we push it, but

And we're voting yes. I think we can do, a roll call.

Yes.

Yes. Okay. And it passes unanimously. Alright. Congratulations. Okay. Thank you for, holding on to this long committee. I've been I'm sorry we're making these economic development committees longer and longer because there's so many great things happening in the city of Riverside. And I will now move on to our business excellence series, the workforce development, and Randy Solis will come up again to talk about that.

Good afternoon again, committee members. Next on our agenda is a presentation from a local manufacturer that is redefining what it means to be a community partner. Phoenix Technology is a homegrown success story. For five decades, they have protected firefighters with their equipment. However, their impact to our local community goes far deeper than manufacturing.

They are a powerhouse for workforce inclusion, creating career pathways and partnering with our local schools to bridge the gap between the classroom and a career. Phoenix family members serve on over two dozen local boards including the Greater Riverside Chamber and the mayor's economic advisory committee. Having donated over two thousand five hundred hours in just the last year alone. So we are joined today by their CEO, Angel Sanchez. Angel is a fierce advocate for the Inland Empire recognized as the Riverside County Workforce Development Employer of the Year and serving as a voice for inclusive employment at the state level. So now, I will turn this over to Angel to tell us more about their work.

Thank

you so much for the opportunity to present today. And we appreciate all of the support the city's given us. And we're proud Riverside residents and have been in the city of Riverside for over twenty five years. And I'm personally a Ward 3 resident. So I'm proud to live there and I wanna tell you a little bit about Phoenix Technology as well as Phoenix Gateway, our nonprofit arm.

A little bit about our organization. We're quite different. We are a lean manufacturer and also one built on a very specific culture built around love and joy in the workplace. And as an organization, if you look at a vision statement or a mission statement that most companies had, being lean, we're about abbreviating everything. So we took it down to what we call a core focus. And that is better people, better products, and a better world. So better people, we look at three things. They have an academic approach. On average, while last year, we had a 144 of personal development time per person in the company. We have we call it spiritual approach.

It's not religious but we believe that anyone that joins with us becomes a better person. Better neighbor, better spouse, better cousin, better worker. And so whether you're with a six day, six months, six years, six decades, that time is enriching you as a person. And then we look at physical and mental well-being as well as an important part of that better people element. That leads us to creating better products and I'll talk about those in a moment. And ultimately our mission is to create a better world. So that encompasses really what we do on a daily basis. A little bit about our history. We were founded in 1972 by two firefighters, Ray Russell and Ronnie Coleman. A couple of friends didn't like the helmets that were on the market, so they wanted to come up with something better.

And, here we are fifty three years later supporting and protecting America's heroes as well as heroes all around the world. So we have over 80 distributors, that represent us throughout North And South America and Asia. The Europeans, they kinda wear goofy looking helmets so we haven't quite entered that market yet but that's coming soon. From a product perspective, we're honored to have our very own city of Riverside as well as the county of Riverside, Cal Fire, and most of California in the helmet that you see in the middle there. The first two Phoenix helmet.

But we also make a beautiful leather helmet which is kind of an East Coast thing for the most part. But it is worn throughout a number of it's actually one of our most popular products nowadays. And then one that is a traditional composite product. So the all three of those helmets meet the NFPA and OSHA standards required by firefighters and have been on the market for decades. But I really wanna talk more about who we are as an organization.

And so some of it was touched on already. Under the better people, we've been blessed to be recognized with a number of different awards including the 2018 presidential e award which was given to us by the office of the president of the United States for exporting excellence. And we just started exporting in 2015. So within three years, we were up there with some companies like Harley Davidson being recognized. More recently, the Riverside County Workforce Development Employer of the Year and also the National Workforce Development I'm sorry.

The National Association of Workforce Boards Business of the Year. There's over five forty workforce boards that are represented in this organization and we were the one business chosen to represent Riverside and represent Phoenix in Washington DC. So it was quite an honor. A And lot of the reasons, some of our impact indicators that created that is what makes up the fabric of our organization. We're a truly inclusive organization with over 35% of our workforce being neurodivergent.

I think it's actually just over 40% now. We have active training, apprenticeship programs. We work alongside a number of different organizations I'll talk about in a moment. But as a result of that, we are recognized on a national level. And so, I was very proud to go and speak and bring that award home.

