City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll go ahead and get started. Good afternoon and welcome to the 05/05/2026 Salinas City Council meeting. I'm gonna call this meeting to order and I'm gonna ask the city clerk to speak up.

This meeting is available in Spanish for members of the public in attendance and on Zoom. Translation devices can be obtained in the foyer.

All right. This meeting includes teleconference participation by Councilmember Barrera from Avenida, Olas, Atlas 79 Sur Mazlan, Sinaloa, Mexico pursuant to California Government Code Section 54,953. Zoom webinar participation is available for members of the public. The Zoom webinar ID and link are available on the posted agenda item on the city website and with that will everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right.

With that, we are going to get started with a consideration item and will receive a report from the city attorney. Roll Sorry about that.

Roll call. Council Member Barajas absent. Council Member Barrera?

Here.

Council Member Dorrigo? Here. Council Member Della Rosa?

Here.

Council Member Salazar? Here. Council Member Sandoval? Here. Mayor Donahue?

Yes. Yeah. I am here. And and now we will consider stuff. So we'll look for the city attorney.

So thank you, mayor. As the council is aware, Council Member Barajas has missed three consecutive city council meetings, including this meeting. This meeting brings his total absences to three consecutive meetings. Council member Barajas is suffering from a medical condition that prevents him from being able to attend or to participate in city council meetings. Salinas Charter Section 6.2 provides that a member of the council who is absent from three consecutive regular meetings shall forfeit the member's seat unless excused by the city council on account of absence from the city on city business or illness.

The reasons shall be entered upon the minutes. A copy of Charter Section 6.2 is provided for the Council on the diets and will be made available to the public through the agenda if it has not been already. On April 27, the City Manager and I received a letter from legal counsel representing Councilmember Barajas requesting that City Council excuse Councilmember Barajas from City Council meetings up through and including 06/30/2026 due to his ongoing health issues. A copy of this letter is provided for the Council on the Diets and again will be made available to the public for the agenda if it has not been already. So this afternoon, we're looking for council action on one, excusing council member Barajas from being absent for three consecutive meetings, including this meeting on account of illness and two, excusing council member Barajas from attending future council meetings up to and including 06/30/2026 on account of illness.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. With that, we'll look for council member comments or questions. I'll start with Councilmember Sandoval.

And just to clarify, Mayor, we're going to ask questions and then there'll be an opportunity for members of the public to comment and then we'll have final comments and direction.

Is that correct? We'll be looking for action as always if there's an additional comment. This would now be the time for questions and then we'll go out to public and then, but you'll an opportunity to make whatever comments you want to make.

Sure. So it's the first time that we're hearing from this on April 27. Is that correct? This is the first communication that we received on April 27.

Will you direct the question to me, Council Member? Yes. So the city manager and I met with Council Member Barajas several weeks ago and had a conversation with him. This was prior to his first absence from the council meeting. But the April 27 letter is the first written communication that we've received from his legal counsel.

Okay. And then during this absence, will Councilmember Barajas continue to receive compensation from the City of Salinas and insurance benefits?

Yes. He is still a sitting council member. And just as any council member who misses a council meeting, they continue to receive their compensation and insurance benefits during that absence.

Thank you. And then Council Member Barraja sits on several boards, regional and both housing and land use, the Board Oversight Committee. And have appointments been made to those boards to fill the vacancies during this time?

So with respect to the regional boards and commissions, there are alternates that have already been to those boards and commissions. So those alternates will just assume the role as they would in any normal circumstance. And with respect to the city internal committees like the Housing and Land Use Committee, they can continue business with two appointees. The two would be sufficient for a quorum for those.

Just for the housing and land use meeting, we've had to cancel them recently and we have an upcoming one. So how can we I mean, would it be prudent to appoint somebody else in the interim to the Housing and Land Use Committee?

No, that's certainly a question for the mayor's discretion. But if the meeting had to be canceled, there would have to be two absences and not just one.

Correct.

Mayor, will you be appointing somebody in the meanwhile to the Housing and Land Use Committee, the rodeo oversight and then respective to the Salinas Valley Recycles Board, I don't think we have alternate appointed. So will there be an appointment for that position?

There is an alternate for the Solid Waste Authority and I will take a look at the other

committees. Okay. And then in relation to and I had sent you an e mail yesterday related to some vacancies that we have on our city commissions and committees that we've had for a long period of time. I think Eric has brought those to our attention. Will you use your authority to fill those vacancies?

A couple of things. Some of the positions, attendance has been an issue with some of these things in terms of vacancies. I will take a look at general applicants and take a look at making some appointments. I'm also planning on meeting and have been planning. We're working on getting set up.

I also want to meet with because I believe for a long time and I think we all share this, the commissions are important. And I'll be meeting with the chairs of the various commissions to talk about their roles so we can be doing more things like we are with traffic, the traffic commission. But the answer to your question is I'm going to work with Patty to go over the general applications of folks who want to participate, take a look at that and then we'll try and address that shortly.

Those are all my questions. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Barrera.

Yes. Thank you. Mayor, there was a question brought up. As far as phone calls, emails, how are we gonna take care of that with the constituents as District 1 to be able to support council member Marajas?

To the mayor of council, to the ex to the extent there we're aware of that we'll respond. I've been attending some of the the meetings and responding accordingly. So we'll just get that information out.

Right. And then there would

So I would urge people, whatever the council takes action today just to reach out to our clerk or to my office directly and we'll address it accordingly.

The other thing is there was a recent meeting in that district. Council members Salazar and Dela Rosa were there and indicated at that time they're happy to follow-up. And then I'll work with them and then I'll plan on scheduling a meeting myself in district in the near term.

Great. Thank you.

Okay.

That's all.

Okay. Thank you, Tony. All right. Aurelio?

No comments or questions at this time. Thank you.

Gloria? I

don't have any comments or questions. We're ready to make a motion. I'd like to make the motion.

Okay. We'll after we hear from the public, we'll

go ahead and do that.

Thank you. Margaret, anything?

No questions, no comments.

Right. Go ahead and will go out to the public. Two minutes.

Jose Guerra, Montevia community. It's kinda weird that you guys are all of a sudden hearing that he's ill. I mean, the public needs to know if someone is not gonna be here, especially District 1, which aligns with District 2. And for twenty two defendants, he's gonna help district one, he can't even run district two. No disrespect, but he can't. And that's excuse me? You have your chance, man. And like I said, you know, the buddy system up here has got to stop guys. Hold people accountable. If he's not going to be here, find somebody else.

I know we all get sick. We all have that stuff, but there's paid time off or whatever they call it, FMLA. I'm sure you guys get it too. Why we got to continue the buddy system? We got to stop that up You know, I thought this would be a better console when I first came about it and I'm seeing that I'm very disappointed. And you all have your heads down except except you, Gloria. I mean, you're the only one that's probably real up there, no disrespect. And Aurelio, I mean, everyone else. I like Andrew, he's stepping up and telling people what's up and it's giving them information. No one else is doing that here.

You guys have your little parties and your pictures and all this on your Facebook. But look at our roads, look at everything we have, our infrastructure is failing. All that money that we got from Amazon, nothing's being done. We don't have it yet, we don't know where it's at, what's going on. I'm asking these questions, I'm very upset because I'm tired of being a resident here and being railroaded, but you guys not doing your job.

Do your job please. Don't worry about someone else's district, run your district, run your district. And Mary, you should have all that stuff covered already. Shouldn't be all that look into it. What's that? Do we have to slap in the face? That's telling me you're not even doing your job. Should have been done already. It should have been done, guys. Come on. Please do your job. I'm gonna have to tell you one more time. Do your job or resign. There's a lot of people out here that want your job. God bless you and thank you, guys.

Good afternoon. My name is Eric Peterson. About seventy years ago, my parents took me to my first city council meeting. Since then, I've been to a variety of meetings in a variety of places. In that seventy years, I've called publicly for the resignation of one person, mister Brajas.

He is not doing his job, has not been doing his job, nor does he seem to, have an interest in doing his job, or for that matter, making any attempt at really representing District 1 or the, residents of Salinas. He seems to have overarching interests not related to Salinas or being a council member. Clearly, he needs to go away. No leave of absence, just go away. Maybe he can take a class in civics at Hartnell College and learn how things are supposed to work.

Or maybe he could dawn here feeding homeless people in Salinas as a previous district one council member did.

Or

something else tailored to learning about how the city is supposed to work. District 1 deserves an election to choose a council member who actually represents them and who is actually willing to do the job. And just for what it's worth, when I was first appointed to District three Traffic and Transportation Commission, it was by then mayor Alan Stiles. That system worked well. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Anyone else from the public?

