City Council - Regular Meeting

well thank you everybody good evening thank you for the hold here we had about four count uh four closed session items and just took longer than we had hoped for so with that we're going to go ahead and um sorry i'll introduce myself mayor erica a stewart and i'm stating that all of the city council is present and um oh thank you sorry everyone's present except that's right i do i do i always need theresa so sorry Still good evening. Start again. Well, good evening. Hi, I'm Mayor Eric A. Stewart, and I'm here to say all the City Council is present. Thank you for your patience as we had to delay the start of this meeting. We had four closed session items, which we'll get a report out in a minute. But I would love to have the Council Member Shoresman lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, Council Member. City Attorney Christine Dietrich, can we please have the closed session report?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We did, as you noted, have four items on closed session. The first, conference with legal counsel on anticipated litigation, one potential case. Those are facts unknown to potential plaintiffs and therefore not disclosed on the agenda. Mayor Stewart recused from that matter due to a potential conflict of interest under government Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. They're in a different order than we heard them. Item 1B on the agenda, Mayor Stewart recused due to a potential conflict of interest under Section 87-100 of the Government Code. Item 1C was a conference with legal counsel related to allegations challenging the validity of development impact fees. And as further noted on the agenda, there was no reportable action on that. That was direction on settlement discussion, but no final action to report. Item 1D was a conference with legal counsel related to various allegations about the applicability and litigation threats regarding retroactivity around our mobile home park rent stabilization ordinance amendments. And at the initiation of discussion on that, Council Member Marks Recuse herself in an abundance of caution because she does own a mobile home park in the city that is And I'm sorry, not the park, a unit which is occupied by her daughter. So she did recuse herself from further discussion on that issue once that potential conflict became known. And there was no reportable action on that item. And then a final conference with legal counsel on considering the initiation of litigation and also facts undisclosed. And on that matter, Vice Mayor Frances recused herself due to a potential conflict of interest under Section 87-100. And with that, there's no further reportable action.

Thank you. Like I said, it was a full plate. And one of the best parts about every, not every, but majority of our meetings is the kind of the section of presentations. Today we have the advisory body recognition where we get to say thank you for those who have served and hello to those who have joined us. We also are having a Juneteenth proclamation and as we kick this off, I'll be sharing a brief proclamation And Herb Heppner from NAACP will accept it and share a few words. And I'm staring around looking for Herb. Herb, can you wave your hand if you're here? I'm not seeing you. I don't think he is here. Okay. Well, I will accept it and pass it on back to him. I do want to say that, you know, as we get into this Friday is Juneteenth, June 19th, and typically it is a day that is commemorated as the day when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally received word of their freedom and the end of the Civil War. The thing is that's so important about this is they didn't have social media and it was more than two years that people kept working as enslaved people thinking they were still enslaved. But it turned out there was the Emancipation Proclamation had already been issued and a lot of other people throughout the U.S. were free and not them. So this is a proclamation to share about Juneteenth Day. And I'll just read it very briefly and then pass it on to Irv whenever I see him next. Just a quick note is that there are many, many Juneteenth events happening this weekend. Right here in SLO, we'll have a big event in Mission Plaza on Saturday the 20th. In Lompoc, there is a celebration on Friday from NAACP of Lompoc in northern Santa Barbara County. And then there's also a large event in Santa Barbara. Just our surrounding area. So whereas Juneteenth has become the day associated with the ending of the institution of slavery in this great nation, Juneteenth embodies the indomitable human spirit of the past carried into the present and an inspiration into the future. The celebration of Juneteenth gives us all the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the true American spirit. We are community members who wish to secure the blessings of freedom, justice and equality for all in this great city of ours. And now, therefore, I, Erica A. Stewart, Mayor of the City of San Luis Obispo, on behalf of the entire City Council, do hereby proclaim the third Saturday in June 2026 as Juneteenth Day and recommend that all community members join in recognizing the importance of this day. And with that, we will move forward to our next presentation. And many of our advisory body members that come from our community, the majority come from the city of San Luis Obispo. We have 19 advisory bodies, and people are willing to serve and give their give their personal time to help the city council and the city as a whole. Just as a quick reminder, it was National Volunteer Week just a few weeks ago, National Volunteer Month in April, and 8,600 hours of volunteer hours were given in San Luis Obispo. I just want to highlight that one more time because the amount of people who care about our community is huge, and I am just very, very thankful of that. So we are taking a moment to thank a few members who have reached the end of their service. We have term limits for many of our councils. And tonight we are formally recognizing Bob Jorgensen, Tony Skipinski, and Robin Kissinger. And today Bob Jorgensen and Tony Skipinski are here, and so we have a certificate for them. And then they'll come up to the podium, share for about three minutes if they wish to about their experience. So first, I'm going to go ahead and start with Bob Jorgensen. And I'm scanning the audience. Oh, there you are. Wonderful. Sorry, the podium was covering you. So Bob has been a leader on the Planning Commission for eight years, serving both as vice chair and chair. His tenure included reviewing many complex projects and initiatives, including updates to the housing and climate adaptation and safety elements, numerous updates to the zoning and subdivision regulations to promote and streamline housing development in alignment with city goals and development. Also reviewing major new commercial and residential projects. And I just wanna say thank you, Bob. Your thoughtful and measured decision-making will be missed. And with that, if you would like to share three minutes, I'm gonna come down and bring your certificate of acknowledgement first and a little gift for you. Yes, Vice Mayor. Goodness.

sorry before you speak bob i just wanted to also thank you for being my mentor on the planning commission and um you just did so much to make me feel welcome and to also teach me a lot about the workings of the planning commission and i'm just so grateful for you so thank you looks like it turned out well too thank you so good to see you thank you it's for you oh beautiful oh my goodness

Well, gee, this plaque, if I can just jump in real quick. Actually, I've been doing this kind of commission work for like more than 25 years, not all here, but I'll explain real quick. It actually started when I got red tagged. When I was living in Santa Cruz, we needed more space for our blended family, and I surreptitiously tried to squeeze in a bedroom into the garage and got a stop work notice. So I decided to appeal the notice and want a variance. That made me thirsty to learn more about the nuts and bolts of planning, which I guess I kind of skipped over a little bit in grad planning school. um that led me to be appointed to the santa cruz zoning board and then to the planning commission and then later i served on the walnut creek planning commission I'll just say a couple things about those towns because the thing that was interesting to me was I was attracted to these small, friendly towns who took pride in their vibrant downtowns. And both of those cities had really juicy planning issues. Santa Cruz had to revision and rebuild the entire downtown because of out of the Loma Prieta earthquake. It was just devastating. And my oldest daughter was on the second floor in a brick building when that earthquake hit and had really struggled to get out of the building. And for two weeks would only sleep on the junior high school playing field, would not come into a house or any house at all. uh took a uh an approach uh to for big shopping centers they required the massive broadway plaza shopping center to be downtown and which i think was a really smart move during my time there uh that platform that Broadway Plaza Shopping Center demanded that they be able to double the whole scale of the plaza, a tremendous kind of thing that would have been really tough on the city. anyhow so we moved to slow after retiring from uc berkeley and planning like this i thought to live in another small college town this one particularly following our son who graduated from cal poly in engineering so i i applied for the planning commission really because I really like what was going on with housing, where housing was being enabled and we were actually paying attention to the state motivations to do even more. And I thought that would be kind of interesting to work on. so to me maybe the biggest accomplishment here in the last decade has been how systematically our housing stock has been bolstered and we've been doing it in line with state goals and i think it's really been the biggest accomplishment this last decade i even have some data about it because hema dandekar a former commissioner and a city planning uh professor invited me to lecture to her her housing class on mixed-use development in three small cities maybe you can guess what three cities they might be actually and it turns out from 210 to 2018 slow produce more mixed-use housing than either of those other two towns both are bigger by the way and more housing overall than the two bigger cities together in that period. So we really pushed and I'm really excited about how that all worked out. I also found that San Luis did a much better job preserving the integrity of its downtown. Both of those other cities really suffered in the outcomes of the way this developed. so um i did want to say i have enjoyed mentoring new commissioners and i'm impressed how well our current commission digs into the important issues and ask questions in ways that bring the audience along to a common understanding and the staff here have been so thorough and so professional much more so than where anywhere else i've witnessed i'd have to say council keep up the good work this is uh to guide all this this is really important thank you

thank you so much and councilmember schwarzman do you want to add a few words yes please i just wanted to follow uh vice mayor francis's thanks to bob he was also a mentor to me on the planning commission as well and i just really appreciate your thoughtful deliberations i always know when i watch a meeting that i can trust that you are listening hard and asking good questions and you are one of have been one of my go-to people when there's something that i haven't quite understood the intricacies of the conversation that i've been watching so um you will be missed but i also know that you are giving continuing to give back to our community in a lot of ways and so i know this isn't a farewell but um but just a really big thank you thank you so much

Well, next we have Tony Skopinski. I value this committee so much, the Revenue Enhancement Oversight Commission. And this is, when you look at the revenue measure that we passed in 2020, the local revenue measure, this was pretty intense as far as how are we going to be accountable and how are we going to be transparent. And this commission really has kept us on our toes and kept staff on their toes so i just really want to thank you tony your thoughtful direction and commitment to transparency has been just ultimate you've helped enhance public trust and managed to help kind of steward the city's finances around the measure so i just want to say thank you we're deeply grateful i want to make sure you get three minutes as well or you know a tidbit over three minutes and i'm going to bring your certificate first

I think it'll be a tidbit under three minutes. No prepared remarks. Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I'll just echo the comments before about the thoroughness and professionalism of the staff, Riley and Emily. Madeleine, it's made the job really easy just to be able to rely on solid reporting and flexibility and a lot of patience and walking us through public accounting and all those sorts of financial criteria in managing those budgets and projects. it's nice to be behind the scenes see the inner workings appreciate greg was on the front uh front side of that process and uh bringing me in and um i certainly recommend the opportunity to other folks in the community it's a it's a good learning experience and look forward to further opportunities so thank you thanks again

And last but not least, I want to make sure that we thank Robin Kissinger. Unfortunately, Robin could not be here tonight, but Robin served on the Mass Transportation Committee as a senior representative for the past eight years. During her tenure, slow transit experienced significant changes, including service disruptions caused by the pandemic, staff transitions, and the introduction of zero-emission vehicles. Throughout these changes, Robin contributed thoughtful, insightful, and constructive feedback on ways to improve slow transit services and programs. Her perspective helped inform discussions and decisions that helped shape the future of public transportation in our community. Staff is grateful for Robin's dedicated service and honored to have had her as a member of the committee for the past seven, I'm sorry, for the past eight years. So please let's just give a quick hand again to thank her for all of her contributions to the city. One minute. So next we have the city manager report, and then we'll move on to public comment for items not on the agenda. So if you have comments you'd like to get out to us before we move on to the public comment, please make sure you get one of the slips from next to where Greg is, the yellow slips. There's also some right outside in the front of the lobby. So if you're wanting to comment and you have not gotten one of those slips yet, please do.

City manager. Thank you very much. We do have a number of slides to go over this evening, largely because we will be on a break for about a month here. And so there's a lot of updates. We want to make sure folks are aware of things that happened recently and things that will be happening over the next month. So we'll start out with a slide and a little information about our past Monday, June 8th. The city hosted Yachtichu Chichu Yachtilhini Tribe, who led a cultural burn at the Miyosi Open Space. This burn advanced our community's goals for wildfire resilience and ecosystem restoration, as well as our goals to revive traditional ecological knowledge and tribal stewardship on open space properties. This was an 11 acre burn and it went incredibly well, largely due to great weather, but also a lot of hard work by the YTT tribal members. the generous support and preparation provided by CAL FIRE. And again, just really want to thank everybody for their involvement. We have amazing staff in our Office of Natural Resources and Sustainability who help gather the folks together. And we're really excited to continue this practice to help make ourselves more resilient to wildfire. next up we want to make sure everybody's aware of what we are doing and are participating in on july 3rd so the city of san luis obispo and visit san luis obispo are proud to sponsor the july 3rd concerts in the plaza block party which will kick off our fourth of july weekend and we're doing it a little differently this year because there's a lot for us to celebrate um we're inviting the community to join us for a special block party to celebrate our country's 250th anniversary of independence as well as the 30th anniversary of concerts in the plaza. So this is held in Mission Plaza, and it will include the entire plaza plus the dog lake on Monterey and Broad Street behind the mission on Friday, July 3rd from 2 to 8 p.m. So this is an extended type of event in hours. The celebration is free and open to everyone in our community and will feature two stages, five bands, six hours of live music, vendors, art, and photo installations. Our very own Mayor Stewart will be on the main stage before the headliner band at around 6 p.m. to mark the occasion and welcome our community to the event. You can also come by the city booth to learn more about our citywide single vote initiative and our DEI initiative. So full lineup of the events and activities in SLO both that day and over the July 4th weekend are available at visitslo.com slash July 4th, 2026. We also want to make sure folks are aware of a few additional community and cultural celebrations happening later in the month. They will be taking place throughout the community and we're encouraging residents to join in to connect, learn and celebrate together. So Saturday, July 20th from 11 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. As the mayor mentioned, the NAACP of San Luis Obispo County will host its annual Juneteenth celebration in Mission Plaza. It will feature food vendors, live music and dance performances, community organizations, and a keynote speaker. Later in the month, the Gala Pride and Diversity Center will host two Pride events, one on Saturday in Mission Plaza and one on Sunday at Benno Park. So Pride in the Plaza will be held on Saturday, June 27th. from 10 a.m to 5 p.m and trans pride in the park in meadow park on sunday june 28th from 1 p.m to 5 p.m these last two events celebrate the lgbtq plus community and provides opportunities for people to connect and have visibility and belonging for residents and visitors our office of diversity equity inclusion and our police department will have joint booths at these events And we'll be helping to support them as well. And of course, we will also be featuring information about our citywide single boat process. So lots of opportunities to get more information about that as well. Similarly, we want to make sure July 11th, as kind of a culmination of Pride Month, the Gala Pride and Diversity Center of the Central Coast is partnering with our Parks and Recreation Department's Aquatic Division for their third annual Swim with Pride event at the Slow Swim Center. So this is an all-ages family fun event on Saturday, July 11th from 12 noon to 6 p.m. and it is open to the public so information is available at gala cc.org or you can contact our swim center as well at aquatics at slowcity.org Another fun parks and recreation related event is our Monday meetup. So they are back. We're in full swing of summer now. And that means you can come every other week to a park for a Monday meetup. So you can join your fellow community members to try out food from a variety of local food trucks. There's always games, music, lots of information booths from city departments. I bet you can guess one of the booths that we will have there, probably related to citywide single vote information. We had our first meet up last night at Meadow Park. Happened to be an amazing time for us to make sure we were out there. We have an item on our agenda later tonight that we know impact folks in that area. So our next one is on June 29th at Throop Park. There's a list up there on the screen. Maybe a little hard to see, but if you go to slowrecactivities.org, there's information there. So these are held between 5 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. again every two weeks and rotate around our neighborhood. Hope to see you there. They're always a lot of fun. next up we wanted to remind everybody we mentioned this at our last city council meeting but july 1st is usually the time where we make some shifts in our fee schedules they're adopted and go into effect automatically so the fee schedules are up live online if anybody's curious about what they look like our user fees will increase by a cpi of 3.68 percent and our impact fees are actually going to decrease by 0.51 which is based on the ccci those are again in effect july 1st and you can go to slowcity.org fees for more information about what those look like next up we want to make sure everybody is aware that it is the summer and that means free rides on our transit system for youth so slow transit is once again partnering and participating in the youth ride free program that offers free rides to K through 12 students from June 5th through August 19th. This is sponsored by Rideshare, and the program provides students with free access to public transit throughout the summer on both slow transit and the slow RTA systems. So no passes required. You can just hop right on. Then beginning in July, our old slow trolley will expand service to include Fridays and Saturdays. The trolley will continue to operate Thursday evenings during Farmers Market and will also run from noon to 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays during the summer. This operates on a 30-minute loop connecting downtown with Upper Monterey Business District before returning downtown, and the best part is... The trolley rides are free. This is sponsored by Rideshares Know How to Go program. We're really grateful for this program. We saw a lot of increase in our trolley ridership when we provided this program last summer. So we're very grateful for that support. And as a final reminder, Slow Transit's fixed route system will transition to its summer bus schedule beginning July 1st with reduced service hours through July 16th, 2026. That's a little bit of a different time frame than normal. We're given that Cal Poly's transition to semesters. We will be having students back in at that point. And so our our system shifts again. So riders can continue to expect hourly service on all routes. The daily service will end a little earlier during the summer period with the last trips between 6 30 and 8 pm. Again the academic schedule which includes extended service hours will resume on August 17th and we're encouraging everybody to download the transit app for real-time arrival and departure information. We also wanted to highlight just a piece of fun news and information, which is during the last week of May, we were really proud to participate in the Los Ranchos Elementary School's Career Day and Vehicle Roundup, because it's just fun to see um you know excitement from people getting a look at what it means to be in public service both with public works utilities and our police departments they joined together to give students a hands-on look at the many ways that our city employees serve the community every day they got to explore vehicles and equipment learn how our wastewater system works discover that they can ride the trolley for free this summer and hearing firsthand how our police department helps keep our city safe. This school serves a large portion of youth in the southern end of our city and so it was great way to connect with them, inspire interest in public service careers. It is never too early to start talking about that. and just share important work being done across our organization. And we're really grateful for that opportunity and to our team who participated in that. We got really amazing handwritten notes and drawings and wanted to just give a little highlight of that. finally again i mentioned we're on a bit of a recess here with our city council meetings our next meeting will be held on july 21st and for folks awareness there will at that meeting we will have a presentation from the county homeless services division on an update on the outcome of the 2026 point and time count results and community reports i want to make sure people are aware that's coming and that is the end of my report

Can you repeat what's the schedule for the summer buses July 1st through August 16th? Correct. Okay, great. Thank you. And I believe there might be a guest speaker reading the Declaration of Independence at the concerts and the plaza as well. There's a rumor that that could potentially happen. Right. Curious. Anyway, all right. Well, thank you. Yes, thank you. Any questions for the city manager and her report? all right well with that I just thank you there's so much going on and the city manager report is always chock full of lots of good stuff and I think that's because there's so much happening at the city and not everyone gets to experience all of that so thank you Well, next we have public comment for items that are not on the agenda. So if you do have a comment for things that are on the agenda, we will actually open up public comment at different times as well. So for now, if you have an item that is not on the agenda, City Clerk, do we have any commenters?

Yes. And we did put out 123 speaker cards. Great. So we're taking ones that had one minute first, two minutes second, three minutes last. Uh, our first speaker is Jerry Clemens and then Jesse Arnold and then Fitzgerald Kelly.

Hi, Mayor Stewart, council and staff. My name is Jerry Clemens. I am not here as a Haslow board member, but I am here as a resident, a renter, a veteran, a Franciscan of the city of San Luis Obispo. And I am requesting that you Hang on a second. Oh, I'm sorry. That you keep the rental registry as a priority. And you can do this by putting the rental registry on the agenda now, not a year or two from today. The rental registry is a concrete step to safer, stable, affordable housing, as well as it being a social justice moral issue. you can direct staff to start developing the necessary ordinance and bring to council in 2026 for approval this is my action ask of you all thank you

So Jesse Arnold, Fitzgerald Kelly, and then Sean Harris.

Good evening. My name is Jesse Arnold. Mayor Stewart and council, thank you all for serving. I'm here to speak in defense of the oak that I'm sure you're aware of. I think you should change your mind. There are some times when it's a good idea to change your mind. As you know, you originally had an agreement with the slow rep that they would protect the tree. and they claim that it won't survive their construction process. Oak trees are tougher than they know. So I say, reverse yourself, make them go ahead, and if they can't, with reasonable measures, protect that tree, fine. They don't let it die and they can replace it with one they want. But for the meantime, let's keep the tree. Thank you very much.

Thank you, and it's nice to see you in person.

fitzgerald kelly sean harris bruce judson hi i'm fitzgerald kelly and i've spoken to you at least at least one time and i didn't have a phone on then yeah remember that one yeah so i am here about um the oak tree at uh slow rep And I just learned today that this process of canceling that agreement to save the oak is very new. It actually, with the petition by Slow Rep to remove the tree, happened on an appeal from Kevin Harris with the Slow Rep on September 25th of 55. Excuse me, 25, yes, yeah. And it was approved by the city on October 10th of 25. This is a very new development. Up until that time, from the last decade up until the September meeting or the September appeal, it was guaranteed that the oak tree would be part of the process and the construction. And since then, there was a vote by you council people on the 3rd of February to cancel that. strongly disagree with that. So in another direction, I wanted to learn the timeline if there is still gonna be the pursuit of cutting down the tree, what is that timeline going to be? It's very difficult to learn that for phone calls to people who should know have not returned phone calls, not good. So another thing is, I presume that you council people have had some contact from the citizenry. And I'm curious at how it's going. How many people have responded to you or approached you and said, cutting down that tree is really a really good idea. Just I think that takes care of that. Thank you. Thank you.

Sean Harris, and our final speaker is Bruce Judson.

Yeah. Sean Harris, come on up.

Did you say somebody named Bruce? Bruce is after you.

All right. Thanks.