This was mentioned, our commitment to community. We actually serve on over 35 boards. So we have members of our small Phoenix family. We have less than 50 employees and they serve on over 35 boards and or commissions And we're looking to increase some of that. We have other people that are applying for city commissions that we're hoping will have the opportunity.

I myself serve on a number, including the state of California Workforce Development Board where I was recently appointed by governor Newsom. And then when it comes to volunteering, just in the last three years, we've donated And this is documented volunteer time over two thousand five hundred hours. And so I think it's probably in excess of 3,000 because people just don't document it. And so we're very committed. Things like the Ronald McDonald House, Relay For Life, Adopt A Street.

So we have park from University to 14th and we take a lot of pride in representing that community. Not only do we go out and clean, but we also engage whether it's the art house or eating some Polynesian food or my favorite, the panaderia. We do our best to engage with the local businesses and the community members as well. We do a lot of tours. So thousands of people visit Phoenix.

Some of the most recent tours that we've had included America Makes which is the leading partnership in advanced manufacturing on a national level. The California Women in Manufacturing. The Department of Rehabilitation including the director of the Department of Rehabilitation, Arc Riverside, the Riverside County Economic Development. In fact, the CEO, Jeff Van Wagenen, has been sending a number of county offices to tour to learn about our culture and about our lean services. And then, Association for Manufacturing Excellence, which is an international organization focused on lean and manufacturing efficiency.

They put a picture of me in here but I'm CEO Angel Sanchez. I forgot to mention that part. I was appointed to the state board as I mentioned and Phoenix is really involved in trying to have a voice in shaping statewide training, apprenticeship, and employer alignment strategies. And so not only do I sit on the board, but I'm an active member. In fact, we brought the executive director of the California Workforce Board.

We're the first region that was visited as part of the California Jobs First Act, and we spent three days with him. Touring Riverside a number of different companies as well as UC Riverside and Riverside Community College so that they could learn more about what we're doing here right and share it at a state level. This leadership approach serves as a model and it's focused on practice and policy within local, regional, state and national workforce. When it comes to the classroom, I'm very proud to be responsible or have our organization being responsible for having a partnership with Casablanca Elementary, an elementary school that was badly needed for a community that needed that assistance. And we are a very strong collaborative partner for their STEM program.

But we also collaborate with UCR, Cal Baptist, Riverside Community College District, Riverside Unified School District, CSDR, and Gordon Bourne STEP program. And so we are actively involved with the help of their curriculum development for CTE. We also have internships that we have Riverside Unified School District and CSDR students. So I think we have four total at this time at Phoenix who are involved with that. We do a lot of job site visits, hosting job shadowing, and as I mentioned, internships which give students real exposure to manufacturing and industry work.

Not just theory. We also, in working with our CTE partners, are building around educational partnerships, hands on training, inclusive opportunities, leadership engagement, and creating the future workforce. And so we're engaged in all of those elements, working with all of these partners. In fact, on the Phoenix Gateway side, started under Phoenix Technology, we have over 45 different regional partners that we're working with and helping to develop workforce opportunities for the future. Now under Phoenix Technology, we started a program that became known as the opportunity for all program in 2021, and it was developed to target individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, especially those with neurodiverse talents with on the job training, apprenticeships, and support to transition into full time roles.

It started with one young man who came to us, wouldn't talk to anybody, wasn't engaged, had dropped out of school, was really kind of a social I hate to call him an outcast, but he just wasn't part of the fabric of everyday society. And today, he lives on his own. He has a side business doing landscaping, still works for us, and is one of the most social and engaged people we have in the organization. And he graduated from school. He went back to school. That became a little bit much for Phoenix Technology so we created the Phoenix Gateway. And with your permission, I'd like to show you a little video that's talks a little bit

about If you don't mind, Angel, council member Ergo Servantes has a 05:00 meeting she has to get

to. Okay.

And right at 04:49. So if we can skip the video minutes. Two minutes. Okay. Yes. Because I wanna make sure we get your pictures and get all those yeah.

And you might need some tissues.

They see things in ways we never thought possible. They understand concepts in ways we hadn't yet thought. We just had to give them a space to be able to let themselves be seen.

It's about growth. It's about learning. It's about gaining new experiences. So for me, that's what I get out of it.

California, it's like one in twenty two kids now are being diagnosed as being on the spectrum. So that's one in twenty two kids, that's one in twenty two moms and dads that you need out there who are trying to figure out, okay, how am I gonna help my son or daughter be as successful as they can possibly be?