I was not aware anything was wrong with him. I mean, that we had complaints about him. But I can tell you, I have invited him to come down already. The only time he came in my area was when he was campaigning, and I wasn't home. But I've invited him to come out so he could see the problems. And lately, we've had a lot of problems with graffiti. In fact, as I was leaving home, there's something going on in Del Monte right now. And we've had graffiti right in front of those two places where the police are right now. And yesterday, you had someone out there painting. I was ready to call in about it.

But I do know there's a big step going on there. He's never had a meeting that he's invited anyone in our area that I know of, unless you did social media. And most of my people don't, in my area, don't pay attention to that because they work, go to work really early in the morning until late at night. And, but I'd like to, you know, I'd like to have him come out and I could show him introduce him to some of our neighbors so he could know who they were and stuff. But I can't get much heat.

He never calls me back or nothing. So I don't know what the problem is, but I just wanted to let you know what's going on in our area because we haven't had any meetings that I know of down at either the schools on Sanborn or any of our areas. So just wanted to let you know, he's a nice kid, but he's a kid. So anyway, talk's good, but I haven't seen him do much work out here. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, anyone else? Okay, we will go to see if there's any hands up on Zoom. Marisol?

Hi. I think the essence of the issue is the lack of transparency. The moment city council and the city manager found out that there was going to be a potential leave of absence that should have been brought forward. This continues to lend to the distrust that the community has. I agree that when someone deals with medical issues, there should be grace.

There should be an allowance. There should be an understanding and willingness to provide them time to heal. However, it is the lack of transparency that really affected us, that affected everybody sitting here who has a concern with this issue of missing district one representative representative. So please ideally do better next time in this sense. We need to be made aware as soon as things happen. I wish the best for and the speedy recovery for mister Barajas. But, again, we need to be able to make sure that District 1 has consistent representation. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Anyone else? Okay. All right. We will come back to counsel for final comments and action. Andrew, if you have some additional comments.

Yeah, I just want to get a clear understanding. So it's the members of the public are going to reach out to council member Salazar and council member De La Rosa with questions and concerns and they'll be the ones taking the lead on following up with his constituents or who will be that person?

No, what I indicated as the city manager indicated that we that questions that come in or concerns that come in from that district will continue to come in through the city manager's office. Council member Salazar Dela Rosa and I will be setting up a district meeting shortly to deal with the district to provide some availability. So it'll be teamwork.

And then you didn't really provide a clear answer on the appointments of, you're gonna look into them or are you all gonna make appointments?

I would expect to but I'm gonna

take a look at it. There has to be

a sufficient pool of applicants and as we all know sometimes and this issue of appointments is not limited to as the city attorney said to Councilmember Rajas, vacancies exist from time to time and finding the right people but I will take a look at the pool that's out there and we'll look to get

them filled as quickly as we can.

Yeah, and just from a procedural standpoint, just so the public knows, this is like for example, the first time I've seen a letter from council member Valacha's attorney. I think we need to work more on being transparent. This is the first time the public is hearing the request for the date of June 30. Traditionally in a staff report there is supporting materials that help us make better decisions. And so I'm a firm believer that some of this information should have been made public when we posted the agenda.

The discussion about or the question about salary and insurance is because it's tax payer funds and typically if you're going to stop work, know, maybe you'd go on disability, but the decision is not only here on leave of absence, but three months of paid salary. So I know the letter and some of this documentation is going to be made public, but doesn't seem to be made public until after the fact. So those are all my comments.

Thank you. All right. Anything else? We do have a motion on the floor. Is there

I'll second it.

Yeah. Mayor, I had a comment.

Okay. Go ahead, Tony.

Mayor, I think we're hearing, I know we're governed by HIPAA rules on serious issues like this, and and we do hope that council member Barras for a speedy recovery. On the other side, I think we need to do a better job as a team of how we can be more transparent on information that we can share with the public.

I I

I know we're trying to do the best possible work or representation, but I think sometimes when people don't know what's happening, that creates even more rumors, even more suspicion, and concerns. So I would ask the administration as well as all of us, we need to work on that transparency. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Let's go. Chris?

I just want to be clear with respect to the motion made by Councilmember De La Rosa, it's to excuse Councilmember Barajas from being absent for three meetings, including this one on account of illness and excusing Council Member Barajas from attending future council meetings up through and including June 30 on account of illness, correct?

Okay. And that's and we have a second for that motion and we'll go ahead and call for the question.

Council Member Barrera?

Yes.

Council Member De Arrigo? Yes. Council Member Della Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Council Member Sandoval?

Yes.

Mayor Donahue?

Yes. Motion passes.

All right, thank you. All right. We are going to proceed to closed session and then we will return. Says we'll be back here at 04:30. So we anticipate it to be relatively quick. So hang in there.

Mayor, public comment.

And if there are any department directors in the house and you have new employees, let

us know.

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the City Council. I'm pleased to announce that we have five new employees in the Community Development Department that have joined us. First, Jessica Aboites, she is a community outreach assistant in our advanced planning and project implementation division. She'll be supporting all of our community plan as well as general plan outreach. And she has over fifteen years experience in community focused roles.

Anthony Vasquez is a community outreach assistant for our housing divisions street outreach and response team, sort, and he has several years of experience coordinating with local police and nonprofit organizations to assist people in recovery. Samuel Hernandez is a community outreach assistant for our housing division, and he will be focusing on the administration of the rental assistance program. And he began working with our department in June 2025 as a temporary permit clerk. Vanessa Ibarra is a plan checker one. So we have Vanessa and Will.

So Vanessa Ibarra and Will Chaseboro have joined us as plan checker one. So we're very excited to finally fill these positions. Vanessa has six years of experience in the tech industry as a project manager and Will previously worked in commercial construction in the Bay Area. So we look forward to bringing their expertise to support our plan review processes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa. Welcome.

Good afternoon. Selena Andrews, Finance Director. It's a pleasure to be here, Mayor Council members. I'm pleased to announce Anthony Guido. He's been with the city for four years and recently joined the IT team as a business systems analyst.

And while he will be supporting all departments citywide, his focus will be public works and community development. I would it's also a pleasure to announce that Carlos Ortega has been promoted to deputy director of IT. He joined the city in early twenty twenty four and received his master's degree in information systems while here at the city. Since joining Salinas, Carlos has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership, technical expertise,

and

a forward thinking approach to leading technological advancements. Under his guidance, our IT program has achieved significant milestones. Very happy to announce these two promotions.

Good evening. Sam Klemic, your fire chief. And it is my pleasure to introduce to you Sean Brennau, who is our new deputy fire marshal after an exhausted search. Sean comes to us by way of Riverside, and I'm going to have him come up and tell you a little bit about himself, but we're really happy to have him here. It's been thirty days tomorrow that he's been here, and he hasn't sat down long enough for me to really get him in front of you because he hit the ground running. So this is Sean.

Good afternoon. Thank you for selecting me. I'm really excited to be here. As the Chief mentioned, I spent the last nine years at Riverside County Fire Department as a Senior Plans Examiner there. Prior to that, was with City of Napa Fire Department and Fresno County Fire Department.

I started my career thirty one years ago with the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department in Sacramento after I got out of the Air Force. I haven't I've had the chance to actually meet several of you already, shake hands and say hello, as well as some of the community members. Know, I was looking at a lot of different departments and what really drove me to select Salinas was

the

family feeling that I got, especially during the interview process, talk with the Chiefs, and then getting to know some of you here, and getting to go go to some of the community events. And I gotta tell you, I'm I'm really happy. I feel like I I made the right choice in selecting Salinas, and I think you guys made a great choice in selecting me. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor and council member council members. Our police chief and assistant chief are at a training conference, so I'll share the police department's new hires with you. We have Anthony Martinez, he is a police recruit that was hired April 9, started April 9. Adriana Nicole Rios is a community service officer that started April 6. And Bobby Isaiah Rodriguez is a new police officer who just started on April 27. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, counsel. I'm here to introduce two new hires in public works and one promotion. We have Jonathan Martinez, who's a public service maintenance worker and David Joseph Pastore, who is a wastewater operator in training. And then a promotion, we have Yammeleth, Roxas Alvarez, and she's been promoted to the Public Works Compliance Officer. She started as a temporary person in Public Works, moved over to Community Development, has now come back to Public Works as a Public Works Compliance Officer. She's right here in the back. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, everyone. All right. With that, we're going to do a little proclaiming and have some important groups to recognize. We will I think Larry you are here.