Thanks. So I believe it was our city attorney mentioned that in the closed comment session, closed session of the city council meeting, there was a couple members up here that had recused themselves because they were actually part of a, if you want to know, there's a website, Cal Coast News has an extensive article on what's going on. and why certain members had recused themselves. So again, Cal Coast News website explains a little bit what's going on, why certain people had to recuse themselves. I'd encourage the public to read that. There's a city employee that's suing the city here, and I hope he wins. I'm going to follow that very closely. Again, Cal Coast News talks about that lawsuit. The United States Department of Defense, now known as the Department of War, is not a benign federal agency operated by diligent public servants on guard for waste, fraud, and abuse, whose publicly funded, eye-popping budgets are carefully monitored. No, it's the exact opposite. Like the mafia, and with the help of the press, politicians, and banks, the Department of War operates shakedowns on the American public, Nice country you got there. It'd be a shame to see it get invaded or burnt down, they tell us. Career as generals, admirals, and colonels' sole interest is lining their pockets. It's ensuring a cushy job in the defence sector or television after retirement. To this end, they push white elephant weapons programs to ensure a continuous supply of public dollars to the corrupt defense contractors and shareholders. For their part, defense contractors strategically place factories all over the country so that members of Congress concerned about their constituents' jobs and votes vote en masse and without any deliberation to continue ripping off Americans and grant the Department of War insane defense budgets. Soon to be, in this case, $1.4 trillion in borrowed dollars. This, along with defense lobbyists, ensures that the public spending is directed to war and the bank accounts of shareholders rather than our social safety net. Peace is not profitable. So what then is the solution? This is one option. Tax the sale and trading of stocks and bonds half a cent each. Restore the corporate tax rate to that where it was in the 1950s. Use this revenue to stand up FDR's work relief program. This will entail a reduced wage for former defense workers but will maintain their income. Five, create a database of defense workers and create a mortgage support program for them until they're either reemployed in the private sector or part of the federal work relief program. similar to FDR's. If anyone doesn't know what the federal FDR's work with the program, I encourage you to revisit the Great Depression because we're in one now. I'm old enough to have witnessed rounds of US based closures and we didn't collapse. I'm old enough to have seen former steel and auto factories get shut down and sent overseas. Politicians cried crocodile tears, but never incentivized the private sector to replace these centers of production. Their solution was to allow Visa and MasterCard to hand out credit cards and flood our country with illegal aliens to keep the price low for millions of Americans whose lives they destroyed, sending our industrial base and jobs overseas. I'm proposing direct investment in non-defense related industry with heavy monitoring for waste, fraud, and abuse. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please. Is that Bruce Judson you said? Yes, thank you. Bruce Judson?

Hello. My name is Bruce Judson. I've lived in SLO for 27 years. And I'm very concerned about the oak tree to be removed by SLO rep. And more specifically, the process used to make this decision. I contacted the Council after learning of the February 3rd decision, and Michelle Shoresman suggested I watch the meeting video, which I did. And I also read the Council agenda report, the Council agenda correspondence, and the Arborist report. And this resulted in more questions than answers. On February 3rd, Kevin Harris, representing the slow rep, stated that best practices were followed and the tree was a top priority. Why then did it take SLO-REP 13 years to bring in an arborist? The design begins with establishing the building footprint, which began in 2012. The footprint required extensive reduction in the tree's canopy and also encroached into the critical root structure, even when assuming best practices at the time. This knowingly put the tree at risk. The canopy reduction not only exceeded arborist norms, but violated slow city municipal codes. Clearly, this was a huge red flag. Why was it ignored? Why didn't the February 3rd discussion occur a decade earlier before all this money was spent on design? The Community Development Department states that the tree is a lower preservation priority Yet the council at the time recognized the tree's value to our community by explicitly protecting the tree in this lower-up contract. Isn't this equivalent to having a heritage tree designation? Why was this ignored in the report? Where was the city arborist during design reviews? Why is the same municipal code selectively applied and ignored? Does the city's role as a dominant financial supporter play into this? Something's not right here. Where's the accountability? The assumption that community support of a theater plus a tree is the same as a theater without a tree has no basis. The community has not been included. Signs and banners to educate the community have been removed by someone. Private properties were posted by someone. 75 community individuals wrote and posted love letters to the tree, and these were removed. Who would do this? The city did the bare minimum, a small sign posted a week before the council meeting and removed immediately after. The community is not aware that the tree is to be removed, and there's an effort to keep it that way. You have the opportunity right now to take a pause and objectively consider the situation with visibility, accountability, and community inclusion. Let's be open to all options. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment?

No, that was our final one.

Okay, thank you. City staff, do you have anything to add on any of the topics before we move on? Okay, thank you so much. All right, so next we move on to the consent agenda. And with the consent agenda, one of the first things we have is, one of the first things we have is a 6C, which is the acknowledgement of, or which is the bringing on of the new advisory board members. And I really want to acknowledge the appointees who are starting their terms next month. If you are recommended for an advisory body, I would love if you could wave your hand or stand up or some things that we know that you are here in the audience and where you're going to be joining us. Thank you so much. We are so thankful for your time. And we'll be just kind of accepting you all in this consent agenda, and it will feel a little bit not... pomp and circumstance. So I just want to let you know we are greatly thankful. And for the community that's not a part of these advisory bodies and or the interview process, this is three months of reviewing applications. We had well over 100 applications from our community members. to join these different committees and then many, many interviews with all of us from the council as well as the chairs of each and every commission and committee. So I just want to thank the chairs, thank everyone who applied, and thank the appointees who are here today. And with that, I will continue back to consent agenda and ask if anything would like to be polled. And Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you for mentioning all the advisory body members and letting them point themselves out, because I saw several of them, but I wanted to know exactly who was here, too. So again, thank you all for volunteering to serve, whether you're returning to your position or you're new to an advisory body. So thank you. I would like to pull 6I, please.

Perfect. Thank you. 6I. That's the Amendment to Management Compensation Resolution for Department Head Employment Contracts. So we'll come back to that one. And same for you? Okay, wonderful. So without anything else being pulled, we have public comment on anything on the consent agenda. Do we have any public comment other than 6i?

We have 146c, and it's Nathan Rubinoff.

Wonderful, thank you.

I'll go quick. Hi, everyone. My name is Nathan Rubinoff. I'm here tonight to say thank you to the City Council, to the Madam Mayor for this opportunity to positively contribute to the community of San Luis Obispo, which has done so much for me. I moved here a little over five years ago and have since met my wife, found a career with the Homeless Services Division with CAPSLO, and have really felt accepted and really found my purpose here in San Luis Obispo. So I'm just really excited for this opportunity to contribute to the community as well. So thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for continuing to serve even more. Council Member Marks.

Yes, I would like to move approval of the consent agenda except for item 6i.

Great. Council Member Shoresman. I'll second that. Wonderful. Can we have roll call?

Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes. And the motion passes 5-0. Thank you. And thank you to all over here. And with that, we will move back to 6-I. And I will have Council Member Shoresman come back to that.

Thank you. I want to just start out by thanking staff. I know I submitted some questions in advance and agenda correspondence and we did get some emails on this topic and I asked some of the questions that I saw in the emails but I probably didn't cover them all and so I was wondering and probably not everybody got a chance to read the responses that staff put out in agenda correspondence but they are there if anybody wants to go look at them and I would like to ask a couple more clarifying questions for um whoever city manager you think should answer them either you or somebody else if you want to phone a friend but basically i just um mostly want to just get an overall clarification about why we're doing this now how is this different than our current practice and where did the recommendations come from for the items that were that we're being asked to offer the city manager sort of leeway in making decisions about in new department head employee contracts.

Sure. Thank you. I'm happy to talk through questions, provide that overview. It is a fairly standard practice for department heads to have employment contracts with the cities. It's not universal, but pretty common. I think about half, if not a slight majority of the cities in this county use them as a standard practice. Typically, because at that level of an appointment, there may be terms that are beneficial to both the city and the employee to make explicit in an agreement that you don't necessarily want to have in a resolution that would require a city council action when we are, say, hiring a new department head. We typically are looking at trying to move quickly and bringing in, you know, our chosen candidate, top talent, and then looking at making sure that we are providing a mutually agreeable arrangement for them to come on board. What we've proposed here is really addressing, we have a need for two particular contracts at this point in time. One is identified in there. um separately for the police chief to address some compensation issues that we have a compaction with deputy chiefs right underneath the police chief and the other is bringing on our new fire chief who has been with us now for six months and has a pre-planned vacation which he very much deserves to go on and yet our normal resolution does not provide any authority to give somebody some additional leave time So those are just two examples of the nuances that we might look to to address in an employment contract. The other is oftentimes what happens at separation, just making sure that everybody is aware, eyes wide open, what the expectations are when they enter into this new employment. What we've done is made sure that everybody knows this isn't just a completely open ended, discretion given to the city manager. We've confined that to a number of different things, including if there's any ongoing compensation that's not otherwise allowed for in the management resolution, that definitely needs council's approval. And that is why we've called out separately the police chief's additional compensation that we're providing to him consistent with the terms that we are proposing. The other is making sure that it's clear what are the types of terms that we would be negotiating something like a hiring bonus. We provide hiring bonuses for other types of classifications like police officers or other hard to to hire positions. If we might need that to bring in somebody, bring them on board, then there would be a certain amount up to a maximum of one month's salary available to have that bargain. We would be including a severance provision up to four months. What I've heard and determined through research, four to six months tends to be standard in another nearby city. They don't do employment contracts, but they provide these types of provisions in their management resolution, and that includes a six-month severance potentially for department heads. We landed on four months that seemed appropriate. So those are the terms that we're talking about. It's not totally unfettered. And yet at the same time, it provides some flexibility when trying to bring somebody on board or to address something like we are. seeing with compaction needs that wouldn't necessitate otherwise a full resolution that the council would need to look at and then say call out separately for one specific person in that resolution and bring that back um and then have lag time and things like that so It's for a lot of reasons, you know, it's definitely my recommendation that employment contracts are appropriate to have with a department head. The level of expectations of somebody in that position are are more and very significant compared to other positions. And so the ability to make sure that everybody is aware of what those are coming in. is incredibly helpful and I think has been not just from my own experience, but certainly colleagues as well. So that's the genesis and also a bit of some of the details of what we're actually proposing. One thing I'd like to note, the agenda correspondence, we did get a suggestion that we include a provision in the resolution to make sure that the city manager notifies the city council when a contract's been entered into. We are totally happy to do that. We've provided a revised resolution that includes that requirement as well as we will post those contracts online in the same places that the appointed official contracts are located on our website, so they they are a public record, they would be no matter what, but that way they are easily accessible by anybody in the public.

Thank you. That's a lot of great clarification. So currently without passing this item, do we have contracts with our department heads or what is the current arrangement between a department head and the city?

So there's two places really. We provide an offer letter when a new department head comes on board. They accept that offer letter and any terms in the offer letter become kind of the basis. of that employment contract and then our management resolution is what governs. And any other type of incentive or resolution that the City Council has otherwise passed. It's mentioned in the agenda correspondence and linked as well. We have a retention hiring incentive resolution that was passed a few years ago that otherwise is available as well.

Thank you. I just have one more question about sort of the specifics of the items that were proposed to be under discretion of the city manager to negotiate with a prospective new department head. One of them is, as you mentioned, the hiring bonus. The other one is, the one that I have a question about is the relocation reimbursement. Thanks for providing the attachment that shows that we currently offer a $10,000 relocation reimbursement for those who need it that are not department heads and department heads I think if I'm reading this correctly have a $15,000 allowance and I think what you're proposing now is a $30,000 allowance so I'm just wondering that's a big increase above what is currently allowed in our in our policies so I'm wondering where that number came from and why doubling of it

Right. And really taking what we currently have and knowing that it is incredibly difficult to attract somebody to move here from outside of the area. Incredibly difficult. Right. I mean, it's it's been. very challenging and trying to incentivize somebody to relocate to this area comes with a significant amount of costs. And we know that $15,000 may cover a portion of it, but doesn't nearly come close to what they would be looking at overall. And so it's really an attempt to help account for what we might need in the future. Um, if and when we end up in another recruitment process, we did just go through recruitment process and did hear about this issue. Several times from our recruitment firm from the candidates who they were speaking to the other time, because truly what we would be looking at instead is if we end up in a new recruitment process, we would probably need to come back and look at salary adjustments. That's the only other way to help potentially get. what we might need in those moments. That's not ideal for all kinds of different reasons. This is another way to help kind of nibble around the edges a little bit more to make sure that we're putting ourselves in the best position possible when we end up in that position again. Hopefully not, just to be clear, for a very long time.

Appreciate that. And yes, I know both in this role and in my other role that it is very hard to recruit and retain people from out of the area. And the staff report and the agenda correspondents talk about some of the other hiring bonuses and things that we've done for hard to fill positions. I guess I'm just wondering, I always have this sort of feeling and it's a little bit of a conflict in not not conflict of interest, but just an internal conflict in my mind about we have so many other hard to fill positions that we might need to recruit people from out of the area. And if we give a department head level person the option of $30,000 in covering moving expenses, but we only give a police officer, for example, I'm just pulling that out of the air, $10,000 moving reimbursement, I have a little bit of an equity issue in my mind about that. So did we think about changing that number? Maybe this is not the right time. Just wondered if you had any thoughts on that.

Definitely not the right time. Those are established in a separate process. But I mean, truly, it counsels pleasure and discretion there. We're just trying to make sure we're availing ourselves of things that we may need in the future. But if you want to change the number, totally open to that.

All right. Thank you. I think that's all for now.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yeah, I have some real concerns any time that the discretion of the city council is reduced in general. I want to start out by saying that. So not thinking about this city manager and not thinking about this city attorney. But the only kind of safeguard or oversight that's provided in the staff report for the city manager utilizing this discretion, which would be delegated from the city council, is that the city attorney would sort of oversee and make sure that everything is copacetic and legal. Well, I have some questions about that. How would that work with another city attorney and another city manager? So I don't want you guys to feel in any way insulted by this question. However, these two positions do report to the council. So my question is, in a situation where the city attorney finds that the city manager has misused the discretion that is contemplated being delegated what kind of position would that put the council in hypothetically hypothetically the city manager has in some way put her thumb or his thumb on the scale and the city attorney is telling us that and so then does the council have to do what so i i'm i'm very concerned about that right now it's a pretty clean process And to me, this delegation, the idea of delegating the authority would possibly really create a potential very difficult situation for the council, a different council too. So hypothetically, can you answer that? Could the city attorney answer that? What would the city attorney rat on the city manager and say to the council? Well, sorry, guys, we have to do what?

Yes. Hold the city manager accountable. Correct. Yes. Through evaluation review and all of the different mechanisms, you have to hold the city manager accountable. And certainly if the city manager enters into a contract that violates the policy and resolution that's being presented, then that out of the gate is a problem that has a lot of remedies to it. So I guess the question is ultimately, you know, the comfort of level of comfort that the council has in delegating authority to the city manager maybe generally and then within the confines of what's being presented now if the confines need to become stricter you know we can do that too and ultimately you know if you want to make the discretion incredibly small that's fine as well we've tried to strike a balance and making sure that you know there were certain very clear things that compensation is set by the resolution and that these other pieces have finite amounts to them. So if the amounts are not acceptable, then we can change them. If they are, then that is what essentially the law requires. And then if the city manager is doing things that aren't appropriate, then you have all of the mechanisms you have available to otherwise hold the city manager and the rest of the city organization accountable for issues that may come up.

City Attorney.

Okay, now here's another question. Thank you.

Mayor, I just wanted to add to that. I think it's important for the public to know and certainly the Council knows that these contracts, once negotiated, are public records and are available on the City's website for not only the Council to review, but for any member of the public to review. There's no such thing as secret compensation for us public employees. It's an open book. So that's obviously an additional check that is available, again, both for the Council and for the public.

Thank you. Councillor Marx.

Yeah. So I want to see if there would be any problem proceeding with the idea of employment contracts and retaining council discretion. What would be the problem with that?

Discretion in what fashion?

What type of discretion? Well, if the idea is that the city manager wants to move toward employment contracts, is there, I don't see the link between that and the city manager wanting to have the city council reduce its discretion. It seems to me, so I want to know if there's some linkage there, or could they...

I'm not following how this reduces discretion by the city council me neither.

Yeah. So there seems to be a linkage, at least on how it was presented. But what you're saying is that we could still move to employment contracts, but then have them actually approved or considered or disapproved by the council. Is that correct?

You could. I would just caution there that Timing would become potentially challenging when you're in a recruitment process and needing to get an employment contract completed and have somebody onboarded. Then we're looking at making sure that we put the contract on the Council agenda and have it approved there. So that's a piece of the equation that we think is beneficial to make sure that we're able to be efficient, effective. And again, the delegation is limited to what is in the resolution. So it's not a delegation of everything. just of the terms that are in the resolution. And a draft agreement in its form has been included as well in the packet. So the terms that are basic, that are standard, and the places where the specific terms that would be negotiated and included in there are identified as kind of with brackets. So we would be following that standard contract template.

I think HR Director Domoney might add some two cents.

Yeah, thank you. Good evening. Nicole Domoney, Human Resources Director. Exactly as City Manager McDonald just said, I wanted to make sure that there was clarity that what's before you tonight is allowing the city manager to enter into an employment contract with the department head. straying from the benefits that are otherwise approved by Council for one-time purposes. So what's included in the revised and amended contract is a one-time hiring bonus, a one-time relocation reimbursement, two weeks of advanced vacation and then the severance. So all ongoing incentives or the salary is established by council and so that would remain.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, and you mentioned that there was a new resolution. I hope that the council can see what you are,

It is attached to the agenda correspondence. The difference is that it adds one sentence between what was published last week and what we published today. The one sentence is that the city manager shall notify the city council of a contract that's been approved and that we will publish it on the city's website. Essentially.

And let's say page 161, write that resolution.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. That's all I have for now.

just to correct for the record it's an amended exhibit b to the resolution and the updated language is included on page 149 of the packet yeah or page 22 of the agenda correspondence too okay great thank you for that council member anything further

Council remarks, anything further? No? You're good? OK. Vice Mayor?

Yeah, thank you. I think actually most of my questions have already been asked. So just a point of clarification, when you were first describing kind of the need for the contracts, you mentioned that anything that went outside of what was already established within the management resolution would need to come back to Council regardless of whatever authority you're given this evening. that is correct and so the things that are already established in inside of there and this was something that you answered um in the agenda correspondence those were items like the lump sum and as nicole was describing here the relocation and that's just an additional amount um the new item is the severance which wasn't previously accounted for inside of the resolution correct okay and so that we do not have any provisions related to severance And that's the one new thing that's not in currently in management resolution or leave balance as well.

That's correct.

Yeah.

And leave balance. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Those two items.

So this is just kind of points of clarification just to make sure that people understand that this is not a big departure from what's currently in place. This is just a little bit of allowance on a few of few items that are already in there and then two additional

items to allow a little more discretion is that a fair assessment of what we're dealing with here that's right and i would say you know if if there's not comf comfort with employment contracts as a concept or that the city manager would be authorized to enter into them with individuals you know the the management resolution could be amended to provide the ability to provide the same things it's just without the benefit of a specific contract i will say in And I know there's another jurisdiction in our county that provides severance as an option for department heads and it's stated in the resolution up to six months. So that would be a different option. We would also, though, however, need to come back with a specific piece related to the police chief compensation that we've discussed previously so that we would. There's another way to go about this, but it would require coming back with a an amendment to the resolution to address those other items that we've spoken about.

With the advantage of using these employment contracts, as I'm understanding it, would be that these potential one-off situations can be dealt with within the language of that contract without having to amend the entire resolution as it applies to all management? Is that the idea? That's correct. Okay. And so that allows us a little bit more kind of specificity with each individual department head. That's right.

Okay.

And the other question, I think you sort of addressed this, was that the staff report mostly was talking about the issue with the police chief, but you did just discuss a moment ago that we've had some recent recruitments that have been particularly challenging for us from some of the more difficult to fill management or department head positions that we feel like this flexibility would have made those positions easier to fill. Is that correct?

You never know exactly what might have happened, but it does help. It certainly would help with bringing somebody, especially who doesn't live locally in the region. Okay. Yeah, thank you for that clarity on those items.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Thank you. Just following up on Council Member Marks' question regarding the interpretation of the language. I'm reading it here. The individual employment contracts shall be subject to review and approval as to form by the City Attorney. So the City Attorney would conduct an independent review of the offer and be required to approve it? Is that how that would work? What does this language direct the City Attorney to do? I guess that's my question.

So to review the form of the contract for legal sufficiency and also compliance with the adopted council policy.

Okay, so not the terms. Not like, oh, you offered 30, you should have offered 25.

No, within the parameters established by council, just ensuring that essentially the final deal negotiated as recorded in the agreement is in conformance with law and the council policy parameters.

Thank you for that clarification. And of course, I assume we can rescind this at any time. Absolutely. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. And I just wanted to go back to Director Dominey. With the timelines that we typically have, I don't know if you have this at the tip of your tongue because, you know, I really wasn't planning to ask this question, but I'd love to give some kind perspective and clarity to the community as we're talking about this, the timeline from when we go from that brochure to recruitment to hiring, the timeline we're looking at, how long it is, and then when it comes to actually offering and how quick that process goes, if you could share anything more about that.

Sure. Recruitment could take approximately four months, maybe a little bit longer if it takes longer to develop a brochure. Once we interview, we may be turning around and extending an offer the same day as the interview. And so if it required us to go to council, That could add a month, depending on the timing of a council meeting, and we could lose out on well-qualified candidates.

Thank you. Vice Mayor?

