City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everyone. It is our first day back from City Council meetings, and I hope you all had a wonderful break. It's July 21st, and I'm here to say I'm Mayor Erica A. Stewart, and all of the City Council are present. With that, Councilmember Boswell, can you lead the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you. City Attorney, can you please provide the closed session report?

I can, Madam Mayor. Thank you. The Council met in closed session on two items. I will report on the first, and then I will ask our Assistant City Attorney, Markey Kirsten, to report on the second, because the individually named defendants in that second matter, including myself, were recused from that discussion. The first matter was a matter of anticipated litigation, and that related to facts and circumstances surrounding exposure to litigation arising from allegations related to the potential application of the City's mobile home rent uh mobile home park rent stabilization ordinance to existing long-term leases and there was no uh reportable action taken on that matter thank you oh and i'll ask council member marks to explain the circumstances of her participation because she recused an abundance of caution from a prior matter on perfect thank you

Yeah, briefly, we tried to purchase a mobile home in in harmony owned park. But we did not follow through with the purchase. And we have a family member who is who lives in a harmony owned park, but she's on a month to month lease and has lived there for 15 years. So there's no problem. I don't need to recuse on this one. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Assistant City Attorney Markey.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. On item 1C, the council unanimously authorized defense of the city and the individually named defendants in existing litigation with parties and facts as stated on the agenda. And as city attorney Dietrich noted, for the record, the individually named defendants did not participate in the closed session and the city council was advised by outside legal counsel. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Well, with that we are moving on to a very fun presentation today we actually have three really interesting presentations today. We get to do the introduction and oath of office of our new fire chief Randy Harris, we will be doing a receiving a San Luis obispo county. 2026 point in time count, and then the citywide single vote communications update. So a lot of things coming up and then the city manager report and then public comment on items not on the agenda. So if you have an item that you'd like to share for public comment, please make sure you pick up a city clerk. Sorry, there you go a slip next to the city clerk and assistant city manager and we can get that into the meetings. And with that, I will introduce City Manager Whitney McDonald to introduce Fire Chief Randy Harris.

Thank you very much. This is an incredibly exciting day for us and very positive for our community and our organization. We are joined here by a number of members of our fire department team, as well as our new fire chief Randy Harris and his family. Just a few words about Randy. He started his career here back in 1990 out at Fire Station 21 out by the airport. And so it's a little bit of a full circle part of his life, I think. But really, we are incredibly grateful for him joining our team. This in some ways was a little bit of a Batman moment, seeing the call coming and request for some assistance in stepping in while we were in a period of transition. And he's immediately won over hearts and minds both within our department and out in the community um if anybody hasn't had a chance to meet randy it won't take you long to get to that sense of warmth and genuineness and true humility he is a public servant through and through he's here because He knows we, he really heeded that call to service and truly believes in the work that we are doing here at the city. He's here to support the department and the work that they are doing on a daily basis. um he cares very deeply about each person who is here in the room and outside of the room and in the community as a whole we're just really grateful that he's here it is a true honor that he chose to spend additional time here he had planned to be on a boat sailing around different parts of the world and instead has chosen to stick with us for an additional period of time. There's a lot going on in our fire service here in San Luis Obispo. We have a new fire station we're planning to bring online. Not a lot of fire chiefs, I think, get to do that in their careers, and Randy gets to do that in a pretty short order here. But again, we're just really grateful for his service, for stepping up, for joining our team. Lots of praise for him immediately and out of the gate, and we're really grateful to His family who are here in the room. We can only get a sense from my standpoint of the the service what that call to service truly means for folks in the fire service the calls literally day and night at any time. He is there supporting his team as are all of our firefighters. It takes a special person and a special family to support that type of work. And we know they're there on people's worst days of their lives often time with a smile and there to help. So we're grateful for not only Chief Harris stepping up and being with us, but also for all of our firefighters who are in the room, and also out on calls and helping to serve our community every day. So thanks so much for the opportunity to say these words and really looking forward to swearing them in and the work that we're going to continue to do over these next few years. So thanks so much.

Thank you. And now I'll bring up City Clerk Teresa Purrington and Chief Randy Harris.

Okay, thank you. Okay, raise your right hand and repeat after me.

I, wait, hold it. Camera. I, state your name.

I, Randy Harris.

Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear.

That I will support and defend.

That I will support and defend.

The Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States.

And the Constitution of the State of California.

And the Constitution of the State of California.

Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation for the purpose of

or purpose of evasion, that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter.

I furthermore agree to abide by the rules, regulations, and laws of the City of San Luis Obispo. May I take a quick minute? I'd like to take a moment to thank the City Council, City Manager McDonald, the men and women of San Luis City Fire, my fellow department heads, and especially my family, wife Jennifer, daughter Madison, and son Christopher, for their amazing support in taking on this new role. I stand here because of the people who shaped my path, mentors, peers, and every member of this department who shows up with professionalism and heart. I'm truly honored to serve alongside you. I believe this badge is not a symbol of rank, but a reminder of service. I will wear it with humility, integrity, and an unwavering commitment to our mission, our people, and the amazing community we serve. I'm incredibly honoured to serve the City of San Luis Obispo as Fire Chief. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much, especially as we just went through the Terrace Hill last week. We know how important it is that you are all here doing this job, and we are so thankful for all of the firefighters that we have, and we are thankful, Chief Harris, that you are willing to lead us for these next couple of years. Well, with that we have a next interesting conversation which actually kind of ties into firing away with our mobile crisis unit, but in all reality, we will be discussing the San Luis obispo county. Point in time count update and with that we'll have a community. Community Development Director Timmy Tway, there she is, and Homelessness Response Manager Daisy Weiberg. I know that many of us at different times have served on the point-in-time count, and it's really an amazing moment to be able to see who is in our community, what they need, and hearing from them directly. And with that, I'll pass it on over to you.

Thank you so much and good evening. I'm Timmy Tway, Director of Community Development. In a moment, I'll hand it over to Daisy Weiberg, who will tee us up for more information about this point in time count, which is a really important thing that the county and cities participate in so that we can understand the makeup of our community and how we can best assist everyone in our community providing services and housing. So as they're pulling that up, just want to thank daisy and our county colleagues and everyone who volunteered for this point in time count it takes a lot of people power to get out in the community and really understand who we're serving in the community so that we can better provide services for everyone that lives in san luis obispo so with that i'll hand it over to daisy and thank you very much

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and Council Members. My name is Daisy Weiberg, Homelessness Response Manager for the City of San Luis Obispo, and it's my pleasure to introduce Kate Bourne, who's the Business Systems Analyst for SLO County's Homeless Services Division. She'll be providing an update on countywide and City of SLO data for the 2026 point-in-time count. The point in time count happens every two years and as a census of our homeless population within the city of slow, as well as county wide. So just want to thank the homeless services division for their leadership and partnership on this effort. And with that, I'll hand it over to Kate and we will both be available for questions after her presentation.

Thank you so much.