I'll have you step up to the podium and we'll start out with the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Whereas Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month is a month to celebrate and pay tribute to the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans towards American history, society and culture. And whereas the United States Congress in 1977 designated one week in May for such observance followed by an expanded time period to include the whole month in 1992 and whereas Asian American and Pacific Islanders comprise many ethnicities and languages and their many achievements are as pivotal in society and whereas these individuals are leaders in all aspects of American life, government and industry, science and medicine, education and sports and armed forces and whereas the city of Salinas joins in the celebration of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders and their contributions towards cultural richness, diversity and generosity. Now therefore I, Mayor Dennis Donahue, on behalf of the Salinas City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2026 as Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and encourage all residents to celebrate this special observance and that's dated this May 2026. So congratulations and thank you and you have the podium.

Well,

you very much. We have some Chinese, Japanese and Filipino representative here, but that's only a small portion of the Asian American Pacific Islander group. But we're very appreciative of this. As a matter of fact, I'm going to and rather than give public comment, I'm going give part of my public comment at this time because it's representative of the Asian Cultural Fair. So first, I'd like to thank the mayor and the city council for supporting us and being there at the event itself.

It was very successful, well attended, and we really appreciate your support, especially the city was very supportive, especially the Lisa Murphy and Public Works as far as cleaning it up. It was very, very nicely done. We appreciate that very much. And Public Works was also very integral in providing all of the barricades and work as far as getting it operated. So we thank them and also big shout out to Michael Bachelor, Sargent, who helped out as far as prior to the event he was very instrumental in increasing the presence.

So we had a very safe environment as well. We hope that will continue. So we're very appreciative of that. And so the other integration of that is that Asian Cultural Fair is one of the largest part of Chinatown revitalization as a project itself. So we consider it an important part of that and we appreciate that we can be a part of this and also we invite the community to understand we have a vibrant Asian community. We may not live there, but it's still a vibrant Asian community, which has a goal of creating a very livable Chinatown.

Also like to thank the residents of Salinas and out of Salinas who attended the Asian Fair. It was very well attended this year and the support means a lot to us because like I say, we're the city is putting a lot of money into the Chinatown revitalization and hopefully everything goes through and we fix the Chinatown area. And thank you for your support for the Chinatown area and revitalizing it. Thank you.

Thanks, Morris.

On behalf of the Chinese community, we want to say thank you very much for everybody's support. Thank you.

Appreciate it. All right. Photo ops. Hang tight. I'm we're going to I'll read all the proclamations and then we'll do yes, then we'll change sets for each of the photographs.

All right. Next up, National Military Appreciation Month, also in May. Whereas the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are secured by the dedication of the members of the United States Armed Forces. And whereas National Military Appreciation Month is celebrated every May and is intended to recognize the six branches that make up the United States Armed Forces, the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard representing those who serve on land, at sea, in the air and in space. And whereas today the United States military includes approximately 1,300,000 active duty service members supported by reserve forces and military families who share in the sacrifices of service.

And whereas the sacrifices made by all members of the United States Armed Forces and their loved ones are to be valued and the brave men and women of our community who served and enlisted deserve our recognition and whereas we dedicate this month of military appreciation as a symbol of unity to recognize, honor and support the commitment and sacrifice of current, former and fallen members of all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Now therefore I, Mayor Dennis Donahue, on behalf of the Salinas City Council, do hereby proclaim May 2026 as National Military Appreciation Month in the city of Salinas and recognize the service of all current and former military personnel and that's dated this May 2026. So congratulations. Thank you. Okay.

One more. Okay. This one is just a week, but an important week. This May 2026 is Small Business Week. Whereas small businesses are the energies of job and revenue creation in The United States and this fact comes to life in the city of Salinas.

And whereas the city of Salinas recognizes that small businesses are a core component of our local economy. They provide essential services, pay taxes and contribute to local charitable and community efforts. And whereas small businesses provide jobs, generate revenue and bring unique cultural and social element into our community and whereas The United States has proclaimed National Small Business Week every year since 1963 to highlight the programs and services available to entrepreneurs through the U. S. Small Business Administration and other government agencies and whereas the City of Salinas encourages residents to patronize local businesses during Small Business Week and throughout the year and join in this national effort to recognize the contributions of small businesses in the American economy and their importance to ensuring that our local communities remain as vibrant tomorrow as they are today.

Now therefore I, Mayor Dennis Donahue on behalf of the Salinas City Council proclaim May 2026 as Small Business Week and encourage all residents to recognize small businesses for the contributions they make in our community. And that's dated this May 2026. So congratulations to our small businesses and we will have Colleen Davy in the chamber receive that award. So let's we'll go in the order, Larry, and your group is up first for photo ops. Picture first.

Thank you, Mayor and council members for this proclamation. It's an honor to stand here alongside our veterans and many organizations that support them, including the American Legion, local chapters, Monterey County Semper Fi Fraternity, the Salinas hometown banners program, Hartnell Veterans Club, Monterey County Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee, and the Veterans Parade and many more. This month is really about those currently serving and those who have served. Throughout May, we recognize important days that remind us remind us that the service and sacrifice throughout May So the service and sacrifice, Silver Star Banner Day, Military Spouse Appreciation Day, Children of Fallen Patriots Day, Armed Forces Day, and Memorial Day. Each one honors a different part of the military community and the sacrifices made not just by service members, but by their families as well.

We honor not only their time in uniform, but the continued impact they have in our community. This proclamation reflects a shared commitment to our veterans, and we're grateful to the city for standing with us.

Okay. Nathan, then Colleen. All

right. Thank you, Mayor City Council for the proclamation for Small Business Week. Just want to say, small businesses are the lifeblood of our community on there. So I want to thank all the local small businesses that contribute back to our local economy and everything that they do. So thank you.

Thanks, Nathan.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for recognizing the small businesses. We know so many of those small business owners are working in their business day in and day out, so they don't have the opportunity always to be here and to be celebrated. But, thank you for making this possible and for honoring them and I'll make sure they get the message how much they are appreciated by their city leadership. So thank you again.

Thank you, Galen. Alright. With that, we are now open for public comment on items that are not on the agenda and that are in the cities of Salinas' subject matter jurisdiction. Comments on consideration public hearing items and the consent agenda should be held until the items are reached. Public comments generally or public comments will be limited to minutes per speaker and with that and then each person who addresses the city council during public comment shall do so in an orderly manner and shall not make any personal, slanderous or profane remark to any member of the City Council, City Staff or the general public.

Any person who makes such remarks or who uses threatening personal or abusive language or who engages in any other disorderly conduct which disrupts or disturbs the meeting may be asked to leave the city council chambers and with that we are open for public comment. Two minutes.

Good after eve everyone. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. My name is Kimberly Bryant, and I am here to just release blessings over our city and release blessings over each one of our council members, our mayor, our city manager, our city attorney, and our city staff. I want to thank each one of you for the work you do and the time that you dedicate to each one of your districts and the city as a whole.

I also want to pray healing for Jose that he can come back and do his job just as he planned to do it when he ran. I would also like to pray strength over those of you who are running a race this year. Just pray strength for you and strong immune systems so that you're able to do all that you need to do in order to run and to win your district. And I just thank you. God bless each one of you.

Thank you.

Karen Cameron, concerned Salinas resident. I'll do my best to make it through. I'm struggling with an upper respiratory infection that came on last week after the winds and after toxic restricted pesticides were applied within one mile of my home. Can't prove the correlation, but it sure seems coincidental. I was highly disappointed that none of you, except Andrew Sandoval, showed up at the California Department Pesticide Regulation Environmental Justice Advisory Committee meeting that was held right here conveniently in Salinas for you to participate.

I wasn't asking you to go to Sacramento. None of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors showed up, none of you showed up. There are critical issues at hand. May 11, I expect each of you to publicly comment in writing requesting an air monitor in your city. It's criminal that they took it away in 2017, and we don't know what we're breathing.

A lot of the decisions that are coming down from CDPR require intervention at the highest level. I'd like to see the city council and the county begin to intervene at the state level and cry out, because it shouldn't just be citizens like me. If you look at the environmental justice element of the general plan, which again has public commenting, deadline May 11, everyone should be reading that and aware of what's going on. It does show pesticide accumulation for outlying areas, Baranda 99%, Castroville 95 to 99%, Moss Landing 99%, Pajaro 79% to 100%. What does that mean?

I assume 100%. And that's where they're measuring our air from. I just feel this is criminal and I'd like to see each and every one of you get involved. What is it going to take? I mean, we fought hard to get them to come to Salinas to make it convenient for you. But none of you seem to be concerned like I am about the pollution that's being caused by the biggest industry in our city.

We need to do better for

our health and our safety.