Yeah, forgive me. I remembered I had one more question. And this is maybe just another point of clarity. But when we were first discussing the idea, in some ways, the idea of individual contracts with the employees was appealing to me because of the idea that we would have more transparency and some degree of insight into what then happens if there is a severance with an employee right which otherwise would have to be negotiated sort of after the fact with the employee upon time of them leaving the city is that kind of a fair assessment of what would happen there

Yes, that's fair.

So this then in the contract lays out what happens ahead of time, and that's a public document that then is available to City Council, all of the members of the public, and we then have some idea what happens with the employee.

That's correct. And it helps not only for transparency for other people, but definitely for the employee in terms of what those expectations are.

And other than severance, are there any other elements of that that kind of are helpful in kind of clarity of communication with the employee? Or is that kind of the one main item there?

That is a main item. I think that the standard contract that's attached, it talks about performance standards and when they're established and goals. You know, we otherwise go through that process and it's kind of essentially memorializing what our standard practice is. But again, it is also stating upfront for the employee and then for the organization to understand what those expectations are before the employment even begins. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yeah, well, I have to say I've been through a lot of recruitment in the 20 years that I've been on City Council. in either as mayor or council member. And what's happened in the past when there's been a timing issue is that we've called a special closed session. Often it's not on a Tuesday. Often it's something that the council needs to come together. There's a proposed offer. Council says usually looks good. And then the offer is made to the prospective employee. And then if it's accepted later, it comes back to council in an open session. And then, you know, it's all transparent, the public knows what's going on. It seems to have worked in the past. And so this idea that it's not modern or that we need to modernize the process, I just don't understand. I'd like to, as a question, ask what is the urgency? If we did not approve this item, what would the downside be in terms of being able to hire people?

Well, first, we are fully staffed on our department head team. So that is great. On the other hand, I did identify two specific means out of the gate. And so if we are not moving forward with this approach, using employment contracts and the approach identified in the proposed resolution, We will be coming back with a proposed resolution modification to make sure that we have the ability to provide those things to the police chief and the fire chief. So that would be the next step. And it would be urgent because those items are needed immediately for those two employees. The other thing in terms of, again, if there's changes to compensation ongoing, council will have to approve that. Every council will need to be, there'll need to be a conversation and an approval by this body or future councils on ongoing compensation and benefits. Any ability to change that does not change in terms of, city manager authority or future city manager's authority. So that would occur in the same fashion. So at least in terms of that engagement with the council and council discretion on those items.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I see no further questions. So we'll go to public comment before we go to deliberation. Public comment.

Yes, we have two on this item. The first one is Leslie Hall and then Steve Farish.

Good evening, members of the council. I just got out of the hospital, so I'm gonna keep my voice down, if I may. To give this a little economic perspective, I went back in time, and these statistics were given to me by Bill Statler and Ken Hampion, so I don't question them because they were esteemed employees here at the city, but in 2005, We had an all city budget, including the enterprise funds of approximately 56,000, 56,370,000. We had a population in the city of 44,750. So going forward 20 years, today the population of the city is roughly 49,500. roughly, and our all city budget is around 216 million, including the enterprise funds. So in simple math, the increase in our city budget has gone up 285% in 20 years. whereas the CPIs have been around 3% to 5% every year. So there's a significant divergence of what the national economy is doing versus what we're doing here in San Luis Obispo. And I don't know all the reasons why the difference is so large, but it is large. As you know, in our general plan, we have a three percent cap on our growth. That is in our general plan. So we're not going to build ourselves out of a problem with respect to housing. That housing balance and housing employment balance is pretty well set. So from my standpoint, I'd like to know if the city manager can also not give raises, which is a de facto demotion in some cases. If she can, also gives raises to department heads. Because employment law is pretty specific. You've got to have one with the other in most cases. So I'm concerned that the city has either been charging too much for certain fees or infrastructure, or user fees. And at the same time, the population of the city has only increased slightly in 20 years. I mean, these numbers are irrefutable. They are what they are. So I'd like to have someone from Maybe the community development or the finance department research this a little better because we seem to be in orderly high in terms of operational costs for the city. There's just no two ways about it. And the statistics don't lie. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. I hope you feel better soon.

Thank you. My name is Leslie Halls. I was here two weeks ago and I'm happy to be here again tonight. I had prepared some remarks, but after listening to all this, I have to say I think you're looking to solve a problem that really isn't that much of a problem. And the fact that this was put on the consent agenda with the assumption it would just slide right through makes me very suspicious. There's been a lot of good questions raised here by Mrs. Shorman and Mrs. Marks. And, you know, the question that comes down to me and probably many other people here is, is San Luis Obispo such a horrible, awful place to live? Is our crime, our traffic, our air pollution, our crummy public schools, lack of open space, lack of recreation, Our weather, is it all so bad that we can't find people who want to move here and live here and work here and secure a very secure government job with marvelous benefits? I just don't see what the problem is. There are so many people who would give their eye teeth to get a job at City Hall. I'm sorry, I don't believe it's that hard to recruit these people given the salaries and the benefits and everything else. I just have a hard time believing that. And I think part of the problem that Steve referenced was when Bill Statler and Ken Hampton were here, they compared our salaries to other similar salaries employees, department heads, and the like. So anytime one of these other five cities raised their salaries for anybody, everybody else wanted to raise too, and that's how we somewhat got so out of whack. Two weeks ago, I know Steve had mentioned we should have an objective committee to just go through all of this and try and figure out how we can get this budget under control. Because the more we pay these people, the more heavily in debt we get to CalPERS. And it's pretty obvious to me and anybody who was here two weeks ago that at least the staff in this this city doesn't really care too much about the CalPERS debts. It scares me. It scares me a lot. And I think another idea would be to say, OK, let's take a look at everybody who works here. You all been here maybe a long time. Give them a golden handshake to leave within two years. Now, listen up. This would give them an opportunity if they have kids in high school or something to finish school. You don't want to uproot them. It also gives them an opportunity to leave and find another job someplace else. It gives them a chance to maybe forward their career because inherent in this suggestion is that nobody is going to be promoted from within. That sends kind of a bad message, I think, to all of your employees. We're always going to look for somebody else outside, no matter how well you do your job, how good you are at it, how much you know about it. And then take a look, have a committee look at these things. Try that. You can replace these people with lower paid people. Give them an opportunity to start their careers instead of just hiring somebody who's going to retire in three years. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment?

No.

OK. I'll bring it back to the council for deliberation or further questions. Who would like to start? Council Member Schwarzman. Thank you.

I appreciate the public comment. I appreciate staff answering our questions. And I have had conversations, a little sort of pre-briefing from our city manager in advance of this. So I had a little bit of knowledge. But then in reading the staff report, it brings up more questions. And so I appreciate all the clarifications by the city manager and Director Domini. Sorry about that. Brutalize your last name. So I do appreciate the clarification. You know, I work for the county in addition to serving on this council, and so I do know that management contracts for department heads are a pretty standard thing at the county as well. Sometimes it goes down to deputy director as well as just department head. So this is not an unusual concept. concepts like severance and leave balances. I'm seeing that more in the recent past where people are transferring maybe in order to retain somebody that maybe wants to move to San Luis Obispo from another city. Maybe they had a lot of seniority in that city and they had a lot of vacation time stored up and so they want to be able to take a vacation before they might pass their probation or have enough vacation accrual. So I understand that one as well. I think the only one that makes me a little bit uncomfortable is the one that I asked about, the relocation reimbursement. So I'm curious what my colleagues think about the amount of $30,000, that it's double what our existing our existing parameters are makes me just a little bit uncomfortable. I'd be a little bit more comfortable with something just a little bit lower than that, like maybe splitting the difference 20,000 or something like that. At the same time, I understand that it's reimbursement based and someone would have to submit receipts up to $30,000 basically to get that full amount reimbursed. This is not not an issue that I'm just you know It's not the thing that I'm gonna the hill I'm gonna die on so to speak But I would just be a little more comfortable with a with a lower number there. So that's just my two cents Thank You vice mayor

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Shoresman, for kicking this off. And thank you to everybody for answering all of the questions. And I think the thing for me was that these contracts are something that really actually gives us a little bit more control and clarity on the parameters of employment for our employees by kind of setting expectations at the front end. And coming into having this on the consent agenda, I think it was clear that this is something that most other municipalities are doing, and it made a lot of sense for us to also have this in place. We've run into incidents where somebody was leaving the city, and it just wasn't a lot of clarity on then what happens. And that's not really good for the employee or for the city itself. And so I'm very much in favor of making sure that we have employment contracts in place. On the details of the individual things, I just want to be super clear because I'm still hearing people mentioning the idea of raises here. These are not raises. We're still being held to what's laid out in the management resolution. So this would not change people's compensation at all. It's just kind of these one-time incentives in order to bring people in. As somebody who was recruited, not me personally, but my family was recruited here from North Carolina 13 years ago. I think it was $12,000 to move across country, and that was 13 years ago. So this does not seem like an outrageous sum. And so I don't want to get into nickel and diming it, particularly since it requires receipts already. in favor of this as it's laid out and knowing that it would come back to us uh not for approval but at least for review so thank you thank you council member marks uh yeah i have no problem with the idea of contracts or

one time incentives one way or another. My problem is reducing council's discretion. I think it would be possible to proceed with the idea of contracts, especially if our fire uh fire chief or police chief need those contracts um and that's the way that uh the city would work better uh than it does now i'm i'm i have no problem with that i just think it needs to come back to council so we can give uh you know basically parameters and say yeah this is okay go for it and then um proceed as we have in the past so i'm i'm i just don't think that the linkage is there i think that the contracts are okay but we don't need to reduce council discretion and I believe that a pattern of reducing the discretion of elected officials, whether it's the House of Representatives or the Senate, over time is a slippery slope. It's something we don't need to do. We're elected by the people to represent them.

uh to to willingly let go of the discretion that's there right now i feel is um to some extent letting down the public so i'm going to oppose this thank you thank you councilmember boswell yeah thank you i'm going to be supporting the amended resolution i think this is a reasonable amount of additional discretion for the city manager we asked the city manager to The city manager has the authority to make these hires and to run the entire process for the hires. And I think if you're going to give that authority, you need to give them some discretion to be able to effectively negotiate and attract the talent that we need. I don't think it's a lot of additional discretion beyond our memo is still largely controlling over how these things go forward. And I don't see it as really relinquishing our discretion because we could take it back at any moment. You know, this is not like we're amending the city charter or something. We're passing a resolution. We could turn around and unpass it next, a month from now if we're not happy. I had asked for, I had asked staff to include the provision that the council be notified once these contracts are negotiated so we understand what the city manager is doing with the authority that we've granted them and i think that provides us the sufficient accountability to then evaluate whether we think that was an appropriate use of that authority and again we could at that point determine that we wanted to rescind it if we felt like it wasn't being followed correctly I also think the provision of the city attorney reviewing it to make sure that the city manager is legally following the discretion that we've provided is another second check since the city attorney is hired separately by us and is accountable to us separately. So I'll be supporting. Thank you.

Thank you. Myself as well. It's challenging because, you know, I've been in human resources in the public world, in the public sector, private sector, nonprofit, and hiring is one of the most, recruitment and hiring is one of the most challenging things because The candidate would like it to move fast. The hiring manager would like it to move fast so they could do the work. But the reality is we are making sure that we are crossing all of the T's and dotting all of the I's in the public sector so much more. And so when we set up to go into recruitment, I'm just going through the different department heads that we've been hiring since the last seven to eight years that I've been on board. And some have been lateral, that have been internal hires. And so I just want to make sure that we're talking about this is for people who are moving here from over 50 miles as far as the reimbursement rate when it comes to moving or moving expense reimbursement rate. But also, sometimes there are not those candidates that are here. And so sometimes we do look for out of the area. But we are looking for whoever would like to apply that has the most experience and would like to be in this position. So I think there is always that combination. Some people don't want to move up into a management role. We've seen that happen at times. due to whatever different reasons. And I think it's really important with contracts in the public sector that we have clear expectations for the city manager, for HR, for the recruiters if they're involved, for the attorney, for the council, and for the candidate. And so when they can see clearly what happens as to when they come on board and if they were to leave, I think both of those are very important. And I also, Council Member Shoresman, when you mentioned about, yeah, some people come over from many years of experience and they have accrued these great banks. They know they can't have that many years of weeks of vacation, but they already have vacations planned. Can we start with this? Can this be my concession for taking a major pay cut? One of the things that I've heard for 30 years is kind of the sunshine tax, the discount. People want community members to come here to San Luis Obispo and pay the tax of a 30% cut to 40% cut in salary. because look at the beauty that they get to come into. And there is. People love coming to SLO. They want to be here so bad. And sometimes when they bring out the calculations, though, they can't make the move because of the 30% to 40% cut in salary they're taking to come here in San Luis Obispo with the cost of living. Unfortunately, we are still, yes, we have had more houses built, but we are still one of the most expensive to live in California as well as through the US. So when I look at that, if we're helping people move to be able to get here, that is key. And these are positions that we are asking to work sometimes 24-7, sometimes not, but really, truly holding some intense responsibilities. So with that we are asking them to move their families across countries sometimes and come here and take that responsibility. I think as far as if If there is a process where we can help the city manager and the HR manager, or HR director, sorry, to get our candidates that we want, that are the most qualified, that want to be here, to be in that role, and we can give you the parameters to do that, I am all in favor of that, because we're talking about it ahead of time. We're talking about it now, and usually, We're talking about it before that brochure comes out, or as we're making that brochure that's coming out, that we're having that conversation, because these are high up positions. These are large positions with a lot of responsibility. And I will say, too, there are often large committees that are part of either local jurisdictions, there are sometimes community members that are part of the process. This can be quite large. So I know it's a lot, sorry it's a lot for me to kind of spew out here today, but being in human resources and trying to be as nimble as possible has been very difficult. And then when you go into a public sector, that's even more difficult. So as I look at being able to give you the parameters to say, let's take this person and be able to hire them, that sounds perfect. So I think that going back to also what Council Member Boswell said is, yeah, if this doesn't work well, yes, we can rescind that and we can make that change. That is one of the benefits of having these items on our agenda is if it's not working, we won't continue it. And I promise the community that. The other part I think that we have to remember is both the city manager and the city attorney are under our purview as far as evaluations and so if the city manager is making decisions that we are not pleased with, we have the ability to communicate with that city manager on a regular basis and of course also at the end of the year with a review. So to me, I don't think this is taking away massive control away from the council. And I think the accountability sentence that you added, Council Member Boswell, is key to that. It is something that I'm really glad you thought about that ahead of time and were able to get this into the resolution because I think that makes that full circle, that loop that people could feel like we're really out of the loop. We won't be with this because you're bringing that back to us. So I am in full support, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you so much. I just want to take a moment to clarify for the public. I hear your concerns, Council Member Marks, but I really don't believe that this actually reduces council discretion because we don't currently review management or director level contracts. So just to be super clear for everyone, we only hire the city manager and the city attorney. And so all of the directors are currently hired by the city manager. So that's not something that we already currently review or have discretion over going through the minutia of those contracts. So the two things that we're actually granting today is employment contracts that, in my mind, will provide a little bit more clarity and transparency for both employees and the public. And then the second item is just a little bit of flexibility, financial flexibility on a few specific one-time incentives that might help us fill competitive positions. But we are not giving up any particular council discretion that we currently have. And in fact, in some ways, by having the contracts then come back to us and having the city attorney review, it's an additional level that we currently don't have written into the process. So we're actually kind of gaining a little bit more transparency in this process if we accept it as amended. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Francis. You covered most of most of what I was going to say. I'm just going to back you up. I think by I was kind of scratching my head a little bit about the loss of discretion and I don't see it as a loss of discretion. And we're really just extending some of the same things that we already have in our policies with hiring bonuses and relocation reimbursement to another category of employees. um i as i said i am a little bit uncomfortable with the difference in the amounts but um again i'm it's not a hill i'm gonna die on i i do think that at a future time we should go back and look at the discrepancy between what some of our hard to fill positions are able to get in relocation assistance versus our department heads because again they are These are our highest paid positions. And if we're struggling with some of our other positions that it's harder to make a living here with. And if if relocation incentive is really the thing that's going to help it helps help makes it easier and easier decision for somebody to move here from a some from another place in a position or a classification that we're having trouble hiring, then we should look at that. We have lost critical candidates relatively recently because we weren't able to move quick enough. I know it seems hard to believe because of the beautiful environment that we live in that it seems like everybody would want to live here, but we all know that it's expensive to live here and it's not easy to move here from North Carolina or Fresno or anywhere where it's even a little bit less expensive. I've lost nurses and nurse practitioners multiple times in my recruitment processes at the county over this last year. So I know it's difficult and I don't again see this as a loss of discretion and I do appreciate the changes. I'm glad you thought to ask for that to change Council Member Boswell to getting us a notification of when something is happening again. I think that helps with transparency and I also appreciate that the The contracts are all posted for everybody to see. So I'm going to go ahead and support it. And I do think that we should look at the relocation, the equity issue in my mind with the relocation assistance at some future date.

Thank you. And I think one other question that maybe hasn't set out loud, so I'll just go ahead and ask it. I believe that some of the other positions would be a bargaining conversation that different units have asked us for different requests at different times, so I wanted to just kind of I don't know if it's Director Domini or City Manager if you'd like to answer that. But I also want to go back to, I know in the past on this Council, in the small, you know, seven years I've been here, we have bargained for some, or we have offered an exception at different times for officers that were very hard to get at that time. So I know that there's different times we do offer, or we do bring back to Council and say, this is a hard position, this XYZ engineering is not working, we need this. change. So I think always remembering that we can bring that back to this council for different positions that are hard to fill. So sorry, city manager.

Thank you. I think the hiring incentive is in the individual mo use, but the relocation benefit is part of the it's part of a separate policy.

The relocation and the hiring incentives are all outlined in that recruitment retention referral or a mixed variety of that RRR policy that's included in the agenda correspondence. So the the hiring incentive as listed in the agenda correspondence is a little bit higher actually for police officers lateral police officers and lateral public safety dispatchers than it is for other classifications throughout the city.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, I wanted to, if we are at some point heading toward a motion, there was a statement that needed to be read out loud, specific. Got it. Just wanted to make sure that was all on the radar.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm ready for that when it's time. Thank you. With that, any more questions or deliberation? We're ready for a motion. Vice Mayor.

I will move approval of the amended resolution.

Okay. Council Member Boswell. Second. Thank you. With that, according to law, I get to read a statement. So hold on one minute. So consistent with California government code section 54953, this serves as the required oral summary for item 6i, amendment to management compensation resolution for department head employment contract prior to final actions. This item includes two recommendations. First, staff recommends that the city council adopt a draft resolution authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute individual employment contracts with department heads. This authority would allow for limited variations in one-time compensation and benefits provided they remain within the parameters established by the resolution. Second, staff recommends that the city council authorize the city manager to execute an individual employment contract with the city's police chief. This separate authorization is needed because the recommended adjustments to the police chief's compensation, as outlined in the staff report, exceed the parameters proposed in the draft resolution in order to address compaction issues. These recommended adjustments include increasing the city paid deferred compensation contribution for the police chief from 1% to 3% of salary and extending to the police chief the same educational benefits currently provided to deputy police chiefs. With that, city clerk, can we please have roll call?

Thank you. Just wanted to clarify that the motion included both of those actions, so both the adoption of the resolution and then the approval of the agreement with the approval of that different compensation package for the police chief. Thank you.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks? No. Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes, and the motion passes 4-1. With that, we will take a break, and then we will come back to Public Hearing and Business Items 7A, Adopt the Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Mayor, are we going to reorder the agenda?

So sorry, I had not gotten the response yet. So we have quite a bit of public comment on our last item, 7D, which is the South Street and King Court Crossing project. We're actually going to talk about that first. So we're moving 7D up first before 7A. Thanks so much. Well, welcome back. Thank you for a quick break. We are coming back to talk about 7D, the South and King Crossing. And Mr. Luke Schwartz will be sharing a few words.

Get my slide deck up here. Mm-hmm. I swear I'll get this one these days. OK. No, just stay right there.

Right there? Come.

Got it?