Hello Mayor Stewart and Council members, my name is Kate born and I am the business systems analyst with the county homeless services division, the Department of Social Services. I'm here to share with you the finalized statistics and analysis of our 2026 point in time count of homelessness in San Luis Obispo County. Before I begin, I'd also like to acknowledge the massive collaborative effort that happens for each of these unsheltered counts and the fact that we had over 200 volunteers staffing seven logistics centers, including the largest logistics center here in the city of San Luis Obispo. The majority of these volunteers are city or nonprofit staff already engaged in the important work every day. And this year in particular, we had incredible support from our county GIS team with the county IT department, Cal Poly interns, technical assistance and writing of the report by the Institute of Community Alliances and leadership from county staff, including Carrie Howell and Chelsea Friedenberg. uh finally it is always important to acknowledge that our neighbors currently and formerly homeless who participated in the count this is the level of collaboration required to find appropriate and long-term housing solutions for our neighbors in need next slide so i'll be going over the key takeaways of our newly released community report the population trends and subsections of data specific to those experiencing homelessness in the city of san luis obispo On the night of January 26, 2026, there were 1,118 individuals experiencing homelessness in San Luis Obispo County. Roughly 60% of that total were unsheltered, while 40% were in shelter or transitional housing. We obtained these totals through the mandated countywide census of unsheltered individuals who are living on the streets, in encampments, or in other locations not meant for human habitation. In accordance with requirements set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD, we conduct the unsheltered count every other year and combine it with demographic and survey data of clients residing in shelters and transitional housing projects. We then turn this report over to our community and Congress. This year, we also had the advantage of validating trends against other community data, including our countywide homeless management information system quarterly dashboard. Again, for methodology of the report and the data that you can find in it, the numbers are meant to show a snapshot comparable to other communities when reported to the federal government. Further detailed in the community report are efforts to implement stakeholder feedback provided after the 2024 count and utilize local resources and expertise through recruitment of university interns. Our key takeaways after reviewing the data and through validation and analysis found that there was a 5% decrease in homelessness from 2024. A 22% decrease in overall homelessness since 2022 and opportunities to further coordinate utilization of shelter and bed inventory across providers through the coordinated entry system. Next, I'll review a specific count of individuals in each of the categories designated by HUD. And it's important to remember that while we are looking at still data points on graphs, all of these numbers do represent our neighbors. Pit count trends from 2017. Here you see five data collection points or five years worth of data collection points showing the change from 2017 to now. The top line in the graph in brown shows the total for each point in time count in those years, while the lower lines indicate the count specific to project types, including emergency shelter and transitional housing, as well as those who are unsheltered. When we zoom in to look at the data as of 2022 onward, we can see that post COVID or post initial pandemic, we can see that 22% decrease in overall homelessness and the progress that's been made through the funding and efforts of our shelter providers and housing providers. Considering the decrease in overall homelessness, it is also important to note that we saw an increase in the count of sheltered individuals locally. This convergence of the two lines indicates progress in the system that is working as intended. Opening additional shelter beds, opening additional capacity reduces unsheltered homelessness. For regional distribution, we see trends continue from prior years with San Luis Obispo representing the largest proportion of those who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness locally. When we look at our age breakdown, we have a relatively even number between demographic buckets of 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64. what has become a little bit more clear when we look at, in particular, the youth demographic, 18 to 24, while it represents a small slice in our overall total population, we have paid particular attention as this is a HUD population, and it has not made the same level of progress as the other subsets of the population as defined by HUD. Race and ethnicity, these are counts of all of the racial and ethnic options that that the participants of the survey can provide. It is a multi-select racial and ethnic single question as opposed to many demographic subsets that separate race and ethnicity, but predominantly white respondents in our unsheltered count. Again, we then in the report explain the further representation of race and ethnicity as a percentage in order to compare it against California ICH, which lumps some of these racial and demographic categories together to allow for individuals to be represented in every category that they respond to. As mentioned a couple slides ago, we look in the report at specific subsets of the data, in particular veterans and youth. Veterans, we saw a really encouraging trend since the last point in time count, a 47% drop in veteran homelessness countywide. However, for the youth category, individuals aged 18 to 24, the count actually increased by two. As in prior years, we surveyed respondents on how long they have lived in the county. This is not a standard HUD question as many of the questions are, but we have asked this question at the at the recommendation of our steering committees. And as in prior years, we found that the majority of those who respond to this survey are experiencing homelessness having lived in San Luis Obispo County for several years prior. Sleeping accommodation, showing these are response options provided by HUD. We have abandoned building, other sleeping accommodation, parks, streets, under a bridge or overpass, vehicular and other outdoor encampment locations. These are specific to the population who were unsheltered at the time of the count. And comparing 2024 to 2026, you can see on this survey that we did see an increase in vehicular homelessness from 2024 to 2026. And final for the countywide results, we also report out to HUD our housing inventory count. But this is a total of shelter beds as well as the beds dedicated to those who were previously experiencing homelessness in the county. So the total that you see in the white box on the bar is the total sum of those who were actually counted on the night versus the gray box of 1,737. That is all beds countywide dedicated either shelter or permanent to individuals previously experiencing homelessness, showing a utilization percentage as calculated by HUD of 86%. So a slightly lower utilization overall than prior years, although an increase in the total number of available beds. In looking at the same data set but zoomed in to those who were experiencing homelessness in the city of San Luis Obispo, we can see our first, our unsheltered population. In the city of San Luis Obispo, we had 230 in shelter and 273 respondents or surveyed unsheltered. For sleeping accommodations of those who were unsheltered on the night of January 26, we saw the largest proportion experiencing homelessness within a vehicle, followed by those who are experiencing homelessness on the street or sidewalk. Then looking at the age age breakdown of the demographics, the largest portion those who are aged 55 to 64 and but when compared to the breakdown of other. Other county jurisdictions, larger portion in the 25 to 34 range than the other jurisdictions. Fewer folks, 25 or younger are in those jurisdictions as compared to the city of Sloan. So in conclusion, our data shows that a 5% overall drop in homelessness since 2024 and a 22% drop since 2022 with a 3% increase in those experiencing sheltered homelessness compared to 2025. We consider this an encouraging trend, reflecting the growing systemic care. And again, thank our partners, including those with the City of SLO, including Daisy, and the community for helping make progress towards the countywide five-year plan to end homelessness. And welcome council members and the public to read the full report at slowcounty.ca.gov forward slash pit dash count. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you for that great presentation. Can you just go back to that one with the age breakouts? Thank you. Were you saying that compared to other cities within our county, we have more younger people who, okay. And was there any cross-reference to people who were attending either Cuesta or Cal Poly that were also unhoused students?

We didn't collect data in the unsheltered count on attendance at any sort of educational institution. We really worked to keep those surveys for the unsheltered population very narrow. Education institution is collected at some of the local shelters. So it is something that outside of the point in time count could be further investigated. But so we don't know exactly.

And were the university or college asked to be part of providing some of that data? I know like the shelters are asked to provide the data.

No, we don't collect, each of the shelters collect their data through the homeless management information system countywide. That is not utilized at any of the services offered at Cuesta or Cal Poly. So unfortunately, no, but we did work in conjunction with Cal Poly for

the interns for the planning and we had a couple of statistics interns work with us for some of the final data cleaning and number crunching thank you so much councilmember schwarzman thank you thanks for the great report i remember in 2024 when we got the results of the point in time count in that year compared to 2022 the total number of people in the county that had been counted on the point in time count night in 2022 versus 2024, countywide that number had gone down. But if I remember correctly, from 2022 to 2024, the number in San Luis, the city of SLO had increased over that same, from the 2022 night to the 2024 night. But we didn't get the data, maybe it's in the report, but you didn't present it in your slideshow what the difference was between the 2024 point in time count and the 2026 for the City of SLO.

I can speak to that. We don't have a slide to show that. But just to compare from 2022 to 2024, our overall count, like you mentioned, increased from 385 to 512. And the sheltered count went up from 137 to 202. Unsheltered also went up from 248 to 310. And then comparing from 2024 to the current count our total went down by nine from 512 to 503 the sheltered count went up from 202 to 230 and the unsheltered count went down from 310 to 273 so. Slight decreases on unsheltered in our overall count and increase on sheltered, which is encouraging, but i'd say fairly kind of stagnant in some ways between 2024 and 26. I will note that we do have the welcome home village project and the beacon studios project welcome home village is set to open soon, which will house people on the Bob Jones bike trail. the beacon studios project is scheduled to open next summer or fall and that'll be 79 new units so i'm hopeful that in two years we'll we'll see a decrease in our unsheltered count with those projects opening agreed yeah i think they're just waiting for the certificate of occupancy for welcome home village so great thank you for summarizing those numbers thank you vice mayor francis

yeah thank you so much for the presentation i was curious especially for folks who might be tuning in to this presentation if you could talk a little bit about that difference between unsheltered and sheltered homelessness and if that's defined on just that particular night or does that person need to be experiencing shelter multiple nights throughout that year in order to be counted as a sheltered and unhoused

Thank you for your question. So the definitions as they apply to the survey, unsheltered, sheltered, transitional housing, those are definitions that can be found in HUD's data dictionary and are applied to the data collection for clients across multiple data sets, whether that be our HMIS, our Homeless Management Information System, or comparable databases that are utilized with victim service providers. number of unsheltered individuals is in essence just those who are living outdoors in some place not meant for human habitation. There are some additional technicalities when you start counting vehicles about whether the vehicle is hooked up to running water and has utilities ongoing, but unsheltered is really pertains to anything that is not indoor space meant for human habitation. And so we're for this report looking at the single night, the single point in time. So there is not an examination of where that client lived or resided prior to the night of January 26 except to calculate chronicity. And defining someone as chronically homeless is also kind of layered definition that doesn't take into account whether they're in the survey at all, but just whether or not they are considered chronically homeless and having experienced homelessness for multiple months over the course of a year or multiple times, adding up to a year within the last three years.

Thank you for that. And also curious, what happens to the data between the January count and the release to the communities now here in July? Does that data get sent back to HUD to be analyzed or is that all analyzed at the local county level? And how then does HUD kind of interact with the analysis that's been done?

Yes, so the data is collected, and this is detailed a little bit further in our community report, but the data is collected essentially for most things in two places, either ArcGIS Survey 123, so on an app, or in our Homeless Management Information System, database with the homeless service providers, nonprofit providers. And so that data is then analyzed locally. And then when we do our comparison against data that we have and looking at those personal identifiers to try and deduplicate to the greatest degree possible, we end up with our final data set and the aggregates are what are shared with HUD. So the actual so the totals that you see in the report and in this presentation are what are sent What HUD then looks at for data quality control is the historical changes in numbers. So we do, one of the reasons it does take some communities some time and some communities will exercise additional caution before releasing any official numbers is we're waiting on our response from HUD for those data quality reports or any additional questions that HUD has for us to provide further explanation on or look at and examine again.

Thank you for that and in light of kind of a maybe changing federal approach to homelessness do we see any difference in the response that we're getting back from hud or has it been fairly consistent from the last point in time count to this one.

The technical assistance providers that we on the data team, their approach remains virtually unchanged. The biggest change that we saw is in terms of whether or not gender is collected and how gender is collected. So we actually do not turn over any sort of gender or even sex field data to HUD. It was determined that because of various executive orders, it would just cause more complications than would be worth trying to report out at a federal level.

Yeah, thank you for that. And then last question, I think for now, I was curious about the underutilization of the housing inventory. And I'm sure in the larger report that's broken out a little bit further, but I was wondering if you had any observations about what, you know, what parts of our housing inventory is being underutilized. And if there's some, maybe this isn't the night for this discussion, but if there are ideas about how to better utilize that housing inventory that's not being used right now, or not on that night.

Yes, so in terms of observations of utilization, I will say that the shelters are for the most part all operating at full capacity. The place that we see large fluctuations in utilization from year to year or month to month we are our warming shelters and so we did not have severely inclement weather the night of this pit count so we we are we require our warming shelters to open in order to get that full picture of what the local capacity is to shelter individuals but then In some cases, we don't see the full utilization at those warming shelters. For further efforts to fully utilize things like our permanent housing resources, that's where coordinated entry and the coordinated entry system come into play and really, in that case, do encourage folks to attend our HSOC meetings, our oversight council meetings, and look to our coordinated entry management, our coordinated entry management entity, CAPSLO. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Council Member Schwarzman.

