City Council - Regular Meeting

2026 council meeting approving a partnership and conservation easement between the Regetti Fiscalini Ranch and the Land Conservancy of Slow County with the necessary grant funding to limit the use of that land as a means to protect and preserve it. Approving a historic property preservation agreement between the city and the owners of the Meredith House to maintain and restore the property as a means of preserving St. Louis Abyispo's cultural heritage. adopting a resolution designating the George and Cordelia McCabe House as a landmark historic resource as it has unique and important architectural features that must be preserved. Authorizing a new contract for transit operation and maintenance services. Next, the council will move on to public hearings and business items. First, the council will hold a public hearing on the city government's employee recruitment and retention efforts and staffing vacancies as required by state law. Then the council will discuss proposed changes to regulations that could reduce sewer spills, improve sewer system reliability, and increase housing development. Finally, the council will hold a study session that will help shape how local water and sewer rates are designed in the future. Attendees of city council or advisory body meetings are eligible to receive 1 hour of complimentary parking. Visit the city's parking for public meetings web page for more details. We encourage your participation in person or prior to the meeting. Please review the cover of the meeting agenda for ways to submit your comments. View the council meeting remotely on channel 20, on the city's YouTube channel, and on the city's website. For more information and the full meeting agenda, visit slowcity.org/aggendas. Here is a preview of our next city council meeting which will take place at city hall on April 21st, 2026 starting at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will begin with several presentations including two proclamations declaring the week of

April 19th through 25th as California cities week and volunteer appreciation week respectively and a proclamation declaring the month of May as bike month. Then the city manager will share important information about city programs, services, and projects. There are several routine matters on the consent agenda which the city council can approve all at once with a single vote. These include waving the reading of all resolutions and ordinances, approving the minutes of the April 7th, 2026 council meeting, approving a partnership and conservation easement between the Regetti Fiscalini Ranch and the Land Conservancy of Slow County with the necessary grant funding to limit the use of that land as a means to protect and preserve it. approving a historic property preservation agreement between the city and the owners of the Meredith House to maintain and restore the property as a means of preserving St. Louis Abyispo's cultural heritage. Adopting a resolution designating the George and Cordelia McCabe House as a landmark historic resource as it has unique and important architectural features that must be preserved. Authorizing a new contract for transit operation and maintenance services. Next, the council will move on to public hearings and business items. First, the council will hold a public hearing on the city government's employee recruitment and retention efforts and staffing vacancies as required by state law. Then, the council will discuss proposed changes to regulations that could reduce sewer spills, improve sewer system reliability, and increase housing development. Finally, the council will hold a study session that will help shape how local water and sewer rates are designed in the future. Attendees of city council or advisory body meetings are eligible to receive 1 hour of complimentary parking. Visit the city's parking for public meetings web page for more details. We encourage your participation in person or prior to the meeting. Please review the cover of the

meeting agenda for ways to submit your comments. View the council meeting remotely on channel 20, on the city's YouTube channel, and on the city's website. For more information and the full meeting agenda, visit slowcity.org/aggendas. Here is a preview of our next city council meeting, which will take place at city hall on April 21st, 2026, starting at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will begin with several presentations, including two proclamations declaring the week of April 19th through 25th as California C's week and Volunteer Appreciation Week, respectively, and a proclamation declaring the month of May as Bike Month. Then the city manager will share important information about city programs, services, and projects. There are several routine matters on the consent agenda which the city council can approve all at once with a single vote. These include waving the reading of all resolutions and ordinances, approving the minutes of the April 7th, 2026 council meeting, approving a partnership and conservation easement between the Regetti Fiscalini Ranch and the Land Conservancy of Slow County with the necessary grant funding to limit the use of that land as a means to protect and preserve it. Approving a historic property preservation agreement between the city and the owners of the Meredith House to maintain and restore the property as a means of preserving St. St. Louis Abyispo's cultural heritage adopting a resolution designating the George and Cordelia McCabe House as a landmark historic resource as it has unique and important architectural features that must be preserved. Authorizing a new contract for transit operation and maintenance services. Next, the council will move on to public hearings and business items. First, the council will hold a public hearing on the city government's employee recruitment and retention efforts and staffing vacancies as required by state law. Then, the council will discuss proposed changes to regulations that could reduce sewer spills, improve sewer

system reliability, and increase housing development. Finally, the council will hold a study session that will help shape how local water and sewer rates are designed in the future. Attendees of city council or advisory body meetings are eligible to receive 1 hour of complimentary parking. Visit the city's parking for public meetings web page for more details. We encourage your participation in person or prior to the meeting. Please review the cover of the meeting agenda for ways to submit your comments. View the council meeting remotely on channel 20, on the city's YouTube channel, and on the city's website. For more information and the full meeting agenda, visit slowcity.org. or slaggendas.

Here is a preview of

Well, good afternoon everybody. I am Mayor Erica A. Stewart and um unfortunately council member Marks is not feeling well and will not be here today otherwise. Uh if you'll please join me to uh the pledge of

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nationy andice for all. Thank you so much. Um just a quick note. Um item 7B will be heard after item 8A. Uh so the sewer ladder will be after the water and sewer rate structure study. Um I have a request at the fair practices political commission and I have to recuse myself from that at this time. So, uh, vice mayor will lead the rest of the meeting at that point. And with that, city man or sorry, city attorney, do you have a close session report?

Yes. Thank you, mayor. The council did meet in close session on uh matter, one matter with two subp parts on conference with labor negotiators. Uh for the first portion of that uh the city manager and I were not present and that was our agency negotiator Nicole Dominy uh receiving uh negotiating direction for the city manager and I which is why we were not present. Uh I am told by our agency negotiator that there was no reportable action on that portion and then there was further discussion regarding uh in which the city manager and I did participate regarding unrepresented management employees and there was also no uh reportable action on that matter. And then we had a conference with legal counsel on a matter of anticipated li litigation um with the facts and circumstances supporting that as stated on the agenda related to a property damage claim. Um uh ar alleged to arise from a failure of the nasium portion of the nasameo pipeline. Uh the council provided uh litigation direction to us on that but there was no further reportable action on that item either. Thank you so much. Well, next is the part we do some proclamations. Um we share some interesting things that are happening in our city. So, we have three proclamations today. And um the first one is California Cities Week. And it feels very weird because I'm going to be giving myself a proclamation. No, I'm really just uh the representative of uh the statewide board for the Cal Cities and for our region here in the Channel County's Division, which is the St. St. Louis Abyispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties. So, I will take this and bring it back to Cal Cities because the vice mayor, the city manager, and the deputy city manager, Greg Herman, will be all going to Sacramento tomorrow uh to meet with our legislators as well as to uh meet with the whole board. So,

I'll just read a couple of these stanzas, and if you wish to, you can, of course, look at these online. Um whereas California's first cities formed in 1850 to provide essential health, safety, and infrastructure services to communities growing rapidly during the gold rush and in the decades of economic development and immigration that followed. Today's California's 483 cities and towns vary widely in size and character, serving diverse communities across the state, from small rural towns to major metropolitan regions. More than 80% of Californians live in cities and towns that rely on the services, facilities, and programs provided by municipal governments. California cities remain transparent, accountable, and responsive to the communities they serve, earning the trust of residents through accessible local governance and public engagement. So whereas California cities week provides an opportunity to recognize the essential role cities play in community members daily lives and to encourage civic participation, education, and involvement in local government. Now therefore, I the mayor of city of San Losispo recognize and proclaim April 19th through 25th, 2026 as California C's week. Thank you. And next we have the volunteer appreciation month. I saw some wildflower seeds out there. I'm very excited. So, um, after I, uh, get to read this volunteer appreciation month proclamation, I will meet Kirsten up front and she is our volunteer uh, director for the entire city of St. Louis Bispo. And lastly, we have bike month and I'm hoping that vice mayor will read bike month's proclamation. Thank you so much. and then Hannah um Heben Rich from the slow regional ride share will meet us up front and share a

few moments about bike month as well. So whereas the city of St. Louis Abyspo recognizes the positive impact volunteers have on our neighborhoods, schools, nonprofit and community- based organizations, civic groups, faith communities, and government agencies. Volunteers generously offer their time, talents, and compassion to strengthen our city and enrich the lives of those around them. Volunteers are the heart of the St. Louis Abyispo community, bringing people together, cultivating connection, and helping ensure that everyone feels welcome and valued. Through service in the arts, environmental stewardship, education, civic engagement, historical preservation, philanthropy, local businesses, volunteers advance the work of organizations that help our community thrive and enhance the quality of life for all who live and visit the Central Coast. The 2026 Volunteer Appreciation Month theme was you belong here, celebrating the spirit of inclusion and connection that defines volunteerism in St. Noispo and reminds every community member that there is a place for them to contribute, participate, and make a difference. During the month of April, we call upon all community members, organizations, and community partners to recognize, celebrate, and uplift the contributions of past, present, and future volunteers. So now, therefore, I, Erica A. Stewart, mayor of the city of San Los Aispo, do hereby proclaim the month of April 2026 as volunteer appreciation month and encourage community members of all backgrounds, ages, and abilities to join in service, strengthen community connections, and help ensure that in St. Louis Abyispo, everyone knows that they belong here. Yeah, of course.

right there in the front. Go ahead and sit right there. Okay, cool.

Well, good evening, Mayor Stewart, Vice Mayor Francis, city council members, city colleagues, community members, and a special greeting to city volunteers here on online. My name is Kirsten Anderson, and I have the honor of serving as the city's volunteer coordinator. housed in the incredible parks and recreation department while supporting all city teams. As we celebrate National Volunteer Week and Global Volunteer Month across the world, uh communities everywhere are celebrating um the power of service. And here in San Los Aispo, that impact is strong. Since July, more than 1300 volunteers have contributed over 6,500 hours of service with over 45 service opportunities listed in Engage Slow, our volunteer portal. Over the last three years since this centralized volunteer program was created, it's been inspiring to see our community show up serving alongside our hardworking city staff to keep slow safe, clean, and beautiful while building a deeper sense of belonging and shared stewardship. This year's theme, you belong here, reflects what we see every day amongst our volunteers and reinforces that the act of service brings people together. whether restoring habitats, maintaining parks or open spaces, supporting community events like the volunteers showing up for Earth Day tomorrow at Johnson Ranch. There's still space. Uh leading tours of the Jack House, caring for neighbors, or serving as an advisory body member, each act of service strengthens connection and community. Um in that same spirit of growth and care for a local area, Mayor Stewart's correct. Everyone in attendance tonight is welcome to pick up a pack of native wildflower seeds on your way out. Those are approved for open spaces or your backyard to attract pollinators and just bring beauty to slow. To all who give their time, heart, and talent to slow, thank you. You make us stronger. I'd like to recognize two outstanding volunteers tonight who will share brief remarks. Uh first, Tony Concincaid as our Jack House Dossent President and

serves on the parks and recreation commission. As a volunteer of over 20 years with the city, her leadership amongst fellow dosent, humor in meetings, warm presence, and deep passion for preserving local history makes her a standout volunteer loved by many. Tony, we're so thankful for you.

I'll um uh madame mayor and the council, thank you very much for the honor. Um, I couldn't do it without, as Wendy Stockton is here, I couldn't do it without my doc, uh, my dosens because they're they make it and my husband because he fills in when I really need him. And I want to invite you and uh, and all the people here and I see a lot of men. So, this is for you. Mother's Day at the Jack House. We have cake. We have games. You can bring a picnic. You can have fun. You can have free tours of the house. And I want to see you guys bring to your wives because they deserve a day off. Got it.

Thank you very much. She is a force, isn't she? Uh, next we have Jim Crawford, who you may have seen all of us around town in his high visibility volunteer vest, walking up to six miles a day, reporting hazards on ask slow, removing litter from our public streets and pathways, and helping to keep our environment and our wildlife and our wild systems safe and protected. Since joining the volunteer program just two years ago formally, although he's picked up trash and helped out for years, he's clocked nearly a thousand hours and engaged slow. Jim, your dedication to protecting our space is truly inspirational.

Uh, thank you. Um, I just wanted to say a few words about how people ask me, "How did you get started picking up trash?" And uh I tell him a little story about my grandma when she was teaching me how to tie my shoes to get into kindergarten. Um she said, "Well, Jimmy, uh your dad's your dad's in the war and your mom had to go to work and grandpa had a heart attack and I have to take care of everything else. So, I want you to help me by picking things up. So, now I feel like when I pick up trash, my grandma's looking down on me and I feel like she will live as long as I live and I'm still picking up trash. Thank you.

Jim has so many beautiful stories of inspiration. So, um that's it. Everybody visit volunteer.slowcity.org. That's our engage slow portal to sign up and learn about how you can support your city. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And um at the volunteer appreciation lunch, I got to sit next to Jim and his lovely wife. And the best part is as a beautifification ambassador, not just someone who picks up trash, beautifification ambassador. and you do make our community more more beautiful than every day. Um, you know, I there's a there's a place that checks out how much a volunteers's hour is worth and they say that each volunteer hour from independent sector is $36.14. So when you think of Jim's thousand hours or everyone's 65 u 6,500 hours, that's a lot of money that you are helping give back to the community as well. Thank you so much. And on to Vice Mayor. Thank you, mayor. Uh, we are celebrating bike month. This is a good one. Whereas the bicycle is a viable and environmentally sound form of transportation and an excellent form of recreation. And whereas millions of Californians will experience the joys of bicycling during the month of May through educational programs, races, commuting events, group rides, charity events, or just going for a ride. And whereas San Los Aobispo County offers urban and rural cycling routes popular to riders statewide. And whereas these bicycling activities and attractions have great potential to have a positive impact on St. Louis Abyispo County's economy and tourism industry and stimulate economic development. And whereas creating bicycle friendly communities is shown to improve citizens health, well-being, and quality of life, boost community spirit, improve traffic safety, and reduce pollution and congestion. And whereas May was declared National Bike Month for each of the last 69 years and is so again in 2026. And whereas the League of American Bicyclists, Cal Bike, bicycle clubs, and advocacy organizations, schools, companies, and civic groups throughout California will be promoting bicycling

as a leisure activity and as an environmentally friendly alternative to the automobile during the month of May. And whereas the education of bicyclists and motorists on the safe operation of bicycles is important to ensure the safety and comfort of all users. Whereas Calike, the St. Louis Abyspo Council of Governments, Bike Slow County and other organizations across the state will promote bicycle safety during the month of May. And now therefore, be it resolved that I, Vice Mayor Emily Francis, on behalf of the members of the city council of St. Los Abyispo hereby recognize the month of May 2026 as bike month and urges all who support bicycling to participate in May's events and urge all road road users to share the road safely with bicyclists. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor and Council. I'm going to keep my remarks quite brief. Um, but I appreciate you recognizing bike month as it's something that I am very passionate about. Um, for everyone else in the room, my name is Hannah Havenrich and I work for the St. Louis Bispo Council of Governments in the Ride Share Department. And part of my job is to make bike month happen for our county. And luckily, the city of St. Louis is our most active part of the county when it comes to biking. We have over 40 events already scheduled for the month and more getting added to the calendar every day. That includes everything from free community events. Um, kids, families, people of all ages are welcome and lots of bike breakfast, even a bike rodeo in Los. And just want to keep in mind that one of the goals of bike month is to increase community and community building. So, when you go out to those bike breakfast and events, please talk to your neighbor, you know, ask them why they bike, get to know each other, and spread the good word of uh

getting out there on two wheels. Like we said, it's better for the environment, better for our health, and better for each other. So, I uh invite everyone to join us in bike month, and I'll leave this poster flyer up um outside. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Hannah. I look forward to seeing you on May 1st to kick it off. All right, so with that, we'll move on to the city manager. Before I uh bring up the city manager's report, I just want to make sure that there's some people here that I don't see normally, and I want to make sure that um we do have public comment. The uh yellow slips are right there. If you wish to share some public comment on items that are on the agenda or not, please make sure you put your name in and which topic you are speaking on. City manager,