Thank you. Mayor Stewart, council members, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. The item before you is a proposed modification to the South and King Crossing project of a five to 10 minute staff presentation. I'm happy to take questions following that. The recommendations tonight are to consider approving a modification to the project to advance a full traffic signal in lieu of a pedestrian hybrid beacon as previously approved at this location. Would also be asking for council to authorize the city engineer if you choose to approve this modification to allow the city engineer to approve final plans and specifications reflecting those modifications and approve any construction contract change orders needed to address those modifications within the current project budget. A little history on this project. The intersection at South and King has been a challenge from like a circulation and active transportation crossing standpoint for decades. In 2021, with the adoption of the city's active transportation plan, there was a proposed project recommended at this intersection to advance a hybrid beacon. At the time, existing traffic conditions did not warrant a full signal based on traffic. crash history, volumes. And then in 2023, we were actually able to advance kind of an interim improvement to provide some level of improvement for pedestrian and bicycle crossings with some rectangular rapid flashing beacons that was installed in 2023 as kind of a phase one for this intersection. And then from 2023 to 2025, we were successful in obtaining a grant from SLOCOG for half a million dollars to do something more robust and permanent. and funded a full crossing improvement project in our financial plan. As part of that, we conducted more detailed technical studies, traffic studies, warrant analyses based on more recent traffic conditions and advanced the projects through planning and design. And as part of that, we identified that current traffic conditions could meet warrants for either a full traffic signal or a hybrid beacon and actually advanced some design work for a full traffic signal net that improved access for both drivers and vehicles trying to exit the side streets crossing South Street, as well as pedestrians and bicycles. However, following more detailed review with emergency services staff, there were some concerns about the frequency of stops of traffic on South Street, creating potential delays for emergency services, which use South as a primary response route. And there was a preferred approach to start with a hybrid beacon with potential to maybe upgrade it to a signal down the road when the next fire station's operational or when conditions maybe were more suitable. And late 2025, the council did approve final plans and authorized staff to advertise a hybrid beacon project for construction. Since then, the construction has started. The long, lead-tied equipment, traffic signal poles, can take eight to 10 months. So those have been ordered. We're waiting for those. Some initial electrical work has been done. We're waiting for signal poles and PG&E to pull electrical service to the intersection. And we've also, since the project was approved, have funded additional upgrades to emergency vehicle preemption equipment for both slow fire and slow police to increase their ability to communicate to downstream traffic signals, give them a green light and reduce delays on emergency response routes at traffic signals. We've also, as you've recently seen while we're waiting for the project to continue in construction, we've been getting thoughtful comments from neighbors on King Court, the south leg of this intersection, expressing concerns that the pending hybrid beacon may make it more challenging to exit their cul-de-sac, which is already difficult currently with the traffic volumes on South Street. It's challenging finding gaps during peak times of day to make those turns. Based on that feedback, we've had further discussions with our emergency services folks and based on the Subsequent upgrades to the equipment that we have and the understanding of the context and the needs of this intersection, we've gotten more openness and support to explore a full traffic signal and that we have equipment now that can reduce the potential of that to delay emergency response. And we're at a good stopping point now, at least in the project, that there's at least an opportunity to have a broader conversation of whether the previous hybrid beacon that was proposed is still the right solution, or if there's openness from the council and community to support a full traffic signal. Staff's recommendation is to consider modifying the project to a full traffic signal. and that we feel that the benefits outweigh the potential trade-offs of that change. So what are we proposing? We're proposing to install a full traffic signal. It can be advanced within the existing approved project budget and without significant delays to the project schedule. The vast majority of the equipment is the same, regardless of whether this is a hybrid beacon or a traffic signal. In fact, the hybrid beacon was designed with the intent that it could be easily converted to a traffic signal down the road. The majority of the work is curb ramps, underground conduits, signal poles. Those are the same between the two. What would change is things like, what does the signal head look like? Is there cameras on all the directions or not? And some minor sign and striping changes. In advance of this, we wanted to make sure that the community knew that we were asking this question and having this conversation, so we sent direct mailers to all the properties within 1,000 feet of the intersection, published a news release. We put sandwich boards out at the South King intersection as well as nearby at the South and Exposition intersection, so folks walking, going about their day-to-day business know that, hey, this opportunity to engage in this conversation is coming. we've also notified the active transportation committee i'll note that we've had previous conversations with them about potential for a signal but the lattice last they've formally seen of the final project was a hybrid beacon so we want to make sure they were aware and at least have the opportunity to know this is coming and participate as residents if they are interested in doing so We also notified all the members of the community that had recently reached out with concerns or questions about this project, so they were aware that there was an opportunity to participate in this conversation. So what does the previously approved design look like? The concept on your screen is the pedestrian hybrid beacon. Almost identical to what you see currently nearby at the intersection abroad in Woodbridge and that you have a pedestrian crossings on both sides of the intersection. Bicyclists and pedestrians have the ability to cross using a pedestrian signal and the beacon system stops traffic on the main street. There is no ability for vehicles on the side street or the main street to act to use a signal to cross like you would in a more traditional signal. And as designed, the intersection of South and King would look very similar to this. I also wanna note that to manage conflicts during those crossings, we have an eliminated sign that comes on during the pedestrian crossing prohibiting turns from the side street. So in this case, that would be from King Court. And I think that's where we have much of the area of concern from residents of King Court saying, well, if we can't make turns when traffic is stopped in South Street, that's gonna make it even longer to wait for a gap when the crossing's done for those opportunities. What is proposed? The proposed traffic signal would look similar in many ways. The main difference is I'll walk through instead of hybrid beacon triangular heads, you'd see standard traffic signal heads on South Street. We'd be proposing using flashing yellow arrows for the left turns. You see that similarly at other locations in the city. The intersection of Monterey and Santa Rosa Street would probably be the best example of what you'd see if you're turning from the major street to the minor street. For pedestrians, the experience would be relatively similar. You'd cross with a pedestrian signal. Although we'd have pedestrian signals at each leg of the intersection, we'd be using accessible pedestrian signal equipment with the countdown timers, with audible push buttons, and deploying lead pedestrian intervals, which we've been doing throughout the city For those that aren't familiar with that term, it essentially gives a pedestrian a head start. So the walk signal will come on several seconds before a vehicle gets a green light so you can get kind of a head start into the crossing. And with this, because of the proximity of the school and the types of folks that will be crossing here, we'd also be recommending to install the illuminated no right turn signs that would come on during that lead head start so that we wouldn't have conflicting right turn on red traffic from the side streets during the start of the pedestrian crossing. We'd have high visibility yellow school crosswalks at all legs of the intersection. And for bicyclists, the way that you cross is a little bit different in that instead of using the pedestrian signal, you would arrive at the intersection and there'd be a symbol for where you should wait. And we have detection using cameras that can detect bicycles and cars that will tell the signal to give you a green light. One thing that's slightly new that we haven't seen elsewhere in the city that this would be the first project we'd be recommending this is using these things called bicycle detection indicators. It's a small little light that you would see as you approach the signal on a bike that illuminates when you've been detected. So you know, hey, the camera's seen me, the signal knows that I'm here and waiting to cross the street. There's advantages and disadvantages to both the signal and the hybrid beacon. I'll walk through those briefly. The advantages to a traffic signal are that it provides a dedicated signalized crossing for both vehicles exiting those side streets onto South Street while still giving a signalized crossing for bicycles and pedestrians that fully stop South Street traffic. What we think is one of the main benefits other than improving access for vehicles is that a traffic signal is often more intuitive and familiar to people. And for what we've seen is we're likely to expect greater driver compliance and red light compliance with the signal than with the beacon where there's maybe less familiarity, but also there's not as much of a concern of like, If I go through this intersection, there might be a car in front of me that I might crash into where the hybrid beacons will see some examples of drivers that might see that first, second or two red and see that there's nothing in an intersection that they're going to conflict with and just go through the red. It's not super frequent, but it's a consideration that we think about with these decisions. Another advantage is that the type of change is not huge compared to the. what we're already putting in at the intersection, and it's a relatively minor cost increase. And the delay for a pedestrian trying to cross South Street would be relatively similar for a signal or a hybrid beacon, and I'm happy to get into more details with how that works if there's questions on that. There are some trade-offs. So with the signal versus a hybrid beacon, you're gonna stop traffic on South Street more frequently. That's gonna create more stops for drivers, more congestion during peak times for drivers, people on bikes on South Street, people walking on South Street, and emergency vehicles. And we have some strategies that we think can minimize some of those things, particularly for emergency vehicles with the more innovative technology we'd be putting in. at the signal also there will be some conflicts with turning traffic from the side streets when a pedestrian or bicycle is crossing south street so with the hybrid beacon you have the signs that say no turns and there's no conflict when people follow the signs With the signal, it's very difficult to fully remove that conflict. You're likely to have some turning vehicles from the side streets at low speeds and relatively low volumes that will cross the path of the crosswalks. We can manage those with things like the lead pedestrian intervals, the no right on red illuminated signs, but there's still some conflict. And last, there's some added cost and delay compared to the hybrid beacon, even though we believe those are moderate and can be accommodated within the current project budget and schedule. We've seen some comments expressing concerns that a full traffic signal might create more stops on South Street and make it more attractive for drivers to cut through the Meadow Park neighborhood to bypass any congestion with the new signal, or a hybrid beacon could create some of those concerns too. We have looked at this, and while it's difficult to say there will be no drivers that may choose to do this, we think that it's relatively low that we'd see a significant change in people cutting through the neighborhood. The reason for that is it's likely still to take longer when we look at the typical delays you might see even during peak times on south stopping at a signal versus driving a more circuitous route through the neighborhood. But we also have traffic calming that's already planned to go in throughout this route as part of the High Area Complete Streets project that we expect to start in a few months here. The map you see on your screen, the yellow route would be that kind of potential cut-through route. And those green lines are speed humps that are already planned along that stretch that will make it a lot less attractive and cumbersome to try to cut through quickly through the neighborhood streets. I will also note that the South Broad Street corridor planning effort that is beginning soon also as part of that scope is looking at a full kind of traffic management strategy for this Meadow Park neighborhood to address not just cut through concerns from a potential new signal on South Street, but existing cut through that's already happening and may change with whatever improvements are done on Broad Street with that project. In terms of like some potential options for the Council to consider. Well, the first I'll call option A is the staff recommendation, which is approving a project modification to advance a full traffic signal. Another option I'll call option B could be to retain the existing designs for the hybrid beacon as originally planned. I will see it put an asterisk there that I want to draw attention to that staff is recommending a minor modification that if Council wants to proceed in that path, which I'll mention in a second here. The third option I'll call option C is to kind of reevaluate other solutions at this intersection to say, you know, are there ways to address the pedestrian crossing needs and the driver's access needs that are different than those two options? And with that alternative, if staff is interested in pursuing that, one request I would make or suggestion would be to consider proceeding with the hybrid beacon as planned to make sure we don't lose the half a million dollar in grant funding that needs to be spent by the end of this calendar year. because looking at larger alternatives could be useful, but also would require more time and staff resources that we don't know that we could advance that planning effort and modify the project within that timeframe. Ideally, if this is a direction staff would like to go, we'd suggest advancing that as part of the next financial plan is a separate work effort considering staff's current workload and other major projects that we're working on. That asterisk I mentioned, there is one modification if Council desires to stick with the hybrid beacon that we would suggest advancing. This graphic shows the existing hybrid beacon when we have pedestrians crossing South Street, we have illuminated signs that completely restrict all turns from the side streets at King Court and King Street. What we would suggest is a minor modification to use two signs that have a separate no left and a separate no right, so that if there's a pedestrian crossing on only one leg of the intersection, it doesn't restrict turns from the side street that wouldn't be crossing the path with no pedestrian crossing. So most of the crossings at this intersection are on the east leg and will likely continue to be on the east leg. So under this scenario, when there's people crossing that leg, there isn't a need to restrict left turns from King Court. And so there'll be likely less increase in delays for drivers from King Court trying to make those left turns onto South Street. That concludes the staff presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions on the topic. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a couple just to check. One of the things about the slow cog grant, There was a gentleman who came to the last SLOCOG meeting, and SLOCOG seemed to think there was a way they could potentially extend the deadline if possible. But are there other grants that we need to be concerned with as far as the end of the year deadline?

The only grant funding on this project is the SLOCOG funding. It's state REAP funds, which are administered through SLOCOG. And if there's an option to swap or horse trade with other programs to increase the flexibility, that would be nice. It would be news to me. The last I'd heard from our SLOCOG staff liaisons is that reminders to make sure you can spend this because beyond 2026 calendar year, you're not getting reimbursed for what you spend.

Got it. Yeah, it was kind of a mixed message at the SLOCOG meeting. I was surprised to hear that. potential, maybe we could extend it. And I'm like, really? That's not what I had heard. And then also with the Ability to be able to have the emergency vehicles communicate with the traffic signal, that's great. One of the things that I've been hearing more times than not, though, is that we do not have any cameras that actually manage an accident or capture an accident at different signals. So would this traffic signal also have a camera that captured accidents as well?

Right now, we don't have any cameras that are traffic signals that are recording video. We use the cameras for detection only, and in some cases, live video feeds. If we have a call that, hey, something's not working, we can pull it up and watch in real time. We don't currently have the ability or the policy direction to record and store video, nor are those cameras, the resolution can be poor sometimes. And currently, we're not doing that. And it's not something that's currently proposed with the project.

Okay, thank you. And then lastly, as we talk about more traffic potentially, if we were to add the traffic signal, I kind of have two questions with that. So one, you know, there were some emails that came to us that said, hey, if I want to go faster, then I can go on South Street. And if you add a traffic signal, I can't go as fast. So have we studied where people decide to travel instead if they choose not to go down South Street? And then part B to that question, people had commented quite a bit that, We need to study this area if we're looking into this traffic signal. And I know that you did already in the previous time, so I just want to make sure you share that out loud.

Yeah. So when we had a more formal project programmed and funded, one of the first things we did is do a detailed traffic analysis to say, is a signal warranted now? Times have changed. And if not, is a hybrid beacon warranted? And if so, what should the signal phasing look like? What is the operations and impact on traffic congestion look like? And so we have a detailed traffic study documenting that a signal is warranted. And if so, here's the recommended phasing to manage safety and operations on South Street. And we have analysis showing that we have the right conditions to warn a hybrid beacon. The main decision to pivot from a signal in the first place was more related to the concerns for emergency response impacts at the time when the only equipment we had for emergency vehicle preemption was a line of sight where An approaching fire truck or ambulance had to be within a few hundred feet of the intersection to tell it, hey, I'm coming, where we now have equipment that has GPS capabilities where a fire truck coming out of Fire Station 1, as soon as it leaves that garage, tells the signal, I'm coming. It can even be on Broad Street or on Higuera. starting to turn on to South Street and tell it I'm coming, which gives much more time to clear traffic out of the way and give it priority so that there's less delays at this intersection and other intersections along those routes. So that was the main thing that's changed why there's opportunity to kind of revisit the potential for a signal. A signal was staff's preferred solution in the first place because of these competing interests to improve pedestrian and bike crossing safety and address the vehicle delay and safety concerns that we're hearing from the King Court folks.

Thank you. I know we've asked this question numerous times. I still appreciate you answering it, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor, for your questions. And thank you so much for the presentation and the speed bringing this back in front of us. You showed us that minor modification that you'd be suggesting if we decided to move forward with the pedestrian hybrid beacon. And I know with that, some of our traffic concerns would be alleviated coming out of King Court specifically. But you also mentioned in our agenda review that there were some timing advantages to a full signal that I don't think I fully appreciated or understood Previously and I was wondering if you could get into the details on that a little bit Sure, it's a good question.

So a signal will stop traffic more frequently on South Street and that it's Getting red lights to South Street traffic both when there's a pedestrian or bike crossing and when there's a vehicle exiting the side streets The difference is with the hybrid beacon, every crossing activation is giving the full time that's needed for a pedestrian, which can be 30 plus seconds, whether it's a bike or whether it's a pedestrian crossing. Both at Broad and Woodbridge and at this location, a lot of these crossings are people on bikes. There's a lot of PEDS too, but there's a lot of people on bikes. With the signal, when a bike is wanting to cross South Street, you have the ability to not give it the full time you might need for a pedestrian. When a bike may get through the intersection in five or 10 seconds, you can use a traffic signal where it gets the 10 seconds they need, and then you can return the green on South Street. So there's more stops with the signal, but oftentimes those stops are shorter, if that makes sense.

And is there any way to kind of project what the difference would be between the two of them and like how often traffic would would be stopped and what that would look like for queuing at peak times? Or is that difficult just because of the variability of crossings?

It's difficult. It can depend on the time of day. If this hour you have more bikes versus PEDs and the other you don't. I don't really have a sophisticated level enough model to give a really accurate idea of the delay. But I know some of the... complaints we will get at the hybrid beacons is if you have a bike that passes through and they're out of the way and now a driver sees nothing and they're stopped for another 20 plus seconds that sometimes that can be a contributing factor to people not complying. I don't have a good way to estimate it but I'd say oftentimes the stops will be much shorter on South Street.

Thank you. Also thrilled that this project is kind of aligning with our Higuera Complete Streets. And thank you for putting up the diagram of some of the traffic calming and speed humps that would be a long exposition there. And I was wondering if you could give us a little more clarity on the timing and how they might align so that bad habits aren't established on the front end. If a signal is put in, we don't see cut throughs and then have to kind of break that habit.

Sure, we expect the Higuera Complete Streets project to get started in the next few months here. I'd expect it to have about a 10 to 12 month total duration. A lot of that is driven by those long lead times on signal poles. Conservatively, assuming the last phases involve the roadway ceiling, speed hump installations, that could be happening towards next summer, where current schedule for this crossing would likely be operational towards the end of this year is our goal. So you could have about a six month period where the traffic calming that's planned with Hygeria Complete Streets hasn't happened yet. It is nice to have that time if you wanna measure and see are people shifting patterns. There's a scenario where if you felt like you're seeing these huge changes that are more than what is expected, that you could make changes quicker and advance some of those measures more urgently or maybe using temporary materials. The other challenge is if we were seeing changes and thought adding additional speed humps or advancing traffic calming sooner, is needed, if there's something different that wasn't already proposed, we wanna make sure that the community on those streets know it's being proposed and have a chance if they are support or against it. When we were planning the traffic calming throughout the Meadow Park neighborhood with the Higuera Complete Streets, our first iteration of the plans had more robust traffic calming. And we heard from a lot of folks, Use a general touch. If we don't have high speeds, don't put in traffic calming. So we want to be thoughtful to make sure people have an opportunity if there's more features than we were planning are needed. So I'd say worst case, you could have maybe a six-month gap between when the signal's up and running or hybrid beacon's up and running and when we might be seeing the traffic calming coming in with the Complete Street project.

Got it. But that maybe gives us a little bit of the advantage of being able to be nimble with the Higuera Complete Streets and make adjustments if behaviors do change as a result. Will we be doing any sort of monitoring of traffic patterns in that area to kind of see how people's behaviors change after the installation happens?

Yeah, we have detailed existing volume and speed data on each of those routes, including exposition, Woodbridge and Carita. And the reason you don't see speed humps already proposed on Carita is the existing speeds and volumes are very low. Where we have the ability when the crossing project is completed to go back and see if people are changing their patterns and take updated speed and volume counts. And if those are changing in substantive ways, we'd have the ability to make the recommendation on whether more friction is needed.

Thank you, and then last question, with the King Court and on King, on the other side, I saw on your diagram it looked like there's going to be the no right blackout turn for drivers, there we go, yeah, for drivers coming from both of those directions when the signal is activated. Will that just be for pedestrians or will that also be when the bikes trigger the signal as well?

So with the hybrid beacon, both the bikes and pedestrians can only cross with the pedestrian signal. So those would be on for both users, whether it was a bike that hit the push button to activate the pedestrian crossing or a pedestrian. With the traffic signal, we can have it programmed the same way. The challenge is the bikes will often, to get the benefit of a shorter, stop on south street is you'd want the bikes to be using the vehicle signal and it would be difficult to give like an advanced head start with that no right turn on red sign with a bike unless the bike is using a pedestrian crossing

So likely a lot of our elementary users would be kind of using that crosswalk and the push button and all of that.

Yes. And I'll note, too, maybe I'll go to the concept with the traffic signal, too, is with the traffic signal, the typical way we design this is the cyclist. And I don't know if you can see my cursor or not. Probably not. So imagine you're coming from the south from Meadow Park. You'd be centered at the front of the traffic lane to get detected. So you don't really have a right turning vehicle turning in front of you. So the benefit of having a lead head start is still nice, but not maybe as useful when you're not crossing to the curbside.

Awesome. Thank you for the explanation. I think that's it for now.

Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

Yeah, I'm gonna ask you to repeat that last part because I was trying to figure out the difference between the bike and ped movement with the with the full signal versus just the hybrid beacon. What's the difference again?

Sure. Well, let's start with the hybrid beacon. So this, if you've used the crossing at Broad and Woodbridge, would be a really good example on that. As a cyclist, you'd come up from the side street to the curbside and you'd have a push button to hit that activates the pedestrian crossing. When the crossing starts, The illuminated signs come on saying side street traffic, in this case it would be King Court and King Street, you can't enter the intersection. That allows the bicyclist to proceed straight and then merge into the through receiving lane if they're crossing. And in this case, a lead head start is not really adding value in that you're already telling side street traffic you can't enter the intersection. With the traffic signal concept, the cyclist would be entering the intersection and continuing, you're approaching on a shared lane on King, and you'd stay, and if you're crossing, you'd stay in that through lane at the front where the bike detection symbol is. You arrive, the new bicycle detection indicator will light up saying, hey, we know you're here. And then you get a green light with the traffic signal. In that case, there's not really value in turning on a no right turn sign because you're the one that's entering the intersection. There's not a car turning in front of you. And there's no pedestrian signal active if a bike is crossing without a pedestrian also using the pedestrian signal. Now, there could be a scenario where, say, a pedestrian has hit the button, is waiting, and a bike arrives. In that case, the walk signal will come on first. And with the state vehicle code, as a cyclist, you can enter the intersection on a walk sign. So when there's a crosswalk activated, you could get that head start still. If it's just you on a bike, there's not really a way to do that if you're using the vehicle signal to cross, which would be what we would suggest.

And it sounds like at this intersection, unlike most of our other intersections where there is a bike facility of some sort, a lot of times in our normal intersections that we have existing in the city, there's a sensor in the roadway that detects the bike. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But you have a light, it sounds like, that will be triggered instead. This sounds like a new technology that we haven't used yet in the city.