Thank you. Yeah, I had two questions left, but that was one of my questions, Vice Mayor Francis, so I won't have to ask about the inventory count again. So thank you for that. I did want to ask a little bit more about the emergency shelter beds. You had a slide early on that showed emergency shelter versus transitional beds. Housing versus unsheltered and just wondered if you could again. I'm sure this is in your data dictionary. But what exactly is the difference between emergency shelter and transitional housing, for example?

Yes, of course. So emergency shelter is actually broken out within the data dictionary in in two categories. but can also somewhat be associated with interim housing in a lot of local conversations. But emergency shelter night by night is going to be a shelter that operates and has an individual check-in for a single night. And then emergency shelter entry exit is a shelter in which a client is expected to be enrolled in the program for a longer period of time usually about 90 days, and while they are working with a case manager on a housing plan, but relatively short duration of stay for emergency shelter. This would be the of various programs at Forty Prado, for instance. Transitional housing is a, as you can see on the graph, very small amount of our inventory locally, and that's been the case for for many, many years. And it is a place that an individual or a household can be enrolled and expected to stay there for up to two years. There is a 24 month cap and it is kind of a niche project type, if you will, that isn't always fit nicely into all of the funding sources that we see coming through the federal government or state government.

So will some of the beds at Welcome Home Village fit into that transitional, or are they shorter enough stay that they'll go into the emergency shelter pool?

Yeah, Welcome Home Village, what are referred to as the interim shelter at Welcome Home Village will be emergency shelter, the 90-day program model. And then there will eventually also be the permanent supportive housing units at Welcome Home Village as well.

Okay, so even though CAPSLO currently runs the only night-by-night shelter, except for the warming centers across the county, those 90-day program beds are still counted in the emergency shelter bucket?

That's correct. Yes, 90-day shelter beds are still counted as emergency shelter under HUD's HMIS and data dictionary.

Okay, thank you so much. Appreciate that clarification.

Thank you, and thank you for your questions. I have one more. When we talk about the street in a couple places, does the street include the safe parking as well, or is that separate?

That would be separate for the purposes of this count. When you see sleeping accommodation represented on our graphs or in the report, we're talking about those who have been surveyed for the unsheltered count. We actually did pull our safe parking client information from HMIS. even though they fall within that category of unsheltered homelessness, they aren't actually, we aren't able to count those as a shelter or emergency shelter of any sort when reporting. They were not surveyed in the way that we survey, send volunteers out to administer the survey. And so no, the street totals would not include those safe parking projects.

Okay, thank you. Well, I don't see any other questions. So I just want to say thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing this. And I know that CAPSLO had their cooling shelter open today. They may have it more throughout the week, depending on how the heat wave goes. And as far as, can you just say one more time where people can find this point in time count on the internet?

Yes, I can.

Can I talk slower? Sorry.

We do have one public comment on this item.

OK, great. Thank you. Daisy, did you want to add something?

We'll be sending out a news release also from the city tomorrow or later tonight, which will include a link to that. But Kate can provide the link verbally as well.

Great. Thank you. Put that in the very bottom, I guess.

I think it was slow county.ca.gov forward slash PIT count. Is that right?

PIT dash dash count.

Okay. Thank you. That's why I wanted to ask. Awesome. Thank you so much. And if you want to hang tight through public comment, that'd be great.

Very price.

Thank you Mayor Stewart, Council and staff for the good presentation. I'm Barry Price with the Tenants Union. Though there has been an encouraging decrease in unsheltered homelessness and increase in sheltered homeless, there also appears to be a disturbing increase in the number of local working people, families and young adults and children experiencing homelessness. The present the presentation was good at showing the what but not the why, and, for example, we'd like to know how many of these people were formerly housed and lost their homes due to eviction or inability to pay rent. And we'd like the county and the city to make whatever such information on that they have available as well. And I'll just remind council that prevention is the most cost effective and human centered solution. We can help keep people in their existing homes and off the streets by enacting no fault eviction protections. Thank you so much.

And the final speaker.

Yes, it is.

Great. Well, thank you so much for your time and for your report. We really appreciate it. And next we will have... the single vote communications update, and we'll have Deputy City Manager Greg Herman kick us off, and then we'll have Policy and Project Manager Natalie Harnett, and Public Communications Manager Whit Centese. Along with that, we also have a presentation they'll be pulling up, but I'll pass it right over to Deputy City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members. We're very happy to be here tonight to give you an update on this item. As you all know, we're making a change to the way in which we elect our Council members in the upcoming election, and that's a significant undertaking for us. And I want to reassure the Council that we've approached this work with a degree of care and seriousness to ensure that each member of our community knows how to make their vote count in this election. I also just want to take a brief moment to recognize both Whit and Natalie for their incredible work in that effort to make sure that everyone has all the information they need to be able to participate fully in the election. And with that, I'll hand it over to them.

Great. Thank you, Greg. Hello, Mayor, Council. My name is Natalie Harnett. I'm the Policy and Project Manager in the City Administration Department, and I'm here joined by Whitson Teesee, who is our Communications Manager. So in January of this year, we presented to the City Council our communications and outreach plan for the city's transition to citywide single vote. Here today, we're just giving you an update on where we're at now that we're just about three months out from elections. Happy to say that it's going really well. So we've got some numbers here that we'll share in just a minute. We have just a really quick presentation for you tonight, and we're happy to take any questions at the end if you have them. We're just going to just kind of an agenda, revisit our communication goals and our strategy, provide a quick update on where we are with that effort, and then provide some metrics on our engagement and some of the feedback that we've been getting from the community. Before we get started, I did want to share the short video that most of you have probably seen, but in case there's members of the community that are maybe online, it just gives a really good overview of what citywide single vote is. If you're not familiar, so we'll just play this really quick. Hopefully it will play.

Know that St. Louis Obispo is changing the way we elect council members? Starting this year, you'll vote for one council member candidate instead of two. Let's break down what this means and why. The City Council is San Luis Obispo's legislative body, made up of one elected mayor and four council members. Every two years, voters elect the mayor and two of the four council members. Here's the change. Instead of voting for up to two council member candidates, you vote for one. The top two candidates with the most votes get elected. And nothing changes for the mayor. You already vote for one. Here's one important note. If you select more than one council member candidate, your vote in that race won't count. Citywide single vote is simple and familiar to many voters. Vote for one and the top two win. This aligns with voting trends as many local voters have only selected one council member candidate in the last few elections. And we saw the most, about 70% of voters, select just one candidate in the last election, even though they could have chosen two. All registered voters get to continue voting in every council member election every two years, and all registered voters get to choose the candidate who best represents them from across the city. San Luis Obispo is a charter city. That means we have our own local constitution called a charter, and only voters can change it. For more than 100 years, our charter has required citywide elections. In 2023, the city received a letter from the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project claiming that our election system violated the California Voting Rights Act, a state law meant to prevent racial vote dilution. The group demanded that we switch to district-based elections. The city evaluated three options slightly adjusting citywide elections for Council members dividing San Luis Obispo into districts or entering into a costly legal battle. By district elections can work in some cities, but would limit local voters from participating in every Council member election and will limit the choice based on where voters live. Data doesn't show that districts would improve voter representation in SLO primarily because minority groups are not concentrated in any specific geographic areas. Some local minority leaders also raised concerns that dividing San Luis Obispo into districts could actually reduce a minority group's opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Another option was litigation, but no city has ever won a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. Some cities have even spent millions of taxpayer dollars fighting it in court. Instead of splitting up San Luis Obispo or fighting a legal battle in court, the city spent nearly two years negotiating with voting rights advocates to reach a better solution for our community. The compromise is citywide single vote. It keeps elections citywide, meaning all voters have a voice in every election, but each voter selects only one candidate instead of up to two. With one vote, no single group can boost multiple candidates at once. That creates a consistent method of voting, ensures all elected council members continue to represent the whole community, and encourages community-wide coalition building among voters. Let's be clear. We didn't ask for this change. And this decision was not made lightly. There were public hearings in November 2024 and January 2026. community members shared a wide range of views. After nearly two years of evaluation and discussion, the council adopted citywide single vote into law. The city will review results of the 2026 and 2028 council member elections. We can switch to districts or another alternative if the data shows there's a better choice for our community. Citywide Single Vote protects voting rights, preserves citywide participation, and keeps our community connected. To learn more, visit slowcity.org slash single vote. And remember, vote for one, the top two win.