Thank you.

I'm allergic to formaldehyde. I've had chronic sinusitis surgery. It is ongoing.

Thank you, Chairman.

How many others of us are sick?

Hi, good evening. I with you. I was at that meeting too here, and I got invited last minute. I don't see how the mayor wasn't here, how the senior manager wasn't here or any of the people that are supported by ag up here. How come none of you guys were here at the meeting? Because they're all funded by ag. You should have been here. Sad. Real sad. Let's talk about transparency. Once again, I'm going to tell you guys, you guys got to do your job and I'm tired of coming up here and trying to tell grown people what to do, how to do their jobs. You have one district, do your job in your district. It's real simple. You're the Mayor, make sure they do their job. Mr.

Mendez, you're the City Manager, make sure they all do their job. And the City Attorney, make sure they all do their job the right way. That is your job to keep them in line, to make sure they don't cross any lines. You guys need to listen to the people. You want Measure G to pass? The way things are going, nobody trusts you guys right now. Read the polls. People are doing their surveys and there's no trust in this city right now. I don't mind if you spend money here and there where you need to but don't abuse it. Know, don't don't give money to the people that have that are wealthy, like the Welcome Center really.

You know, it's only Welcome Center I know that it's funded by the city. Everything else is funded through nonprofits and people donate their own money. I went to the one in Paso Robles the other day and the same thing I asked. It's crazy how when you do a little research you find out the truth. Why are we funding rich people? Why? Because they take care of your guys' campaign donations, that's sad. If that's true, I don't know if it is, I don't care. But it's sad if it is and if you're working for them, you're not working for the city. And once again guys, please do your jobs and if you want to come and have coffee with me, I'm at Starbucks all the time, eight to ten.

Constitution, come see me, come talk to me, then I'd be political, come be a friend. Let me know and I can have people that let you know how they feel that go there every day. God bless you guys. Have a good night.

How's it going? My name is Daniel Munoz, Eastside resident. I I recently I found your city guys spraying herbicides, right, Roundup. And since then, I came, I spoke to let you guys know what was going on. I made a video. Of, I think, thirty, forty thousand people seeing it. Right? And you guys are still doing this. You guys are still spraying, Renee. You're still spraying poison in the city. People have been sending me videos. They're still doing this. Is it really cheaper to spray thousands of dollars worth of poison than it is to go and pull the weeds? Is it? I wanna know, is it cost is it cost effective to poison us?

Now speaking of poisoning us, there was a meeting with the Department of Pesticide Regulation in. Dennis, you're the AgTech mayor, and you didn't show up. Why wouldn't you show up to something like that? You show up to every photo opportunity that you can. Right? They open they open some anything. They open it of an envelope. You're there for a photo op, but you're not at the Department of Pesticide Regulation as the AgTech mayor. That's very disappointing. They're poisoning us. They're poisoning our children. I mean, you have an office at the Taylor Building. You should go talk to Bruce. He makes billions of dollars a year. He could buy pesticide air monitors for every side of town, if you really wanted to.

Maybe you should have a conversation with him, Dennis. Maybe you could ask him to protect us. He's making billions off of us, off of our backs, and then off of our children, and we're breathing poison. Can you please maybe I mean, they only have this meeting every six months, Dennis. And they don't have it in Salinas all the time, and you couldn't even show up to this one meeting. It's very disappointing. I'm very disappointed in everybody that didn't show up. You know, Andrew showed up. He was the only one that showed up. So maybe, you know, maybe you should show up next one, maybe in six months if you're still around, Dennis. Have a good one. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon. Name is Eric Peterson. And I thought I would point out a couple local veterans organizations that were left off the list that was read earlier. One being Disabled American Veterans, which is unfortunately a huge organization made up of disabled veterans, those of us who came out banged up one way or another, as well as many, many paid employees and volunteers to help those people. A lot of them are banged up a lot worse than I am.

And the other isn't active so much in Salinas, but it's very active on the Peninsula, and that's Veterans for Peace, which has been active outside the Naval Postgraduate School and on Windows Window of the Bay in Monterrey, which is trying to bring some sense to what's going on in this world with a warmonger president. And it also really say it's mostly active on the Peninsula, but it's another organization that deserves a lot of credit for doing things. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good

afternoon, City Council Mayor. My name is Marina Sarate, and I'm from District 2. And I'm also a volunteer with thriving neighborhoods from BHC. I wanna first thank council member Barrera because he had a meeting with the base for the residents from the civic engagement, and we were able to establish some priorities there. Number one priority from the surveys of 2026, 2027, the number one priority is housing.

We need to have enough housing and enough people or staff to be able to implement the ordinances of rent stabilization. We also need more affordable houses to be built for the community, but these houses also have to agree with the salaries that we are earning. We also were able to complete 1,300 surveys, and we also walked the other districts so we can find out the needs that they have and what do they need, and what areas do they need improvement, and what do we have to address urgently. We were able to identify 84 needs of specific improvements. And we also walked all these districts, so that shows the commitment that we have to improve our community of Salinas.

So we hope that we take that you take everything that we've done seriously. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon, city council, mayor, and everybody that is present. My name is Jesus Berlusco, and I live in District 3. I'm a volunteer with VHC and Thriving Neighborhoods here in Salinas. And I'm here because we need to implement the ordinances and we need more staff to be able to implement the ordinances for rent stabilization. We also need to improve economic development.

We need more jobs, but we also need that those jobs are paid more by the hour. We also need improvements like the streets and the curves. We need better municipal services. And our parks and recreation areas also need improvement. But we also want to thank council member D'Arrigo because she accepted the invitation to talk with the community.

Thank you. Good afternoon. It's the very first time I come before you and speak. My name is Virginia Montier, and I want to talk to you about a case that's happening to me. A year ago, my house burned down.

It didn't burn down completely, it was just like 6%. But the thing is that right now, they're telling me that I have to leave. And that took me totally per surprise because the house was not totally burned down, it was 6%. Now, they're telling me that I have they're evicting me from my house. They say that I can't go back and I still have things inside.

So, why didn't they let me know that I was going to leave the house and I couldn't come back? Now, they're saying they have to rebuild it, it's not true because it was only burned 6%. And, I received a notification from a lawyer telling them that I had four days to get all my things out of my house. It wasn't even the agency that told me. And, why didn't they tell me from the beginning, when I was leaving my house, that I wasn't able to come back? Now, I only have four days to get all of my stuff out. So, I want you to know what is happening, because if this happens to me, it means that it's happening to other people. So I want you to be informed what is happening out there.

You. Manager, can we have somebody from our staff contact you, please?

Good afternoon. My name is Nidia So to, and I am an organizer with VHC. And well, right now here, I want to thank all the council members, and I also have here four twenty four surveys with the exact address. We have been going to all the districts, to the six districts, we have been walking them, and we have been able to identify many needs. I want to thank to all the council members that were willing to meet with us.

We have reached out to all the council members. We already had a meeting with Sandoval. We also had we also thank we also appreciate Salazar de la Rosa. We're going to have a meeting with Diego. We already have it programmed for Monday. We're inviting you, Mr. Mayor, if you can join this meeting. And we wanted to meet with Jose Luis Salazar, but sadly, he's going through the situation. He's young. We wish that he gets better soon.

This is something that we don't wish anybody to have to go through. But we want to restore the trust. We're here because we want you we've heard many times that you have not been communicating with the community, so we're here to offer that opportunity so they can sit with you and that we can rekindle the trust that has been broken. So we're here to give you this invitation so you can meet with the community and restore the trust that we need. Thank you.

Hi.

Again, Mary Ann Warden. I'm here to to inform you. Anybody watch channel nine and the China about the Buddhist, temple and the story about how they've rebuilt it and the story from it was a wonderful, wonderful program. I really truly enjoy being with historical fund commission of the county. That was one I had I've been there before, but I'd never heard the whole story.

Somebody should listen to it. And by the way, next month is our portuguesecom the month that the the Portuguese community is recognized throughout California and our Pentecostal be on I believe June 7 in San Benito Street And it will be our one hundred and second anniversary. So I just want to let you know on that. But if anybody turns on channel nine and listen to it, it explains the Chinese, the Filipinos, and the Japanese, their heritage out there. It was a wonderful program.

So thank you. And I didn't know about that thing, but I would have been there because I just took my friend last week to the doctor. They can't find anything along with her lungs, but she's got I have my own allergies, but she was it's been really bad in the last year or so. And they can't figure out what's going on. And it's all this air. And if you want to take a ride and go down Old Stage Road, you can smell the marijuana out there. It's so strong that you cannot breathe. Tell you, it's the truth. It's the truth. I was up there.