Correct. And there's like a product that didn't really exist five plus years ago. Some of our older intersections may still have loops. They're wires that are wound underneath the pavement on the side streets. And usually that's where we don't have a tall pole to put a camera on. You need a taller view to use a video camera. We have other intersections with cameras, but those cameras may have been installed 20 years ago. And the technology has changed a lot where the older cameras used a change in pixels to say, is there a car or a bike there to tell the traffic signal there's something here waiting. Those ones can be more challenging to pick up bikes and that we can program specific bike zones and make them more sensitive. We can usually get them working pretty consistently. The newer cameras use AI and things where it cannot just tell that there's something there, but it can say that's a bike, that's a truck, that's a bus, that's a car. So with the cameras, we have a lot better consistency with picking up a bike when they're there waiting for the signal. But adding that with a visual indicator that says lights up and says, I know you're here, and you know that it's seen you, and even if you're waiting for a few seconds, you're not worried, does it know I'm here, do I have to run the red light? So I think the combination of those will work better than some of the older intersections we have in town.

Okay, thank you for that. Let me look at my notes here. Can you put the slide up that showed the Higuera Complete Streets improvements? Because we did get one email at least that talked about Corita Street, and what I heard you say earlier is that there is no improvements planned for Corita Street because that was not the preference of the neighborhood as part of the Higuera Complete Streets project when you last went and talked to the neighborhood about that. Did I hear that correctly?

Yeah, so like the first iteration of the traffic calming plan for this Greenway route had speed humps on all the streets, had some neighborhood traffic circles at several of the intersections. And what we heard when we met with the community, including a workshop at Meadow Park that looked at this and the hybrid beacon was that we don't want all of this Is it needed? Are the speeds high? The traffic circles remove parking. They can be confusing. Use a minimalist touch. And so what we did is we collected more data and said, well, which streets actually have speeds that are 25 to 30 plus miles an hour? And that was mainly exposition in Woodbridge. Corita had low speeds and low volumes. So what we came back with was instead an always stop at the Meadow and Woodbridge intersection instead of a traffic circle, and speed humps on only the streets where we had speeding issues. So Carita did not initially include speed humps because we heard from the larger community to not put those if they're not truly needed and speeds were low and volumes were lower. If it's already a safe and comfortable street to walk and bike on, don't add things that maybe won't be needed.

Okay, but what I'm hearing you say now is that with the installation of potentially a full traffic light at South and King, and there is concern that traffic behavior might change because there'll be a six month potentially leeway between when the crossing is built at South and King, that there might be interest if behavior changes in adapting that plan for this area. And it's still possible to do that even though we're out to bid for Hagera Complete Streets?

It's still possible whether that's whether the mechanism is a change order to the Complete Streets project or a change order at the back end of this project if contingency budget remains or as part of the Broad Street effort or a greater traffic calming program. I think the The detail would be making sure that we've confirmed there's a need that's changed and that the neighbors of Karina have an opportunity to know if something new is proposed and that they're generally wanting to see it. So what I would suggest is an option is collecting data, which we planning to do anyways after operation of a hybrid beacon or signal and if we're seeing speeds go up above 25 miles an hour or we're seeing lots of cars shifting this route to see if there's other solutions that weren't previously planned with the complete streets project that maybe times have changed and that the need is different and communicating with the neighbors on those streets to see if they still would support something like that

And I think I heard you say we already have sort of before data for this area for the traffic that goes through. We already know how many people drive through Woodbridge and Exposition right now?

Correct.

And how old is that data?

2023 okay so not less than five years probably pretty close to current probably pretty close to current before installation of a south uh king yeah i would approximate so um there hasn't been any large development or things that have changed here that would i expect it to be much different now than it was then but it's relatively current

great i think it's really important and we had some requests for making sure that we monitor what we had there before and what behavior was before and what happens afterwards to see if that cut through traffic increases i had one other question i think i can't find it now so i'll come back to it if i need to but thank you

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Yeah. Thank you for all the great questions. Thanks, staff. Asked a lot of questions. And agenda correspondents, thank you for thorough answers on those. Just, I just wanted to, one thing that was brought up, some clarification on King. There's not, we're not using advanced stop line or bike boxes there, right? It's just a regular queue for the traffic light.

We have advanced stop lines at each of the approaches to the intersection. We did look at the potential for a bike box that might make it more intuitive or convenient for, say, eastbound cyclists on South Street or westbound cyclists on South Street to use a box to turn left to use the crossing. One of the challenges is... If you have a bike box that conflicts with the right turning traffic from the side street, you need to have full-time prohibitions on right turns on red. And so that could add some delay and frustration for the drivers getting out that would otherwise be able to make a right on red and not even actuate the traffic signal. It also would stop traffic on South Street more often. It doesn't mean it can't be done, but it's something that's not a discretionary item. It's a standard. If you have a bike box that overlaps with the right turning traffic, you need to have full-time no right on red. And in this case, you would need to do that to be able to provide the bike box. The alternative is something I do commonly on Broad Street at Woodbridge is I might make a right turn onto the side street and then do a quick U-turn 50 feet down the block if no one's coming to saddle up and use the crossing. So there's a couple options and trade-offs with each of those. But right now, a bike box is not proposed on the King Court sides, but it could be with that trade-off that you'd have to fully restrict right turns on red.

The bike symbol on the graphic is just showing bikes where to queue. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Great. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Shoresman.

thanks i remembered my last question so with the with the new traffic signal um we had a question about well it implied there would be more stopping and uh a lot of times with the traffic signal it just goes it has a cycle right it it's it turns to red turns to yellow at certain times and certain intervals just to keep traffic throwing through flowing through the entire intersection But the point of this traffic signal is not necessarily to give everybody in a car the right time to go. It's more about stopping the traffic for the bikes, pedestrians, and also the traffic that's coming off of King Street or King Court. So would it be a regular sort of cycle as well as preempted by bikes and pedestrians? cross traffic and pedestrians or would it really just stop traffic on South Street if there was somebody wanting to cross the intersection or turn left?

That's a good question. So there's a couple of different ways you can run the cycling of a traffic signal. So like in the downtown, we run essentially a fixed time. So every approach gets served. The pedestrian crossings are on automatic recall. We have a time so that there's some sequence and progression where on other arterial streets like this, we use a fully actuated operation, which means that it'll generally sit on the major street and there's a minimum amount of time that will serve. But if someone comes up on the side street, whether that's a car or a person hitting the pedestrian crosswalk button or a bicycle that triggers the signal, it'll transition to the red light on South and serve them only when needed, but it won't otherwise be stopping traffic on South unless there's a person or a car or a bike on King triggering the traffic signal. We had another common question of how long is the delay if you're trying to cross South Street from King with the signal versus a hybrid beacon? They'd be pretty much the same in that when we have a hybrid beacon or a signal, we will program a minimum amount of time that it has to give the main street in between side street crossings. before it'll serve them again. Because otherwise, you could get someone just hitting the button all day long and fully stopping traffic, or a broken push button or malfunction that shuts down the whole major street. So for example, like on Broad and Woodbridge, if you push a button, use the crosswalk, it's going to be about 45 seconds before it'll let you turn on the crosswalk signal again, even if you push the button right away. Whereas if you came several minutes later, you could push it and it'll give you the crossing quickly. It'd be the same for a car or a bike in this situation and that. It's not automatic, but it'd be trying to maximize maintaining flow of traffic on south, but still serving side street crossings for cars and bikes and peds as efficiently as it can.

Okay, and last but not least, I know I kind of asked this last time, but just to repeat for the public. So our normal process if we were going to reevaluate something like this would be to take this potential change to the Active Transportation Committee, especially since this has been in the process for a long time and lots of community members have weighed in on it through that body and in other ways for a pretty long time. We have a deadline with the grant right now and we need to order supplies that have a really long lead time. Are those the reasons that we're being asked as a council to make this decision now rather than go back to the ATC where there was no time to schedule a meeting and still make our time commitments with our grants and ordering?

Yeah, that's exactly the reason why in a perfect world we would want to take it to them and have an opportunity for more broad discussion. There's also the context that we, the concept of a traffic signal here is not new, it's a modification or revisited alternative which we had discussed and that was our recommendation previously until it didn't have a path forward as the first phase of this crossing project. So there's a little more comfort in that there was the option of a traffic still presented and there was no major pushback, but there's value in having the committee to have an opportunity to weigh in on a final decision. It's mainly the concerns with the grant funding and timing and other challenges with putting a project in suspension for an indefinite amount of time until we have a final call on that. But the grant funding is a major deciding factor. The other consideration would be if there was interest in not risking grant funding and saying this has to move forward as initially planned. Now, you would have the potential where you advance a hybrid beacon, we bring this back to the committee, broader discussion, and if the direction at that time is we do think a signal is the right choice, there's some additional cost and inefficiency with remobilizing, and also some potential with driver or user confusion if you see something constructed and turn on as a hybrid beacon and then months later all of a sudden there's a signal it's a little bit of a user learning curve challenge but it's not a fatal flaw it's just a trade-off all right thank you so much thank you for your patience and lots and lots of answers and lots of questions appreciate it any public comment

Yes, we have several.

I'll just say one more time. If there's anyone that has public comment that has not put in a yellow slip, that is where we do our public comment. So that way you can be able to put in your two cents. We have one minute, two minute, and three minutes. So those who are speaking for one minute get to go first. Two minutes, get to go second. 30 minutes, get to go last.

Okay, our first speaker is Kristen Kent, then Alberto Ponte, and then Cole Bybee.

Hello, Mayor and members of the City Council. Thank you for this opportunity for public comment. My name is Kristen Kent, and I'm a homeowner of a King Street condo. When I bought my home 25 years ago, traffic on South Street was significantly lighter than it is now. As the population of San Luis Obispo grows and traffic increases, it becomes more difficult and less safe to turn from King Court onto South Street. Therefore, I support the installation of a full traffic signal for the South Street-King Street crossing project. Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor Stewart, council members, thank you for your time. My name is Roberto Ponte. I live on Woodbridge Street, and I'm very familiar with the intersection. I cross it by bike four times a day, by car probably ten times, and I'm in full support of conventional street light there. It would make things a lot easier. Right now it's about a It's a game of chicken. And you kind of have to get to the side, press this button, so you're out of the way. Cars don't see you. Then you kind of go back and move your bike forward. It doesn't really work that great. So I'm really glad that a signal is coming. Also, if there is a cutoff, I think a stop sign somewhere on Sendero and Woodridge would work great to stop that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alexandra W.

Hi, thank you. My name is Alexandra Vichka, and I want to thank the Council and staff for the great presentation. It was really informative. I live on 2346 Madrid Court, right off of Corita. I go to the intersection all the time and watch the traffic there, and I fully support a full traffic stop, option A, with the calming measures on Exposition and Corita and Woodbridge. My husband says that the reason you don't have any fast cars on Crete is because he's out there yelling at them saying, slow down, slow down. So I do encourage you to continue to study the area. And I strongly support speed bumps or other calming measures on Crete itself as well. But exposition is the really fast one. So that's a great plan. Thank you.

Thank you.

Cole Bybee, Aurora Wilcox, Sean McNam.

And if you wanna go ahead and line up next to each other, it helps the public comment continue. Is Cole here? I don't think so, okay. Come on up.

Hi, I'm Sean McNabb. I haven't spoken in front of this council for a while. I was actually part of that original hybrid beacon discussion way back in 2021 when my kids were in school and using that crosswalk every day. And was kind of disappointed it took so long for something to happen. uh they're now you know in high school and college um i would i really support a signal i support moving forward this immediately it has been over six years um that this has been studied um i don't see any reason why you would delay it any further studying it further it's definitely necessary um but i would want to say that you know living off of woodbridge i do am concerned about cross traffic and calming measures there and maybe speeding that up and not taking six months to put in speed bumps or any kind of calming, especially if that could potentially get delayed again right it's like oh you know four months in you're like oh we need to study again and it takes a year so um i want to say that i very very much support having this happen i'm very happy to see traffic calming and and more walkability and ability to cross south street i've been crossing south street for 15 years taking my kids downtown and stuff um so please you know i no more delays just get it done give us our ability to get through that street thank you thank you our next speaker is aurora wilcox and after that dustin hayes and then daniel c

I am just wanted to say that i'm from Korea, the tribe over the past six years i've probably seen a lot more activity. But like i'm all for the you know the signal traffic signal to be put into place i'm all for that, because there has been. a lot more activity on South Street for sure. But definitely keeping an eye on Corita Drive and just seeing how the activity is going over the next six months or any amount of time that you're taking for the construction would definitely be appreciated because There's kids in the neighborhood who are playing and I've seen a few fast cars in the past, but not to an extent where it's super alarming or anything, but definitely keeping an eye out on that. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Dustin Hyatt, and I'm also for doing the full traffic light. My partner and I recently moved into a duplex on South Street about 500 feet from that intersection. And we were really excited, but also a bit concerned about the location because there's lots of opportunities there. There's many local businesses, several parks, and even a community garden. in Meadow Park that we were excited for, but we were concerned about how busy South Street gets. There's often a constant stream of cars there. And I'm really glad that we're readdressing this. And even as I was taking, as I was walking to the bus today to come here, there was a car that was waiting for several minutes to leave the King Court. And thankfully they were watching me, but I had to cross over. And if they had gotten in a hurry, then they could have easily had an accident there. I also believe that the council should really look into or continue to look into other routes, improvements to other areas of the city to redirect that traffic because it is such a dense neighborhood and it gets so much car traffic that it can definitely be a hazard. Um, 1 thing that I would ask that to look into as well is, um, 1 looking at putting speed bumps in the surrounding neighborhoods to consider that those tight neighborhood streets. It's best for having small. cars there. And if it's overly aggressive or high, then that can easily damage those cars. I think that they're a great measure to prevent people getting impatient and doing dangerous things. But it's good to consider that there are people that live there and have to park there and that they need their cars. Thank you.

Thank you.

Daniel C., Gary, I'm sorry, I can't read the last name. And then our last speaker is Helene Finger.

Mayor Stewart, council members, I'll say welcome back to myself, not you. You're here all the time. Pleased to stand in front of you again. First and foremost, I'm here to express gratitude for your reconsideration of this intersection project. And a reminder that it is the sole means of egress for 130 households. And so it's effectively a glorified driveway for the residents of King Court. I'm also here to indicate my endorsement of the proposed change from the previously planned pet hybrid beacon to the fully signalized intersection. I didn't know all the details of that, but I'm hearing the details from Luke. It sounds very promising. One thing I would say at a disadvantage of the PHB is that if kept as it was originally planned, it deteriorates our already dismal level of service F, and even with the modifications to the pet hybrid beacon, it preserves the existing condition, which is the level of service F. It doesn't give us It doesn't move us away from that to a better level of service. It's simply preserving the existing core service we have. And so I can only throw my weight completely behind the signalized option as the path forward that meets the most needs for all community members. Technology is ever evolving. new signal detection systems and things like that for peds and bikes, you know, sound like great improvements. And, you know, I'm happy the city is exploring those. I'm very happy the city is exploring those. And then, yeah, desire to slow traffic, you know, Think either option or whatever, you know that will help break the traffic more Frequently or better along South Street. I know it is a high speed There's difficulty with speed control there So I think both those options are great and yeah the interruption to flow if we're doing detection only and it's it's majority of the time green for South Street you're gonna preserve that little service and As a transportation engineer myself, I don't see, especially with the calming measures that are presented, that that creates added friction for those neighbourhoods where you want even slower speeds. And so I think those would be great complements to the signal and deterring that pass-through behaviour in those residential streets. So I think that's...

You have gone basically out of time and my phone locked up.

So yes, I can only implore you to continue forward with the full signal rather than the pet hybrid beacon. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Gary Clay. I'm a resident here for 30 years. I've lived on Woodbridge Street for 30 years. I have a contrary opinion for you to think about. The other day on South Street at King where the pedestrian crossing was, I counted 16 cars stopped waiting for someone to cross the street. And the reason why they didn't was because they were texting instead of moving across the street. That is something that probably will always happen Exposition today, to go to Kennedy Club today, I spent 15 minutes trying to go across that intersection just to get across Exposition. All of those, Beebe, Exposition, King, Meadow, they all are blocked. They're all full of traffic all the time. So this is just not a King Street. So it's pretty well the entire thing. You can do what you want. I really think that the King Street proposition that you're proposing is a band-aid, but it's not the cure. I think ultimately there needs to be some systematic kind of looking at sort of more transportation planning, thinking about what really can be done and how it can be done. And I don't think it has been done. My wife and I, just to let you know, because we live on Woodbridge, we used to go down Woodbridge Street and then turn it broad to go up. We don't do it anymore because there's that pedestrian crossing. And there's a huge amount of traffic there. So now what we do is we go down to Mitchell Street and we go up. We've seen over the years that the traffic on that smaller road has systematically increased because nobody wants to stop and wait 20, 30 seconds for people to cross on that as well. So what you have is you have this interesting chicken and egg thing going on right now where as we make stops here and make stops here and make stops here and make stops here, then all of a sudden people are going to be wondering, where do we go? How do we do it? Where do we make a change? Where do we turn? How does that work? You can put strips on the road every 20 feet. That is not going to really change how people think and how people are going to drive. It's just not going to work. And you can say, well, we're going to have six months, and we're going to go, well, we're going to kind of look at sort of the mindset of the people. It just isn't going to work because people do not want to wait, like the other day, 16 cars to do that because they don't want to do that. So they're going to cut across and go to these smaller streets. And it's always going to be that way. So I think what I would really humbly suggest is to carefully think about what it is you're trying to do here. Because I think this King thing, as well as it might be a good gesture, it's a Band-Aid, but it really doesn't solve the problem of South Street. It just doesn't. Because what you have is you have a lot of more cars there. We've taken four lanes and taken it into two. We have a boulevard down the middle, and that's what you get. Thank you. Thank you.

Our final speaker is Helene Finger.

Hi my name is Helene Finger and I wanted to give a huge thank you to staff because they did a lot of work in a really short amount of time on a complicated project and it's very very much appreciated. I also wanted to extend my appreciation to each of you sort of council members and Mayor Stewart. You did an amazing job stepping in for ATC, who usually provide some guidance on this. And I think you, I couldn't ask for more on the questions that you were asking. I agree with staff's description of the traffic concerns in the Meadow Park neighborhood. Coming in on exposition is the one that's key for this project. And I think that there are some traffic calming measures that are going to be implemented as far as Higuera Complete Streets. This is the entrance to a calm neighborhood. And this is where we need to do the calming. I heard several people talk about wanting calming on Woodbridge and calming on Corita. You'd have to do both, or you're going to divert traffic down one or the other. So the easiest thing is let's get them diverted deciding not to go in through the calm neighborhood. And I think that will take care of the issues. And again, I appreciate it. I appreciate all of the community feedback on this project. I think it's going to be a great improvement for the residents in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Was the final speaker?

Yes.

Great, thank you. With all of that, any questions or ready to move to deliberation? Vice Mayor.

I'm happy just to jump right into deliberations. I'm just going to reiterate that I'm just so impressed with all of the work that you all have put in on this and really a quick turnaround. And then thank you also for going out to the Monday meetup and talking with more people. I heard a lot of feedback from folks in the neighborhood that they were absolutely just thrilled to have an opportunity to talk through some of the details that were unclear to them as this change was coming through. So thank you so much for all of that. Also, just very glad to see a lot of current and former Hawthorne families in here. I know that this is a really important corridor for so many of our kids or was an important corridor for our kids. And I know that making sure that this is safe as possible for all of our community members is kind of a primary concern in this room. I will be supportive of the full signal as proposed. I think there's just been an incredible amount of thoughtful consideration for all sorts of additional modifications and technologies that are going to make this crossing as safe as possible for all of our users, particularly the youngest ones, but then also the full signal gives the advantage of not having the stops be as long. as it might be with a hybrid beacon when there's a bicycle crossing, which I think is a real advantage to moving to the full signal model. And I am very much in favor, as we've heard from a lot of the speakers today and through some of our correspondence, of making sure that the calming measures that we have planned for Woodbridge and Corita. I know they're not currently planned for Corita but Woodbridge move forward as quickly as possible as part of the Higuera Complete Streets and that we do whatever outreach that we need to do and monitoring that we need to do to move forward traffic calming for Corita if we see that that's necessary. So I'll keep it simple and leave it there and just encourage you know all the monitoring that I know is going to be done so that we don't if the unintended consequences come with the project that we're able to address them as quickly as possible thank you thank you councilmember schwarzman thank you um thank you yeah i had a couple other questions come up

Just to, I know that you've answered this particular question before, but we did have emails, and just because of some of the public comment about the speeds on South Street, wondered if you could talk about, we had requests from residents asking why can't you just, can you just lower the speed limits, and maybe you could talk about what that process is like so that we can answer that question for folks, because I would love it to be slower in a lot of places, and I know lots of people would, I know it's not that simple.

So sure, happy to answer that. I hit on this a bit in the agenda correspondence, but right now the posted speed on south is 35 miles an hour. It's the lowest we can legally post and enforce it. Now the prevailing speeds are forty one something along designs. The speed surveys that are used to set those limits, the survey for South Street is already due to be updated within the next year. So we're already planning to do that. And as we discussed with the Vision Zero item a few weeks ago, any of these higher speed streets were within the current vehicle code provisions where we can set a lower speed limit. We will try to do so. Some of the recent changes to vehicle code that allow a little more discretion to round down even further are based on the street having a higher rate of severe injury crashes or proximity to a high pedestrian and bicycle generator, like a school or a park. To date, South Street does not have a high rate of severe injury crashes. Thank you, at least in recent history. So that's not a case we could likely make to reduce it lower, but proximity to the school, the park may be a provision we can advance. With that said, if I posted the limit on South Street at 30 miles an hour right now, it doesn't actually mean people will automatically start driving that speed. As mentioned in the Vision Zero item, we'd be coupling any speed limit reductions with things like radar feedback signs, warning flags, news releases, and targeted enforcement to help increase compliance. One option that could be taken short of reducing the limits, whether that's something we can do or not when we update that study, This could be a good corridor to look at radar speed feedback signs that give drivers a cue of what speed they are going. And there'd be flexibility for staff to advance those if there's remaining contingency budget with this project, or as part of our targeted deployment of those with the Vision Zero Action Plan or other subsequent projects. So I'd be happy to take direction from council if there's interest in trying to advance something like that.