So you might recognize the voice on that video. Whit actually made that, so thank you for that. So just revisiting our communication goals. Number one is to clearly inform residents about the change and the why behind the change and how it will impact them. Second communication goal is to encourage voter registration, especially with some of our harder to reach populations and historically marginalized community members. The third goal is to provide clear direction on how to vote in order to prevent invalid ballots and reiterating the message that every voter will only vote for one and that if they vote for two, then that section of the ballot will not count. Our final goal is to support voter turnout that meets or surpasses previous election levels, which are very high. Our community has really high voter turnout. The last several elections have been above 85%. So the City of Slough is just trying to really keep that number high. So our outreach strategy is organized into three phases, which closely align with our communication goals that we just went over on the previous slide. We're using a multimedia approach and incorporating bilingual outreach efforts to help ensure that we're reaching our Spanish-speaking residents and providing accessible information to the whole community. Phase one, which is largely complete and focused on introducing citywide single vote, explaining what the change is, why it's happening, and providing residents with some of that background information. Phase two, which is the phase we're currently in, will continue to reinforce that foundational information while also shifting the focus towards voter participation. So this phase is really focused on encouraging residents to register to vote and providing clear information on how and where they can do that so that they can participate in the upcoming election. Phase three will serve as our final outreach push. The goal here will be to ensure that voters have a really clear understanding of the change and what to expect when they get their ballot and they know how to complete it correctly and feel confident doing that. This is just a quick overview of the different areas included in our communications plan I apologize these you saw little green orange and red things on them, but at least there's also. Some words there and so it's going to go over this in a little bit more detail in a few minutes. But so far, we've established our citywide single vote branding, which you've seen probably all over, launched a comprehensive website, completed half of our planned community meetings. We've also been building lots of partnerships with community organizations and conducted presentations with a variety of different groups to help expand our outreach. Our digital advertising efforts are currently underway and picking up, and voter registration outreach is also in progress. Overall we're seeing increased awareness and engagements across the around the transition looking ahead our major focus will be on ballot education, making sure that voters understand how to correctly complete their ballots. um and this is just a little um some images of some of the community outreach that we've been doing over the last six or so months um and i also just wanted to take a moment to give a huge thank you to the entire team it really does take take a village um we've been out in the community on a weekly basis and it's been a great opportunity to not only share information about citywide single vote but also just connect directly with our residents A special thanks to WIT, our communications manager. We also have two interns, Kate McHugh and Ashley Villanueva, who have been a huge help as well as our entire DEI team. And you'll see even in the lower left-hand corner, deputy city manager Greg Herman made it out to a couple of our pop-ups. So I'm super grateful just for everyone. And with that, I will go ahead and hand it over to WIT to get into a little bit more detail.

Great. Thank you, Natalie. Our job throughout this process is really to reach everybody. And that's a tall order. In order to do that, we have to put in a lot of effort. There are a lot of people that we reach every day. A lot of times it's the same people that we reach every day. But there are a lot of community members that we're not reaching on a regular basis. There are a lot of community members who have been historically marginalized and frankly harder to reach. They're not following us on social media. They're not subscribed to our e-newsletters. They don't come to our meetings. Some of them don't speak English and it's really important that we make that extra effort and go the extra mile to not only meet them where they are, but make sure that they not only understand the information, but can act on it. We've gone to great lengths to make sure that every group in our community understands and is aware of the change. We want to make sure everyone knows how to make their vote count. We've held a candidate forum, a candidate orientation, three of six community meetings, We have created a partner toolkit with information in English and Spanish for our trusted messengers in our community to help get the information out, for community groups and organization to share the information with their customers, communities, and networks. We've created two unique web pages, one for Citywide Single Vote and the other for the partner toolkit that has all the information anyone could ever want or need on this topic. We have sent two postcards citywide to every household in San Luis Obispo, one in April and one in June, right after the primary election. We didn't want to confuse people during that time. We have published two explainer videos, both in English and Spanish. You just saw one. And we've published four editions of our citywide single vote newsletter with important key facts and updates. This goes to thousands of community members. We have presented information about citywide single vote to six community groups. We have published seven news releases resulting in 14 independent news stories or republished news releases. And we've posted related content on social media 18 times since January. We've hosted, as you could see in the pictures before, we've hosted informational booths or pop-ups at various locations and events throughout the city, including the Slow Senior Center, Farmer's Market, Slow Chambers, Community Expo, or Expo at the Expo, Monday meetups at various parks, and concerts in the Plaza Block Party on July 3rd, just to name a few. What's not listed here is we've also printed 5000 business cards English on one side Spanish on the other, with a QR code to the website. With more details we distribute this at every event that we attend and we've also provided this to city council members and we are providing this information to candidates as well. We have printed and displayed large street banners in English and Spanish, which you can currently see displayed at Laguna Lake Golf Course as you pass by on Los Osos Valley Road. It's right there on the fence. We have a community working group that meets with us monthly and provides us with feedback not only on the information that we've already posted and shared, but that is coming up. So they'll let us know if it's resonating, if it works, if it makes sense. And these are just some of the ways that we've directly reached community members who are typically harder to reach and those who we reach regularly. It's been an incredible opportunity to build new connections as well as Natalie mentioned. So what does that mean? It's resulted in us reaching thousands of people. We've obviously used every tool in our toolbox, and I believe it is working. We've certainly reached every household in San Luis Obispo twice. and we are continuing to reach even more people as we move forward. We recently started streaming commercials in English and Spanish on KSBY and other streaming services, and as of last week, those have had more than 170,000 impressions. We also have radio ads that are currently running, display ads that are running on various websites. We've sent more than 32,000 emails that have been opened more than 15,000 times, and I swear they all weren't opened by me. Our social media content has gotten more than 23,000 impressions collectively, and we expect even more as we get closer to the election. We have been focusing on a strategic approach that builds awareness first, creates understanding second, and that results in action. So what are people saying? Community feedback. This is what we have heard from community members online and from community members just out in the community when we're out talking with people. We're hearing overwhelmingly positive feedback. Last year, as you recall, we did a survey last year just before we started this communications plan just to kind of get a baseline and see where we stood. Most people were unaware of this change. Now residents we speak with are aware. They have told us that they've seen or heard something about it. That's great, but we want more. Last year community members did not understand the new voting process and now the ones we talk to say that the change is easy to understand. The community wanted simple clear explanations and examples and we've provided that. There are still some questions about why this is happening, but with a brief explanation, most community members we speak with seem satisfied with the answer. There are still some questions around by district elections, naturally, and then we are still getting questions around ranked choice voting. But for the most part, community members are more aware of this change than ever before. So where do we go from here? starting this september we're going to be doing some volunteer canvassing door-to-door outreach across neighborhoods in san luis obispo we're going to be first targeting neighborhoods based on census data that include harder to reach community groups this like i said will start in september but will likely continue leading up to the election we will also start to really educate people on the ballot this summer and fall we should have an actual image of the ballot I want to say in September right before the ballots go out in the mail. We will continue educating candidates and providing them with the information and materials they need to help get the word out. We will continue supporting our community's trusted messengers by providing the tools, messaging, and staff support so that they can be successful and confident in getting the word out. We will focus on student outreach as Cal Poly and Cuesta College start the new academic year. This will be primarily to focus on increasing voter registration. A lot of the college students we hear have are registered elsewhere, even though they might live in the city and can vote here. And we will continue running paid ads, sending out news releases and newsletters, sharing content on social media. And we also have one more postcard going out citywide in the fall. And finally, there will be an election. So to anyone watching from home, if you're part of any group, whether it's an HOA or you have a book club with friends or you run an organization, we would love to connect with you. We can meet you where you are and provide you the tools that you need to help share this message accurately with your communities. That concludes our presentation today, and I want to thank you for the time.

Thank you. Thank you for all of this work, not just today with this presentation, but as you've been working through this entire year. Can you share a little bit more about the education that will happen at the polls? And can you share a little bit more about the Spanish radio, TV, you know, how has that been working?

So we are partnering, oh, sorry. We are partnering with the county for poll education, they also just recently published faqs on their website, the county elections office and clerk reporters office, so they have all of the materials that they need that they will provide poll workers. And we will be relying heavily on the county support with real in relation to. poll education or education at the polling places spanish-speaking radio we haven't started running ads on spanish-speaking radio we plan on running that although we are running spanish tv commercials and streaming ads right now we've been focused on getting the word out via spanish-speaking printed materials so radio is coming soon

Great. Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you. Yes. Thanks for the presentation. Thanks for that question, too. Just really, you know, this has kind of been a situation like your video said that none of us asked for. But here we are. And I would say I don't think I've seen many other cities do this kind of outreach just on voter registration and voter education. So it's interesting. it's refreshing and I think something that most cities probably don't do they just hold their elections and whoever shows up shows up and the results are what they are, so this is. I really love the interactive approach really trying to get more people registered to vote as well, I did wonder. About you know you talked about some of the outreach that you're going to be doing with students in the fall and it seems like there's probably some. Political science and public policy students out there that would love to be part of the process, not just. Being outreach to but maybe volunteering on the effort door knocking and just wondered if that's something that you were all looking into as well.

Yes, it is so we'll be working closely with Cal Poly and the political science, you know program to for for our canvassing for a volunteer program and we've already been in contact with some folks at Cal Poly and there is interest there.

awesome I think Cuesta would probably be a great since they probably have more students that are local. and may actually be more likely to be voters in the city, too. So just a suggestion there. And then also, the one question that I have gotten, obviously, we get a lot of questions about this in the community as well. And I have a big stack of those postcards that I carry around in my backpack and share frequently with folks. But the one question that I still struggle with, you all have got the messaging really clear and simple, the one question that I still have trouble with, to be honest, is how the math works and single vote and and how how this will really. Give larger voice to underrepresented historically underrepresented voters in our Community, do you do you have a good simplified answer for that.