thank you very much. Um we have a number of updates and slides to go through. So hope folks will bear with me here as we provide a number of updates. Um first out of the gate we want to talk a little bit about our student community lays on committee orc. This committee was formed in the spring of 1987 to serve as a mechanism of communication among kpali the city of San Los aispo the county of San Los aispo and our entire St. San Bispo community to develop and strengthen university and community relationships which can be often referred to as town gown relationships and address issues regarding the community and Calpali students. SCC serves to proactively engage in discussions and actions to promote positive relations, mutual respect and improve quality of life for all members of the San Louis Bispoke community. And a big reason why we want to highlight this this committee at this point is we are looking for a community member to join our committee. We've had a vacancy for some time and we want to make sure we're getting the word out that we are really looking for additional representation from the community at large uh on this committee. So there are a few requirements that I'll highlight on you know for anybody who might be interested in joining us. Um this includes uh one one and no more than five voting members that are at large that are selected from uh geographical neighborhood associations or groups and or really a community member at large. So anybody with an expressed interest, demonstrated impact or an immediate proximity to either Cowpali University or Questa College. uh these members will participate in education of of the community for strengthening our student community relations and work on goals uh of the SCC and our larger community. So, if that sounds like something you might want to be interested in, um please uh there's a QR code up on the screen or

you can reach out to our city through our city clerk's office. Uh we can help navigate you to this uh website. It's actually hosted through ASI on the Calpaly website. And so we're happy to help you find the application materials. Our meetings are held uh monthly at a specific time except for December, June, and July. Um, we look for this person to help provide some monthly reports on community happenings and then again serve as a representative on community related issues and really just helping to grow those relationships um bring issues forward and help us just strengthen the ties we all have between our uh community members, students, and the universities that uh they all represent. So, um please check it out and uh feel free to ask questions to any any of our staff. Um and we're hopeful to see people there. Next up, um our city ranger service staff are conducting a free youth beginner mountain bike clinic on Saturday, May 9th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at our Laguna Lake Bike Park. The camp is uh geared toward youths aged 7 to 12 and will offer hands-on instructional writing techniques, safety tips, trail etiquette, and lots of fun uh writing activities. Again, it's a free program, but we do require registration to secure your spot. So, please go uh onto our website at uh slow rangers.org org or our parks and recreation website or call our parks and recreation department at 8057817300 and we're happy to give you information and hopefully get you signed up. Next up, we want to highlight really uh some of the amazing work that I'm sure folks are seeing around town. And if you haven't seen it, um some of these maybe not as much, but we are uh we've been receiving awards for the work that we've

been doing. We want to highlight this here. Um, our city continues to receive strong external recognition for excellence in public infrastructure and community investment. This year, several of our projects were honored with outstanding project awards from leading professional organizations. This includes uh American Public Works Association awards for three projects across multiple categories. And the projects were the Laguna Lake dog park project for its contribution to parks and recreation, our cultural arts district parking structure for advancing accessible and well-designed parking solutions, and the midhigh bypass project for its thoughtful integration of natural resources design considerations within a creek habitat. In addition, our cultural arts district parking structure received further distinction from the American Society of Civil Engineers as an award-winning architectural engineering project highlighting its innovative design and engineering quality. These awards reflect our commitment to delivering high quality community focused projects and really recognize collaboration between our staff, consultants and stakeholders in re reaching these goals. And we really just want to highlight, we know uh it takes a lot of time, effort, investment um from from C city councils, multiple of them staff and also our community in both seeing the vision, helping support us carry it out and then helping uh us weather the construction process that often takes time to see these things come to fruition and uh they are being noticed um beyond even our own enjoyment out in the professional world. So, just wanted to highlight that. Next up, some folks may remember that last year we did we had a number of conversations related to uh our wildline wildland urban interface code and changes being made at the state level with new fire hazard severity zone maps and the

changes that that might uh make us see in our community. And we wanted to give a brief update on what we've been doing since then. Our fire department has hired two community risk interns. Uh these interns will provide community education and give folks uh voluntary detailed home assessments that will help emphasize defensible space and home hardening requirements. So if you're wondering what do you need to do in your own home, we look to roll out this program where you can call us up and people can come out and help with help that um give you some more detailed information. We're still building that program and we're looking to launch it in May. We also want to give a shout out to the our first city firewise community or firewise community in our city. Uh the Buenav Vista estates were able to achieve this marker and really what that means is they've gone through a series of uh checklists to uh make sure that they are taking the steps needed to be designated as a fire wise community. We really appreciate their leadership. Uh in addition uh and a lot of that came through work that our fire marshall and our emer emergency manager um have been doing with those communities. And so if anybody's curious certainly reach out to us and we're really uh excited to get more information there. We will be hosting a uh the second of uh of a few free chipper days. So if you have things that you need to chip which also helps reduce uh fire risk, we are providing that um coming up April 20th through the 30th. Then residents can sign up at fires slave firesafeslow.org/chipping. Uh and just a word about zone zero regulations. So that was something we talked about. The state will be releasing regulations that look at what people need to do between 0 to 5t from their homes. Uh new rules on the types of vegetation and other potential potentially flammable materials near your homes. Those regulations have not

yet been finalized. Um, we were actually expecting them back in January, but they are still in draft form. Um, the next meeting of the board of forestry is uh later this month and so we may get more guidance at that point, but we wanted to let folks know. We don't have anything definitive yet. So, if you're worrying or questions about that, we wanted to give a quick update. And if you have any other questions about wildfire preparedness, there is a landing page at slowcity.org/w wildfire where we have a lot of this information. Next up, uh we're really excited that we have reached a point where we will be ready to re to open our new restrooms in Mission Plaza. Yes. Um they are very near and if you walk by there now, the fencing has been removed from around the restroom specifically. Um and we do anticipate they they will be open tomorrow afternoon. So, we're very excited. It's it's been a long time getting here. Uh and they are beautiful and we're really excited to open them up to the public because uh this has been a a lot of labor um on lots of parties. Um a lot of people have put a lot of work into getting to this point and it it's really important for people to be able to access them. Please note that there fencing will remain around the kiosk and patio. Um and that's really to allow our future tenant of the kiosk cafe um which will be called Sloga by Lana. they need to get in there and be able to fill out the tenant improvement work on the inside and be able to open up that cafe. So, it's going to take a few more months, but we're excited to be able to move forward with this step of at least opening the restrooms um tomorrow afternoon. We also want to highlight we have a new uh belonging project series um with the next session focused on civic participation and community voice. This event is titled building inclusive

public engagement and it will take place on May 13th from 5 to 8:00 PM at the library community room. The session is designed to be interactive and engaging. It uses a present and defend format that helps bring real world decision-m to life. So participants will not just listen, they will actively engage with ideas, ask questions and explore different perspectives and really around that um idea of civic engagement and dialogue. Our office of uh diversity, equity and inclusion is partnering with the cowpoly debate team who will respond to the question, how can the city increase participation from underrepresented communities in public meetings and decision-making? We will have community judges who will play an important role by listening to presentations and offering feedback on feasibility trade-offs and overall community impact. And just as important, our community members will have the opportunity to participate directly through live Q&A and open dialogue. This session is about creating space for people to feel more comfortable, more informed, and more connected when it comes to engaging with local government. So, if you'd like to RSVP, please use the QR code on the screen or visit slowcity.org/diversity. And finally, just highlighting some um our next regular uh city council meeting will be May 5th. Really want to highlight, I think, um we the business items we will be bringing our annual zoning code updates for really complying with new housing laws forward. Um, we will be discussing our 2026 paving project plan and then discussing uh new policies that we need to bring forward to comply with SB77, which is new legislation related to um how we conduct our meetings and things like opening up Zoom as an option um for participation. So, those were the the big items we wanted to make sure folks were aware of. And with that, that is the end of my

report. Thank you. Thank you so much. There's so much happening at the city all the time. So, it's a big report, but thank you for sharing it all. Any questions for my colleagues? All right, with that, we will move on to public comment. So, this is for items that are not on the agenda. If you have any public comment, now is the time. City clerk, we have one public speaker, Sean Harris. Hold on one second, Sean. Yeah, there we go.

All right. Good evening. Thanks for giving me the time to speak. I'll make it quick. December 29th, I was uh detained by ICE on Bullet Lane in the dark. Um my freedom of movement restricted. I was blocked in from three sides uh doing nothing more than going to work um at 6:15 in the morning. Uh and so that brings into um consideration uh the funding for ICE. And uh I don't know if you got this slide but um uh right now ICE I believe and either DHS or ICE have been appropriated maybe I think it's a hundred billion dollar budget. Um and uh at the same time our social safety net is falling apart. And for example I thought I'd just uh bring to mind or bring to light the our social security system. Um if you look at that uh up there if anybody can read that it's uh what that represents is compromise. uh and uh in the 74th Congress in 1935 in the in the uh bowels of the Great Depression uh both sides managed to come together and pass a America's first uh social safety program for old folks uh and widows and so forth. Uh, and if you look at the breakdown right there, uh, in the House of Reps, there were 200, my eyes are terrible, but 200 some odd, uh, Democrats and, um, I I can't really read that right now, but suffice it to say, there are majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans uh, and conservatives. Despite that, Republicans got on board and a few didn't. Um, and they passed our social security system. And right now, it's on the verge of collapse by roughly 2030. Uh in the meantime, we're allocating or they're trying to get about $200 billion, I believe, extra for this war in Iran at 1.4 trillion dollar defense budget uh from a member of the same party I am who purports to uh value uh uh fiscal conservatism. Um and we have we don't have a tax base to support that. We're

going to borrow it and uh further weaken our economy. Um, so all at the expense of our social safety net. And if you remember, anybody remembers about two weeks ago, Donald Trump, a member of the same party I am in, got on national television and said that the federal government has no role or basically said that they can't the federal government cannot support. I think he was talking about Medicare at that point, but it all the federal government's role to do is to provide for our defense, but um uh I know he went to school. Um so if anybody's not aware and he clearly is not um uh article one section 8 um clause one of the general welfare um portion of our the preamble of the constitution I think it's preamble uh states that the congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes duties impost and excise to pay for the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States that means the federal government has a responsibility to provide for the people um and I say that as as a conservative there's nothing that does not comport with uh the Republican party's values such as uh limited government and states rights that would that uh that would not um that is not in does not um align with those values by funding uh our social safety system and it needs to be recapitalized and instead our federal government is choosing to uh uh fund war and not the people. So, uh, I only bring this to your attention and you have you there's really nothing you can do, but uh, I just I just want this on record that people are very concerned about that and not just old folks. Um, we are on the verge of a crisis. We have no industrial base. We're $40 trillion in debt and uh, nobody cares about that and this everything we're doing here will the lights will go out. We we don't have there's no money anymore. So, the postal service can't even pay its pensions. So, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Any other members for public comment? No more. All right. So, if you have items that are on the agenda you have public comment for, though, we will get to yours. All right. With that, we're going to move on to the consent agenda. Um, are there is there anything you'd like to pull? I'll ask my colleagues before I go. Okay. Any public comment? Yes, we have two public speakers. The first one on item 6 C, Daniel Bowman. And then on item 6F, David Smith.

Thank you, Madame Mayor and Council members. My name is Daniel Bowman. I am the deputy director at the Land Conservancy of St. Spispo County and I simply wanted to express the land conservy's gratitude for formalizing our longstanding partnership with the city specifically as it relates to our habitat restoration and land conservation efforts. The Regetti Ranch conservation easement is a project which falls within the slow green belt. The green belt is an excellent example of the long-standing partnership between the city and the conservancy. The green belt was defined over 40 years ago in a series of reports titled saving special places. This report was authored by the land conservancy uh in collaboration with the city and we are proud of our relationship with the city and all we have accomplished together. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Madame Mayor, members of the council. My name is David Smith, director of business development for TransDev. Transdev has operated the local services first transit as a partner to the city for almost 25 years providing safe, efficient transportation to the community. We have worked closely with your staff over the years through many service changes including the decrease in service due to COVID, the uh recent movement into battery electric buses uh all with the goal to return to pre-COVID levels of service for the community. Our employees are extremely dedicated to this community and members of this community. We have a strong relationship with the teamsters local 986 with a new CBA running through 2029 and a strong endorsement from their local leadership. This has helped stabilize our workforce. We have uh 40% of our employees have been with us more than 5 years with several of them at 20 years of service. We understand the fiscal challenges needed to balance your budget with the desire to put more service on the street. And we developed our proposal to best meet these needs while maintaining excellent service. Our competitors can make you lots of promises that they know how to operate better than we do. But those are just promises. While we know this community and we are part of this community and provide the continuity of service without charging you an extra 3% that it they are planning to do. Our team is already working with city staff on several capital projects to include recent parking lot resurfacing, installation of battery electric bus chargers, a new solar array projects, employee parking lot, as well as facility improvements. Our request is simple. continue to work with a trusted long-term partner locally operated by residents of this community, serving their neighbors professionally and

saving the city money that can be best put towards additional service on the street. I'd like to thank our members of our staff who have served diligently to this community and thank you for 25 years of partnership. Thank you. Thank you. Any other

that was speakers? Okay. Thank you. Um, just so that people in the community could know, there was an added uh correspondence today um that did share some information about item 6F um the transit operation and maintenance services contract for that matter. There's also item 7B and 7A or sorry 7B and 8A. There's also additional correspondence. Sorry, that was hard for me to get out for some reason. So, if you have some questions, I encourage you to take a look at that as well. With that, I'll bring it back to um the council. I just want to say thank you so much for the many years of service from TransDev. I greatly appreciate you coming and sharing. Um and I know that I can't promise anything from the dis, but I'm very much hoping that um employees will be um kept with the new contract. Um, I know there's negotiations to be had and not in my purview, but just looking forward to our local workers continuing to be local and here. Um, any questions or comments or do we have a motion for the consent agenda?

Vice Mayor, I will move approval of the consent agenda. Thank you. Second, uh, Council Member Shoresman. Uh, yeah, I appreciate your comments, Mayor, and I'll second. Thank you, city clerk. Vice Mayor Francis, yes. Council member Shoresman, yes. Council member Boswell, yes. Mayor Stewart, yes. The motion passes 40.

So, now we move on to our public hearing and business items. And our first one is um the overview of vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts. This is a uh required by law um presentation. And with that, we'll have um HR director, human resources director Nicole Dominique and human resources manager Jeff Andrews. Almost there. Well, good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Nicole Dominy, human resources director. I'm accompanied by Jeff Andrews, human resources manager, and we will be providing quite a short presentation on the status of vacancies, recruitment efforts and retention and res retention trends and strategies in compliance with the new law that went into effect in 2025. With that, Jeff.

Thank you, Nicole. Good evening, madame mayor and city. One more time.

Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Good evening, Madame Mayor and City Council. I am pleased to be here tonight to share a short presentation on the status of vacancies and the city's recruitment and retention efforts. Uh the city has 487 budgeted positions across six bargaining groups. You'll note on this slide that the average vacancy rate for the 2025 calendar year was 7.6%. The bar graph on the right highlights the vacancy rate by bargaining group. There is a 20% vacancy threshold before additional reporting requirements kick in. But as we can see, none of the city's bargaining groups were near the 20% threshold. They are all below 20 uh 10% demonstrating the city's strong commitment to recruiting and filling vacancies. In addressing vacancies, staff recognize recruitment is about identifying, attracting, and hiring the right people and retention is about keeping employees engaged, satisfied, and committed to the organization long term. When vacancies occur, it is a high priority for the HR department and the city's hiring managers across all departments to fill the positions to ensure continuity of services, maintain operational efficiency, minimize the need for overtime, and to minimize disruptions to departmental functions. Uh timely recruitment and hiring efforts help the city sustain its workforce, meet community needs, and uphold service standards while also providing opportunities for internal growth and external talent acquisition. Looking back at 2025, HR staff managed an average of 23 recruitments per month. Throughout the year, about 60 positions became vacant and subsequently recruited for and staff successfully filled 76

vacancies after receiving almost 2,000 applications. The differential in the number of vacancies and job postings stem from job postings that began the recruitment process in 2024 and then we filled those positions in 2025. As noted in the city's personnel rules and regulation section of the municipal code, the city strives to fill vacancies by promotion from within the organization. In 2025, 43% of vacant positions were filled with internal candidates, uh, which exceeds our key performance indicator with a goal of filling 40% of vacant positions via internal promotion. The city has a 91% retention rate which is defined as the percentage of employees who were employed from the first day of the year to the last last year's no worries. Last year's retention rate was 87%. So this was a nice increase indicating the city's retention strategies are working. The average tenure is 7.7 years which is also uh consistent with last year. And while the city's geographic location prevent presents challenges like a high cost of living and limiting the city's applicant pool, highlighted here are a variety of recruitment and retention approaches. Proven recruitment strategies include hiring incentives such as accelerating vacation acral to incentivize applicants to apply. HR staff also work with hiring managers to strategize on the best methods to recruit for positions. For example, in an approach to uh designed to navigate ongoing challenges in recruiting engineers, HR partnered with public works management to launch a flexibly

staffed recruitment to hire either an engineer or a capital projects manager to address multiple vacancies in the public works CIP division. HR also began partnering with departments to underfill certain hardtofill positions to develop talent into more senior roles. The city offers a variety of training and development opportunities to employees uh to provide career advancement as well as enhance city uh employee engagement. The trainings improve city employees skills and abilities so they can van advance in their current roles within the organization. It also helps to minimize gaps, skill gaps in the workplace. Work life balance opportunities include flexible work schedules, remote or hybrid work, and employees are encouraged to use personal time off to relax and recharge. That covers the presentation on vacancies, recruitment, and retention. And I'll let Nicole close out.