Thank you. I just think it's really important. And like I said, I know you've answered that question many times before, but there are also things that we can do on roadways that naturally in some ways lower speeds and therefore make the street an eligible street for lowering the speed limit, correct?

Yeah, design has a much greater influence. The things you typically do to make it feel less comfortable to go really fast on the street is you make it feel narrower. So we often do that with restriping. We'll make the lanes feel narrow. Sometimes it's difficult to make the road physically very narrow if you still need to accommodate vehicles and clearances like that. The other things you can do are harder to do in the short term like have taller buildings and things closer to the street. On certain streets you can do things that make vehicles go up and down like a speed hump. Those are not always appropriate on like an arterial street or make them go left and right like a around about essentially does that some of those are difficult to do in the short term but we're happy to keep exploring measures like that one thing that is coming that i could see having some effect maybe not huge but as we brought the roadway ceiling project to you a month or two ago we are recommending on south street as part of just refreshing the striping to stripe a bike buffer on that eastbound side which could hopefully make the road feel a little narrower and maybe compel a little bit slower speeds. I wouldn't expect them to go down by 10 miles an hour or so, but every incremental benefit can have some value.

Thank you. Yeah, and I know that we did get some correspondence also about interesting crosswalks at other locations along South Street. Beebee in South was mentioned specifically, and then Meadow in South. So are those potential Speed reducing things that we could consider. I know there's a lot of factors that you have to think about when you're going to put in a crosswalk, for example, and you can't just put some paint on the street and call it good. And that won't necessarily make it safer for people. But are some things like that things that we could maybe look at in the future if traffic speeds remain too high.

Sure. So the active transportation plan does identify potential for a crossing to be considered at Meadow. And we've had subsequent input from the Active Transportation Committee and residents expressing interest in a crossing at Beebe to provide another parallel route to kind of bypass those busier Higuera south intersections. With the context of South Street and the fast moving traffic, as you mentioned, painting a crosswalk alone is probably not the right move. Something bigger is likely to be needed, as we've seen with the King intersection, whether that be a high beacon or signal those could be explored further some of the considerations are is this feasible is this just providing something like that increased safety or it could be unintended consequences so I think the meadow location will be particularly challenging and that it's really close to the broad and south intersection where you have two left turn lanes coming from broad on to south and then quickly merging adding a pedestrian crossing to also be attentive to in that same stretch is a lot of things and we also wouldn't want traffic to be backing up like into south street so i'd say either one of those locations could be certainly evaluated if prioritized in an upcoming budget through the active transportation committee or from the council but they'd be a more complex endeavor than simply painting something they need some more robust features if a crossing is appropriate. But yeah, we'd be happy to look at those further if they are prioritized among the other things that everyone wants to consider further. Yeah.

lots of priorities and i wanted to bring that all up just because i know there were some folks that were saying you know don't forget to look at this from a holistic approach there is not just this one intersection at south and king there is not just the neighborhood there is this whole area that we have to be careful we don't you know one of the speakers i think said you know this isn't the this isn't the silver bullet this isn't the thing that's going to solve all the problems on south street and I fully realize that. I don't think that this project is an attempt to solve all the problems. And it's going to create other difficulties in other places. So I think it's important for us to all realize that this one intersection is just a small piece of the bigger puzzle that we all have to kind of keep continuing to watch and look at and make sure that the unintended consequences aren't aren't more significant than we think they're gonna be. And as Vice Mayor Francis said, to continue to look at how things turn out as we proceed forward. The original purpose of this project started out, as one of our speakers said, as really a concern about safe routes to schools. Although we don't have a recent, serious incident on this particular stretch of roadway. We have had a very serious incident on this stretch of roadway and it was from a child who was killed in a traffic accident. And so we really need to find a way to help kids get safer across this pretty seriously large arterial that is between a pretty big neighborhood and the school that is nearby. And so my priority in this has always been to make that crossing of that street safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. The fact that we are doing this at an intersection with a pretty significantly sized neighborhood where there's also car level of service issues creates pretty much a win-win situation in my mind, and I'm really grateful that staff has found You've answered all my questions. You've found the right technology and the right signage and the right combination of things to both continue to prioritize pedestrians and bicyclists and our kids, most importantly, while also creating hopefully a better situation for the neighbors that are having to drive in and out of that intersection on a regular basis. I would have liked, the one thing that I would have liked would have been the possibility of going back to the ATC and they really are our experts on these topics and they really dig deep and I appreciate the compliment that we did a good job in their stead of evaluating things, but that has been the go-to method and I'm glad that we did our part and held our own in this discussion. I hope that in the future we'll have time to do that and I just recognize that the reason that we're not right now is because of the grant funding and we really do need to move forward. I also want to just empathize with the community member that was expressing frustration about the length of time that it takes to get these things to happen and Boy, don't we know it? The story of our lives is that we can never move as fast as we want to in city government and what we lose in speed we make up for in transparency and community engagement. So I hope that's at least a little bit of consolation, but I agree. I would always like these things to move. quicker than they end up moving. So thank you to staff for all your work on this and actually being pretty nimble and bringing this back pretty quickly so that we could make a determination and move forward as quickly as we can without losing those grant funds. So I'm prepared to support the full traffic signal at this time.

Thank you, Council Member Marks.

Well, thanks. I'll keep my comments brief. I just want to thank staff very much for all this work and listening to the residents and how many emails I can't even count them, but I read everyone. There was an outpouring of cries for help from the residents. And I'm so impressed that staff was able to be flexible, pivot, be nimble in this situation. So I'm going to echo the words of one of the folks who testified tonight, get it done, full traffic signal. I'm 100% in favor. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Thank you. Thank you staff for being nimble and working hard on this I also want to thank the neighbors. We heard a lot of comments some are here tonight several invited me out So I've spent several mornings in the last two weeks out at the intersection talking to folks It's got to be one of our highest dog crossing crosswalks in the city. I saw way more dogs and almost people Strangely enough. Also, I want to make sure to recognize that for a lot of folks, South Street is a way to get across the south side of town. But South Street is a neighborhood. Pretty much all the land use on both sides of South Street are homes, people's homes. I lived on Branch Street about three blocks from this intersection for over 15 years. This was my neighborhood. I don't know how many times I've crossed that intersection a lot. So, you know, this is where people live. It's where their kids play. It's where they go to school. So I think we want to keep that in mind when we're thinking about, you know, how we think about what is South Street. We've luckily not had a serious injury there of late, although last year I did my inaugural fire department ride along and our second call that day was for a vehicle striking a cyclist at that intersection and the vehicle had violated the flashing yellow beacon. The cyclist was fine. generally, physically, I should say. I think the only reason they were, though, is they were lucky enough to be struck by a very, very small, low-profile hood car. Imagine it would have been worse if it had been a large vehicle like a truck, for example. So I think we've been lucky in that. And so for me, this project has always been number one issue, number two issue, number three issue, safety, particularly given that it connects not only as a neighborhood, but it connects one of our major city parks and one of our elementary schools, Hawthorne. Had a wonderful conversation this morning with a Hawthorne parent who walked me through numerous scenarios that they had experienced with trying to cross this intersection with their child. I think this can be safer because I think although pedestrian hybrid beacons have their use, I think generally traffic signals are better understood by everyone. They're better understood by motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Why? Because we encounter them constantly all the time. We all know how they work. Not only do we know how they work in the formal sense, but we have a lot of intuition about them because we use them so much. So I think when a full traffic signal can be justified, it's usually going to be a better option than a pedestrian hybrid beacon. We also know that they get better compliance. There's actually some research out there looking at compliance between rapid flashing beacons, pedestrian hybrid beacons, and full traffic signals. Not a lot, but some research shows much better compliance for full traffic signals. And, you know, if you've spent any time crossing Broad Street at Woodbridge, you know that compliance is an issue with pedestrian hybrid beacons. And I think also, and I've seen this a lot at Woodbridge, is the side street violation of the turn prohibitions because they see it as a gap, right? It's like, hey, the ped's crossing. Here's my chance to make my left turn out. And I know we get similar and would continue to get similar kinds of activities at King. And then finally, the concerns about cut through, I hear them. We have mitigation measures that we will already be installing. They are definitely coming associated with the High Garris Complete Streets project. And we know that there are others we could potentially deploy if we have a problem. So I'm glad that staff has said that they're going to continue to do monitoring after installation. OF WHATEVER WE VOTE ON. AND I WOULD HOPE THAT THEY WOULD REPORT TO COUNCIL AS SOON AS QUICKLY ABOUT WHAT WE'RE SEEING OUT THERE SO THAT WE COULD POTENTIALLY ACT QUICKLY TO WHETHER TO MODIFY THE HIGH GARA COMPLETE STREETS PROJECT OR POTENTIALLY TRY TO QUICKLY IDENTIFY ANY ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS OUT THERE. SO THANK YOU FOR COMMITTING TO DOING THAT AS WELL. I'LL BE SUPPORTING THE FULL TRAFFIC SIGNAL. THANK YOU.

Thank you. And thank you so much for all the great comments from my colleagues. I will try not to repeat many of them so that we can move on to the next topic. But I truly hear you, Councilmember Marks. We had a lot of comments, a lot of community engagement. And this is why we're here today. This is also why we're here today is the amount of great work that had already been done. by staff on this as far as this isn't just a new idea. This was already a plan, but we couldn't quite get there at that point. So just really excited that you were able to all move as fast as possible to make this work was just, I don't want to say shocking because you do amazing work, but just really, really appreciate it. I think the hard part is people want to get places fast, as you are talking about. South Street is one of the ways to get around and get across town. But we also live in a place called Slow for a reason. And a lot of us moved here for that reason. We enjoy the slower pace. We didn't move here because we wanted to be in the hodgepodge or hullabaloo of... I don't know what word I'm trying to use. Anyway, Los Angeles and San Francisco, et cetera, is we really enjoyed this pace of life. Sometimes it's hard when you have to get your kids somewhere, and you have to get to work, and you have some errands to run. So I hear that. But as we talked about the fatal death of a child a long time ago at this same location, as we've talked about the Vision Zero and 19 fatal deaths in the last seven years on bikes, we are talking about getting people around in cars, in bikes, walking, et cetera, safely. And the safe routes to school is one of the ways that we can get people throughout the entire city. And that is what we're looking at. And so the fact that we can move to a traffic signal, I think, is wonderful. Because I agree, people have the understanding of a traffic signal, it's clear. I still listen to people that tell me, I don't know what else to do right now. The light is flashing on Broad Street, and there's panic. But there's also a lot of joy around that beacon. So I don't want to take that away, because I will tell you, I'd much rather cross there on my bike or in walking than in other places on that busy street. So I don't want to take anything away from that beacon. But I think that the signal will be a way that everyone can get around safer. And the bonus of the new technology of being able to be seen on a bicycle with that type of signal as well is just the extra bonus. So thank you for all of this work. I'm in full support of the traffic signal and being that we have three other items, I will not continue to belabor the point. So I would love to move 7D and that is obviously to a full traffic signal with the amendments that were made by staff on the South Street and King Court Crossing project. Do I have a second? Council Member Shoresman.

Vice Mayor Francis and I were Rochambeauing for the motion, so I guess I get the second.

Sorry about that. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Can we have roll call?

Mayor Stewart?

Yes.

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Vice Mayor Francis? Yes.

And the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much, Luke, and thank you so much to all the community. And we're just going to take three minutes while you guys get set up for adopting a resolution approving the County of San Luis Obispo Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan. We'll see you in a minute. Thank you so much. We'll get right back to it with item 7A in our Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. Chief Harris, I'll pass it off to you.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart, members of the council. I'm Randy Harris, interim fire chief, here tonight with Joe Little, our emergency manager. This presentation provides an overview of the city's local hazard mitigation plan, its relationship to the county's multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan, and the key actions requested from council this evening. The local hazard mitigation plan is a proactive planning level tool that serves as the city's blueprint to risk reduction. The plan analyzes the city's natural hazards, risks and exposures, and identifies and prioritizes mitigation actions. The value isn't just in the resulting product, but also includes the planning process from risk assessment to potential mitigation strategies. Due to the severity and frequency of natural disasters such as large wildfires, municipalities in California have generally done well over the years in both planning and preparation. However, the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, which was an amendment to the Stafford Act, now requires jurisdictions to adopt and renew their local hazard mitigation plan every five years to be eligible for both federal grants and mitigation funds. I'd like to provide a quick overview of the adoption process. Understanding that hazards are regional and to better align neighboring policies, San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services proposed a countywide multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan, or MJHMP. All seven cities, 10 CSDs, and four special districts were included. In 2025, San Luis Obispo County hired WSP consultants to conduct the analysis and draft the plan under the supervision of County OES. San Luis Obispo City contributed its portion of the contract work, which was approximately $4,500. Being part of the San Luis Obispo County multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan strengthens regional coordination and ensures our mitigation strategies compliment those of neighboring jurisdictions while still allowing for city-specific risk assessments and prioritization. This maintains city-specific priorities while reducing cost and duplication of efforts. It also strengthens partnerships that are essential during disasters and better aligns grant implementations by coordinating between regional partners.

Thank you. Picture is a mid-Higera bypass project that was completed to reduce flooding. On mitigating action SL7, the primary hazard mitigated is adverse weather, and the description is assess structural capacity of key assets, including bridges, and pursue infrastructure improvements as necessary. Status is listed as in progress. The city continues to prioritize asset maintenance And replacement toward that in the city completed the work on the mid high gear bypass project to address flooding in the area. The mid high gear bypass project is completed, but we still work toward identifying actions we can take to help mitigation action. SL seven. The local has mitigation plan is not an emergency response plan is, however, a planning tool that focuses on long term strategies to reduce risks before disaster occurs. It is important to highlight that while several mitigation actions are identified, it is not expected that all mitigation actions are funded or complete to be eligible for FEMA reimbursement. This plan also ensures eligibility for FEMA funding and for AB 2140 fund matching from the state is kept intact. This process followed FEMA's standardized methodology and included collaboration with city departments, utilities, and community partners. The process included hazard and risks were identified, the community and stakeholders were engaged, our capabilities to mitigate hazards were assessed, a mitigation strategy was developed, public comment and review was offered. FEMA reviewed the document and annexes when submitted by the county. Public engagement ensures the plan reflects community priorities and increases public support for mitigation actions. Public engagement for the development of the plan included a January 14th, 2025 stakeholder and public workshop in the Board of Supervisor Chambers, a January to February 21st, 2025 online public survey. We had 224 respondents. May 29th, 2025 online public workshop, followed by a public review period May 21st, 2025 to June 9th, 2025. Major stakeholders were from a wide range of businesses and community stakeholders, including Cal Poly, the Chamber of Commerce, Downtown SLO, Has SLO, People Self Help Housing, CAPSLO, the Water Resources Advisory Committee, Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters, or VOAD, and the SLO County Disaster Planning Advisory Committee, or DPAC.

For our listening audience, I'll quickly review our city's 10 identified hazards, which include adverse weather, infestation, biological agents, drought, earthquake, flood, landslide, subsidence, wildfire, and hazardous materials are all hazards that were identified as potential threats of various degrees to the City of San Luis Obispo. To provide a little explanation, subsidence was included as a hazard to our geographic area because of past groundwater pumping in the Los Osos Valley. It was ranked low in significance level. For brevity this evening, we'll review our wildfire risk, which is one of the 10 hazard and has the potential for a more significant impact. To analyze the values at risk from a wildfire, we utilize the 2025 state fire hazard severity zone mapping. Wildfire presents a critical risk in our city that impacts approximately 15,870 people, over 7,700 properties at an assessed value of $5.5 billion. Also highlighted in the three state fire hazard severity zone areas are a total of 70 critical facilities that are exposed to fire hazards. I'd like to highlight that 31 of the 70 critical facilities are listed under transportation, which includes highways, roads, bridges, mass transit and railway infrastructure. With the values at risk identified, the plan then focuses on potential wildfire mitigations, including infrastructure resilience, vegetation management, evacuation planning and modeling, and public education. One particularly effective way that allows us to accomplish all these mitigations is by establishing firewise communities. Just recently, Emergency Manager Little was able to establish our third firewise community in Laguna Lake Mobile Home Park. While non-regulatory, the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan does interact with a handful of regulatory mitigation tools, such as the safety element of the General Plan. With the adoption of the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, it is recommended that future safety element General Plan updates be conducted. I would also like to highlight that the 2025 plan adoption doesn't have a direct fiscal impact. Most of the planning mitigation items have little to no additional costs or are already identified in our existing capital improvement projects. Any new projects over 25,000 would go through the normal capital improvement planning process unless Council directs otherwise.

This mitigation action plan reflects both continuity and advancement. 17 new hazard mitigation actions and 24 ongoing actions from the previous plan. This is reviewable in table G29 of the annex file. These mitigation actions were prioritized using a standardized FEMA-aligned methodology, considering risk, cost, and implementation feasibility. This plan integrates across departments, fire, public works, community development, utilities, and administration to ensure coordinated approach. Key focus areas include infrastructure resilience, wildfire and flood mitigation, climate adaptation, and community preparedness. Overall, this sets the city up to reduce long-term risk, improve response capability, and remain competitive for state and federal funding. The local hazard mitigation plan is not a standalone document. It integrates with and strengthens existing city policies. The plan directly supports city goals of protecting public safety, maintaining resilient infrastructure, safeguarding natural resources, and using public funds responsibly. The plan provides a roadmap for reducing risk before disaster occurs, while preserving eligibility for FEMA mitigation funding that can help implement many of these projects. Staff recommends adoption of the San Luis Obispo Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, which is Annex G of the San Luis Obispo County Multi-Jurisdiction Hazard Mitigation Plan. That concludes our presentation. We would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

That was fast. So as I remember, the Buena Vista was number one. Now we have Laguna Mobile Home Park as number three. So who's number two? The San Luis Drive neighborhood. Ah, thank you. So we have the whole area up there. Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much. Any questions? OK, seeing none, any public comment?

No, we have none.

OK, thank you so much. I'll bring them back. Would you like any deliberation, Vice Mayor? No? Well, Council Member Marks. Sorry, that was odd.

Yes, I fully support this plan. I think it's great, and it's wonderful to see this regional approach. So I'm going to support the staff recommendation.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Francis.

Yeah, I appreciate you answering my questions in a gender review about this. And, you know, I think our lack of questions here is mostly because this is such an incredibly thorough report. It was fascinating to read through and appreciate all of the collaboration across the region. And also just excited to see that so many of these projects that would help mitigate some of the hazards are already programmed into our our CIP. So thank you all for putting this together and for all your effort here.

Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

Yes, thanks for the great report and I appreciate the regional approach. Glad the county was willing to kind of lead this approach and help with a little bit of grant funds, it sounds like, to make it happen too. I guess I do have one question. It would not be very on brand for me to not ask about pandemic planning. It's not a hazard in the same way that the hazards that are listed here our hazards but are we doing some kind of coordinated regional approach to pandemic planning too and if so where is that discussed if not in this plan

We have a standalone part of our emergency operations plan that addresses pandemics. We do work, we do a, we call it FR pod, and I'm going to forget the... First responder. Thank you. First responder, point of distribution. Thank you. And that simulates an inoculation in an emergency situation. And we do those once a year as we do our flu drives. This year coming up, we're potentially doing a full-scale one, depends on what the County Public Health wants to do. But so we do work towards those things and that's the extent of our regional effort is with County Public Health.

Awesome, thank you so much. Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Great. Thank you to staff and thank you to the county for doing the heavy lifting on putting together a multi-jurisdictional plan. In the city of San Luis Obispo, we have a very current and very good safety element within our general plan, which guides a lot of our policy. You know, the real value of the LHMP and the real value you're contributing getting this through is the eligibility for federal mitigation dollars to do more of the kinds of projects like we did on Mid-Higera. And also the AB 2140 compliance portion as well. This is like the extra cell. It makes us eligible for additional funding in a post-disaster situation for public assistance dollars. So it covers more of the cost that the city would incur if we were to have a disaster. So the real benefit of this kind of work is the real dollar value to the community.

thanks for doing that and look forward to supporting the lhmp thank you so much and i just i can't help but echo my fellow colleagues this was a great deal of work and and i know that it's been a quick wrap up and i also appreciate as you're saying vice mayor it's it's because we have so much support for you and what you're doing um this has been a lot of detailed work that we've been very um focused on and um so i think as far as as far as the county i just want to give a big thanks to the county for leading this work because as we do all of the work that we do it has to be regional so um a fire doesn't care about the border of a city so thank you so much for this work and um do we need an official motion on this yes okay um advice or sorry councilman

Yes, I'd love to move approval of the County of San Luis Obispo Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan 2025 update.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I will second.

Thank you. Can we have roll call?

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes, and that is 5-0. Thank you so much for that great report. All right. Well, next we have the adoption of the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan for 2025. And here to do our presentation is Assistant Director of Utilities, Shauna Scott, and Deputy Director of Water, Michael Borman. And you're welcome to use both microphones if you'd like.