Bad. It was bad.

It's abnormal for me.

All right. Thanks, Marianne.

Good afternoon. My name is Adriana Garcia. And first of all, I want to thank you in the name of all the volunteers from BHC. I want to thank you for meeting with us. I want to thank Gloria de la Rosa. Thank you to members Sandoval and Tony Barrera. We also invited Mr. Salazar. We appreciate that he took advantage of the opportunity and met with Mrs. Gloria.

But we do want to meet with you and listen to what you have to say because we're also looking for opportunities. For example, there is a youth theater that we are working with them. We're trying to find certain activities healthy, that so that youth can get involved. So we would like to see if maybe some funds can be allocated for all these activities for the youth. Another thing that I want to focus on is that we've seen that next to Sherwood Hall and the park, the bridge and Carr Lake, there's a store, a cigar store.

When this was we didn't realize that this was close to all these places, to a school, to a park. So, I want you to put a little bit more attention to that cigar store and investigate it a little bit. And, another thing that we have been walking, we have been walking to the different street districts. And, as you walk the districts when you were looking to get a vote from us, we are hoping that you can do the same thing now. And, please visit your districts, visit all your districts so you can see how the districts are right now. We want you to as you walk the districts looking for our votes, we want you to please walk the districts now so you can see in what state they're in. Thank you.

Peter Zalay. This is my mom. She's lived in Salinas for fifty three years and she's watched her neighborhood decline. The city has codes to preserve the basic character and quality of life in residential areas but they have not been enforced. The result, illegally parked vehicles on streets, lawns, driveways, sidewalks, permanently stored cars, inoperable vehicles, panel trucks, trailers, tow trucks, even big rig cabs.

Some residences operate like commercial yards parking multiple work vehicles. Spaces for legitimate parking are reduced, street sweeping is impossible, and sight lines are obstructed. Some homes have piles of debris, appliances, junk, excessive planters blocking access. Yards are overgrown, sometimes taller than people. The lack of enforcement grants permission. Then there's what we call the Alvin Dump, a construction debris site in the middle of her community. It was supposed to close on March 31. It's still operating. Gates are left open inviting illegal dumping. I reported it a month ago, no follow-up from anyone.

So my mom has a simple question, would you want to live next to a dump? Now a step in the right direction, the city has finally begun proactive code enforcement. That's long overdue. Hopefully there will be coordination with the LAZ and Wilden contractors and the police, But is this permanent or an election year gimmick? Every neighborhood deserves to be clean, safe, and respected. No favoritism, no inequitable enforcement. Close the Alvin Dump and make scheduled proactive code enforcement multiple times a year a permanent reliable service for all of Salinas for every resident in every neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Wendy Fernandez. I am a student from Everett Alvarez High School. First, I would like to thank everyone that's in here that was able to assist to this meeting. Oh, thank you.

I'm part of the organization BHC, and I would like to affirm that us, the youth, have dreams to accomplish, and some of us will really like to accomplish certain goals. Like me, for example, I would like to become a journalist when I'm older, and I'm willing to do everything as possible to be it. I would like to thank Sandoval de la Rosa and Salazar for taking their time to watch her play. We really hope to see the Rigo and the mayor to give us the opportunity to watch her play. My classmates and I have been participating for this since we're doing community hours for high school, and I would really like to see you guys there. Thank you. Thanks for the attention.

Thank you.

Hello again. My name is Lee Jeter Stanford, and I have been attending our city council meetings to keep educating you about the animal crisis in our community and how a spay neuter ordinance is the first step in making a real change. I'm not here to complain. I'm here providing education, resources, recommendations, and solutions to fix this problem. Thirty years of doing nothing different is not working.

In every city and county that has implemented this type of ordinance, a spay neuter ordinance has effectively decreased the number of animals impacting the community, which translates into cost savings for the shelter and helping the overall budget of the city or county. I want to share this following letter. The general public has no idea what the animal crisis currently is, so here's an update. The animal shelters are full, the rescues are full, no kill shelters are full, adoptions are at an all time low, intake is at an all time high, Euthanasia of healthy animals for space is at an all time high. Breeders are surrendering entire litters, parents included.

They aren't selling puppies, pregnant moms and good young pets are being euthanized daily because there is no space. The chance there is a really nice home just waiting for your dog or cat is slim. Spay and neuter your pet. Train your dog. They are fine being at home while you work. They sleep most of the day anyway. There is not a line of people who have more time or can take better care of your pets than you. Stop trying to rehome them or surrender them to the shelter because you don't have time. If you need help, there are organizations that can assist with food, medical, or direct you to an organization that can help you. Please keep your pet.

This letter was written by an exhausted rescue volunteer. This is going on in our community every day, all the time, and it is an expensive cost to the city. I have a solution and I have a lot of people who are willing to lend resources to that solution. We would like to see this item be on the agenda for the city of Salinas. It will soon be on the agenda for Monterey County. Thank you.

All right. We will go to any public comment on Zoom. All right, Ozzy.

Oh, yes. Hello. So I said said I'm also in the city council. Have something about Selena city council. Three, two, one. Oh, Selena city council sucks. They ruined the community, and then they scam all the people, and then they ruined the town. And then it's not like he's a piece of shit and he's a clown and he's success.

And Mark Go ahead. Okay. All right. With that, thank you everyone. We will now proceed to public hearings and I think I'm looking for Maria and we're going to hear about vacancy updates and recruitment and retention efforts.

So good evening, mayor and members of the city council. I am Maria Avila, senior human resources analyst with the city of Salinas, and together with our human resources analyst, Charlene Virueta, will be presenting to you today on the city's vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts. There's no action required for this item. Assembly Bill 2,561 requires public agencies to hold a hearing at least once per year, to report on vacancy recruitment and retention efforts before the adoption of the budget. So today, will go over workforce vacancy, recruitment, hiring challenges we are seeing, and retention challenges, as well as give you specific information on vacancy and recruitment challenges for bargaining units whose vacancy rate is above 20%.

All the data presented to you is as of 12/31/2025. Data was tracked throughout calendar year 2025. At the end of the year, there were six sixty eight authorized positions, 75 were vacant, which gave us a vacancy rate of 11.21%. During the calendar year, we filled 122 vacancies, and these vacancies were filled by different types of recruitment. The majority were filled by eligibility lists that were previously established by ongoing recruitment, such as those with police recruit, police officer, community service officer, and police services technicians, which did not close throughout the year.

We also had new internalexternal recruitments, which are open to both the public and city staff, new internal only, which are promotional positions only open to current city staff. We also had transfers, which an example would be an office technician from our community development department transferring to our library and community services department. The average days to fill vacancies is high, and some factors that contribute to high numbers is the time for a background investigation to be completed, as well as delayed start dates to relocation or personal reasons. Some of the hiring challenges that we have seen here at the city are that some positions generate more applications than others, and some require certain certification, education, and experience. And that is where we begin to see limited applicant pools for specialized fields such as those in engineering, finance, and legal.

The length of the process is also one of our challenges. The timeline for recruitment can vary by position and depend on whether we have an existing eligibility list or we need to open a recruitment. Some positions require a study to establish a job description, the salary range, and where to be placed in the bargaining units. Other positions require extensive background investigations, medical examinations, and psychological exams. There's always delays with backgrounds, which are like our live scans for our non public safety folks, as well as delayed start date for due to personal reasons and relocation.

Compensation so we're competing with other agencies in the area, public, and both our private sector, which may pay more. Remote work was also one of the challenges, so some applicants are looking strictly at remote work opportunities, and until now, the city has accommodated remote work for social distancing during the pandemic or to accommodate some medical conditions. The city is addressing these obstacles by implementing remote work, so the city is in the process of finalizing our remote work policy. We're reviewing expanded referral program. So currently, the only referral program that is available is for our police officers, police recruits, and police services technicians, and we're looking to expand that to other positions.

So we have started employee engagements and training. Since our city manager arrived, he has focused on employee development, training, engagement. We have increased the number of training opportunities to include communication, customer service, employee safety, and supervision. HR has coordinated new supervisor orientation for our fire and police departments to help new supervisors be successful in their new roles. Departments are focusing on succession planning and collaborating on employee engagement activities.

As a department, human resources has hosted different employee events throughout the year, which have included cafecito en pan, Tea Time with HR, and Cookies and Coco during the holiday season. This year, we also had a Super Bowl kickoff event that we collaborate in Library and Community Services Department and are looking forward to hosting more events throughout the year. Case by case analysis, an example that we currently went through in 2025, where our police services technician pay was brought up to be the same as other technician positions in the city to help with the recruitment. Hiring police services technicians is difficult due to their work schedule, as they work twenty fourseven, three sixty five to help support sworn law enforcement personnel. We've applied applicant feedback.