Thanks, Jeff. The biggest takeaway from my standpoint is that retention is cheaper than recruitment. And so really doing what we can to retain our well-qualified and amazing employees. And Jeff highlighted some of those aspects that we've been doing and that we can continue being aware of. There's other key takeaways on this slide. Um, and HR is continuing to serve as a strategic business partner to all of our departments to really look at individual recruitment and retention strategies that we can do in order to move forward and be an employer of choice for the city of in the county of San Losispo. And with that, that concludes our presentation and we have the recommendation up here on the slide, which is to receive and file the report.

Thank you so much. Um, any questions from my colleagues? Council member Shoresman. Yeah, just one really. The the not the note about 58 days being the average to fill vacancies. Just curious like when do you start the clock to get that number of days?

Yes. Uh thank you for the question. That starts from the moment that we open a job posting to receive applications. We go through the application process through the screening process through the initial panel interviews also through second interviews and then that clock stops when we have secured a candidate when they've uh signed an offer. That's pretty quick for a public agency. Just going to say um just it's also an increase from for a decrease in time from last year which which uh which is good good for us. What was it last year? Just out of curiosity. I think it was about 75 if I remember correctly. Okay, that's definitely going the right direction then. Thank you for that. 71 71 to be exact.

Yes. Uh, and then hiring incentives just for inquiring minds that might be looking for a job with maybe a local agency like ours. Um, I don't know if you can talk about which positions in particular that you've used hiring incentives and what those look like.

Sure. Hiring incentives are looked at on a case-byase basis for positions that are deemed hard to fill. So some recent examples of hiring incentives that we've extended are for engineers as an example. There's a national shortage of engineers. We've certainly provided hiring incentives in the past for police officers, dispatchers, um and a variety of other positions. We have some um utilities management positions that are vacant or becoming vacant and we'll likely extend hiring incentives for those as well. Thank you. Yes. So for all those Calpali engineering students out there, uh

come on over. Listen up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that great report. Let me just check any public comment. No, there's not.

Okay. Well, um do you do you need a motion for this one? Receive and file. No. Right. Okay. Great. Just making sure. All right. Well, thank you for that great report. And with that, uh, we will move forward. We'll be skipping 7B and moving on to 8A, which is the study session of the 2026 water and sewer rate structure study. We will not be talking about actual rate increases today. We're just talking about how rates are created and how the structure is created as a whole. So, with that, I'll pass it over to uh Director Aaron Floyd for the presentation.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm Aaron Floyd, the public works and utilities director. I'm joined this evening by our utilities business manager, Shane Whittington. We also have in the audience with us our consulting firm HDR who helps us typically um with both rate structure as well as rate setting um for the city for water and sewer purposes. And thank you mayor in advance for that. I think it really is important to let uh the community know when we're having these conversations that it is the rate structure and not actually the money being discussed this evening. This is really an opportunity for a council to confirm or give direction for the way you would like to see future rate structures. And for general purpose, that is really is what we're looking at is the amount of tiers we may have, the level of base fee we have um associated with our water and sewer bills. We also have tonight a soft I will call it a soft recommendation, but it really is confirming um for council's uh determination tonight our recommendation to proceed with a 4-year rate adoption period. And if given that direction, we would return as part of the 2729 or possibly in that case the 27 through 31 financial plans for a setting for those water and sewer rates. Um, if also needed this evening, if we receive significant input of um, a direction of course that council would like to take with how we are currently setting our rate structure, we might need to return for another study session um, likely in August or in fall at some point in time to bring that back to council for further consideration. With that, I'll turn it over to Shane Whittington to give the presentation and then we'll happily answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Aaron. Uh, not to sound like a broken record, but I just want to

reiterate uh this presentation is not uh seeking adoption or modification or adjustment to any of their rates. Really, what it's looking to do is provide context. Uh so what we're what we're providing context on is kind of the legal constraints. So that's proposition 218 uh for what we can do with rates. uh some of the industry standards in terms of uh what we can what we could and should consider uh when we are adopting rates, what those rate design attributes could be. Uh and then also the historic council direction that led us to what our rate is today and uh how we got here. Um so at the end of this presentation, we're hoping like Aaron said that uh council will consider uh the rate design attributes uh but also the rate adoption period. So jumping right into proposition 218. Uh there's three criteria that make something subject to prop 218. Uh so that the first criteria is uh the corresponding service must actually be available uh and used available for immediate use by the property owner. Uh and really the example that I like to use here is when you turn on your uh faucet, water immediately comes out. Uh and then the second one is it's an incident of property ownership. uh and this is distinct than something uh another example that I like to use is another enterprise fund within the city. So for example our parking fund uh it's not a compulsory service. Uh so the city is the sole purveyor of water and sewer services. Uh so in that way it's an incident of property ownership. Uh and then lastly it's not a general service. Uh so really the distinction here is it's not public safety, it's not library, it's not something that's um generally available. Moving on to the five requirements uh that are related to proposition 218. Um there's a bunch of administrative I would say requirements involved but the two that I want to focus on today are the

proportionality. Uh so the cost of rates need to match the cost of service to that specific parcel. Uh and then also uh the I guess restricted use. So revenues must be used for uh the purpose that they were collected. And so water fund revenues need to be used for water operations uh and sewer fund revenues need to be used for sewer operations. Transitioning into rate design attributes. Uh so the first I broke these out into I guess four um categories to make it a little bit more digestible. Um the first one going from left to right. So effectiveness and yielding total revenue requirements. And really what that's looking at is between the variable and the fixed portion of your bill uh across the entire customer base. We need to make sure that that's enough to meet our financial obligations. So paying salaries, debt obligations, capital replacement, that sort of thing. Revenue stability and predictability. And really what we're looking at here is uh when we have a really dry or really wet year and water use is a little bit more variable, we need to be able to rely on revenues to be able to meet those obligations. Um and then the last one, stability and predictability of rates. Really, that's looking at the customer side of things. And we don't want to see massive spikes uh in uh a customer's bill year-over-year. We want it to be somewhat predictable and incremental in those increases. Moving on to uh the fairness of it all. So the first one is reflecting all present and future costs. Uh and really what this ties to is um what I like to point to is having a proactive uh capital rehabilitation program. Uh so rather than waiting for infrastructure to break and fixing it in that uh point in time, getting ahead of those things and having a maintenance and

rehabilitation um program that gets ahead of those breaks. Uh proportional distribution of costs among customer classes. Uh so really what that's looking at is if there is differences, real differences in the cost to deliver service because of use characteristics. Uh so what we look at is peaking uh so customers like irrigation customers uh may cause us to have to oversize um our infrastructure uh and that in turn increases the cost to deliver those services. Um so making sure that there is a proportionality there. And then the last one there customers in similar situations should be treated the same. So really any difference in cost between customers in similar situations should be based on the real cost to deliver service responsible use. And I want to pause on this one a little bit because uh this comes back to the cost of service from Prop 218. Uh so while this is industry standard to uh consider uh discouraging wasteful use, what we can really do here is constrained. uh we can have tiers uh to uh charge more as water use goes up but it needs to match the cost of service. Uh and then dynamic in its ability to respond to changing supply and demand. And the example that I want to use here is search charging. Uh so we can have drought search charges to make up I guess gaps in uh our ability to meet our financial obligations. And then the last set of rate design attributes. So simple and easy to understand. Uh so the less I guess elements in a rate structure there are the easier it is to understand. Uh and then freedom from controversy as to interpretation. So really what that's

looking at is making sure that the calculation is clear uh and there's uh I guess consistent interpretation from staff to auditors to customers and so on. So council direction. Uh so how did we get to where we are now? Uh and starting from left to right we have pie charts. So the first one shows the fixed charges uh or the fixed revenue that we got from our rates in 2017 and 18. Um and the amount of fixed charges or amount of revenue that came from fixed charges was 14%. uh looking forward to our forecast for this next year that is looking something more like 30%. But if you look at our water expenses from uh fiscal year 23 24 our fixed expenses were something like 83%. Um, and really why we're highlighting this is, uh, what drove council to prioritize something like revenue stability is, uh, historic drought conditions in the 2000s and 2010s. And what we really noticed was when water consumption really dipped, so did our revenue stability and our ability to meet our obligations financially. So to touch on that a little bit more, some of our emerging emerging trends. Um what we have here is a line graph. So looking at that dark blue line, uh you can see that our account growth has gone up steadily over the last 10 years. Uh so annual year-over-year, it's about a 1.5% increase. Um, and then there's a little bit more volatility on that. I guess you can call it like a burnt orange line. Uh, where it goes up and down, but on trend. Uh, it's about a negative or a reduction of 1.2%

year-over-year. Um, and what that points to is, uh, really St. Louis Bispo's ability to conserve water. Um, but also kind of just the changing use characteristics of our customers and, uh, what that means for our revenue stability. So what I have listed up here are the rate design priorities from council in 2018. Uh and they're relatively consistent to what was brought towards council in 2011 and I think the other the year previous to that was 2005 when we looked at race structure again. Uh and like I just highlighted revenue and stability was very much on the uh forefront of consideration of council in 2018. Um but these were the other um priorities that council had decided on and what staff are recommending tonight. And shifting gears a little bit into timeline and some of the outreach that we've already done. Uh so we've already done a public information session and tonight we are doing the rate structure study. Uh if council confirms the rate design priorities tonight, the next steps would be to continue with our standard process in terms of adopting the next rate schedule. Uh which kicks off with uh outreach in the winter of 2027. Uh and then coming back to council to get authorization to mail Prop 218 notices in March or spring roughly. uh and then also uh the public hearing in the early summer of 2027 as well. And to touch on the outreach that we did in February, uh so we actually conducted a public information session to cover a presentation very much like the one that we're uh presenting tonight. And to advertise this uh we did two social media posts, one story and did a direct email blast to something like 160 uh

individual organizations uh including 140 HOA multif family uh property management companies and so on. There were three attendees and when given the opportunity to fill out a form uh to give their own design priorities, no one um obliged. Um, but the verbal comments were uh generally supportive of what the rate structure currently is. And with that, I'm happy to pass it back to council for any questions that they may have. Thank you. um with the limited amount of response um that you've received, do you feel like the survey in January might get you some additional responses versus just the inerson?

I think we that's a that's a great question. Um I'm always optimistic that we're going to receive more input. I have been doing this for a handful of years now for the city and u we have tried everything. we entice with cookies and everything else punch anything to get people out there. I do believe we have in the input we did receive from those folks and Shane Shane said it in one way they were really you know more of the if it's not broke don't fix it um is really what they were sharing with us on that. I I'm not sure we would really receive more or varied input. I think we did really try to reach that out. Um, I think what I would like to hope is at least is that it was a measured kind of comment on the success that we have had that we haven't had to since we went into, you know, the 2015 drought. We didn't have to come back after the more recent droughts and ask for a, you know, near double digit or, you know, mid double digit rate increase. So, I'm hopeful that the community recognized that the current structure at least appears to be working for us to meet um both council's prioritizations um on what they wanted to see as well as we didn't receive rapid, you know, didn't have to ask the council to adopt rapid swings in the amount of actual water and sewer increases.

Thank you. I know there's been a lot of work and a lot of community involvement through the years, so I I definitely hear you. I just had to ask. Thank you, Council Member Boswell. Uh thank you. Thanks staff for the uh great report. Did you bring that 4inch book that has the rate structure design? What's the I just want I just want to see that thing. I was very impressed by um Okay. The uh one of the attributes is the is the promotion of efficient resource use. I believe in the last round we had that ranked as second

my understanding. So that's what that's what's directing you to create tiers basically. But you're also constrained by 218 on tiers. So, do we feel we've kind of done what we can do on tiers given that constraint?

I believe we have at this point and we do closely monitor this. Um, there are cases that are more frequently recently challenged on the applicability of tiered. Um there have been cases that were where maybe a municipality kind of capricciously assigned tiers like that. So we really work closely with our rate consultants to ensure that our tiers are based on actual true levels of service. So we typically design those around the first tier trying to get that health and human need of a certain amount of water per day, cooking, cleaning and the like. We then move into that next year that really talks about um the need for or people's desire to have seasonal irrigation. As Shane was alluding to, our pumps, tanks, and pipes can't expand and contract based on the need right there. So, we have to put an extra cost to build those extra um we have to use larger pumps which become less efficient for moving that smaller amount of water. So, that's where we have the second tier right there. By the time we move into the third tier, we're really seeing larger users who are really using above and beyond, who are really adding on to in those tanks and pipes. Not just the fire flow capacity we already have to have and the average daily use capacity, but really this peaking factor that goes above and beyond that for all of our infrastructure to be able to carry what people want to be able to use right there. Um, but we really are limited at that point with Prop 218 from assigning something where it is punitive in nature. So it really does have to capture an actual cost uh when we do set that structure

and we have with our I mean essentially with the tiering we've been running for how many years we've been running tiering we have seen it working right we've seen I mean reported 1% reduction in demand um and I know we've done long-term very good on our conservation efforts do are are we I mean I know we're always trying to save more water but you know h how do we feel we're doing currently do we are do we have a I can't remember. Do we have a specific goal on further per household or per capita reduction of water use that we're still trying to hit? Are we still trying to get more conservation in the system?

We Yeah, we actually, that's a great question. We have a water resources um section within the public works and utilities department that is constantly going out and talking about conservation for our community. And if there was one issue I would say that unites across this entire community, it is water conservation. And it is impressive when we see a chart like the one Shane uh was able to show us there with an increase in connections going up throughout the years and yet an overall total decrease in water demand over that time that corresponds to it. When we actually expand those tables out to look at what we saw in the mid 1980s and beyond, it's fascinating. We were using, you know, 8600 acre feet per year and right now we're about 5,200 acre feet per year even with the development that has occurred at that time. So, I would say the community does an amazing job. Um, and we continue to try to educate folks as well on the need for continued water conservation.

Great. Thank you. That's all my questions. Thank you, Council Member Shoresman. Yes. Would you mind going back to that slide that showed the three pie charts next to each other?

So, that's three different Okay. So two of those are revenue and one of them is expense. Um the 2324 is that so not sure how to ask this question. Uh the the the rates that were that uh residents are charged are based on partially a fixed cost and partially a variable cost. Correct. That's not what these tables were showing, but that's what I was thinking when I saw these tables. So, I'm just trying to I guess my question gets to

what proportion of I don't know the average household's bill consists of those fixed costs versus the variable costs. Is that a question you can even answer?

Yeah, I think you know um Yeah. So let's let's start if I could try to explain what this one is showing because I think it is a critical part of how this all plays in right here. When we're looking at the chart on the right, our fixed expenses is 83%. So we have debt that we carry for something like the Nasimo project. We have salaries. Um we have infrastructure replacement. Those are all fixed cost. So whether the city that day delivers a gallon or 8 million gallons, we still have those cost right there. So the variability in the cost is really based on that volume of water that is associated with. So we really look at how much electricity does it cost to pump the extra amount of water and chemical usage on that.