We'll share the middle one. All right. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm Shauna Scott, Assistant Director of Utilities, and I'm glad to be here tonight with Michael Borman, our Deputy Director of Water, to present the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan and 2026 Water Supply and Demand Assessment. The State Water Code mandates updates to the urban water management and water shortage contingency plans every five years, a process that includes holding a public hearing and adoption of the plan by the City Council prior to submittal to the State Department of Water Resources. The urban water management plan is the city's primary long range water supply planning document with a planning horizon up to the year 2050. The water shortage and contingency plan is the city's six stage action plan in response to conditions that may limit water supplies, such as drought, water quality issues and catastrophic infrastructure and supply interruptions. The water supply and demand assessment is prepared annually and evaluates current water availability and if a water shortage is anticipated in the 2026 to 2027 fiscal year. The good news is the city's water supply remains reliable and sufficient to meet projected demands through 2050. even when evaluated under dry year conditions. This is representative of our community's diligent commitment to water conservation and the work of current and past councils and city staff to develop and implement strategic and responsible water planning policies, plans and projects serving our current and future population and community. And now I'd like to turn this over to Michael for the presentation.

All right. Thank you, Shauna. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. As Shauna mentioned, tonight we're going to have three separate water planning related documents. 2025 Urban Water Management Plan, the 2025 Water Shortage Contingency Plan, and the 2026 water supply and demand assessment. Together, these documents really evaluate the city's long-term water supply reliability, assess whether a shortage is anticipated during the upcoming year, and establish the framework that the city would rely upon in responding to any type of water shortage condition, whether caused by drought or any other type of issue. Tonight we have four recommendations for the council. First would be adoption of a resolution approving the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan. Second is adoption of a resolution approving the 2025 Water Shortage Contingency Plan. Third would be to receive and file the 2026 Water Supply and Demand Assessment. And then fourth, make the CEQA findings identified on this slide on the screen now. So again, three separate documents here, and they have really three different purposes. The Urban Water Management Plan largely is a long-term water supply planning document. As Shawna mentioned, it runs through 2050. It also contains a state required five-year drought risk assessment, which is gonna be the upcoming five-year period. The 2026 water supply and demand assessment is an annual report that we bring to the city council. This year, it just happens to align with us bringing this five-year urban water management plan. So it's examining supply versus demand for the upcoming fiscal year. And then third, the 2025 water shortage contingency plan, is again gonna be the outline for the actions that the city would take if we have any type of a shortage condition, either in the next year or the five following years or any point in the future. So a little information about our water supply portfolio. As you all know, we get our water from Salinas Reservoir, Whale Rock Reservoir, Nascimento Reservoir, and we're currently working on a project to bring groundwater back as one of our potential water supplies. That project is scheduled to begin in 2027. Importantly, we also have a recycled water program that offsets potable water use within the community, and that accounts for roughly 5% of our overall water demand. One of the things that isn't traditionally thought of as a water supply, but we kind of consider it a little bit of a A similar thing is our conservation program over the years has significantly reduced water demand in the community and we feel it's important to note that because these supplies that we do have last a lot longer because we use a lot less water in the community now than we did in the 1980s and 90s especially. So these three reports, as I mentioned, cover different time periods and they also utilize different methodologies. So for our near term planning, meaning the upcoming year for the water supply and demand assessment and the five year period covered for the drought risk assessment, which is part of the urban water management plan, We utilize our water projection model to determine if we have appropriate water supplies for those periods. That water projection model receives inputs, various inputs, one being our current reservoir storage, another being the anticipated water demand across the community in the upcoming years. We restrict supplies if we have any type of known infrastructure issues. For instance, right now the Nassau Minnow pipeline is damaged, so the upcoming year shows restricted deliveries from Nassau Minnow. And then we utilize modeled climate data or historic climate data, depending on what we actually input into the model. That model outputs an expected number of years of water supply that the community has remaining. So for everything basically from one to five years, we rely on near term planning, water projection model inputs and outputs to determine if we have adequate supplies. For anything beyond five years, we rely on a framework that's linked back to the general plan. And essentially we're looking at forecasted population multiplied by an anticipated or expected planning value for how much water will be used per person in the community. So the general plan, as you know, runs through 2035. We have established population projections through 2035, but we don't have projections beyond 2035. And so what we did in this scenario is we we maintained the city's one percent maximum growth rate from 2035 through 2050 to establish those population numbers. And then the gallon per capita daily number of 117 GPCD is based on the maximum amount of water that can be used per Senate Bill X7-7, which is the Water Conservation Act that required a 20% reduction in water demand statewide. So that's kind of the general planning basis for long-term projections. I will note that both the water demand and the population numbers are very conservative figures. We generally grow at a slower pace than that 1%. And then the 117 GPCD is significantly more than our current water demand, which is about 87 GPCD. So we've got a little buffer. Part of the reason is there's a lot of uncertainty in what the future looks like when we're talking 25 years in the future. And so we wanna make sure that if things change in the future, that we have the water that we need for those community members.

So a little more detail just on near-term reliability assessment methodology.

So again, that water projection model, it's an Excel-based mathematical model. We enter our current reservoir levels for each of the three reservoirs into that model. We enter current water use information, so that 87 GPCD. We enter current population based on Department of Finance data. We make any restrictions for known infrastructure deficiencies, for instance, Nascimento Pipeline being offline. And then we're actually able to dial that model kind of up and down and simulate wet years or dry years, depending on what we're trying to simulate. So in this scenario, we're simulating dry year scenarios. That model outputs an expected number of water of years left of water supply, which allows us to confirm for the required five year drought risk assessment that we do have sufficient water supplies. And then same thing for the upcoming dry year. And then we're able to make a recommendation to the city council on whether or not we should enter into any type of a declared water shortage and enact our water shortage contingency plan, which Shauna noted we won't have to do tonight. So I covered most of this already, but the 20, the upcoming year, we show we have adequate supply available for, and then for the five-year period, same thing, we have adequate supplies again. Long-term supply forecasting methodology is a little more complicated. Again, this is going to be just for predicting or trying to identify the supply volume that we'll have available in the future, not the demand volume. We'll get into that next. From Nosso Meno, we have what we refer to as the dependable yield. That's an expected volume that we believe we can safely receive even during dry years. From Nosso Meno, that's actually our full entitlement for that contract, which is 5,482 acre feet a year. Important to note, that's actually more water than the city uses annually right now. We add into that our combined safe annual yield from Salinas and Whale Rock, which is 4,910 acre feet per year, an anticipated safe annual yield of 700 acre feet of groundwater, And then we actually remove 500 acre feet of capacity to adjust for anticipated siltation. So during extreme storms, the reservoirs do silt up. We know we don't want to allow development to occur today that will rely on water that may not be there in the future because that lake is silted in more. subtract 500 acre feet off the top to make sure we don't do that. That results in about 10,592 acre feet of supply available to us in the future. On the demand side, as I mentioned earlier, we take a modified approach to the city's general plan population projections, multiply that by the maximum amount of water that we can use under SBX 7-7, which is 117 gallons per capita daily, And that gives us our forecasted demand. We had to compare supply and demand in the urban water management plan for periods all the way through 2050 under dry period, single dry year, multiple dry year, and then normal conditions through the entire horizon. And under all of those scenarios, we showed that we had adequate water supply. which I cover in this slide. So assuming at any point in time in the future we do encounter any type of water shortage, we're also able to enact the the measures outlined in the city's water shortage contingency plan. So during a meeting like this, we often think about a shortage occurring from drought, but the reality is we can have shortages occur from a variety of things outside of drought that are Um, a little less predictable, most notably probably infrastructure failure. That could be a pipeline within our distribution system or raw water pipeline. It could be a well failing a variety of things. We could have water quality issue, whether that be naturally occurring contamination from. some sort of a spill, we could have a power outage, we could have a major seismic event that damages infrastructure, or we could have regulatory changes that make it where we have a supply that used to be compliant with state regulations that maybe no longer is. So any of those types of things could result in a shortage. But we normally talk about drought, so that's the most prominent one. If we ran our our modeled scenario through the water projection model and it output that we had any less than five years of water supply available, essentially we would go to this water shortage contingency plan and identify what actions are available, kind of a recommended that would reduce water demand within the community. So as you'll see on the screen, we have really, there's six stages. The monitor stage is really a stage that's kind of our normal conservation programs. We're saying this is the stuff we do all the time. We're always working with customers on reducing their water use. We have staff that are proactively putting out communication. So that's that zero stage that we have at the top. From there, each stage, simulates a 10% reduction in demand. So the watch stage starts at 10, warning adds an additional 10% reduction all the way through the critical stage where we're trying to reduce our water demand by 50 or more percent. At that stage, we've essentially cut off all outdoor irrigation and things are pretty significant. At that stage, that also corresponds to us having less than two and a half years of water supply available. So again, with the three items that we have for the council's consideration tonight, two are required to be adopted by resolution. The third, the water supply and demand assessment is a receiving file item. And then our fourth recommendation is related to CEQA findings. So with that, if the council has any questions, Sean and I are available to answer anything that you may have.

Thank you. Thank you for this thorough presentation. You know, I get asked all the time. We don't have enough water. How are we going to do this? Why are we building? We need water. And so this is just a really great presentation to make it very clear. So thank you very much. Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you. Yeah, I really only have a couple of questions. Great report. Super clear. Nice slides, too. I like the graphics on the slides. Yeah, you took it up a notch with your slide performance there tonight. My questions are mostly about NOSI and the water that we have available there. Maybe you could just give us a little bit of an update on what access to how much water we have right now from that source and what we anticipate. how we anticipate getting back up to the potential to utilizing our allowable yield, I think is the term.

Yeah, so our Noscovino pipeline is still at reduced capacity due to storms in 2023. The county installed a temporary pipeline across the Salinas Riverbed. Our normal capacity that we can deliver is about 5.2 million gallons per day. With the temporary pipeline, it's reduced to about 3.1 million gallons per day, so about 60% of what we normally receive. It's a little more complicated than that because the temporary pipeline can only be in place when the riverbed is dry. So in years where it's wet, like this year, we're normally offline with that pipeline from roughly January through May or June. So there's about six months or so where that water is not available from Nosso Meno. So overall, we kind of anticipate roughly 2,000 to 2,500 acre feet per year. available from Nascimento until the pipeline is repaired. Right now we're projecting that that pipeline will be back online in full capacity sometime in 2027.

Okay, so not too much longer if all goes as planned. The next question I had was about, it's table 5.1, and I don't know which document this is in, but it's page 284. Oh, it's the water supply and demand assessment. There's a table that says the assessment year available potable supply by source, and it shows zero available from Nacimiento in February and March. Is that because of the

um lack of ability during the wet season to utilize our supply from that source yes and um interestingly the table may not align with what i'm telling you was available this year because for the 20 26 27 demand forecasts we're supposed to simulate a dry year and so we're we're showing additional months where we're anticipating NOS Mena would be available in essentially reduced capacity. So we're really showing that it's not available during the wettest months of the year.

Okay. Thank you. That explains why you only have two months here and you just said a longer period a few minutes ago. Okay. Thank you. That's it.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you for answering all my questions earlier. But I had just one more that I wanted to follow up on. I know we're really strategic about which water source we're pulling from because of recharge and water quality and kind of thinking about doing the right mix at the right time. And I was curious about how our groundwater is going to factor into that when that 700 acre feet of groundwater comes online in 2027. Is that going to be kind of an emergency use only, or is that going to be kind of figured into the mix because of particular qualities that it possesses?

Yeah. You know, we're really hopeful that we'll be able to pump a little bit of groundwater all 12 months out of the year to help with water quality issues. Our groundwater is really on kind of the far end of our distribution system. It allows us to bring some fresh water into that side of the system. What we do know at this point is we don't think we're going to have a lot of groundwater available during any period of extended drought. So there's a lot of connectivity between groundwater and surface water flow in San Luis Creek. And so we want to make sure that any pumping that we do isn't reducing stream flows. It's one of our SGMA GSP requirements. And so we're anticipating that groundwater will actually probably be used more so during wet years and allow us to rely less on reservoirs and store water in those reservoirs a little more for those drier periods.

Is the effect of pumping some of that groundwater that then the reservoir is recharging with fresh water that then improves the water quality of the stored water in that reservoir or in that groundwater reservoir? Or is that maybe a wrong assessment of what you said?

Yeah, sorry. And I'll try to maybe reframe it a little bit. So pumping the groundwater into our treated water distribution system on that side of town will help us improve the water quality on that side of town. The rationale for kind of leaving or not pumping groundwater during drier periods is that we want to maintain stream flow to support aquatic habitat and and during those drier periods we'll really be relying on nasa minnow most heavily and that's kind of a use it or lose it entitlement that we have there so we're not allowed to store water and carry over rights from year to year so during dry periods predominant use would be from nasa minnow and salinas excellent thank you so much thank you councilmember marks

Thank you. Well, this was an excellent staff report. I have to say I read the whole darn thing. I even had it printed out so I could make notes. And I asked a lot of questions already, which have been answered very thoroughly in agenda correspondence. I really appreciate that. I did have the... uh privilege i guess you could say of serving uh on city council during uh from 2008 to 2016 which are like the you know we talk about the good old days this is the bad old days when we really had a drought and um our uh city residents really stepped up with water conservation which you referred to so my question is um what are we doing in terms of All of the new residents who are moving into housing, we're really proud of how much housing we're building, but guess what? The housing is full of people and the people are using water. So my concern is that some of the people coming from other areas might not be as motivated for water conservation. So what are we doing in that area?

Yeah. So one of the important things to note with new development is because of California Plumbing Code and the what we call MWELO, the Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. New development is generally highly efficient by default. So every toilet flush, every time we do a load of laundry, everything that is built with that development is efficient. So to your question, kind of how do we change maybe the habits of people that weren't here during the last drought, we really focus on proactive communication from our conservation team. And so we're involved in, for instance, just last night we went to Monday meet up down at Meadow Park. We'll go down to Farmers Market and we try to get mailers out to people. And then we have dedicated conservation staff who are are available seven or five days a week to support community members when they have a high bill. Another thing that we're doing that I think is going to be really important to us in the future is we're installing AMI water meters right now that just make data more accessible for a property owner. And so you're able to see when you ran your irrigation yesterday exactly how much water did it use. Was it an abnormal amount because you had a leak or you had family visiting in town? How much did that actually increase your water use? It just allows people, rather than getting one meter read once a month, to check in on a daily basis to try to keep an eye on their water use. That'll really help. And again, just back to our conservation staff, I think they do a really good job at getting the word out. And as you know, habits change sometimes slowly over time, but I think it really does help that the infrastructure that we're installing in these new homes is really efficient.

That's great. And then I am going to ask a question about subsidence, because I think a number of... of longer-term residents will remember what happened to the Bear Valley, a little shopping center, and Los Angeles Valley Road. And during the, from, let's see, 1987 to 1993, there was another drought, and the city pumped groundwater like crazy. can you my question is and you've already answered it in the agenda correspondence which is for the public i want to get it out there can you um address what the effect of taking 700 acre feet of groundwater would be in terms of the subsidence question

yeah um so one thing to note back in the the late 80s early 90s drought was the the city's groundwater pumping back then was about 2 000 acre feet a year for two years in a row um substantially more than the 700 that we're forecasting being kind of our maximum moving forward Additionally, there was a lot of agriculture within that area during dry years. There's a lot of additional pumping that has now been developed and has provided water from, for instance, Nos Minos, Salinas, and Whale Rocks. So overall groundwater pumping in that area has been significantly reduced. um we've we've also um been in the uh part of our construction project for the new groundwater wells is we're also putting in monitoring wells to help monitor groundwater level and so um you know it's important that we're able to gather data continually to kind of re-example re-examine whether or not our pumping is impacting groundwater within the basin and making sure we don't dewater certain portions of the basin and experience subsidence. We also have annual satellite imagery that monitors ground level to see if we're starting to experience subsidence. But I think most importantly is that 700 acre foot per year number is considered a sustainable yield should not generally result in subsidence but in addition to that we're going to be monitoring on a continual basis to make sure that none of the actions that we take actually do result in any undesirable results as sigma would define them that's great i think it's uh there was very little monitoring going on uh yeah when i was on first on council

We had to pay $3.5 million. We were sued up and down the yin-yang, as they say, because of the subsidence. So I'm glad. Thank you very much. Bye.

Thank you. And if I remember correctly, the Eye on Water is the app if people want to kind of watch their water, if they have the AMI smart meter. And I think we just, as we keep talking about, we're already using so much less as community members, but we can also kind of keep our eye on our water use and continue to look at what's happening. And I think for a little while, I forget the other one that we used to use, Fluid Flow. And which one was it? Flume. And it would show you. I mean, you have a leak or something of that sort, it was really important. Or, you know, a kid comes home from college and all of a sudden your water use is way higher. Anyway, so I think that as we continue to help the community, I think as you talk about the ion water in the future and helping people know, here's just another tool I think would be really great. So awesome. Any public comment?

We have none.

Okay, thank you. So with that, we'll bring him back. One other question I forgot to ask you ahead of time, but I know we've had a lot of conversations in the past around groundwater and our TCE from the dry cleaning. And I remember there was a certain amount of years that kind of, in a sense, flushed it out and we took care of it. Where are we at in the timeline for the cleanliness of the groundwater?

Yeah, so our groundwater cleanup project is essentially construction of approximately eight monitoring wells and two pump and treat wells. We've constructed seven of the eight monitoring wells at this point, and really at this point we need to equip to existing production wells. And so we're aiming for, I think it's likely gonna be around mid-2027 for those wells to come online. At that point, as we pump water out of the groundwater basin, we'll be cleaning that contamination out. And it's not certain how many years that will take. It's a little bit of a slow process, but we're gonna be continually monitoring it to try to get those levels reduced as much as possible.

Great, thank you so much. Well, any other questions from the Council? Council Member Shoresman?

No questions and no further deliberation, and I'll take a stab at the motion if we're ready. So I would move approval of the resolution to adopt the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan, the resolution to adopt the 2025 Water Shortage Contingency Plan, and receive and file the water supply and demand assessment as well as adopt the CEQA requirements that we need to adopt, can I just say that?

Perfect, thank you. Is there a second? Vice Mayor?

Nope, I tried.

Oh, counter remarks.

I second it.

Thank you, can we have roll call please?

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes. And the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much for taking care of this really precious resource for all of us. And last but not least, we have the update on our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic plan. So we have our sorry, our staff members to come up and provide their presentation. And I believe we're gonna start with Deputy City Manager, Greg Herman.

Sure, thank you, Mayor and Council Members. I'll just kick things off briefly while we're pulling up the presentation, but this is a big deal for us. This is our first annual update of the DEI strategic plan. As council recall, when the DEI task force originally formed in 2020, there were five essential recommendations that they put forward. We've completed all of those five. The last one that we did, however, was a strategic plan that was adopted by council in 2024. And we had planned on updating that on an annual basis for a number of different reasons. We haven't been able to do that just yet, but really excited to be here now. There's a lot of great work that we are looking forward to sharing with you all. That is a result of a community that has leaned into this work, an organization that has leaned into this work, and to our DEI team. Matt Pennin, our DEI manager, and Samantha Vethavanam, our diversity, equity, inclusion administrative specialist. And I do just want to take a moment to thank both of them for their dedication and persistence and unrelenting optimism in moving this work forward within our organization and community. And I'm happy to turn it over to them for the presentation.

All right, thank you for that wonderful welcome. We're super excited to be here and we will close out the council meeting tonight with even more optimism. And we're happy at the end to answer any questions that you may all have. But tonight we're excited to provide you with an update on the work that our office has led over the past year, as well as share our vision for what is coming ahead this next year. Specifically, we're going to be focusing on the diversity, equity, inclusion strategic plan. And this work is really centered on how do we strengthen access within our city for all of our community members? How do we improve connection and belonging across not only our city organization, but throughout our broader community? A lot of this work is really about building relationships, supporting inclusive engagement, both within our community members and our staff. We want to make sure that anybody and everybody feels connected to our local government, connected to our city, whether you're living here, working here or you're coming to visit our beautiful city here on the Central Coast. Throughout this presentation, we're going to highlight some of our key accomplishments. We're also going to talk to you a little bit about some of our emerging initiatives and provide you with a few notable updates about our strategic plan and some of our major city goals. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within our city is about every single community member. Whether we agree on all of the issues, whether we disagree, our office is really focused on making sure that everybody has a voice, a seat at the table, and an opportunity to communicate with not only you as our city council, but also with us as the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. So with that, First recommendation is that after the presentation, we hope that you will consider receiving and filing the annual update on the implementation status of the diversity, equity, inclusion, strategic plan. And now to the good stuff. So access and belonging by the numbers. So over the last fiscal year, we have had the pleasure and honor of attending, sponsoring, and or some combination of that, 33 different community events. We will dive into what some of those are a little bit later on, but we have engaged with every single city department in some way, shape or form. We have held eight diversity, equity, inclusion employee committee meetings. We have hosted a total of 10 interns from across the spectrum, everywhere from college core fellows to a Cuesta College intern, a Health Career Connections summer intern. We've also hosted quite a few student interns from Cal Poly's Department of Psychology. And then we currently have one amazing admin support volunteer. In their time with us, they have contributed almost 2,400 hours of work in our office. We have to give them a little bit of credit because we wouldn't have been able to do all the work that we've done, engage the community in the way that we have without the next generation helping us and us teaching them how to do this really amazing work. So kudos to our amazing internship team. Next year when you come back, we'll share how many more we have work in our office today and moving forward. Additionally, we've been able to release three internal staff newsletters with another one coming out next month in July. So before we dive into some of the specific accomplishments, I just want to kind of take a moment to ground our presentation in the framework that guides how we do our work. The diversity, equity, inclusion strategic plan was intentionally designed before Sam and I arrived, but it was designed on four different pillars that are interconnected throughout the work that we do. As you can see here, the top two are really focused on our community engagement, how we interact with our community, how we take time to build relationships, communicate, hold ourselves accountable, engage them across the city. And then the second two are really focused internally on how do we engage with our staff, our colleagues. They are public servants doing some amazing work alongside us, with us, and we wanna make sure that we can be supportive of them. We look at ourselves as collaborators, partners, providing them with tools, resources that they need so that we can support them in the work that they're doing. And we'll share a little bit about that tonight. At its core, this work is about helping create a city where people can access services, participate in civic life, feel connected to their community, see themselves in their community, and know that they actually do belong. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Samantha.