We have a simplified answer and we also have a very short video that helps simplify the answer in visual terms I think it's easier to explain it in a visual way than to talk about the math, so I think natalie's going to try to pull up the YouTube video in just a moment. But essentially it's focused on. Up here we go leveling the playing field so. How does Citywide Single Vote level the playing field for voter representation? Let's look at a simplified example of how Citywide Single Vote creates an opportunity for minority voters to elect their chosen candidate compared to the previous voting method, where voters could choose up to two council member candidates. In San Luis Obispo, two council members are elected every two years. Now imagine you have three candidates on the ballot, candidate orange, candidate green, and candidate blue. Under the old voting method, if you have 100 voters and they each get at least two votes, that means there are 200 votes to go around. Now let's say the majority is made up of 60 voters. Their first vote goes to candidate orange and their second vote goes to candidate green. They would never vote for candidate blue. Even if the minority of 40 voters puts all their support behind candidate blue, their preferred candidate can never win. And if they put their second vote behind candidate orange or candidate green, that could further reduce the likelihood of electing candidate blue. Under Citywide Single Vote, however, all voters get one vote. When the same candidates compete and voters choose their same top preferences under Citywide Single Vote, candidate orange wins the first seat and candidate blue wins the second. Citywide Single Vote is simple, fair, and familiar. It creates a level playing field for everyone and is approved by the City Council as the best compromise for our community. To learn more, visit...

Thank you. I queued up that question just so you could show that video. I'm just kidding. But thank you. That's helpful. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Thank you and a great presentation and I appreciate all the energy you guys are putting into this and I wish you well. My question is in terms of the pamphlet that goes out from the county prior to actually getting the ballot, the voter information pamphlet. Are you working with them as to the language that goes into telling the voters about single vote? Because a lot of people, even if they get postcards and even if they watch TV or don't, When they think about elections it's like right before they vote and so that's my the second part of the question is also in terms of the balance themselves will there be directing language, so that people know they can only vote for one and then, if they vote for two they their vote won't count.

The answer to both questions is yes. We will have information in the voter information guide. We were going to have the back page of the voter information guide for the primary election, but after working with the county clerk recorder's office, we thought that would be too confusing. for the primary because there was no city council election during that election. So we are going to be working with them to have a page, probably the back cover, in the voter guide for the November 3rd general election. And to your second question, the ballot will say vote for one. So that will be the clear instructions, and hopefully people will read that. What we have heard from community members is when we explain it, they're like, well, I'm just going to read the instructions on the ballot. So they, you know, who knows? But that will be the instructions on the actual ballot, vote for one.

Just be that normal, just one sentence, right? Okay, thank you.

Thank you, and lastly, with the Southwest Voters Group, SVREP, are they in part of that community group or are they in addition to the community group? You mentioned there was a community group that was helping with the education.

No, the community group is made up of San Luis Obispo City community members, people who live here who are part of historically marginalized communities or harder to reach groups. We specifically handpicked folks. And then we also reached out to folks who really weren't in favor of this. And they're part of the group as well. So we're hearing from a good subset of the community sharing a wide variety of perspectives based on their lived experiences great thank you very much it's great to hear that i don't see any other questions do we have any public comment on this topic i have no speaker cards great and i don't see any hands raised

Okay, thank you so much. Well, thank you for this great report. Thank you for your great work. I know there's lots more still over these next few months, and we really appreciate you. With that, we will move forward to the city manager report. And I'm going to just remind everybody after the city manager report, we have public comment for things not on the agenda. So if you have something you would like to put in a public comment for, there are slips right next to the deputy city manager. There are some slips right outside where you can put your name on and say you'd like to provide your public comment. Also, those who are listening online, please raise your hand if you are interested in providing public comment. Our city clerk can help you with that.

and without further ado city manager thank you very much um we do have a few items to go over this evening although not not too many even though we had a bit of a break so i'm looking forward to sharing some of this information with you all kicking things off and staying on theme with our discussion about our upcoming election first want to again give a huge thanks to our team to whit and natalie as well as to our interns and all of our volunteers who have been out there at our booths helping us. Our objective is to talk about this publicly and in so many places that people say, please stop, that's enough, we already know. And so that's our goal. We're going to keep at it because it's incredibly important that everybody's vote is counted and counted properly. So really impressed with the work of our team and looking forward to continuing that work as we go. So November 3rd, 2026 is our municipal election. our nomination period for our seats which include the mayor and two council member seats um that is officially kicked kicked off it started on july 13th and ends on august 7th again it's one seat the mayor's seat which is a two-year term and two council member seats at four-year terms each if anybody has questions about what it takes what you need to do our clerks Office and team is there to help assist people walking through that process. If anyone would like to know who has pulled papers, that's the first step. People need to come in and get papers to officially join the race. If anyone's curious about who has pulled papers, we do have that information posted at the website up on the page here, which is basically slowcity.org slash government slash municipal dash elections. um and so yes we're really looking forward to continuing that work and please come with questions if anyone has any next up we want to make sure that folks are aware that there is an important information session coming up that the county of san luis obispo is hosting So the county is inviting community members to attend an informational session on the possible extension of the Diablo Canyon power plants, permits and operations through 2045. Diablo Canyon 2045 the name of this forum local and statewide implications will be held on Thursday July 30 from six to 9pm at the government Center. Over at 1055 Monterey street there were there's a series of speakers who are lined up. This includes Dr. John Parsons of MIT, Dr. David Roland Holst, who is the executive director of the Berkeley Economic Advising and Research Group, and PG&E representatives as well, community will be included in this program. It will include a moderated community perspectives panel that features representatives from education, including our local school district here, business, labor, and a number of other community sectors. The meeting will be streamed live on slow span at www.slow.com. dash span.org and members of the public who wish to provide comments may do so in person during a public comment period just to be clear, this is an informational session. Only but again it's really there to help answer questions that folks might have curiosities and provide a lot of really good information about work that's been underway to evaluate the plant. including questions about its licensing, safety, but also economic impacts. So there's been a lot of work done that the county has spearheaded. A number of additional groups have spearheaded to look at the economic factors on top of all those questions that folks might have. about ongoing operations. I would like to note that Supervisor Ortiz leg is with us in the audience. And if she's obviously been a part of helping to put this together and wants to get the word out as well. And so if she would like to come and say a few words about this event, we want to make sure to help spread that information out there and make sure everybody's aware of this opportunity.

Thank you, manager mctonnell appreciate that and honorable mayor and Council members good evening guys are busy tonight i'll just be brief, thank you for having the slide up appreciate that very much yeah this is, we just want to make sure that everybody knows that it's an opportunity to. listen and then express. So it's both a listening opportunity, because we'll be having public comment, but also learning. And so it's information that all of us are interested in hearing about. And I think you pretty much touched on it. You know, it's everything from what does it look like right now? What's the status of the plant? A lot of people are confused because of the moved off of decommissioning into continued operation. And then now, talking about what's going to happen after 2030 and trying to look at the economics of why it's important to extend to 2045. And then, of course, talking about some of the hotter topics, whether it's seismic, spent fuel storage, embrittlement items, all of those topics. It's lots of different moving parts. And so we wanted to have something that everybody could access, whether they come down to the county building or see it online at slow span. and with that i just wanted to say thank you for the time and of course thank you for actually asking for this this was something that you know when we came in earlier this year and talked about our board saying that we wanted to make the expression together about um that we wanted to see diablo expanded and one of the things that came back to from us from you from your council was that we'd like to have some information sessions for the community so that's what this is and um again thank you for that and i think that's it okay i'll put my slip in

Thank you, I think I think if you want to wait one second Vice Mayor has a question for you one for you.

Thank you for coming down I was just curious if this will also be recorded and available after the fact, yes, it will so if you miss out that they'll be able to go back to it.

and public comment will only be available for those in the building we're not doing a whole thing, and this is not a board meeting. Some board members will be there. Some board members will be in the audience. Some board members will be at home. You know, it's just informational for all of us. So something that we at the board decided that we wanted to offer up. So we thank you. Okay, bye. Thank you.

Okay, we've got a few more items to touch on. Next up, we have some work that will be starting pretty soon out at our swim center. This is gearing up for a sustainable upgrade and it will unfortunately temporarily impact our parking access in this area. Beginning as early as August 3 a large portion of the cinchimer parking lot will be closed and that area is outlined in red up on the screen. While we install solar panels shade structures, this will help offset energy usage at the swim Center. it's really important part of the work that we're doing on climate resiliency energy conservation and really just. bring that work kind of up to standard across the board construction is anticipated to take approximately three months to complete with work expected to wrap up in mid October. Prior to the start of construction, we will place informational sandwich boards in the parking lot and distribute notices to swim Center users and nearby residents to communicate. the anticipated parking impacts and construction schedule, as well as available parking alternatives. During construction, a portion of the parking area will be temporarily unavailable, again outlined in red, and then fenced off to accommodate construction materials and installation. And to ensure public safety, there will be directional signage installed as well. So just we wanted to make sure to get the word out. We know it's a impacted area for parking in high usage time frames, but we needed to get the work done at some point. And so we wanted to make sure people were aware that that will be coming. Next up, really excited to highlight this event that we will be holding on the weekend to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the San Luis Obispo Green Belt. Again, this year marks that 30th anniversary of our Green Belt, and the city invites community members to cherish our open space and celebrate with us this summer. On July 25th at 6 p.m., Please join us and gather for a community picnic at our scenic Terrace Hill open space. You can walk up to the top of the hill with your family, your friends for a simple celebration of this 30th anniversary. Please bring your own picnic blanket and any food or refreshments you'd like to enjoy. And our goal is to really sit and watch the sunset together as a community. Trailhead access is located on Rachel Street and Bishop Street. There is limited parking in this area, so we're encouraging folks to find a way to get there on foot or bike. And by carpooling, if you have any accessibility needs and would benefit from a ride to the top of the hill, please reach out to a ranger service at 805-781-7302 and we will help you out. We want to get folks up there to enjoy with us. Attendees will be offered a special commemorative slow green belt thirtieth anniversary bandana. There's a picture of it up there. It is beautiful. It's really just a way to mark this this anniversary, which is significant for our community. And those who cannot attend one of these events are also encouraged to just get outside and enjoy our green belt, which is really why it is there along with providing access to recreation. It's really an important part of our climate goals as well as and we're really looking forward to the celebration. Thanks to the community support of our open space program as well as our whole open space team who work really hard every day to maintain it. And with that, we wanted to speak to our Terrace Hill and open space program and ask Chief Harris to come up and talk a little bit about what I'm sure some folks may be having some questions about, which is the very recent fire at Terrace Hill.