That's really the only part of our operations though that are variable. And even within that variability, there is only so much variability because on any given day we're going to deliver between about five and 8 million gallons of water. So the variability truly is even a little smaller on that. Now when we kind of marry that up to the amount of variability on a build, we try to find a kind of a sweet spot right there. If we were to truly apply in this scenario something like an 83% base charge, it would make that variability on the volumetric so small, it's possible that even with the great water conservation that people do in the city of St. Los a Bispo that if they weren't really paying that much extra to use the difference of 10 gallons a day versus 1,000 gallons a day, there might be some some wiggle room where people might not be as thoughtful as to um paying those true costs associated with that extra amount. So right now we keep the uh base fee much lower. What percentage right 30

roughly 30

about 30% is about what the current bill on average is right there. So 30% of it is um fixed and we call it the base fee and then the other 70% of a bill to answer your question is that variable part made up by the tiers. And what that allows us to do is still capture that actual amount of water used and assign a proportional cost to it while also having some of that revenue stability. And this was really born of the time when we went into the major drought 13 through 15 when we had much more volatility because we had variable rates that were all based on the volume right there. So when people and thankfully they did, they cut back on the water usage as the state required and we needed them to do, revenues also crashed. And at that point we had the very unfortunate situation of having to come back to council. And right after declaring a drought and asking people to cut back their water, the inverse revenue still had to be made up and we had to then ask for a rate increase on top of a decreased usage. And that was that was suboptimal. Nice word choice there. Um, can you talk a little bit about So, historically, we've determined rates on a two-year cycle and one of your recommendations is to go to four.

And I can see some definite pros to that and some potential cons. and just wondering if we did something like that. While it would provide a lot of stability, it seems like potential stability to the rate structure because you could look out four years in advance and kind of predict how much rates are going to have to change in that four-year period of time. Our economy has been a little all over the place the last few years. So, could that be a problem for us if two years down the road we find that cost increases have just ballooned and we've already dedicated oursel to this four-year planning process and that could create a negative impact, I would think, on rates in potentially year five or six. Yeah, that's a great question and this is new territory for us and it would be one that I would be hesitant as staff to make a recommendation that we um recommend to council if we had not been standing on a rate structure right now that has over the past four years really allowed for us to maintain our reserve amounts and still have our operating expenditures. I I think we have gone through a fairly volatile past four or five years with the pandemic. You know, we've seen markets move up and down. We have seen increased cost right there. So, I I based on that, we felt comfortable um recommending to council. There is a lot of administrative work that also goes into that which is also costly when we do it every two years as we respectfully hire our consultants um and spend a lot of staff time on that. It is one though that it's important to remember Proposition 218 does allow us when we set these rates to set it for up to five years at a time. Um we typically do it on a two-year to coincide with the financial plan which is why staff's

current recommendation is the four-year process like that. While we could, if we were to recommend that council was to approve it and send us on our way, if something did occur, council could at any time lower the amount um of those proposed rate increases. So, let's say hypothetically it's 5%, 5%, you know, whatever. And council on the second year, we found ourselves somehow in a situation where we had too much revenue. Council could reduce that amount. If we got into a situation that was even more volatile economically or for whatever reason than we've seen in the past four years and we found ourselves suddenly maybe it is that radical drought or a loss. Who knows what it could be. At that point, we do have the safety net of we could come back to council and ask to hold another Proposition 218 hearing at that point in time to adjust course um to respond to whatever would be some kind of monumental action that may have occurred.

So, it doesn't the four-year planning period doesn't lock us in if there was something urgent that came up that needed to go one way or the other. It sets a cap on the amount that we could charge, but council again could lower that amount through those four years if it was adopted as that. But yeah, we could return at that point at any time and do a course adjustment. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I know you've heard this question before, but I'm going to ask it in public. Um, so I know every December we measure people's um volume of use of water because it is the time that we use our sprinklers the least if you have irrigation of some sort. Some people would argue that they have the most visitors at their house at that time. So they feel frustrated they are uh measured at that time versus other winter months we could choose. Is there a reason you can share with us why we choose December versus January? typically um that was when we had our winters. Now I know we say that and we had 90 degree weather in January. So that that might be off. Um the idea behind it and so this is a lot of people refer to it as the sewer cap or the winter water use time period. And the origin of this is that we as an industry don't have a great way to measure wastewater uh flowing from businesses or from uh residential units. So what we have tried to do with this is to capture those periods of time when we hope and we do a lot of education and outreach on this of times that people aren't irrigating outside. So the idea would be hey anything used inside during a winter time period should therefore be being discharged as well. Historically we have viewed those as December, January, February to try to be representative. We do try to use three months on that time period right there to help average that out. Uh we have other folks who you know like that because they also leave for part of that time. So maybe they get to take a little more advantage of that. Um that is something though that I do think that if that is direction that council did want us to examine the timing of that I I think we could you know we

there's a possibility just kind of thinking this through we could do two months it could be a little problematic and that we have done so much education on this that we really I think have got a lot of folks updated on hey this is when I do this. So, if we were to shift to a January, uh, February, March, we could be in some of those issues of trying to re-educate people on that. Um, but that is something that we could contemplate right there if that was council direction. Thank you. I was just curious and with the new Calpali wastewater reclamation facility um I'm partially curious with the four years

since we don't know completely how that's going to affect us. Is that something you want to bring into play this early or do we want to experience the cowpoly wastewater recla reclamation facility a little bit longer before we were to switch over to four years just out of curiosity. Yeah, that is I think that is something that right now we still confident that we can address. Um it it will be an impact. It is one we have already baked into our rates a little bit right now. We have seen a delay in the CalPoly one which if anything is helping the city a little bit on that. Um I think that is something that we can actually accommodate in a four-year rate analysis.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Shoresman.

Yes. Sorry, I had one other question that I forgot about. Um, there's a chart on page 367 of the packet, which is the customer assistance program. and appreciate the answer that you put into agenda correspondence about um about the cap, but just wanted to make sure I'm understanding this table that it looks like there is there is assistance available up to 200,000 a year for residents to take advantage of this program should they qualify and get discounted um utilities rates. But it looks like uh the last few years it's been very low uptake and improved this last year but still way below what we could technically afford to support with the fund. And so, um, wondering what we're doing, number one, to increase that and if there is, uh, any ways that we can expand the utility of that for a larger percentage of our population that might be able to qualify. Do you want me to?

Okay. Yeah. And that's so Shane actually uh thankfully prepared a slide so we can actually share what we have seen here and we have seen a couple things. So when we look at that far right column right there where we are anticipating uh greater utilization of the um actual assistance amount right there that's based on a couple things. It's uh based a little bit on some education and outreach we have done where we continue to try to do that. But really I have to turn around and give council the thanks for that because council adopted a customer assistance program that was in line with the solid waste um customer assistance program. So it was at 15% and it was uh adopted by council to be moved to a 20% on that. That did a couple things. It not only bumped from the 15 to 20%, but what we were really able to do is kind of cross-pollinate between the outreach on those two programs and really benefit both of them by increasing the usership. So, we had some folks enrolled in one, some folks enrolled in the other, and we were sending out letters and trying to really get people, hey, you're on this, here's another program that you would also qualify for. So, that really helped right there in getting that. We do have $200,000 right now u put towards the customer assistance program. This is an interesting one. So, um I'm going to dive into this one just a little bit because we spoke so much about cost of service and the like on this. The funding for the customer assistance program because of Proposition 218 needs to come from a different source. So, we really fund this out of late fees. Um late fees kind of go across all of our users right there. And this is non cost of service money so that we do have a little bit more latitude. So, we use it for our customer assistance program. I do think that there is a bit of room for us to hear go from our historic 173 to our 282. I think we can continue to do more outreach on that right there. I

would be really while I would love to see it, you know, nearly double right now. I'm I'm going to be a little hesitant once we start to get a little closer to our current funding amount that we have available for that because we cannot supply that from our water and sewer revenues and we would be asking other areas of the city to cover us if suddenly there was a major rush towards that. So, fair enough. And I appreciate the explanation of uh for those who might be listening that are like, "Wait, wait a minute. Are my rates going to support?"

Yeah, appreciate the clarification that it's it's not the rateayers that are paying for this um this customer assistance program. It's the late fees and what have you. So, appreciate that. And at the same time, we'd love to see us be able to utilize more of that funding for people who need it. So, thank you. Great. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Well, since we're talking about the customer assistance program, just a little bit more on that. Uh just out of curiosity, that $200,000 uh pot of money, does that roll over from year to year? Uh you have it stabilized here every year and just a little bit of utilization. So, I would kind of expect to see it go up with that unused funds. So curious what happens to the unused funds.

Yes, in the water and sewer enterprise funds, um unused funds like that are rolled over at the end of the year. Um we do then re-up that $200,000 on an annual basis right there. And at the end of the year, anything left over is really we kind of how we go towards balancing out our overall um operating reserves that we carry. So we carry independent reserves in both the water and sewer funds uh separate from the rest of the general fund. Awesome. Thanks for that explanation. And since we're talking about this too, maybe we could uh tell folks who might be watching at home and the audience, how would they get enrolled because 282 is a pretty shockingly low number based on what we know about need in the community.

Yeah. So they could visit uh slowcity.org uh if you go to the utility billing uh so you can go slowcity.org or water service backwater service. Uh one of the links on that page will uh link to the customer assistance program and the forms that apply for that. Awesome. Thank you for that. Thank you. And with that, there are no more questions. We're going to move on to public comment. Any public comment? There are none.

Okay. Wow. You did an amazing job because there are no questions from the from the public. Well, I just want to uh first say thank you so much and I appreciate actually that you had the additional slide about the customer service or sorry customer assistance program. Um, this was a program that you really used some creativity and and innovation to figure out how do we help the community members in our in our slow community. And that was during a time when um as we talk about COVID a little earlier today, we're talking about the trans public transit, not just transportation. Uh, this was another one of those conversations which is how do we help people and you really figured out how to do that. So, thank you. Uh, council member Boswell, I think we'll start deliberations. Yeah. So, uh I just want to um confirm that uh in my opinion, we've got our priorities uh correct. The ones we've had in place, ones we currently have in place, I would continue moving forward with those and I would support us moving to a four uh four-year rate adoption.

Thank you, Council Member Shoresman. You know, I I I looked at the different categories of um priorities and was sort of debating in my mind, should we move one above two or three above four and tweak them a little bit here and there, but I think the the basics of the concepts are all there. We want to we want to make it predictable for people and we want to encourage them to conserve as as much as we can and those are at the top of the list. So I think it's a Tetris game for you all to figure out how to fit those pieces together to make the formula work. And I I did ask about, you know, the the cost, how much of it is fixed versus variable because I think that matters when you're a small a small user. I guess you would say you're paying, you know, the same amount in that fixed cost as as people who are using a lot more, but I don't I don't know how you make it any smaller than 30% and have it not create too much variability for all of you in the planning and making sure that we have enough money to cover our costs on a daytoday and month-to-month basis. So, uh I don't I don't have any concrete ways to to tweak the priorities. uh to suggest I I do would like to see us maybe in the next round of rates look a little bit more at the qualification and eligibility standards for the customer assistance program and just see if there's any ways that you know there are a lot of people that that don't qualify for some of the programs and services that uh that are listed in our eligibility criteria but still are struggle are struggling to pay the rent and their rents are really high in this community. As we've talked about over and over again, 62% of our community

members are renters and and a lot of people are just struggling to pay the rent and I think they could use an extra 30 40 $50 off their utility bills to go towards groceries. So, if there's a way that we can not put ourselves in jeopardy of running out of money too quick, but tweak those eligibility criteria in some way, I'd be I'd be curious to see that analysis. But otherwise, I'm prepared to support staff's recommendation. Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Shoresman, for your comments on that. I would love to I know you have worked so hard and I'm uh incredibly grateful for uh your ability to increase utilization of that program. But man, I would love to see every single one of those dollars going out the door to help um our our neighbors in need right now. So, anything we can do to examine that program and eligibility, that would be really great. So, thanks for that. Um, I also just really want to commend you all on your outreach and communication around uh talking about the the fixed costs versus the variable costs in utilities. I think, you know, as somebody who was a member of the community coming in to council, that was something I really struggled with understanding myself and then communicating to others because, you know, if you're at home like watching every drop and sucking the water out of your bathtub and trying to conserve to not see a lot of variability uh or lower um utility bills as a result can be a little frustrating. So, uh really being able to talk to people about the actual cost of delivering water services, you've done an incredible job around that. So, keep up the good work. Um, and I am supportive of maintaining our current uh rate structure and uh really actually eager to move to a 4-year uh period. I know there's some potential pitfalls there, but uh would love to see us be uh a little bit more or kind of avoid some of those other costs that come along with looking at this every two years. So, thank you.

Thank you. Well said to my colleagues. Um, as we look at these priorities, um, just kind of going back to the beginning of we are providing fresh, clean water for the community and with ease and security and stability. So, I just, you know, and I think about what we're doing, kind of going from other cities that don't always get to do that as smoothly. Um, I just want to say thank you. Um with that I see that um how we have stability or sorry how we are hoping to have stability with four years makes a lot of sense for planning not just for you but also for us at our homes um as we're trying to figure out our budgets and how do we um do something different. Um I know that my colleagues already have mentioned about the customer assistance program. I think um you had a great list of people you were already looking at for the outreach about the um meeting in February I believe it was. Um, and I think that there's we've been talking a lot to the slow tenants union. There's other people have been coming out to talk about rental um, uh, challenges. So, we've had the property managers and realtors coming out. So, we have some real great opportunities to get that to get this word out. So, hopefully that will be um, something they can help you out a little bit with as well. Um, and I think that the other question that I I I would know if it's a question, but just the the thing that I know that we have to continue to watch, but it sounds like we have a little bit of wiggle room to do that is uh the December, January, February as we look at climate change and how things are working and how temperatures are changing. Uh, we look at Cowpali and their wastewater reclamation facility. We also look at they're moving to semester. So, people are gone in December. Well, they're actually here in December, but they're out in January. So, how this all will work, I think um obviously you're going to be keeping a great eye on that and I look forward to seeing how that all affects us as we continue forward. So, with that um I'm happy to um uh receive this presentation and also

agree that all of the prioritization and recommendations should be move forward move forward. With that, I assume we'll probably see you back in summertime to talk more about uh rates of some sort. Yes, as part of the regular rate setting then so that I believe we have enough right now and it's our recommend or our opinion then that we do not need to return to you in August for a second study session on this and we are we have the information we need to proceed to put the rate setting. So thank you.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Well, we are lucky. You know, we just had this wonderful conversation earlier about staff and recruitment and retention and you can see what great work they do. So, I hope that um can people continue to look at joining joining our team. With that, um I just want to thank you all um for this meeting today and I want to thank my colleagues for their uh continued conversation of water in a way. Uh enjoy your sewer lateral conversation. I think let's take a 10-minute break and move things around.

Awesome.

Oh yeah. How you doing?

City attorney, do we need to make an announcement before we begin? I'm Do I need to work? The so the the mayor did announce her recusal, but the reason for the recusal is an abundance of caution while she's waiting for uh advice that we we've requested from the Fair Political Practices Commission um related to potential financial interest related to the sewer lateral program for property management companies which um her husband works for. So that's the basis for the caution. We think not, but we don't yet have affirmative uh advice. So, she's stepping down for that reason.