Some applicants didn't know what an oral board exam was. So we created an oral board tip sheet, and there's a link to this resource in our job flyers located on our governmentjobs.com page. We've accommodated weekend and evening testing to widen the applicant pool that may not be available to take a test during regular business hours. And we've also tested in the evening for clerical positions, and we've tested early morning for maintenance positions. We've reduced applicant barriers and updating job descriptions to be more inclusive with education and experience, and we have been more flexible with submission of required documentation.

An example would be an arborist certificate. So we're no longer requiring it at time of application, but need to submit by oral board date. We have continued outreach and community engagement. In an effort to reach our local talent, we've attended different career fairs at Hartnell, CSUMB and local high schools such as North High, Aliselle, MCOE, and Rancho Cielo. We also have reached out to our ROP here in the city to see where we can collaborate.

HR has also participated in community events to include National Night Out, the Salinas Air Show, and different events at Northridge Mall. In 2025, 125 vacancies were created by either retirements, internal promotions, voluntary separations, involuntary separation, position reallocations, other, which include medical separations and over hires. I'm now going to turn it over to my colleague, Dardim Biretta, to present on the bargaining groups.

Good

evening. My name is Arlene Barotta, I will be presenting on the second half of this presentation. So, our first slide here, it outlines the groups of the City Of Salinas, the number of vacancies, the number of full time authorized positions, and the vacancy percentage rate per group at the end of the twenty twenty five calendar year. It's important to note that this chart does not include the city manager, city attorney, or the following three positions which were not assigned a group by the end of the calendar year, which were the cybersecurity specialist, the public safety information officer, and the public safety recruitment coordinator. Per AB two thousand five 60 '1 regulations, we will be providing information on the groups that had a vacancy rate of 20% or higher, which are outlined in red.

We have the Service Employee and International Union crew supervisors, also known as SAIU crew soups, which had a 28.57% vacancy rate, Confidential Management, which had a 26.66% vacancy rate, and the Police Managers Association, which had a 20% vacancy rate. We will start by reviewing the SAU crew supervisor group, which had a 28.57% vacancy rate. In the calendar year 2025, we had received 30 applications and filled one position through an open until filled recruitment, which was the urban forestry crew supervisor. Following internal promotions and at the end of the calendar year, the urban forestry crew supervisor position and the wastewater crew supervisor position were vacant. We are happy to report that the urban forestry crew supervisor position was filled in February and the wastewater crew supervisor position was filled in March, leaving this vacancy, this group with a vacancy rate of 0% to date.

Our next group we will focus on is confidential management. This group ended the 2025 calendar year with a 26.66% vacancy rate. We received 92 applications throughout the year and two positions were filled in this group with external and internal recruitments, which was manager. Two recruitments were also run-in 2025 calendar year to fill the vacancies of assistant city attorney and the deputy director of economic development. Although, we are still looking to fill the assistant city attorney position, we were able to fill the deputy director of economic development in January 2026, leaving us with three positions to fill in this group.

Assistant city attorney, which we're still currently accepting applications for, economic development analyst, which was recently unfrozen, and finance manager, which we're working with the finance department to finalize the job description. We will now be taking a look at the Police Managers Association Group, which under the year with a 20% vacancy rate. We have 15 applications we received in the last calendar year, and two internal recruitments were run-in January 2025, and both eligibility lists were used to fill four vacancies during the spring and summer of twenty twenty five. The same eligible list was then used to fill former positions in January 2026, leaving us with three police sergeant vacancies a day and a 10 vacancy rate. Looking at the calendar year, we filled 122 vacancies, onboarded 37 temporary positions across various divisions, reviewed over 4,000 applications within the 91 recruitments we ran.

When compared to the 2024 calendar year, we had a similar amount of separations throughout the year. We filled 122 vacancies in 2025 compared to 144 in 2024 and had 10 less vacant positions at the end of the calendar year. Overall, we had a 13.84% vacancy rate last year in 2024. And then in the calendar year 2025, we had an 11.21% vacancy rate. We hope to continue to see the downward trend in the upcoming year. That wraps up our presentation for you guys today. Thank you for your time. We're available for questions.

Margaret, any questions?

Thank you. I found two people that speak faster than I do. I was trying to keep up with both of you. So I just have a I wanted to ask if you have any idea of how many that you're hiring are local. Is that I know that's a focus, but are we successful in hiring people that were born and raised here that are more likely to stay here?

We do have a list of people currently live in Salinas. So, employees who reside in Monterey County, so we have that. So, 82% of our employees live in Monterey County. When we're thinking about public safety, 68.44% live in Monterey County. Employees residing in Salinas specifically is 59%, and public safety residing in Salinas is 48%. So, we do see a big number of employees residing in the county in Salinas.

Okay, thank you. I've got more comments, no more questions. Thank you.

Gloria?

Thank you. I have a question on remote, employees that are working remotely. How many employees are working remotely right now?

I think it varies, as Maria had mentioned. It depends on if there's like an emergency, if someone's sick, depending on the department, they'll go ahead and accommodate. I don't believe we have an exact number. It's case by case.

Okay. So, how do you qualify, just for the community that's out there that maybe doesn't know, how do you qualify as an employee to go work remotely from home? Right? Remote is from home.

Yes, that's correct. So, at this time we don't have an exact policy, it's just case by case, I don't know if someone else wants to

We don't have a policy?

At the moment, the policy is still being routed for approval. So, the time, we just have a couple employees who are working remote, if they're ill and working remote from home in case by case situation, we don't have an exact policy at the time.

Patricia Pena, also HR manager. So, Gloria, to your question, we don't have a policy in place and we don't have employees that are working remotely on a fixed schedule, so it is case by case depending on the circumstances.

Okay, All right. Thank you.

Maria?

Yes. In terms of the one vacancy we have regarding the assistant city attorney, just wanted to know approximately more or less how long has that position been vacant? My feeling is that's been vacant for quite some time, just trying to get a general idea of what that has been. In terms of the responsibilities that falls under that particular position, how have those responsibilities been picked up by the department? And in terms of being active and recruiting for this particular position, like what challenges have we seen?

Quite often, hear about the private sector and Citi having to compete with the private sector and providing salary and wages between private sector and Citi. If you could answer those three questions, that would be great.

So, from our notes here, it seems like the position has been vacant for over four years. But I do know we're currently actively trying to recruit for the position. We're just looking for qualified candidates at the time.

And just to add to that, so those four years that it's been vacant, existing staff has had to take on exist on load on the case load or through contract is what we've had to do. And, we are actively recruiting. We recently brought an item to counsel to increase the salary for the attorneys, and we did reopen the recruitment in hopes that we'll attract some talent because that was an issue in the past.

Follow-up if I may. So in terms of having to contract some of that, you know, of those professional services, do we know more or less over those four years? How much have we been spending?

I don't know the cost.

Councilmember, it's hard to say the exact cost. Most of it has been absorbed in house with the litigation being contracted out and there is a cost associated with that litigation, but I don't have that answer for you right now.

Okay. Thank you for answering those questions. I'll follow-up with the city manager.

Thank you. All right. Tony?

Thank you. Know, as you're working on reducing application barriers, I do see in the city that Morales is picking up. What kind of system do we have in place where employees can give input of, what can better their departments? Do they have those types of opportunities where an employee can suggest or put something in writing and and make it better?

You know, I think a good opportunity for that would be during staff meetings. There are quite, the departments hold staff meetings and our community department holds them at least once a month and that's all hands on deck type of meeting. But as an actual mechanism for them to give feedback, that's something we can definitely look into. Councilmember Baragda.

Yeah. I I I think of all the over 4,000 plus applicants on different levels, how do you see that you're reducing I have heard from past applicants that they've applied, but for some reason, it just the process took too long, and they were able to work for another city. What do you think we're doing better those types of barriers to hire people?

You know, I can give you one example. So since I run the police department's recruitment processes, we stopped asking them for physical agility at the beginning of the application process. And that is because it's costly. It's $110 for applicants to go take this test at the academy. So if they go through the interview process and let's say they pass the interview, then that's when we say like, hey, now we have to make sure you're physically fit or physically able to do these duties, and then that's when they go. So we're trying to help our applicants that way as well.

Yeah.