Thanks, Matt. All right. So this next slide provides a high level overview of the current implementation status of the strategic plan tactics. So overall, we have 90 tactics within the strategic plan. And to date, 22 tactics have been fully completed, while 46 remain on track toward meeting or maintaining the task. I did want to note, though, that 24 of those on-track tactics are marked as ongoing in the strategic plan. Therefore, a label of on-track for those items signifies that the tasks are now embedded into the regular work plan and responsibilities of the office. Additionally, 10 tactics are in progress, meaning action has been initiated but is delayed or otherwise not fully on track, often due to capacity, evolving organizational priorities, timing, or budget constraints. And 12 have not yet been started, meaning they are incomplete or the start date has not yet passed. Next slide. and now we'll get into the fun stuff so we'll be providing some updates on some specific items that have been completed and or embedded into our office operations so first up we'll look at pillar one which as matt noted includes some of our more external facing community work so we have the launch and implementation of the belonging project which is in response to tactic 1.1.3 to explore and develop shared multicultural programming activities and events with various partners. So as you all may already know, the Belonging Project is an ongoing initiative featuring workshops, cultural events, community dialogues and more. They're really designed to spark meaningful conversations, promote understanding and provide tools to build stronger and more inclusive relationships within our community. And it really builds upon the success and the groundwork laid through the Community Belonging series, which ran from 2023 to 2025. we also really wanted to know that the belonging project is very community driven and we're aiming to cover a wide range of topics we already have we have several upcoming and we have a few past events that have stemmed directly from ideas provided to us by the community and we even have an online form for the public to submit ideas as well The Belonging Project launched in February of this year. We've held three sessions thus far. I know some of you have been able to attend as well. Our next session will be right here in council chambers on August 27th and will be all about how to access city public meetings and importantly how to give public comment. And everyone is welcome to attend Belonging Project events. They're free, they're open to the public, and we strive to make them as accessible as possible. In addition to providing information on how to give public comment, our office is also aiming to increase civic engagement through participation in city advisory bodies. And this work is in relation to two tactics that are separate, but operationally we are combining them given the overlap between the two. They both center around reducing barriers to civic participation and increasing representation of Black, Indigenous and People of Color or BIPOC individuals and LGBTQIA2S plus individuals in city leadership and advisory roles. So in response to these items, we partnered with the Diversity Coalition to implement a workshop and mixer on understanding and accessing government commissions in November 2025. The first portion of this event was an educational workshop, which was messaged out to all the graduates of the Diversity Coalition's BIPOC Board Leadership Training Program. I had the honor of presenting on what city advisory bodies were, why they were important, and how to join them. This was then followed by a panel discussion, which included Mayor Stewart, one of our human relations commissioners, Katui Campos, and other BIPOC officials in the county. After the learning session, there was a mixer that the city had sponsored that was messaged widely to all where a number of nonprofits and other entities provided information about their organizations and the boards and or commissions that were associated. And moving forward, we will continue the workshop in conjunction with the Diversity Coalition, as well as continue to encourage application and provide information related to city advisory bodies in the regular outreach and engagement that we do. Pass it back over to you.

All right. So next up, I'm going to be talking about pillar two, equitable communication and accessibility. For this one, we were tasked with exploring development and expansion and funding opportunities for cultural activations, promotions, and celebrations in our amazing, beautiful downtown corridor. With that, we have been proud to host, sponsor, and put on so many events over the past year that have had significant impact on belonging within our community. One that you may be familiar with and that we know a ton of community members attended was the Lunar New Year celebration. That was an event that we were able to have five local food vendors come and provide our community members with some amazing food. We had 24 volunteers from Cal Poly as well as our city attend and help us put on this event. We had six cultural performances, 13 additional vendors, and when we glanced out in Mission Plaza, we counted thousands of people wandering through. In addition to that, we were honored to take part in Dia de los Muertos, where we celebrated the history and culture of our Mexican American community members. Additionally, we participated and sponsored the Martini exhibit and the Our Routes, Our Routes verbatim theater performance, along with the Arab American Heritage Festival. We were also involved in the Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, showcasing how the Chicano experience in San Luis Obispo has been reflected in our nation's values. Additionally, and coming up in two weeks, Pride in the Plaza and Trans Pride in the Park. We love those events where we get to connect with our community members and share about all the programs, services that the city has to offer. Additionally, we had two weeks where our Welcome to San Luis Obispo Where Everyone Belongs banners were hung along South High Guerra from late March to early April, reinforcing our city's commitment to building and fostering an inclusive and welcoming community for everyone. We're going to continue to maintain our banner presence throughout the year. So as you're walking through downtown or biking through downtown, please keep your eye out at the banners that we have available. In addition to that, each of our banners has our city website on it, and we're encouraging community members to always check out our website for new upcoming events, information, and resources. So to round out pillar number two, we are really, really excited about this. And I know we're not supposed to surprise city council that often, but tonight we're gonna do it. We have worked really long and hard with community members to develop and create our access and belonging icon. This icon is really intended to serve as a symbol to represent our shared commitment to access belonging throughout the city of San Luis Obispo. and even outside our boundaries. The value comes not only from the visual use, but the actions, programs, partnerships and behaviors that support welcoming and inclusive environments across the community. City staff are going to be able to use the access and belonging icon. It's going to be locked up with our city emblem representing our city and inclusivity in one visual representation. We are really excited about this. City staff are going to be able to use this to identify diversity, equity, inclusion related outreach and engagement efforts to support multilingual, accessible or community centered communication and highlight inclusive or accessible programs or initiatives throughout the city. Additionally, we're going to be eventually allowing our community members to use this icon as well. It'll be used a little bit differently where they can use the icon individually and This will be for any of our community organizations, nonprofits, local businesses, educational institutions, and our amazing grant recipients. They can use this symbol to share inclusion and belonging throughout the city. Unlike our city departments, they can use a symbol individually. We have a full communications plan rollout for this so that there will be guidelines to make sure that everybody uses it in a safe, appropriate way, highlighting our commitment to inclusion of belonging within the city of San Luis Obispo. And with that, we're going to move on to pillar number three. This one we want to share about our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. A key part of the work that we're doing in creating sustainable change and ensuring that this work is not owned by one office alone is making sure that all employees across the organization have a voice and opportunity to help shape and advance the work that we're doing. The DEI Employee Committee serves as a cross-departmental group of staff who help identify opportunities. They provide us with feedback, support efforts to strengthen inclusion and belonging. You may see them at a lot of the community events that we go to. They like to get out there with us as well. This is really a direct connection between our colleagues and our initiatives, making sure that we have a variety of perspectives and it's not just limited to Samantha and I and our inner circle. We want to make sure that everybody has a voice, whether you work here for the city or whether you live here or you're visiting. In addition to the charter that was finalized this year, the committee has developed its first annual work plan that helps us prioritize efforts and greater accountability. We established three different subcommittees to allow members to focus on specific initiatives and projects that we're working on. And they have a hand in leadership in that. One that you may be familiar with is our family-friendly workplace. We also have a communications committee and workplace development. Yes. Our goal with this committee is to build ownership of the work so that it becomes increasingly integrated into the work that we do throughout the organization. And you still got me for a couple more slides. So another area that we're gonna focus on with pillar three is providing practical tools and resources that help strengthen our community resilience and also support individuals who might have experienced or witnessed acts of hate or bias. While our community is one that has many strengths, we know that incidents of hate and bias continue to occur locally as they do in communities across the country. When these incidents happen, people often are not sure where or how to report them, what resources might be available or not, or how they can safely support someone who has been impacted. In response to that, our office has spent the last year developing a responding to hate and bias toolkit. This toolkit is really designed to serve as a practical community-centered resource. The tool is for our residents, organizations, businesses, and community groups. It helps them better understand how to recognize, how to respond to, and how to prevent acts of hate and bias, and importantly, how to report those if they are involved with them or witness them. This toolkit is going to be a living document that we will update on a regular basis through community feedback and making sure that we partner with our police department so that when incidents are reported, they can take those reports and determine whether it's a hate crime or hate incident, and then we will step in and help with support and resources. um our goal with this resource is that it was informative that it's accessible and that it's most importantly action oriented like i said this is a living document we are starting the process right now i'm planning a launch for this toolkit ideally that's going to happen in fall of this year Once this toolkit is released, it's going to be available to all community members and businesses, both in paper form as well as online. I just want to leave you with this. Oftentimes we think about belonging as a feeling, but belonging is also demonstrated through action. So looking at toolkits, at these resources, at the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, the commitment that our council and city has made to that, this toolkit is just one example of how we can turn those values into actual actions that are practical support for our community. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Samantha.

Great.

Thanks, Matt. So moving on to pillar four, which relates to building an inclusive city organization internally, there are two tactics within the strategic plan related to organization-wide DEI trainings. In response to these two tactics, we have contracted with two skilled training facilitators and DI practitioners to create a suite of workshops that we are building a culturally fluent workforce. The bottom four workshops listed on this slide are the ones that the contractors have developed or will be developing by the end of next fiscal year. And the first one listed, the responsibility of privilege, was created in-house by our very own Matt Pennin. The top three workshops, sorry to jump around, but the top three workshops have been crafted. They're now in sort of the refinement phase, and what I mean by that is our plan is to pilot each workshop with our internal DI employee committee first, because as Matt said, they are, you know, made up of members from all the different departments, before we roll it out across the organization. Because they represent those different departments, they provide a valuable perspective on the unique needs and experiences and workplace dynamics of each department. And so that kind of allows us to refine and tailor each workshop as needed. And then the bottom two workshops on identity and perspective and community engagement are in development now. And like I said, they'll be completed before the end of next fiscal year. And then moving on to tactic 4.1.2, which asks us to update and provide resources using the internal DEI website to engage staff in knowledge acquisition and skill retention opportunities. So our office maintains an internal SharePoint page that is accessible to all city staff under the employee resources section. It includes information about our office as well as the DEI employee committee. Last year, with the assistance of some of our skilled colleagues, the page was updated to provide a fresh new look and updated and expanded information. We included a kind of refreshed support request form. This is a form that city staff can use to request DEI support and reviewing policies, providing feedback on presentations or language, really anything, we're happy to help. We do message that out frequently to staff. And we also have an area where we're uploading the DEI newsletters as well. So the SharePoint page really serves as a centralized hub for DEI-related resources, including articles, guides, TED Talks, and other professional development opportunities to help staff broaden their knowledge and competencies at their own pace and volition. There's no requirement to obviously review those. The newsletters themselves also feature information on local events, current issues, and cultural holidays and celebrations. Again, providing staff with low barrier opportunities for learning and engagement. And then once completed and ready for distribution will be uploading the responding to hate and bias toolkit matt just talked about, as well as an internal language toolkit that you will talk about, along with any other resources that our office comes up with. All right, and then just almost, we're almost through. We just wanted to talk about kind of what's on the horizon for us. Just gonna talk about the first three. They're also major city goals, so we thought they were important to touch on, but first upcoming is our how-to guide, which, as I mentioned, will be on how to give public comment. So that'll be launched on August 27th at that Belonging Project event. but um outside of that we're outside of that event we're going to continue pushing the information wherever we can we have a longer powerpoint presentation as well as a shorter infographic that can be shared we're also talking with our communications team about sort of building out a website that'll house the information that we'll build on the your city your voice web page Um, and we're really trying to find groups and organizations that we can go out to, um, and meet and provide information. Obviously, we really want to outreach to people who aren't already connected to the city. Next are our listening sessions for the business community that will have a focus on supporting diverse identities and particularly minority and women-owned businesses. So we're partnering with a women-owned business consulting firm. They're going to be assisting us with the facilitation of the listening sessions. And we're also working with our economic development and tourism team, along with the SLO Chamber of Commerce. And we're hoping to have the first of two sessions by August or September. The overarching goal is to receive input on the tools participants need and any barriers to overcome to being a successful business owner in the community. And then just developing the last two trainings or workshops, as I mentioned.

All right, so last time you're gonna hear from me now, but in addition to what Samantha just shared, our office is supporting the citywide single vote initiative. So we are out there in the community, meeting with anybody and everybody that we can, along with our communications team, sharing the message about the new way of voting for city council. We wanna make sure that everybody has that knowledge and information. We also wanna make sure that anybody that is eligible to vote has that opportunity to express their opinion. In addition to that, we already shared a little bit about the access and belonging icon, but Samantha mentioned a little bit about our language toolkit, much like the responding to hate and bias toolkit, language has power if used correctly and appropriately. So we developed a language toolkit That provides definitions, information, how to use specific terminology, how not to use specific terminology. Like we've shared a couple of times in this presentation for us, we are here to partner with all of our departments. We are here to coach them. We are really focused on learning and growth. We know that folks are going to take missteps. in the work that they're doing. But we also know that our colleagues and friends throughout the city and our organization really want to do the best quality work. So we're here to help them and support them. There's a reason that I did not use the word mistakes because mistakes I think are harder to overcome versus a misstep. We're going to take a step forward together. So we're here to coach work alongside everybody. And the toolkits that we're sharing are all about that strategy and methodology. We talked a little bit already about the hidden bias toolkit. So I won't spend much more time on that. But. I just want to be clear that all of the resources that we're providing are resources, but they're not a mandate. So we're really focused on how do we bring our community, how do we bring our colleagues together in a way that is authentic, that everybody has an opportunity. to have their voice heard, even if we are in total disagreement. I honestly know that there is something that connects all of us, and that is the work that we do here within the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. So with that, just one more reminder, we are recommending that you receive and file the annual update of the implementation status of the Diversity Equity Inclusion Strategic Plan. I wanna close by saying that belonging only becomes possible when we build it together. At this time, we are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much. That's what a year and a half of bottled up work creates, right? So thank you so much for the report. Truly, in the beginning of this process, there was so much and people saw this work and thought, how are we going to get this done? Is the city going to really take this seriously? And you've truly shown that. So thank you. Just one really quick question, I think. As I look at the hate and hate and bias toolkit thank you hate and bias toolkit and the inclusive and respectful language toolkit i'm looking forward to seeing both of those and i assume those also will be living documents language changes all the time and so i just want to make sure that we're not like here's the manual here you go um so thank you for that um all right i have to see a couple other questions vice mayor

Thank you guys so much. As you were going through the presentation and you were talking about all the different events that you've been hosting over the last year, it just, that one was great. And oh, I loved that one too. And so you've been incredibly visible and the hard work you've been putting in is just really evident. So thank you so much. So I had received and I think all of us have received some inquiries and desire from the community for some visual representation of support specifically around pride. And so it asked for a little bit of an analysis and thanks for answering my questions about A flag policy versus other visible acknowledgement, such as like public art or crosswalk or other options. And you had presented some potential trade offs in the work plan and I kind of wanted to dive into that a little bit. Because you'd mentioned two programs one around senior citizens and the other one around veterans. And that felt like not a great trade-off if those things were gonna get shelved. And we kind of wanted to dive into what we meant by the trade-offs there and if these communities would still be addressed and these work plans would still get done.

Yes, so thank you for that question. It was tricky when we were looking at trade-offs because everything within our DEI strategic plan and everything in the work that we do is extremely important. So we selected those two not because those groups would not be addressed in the work that we're doing. They were specific tactics that we knew that we could adjust their timelines, but the veteran community the aging population, that community is still included in so much of the other work that we're doing. So it seemed like that was like the best solution for those two tactics because we're already touching them and so many other parts and pieces of the work that we're doing.

So they're already included in a lot of other kind of work plan items, and so this wouldn't be shelving them as populations. This would just be those particular items.

Yeah, it's essentially shelving those two tactics, but it's not shelving the work that we're already doing with those two separate populations.

Excellent. And if there was consensus around looking into kind of an analysis around flag policy versus other visual representations, what would be sort of a realistic timeline for that to come back to Council?

yeah so um we propose one of the options is being a memo where we would take time to really do some research about what's happening here locally regionally and then kind of expand that search as we mentioned before we have an amazing swarm of interns that we would have assist us in doing some of this research But in that memo, we would like to really identify what are the different policies in place, what are the different visual representations that are in place, come back to Council with a lot more information. We see a visible timeline being in January of this coming year.

I just wanted to add on the veterans and older adults piece. I think those specific tactics also really were focused on like having them come do trainings or some sort of like learnings. And so I think, yeah, just focusing on connecting with those populations in a different way will definitely continue happening, just maybe not in that specific.

Appreciate that clarity. Thank you. And I'll leave that for now.

Okay, great. No. And Deputy City Manager, did you want to add to that?

Uh, thank you very council members. I think we excuse me effectively covered it. We would still plan on accomplishing that work as envisioned through those tasks. I think what we talked about is that we would just push it out and probably would be pushing it out to the following fiscal year to be able to accommodate that. So I think we still would find the touch points with that organization to keep connectivity with them. But in terms of the. Specific work identified, we'd still do it. It would just be delayed to be able to accommodate that. And then secondly, we kind of divided up the questions with 2 different main options. 1 is. to the question posed about what's the best way to show representation in our community? Is it a flag policy? Is it a more inclusive form of public art? Is it an activation during Pride Month? Is it a year-long level of representation that we can see throughout the community? And so we really see that as sort of like the research project piece of it. That's what we would use the swarm for in the office. You should really come by and check it out. It's wild. And yeah, we're looking at end of calendar year for that. If we receive council direction and council's clear that a flag policy is what you all would like us to do, that's a separate and distinct effort where we would put those tactics on hold and stop some of those things so that we could begin work on the development of a specific flag policy. We'd need more clarity on what you all would like that to look like, what the level of outreach is that you'd like us to do on that. And that would be something that would come after the first of the year because it's a larger work effort.

Thank you so much. And just as a reminder, we have four minutes until 11 p.m., so we need a motion if we wish to go past 11 p.m. I hope my words can get out there. Council Member Schwarzman.

My voice is getting tired of talking. I really don't want to do a motion to go past 11. Yeah, so I do have one one question that I wanted to ask was about the building culturally fluent workshops that you were talking about putting together the trainings. Just wondering when those are completed. Are those things that we are going to be willing to share with other organizations? Or is this something that's going to be just used within the city?

That's a great question. And in the spirit of equity, inclusivity and belonging, and also being a government organization, we don't have copyrights on much of what we do. So we are more than happy to share those. We are also looking at the potential of providing those workshops and trainings to our nonprofit partners, business partners as well.

Awesome. Thank you. I think that's really important. We shouldn't we shouldn't keep it to ourselves. I think in the state for the sake of time, I'm going to leave it there.

Okay. Thank you, Councilmember marks.

Yeah, this meeting is going to be over in three minutes unless we have a motion to continue beyond 11 o'clock. And I really Hope we don't go much more than so I'm going to make a motion that we Go five minutes beyond 11 o'clock Okay, before we before we go there do we have any public comment city clerk No, we do not.

Thank you so much. You could also make a motion to receive and file a motion

Oh, I make a motion to receive and file this really interesting, fabulous DEI strategic plan report. Thank you, but I don't know if we need a motion, do we?

We do.

Yeah, okay. Is there a second?

Vice Mayor?

I would like to modify that motion to include some follow up from our staff here to do to turn the swarm to the little research on what visible representation of support specifically around pride would be most meaningful to the community and return with a memo to us. And that's the modified motion if I can get a second on that.

Sure, as the motion maker, it's a friendly amendment.

You accept the friendly amendment?

Yes.

Great, thank you. So we have a motion and we have a second. And can we have roll call?

Council Member Marks? Yes. Vice Mayor Francis?

Yes.

Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Shoresman?

I'm really not interested in changing the motion right now at this point, so I'm going to say no. Mayor Stewart.

Yes, the motion passes 4-1. Thank you so much. Thank you for all of this work, and I'm so sorry I had to be rushed right at the end. Sometimes it works out that way, but thank you. Truly, your entire report was so helpful to understand what's been going on in the office and what you've all been working with, so thank you. And we have literally five minutes. Are we fine with continuing the liaison reports and communications to the next meeting on July 21st, or would you really like to give your reports right now?

Can I just get a clarification of what the final guidance or direction was to staff?

Yes, it was receiving and filing the report as well as receiving a memo as to what are the current LGBTQ plus actions in the community as far as visual representation and what would be interested, sorry, what would be the most meaningful, sorry, sorry.

Okay, can I change my vote then? I'd like to change, sorry, I didn't understand exactly what was happening. It happened very quickly because of the sake of time, so I'll support that.

All right, so that motion passed 5-0, actually. So can I get any feels?

Yeah, let's talk about our liaison reports when we meet in a month.

I think that sounds fantastic.

That way we can end by 11 o'clock.

I'll take that movement. So I just want to make sure everyone knows that we have a council meeting on July 7th. That is our council break. We go on council break as of now. But also that when we return on July 21st right here in the council chambers at 5.30 p.m., it will be also available on Zoom. So if you'd like to be cooking at home and chatting with us and providing public comment, you still can. And thank you so much. I hope you all have a wonderful summer break. you