Well, thank you for the additional information. Uh the public hearing item before us is to introduced an ordinance amending title 13 of the municipal code regarding private sewer lateral inspections, replacements, and dissolution of the mandatory wastewater flow offset program. Uh would uh director of utility Shauna Scott and deputy director of wastewater Chris Leman please present the report. city Francis and city council. I'm Shauna Scott, assistant director of utilities, and I would like to provide a brief introduction before turning the presentation over to Chris Leman, utilities deputy director of wastewater. We have additional staff with us tonight, including Aaron Floyd, public works and utilities director, and Miguel Barcenis, utilities deputy director of engineering and planning. Staff is proposing changes to two existing programs. the citywide sewer lateral inspection, repair, and replacement program and the wastewater flow offset program. We understand that this is a complicated topic and council does have the option of continuing the hearing if needed. I wanted to first express our gratitude for the continuing collaboration, input, ideas, and productive discussions with our community, especially the developer and realtor groups that have spent numerous hours engaged with staff since the sewer lateral and wastewater offset programs were established in 2019. We greatly appreciate these partnerships and recognize that the adoption of these programs and staff's recommended changes to be considered by council tonight have an effect on our community. whether an individual is purchasing a property or constructing a project. I wanted to highlight the policy basis for these programs which is found in our city's general plan water and wastewater element. Uh these include um um expanding the sewer system capacity and support of projected wastewater flow. Evaluating the potential for wastewater flows of a proposed project to exceed capacity in the collection system. develop education and outreach materials

to increase public awareness of inflow and infiltration and the s city's efforts to reduce what we call INI. Support the retrofit of sewer laterals and review development proposals to ensure that new development does not adversely impact existing infrastructure and that necessary infrastructure will be in place to support the development. Our general plan also identifies that new development shall pay its proportional or fair share of expanded collection system capacity and upgrades and new development will only be permitted if adequate capacity is available. The primary goals of these existing programs and the proposed changes are to reduce barriers to residential development, further the major city goal of housing and neighborhood livability, and support carbon neutrality goals identified in our climate action plan. Build and ensure capacity in the sewer system for future housing development citywide. Reduce I ini from private sewer laterals and reduce the potential for sewer spills and impacts to public health, safety, and general welfare. And utilize our updated wastewater flow model to evaluate and identify fair and proportional conditional offsets as determined through engineering analysis. In addition to program implementation, the city will continue to provide financial relief to property owners through our rebate programs, monitor existing rebate programs for potential expansion in the future, continue our education and outreach efforts, and also continue our collaboration with our community partners. Um, and with that, I would like to turn the presentation over to Chris Leman. Thank you, Shauna. Um, Chris Leman, wastewater deputy director, utilities branch. Um, I have 18 slides uh to get through and I'd really like to reserve u most of the time that we have

remaining for uh questions and discussion. Um, so starting off, I wanted to set the stage. Uh, staff uh visited council last August study session. number of items were brought forward for council to consider. Um, one item was uh recommended to staff. We we were given direction to defer uh that discussion item. That's why we're back here today. And that item was uh modifications to the wastewater flow offset program and inspection upon sale programs. Um so that is really what we're focused on today. Um recommendations today, there are three of them. I am not going to read that. Um, I'm going to skip uh to a plain English uh summary of what we're talking about. Um, summary for really four recommendations. The first is a proposed modification to the citywide uh sewer lateral inspection program. And we're talking about laterals that are inspected uh following um ownership transfer of property. And um we're talking about a modification to uh mandatory action upon receipt of that inspection. Um so we're talking about those laterals that are in poor or failed condition um that a mandatory replacement requirement would be um authorized by staff. Uh second recommendation is dissolution of the mandatory wastewater flow offset program in its place. we do have a a system a recommended system that would replace that program. Um third item is uh kind of in in the limbo what happens in between with a program transition. Uh so we are recommending uh just some discretionary review um of um condition wastewater flow offsets uh for specific projects that are based off of modeling and analysis. And then

the last item I think I jumped the gun on that. This is the the limbo recommendation is for projects that are currently in progress um for entitled projects and building permits that are in process. Uh we'd like to um the recommendation is to authorize the public works and utilities director to wave those pending offset improvements. Um acknowledging that we're we're pivoting uh the program. What do we do with the the projects that are currently uh in in in progress? You know, we'd like to wave those requirements. Um Shauna mentioned we've done uh quite a bit of outreach and this is really over the past couple years, but in particular we wanted to highlight um what we've done in the past couple of months leading up to tonight and really the two communities that we've connected with um frequently are the realators and the development community. Um so we've done a number of in-person workshops with larger groups attending the slow coastal realators association meetings. Um we've uh attended the developers roundt hosted by community development department and there's just a number of in-person meetings uh that we've um got a lot of good feedback from um community stakeholders. I see a few of them um in the audience this evening and really wanted to thank again the realtors and development community and the feedback that we've received has allowed the formation of the recommendations we have tonight. um really want to proceed with the most um the most effective route and that's going to be most efficient and best in the long run. So that's why we're here today. Um before we dive into some of the changes and and recommended changes to those two programs, I did want to highlight um our existing rebate programs that are in place. uh a bit of confusion on where these apply and so the attempt here is to bring this this

up on a map. Um so the exhibit that we have up here is a is a city boundary map and we're showing um you know within that boundary there are two areas that are shaded in purple. Those are the areas that we are um have modeled to determine they are capacity constrained and those are areas in the collection system that just don't have additional capacity to accommodate growth. And so within those two areas uh to the city, these are the areas of highest risk and where we want to focus um limited resources that we have in the way of funding. Um so within those two areas, there are two rebates that are available. uh want a $350 rebate for uh private sewer lateral inspection. That's when they send a camera into the uh line and they do a condition assessment to determine what shape it's in. Um second rebate we have is $4,000 that um applies towards replacing the lateral once you determine what condition it's in. um whether mandatory or voluntary, if you want to get that replaced, uh the city is incentivizing that work by providing a $4,000 replacement rebate. Um those both of those rebates in those areas apply to any property type. So multifamily, commercial, single family properties, we really want to focus most of the resources that we can on those two areas. Um, outside of that, citywide there was an existing uh program in place for single family homes that continues. Um, so that $4,000 rebate is available citywide um for single family homes. And then I I also put a link on this slide. This is where a property owner would go to apply for these rebates. So slowcity.org/ateralrebates. um diving into the two programs that we're talking about tonight. Uh first

being what we call the inspection upon sale program. And so um number of conditions that require laterals to be inspected. One of them is when uh a property ownership uh transfer occurs. Um quick numbers. Uh since the program's inception and adoption in uh August of 2019, um we've had approximately 369 of these inspections um that have come through and about 1,200 total. 369 of these inspections have been classified as poor or failed condition. And I'll go into a bit more about what that actually means, but on a high level, these are the laterals that um on some level have collapsed and are no longer functioning. Um out of those 369, when we're talking about where they're located in the city, approximately 116 of those 369 are located within those capacity constrained areas. uh big change, big pivot from when we originally brought this program to council. Um over the course of 2017 to 2019, a number of of study sessions occurred and uh final recommendation that staff brought to council in uh late 2019 was that there would be a mandatory replacement of a lateral in poor failed condition. Um but at that point the recommendation was that that replacement would have to occur prior to close of escrow. And um so council at the time directed staff uh to not proceed with that ordinance change. Um fast forward six and a half years later to where we're at today. We're circling back to the original recommendation with some modifications.

um understanding that it takes time for that work to occur and uh the potential for delaying uh the property sale when you have to clear out this item in a short period of time. Um the current recommendation is that that these mandatory replacements would have to occur within 6 months or 180 days. Um that 180 days is consistent with all other conditions that would require a lateral to be replaced. Um, a couple things here on the timeline. We do recognize this is a major shift in the program and uh the idea is that we'd like for it to be most effective and to do that um quite a bit of outreach will need to occur and so the current recommendation is that if these changes were adopted they would not be effective until January 1st of 2027. Um the second point to make here with that 180 days is there is some concern and we we've received feedback that you know what if we can't get that work completed within 6 months what happens and um under the existing municipal code uh there is director discretion to extend that 180 days. Um the idea is that if there's good faith effort to make uh get the work completed and you can't get it done, they can uh the property owner could submit for an extension request that could be and we have honored those for other other situations understanding uh real life. We'll talk a bit about contractor availability. That's a factor. Um but that um extension uh would be available for any property owner. Um, so I promised to talk about the condition of the sewer laterals. Here's a great picture. Um, what do we what do we consider a failed lateral? Um, these are laterals. Very small image in the lower right uh corner there, but we're looking at root intrusion there. And the roots have gotten so bad that there's

not much room for flowing anything else in the pipe. And so these are are laterals that we can't get a camera through. there's either a void in the pipe, a large missing section, or the root intrusion is so bad that you just can't get a camera through the line. So, worst of the worst, these are the laterals that are the highest risk uh for property owners, for the community and environment. Um kind of going from worst uh to best, we move on to poor condition lateral. Very similar. Um the level of of severity of these defects is is less, but it's still serious. And um to determine these lateral conditions, uh staff actually has a certified inspection program uh training program that they go through to do these inspections. They result in these very generalized categories of good, pair, fair, poor or failed. Um but ultimately we have to categorize them in order to to make some sort of action from the assessment. So we have failed, we have poor and then we move on to uh the fair condition lateral. This is an interesting example. This is a a old clay pipe lateral that is it doesn't meet current city standards but it is considered to be in fair condition. um that lateral, I believe this is a lateral from 1977. So even though it's very old, it still has been uh conditioned and determined that it can be in service. Um still some concern here that, you know, over the long run, these pipes are going to fail. And so where this would not be a mandatory replacement, we would want to um educate the property owner that there are rebates available. And if you don't want to do it now, you might consider this down the road or for getting some work done. talking a bit about this workflow for how these inspections occur and I'm

going to highlight some of the changes that we're recommending. Um the first step would be that uh the plumber uh completes a private seateral inspection for the property owner. Um on average these inspections range from $200 to 350. um that private sewer lateral video and inspection report is submitted to city staff. City staff perform their con condition assessment. That's when the pair uh good fair poor or failed categorization would apply be applied. Um those results are sent back to the seller and with the understanding that those the report should be disclosed to the buyer. Um at this point if the lateral has been determined to be in good or fair condition uh we consider the compliance uh workflow to be complete. No further action required other than perhaps a voluntary action for those fair laterals. Uh if the lateral has been conditioned to be poor or failed. Um same thing the results are disclosed to the seller who informs the buyer and there's some additional steps that would be that would follow. Um, again wanted to highlight that first uh rebate that is available um for those in those capacity constrained areas. Uh $350 that would cover just about every inspection that we've come across in the city. So um would pay for the work to be completed. We want to we don't want to um have these inspections not occur. And so that was a new item that was authorized uh back in December 2nd last year. Um so following that 4B path uh for the poor or failed laterals, this is when the city uh under the new workflow um would issue a notice to correct to the seller. This is an administrative um

process that allows staff to track um requirements of property owners. Um the private sewer lateral at this point, this is when the clock starts 180 days um would start upon issuance of this notice to correct to the seller. Um during that time um again we're not we're not suggesting or recommending that this work would be completed uh prior to close of escrow but that it needs to be occur within 180 days. Um, so that work uh at this point would be completed or a request for an extension would be submitted for director review. At this point, if the lateral was replaced, uh the property owner could submit for a $4,000 rebate. And then uh following the final replacement, uh the city would issue a resolve notice to correct would would essentially close out uh the workflow. and then um if they had property owner had submitted for a rebate then the rebate award would be would be applied changes uh to the current workflow we're really talking about what happens with these poor or failed laterals. So as the current program exists the current municipal code staff are not authorized to uh make mandatory requirements for these poor failed laterals. Um, so those uh boxes that are highlighted in yellow uh do not currently exist and they would be incorporated into the workflow um if the ordinance changes were adopted. Um moving on to the second program, we're talking about the wastewater flow offset program and on a high level um again looking at that map of those two areas that were purple um that don't have capacity. Um so the current program

applies to any projects that are in those areas for new new development or intensified development. Um and we're talking about um you know if if that offset trigger is applied uh improvements need to be made which are largely replacement of other private sewer laterals in that area. Um given some numbers from the program's adoption in late 2019 to the present date, we've replaced 114 laterals through the program. Um which is a part of the it's a part of the uh pie and we'll talk about that again trying to set the stage here and and compare what the approach was uh with the program's adoption in August of 2019 uh to what we're what staff are recommending this evening. Um in 2019 uh the wastewater flow offset program was adopted and again this is applying to intensification projects in capacity constrained areas. Um tonight's recommendation staff are proposing to dissolve uh that portion of the municipal code and essentially going back to uh pre August 2019 in that um we're estimating that 90 to 95% of projects would not require any action uh after this modification uh to the municipal code. So, we're really talking about moderate and major sized projects that are located in those capacity constrained areas. Um, if again, if this uh ordinance change was adopted, we're essentially going back to before the wastewater flow offset program was adopted. Um those any um requirements that would be applied to those moderate and major size projects

would all be based off of uh a new hydraulic model that staff um was uh completed as a part of a long range plan in late 2025. So we're looking at current data. We're looking at um impacts on the system and then we're looking at the buildout of the city to 2035 in our ability to accommodate additional flow in those areas. Um those offset requirements would be determined by that model and again not all projects would require improvements. Um so stepping it through this is one we I I might phone a friend if we need to dig into it. We do have an engineer in the crowd which I am not. Um but talking about that discretionary workflow again if that offset program were dissolved there would would be a workflow in place uh that would evaluate moderate and majorsiz projects. Um so the first step would be that the property owner would submit a planning application for the new development. That application is routed to our community community development uh department planner. Um they would have an updated checklist for this workflow. So and for moderate development review uh we are looking at just capacity constrained areas uh major development review these are the larger projects that would um require analysis citywide in modeling. Um so that application would be reviewed by staff including the utilities department engineer. uh the property owner would provide a design narrative uh showing how their engineering calculations um apply to the model and we have engineering standards that are published. We talked about a big book. I think we have one of those also if we if we'd like to take a look. Um, and to supplement that, we do have our, this is our long range plan, what we call our wastewater infrastructure renewal strategy, and it's available on the

city's website along with the engineering standards. Um, so those engineering calculations would be compared to the sewer model that we have, that hydraulic model of the system. Um, and that would evaluate capacity um, that's remaining in in the area that the project is looking to locate. Um based on that comparison, staff would uh recommend conditions of approval uh which are largely based on the project description. Um those conditions could um include replacement of private laterals um and potentially improvements to city infrastructure. And this is where um potentially the city would have capacity in that area in a f at a future date. uh but the capital projects haven't been programmed and so to accelerate that timeline uh one of the conditions potentially could be uh to perform those improvements ahead of schedule. Um last step and then I'm I'm going to spotlight again the changes uh to the process is that a final review would be performed um by the appropriate decision-making body depending on the project type. It would go to council. It could go to planning commission. And then there are projects that would go to to the util public works and utilities director for review. Um last step, you know, the property would submit their building permit application uh for construction. And really in this workflow, the big change is that we're going to change our routing uh for for pro project review. Uh moving right along, we're comparing really three categories here of the ultimate goal was to replace private laterals that have that are poor condition. Uh three ways that staff has done this. First being the offset uh wastewater flow offset program. Uh 114

of those again have been completed since late 2019. um larger uh orange bar there is actually a voluntary approach in that we've actually had about 518 uh laterals replaced uh through incentivized uh an incentivized process through the rebate program. Um and then the last item there in green is are those laterals that have been uh conditioned as poor or failed through that inspection upon sale program. Uh we've had 369 uh this is as of today a bit different in the staff report. We wanted to get as current numbers as we can. Um but 369 uh through that inspection upon sale program have been determined to be in poor failed condition. Again those are the laterals that are in some cases collapsed. Um u no mandatory replacement requirements have occurred. um out of those 369, 116 are located within those capacity constrained areas. It's an important number to point out there and we might come back to that. Um summarizing some of the the feedback that we've received from our stakeholders, realtors, developers. Um and we have a few more of these in the staff report. Um but I wanted to call out a couple that weren't. Um the first item was a recommendation from the realer community to develop a hardship funding source that would um be applied on top of the $4,000 rebate for those who qualify. Um I think staff like the idea in theory and concept and we've just struggled uh to identify a Prop 218 compliant uh funding source and approach uh to developing this solution. And then um beyond that very difficult to administer from a staffing side, but that's something that we heard and and