And Tony, your question, we have tried to streamline the process and I think last year I had shared our process, we didn't share it this year, but just all of the steps that are required in our recruitment process to make sure it's fair. But we have received feedback and we've implemented it as much as we can and more so with what Maria had mentioned earlier where we don't require applicants to submit a lot of the documentation when they apply. We know that was a barrier for employees for instance their education, their diploma, they were having to track that down and maybe that was so long ago that they didn't have it anymore. So we're no longer requiring that at time of application so that helps them. But in terms of the process itself, steps remain the same.

What we do try to do is just try to screen applications as quickly as we can and keep the process moving as quickly as we can. And

just one last question. Thank you for that. Again, on the retention, I know employees leave for different reasons, better maybe a better position, maybe better to be closer to family, whatever the reason is. But do we provide an opportunity like an exit interview where people employees can share with us hopefully honest comments on how we can better our city?

We do. We do offer to meet with all employees. Sometimes it's not possible just depending on if it's an abrupt resignation but otherwise we do schedule exit interviews with our employees and we have a questionnaire and we ask all of those questions and we usually get feedback, good feedback that we can go back and use and share with the department.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, Andrew?

So in other jurisdictions, what positions have we seen kind of move towards remote work or like a hybrid format, other cities or counties that we're considering?

So we haven't researched specific positions but we do know that neighboring agencies do offer some sort of a hybrid remote work policy and that's why we're working to implement the same because just as Tony just asked about the exit interview, it's something that we do here, not all the time, but it is a request for remote work, some sort of hybrid option. So it's something that we're going to continue researching and hope to implement pretty soon.

Okay, great. And then I know for a lot of time some positions required degrees but we're seeing more move towards work experience or certifications or things like that. Are we moving towards giving people more credit for actual experience instead of just requiring a strict degree?

We are and so you'll see in some of our and so what we do is as vacancies come up, we visit some of those job descriptions and we'll tier the experience and education so that they have more ways of applying and being eligible and not just requiring degrees, they could have a high school diploma for instance and experience instead of a degree and feel less experience.

Okay. And is that going to expand towards management positions or what have we kind of established what that's going to look like?

We've done that for those as well. We don't have an exact template for it, but we have done it also for the higher level positions for some of the managers.

Okay, great. Those are all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Go ahead and take public comment. I do want to let the room know that we are scheduled to have a hard stop at 06:00 because there's a special study session afterwards that's scheduled. So we'll move through this and that will impact the rest of the agenda.

Good afternoon. Segar, Montepeda community. I don't know why it's so hard to hire people in Salinas. I I said this, I think, a few weeks ago, same thing. Are we just not getting the right candidates? Are we just not doing the process correctly? I mean, I know law enforcement's a little bit different than most of the other ones, but I mean, first is a background check, right? It's pretty basic. Fill out the application, background check, bring in your documents. How hard can it really be? I'm just saying, I don't see what why it's so hard to hire somebody here. Are we just hiring our friends? Are we hiring people we don't we like? Or is that what's going on in the city of Salinas? Because we're a diverse city, and I believe that everybody deserves a chance to work here if they want to work here.

So how are we doing it? I'd like to know those answers. I'd like somebody to give me a call and let me know because how can we have so many vacancies? That's money just sitting there where we can help people that need stuff done in the city. We can't do that if we don't hire the right people. And if we're not doing the right thing, maybe our department is broken. Maybe we need to go back to the department and re figure it out or reconstruct it or do something different. I don't know. Mean, is HR involved? Who's training the people that are supposed to be doing this?

Do we have adequate training? I mean, can have a degree, doesn't make you smart, I'll tell you that right now. It's great to have a degree, but some people don't have any common sense. And that's really good. That goes a long way in the community. When you can actually talk to somebody like a regular person, it goes a long way. You don't need a degree for that. I'm sorry. That does help. Know. You get a better job doing it. And so be do Anyways, so thank you. God bless you. And Those are all my comments.

Daniel Munoz, I got a suggestion if you guys want to hire people, maybe get us pesticide air monitors so people can know what we're breathing. Why would somebody want to move over here and work here if they're going to get poisoned? I don't know, just food for thought. Thank you.

All right. Anybody on Zoom? All right, we'll go ahead and close public comment. This is not an action item. With that, we are going to any final comments?

I just want to say I've seen so much improvement in the last two years from the HR department, so visible across everywhere I go. I think you might be the only department that doesn't have like a marketing team or people posting about the amazing work, but I really like the shift that I've seen to try to recruit more and find innovative ways. So thank you very much.

Thank you, council member. Okay.

Anybody else?

Okay. Any final comments? Want to

thank the staff

I'll for the presentation. Get okay, Tony. I'll okay. Tony?

Yes. I want to thank the city manager. In his own personal way, he has improved the morale in the city. And I do also wanna thank the HR team. I think they're doing a a great job, and and and sometimes it's difficult to hire people, especially if, well, they they they don't qualify for certain positions. But but, again, I wanna thank the team for doing a great job and to as Marina Hortagayos, thank you. Can you hear me?

Yes. Okay.

All right.

Okay. Thank you, Tony. All right. Thank you and very thorough. And I'll echo Councilmember Sandoval's comments and praising your good work in terms of helping rebuild the city and its workforce. So thank you. All right. So I'm getting so we're going to just so I can set expectations, we're going to hear from the and then we so here's where we're to go. We have a we're scheduled to adjourn. We have a special session scheduled for 06:30.

We're going to receive the report from fire and then we are going to do one consent item and then everything else will be continued and then we'll jump to the special session. So just to manage expectations that's what we'll be doing. So with that, Chief, you've got the bridge.

Thank you, Mayor and Council and everybody watching at home. I will move as quickly as possible. So hopefully, we can avoid questions at the end. But I'm Sam Klemik, fire chief. I'm happy to be here tonight to just share some of our story of twenty twenty five years Salinas Fire Department.

Essentially, we've been working very diligently to implement the elements of our master plan from 2019 and revisit it again in 2023. So what we've been able to do in 2025 is complete our command staff restructuring, switching some job descriptions and some job titles to add better oversight and better control of our division assignments. We have three division chiefs now and we have our three battalion chiefs, battalion chiefs that supervise the day to day operations of our platoons and all of our fire stations and three division chiefs that oversee EMS training and fire prevention. Our personnel, again, it ebbs and flows throughout the year, but we had for twenty twenty five, 108 personnel, 98 of those being our suppression staff and 10 being our professional I'm sorry, professional staff, prevention folks and civilian folks alongside our Suppression ninety eight. By the numbers, our daily staffing, we have six fire engines, two ladder trucks and one battalion chief on duty every day in the city.

Our minimum staffing fluctuates between twenty four and twenty six depending on the day. But each engine, each piece of apparatus is generally staffed with a paramedic. We have 68 EMTs on staff as well as 25 paramedics. And we responded to over 17,800 calls last year. 28 of those folks working for us are hazmat certified and support our hazardous materials program.

We are the hazmat team for the County Of Monterey as well as have agreements with San Benito County and shortly Santa Cruz County for providing those services as well. We do have in house mechanics, six of those that do keep our fleet on the road, as well as four fire inspectors and now our Deputy Fire Marshal and Sean Brano. One of our goals that we've been talking about a lot is keeping our fleet on the road as we know and you've heard me say many times that our replacement schedule for grower engines has been really turned upside down after COVID because of the crisis and the fire apparatus building arena. This is a nationwide problem that you've probably seen in recent news that there are several large cities and small cities that are getting on board with filing lawsuits and getting to the bottom of it. I am happy to report that from council support in 2024, we were able to order type six fire engine, that's our wildland, small wildland unit to get into our nooks and crannies in the Thibodea Creek Park and some of our very tight areas.

One type one fire engine, that's the pumper that you see every day running around on the street, and as well as a ladder truck. Those will start to come in later this year, another one next year and another one in 2028. And then in 2026, we were able to order additional apparatus that will start to arrive 2027 and then in 2030. Current staffing versus demand. Demand call volume is very similar.

We still use the standard that we've talked about in our 2024 report. Our national standard that we look at is well, I'm sorry, national standard is 1.2 firefighters per thousand people. Our Western Region slightly less as a standard with 0.97 firefighters per person or per thousand residents and Salinas is currently at 0.58. Our staffing per population should be around in the 160 area. But again, depending on where we get with ebbs and flows and staffing and hiring, that's a goal we have set for us.

We're able to accomplish several things in our Fire Academy and graduating one of our largest Fire Academies last year and getting those folks off probation just a couple months ago. It's been great. As I said, 17,858 calls. When we break that down by type, EMS calls being the lion's share at almost 12,000 calls a year, Next being the good intent calls and then fires at eight eighty four. That's a significant number because that does indicate compared to other jurisdictions, we still have a fire problem here.