Mayor Stewart Council members Randy Harris fire chief want to provide a couple details on last Thursday July 16 fire, the fire came in just after nine o'clock about 913 in the morning, we did send a full wildland response to that. The first arriving unit time there shows seven minutes that actually is inaccurate, we did have our deputy chief there sooner, there was some conflict in directions, because of multiple rps. We did have our rangers and local neighbors calling 911 at the same time, so that was wonderful. We got early notification of the fire. Crews immediately began putting hose lays in around the fire. They were able to stop it actually at the trailhead. lack of fuel on the trailhead did help contain the fire there. The incident required containment lines be constructed and then hotspot monitoring throughout the afternoon and into the evening. Thanks to the police department, we actually were able to do a drone flight with IR and confirm that the fire was out as we headed into that evening. There were no major structure damage. There was a minor damage to one window. No evacuations were issued. However, neighbors that were nearby immediately adjacent to the fire were asked to shelter in place just due to the smoke conditions. Later in the incident, one resident did complain of a little bit of smoke inhalation. We were able to treat that patient and they declined any further treatment or transport. And overall, the fire was contained just under three acres in size. The fire was sparked by the city rangers doing ongoing vegetation management work that was obviously at nine o'clock they were aware of the weather. They tried to put the fire out, but because of that extra dry weather that day with a little bit of wind, the fire progressed beyond their capability to suppress it at that time. They did have hand tools and a fire extinguisher nearby, but like I said it just. is spread quicker than the crews were able to contain that. Luckily nearby homes had proper defensible space and that defensible space did contribute to less damage to the homes. This is a great reminder that wildfire risk is always present and being prepared really makes a difference. Slow Fire has a lot of great resources on how to get wildfire ready at slowcity.org forward slash wildfire. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, and thank you to your team. That was incredibly quick, and we really appreciate it. Council Member Marks.

Thank you. Yes, well, I'm just wondering, when we have the picnic up there, I do plan to attend, we're going to be putting, is the whole hill covered with ash, or with, you know, are we going to be able to put our blankets down, or how is that going to work?

You will. The fire stopped about midpoint on the trail as you picture Terrace Hill from afar. And so yeah, you'll be in a nice area with normal native vegetation, not burnt.

Very good. Thank you.

Council Member Shoresman.

I yes, I just wanted to ask this question, I had a chance to ask the manager earlier, but wanting to put it out there for others to know the answer. In the past, I know we've used goats for weed abatement on terrace hill and and some of our other open spaces and i'm wondering if that. would have either been a safer option or if that's something that we plan to do in the future or if that's even would have impacted this at all.

That's a great question and actually the the fuel modification is a combination. So goats were planned to come to that site and they're still planned for the remainder of the site. The person that coordinates the goats actually arrived that day during the fire. This vegetation management that was being done was on thicker vegetation that needed mechanical management as opposed to the grazing.

Okay thank you so much appreciate that. Thank you Vice Mayor.

This is a kind of a multi departmental question but curious about kind of how the after incident assessment goes and if there'll be kind of discussion about you know how we manage vegetation in the future, and you know how all of that process happens after an incident like this.

Yes, so Director Avakian and I spoke that day. We are looking at all opportunities to take any additional mitigation actions. We're also working with that fuels crew. The fuels crew, we did check their well-being that day because obviously a scary incident for them. They're doing well as well. And we're looking to take additional mitigation actions that are identified.

Thank you. And thank you for checking in on the well-being of everybody involved.

Thank you. Looks like all the questions. Thank you, Chief. City manager back to you.

Thank you, just last step when I highlight our upcoming items that our next city council meeting on August 4. I'll just highlight a few things in the consent agenda. One is a grant application for a climate resiliency grant. We are seeking Authorization to apply for up to $500,000 as a planning grant to look at options to support a both multicultural and climate resiliency center in the city. So that would be for planning efforts to help see if there's a location and how we might accommodate something like that in the city. Also authorization to seek funding through a CalRecycle grant to install water bottle filling stations at our public parks. and a approval of an agreement to move forward with a silt removal project and really want to highlight this work is being done clearly ahead of the winter storms and we are seeking authorization to move forward quickly so we can get that work done before October. One of the places we will be working at is at There's a list in the staff report itself. There will be four different locations. One includes Perfumo Creek at Madonna, and so that will help us just in those areas in general, as well as Tank Farm at Hollyhock, Slow Creek at LOVR, and Larkspur at Goldenrod. So we would be looking forward to completing so removal work to help with flow of water in our creeks. And finally, our business main business and public hearing items are all related to our Prado interchange and Prado Creek bridge projects. So this includes introduction of an ordinance. To allow us to establish an underground utility district to facilitate us undergrounding utilities in that corridor, which will be a big part of that project. Providing an update on where we're at with design and new estimates of costs, where we are in the caltrans process with our report. um and talking about value engineering of the creek bridge portion of the project we talked with you all about value engineering of the interchange and so we want to provide an update on the creek bridge piece and so looking forward to bringing that forward um on august 4th and that is it for me this evening thank you so much vice mayor

yeah I just wanted to circle back quickly to the swim Center solar project, I noticed that the start date is currently August 3, but I was curious since school is. Starting on the 20th this year if there was any thought given to bumping that I know timelines can be tight yeah we have a little more information yeah we totally understand.

No time is good for a project like this. We are working to complete it within. I believe we have some grant funding that we are working with. Hopefully I will be corrected if that's wrong. We know we need to get the project done. We looked at earlier in the summer, but that wasn't a great time as well. And so trying to find a good time frame was really kind of a struggle. We delayed it as far as we could to this date. Understood.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council. Madeline Casenta, Assistant Director of Public Works. Yes, you guys make an excellent point, and we understand that often there is no good time to close this parking lot, and there's lots of people using the Swim Center and Sennsheimer Park. So we did collaborate with Parks and Recreation to try and find the best time, but also with the understanding that we do have a grant deadline of March 14th, I believe is the date. So trying to fit that in, and this was the best possible time with also meeting that deadline.

Thank you, appreciate that. Yep, Councillor Schoresman.

Thank you for asking that question, because it prompted me to get a little bit of clarification on the image that you showed. It looked like there's still it's not the entire parking lot that's closed. It's just the area around where which is a big area around where the panels are going to be installed. But there is parking kind of behind that and around the edges still correct.

So the parking lot would remain open, but there's the essentially the middle aisle or most of it will be occupied. We are looking at options for alternative parking locations as well. We'll keep looking at that to try to alleviate some of the pressure we'll see there.

Okay, and I think the I don't know if the part he's he's here, so he might have this better on the tip of his tongue than you do. But the wreck hours that the pool is open and and speaking of the the time period when the construction will be between August second or third and the twentieth. Is there a period when what are the hours of rec swim and And is there a period during the summer during that time between when the construction will start and school starts that there is going to be any closures to the pool? Correct.

I was ready for those questions. But I don't have the hours in front of me. I apologize. But as Madeline said, we worked on this. Originally, it was going to be a spring or early summer. We've negotiated to get to August 3. We have about one week left of our swim lesson program at that point. And our staff are already communicating out to all the families that are registered to just let them know there's going to be impacts to the parking area. Our rec swim and summer ends within about a 10 day period. And then we are closed for two weeks for our major annual rent projects that happened at the pool. So that's our timing. Also the slow blues are finished with their season. I know there's potential playoffs that they're good for them, that we weren't always accounting on. So that will be something that we'll monitor and communicate with them. But they've all been a part of these conversations for that. And then the hours of construction obviously are going to end before our evening activities. So that will reduce some of the impact of just in and out of construction equipment. And then the perimeter parking will be a little more accessible at that point. Thank you so sorry notifications are also going out to our users to our email newsletter to all of our swim Center users and we'll do more of a publicity campaign through our our city communications.

I know you all are always really good about posting changes in the hours on the door when I'm there a few times a week. I always rely on that. And for the hours of rec swim, roughly, don't quote me on it, but I think it's like there's lap swim from 11.30 to 1.30, and then the rec swim is like 1.45 to 3.30-ish.

Correct it's afternoons for the rec swim we have morning lap slim as well, so there'll be some just again adjustment for our traditional users. But the majority of our users are going to be from probably 11 to four in that time frame that will be impactful but again for about a week, maybe some maybe 10 days maximum great Thank you so much for those clarifications.