that we're we're considering how we we might be able to structure something like that. Um second item that we uh received a decent amount of feedback on is if this if these requirements are in place um the work's going to ramp up. Are there contractors available that can do the work? Um, and I appreciate the the research that that had gone into this from particularly from the realators. Um, we've done some research that has built on uh the work that the realator started and u by my count we have nine uh local contractors that are actively doing this work and uh a handful more that are located in the central valley. Um so from our perspective that would not limit um the the availability to get the work done. Um third item from the realators was some confusion and we've heard this a lot over the years than that uh you get a lateral inspected you hear one thing from the plumber and then you get the result back from the city and it's something entirely different and that would matter particularly with a a home sale. you would want to know what what you're getting yourself into and it would really impact some of the negotiation process. Um so to address that I think one it's education and outreach which does continue. Um but two uh we are evaluating um in the final stages of evaluating an online portal that would provide direct access uh to property owners to plumbers. um it would provide a direct link to video and there's um some pretty cool tools that are built in that would help with the education and I think that would clear up most of the confusion that we see uh during that process. Um beyond that, we're thinking this could be a good tool for competitive bidding and you know the property owner could submit this report uh directly to a contractor and they could potentially get a better price for

the work. Uh very last slide and we'll reserve some time for questions. Um realators were interested in considering the replacement um of all existing laterals that have been determined to be poor and failed rather than requiring requiring replacement through this inspection upon sale process. Um staff do not recommend this approach. I I think it's creative. Um the concern that staff have and really uh the approach that that staff has taken is that um we feel this is the most um the most fair time for requiring uh this work to occur and that there is an easier access to a funding source um when somebody's looking to purchase a home. Um whereas when we're approaching outside of that period, it it could potentially catch some people very offguard that aren't in a financial position to get the work done. Um so that's the theory behind the approach. Um last two items, we had some great feedback from developers. Uh we're talking about, okay, we're getting rid of this program. We're going to have some remaining requirements in place for the larger projects. What about what about the credits that we've acred? What what is it what happens with that? Um and so uh two things there that we're hoping will help bridge the gap and that um one those credits could be maintained uh for future projects that would be in those moderate and large project categories. Um so still some potential to put those credits to use. And then uh another thing that that I've heard and observed is that many of these offset replacements have not applied for rebates. And so between the two um we feel that that could help bridge the gap as this program is modified. Um and then the last item um if we're

talking about you know if this program again if this program is dissolved um what are the project thresholds for um future mitigation or condition of approval? Um so again two two categories that we're really um looking at is in that the first being major project uh developments and um amendments to the city's general plan that require a property uh to be reszoned. Um all projects all those projects would require u review and modeling. And then the second category is the moderate development review projects and those are those that are located only in those capacity constrained areas. Um so getting rid of the wastewater flow offset program. Uh still leaving this review process in place for some of the larger projects. And with that I will take a big breath and wait for some questions. Thank you so much for uh taking some really complicated information and putting it into some nice easy to understand plain language. Appreciate that. Uh are there any questions of staff at this time? Council member Short need red, don't I? Oh, there we go. Um, thank you for the report. Super detailed and, uh, gets very technical very quick. So, uh, forgive me if some of my questions are kind of, uh, not as, uh, not as educated as some of you are that are experts in the room here. And appreciate, uh, we got a pretty large volume of email on this topic. And appreciate all the public engagement. and several of the emails had some really good questions in them. So, you might hear some things that um that

you've heard before or that you've seen in our emails. But just curious about um you know, one of the things that was mentioned in some of the emails and you pointed out some data that you know, in the capacity constrained areas, I think there's only been 114 sewer laterals replaced as a result of the um the offset program. But yet we've got 518 that have been replaced voluntarily with the incentives of the rebates. And just wondering one of the questions that uh that came in was what about just using it seems like we've been pretty successful with the voluntary program. What about just having a voluntary program?

I I and that's a great I think that's a great suggestion. Um it I believe there's there's two ways to look at it. Um one is the the progress made to date and it has been a collective um accumulated result of the the man mandatory the voluntary and um and also you know through these other programs but and then we're also looking at um really into the future. And so one of the considerations, and I might pass it over to Shauna for this one, but she really brought up a great point in that we're not only addressing the issues that we have in the system for today, um, but replacement of these laterals is also building capacity for future growth in housing development. And, um, I I'll pass it over to Sean. I think she can build on that a bit.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. And you know, I wanted to pull up this slide as well because we have the 369 here that we received reports on that were not required to be um repaired or replaced. So, we do have those out there. Um if we didn't adopt this program, that you know, that trend, you know, we'd see would would likely continue. And so, um you know, as Chris mentioned, we're looking at providing that capacity and ensuring capacity specifically, you know, for housing projects. You know, as the state, I know, keeps coming down with different regulations. you know, one of the comment letters identified that that in the future there could be um requirements to approve larger projects ministerally. Um and so we really want to make sure that we have that capacity in our system to accommodate those types of projects. You know, relieve burdens on you know an existing housing development particularly for folks adding an ADU or building on a bedroom or B you know these smaller type projects and then really providing that um analysis for you know for larger project larger projects. So trying to achieve a balance here where we're evaluating development projects, um implementing our CIP, encouraging, you know, folks to use our rebates for those voluntary replacements and then addressing known problems that we have as evident in our existing data.

I I have heard stories of uh because of the offset program of projects just not proceeding forward because of the difficulty of finding an offset. So, um, appreciate that. On the flip side of just having a voluntary program, uh, one of the suggestions that was made in one of in some of the emails was having a more proactive program in the capacity constrained areas and maybe dividing up those areas and doing a little bit more proactive enforcement. Um, one of the emails said, "We know where the problems are, so why not just focus on those?" Could you talk about why that strategy might not be why what you're proposing would be more effective than that strategy or what the pitfalls of that would be?

Yeah. Um that that's a great another great suggestion and I think part of this is staff taking all these recommendations and trying to formulate what we feel is most fair and most effective. Um I think the concern with um the proactive enforcement approach is that um we're going to be um one how to manage the program and so it would increase workload. We potentially have to hire staff um to ramp up enforcement inspection programs. We don't that we don't have in place today. Um but beyond that I think the concern is again um what is the if there is one most appropriate or fair time to bring uh replacement to a property owner and the thought is again at a property uh transfer period that there would be access to funding. Um whereas a proactive u enforcement approach uh you're approaching people that might have been on the property for 30 40 years and then they just learned this for the first time. um lot of older homes in the community. You know, you might have a home built in 1930 and somebody's been there for 60 70 years. And out of the blue, we have an enforcement case um mandatory replacement. It's going to be $15,000. And back to the hardship funding source that we currently don't have. You know, how does somebody how does a property owner pull that off? And so, I think it could be effective. I think staff are open to council direction on that path, but that is currently not our recommendation.

Um,

and yeah, thank you, Chris. And I just wanted to add to I mean, we did look at um, you know, do we should we just focus in capacity constrained areas? And so there's a few reasons why we are recommending the inspection upon sale repair and replacement to be applied citywide. U, first of all, the existing ordinance um, the inspection requirements are citywide. So this is just adding an additional action that would be subject to repair replacement. Um second, you know, these poor and failed laterals are contributing to INI throughout the system and as we've seen with our 2025 study that those capacity areas can change over time. You know, it did shift. Um and you know third, you know, these um poor and failed laterals can have the potential to result in a sewage spill, which means sewage, you know, going out into the street or backing up into somebody's house, which nobody wants that. Um you know, and then also, as I mentioned before, it's like we're really wanting to ensure um that capacity in our system isn't taken up citywide by INI. Like the sewer system is meant to serve, you know, wastewater flow, not groundwater intruding into the into the system. Uh, thanks for those clarifications. U, just two more quick ones. Um, the inspection prog pro uh, excuse me, the inspection program is citywide. Correct.

Correct. Correct. Uh, and the inspection rebate is only in the capacity constrained areas, but the replacement rebate is citywide.

Yep. Have we thought about if the inspections are required citywide? Have we thought about making the inspection rebate citywide? It seems like that would be more consistent and maybe decrease or increase the ease of administration just a bit if both the rebates were citywide. Or is there a is there a fiscal reason for keeping it in the capacity constrained areas? It's a great question and it's something that that um I think we struggled with over the past few years is and really it boils down to we have a a funding source that's been programmed um following Shane's wonderful presentation part of the rate study and so these these monies have been accounted for um we have a limited amount that's a part of the adopted budget how do we most how do we apply it most effectively and um the thought and the reason uh that staff had brought the recommendations to council back in December is we identified that there is additional money available and the thought is how do we apply that and get the most bang for our buck, right? And so we have the existing uh program citywide for single family homes. What are we doing for those capacity constrained areas? So the decision was made to expand that to all property types uh for replacement. And then um this is really a data game at this point. again, where is the root of the problem? Capacity constrained areas. Um, so applying that inspection rebate to those areas. Not that it wouldn't be effective citywide. Um, but if we have that limited amount of money and forecasting the spend rates, um, we're going to run out at some point. And the concern is by adding additional qualifying uh, locations, we're not going to get those properties addressed that are causing the biggest impact.

So, it's really a funding source question. And then it could be, you know, a potential it could be a potential impact on rate assumptions at some point, right? Like for example, like looking at if we um increase funding, like while this rebate program provides a community benefit um you know, kind of looking at rough estimates, a $200,000 increase in the operating budget translates to about a 2% rate increase on the sewer fund.

Um are the rebates is it like what we discussed in the last item? And I don't know if you have to phone a friend for this, but u with the Prop 218 requirements, is it like with the customer assistance program for wastewater that you can't use you can only use certain types of funds to fund these rebates or is it

it's very similar. Uh the difference here and what we brought to council in December to update uh the rebate structure is that we have to make a uh a finding uh that demonstrates that this money is um going towards a public good. And so the idea, yes, it's benefiting the property owner, but it's also reducing the impact on the overall system. So the cost of of pumping that water of treating it at the wastewater plant um replacing that private lateral has a demonstrated public good. And so that's how we've been able to fund the program

through through rates. And there is a there's a Prop 218 consideration as we get beyond that and and talking about additional subsidies for for those that would need have a hardship demonstration. It seems like uh if there's a proven public good for providing somebody a $4,000 rebate to replace their lateral that there might be a similar public good for helping offset the cost of the inspection that finds the problem that causes the replacement of the lateral. But I'd be curious to hear more analysis of that at some point in time. The last question that I wanted to ask was just about the um the impact of the uh ending the offset program, you know, sort of mid- project for a lot of projects potentially out there. Do we have an idea of how many of those projects that are sort of in process right now that would have been part of the offset program that would be waved if we uh offered to wave them right now as part of this change? I don't have a total. I might be able to phone a friend on that one there. We do have a handful of projects that we know would be in this category. And again, um the recommendation is that we would give the authority to to the public works and utilities director. Uh programs in transition. This requirement was in place when you applied for it, but the intent, you know, is is at this point we're going to dissolve any pending requirements.

Got it. That makes sense. I was just wondering if it was like five or 55, but I might be able to get it. Yeah, if if it's if it's available, great. If not, I'm not not too worried about it. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Shoresman. Council member Boswell, I'm good. Council member Shoresman asked all my questions.

That's amazing. I just had a couple of quick follow-ups. I really appreciate it. You had some fantastic questions in there. Um, I was curious about you you mentioned the uh creation of this online portal that you're in the final stages of of getting up and um I wasn't entirely sure how that would play into the the process that you're proposing. Um, does it mean that there would be a process for reviewing the assessment of city work or what is the back and forth there that you were discussing?

Great question and I wish I had a live demo to show you because it's I think it's going to be very helpful. Um, Essentially, this this portal is just streamlining what already occurs and you would just have quicker access to the data. Um um some of the new elements that are added to this portal are that the plumber would actually draw out a map of the lateral and so we have a better idea of placement and orientation. We're getting more data. It's a lot easier to get the data in. And then um if you think about a live um I don't know the best um example of this but a video that has live annotations that as you go through it you see live comments and then it's just much easier to review the data and interpretation. Um there's also an AI element that kind of a um question and answer live that you can get feedback. Um but the idea is that um the intent we get better data out, we better get better communication uh much faster. We're seeing other agencies that are using this tool. Um city of Santa Barbara is is is one of the early adopters and they've just seen the turnaround on the videos uh go from days to hours.

That's great. And so we want to get the data quickly. We want it to be accurate. And then I think that the big benefit that I see is we're hoping this this will help drive down costs of replacement. So cost to the city or cost for the plumbers and doing the replacement or cost to the property owner for replacement and that's the feedback that we've heard from Santa Barbara is it's just helped drive down the cost. You have better data. It's going to provide a much more informed bid and then it just allows more competitive bidding easily to occur. You don't have to do the phone call. Let's send a link to the report. That's great. So, it's kind of can be a little bit more strategic in how the replacement is done then. Correct.

Okay. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Um, couple more questions. Sorry, they're a little bit out of order. So, let me take a moment here.

Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about the you you had a really lovely uh diagram of the the process and I was kind of curious, you know, we now are talking about extending um the period to do the replacement to 180 days. And I wanted to understand a little bit better uh who's eligible for the replacement rebate. Does it have to be applied for by the homeowner before the sale is done or can it be applied for by the new homeowner after the inspection shows that there's an issue and it's already changed hands? So, are both parties eligible? Um, and how exactly would that process work?

So, it's a great great question. um the rebate would have to be issued to the current property owner. And so in the case of the inspection, uh that rebate would likely go to the seller. Um whereas with the replacement, we're talking this this is not going to occur within a month. Likely it could. Um but in that case, then that rebate would be issued to the buyer down the road. and um some reasons in place and that we have to award the monies to the to to the property owner. Um one of them is we actually have a requirement to um have the property owner submit a W9 for tax purposes. And so you get into some of that reasoning, but um the rebates are awarded to the current owner of the property. You mentioned when uh council member Shoresman asked a question about projects that had been done, concerns from some of the developer community about already having some of these credits or having recently done these replacements. You mentioned um that some of them had not applied for those rebates and I was wondering if you were implying that they could retroactively apply for some of those rebates or what the window is there or process.

So potentially it depends on the date of when the work was completed. Um we've done a few changes in the past 5 years, different rebate thresholds along the way. Um so depending on when the work was completed that would determine, you know, what amount they would be eligible for. Um but just that that's some of the feedback that we've received is okay, I've done all these replacements. Um one is is as a credit system to apply for future projects. Um but uh finding that that a lot of these replacements haven't been awarded rebates and we want to get that money out if we can. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. And let me just make sure I got everything here. I think we're I think we're good for now. Appreciate it. And uh we'll move on to uh public comment. City clerk, do we have any public comment on this item?

Yes, we have four speakers. The first one is Dale Grryer, then Garrett Olsen, then Greg Wyn, and then our final speaker is Steve Del Martini.