And that's for a number of reasons. That's residential structure fires, that's outside vegetation fires, rubbish fires and the like. Responding to the unsheltered and some of the fire issue that goes along with that, current numbers that we were looking at are about 1,000 calls a year related to unsheltered fires in the outdoors. We do that with 23 personnel, as I said, looking at our 2,007 numbers. We had 10,900 calls that year, 23 personnel and seven apparatus.

I'll point that out as just a change on this slide because it says eight apparatus. We did that with seven. In 2016, we did add an additional ladder truck with staffing of 24 when we ran just under 14,000 calls. Fast forward to 2025, again, almost 18,000 calls with daily personnel staffing at 24 with our eight apparatus. We know we have growth on our horizon that we need to address.

153 residential structure fires. These are our most labor intensive responses that require the most apparatus and the most personnel to deal with. We did that 153 times last year. As you can see, four eighty five outside rubbish fires. Those are some of the fires that I talked about.

They have to deal with our homeless population, vegetation fires and some of the encampments and things like that. As far and then vehicle fires at 70, other fires at 15. So again, those are very similar numbers to 2024 and the year before that in terms of our fire loss. Mutual aid, we responded to 111 mutual aid calls where we gave mutual aid and 94 times last year we received mutual aid. That's been a goal of the fire department is to get that number in balance a little bit.

So we're balancing out the times the amount of time that we share resources with other jurisdictions because of our call volume. Looking at this chart shows a little bit of where we're still falling short in our response times. Our response times still are above the national standard. For fire responses, that's five minutes and twenty seconds. And for EMS calls, that's five minutes flat.

So as you can see, this chart, this table does show that we are still struggling just to meet the demand. There's a number of reasons for that. Traffic calming, sheer call volume, and the number of times that we have concurrent calls going on. So you can see our median response at six minutes and twenty three seconds for fires and six minutes and nine seconds for EMS responses. The ninetieth percentile number refers to basically that that takes out the outliers of our numbers, right, and really focuses on 90% of the time what we're doing, the types of calls we're responding to.

And if you see those nine minute marks, that's a routine thing for us now, especially in certain areas of the North And Northeast part of Salinas where it's been tough for us to get to, and that's where Station seven is contemplated to address. Some of these response time numbers, I will admit to you that Station one, the renovations that went on Station one where we had to rehouse Station one crews to Sherwood All have something to do with some of these response times as well. So in full transparency, since we've been able to get Station one open again, we track these numbers closely As you see in your monthly reports that I give to you now, you'll be able to see that. So we'll continue to watch these closely. Also January 1 having put Station seven or I'm sorry, Engine seven on the street in a pilot is giving us some good data to help us really hone in on what our next moves will be.

Unit hour utilization, we've improved a little bit in this respect, but you can see that still medic engine one down at fire station one, medic engine two at Laurel Drive, and medic engine three down in the South District off Abbott are still in our overutilization category. And that what that means overutilization means it's the amount of time that the unit is over committed or not available for the next call that comes in. You'll see in a chart that's coming up here the amount of times that we had concurrent calls, two calls, three calls, four calls going at one time, that we have to have units coming from other areas where that also contributes to those response time increases. So with that, to talk about our emergency medical services, I'd like to bring Division Chief Stephen Christie. He's our Division Chief of EMS, and he's going to talk for just a minute about that.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members. Steven Christie, Division Chief of EMS. I'll try to keep this quick for you here, but I'd first like to thank you for this opportunity to share what our personnel are doing in the EMS side and as we contribute to the annual report. I'm extremely proud to present some of the information to you over the next couple of minutes here and explain and show and demonstrate the hard work, the dedication, the professionalism of our personnel and show that we're making a difference every single day, every single call. As you look at the slide in front of you here, I'd like you to take note of the two numbers.

First, the red box, 11487 and then most importantly, the upper box in blue, 50, which I'll explain what that truly means here in just a minute. Like the Chief mentioned, our call volume has continued to increase and that is I mean, obviously reflected in EMS calls as well as we continue to increase about 400 more calls in the EMS response than last year alone. This year has been one of continued growth in the demand of EMS. In front of you, the graph shows that we responded to just under 11,500 medical calls alone. While those are actual medical emergencies where there was a patient on scene, very likely our personnel exited the apparatus, made contact, performed an assessment, spoke to our residents or community and possibly treated or brought them to the hospital.

The true number is closer to 12,500 medical calls that we're actually dispatched to every single year. The discrepancy is when there's a false alarm or a case where a patient may have left the scene already or finding out that it may be a lift assist or something as opposed to a medical emergency. In addition to the 11,500 calls, we responded to just over 1,200 vehicle accidents. Those are either small minimal fluids in the roadway type vehicle accidents or a handful of those are requiring enhanced auto extrication, technical rescue to actually remove the patients from the vehicles and ultimately get them to a hospital whether here or up in the Bay Area. One trend that we have noticed is the high speed collisions where our apparatus are requiring more and more resources to actually extricate patients and it's a lot more task and demand for our personnel.

Now moving on to the blue box and this is one of my the highlights of my position that I get to share with you every single year. Last year, we reported that we had 50 cardiac arrest field saves and that's an increase from the previous year in 2024 where we recorded and I was happy to report 36 field saves. This year is or last year 2025, we reported a total of 50. To give you an understanding of that, last what that actually is, is our personnel arriving at scene, assessing a patient that is not conscious, they're not breathing, they're in cardiac arrest, their heart has stopped, they're clinically dead or deceased for lack of better terms. Our personnel provide advanced life support to the highest degree.

This is something that we train on every month, every year we go through a pretty strenuous and a very thorough CPR as well as advanced airway training and fortunately for 50 of our community members, they got a second chance at life. And that is something that I am extremely proud of. Last year, just to give you a glimpse as to how what that number truly means, when we attempted or provided resuscitation, we attempted to resuscitate one hundred and twenty two patients. Out of those one hundred and twenty two, fifty of them we got pulses back and many of those actually exited the emergency room and received further care. That's a total forty one percent success rate for cardiac resuscitation, which to the bystander may sound like forty one percent isn't the greatest, but keep in mind that the national average is twenty three to twenty nine percent.

And so just to give you a better understanding, your salinence firefighters are exceeding the standard in the every single day but especially in the resuscitation field. We're also investing in our the future of our division. Last year, five of our EMTs promoted to the role of paramedic. As you can see in the slides there, we actually do have two of them in the room. Of the five, to my right here is Firefighter Jack Baird and across the room is Acting Engineer, Abe Hugo.

Of the five, two of the members are promoted to the role paramedic were the sponsor or the sponsored through our organization to attend the South Bay Paramedic program, which they attended fourteen months of school to improve their level of service and actually enhance their training and they advanced up to the role of paramedic. One of the 50 field saves I spoke about just a minute ago was actually performed by acting engineer, Abe Hugo over there trying to avoid eye contact with me. But two months into his career as a paramedic for our department, he was able to successfully resuscitate and perform his first field say for a patient that did walk out of the emergency room. They live out of the area but our follow-up, are alive and recovering well, something again that we can be extremely proud of. How early on he's already putting that hard work to use for our department, for our community.

None of this would be possible without your continued support. Like I mentioned, you have the city has continued to assist us with sponsoring our firefighters, working their way and advancing their education in paramedic school and advancing our technology in new equipment and service that we can deliver to the community. Your support for us advancing and maintaining that innovation and staying current with technology and education is how we can ensure that we are delivering our promise to our community, which is the highest level of service available. I'd like to thank you again for your partnership. And I said I'll keep it short here because I am speaking again next week as we recommend or we recognize the EMS Week proclamation where I look forward to sharing a few more details and some information and hopefully give you a little better glimpse into the EMS division of our department.

Thank you very much. And in the report, I'd like to hand this over to Division Chief, David Fury from our training division.

Thank you for your report. Unfortunately, I am going to have to stop here and continue the rest of the meeting until next week's council meeting because we have to get the room set up for the special session with the school board. There Mary, sorry to interrupt, but here's what I'll need. I'll need

a motion from a council member to continue this item and the remaining items on the agenda to your next meeting on May 12.

Can I make some comments really quick?

It all needs to be continued. We're out of time. We're well past six Okay. P.

So you need a motion? Yes. Okay. So move to continue.

Is there a second? There's a second. Patty, call for the question to continue.

You have to continue.

Council Member Barrera?

Yes.

Council Member De Arrigo? Yes. Council Member De La Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Council Member Sandoval? No. Mayor Donahue? Yes. Motion passes.

Thank you, everyone. The rest of the agenda from this point on will be continued to the May 12 council meeting, and we'll take 10 for changing the set.