Thank you for the questions any other questions for the city manager city manager anything else to add. Okay, well, thank you for a great report and so glad the supervisor was able to add come and join us with this part. So next up we'll have public comment for items that are not on the agenda so i'm just going to remind you one last time, if you would like to speak, make sure you get one of these slips there's a speaking slip next to deputy city manager and also right outside. We will be this is our first back to hybrid online meetings so. our in-person speakers will be called first and then the remote speakers will follow so if anyone is on zoom and you would like to speak speak please raise your hand and the city clerk will go ahead and get your order now as far as getting you in order to speak next and then if you are on zoom attending virtually please make sure after you raise your hand you can also press star 9 on your keypad if you're dialing in on the telephone And then the city clerk will notify you when it is your turn and allow you to unmute. So before we jump into public comment, though, I did want to add a little bit from myself. I wanted to take a moment, and I wrote this down, usually I just kind of go off the cuff, but I want to make sure that I really include all of the key points of this next topic. So I wanted to take a moment to apologize. for the handling of the release of the grand jury report. This was the round around town gown report that came out last year. I am sorry that I did that and I take full responsibility for my actions. When the draft report was provided to the city in June 2025, my intent was to ensure we had comprehensive, accurate and collaborative feedback ready for the grand jury and for the community. Since the initial report had focused on both Cal Poly and the city, I had mistakenly assumed that Cal Poly was included in the draft distribution. I sincerely apologize to the members of the grand jury who worked on this report. I sincerely apologize to my city colleagues for the discomfort that this has caused. And I apologize to the San Luis Obispo greater community I take this role very seriously. I completely understand the subject matter of this report, student and neighborhood relation, is an intense ongoing interest to our community. Report or no report, the city and Cal Poly must continue to partner together. We have to resolve these local issues. This is uncomfortable, this is uncalled for, and this is disturbing in our community. And as we continue working together, I am committed to make sure that I am working constructively with all stakeholders to improve our community's quality of life. During my seven plus years on this council, serving as a council member and serving as mayor, I have taken this job very seriously. And I am committed to ensuring the mistake is never repeated again. I want to thank you to everyone who has provided me with encourage and support during these last few months. And I'm just going to go ahead and get us back to moving forward on our agenda to public comment. So city clerk, can you please call the next order of public comment?

Katie Eichard, Stephan Takei, and then Sean Harris.

I live about a half block from Terrace Hill. I'm a little surprised to see that many questions about the parking at the swim center and not much at all about the fire on Terrace Hill. I was up there the day before it started and they were mowing. It was 90 degrees. It was unbelievably hot, and I thought, what are they doing? I thought, what does a citizen even do when they see something like that? They were young. They were hard for me to get to. I was with my dog. And when it started the next day, I saw the smoke from my house. And I thought, oh my god, of course, it's these kids that are up there mowing. I shouldn't call them kids. But I thought, of course, I knew immediately what had started that fire. And I just have no idea, as a citizen, what do we do to make sure this never happens again? It is insane to me that the goats came yesterday, and they were out mowing on the hottest days of the year. And I just have no idea what we do to make sure that never happens again i'm not myself worried about where i'm going to park at the swim Center i'm worried about. How we make sure that they are not mowing in the middle of a heat wave it's it's it's unbelievable to me and I don't know what we do and there's a good deal of concern in my neighborhood about it, we. Have evacuated before and we packed up again and we got out and to see so little comment on the fact that they were mowing in the middle of a massive heat wave is just truly unbelievable to me. And I hope that we can talk a little bit more or or do some let us know how we make sure that this doesn't happen again it's been cool and foggy for three months and they waited until a 90 degree day to be out there. Thank you so much.

Hello, I'm Stephen Dolka. I'm a professor at Cal Poly and I'd like to echo the last comments. The fire went really fast and it was just by luck or by the preparation of our fire department, who is incredibly fast, incredibly professional, that this didn't become something much worse. In the middle of our city, And this is the fourth time in the last six years that there have been brush fires right in the city. And this one was entirely preventable, I think. I woke up that morning, and the first thought in my mind was, this is fire weather. And then an hour later, lo and behold, there was fire. And even though people didn't have to evacuate, there's still a fear factor. My daughter has had to live through three other fires. It's scary, especially when they know what happened at Pacific Palisades. And the other thing I would add is that If our insurance rates go up because of this, it'll be a situation where we didn't do anything wrong, but we're going to end up paying more money because of a mistake that the city did. So yeah, I would like to know who ordered them to go out. I'd like to... encourage the city to look at their policies and figure out how to prevent this from happening all four fires that i know of in the last six years were caused by people and was also hot weather so there's probably things that could be done to minimize the risk you can't make the risk go away but i would say yeah let's minimize the risk and and look at ourselves and and try to

make sure it doesn't happen again thanks absolutely thank you do you have the next three yes sean harris donna hare price and volonicus

Thank you. Okay um thanks uh Shaun Harris here. Uh on June 13 uh 2025 our Mayor uh Erica Stewart uh received uh the one that just gave us a mea culpa uh received an advanced draft of a grand jury report uh despite explicit written warnings from the grand jury forepersons stating that the document was strictly confidential under California law. Mayor Stewart for the forward of the embargo draft with Cal Poly Economic Department development official within three hours receiving it. According to San Luis Miso County District Attorney Dan Dell, the same one amongst other notable achievements got a conviction against Kristen Smart. I'm sorry, against Paul Flores for murdering Kristen Smart. Uh, he, uh, stated that the mayor, or he stated the mayor's actions violated California Penal Code section 933305 F. This law mandates that no public officer or agency may disclose the contents of a grand jury draft prior to its official public release. as an elected official our mayor erica stewart is held to a higher standard of conduct in the general public further ignorance of the law is not a defense a good faith error does not explain how reports stamped confidential with an explicit warning from the grand jury foreperson that the report was confidential under california law was shared like nothing more than a juicy link to a tabloid What was transmitted by the mayor was privileged information from a component of our judicial system or since transmitted by an elected public official marriage story as a little attorney on staff. She could have consulted before releasing it if a if a large stamp labeled confidential and a verbal warning were somehow confusing. If the confidential grand jury report contained the grand jury's finding regarding a liberal cause celeb like DEI or a ridiculous identitarian issue, and a more conservative, sober-minded mayor whose only concern was fixing our local economy and not celebrating diversity released it, I can only imagine the shrieks coming from this town's liberal constituency. But since the grand jury's report contained a less salacious issue, this uh same liberal base liberal city council liberal press is trying to rationalize it bury it and come to the defense of a mayor that surely couldn't be so ignorant that with a general intent and in complete defiance of a written warning leaked it within three hours of receiving it if uh and for the sake of this town's reputation and dignity it's time for a mayor to resign as should our city manager named in what may be a very expensive whistleblower lawsuit Alleging serious misconduct to include diverting revenue, which, in the end, San Luis taxpayers may have to pay for in a well-deserved settlement to a city building spectrum whose life was destroyed by the internal machinations of this city's administration. At a minimum, the mayor and city manager should be put on administrative leave until these two self-induced and embarrassing issues are resolved through the due process. The black eye these two individuals have given San Luis are unprecedented and more befitting Tammany Hall. Can these two public servants sworn to uphold the law be trusted to faithfully, dutifully execute the people's will? No, they cannot. And I'm running out of time. Thanks.

Next.

Thank you, Mayor. May this be an offering of how we can move forward. Adrienne Marie Brown emergent strategy identifies trust as the cornerstone of leadership and change. Building relationships and connections by showing up and staying true to your words and values is how we embody Brown's precepts of trust. It is not enough to tell others your values. We need elected to show up and lead with meaningful actions for all people. This is essential in municipal policy development. However, trust in our elected leaders is at an all time low. The Pew Research Center says over 74% of people believe most elected officials don't care what people like us think. Eight in 10 Americans report local leaders are not focused on their needs. Many believe their local electeds are more interested in personal gain, donors, or corporate interests than the public good. Trust is hard when leadership seems to represent only a narrow set of interests. Trust is the heart of belonging. If leaders disregard different beliefs, perspectives, or lived experience, people cannot feel heard, valued, or seen. thankfully accountability thank you mayor transparency and deliberate actions for the good of all residents rebuild lost trust we can move forward by giving our neighbors the supports needed to live in a welcoming safe affordable and secure community when both our activists and electives share a vision and plan meaningful action to protect everyone. Trust is the connective tissue that makes change possible. Thank you. Thank you.

Did we have one more? Our final speaker is Valonikis, and we have no one online.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. My name is Mr. Volonakis. I'm sure you guys have heard or read my emails, hopefully. You guys have a very good police chief. He protects the city's interests. The reason why I'm here is because I'm one of the uncounted homeless. I'm speaking because I think the main reason why we've seen a decrease in the city's homelessness is because the draconian actions of the sheriffs and the city police. I fear for my health and safety out in those streets because I know that the city can literally beat my face into the ground and not go to prison. Any other American who takes elbows to an American's face on the sidewalk would be in prison, but that officer got to walk free. Also, ignorance of the law is no protection from the law. I find it odd. that most citizens are held to a higher degree and standard to the law than any politician here. Also, I find it really weird that nobody is running against you. It is odd, especially in 2026. So I am here announcing that I'm going to do my best to register on August 13th. So at the very least, there's somebody here to debate you on things. It just, somebody needs to debate you. So if anybody wants to help me, you can reach me at V-O-L-O-N-A-K-I-S-T-K-421 at gmail.com. V-O-L-O-N-A-K-I-S-T-K-421 at gmail.com. I will need somebody to help keep account of the things and the whatnots. Basically, this is gonna be something that just, we're gonna do this and it's gonna have to be before August 13th, because somebody needs to pay her. Biggest thing that we can do to help the homelessness problem on the large scale, We can protect the motel and hotel licenses and permits. We can ban Airbnb. And we can also ensure the city controls at least a third of the rental here so that we can actually sit there and go, no, no, no, no. A single apartment or studio will cost $850 if you rent from the city. I think that would do a huge big dent and also prevent people that used to work or work like me to actually get into affordable housing. I applied for help three years ago. Six months ago, suddenly somebody called me as Oregon Process Self-Rescue. I told them, sorry, I don't need your help anymore, but thank you for calling. That is the kind of service that I have seen and expected here. So I just kind of keep quiet out of the business so that way I don't have to deal with them. Thank you very much for your time. And again, I will be trying to register for mail, V-O-L-O-N-A-K-I-S-T-K-421 at gmail.com. Anyone interested in helping me, please reach out. We only have, what, a couple more days.