Thank you. Dale Ginder, St. Louis Abyispo. Uh, good evening, council and staff members. What are left of you tonight, um, I sent a letter to council early this afternoon. I'm not sure if all of you had a chance to read it. I'll read it now as written for those that might have missed it. Dear St. Louis Abyispo City Council members, I'm writing to you with concerns about tonight's agenda, item 7B. Under my main heading, considerations regarding sewer ordinance implementation is a subheading, background of the current ordinance. When the current ordinance was enacted a number of years ago, it was my understanding that the council evaluated multiple options before making their decision. One of the alternate alternatives considered was to require individual property owners to take responsibility for installing new sewer lines. Ultimately, this option was rejected in favor of placing obligation on developers subheading shift burden to developers. As a result, developers became responsible for managing the transition associated with new sewer lines outside the properties they were developing. As a small developer with property located in one of the INI areas, I formally expressed my opposition to utility to the utility department. I advocated that each individual property owner should be held accountable for their own sewer line upgrades under my subheading main concerns raised. Number one, the utility department faced increased staffing requirements to manage and maintain records related to the ordinance resulting in an excessive complex and costly management process. This could have been avoided if the appropriate alternative approach had been selected. Two, responsibility for replacing private

sewer line should have rested with each property owner. Owners could have been given a deadline to complete the necessary replacements. If an owner failed to comply, the city could perform the work and bill the owner, possibly spreading the replacement costs over 10 years through their tax role to ease a repayment. Since the state mandated the upgrade, this approach could have been pursued and made legally viable if any legal challenges arose. Number three, the current ordinance added extra expenses to the cost of building, compelling developers to charge higher rents in areas that were already costly to live in. Four, if the program changes, as is currently being considered, or if it is deemed illegal to place the burden of private property responsibilities on developers, the city will face significant challenges. These include A clarification on the reimbursement process for developers who have credits remaining on file. B determining whether developers will be reimbured for credits already applied to other properties. Subheading recommendations and next steps. I believe that any changes to the ordinance should be postponed until legal issues concerning past developers responsibilities are resolved and formalized through a notice of intent. I have just a short amount of time here. So sorry we are at the end of time there. Yes. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good evening Vice Mayor Francis and council members. I'm Garrett Olsson, the CEO of your St. Louis of Bispo Chamber and I want to express our support for staff's recommendation to dissolve the wastewater flow offset program. While the program was well-intentioned, uh it's proven difficult for our development community to navigate and implement our development. For our development community, it has introduced added logistical complexity, uncertainty, and cost, and ultimately become another impediment to meeting our shared housing goals for production and affordability. At a time when we're all working to remove the barriers and create more predictable pathways to housing, this program has moved us in an opposite direction. That said, we fully recognize and support the need to address the city's infrastructure challenges, particularly in capacity constrained areas where the systems performance is critical. That's why we support a more targeted and outcomesdriven approach requiring the replacement of sewer laterals identified as poor or failed within these capacity constrained areas triggered through inspection upon sale program and completed within 180 days with um extensions provided by staff when needed. Focusing first on the capacity constrained area creates a thoughtful phased approach. It allows the city to focus and prioritize critical areas while also testing and refining the program before considering a broader citywide application. This kind of measured implementation provides an effective pilot uh to ensure long-term success. This approach is more practical, more predictable, and more directly tied to achieving the intended outcome in the areas most significantly impacted. It ensures that the most critical repairs are made without placing unnecessary burdens on properties that are already working to deliver much or excuse me on projects that are um already working to deliver much neededed housing projects.

Importantly, proactively addressing damaged sewer laterals in these areas is essential to controlling long-term city costs and maintaining the reliability of our system. The proposed 180day time frame provides a reasonable and achievable window for compliance, balancing urgency with efficiency and feasibility. Ultimately, this is about aligning our policies with our priorities, supporting infrastructure improvement while also removing barriers to housing. We respectfully urge you to support the staff's well-informed recommendation to dissolve the offset program and move forward with the incremental step on this path to controlling the impact and costs associated with our aging infrastructure by first focusing in the constrained area. Thank you for your time and consideration and thank you for your recent move to open the rebate eligibility for multifamily and commercial residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, city clerk. Greg W, then Steve Del Martinei, and then Stacy Scaldy. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Francis and Reduce Council. I'm Greg W. I'm an architect in town here. I've done a lot of projects in the capacity constrained area, which means I've got to watch a lot of sewer videos. Uh, something I don't recommend. Um, one of the things that's, um, happened with the program is that, uh, I have to explain to clients why whenever they want to add a bathroom, they get to replace their sewer. Oh, and your neighbor's sewer also, and they just kind of turn their head like a a dog. This is, I don't understand the sound of what you're saying. Um, so I am very supportive of this um, amendment to the to the uh, to the um, ordinance here so that we can get rid of this program. I know well intention but u this is going to be better without it and it seems just appropriate to make it on sale when we where we can put the the burden on the project and not on the development community. So, it it all makes sense to me and it it makes sense because I've heard it so many times. Utilities and the community development department, especially Chris, has done an exceptional job of meeting with outreach with the development community and the real estate community. And we've talked about this over and over and over more than I want to say. And I and I really applaud city staff for making that effort. While it's hard on all of us to go to these meetings, it's really hard on staff to have to come and listen to 20 people gripe about a program. And so, uh, Chris, this is just say thank you for that. And again, I'm supporting the program and, um, available. Thanks.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody. Um, I'm Steve Del Martini. Uh, first of all, I think that anybody over 70 gets three and a half minutes. That should be something new. Um, you know how hard it is to get organized to get here. Um, so first of all, I would I'm going to make a request that you don't have a decision made tonight because it what happens in these meetings is that things come up uh from staff. And by the way, Aaron McGill, um Chris, and Shauna, thank you so much for your time, so much time spent with the realtors. We've had many meetings and we greatly appreciate it. Um, but anyway, I I just think the things come up and then we want to have a discussion about that and and and we get three minutes and we sit in our chair and then you guys talk about it. So, we sit there, our eyes roll and we squirm and we go, "No, no, no, no, no. We just want to say this, but the meeting's closed. You're afraid to open the meeting because then people like me get up and they spend another half hour talking about stuff that you don't want to hear about, maybe." But, so I I really would appreciate that and I think that maybe you should have just an old town hall meeting and let's get this out there and discuss what can happen and how we can get these things done. Uh, first of all, it was news to me because maybe I just didn't follow the program that I didn't know that the rebate check for $4,000 would go to the seller even if the work wasn't done. Do you know how hard it is for a buyer than to get with the seller when the check comes in and the seller to give it to the buyer? We deal with this with taxes all the time. Okay, there's so it it it's not an easy process. You might just think that the seller, oh yeah, they they just forget. They don't they'll cash the check and then, you know, the buyer's out looking for it and it it seems small, but it becomes a big problem. I'll just tell you that um the other thing is um the the amount of time it takes let's just stick with the the restricted area I mean the constrained areas you know uh so one for instance is brought up that says that you know well one homeowner may have owned this property for 30 or 40 years well that may be true but there may be 70% of the people in those constrained areas that actually would do their replacement you don't know because

you haven't gone out to check it out I How do you get to that number? How do you find out? I'm not sure. But this is something that would be interesting to have a discussion, especially with the realtors because we have influence because we know the people that own these homes. And I I don't know that there couldn't be some way that this could be worked out that the con the constrained areas would then maybe have more success than you think because I think just you you you're doing this point of sale and all it does is kick the can down the road. I gave an example in an email that, you know, you have so many homes that are for sale. I think I I mean in in in in the system there's like 4,400 homes that haven't had an inspection. We sell about 180 or 200 homes a year. 30% basically of those homes have a failed or poor system. And then it it takes forever for these homes to sell. Some of these homes with bad laterals may never sell. The 369 homes now that you've had gone through the system now have to resell to even come back on the on the system. I mean it doesn't it just kicks the can down the road and I don't really think it makes sense. Two other things I really want to get to is first of all I think that ah shoot good night.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi my name is Stacy Scaldy. I'm a local realtor and a resident of St. Louis Abyspo. Um, I oppose a mandatory sewer lateral replacement as a point of sale requirement primarily because in a ideal world, the seller prepares their home for sale. They take care of this ahead of time, sell their home, buyer buys it, everyone goes on with a 30-day timeline, which is unlikely that that could happen if the seller does not have that time to prep. So then maybe a credit is given toward to the buyer for the estimate that they have for that repair. So now the buyer is going to take on that responsibility with an estimate which is just that an estimate. We all know you get an estimate, work starts and things happen and it that expense gets more and more expensive. We also have a backwater valve um municipal code requirement for certain homes. A recent colleague just got a bid for that. It's $3,500. We have our plumbing retrofit point of sale. Uh I recently had a bid for two toilets to be installed at $1,500. Of course, that doesn't include faucets or showerheads and plumbing labor. And then I also had a bid for $7,000 for defensible space. So, we're looking at thousands of dollars. If you have a buyer where a loan is involved, if they have a loan of $500,000, generally they get 3% of a credit the lender allows. So, that would be $15,000. So, you just have this escalating issue of who's going to pay what, how is this going to work in the time frame, amount,

and I just wanted to make sure that you have that perspective when you're making this decision. Thank you. Yeah, thank you to all the members of the public for their comments. Um, there was one uh item that came up during uh public comment. I was hoping staff could clarify about uh who would receive the the check um when we're applying for the rebate. I I believe uh earlier you mentioned that the buyer uh could potentially receive the rebate. Could you clarify that process?

Yes. Um, so yeah, to clarify, um, I I think it would potentially be to the buyer for the inspection, just looking at the timelines or to the seller. Um, the criteria for receiving the rebate is that um, it has to be issued to the current um, owner of the property. So depending on the timeline of the transaction, if it, you know, you did the inspection, you submitted for that $350 rebate, uh, the ownership transfer hasn't occurred. And so that rebate would be given to the seller. Um whereas, you know, 1 to 6 months down the road, uh escrow is closed, the ownership transfer has occurred. Uh that $4,000 replacement rebate would then likely go to the buyer, the new property owner. Um the only criteria is that it has to be issued to the current owner of the property.

And the rebate happens after proof of repair is shown, right? So, who whoever is doing the repair is going to have the the receipts and submit those. So, most likely in this scenario, as we discussed, the new buyer of the home, but potentially could be done before sale if that scenario is worked out and could go to the original the seller and or however it's worked out in that particular transaction. Correct.

Okay. Thank you. And uh are there any other items that came up during uh public comment that staff wanted to respond to? I I think we I think we spoke to to most of the the questions. Um I I understand the the concern about, you know, rushing through a process. Um don't feel we're at we're at that point tonight. It's been an intentionally thought uh thoughtful and longer process to get to where we are tonight. Um again um starting the presentation this evening. We had this discussion uh in August of last year and uh rightfully so that decision was deferred um a year and until where we're at now. Um but I I think there's there's something to that too and that this is a major program change. Um let's pause and really consider the impacts and um I'd be happy to to speak to anything particular. Uh we do have quite a few extra slides that we can pull up with some good data.

Great. Well, I'll turn to my colleagues here and see if we want to begin deliberations. Thank you for responding to the comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like to

Sure. I just um wanted to address I there was a a comment about credits. So um so if somebody had for example you know completed um a kind of a proactive offset in anticipation of needing to apply that offset to a future development project. Um you know we have talked with folks that do have those credits and we will work with those applicants and you know potentially put them in contact with like future developers that may need those offsets for conditioned you know for conditioned offsets. So, so we're perfectly willing and um you know to work with folks to kind of figure out how to essentially sell or apply those credits that they've received. Um and then looking at when um you know when an inspection is required I think looking at the um you know looking at the council report. So um you know an inspection is is required say if somebody's applying for a building permit um if there is a you know a notice of violation related to a sewer spill um it is also required kind of you know kind of focusing on the uh property sale. So our code states that that inspection is required upon change of ownership. So, you know, one of the potential scenarios that we looked at is say what if somebody they are um you know, listening to their realtor and conducting their due diligence and getting their sewer lateral inspected, they get the inspection report and then for whatever reason they decide to take their, you know, their home off, you know, off market or, you know, you know, something like that. Um, you know, in those cases because there is no change of ownership, we would then it would not trigger the repair or replacement. It would essentially fall into that category of, you know, they kind of did like a voluntary um inspection.

Great. Thank you so much. And um in the scenario you were discussing earlier about developers who might currently have those offsets, uh should the developers reach out to well, we'll see what happens after this evening, but u if the program were to be modified, should the developers then reach out to the utilities department to discuss next steps? Absolutely. Thank you. All right, I'll turn to my colleagues here. It looks like council member Shoresman has some questions or deliberation. question.

Thanks. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on um one of the comments that came from the public um that there was a reference to 30 days and I everything that I read and I'm understanding what you're proposing now is a 180day requirement. Is there a 30-day requirement in any part of the process or is that an old requirement that might that they might be thinking of or um so the the current uh recommendation is 180 days um for that replacement to occur again with a discretionary extension um but 30 days would not be a part of the requirement.

Council member Shoresman, if I remember correctly, I believe they're referring to the period uh between uh the offer and closing usually being about 30 days. Okay, I see. Okay. Like a escrow. Yeah. Okay. So, so yes, my understanding is the and you can just clarify this for me. Probably the does the inspection when when's the timeline of when the inspection needs to be would that be happen like after an offer is made and when you're starting to get into escrow and a lot of those other sort of inspection steps are done before a house closes extra escrow. So, the inspection might be done before a close, but but the um replacement, if poor or failed, the replacement wouldn't need to happen until 180 days.

I believe all that's correct when the inspection would actually occur. I think it could be, you know, over a course of a few weeks. I don't know when that would factor in. Our only requirement would be that it would occur prior to close of escrow.

Okay. And and just to reiterate, there would be a potential for the buyer if you know, say they they arrange with the seller that the buyer will complete the complete the lateral replacement, they will be the ones responsible for that. They will apply for the rebate. If they choose to do that, they will follow up on an um an estimate that they might have gotten. And that can happen. If it does not happen within 180 days, as long as there's good faith effort shown, then the director could not wave that, but extend the amount of time that's required. Correct. That's correct. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. I just I I appreciate the public comment to like help clarify some of the timelines on this because it does get complicated when you're thinking about a multi-stage process. Uh, Council Member Boswell, sorry, were you dead? No, sorry.

Yeah, I have a few uh parliamentary questions. Um, there's been a couple suggestions about a possible continuence of the item. So, my first question is um uh Mayor Stewart declared a conflict. If the eighth PCC ruling came back that there is not a conflict, could she rejoin this item as a continued item or we we have to kind of start over? No, she she could review the um recording and step back in if she gets the clearance from the FPPC.

Okay. Uh thanks. And then the other question for staff is if we were to continue the item, is this something you've anticipated already in terms of when we would likely continue it too? Um have you would we continue to just the next meeting or date uncertain or we haven't factored that in. Um it would be data uncertain. We do have some alternatives in place that were not a part of this u staff report that we could explore. But as far as a future date, that would need to to be determined.

And I think looking at the looking at the council forecast, I would anticipate this would likely occur probably not until the fall. Okay, that's all I have for questions.

Thank you, Council Member Roell. Um, I will entertain deliberations. So, if we did postpone decision until the fall, I guess I'm what next? Um, we've got some people that are probably somewhat in limbo with the status of their offsets. Um, and I I don't know how far we've gone down the road of educating those folks that if this went into place that their offsets would be waved. Um, I I I'm at a little bit of a loss here.

I I can speak to that, Council Member Shoresman. So, and I I do have a number for you if and how many projects. So, we're talking approximately 10 projects that we have conditions waved. Um, as far as outreach, um, we've indicated, you know, part of the outreach is is sharing draft recommendations. Um, and indicated that this could potentially be coming, you know, not could go a number of directions um have not, you know, made promises to what will occur, but indicated that um that this could be coming and and part of that outreach is is to determine a strategy for for those that are caught in between. And so for those 10 projects if if the ordinance change were deferred and consideration of that and then so those projects would probably be the most impacted. Okay. Thank you. It sounds like you've prepared some other slides for some other alternatives. Is there anything that you want to just share with us

given the questions that you've gotten so far or what little we've said of deliberations here? you know, we we have a um three alternatives that are in the staff report. It's basically combinations of you do none, you do one or the other. Um and there are impacts of both of those. I have a table um comparing u the outcomes of selecting the alternatives. I think we're ready to entertain um and respond to any additional recommendations that the council may have. Okay. I think I'll see if uh my colleagues have anything that they want to say yet.