Tell the tens of thousands of people who face incredible barriers to employment and to success that they don't have to. How stupid is it today that people of incredible talent and abilities are not being given opportunities? They have opportunity. And just a couple of quick pieces of information for Gateway. We run a regional roundtable which has on average about 75 different partners that attend.

Our cohort program has had an 80% full wage placement rate. We run workshops for parents and for participants. And so we're starting a new program in the new year like a coffee where parents can come in and just kind of have a peer mentoring program. And we just opened our new office because of a new partnership with Riverside Community College District. And so we are now a partner with the college district in providing supportive services, a cohort, and a job center for the students that they have who graduate with autism and still run over an 80% unemployment rate.

So we opened our new office in 1960 Chicago Avenue, Space D13, and we will have our grand opening on December 10 at 4PM. And with that, I appreciate the opportunity to give you a brief overview of our company and our nonprofit, and we're excited to be here.

Thank you for that. I have two certificates. So I don't if you wanna say anything, then we can take pictures together.

Yeah. Let's just say I am gonna definitely contact you. I am so fascinated by this, and thank you for being here today. Thank you for, of course, your representation on the workforce development board. This is incredible. I I love I'm loving this new series where we're learning about big businesses and just what's happening in our community that I didn't know about. So I'm thrilled to see and learn about this, and thank you for literally finding ways to create opportunities for those that are again looking to be employed and I really love who you're focusing on especially with the autism sector and helping to create opportunities for families there. Just so much beautiful work being done. I can't thank you enough and I look forward to future conversations.

Thank you so much. Thank you. And I I do need to acknowledge Nicole Rand, our program administrator who is basically runs Gateway for us now.

Oh, Round of applause for everyone like

And future commission member. Also, I I just wanted to thank Angel for your leadership in this role. I know we're coming to one of your round shit roundtables early on and seeing the impact of that. We we really shaped how we're approaching our economic development here in the city. And one of the things that your company actually comes up quite often, when I'm out there talking to companies around the world, and one in particular is Smart Medical Device, which creates a tracking insole for those with autism or for those who are, have Alzheimer's disease.

If you have any wearables, they oftentimes don't wanna wear the wearables. Or if you're trying to run away, you you leave it behind. But everyone wears shoes. And so and I explained how you are working with the people with neurodiverse and manufacturing, and they were just so impressed by that. And as they're looking to maybe locate their business to Riverside, I say having the neurodiverse community building these products would just be such a fit. And so it's more and more sharing your story. And I know you guys are doing a great job sharing your story, but, yeah, you are a part of Riverside of helping put Rivers on the map for the excellence and economic development in the city. With that, I'd like to invite you in.

Thank you.

And I'll have a couple of pictures.

May I bring Nicole up as well?

Yes. Yes. And Nicole, please come down too.

Thank you.

Quickly, Miranda, if you don't mind, I'll just go ahead and do the shout out for the industrial day. So on item number eight, I'm gonna do a quick shout out for the say the date for the industrial real estate forum. It's on Thursday, January 22, 9AM to 11AM at the Sapara School of Business on La Sierra University. We welcome all in the real estate market and the businesses and dust and all industries to come out and learn about the status of the industrial real estate market in Riverside. Okay. And a legislative update. I saw you came all the way down, and so I wanna make sure we got you in.

You. I'll be quick and speed through these. So, of course, you know, legislative session has ended. Several impactful bills aiming to strengthen local economies, support small businesses, and enhance workforce development. Some key legislation that's passed, AB five zero seven regarding adaptive reuse, which supports downtown revitalization and infill development.

AB six seventy one, which requires expedited approvals for restaurants. Tenant improvements, this helps to boost small business growth in the food sector. AB eight eighteen, which amends the Permit Streamlining Act, this promotes economic continuity and resilience. SB 80, which regards fusion energy innovation initiatives. This opens up opportunities for clean tech partnerships and workforce development for the city. And then lastly SB five forty three related to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units, expands and clarifies our authority to do permitting on those. So essentially increasing housing supply and support affordability. Done.

Awesome. I would love to learn more about those. So in the future, maybe we can schedule a time just so can kinda go over the details of those. Those are very interesting to me, so I'd love to learn more.

Okay.

And then with that, we'll go ahead and move to items for future consideration. Alright. We are good to go, and we'll call call the meeting to close.