Yeah, I'll jump in here. Um I'm hearing a little bit of uh a movement towards continuing the item, but I I just actually want to give us a a gentle or not so gentle nudge towards um having our deliberations this evening. You know, this is already in effect a continuation of this item since last August. And uh I I understand it's a contentious issue. I don't think it's going to get less contentious if we talk about it in the fall rather than talking about it now. Um I would love if my colleagues are game to uh see if we can get somewhere tonight and have a a little bit of a discussion around this. Um, I don't have my full deliberation totally uh planned out here, but I can kind of kick us off with uh where I am right now, which is, you know, I I absolutely hear there's a lot of concerns about implementation here and um the devil's in the details with that and and who gets the rebate and how that might interfere with the process. Um, I'm really hopeful that based on all of the outreach that's been done that we've really kind of ironed out most of those issues um by extending the uh ability to do the repair 180 days, giving discretion to the director to be able to extend that as issues emerge and a lot of grace as we kind of start this process so that uh everybody can get onto the same page. I'm hopeful that we can find a way forward uh and and move towards this new process for uh doing our sewer laterals. I I can't tell you all how many uh developers have, you know, come forward and said that they had a project, they wanted to do something, they went to go do a uh um a repair to somebody's house or an addition to somebody's house and the entire thing just fell apart because they weren't able to. It was a big enough project. It required a lateral replacement. Whole thing fell apart. It was too confusing. It was too complicated for the homeowners. And you know, we keep talking about trying to

move housing forward. And I hear the concerns about the impacts to housing costs. And I I don't doubt that those are are there in the transaction we're talking about. But ultimately, I think this has been a bigger burden and a bigger um a bigger issue for our housing here in the city than than uh putting this on time of sale, you know. Um, I actually found the suggestion of a more expansive program incredibly enticing. Uh, and really spent a lot of time kind of thinking through and reading through the um, correspondence from staff on that issue. Uh I really have come to feel though that the costs that might be incurred through that uh mandatory uh inspection and replacement just kind of going systemically through the um the areas that are most constrained right now in the absence of another major exchange of funds really would likely be too burdensome to many of our residents. And I know we've explored a bunch of other ways to try and offset that cost and we just don't have a lot of levers that we can pull on legally in order to try and uh backfill those funds for folks. So right now I'm inclined to move forward with uh staff recommendations and I'd love to hear what my colleagues have to say on this issue. Council member Boswell. Great. Thank you. Uh yes, I generally agree as well and and would support staff recommendation and you know the the offset program I think it was well intended. I think it was actually generally well designed. Um it's just that we ultimately couldn't the matchmaking became a real um a real challenge and continues to be a challenge and um from an administrative standpoint, from the ch uh from the matchmaking challenge

standpoint, I I think I think we have to move to something else. I also believe I spoke last time we discussed this issue that um you know, at the end of the day, this really is the homeowner's responsibility. Um if your roof fails, you replace your roof. If your HVAC breaks, you replace your HVAC. If your sewer lateral fails, you should replace your sewer lateral. Um, it's just if your roof fails, you you got to get it replaced. You're not going to sleep well that night. But if your sewer lateral fails, you can live with that. And the problem is somebody else's. The problem is it's all it's everybody else's problem, right? Because we all end up paying for uh that impact to our community through the cost associated with uh increased flows into our wastewater treatment plant. So, I think the responsibility appropriately uh sits with the homeowner uh to repair this just as they would have to repair any other portion of their house that wasn't functioning properly. The challenge, of course, is the funding. Uh we know this is not a a minor repair. It's not a cheap repair. It's probably more comparable to a roof, although I think roofs are even worse. Um but it's a significant cost. And so if we were to institute a program where we required everybody to get their um uh sewer lateral inspected on some time frame, um lots of folks would be in a situation of discovering they had poor failed uh uh sewer lateral uh without the financial capacity to be able to uh repair it or create a significant financial burden. can imagine people who are maybe retired on fixed income uh being put in a very difficult situation. The time there's money around and there's money on the table is during a sale and and so it seems to me um although again in an ideal world where there wasn't any cost, we would just say homeowner fix your sewer lateral if it's not working properly. Uh that's not

realistic when you put in the financial considerations. And so this seems to me the kind of the best place the mo uh uh the most practical place to put uh the requirement as at time of sale. Um there's been a suggestion that we only make that a requirement within a capacity constrained area. But although those are areas where the um infiltration problem is is particularly a problem, uh it's a problem everywhere. uh it just doesn't affect us in the same way but it still puts an additional bur wherever it's occurring it's putting additional burden on our uh wastewater system and so and again because it's a it's a part of the house that needs to be in my opinion functioning correctly um I do think we ought to continue we ought to go with staff's recommendation that the program apply citywide rather than just in the capacity constrained um areas um Um, yeah. So, I mean, I I think at this point, you know, we had this we had the sess session before, went through a lot of this, gave staff direction to come back with something pretty much like what they brought us. It seems like it has worked out most pro. Appreciate your comment about, you know, there's always some details that have to be worked out. At this level of writing and drafting resolutions and council discussion, there's only so far we can go in designing uh these programs. uh we have to trust that uh staff has thought this through significantly and interacted with the public enough that they understand there is a path towards uh an implementation program that will work. So um I'm ready to I am ready tonight uh to support a motion. I'd only asked because I wasn't sure if there was going to be some energy around possibly continuing and I wanted to know what the implication was for our fellow council members if that were the case.

Thanks. Thank you council member Boswell. Council member Shoresman.

Yeah, thank you both for your comments. Thank you staff for the great report detailed uh answered all my questions, not only the ones that I asked here, but the ones that were uh answered in in advance in the agenda correspondence. Thanks also to the, as I mentioned earlier, the large number of people that have weighed in on this. I think it's pretty clear that staff have done their best, I think, to try and acknowledge and hear all the feedback and while they can't incorporate every suggestion into the process, I feel like that they have tried to incorporate as much feedback as they can and I think that there is always opportunities. We we heard community members say that they would like to talk about it more. I if we proceed with this tonight um which two of the three of us have already said that they're interested in supporting moving forward there's still always room for discussion. We're a work in progress as a community and even if we decide something today 6 months or a year or two years from now doesn't mean that we can't adjust and make changes. I mean we've we will have proven that tonight. We we tried the offset program. If we go forward with the changes proposed by staff, we tried the offset program. It was clunky in a number of ways. Um it m made some impact, but we feel like it could make a different impact another way. Um it doesn't we we can change. We can we can pivot and we can go other directions. I I wanted to pause and let my colleagues speak because I wanted to just go back and look at the alternatives because I feel like we could still continue to learn more about how we could do this better. And I look at the alternatives in the report and I'm just I'm not swayed by any of the alternative recommendations. I I don't know how to pull the pieces apart and um

do this in a better way. So I'm I'm not I wouldn't lean towards um making an alternative recommendation tonight. I would uh lean towards moving forward with staff's recommendation. Um more generally, we all have said, well, most of us have said that we want more housing in our community, and we've had study sessions recently where we talked about how we want safe housing, too. And this project, this ordinance, uh is at the intersection of those two things. Um and yet there is there's no good time to implement measures that are going to be costly to one segment of the community or another. In some ways uh as some community members have said this shifts uh the burden from developers where it has been most recently back to property owners. I generally agree as uh council member Boswell sort of implied that that the property owner is responsible. This the roof was a a a great example. I will if I if my roof is broken, I got to replace my roof. So, I can see um why this more appropriately I think shares the burden. The developers still will have some responsibility for this, but property owners will have to uh assume a little bit more responsibility at the point of sale. So, um I think it's a it's a measured approach. Um, I've heard all the issues raised by all the parties and they all make sense in some respect, which is why this is difficult. Uh, I I wish that there was an easy solution, but I think we've solved all the easy problems. So, for now, I think we should give this a shot and see where it goes. Um, one thing I would like to throw into consideration for future is that it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me unless there's a legal reason around it.

We made the $4,000 lateral replacement rebate citywide. Uh, and the inspection program or the inspection cost rebate is still only in the constrained areas, but yet we require the inspection citywide. So, to me, it makes more sense to have both rebates be available citywide, but maybe that's a funding issue. And I'll leave that to you all to see if there's a way that that can be addressed in the future. And from my understanding, and you all cannot if I'm right, but with the inspection rebate, if someone gets an inspection and it costs less than $350, they don't still get the $350. They produce receipts. And um probably same thing with the inspec uh with the replacement program too, right? So yeah, so it has to be above $350 um or at $350 or above $4,000 for the replacement in order to get the full rebate. So thank you for confirming that with your nods. Um otherwise, I think that's all I have to say. So I'll close there. Thank you, Council Member Boswell. Yeah, just a a follow-up question based on council member Shoresman's uh questions about the rebates. Um uh if we wanted to take a look at the rebate amounts, maybe just the total amounts, but also who's eligible for what amounts is the next financial plan the place to do that? Because this rebate in this case, this rebate is really part of the budget. It's not the one we talked about before was fines, but this is this is really part of the utilities the water system and or the wastewater system budget, right? It's not we're not paying we're paying it's rateayer money. So modifying the rebate programs would

be would require council action by resolution. So I think um I think at one time we came with a separate hearing related to this program. Um at one time we were looking at our water and sewer rates um and it was adopted at that time but it would require council action right specifically with the resolution not just associated with the financial plan. Okay. But then we would also have to look at funding in the financial plan and then also in turn look at if we're increasing the funding, if we're increasing the amount essentially in that um account, how would that affect rates and consider that as part of our rate analysis?

Right? All right. So, when we're doing the rate analysis and the budget for our wastewater system, that's when we could essentially determine what capacity do we potentially have to increase rebates amount or what would be the budget or rate implications for those changes. If we felt like yes, we can add some money or we can expand certain aspects of the rebate. Um, we could identify that through the budget process. But then you're saying we'd have to come back with another specific resolution to actually change the amounts. Correct. Okay.

I'm hearing some interest from two of my colleagues on exploring this issue a little bit further. I'm wondering if it's possible for some time in the not urgent future to get uh correspondence from staff on the timing recommendations for exploring both of the items that were mentioned by my colleagues here. Thank you. and um council member Schwarzman.

Uh thank you, Vice Mayor. I think that would be a great way to go about it. I don't I am just expressing an idea, so I don't know what the timing or possible uh ramifications are. So, uh if there is some way that staff could report back on that at some later date, um that would be great. And with that, I'll go ahead and make a motion to support staff's recommendation if we're ready. Council member Boswell. Second. City clerk. Council member Shoresman. Yes. Council member Boswell. Yes. Vice Mayor Francis.

Yes. And the motion. Sorry, that's me. Uh the motion uh passes 30 with uh one absence and one recusal. Is that it?

Okay, moving on to um the final portion. Thank you, staff. Moving on to our final portion, liaison reports and communications. I'm going to use my privilege here of having the mic on right now to um ask to uh agendaize an item and see if I can get a little support on this issue. Uh, we had some correspondence from the public about a review of our flag ordinance and um, I'm interested in having our uh, staff do a review of our flag ordinance to look at what a Royal Grande city did um, and potentially in consultation with our DEI manager and any applicable uh, community organizations to explore the idea of flying the pride flag in the coming month and um, any other recommendations they have around uh, trans day of remebrance. ance or what that would take to modify our uh ordinance as it currently stands. I'm just going to see if I could get any support on that item. As I often have with proposing things mid financial planning cycle, I worry about not having something in our work plan um to accommodate this and think that possibly our um financial planning process might be a good time to consider addressing something like this. Um we have had this discussion before um and I while I we are clearly a city that wants to promote a sense of belonging. It's part of our major city goals. Uh we want everybody to w feel welcome and safe here. And I uh in particular with the pride flag um being flown above public buildings. I feel

like that's um that's what it is. is it's a it's a symbol to help people feel welcome and belonging and I sincerely embrace that sentiment and want everybody to feel welcome and belong and uh and part of San Bispo. I worry about um staffing constraints and staffing constraints and having uh the full amount of time that we would need in order to um fully you know include the community in a discussion about this and have it part be part of our work plan.

Council member Boswell go straight to red. It's really throwing me off. just jump in. Um, can I ask a question of staff? Uh, if a work item like this were to go forward, would this be primarily assigned to the city's attorneys city attorney's office?

I think in this situation, it would actually be uh largely our office of diversity, equity, and inclusion along with essentially administration and myself, but certainly need a review by our city attorney's office as well. Um there's, you know, there's some legal doctrines at stake and so they would certainly be involved with review of of the policy. In the spirit of the discussion around capacity constraint, uh do we feel like there's uh room to navigate this issue uh ahead of uh June?

Uh I think that we it is possible. We can do it. The biggest constraint is time on our agendas. Um because we depending on, you know, if the intent is to be able to have a policy in place and have the decision um made and direction to staff uh before the beginning of June, we have just uh really a couple of weeks to get something together and make sure that that's um everyone's, you know, on board with a process that we're proposing to bring forward. So that's uh our biggest issue there would be would probably make for a pretty long meeting um in May. And a quick clarification of the process. Uh do I make a formal motion to see if I can get traction on this or is it just kind of a weighing in of individuals?

We can take consensus direction from a majority of the council. Right. I'm I'm hearing myself. I'm wondering if I can get a a second or a third on it.

I'm just really uncomfortable with the timing and logistics of the amount of stuff that we have on our agenda. I wasn't even thinking that we were trying to get this that the intent of my colleagues was to do this before June. I think that's um wouldn't really allow for um I don't know that our agendas allow for that. And I also am not sure that we would have enough time to really activate the community around this discussion in that amount of time either. So I would be inclined to push this off a bit longer um and maybe even talk about it when there's more of us here. That'd be my preference as well. All right. Thank you to my colleagues. Do we have any uh liaison reports?

Council member Boswell.

Sure. Thank you. Um let's see. Um on the 8th I attended the slow county housing summit which was excellent opportunity to learn uh more about uh creative solutions to our housing problem. It's very good. Uh let's see a couple of ribbon cutings. The clean California community uh ribbon cutting and the peace pole ribbon cutting. Those were both wonderful events. Really appreciated the slow youth orchestra playing at the peace pole ribbon cutting. They were great. Um, attended the community academy uh, graduation and again I I thanked them at the time but just uh, it was really wonderful to see all the community members who um, attended uh, attended our community academy. It really is a testament to how much they care about uh, their city. Uh, let's see what else is on here. Uh, LFCO on 416, but there were no city items to report on. uh caps slow board meeting on 416 as well. Uh nothing in particular to report on uh for the city. Uh the following day attended the caps program tour, at least the first part of it. Um and for me being new on the capsule board, that was very valuable to continue to get some orientation uh on CAPSO's uh mission and activities. Uh Earthfest on 418. um here. I just want to thank everybody, the slow climate coalition, uh the city staff that showed up on a Saturday to work our various booths, uh the volunteers, and all the community partners who participated. Um really great event. And then um finally this uh uh just this week uh along with Vice Mayor Francis uh we got a tour of the San Louis Sispo airport and opportunity to learn more about their plans for future growth and development um of the

airport um in support of our uh role on the as liaison to the airport land use commission. Thank you council member Shoresman.

Thank you. Yes, I attended several of the same things uh with uh with both of you. Uh but in addition, the downtown slow board meeting was this past week. Um so got a chance to hear from the business community about things that are happening and that they care about in downtown. Also attended EarthFest. Man, it was a beautiful day out there at Santa Rosa Park. The weather was absolutely perfect. Um and all sorts of there was just a lot of booths and people out there. um electric cars to drive and food to eat and um crafts and awards. It was it was great. Uh also attended the graduation of the community academy and the volunteer appreciation lunch uh at Mitchell Park. Those um those events always fill my soul. It's so wonderful to see all the people loving slow as much as we do and and wanting to give back to it. um also had the opportunity to attend this last Sunday uh the ceremony in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day uh up in Atascadero. And it was a very very moving um and heartfelt ceremony um with some you know shocking stories that just make you realize that it's really important although painful to remember um what occurred uh because um we can't go back. So um I'll leave it there but thank you.

Thank you very much. We uh all pretty much shared uh last two weeks together. So, I also attended the uh awesome slow housing summit. Thank you to the chamber for putting on that fantastic event, great speakers, so many great ideas, really excited. Uh we had our clean California community designation. There's a great ribbon cutting. There's a fantastic new sign out at uh um Highlands and uh Highway One. You should go check it out. Also want to congratulate all of the community academy graduates. Had such a great council meeting with them. This is an awesome group of graduates and I'm so excited to see what they do in the community. Uh we've been actively out doing all of our advisory body interviews. I cannot thank you all enough for applying for and going through the process of uh joining our advisory bodies. Thank you all so much. Um airport tour with council member Boswell. They even let us up in the tower. We got a great view up there. And uh also attended EarthFest and got my own ride share lunch bag for filling out a survey. Very excited about that one. It's a great great freebie. Um, also attended the volunteer appreciation lunchon with council member Shoresman and others. And man, if you just need to feel good for a moment, go out and hang out with our volunteers. It was just such a lovely afternoon. Such good people. And tomorrow we leave for the city leader summit up in Sacramento with the mayor and city leadership to go advocate for our city to our legislators. and I'm just uh so excited to get up there and and remind them how uh important it is to support St. Louis Abyispo and all of the big projects we're trying to undertake. So with that uh I will

I believe it's just adjourn the meeting at this point and there we go.