Thank you. Thank you. And no public comment from the Zoom.

That's correct.

Okay. Just wanted to make sure. I do want to just make sure city clerk, can you give the dates to run for office? Because I believe it's August 7. Okay, great. With that, we will move forward to the consent agenda. So we have I'm so sorry, Vice Mayor.

Thank you for that you, we had a couple comments about the tears hill fire from our public commentators and I really appreciate the chiefs response about the fire departments. And after action response and I was wondering city manager, if you wanted to add anything to that about obviously we're kind of in the immediate aftermath, but what kind of process happens afterwards internally, if you want to speak to anything around that.

Sure. Thank you. I appreciate hearing from folks in the community who are concerned. Completely understandable. Natural fire truly is a scary prospect and something we also take very seriously. Certainly in this situation where we were able to quickly identify a cause, Having been something that a city employee or you know even a contractor if that were the case directly had created we look. We will always look at what it is that led to the incident occurring and what might we be able to change in the future, there are a lot of challenges in this situation because. The very work we were doing out there was intended to avoid the outcome that we saw. We have over 4,000 acres of open space, both within the city and around the city that we are charged with maintaining. And we set about doing that work throughout the course of a year. There's only so much time we have to complete vegetation management that truly addresses the issue because, of course, grasses grow on their own terms. And so we can't get out too early to cut it down without needing to go out again. Oftentimes we may end up doing that anyway. As mentioned, we do work with folks who have goats to help us with our vegetation management. We cannot rely on goats alone. That would be lovely. But instead, we have a multifaceted approach to our vegetation management. And in this situation, there wasn't a red flag day. Instead, it was warm. We were working before 10 AM. And typically, if you see around the state, 10 AM tends to be the cutoff when folks are advised or in some places required to not mow. So we were following all the normal protocols that we would need to follow and that we would expect community members to follow as well, including carrying fire extinguishers and going about trying to put the fire out directly ourselves even before our fire department personnel arrived. So we do understand the concerns. At the same time, we're in this place We need to get out there to do the work. We can't rely on non-mechanical equipment to do the work that the city needs to do to keep things safe. I don't know that we're going to be able to assure folks that it'll never happen right, we need to be out there with our machines doing work, but we will do that as responsibly as we possibly can always and into the future, I also want to take a moment and or I will just take the moment to express. Thanks to our team. This incident truly hit our team hard. You could imagine the sense of responsibility that somebody might have over knowing of what just happened. It could happen to pretty much anybody. And so I want to thank our staff who were out there and express concern and support for them. And I'm hopeful that the community will do that as well. You could imagine if that was yourself, the state you might be in, and particularly if you felt like there were folks out in the community who We're incredibly unhappy with you. We want to make sure that our team feels supported. And we are here to support them as well. So we'll keep looking at things, continue to make adjustments. I would love to give everybody 100% assurances that this will never happen again. But we will need to keep doing vegetation clearing work out there. And we'll keep a close eye and follow all of the best practices possible to minimize that risk.

Thank you city manager for outlining the best practices that are currently being followed. This was a really unfortunate situation and I completely understand the fear and kind of expression of concern after an incident like that, and I just want to make sure that people in the Community understand that you know we take this very seriously and will continue to evaluate what we're doing, but it was not a red flag day it was before 10am and. You know, this is a really challenging situation, but thank you for all the additional information yep.

Thank you very much, Councilman shores been.

yeah just one more follow up on that and chief Harris you kind of touched on this a little bit, but my. My understanding and my experience in emergency planning is that there's always an after action that happens and that there's a investigation, probably, that is it's probably still underway, if not, I guess, my. question that i'm getting to is is there an after action process happening an investigation and will there be some lessons learned that we can apply to future situations and if so is there any way that we can if possible share some of those publicly noted after action things that we're going to be doing differently to try to prevent this as best we can

yes randy harris fire chief great question we did complete the investigation that day because the rangers remained on site and clearly stated what they saw and what they did to help mitigate the fire we were able to wrap that investigation up pretty much immediately after the fire once we ruled out all other ignition sources the after action though does continue and you know Director Avakian and I did speak, and we are working with the crews to provide additional opportunities for education, including looking at alternative tools, carrying alternative extinguishers. In that dynamic environment, it's not a one-size-fits-all for all fuel types. So both their PPE, protective equipment, and also the mitigation tools that they carry, we're looking at those and doing some additional training with them.

Great, thank you, that's good to know. And I know there are some neighbors in that area, some communities or neighborhoods that have become the Firewise communities. Is there any other tips or tools that we can provide to them to help if they see something? You know, the whole see something, say something. Is there any additional education that we can do with them around the area?

You know, that's a great question as well. Probably the biggest thing to be aware of is our communications. Obviously, in a dynamic incident like that, if there was a need to evacuate, the best way to get that information would be from PulsePoint. PulsePoint also connects to another social media called watch duty and it's an app that's available also available online that gives the latest evacuation messaging. And you can also get the status of the fire, so we were actively releasing information to hopefully quell any fears of having to evacuate as soon as we could. The forward progress, as I mentioned, was stopped pretty much within 45 minutes, but we did have messaging out about no need to evacuate even sooner than that.

That's great, because I guess, you know, I mean, it is scary when you see flames all of a sudden near your home and knowing where you can get the information as quickly as you can and knowing where to report. Obviously, people can always call 911, but knowing what's happening and having the neighbors have that information, I think is super important. So thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yes, I had another question. And this is probably something that was part of the investigation but gas powered chainsaws and weed whackers. are more fire prone obviously because the fuel is how we would start a fire if we wanted to as opposed to electric. So that's my question is are you looking into whether there was a gasoline spill or whether it was just like a chainsaw hitting a rock that made a spark or what actually started the fire?

It was the mechanical equipment hitting a rock that created a spark behind the individual that was working. So it wasn't related to the equipment being either electric or gas typically for that level of abatement work, it is done by gas powered machines, just because of the energy. You would still have to run a generator to then charge the electric devices for the rate and frequency of use for the electric tools. It's not quite the same level of work that a homeowner would be able to do in their own backyard. It's a continuous work trying to manage the 4,000 acres between the end of the rainy season and as quickly as possible in the summer heat. It's a very narrow time span to do 4,000 acres of vegetation management.

Yeah, well, we're just talking about Terrace Hill right now. So they were using gas powered equipment, correct?

That's correct.

OK, thank you.

Thank you, Chief, and thank you. Thank you to my Council for bringing this up. I think as we as it was mentioned earlier, the after action report will be helpful. And I think as we continue to keep us all updated as to what what the vegetation management is looking like, as we continue looking at the calendar and the schedule, as well as you know, if you live by open space, that is something that we want to make sure that people are aware of. either the pulse point, the watch duty, the cultural burns, vegetation management, things that are happening around them are very, very important so we can get that fire out quickly. So thank you very much. And I guess the last question with that is, You know, we have best practices now. Climate change is real. It's getting hotter and hotter. And so, you know, is one of the things that changed in the best practice is, you know, yes, we go till 10 or thought it was okay to go to 10. It's not a red flag, but maybe it's too hot today to get out there. So wondering what that looks like for the future. Do we have to change our temperature threshold?

Thank you. I don't know that we have a temperature threshold exactly, but what we will look at and also continue to struggle with is, you know, as Chief mentioned, there's a vegetation period between when it grows and when we need to cut it before it is more at risk. And there are only so many hours in the day to do that work and only so many days out of the week. And so we will struggle with balancing when we can actually complete that work. Of course, the tools and again here, there were gas powered tools being used, but that was not related to the cause of this incident at all. If we continue shrinking times and means of being able to take care of the vegetation, it will it may get away from us in terms of keeping a handle on things generally. And so it's just a constant struggle and balance that we will continue to work through along with maintaining. So, you know, are we talking? Do we need to do this work at night? You know, is that where we're at? But then we've got other Environmental concerns to be aware of if we're out there, impacting species it's a it's a lot for us to try to get done again in a very narrow window of time. And that's, not to say we don't understand the concerns we definitely do, but we also are trying to balance, a lot of different things. getting the work done period and being able to do it in as safe a manner as possible equipping ourselves with things to mitigate the risk absolutely we will continue looking at that and working with our teams to make sure we're employing all of those means available to us i think we we are very fortunate to have a lot of partners out in the community who are able to help us with things like goats who can provide a different kind of service but they're not going to be able to get at everything. We'll always have those areas that we need to go in with people to address. And we're not talking just people with their hands, we need tools as well. So trying to manage that will be an ongoing work effort. Yeah. Always a balance. Thank you so much.

Okay, with that we're going to move forward to the consent agenda, and these are in theory items that are deemed routine and non controversial by controversial by staff. But at the same time, we can always as the Council members pull an item and we have a quick reminder oh quick reminder for in person attendees there's a three minute two minute and one minute speech. So if you have a one-minute public comment, you go first. Two-minute public comment, you go second. Three-minute public comment, you go third. So I just wanted to give you some heads up on that. Also, if there's anyone still on the virtual Zoom, we do still have the ability for you to raise your hand if you have a public comment for the consent agenda items. And with that, we will move forward. Is there anything that you would all like to pull? Council Member Shoresman.

City Council Chambers, I don't want to pull anything, but I did want to just draw attention to the agenda correspondence from some of the questions that I asked of staff in advance of the meeting and I appreciated the answers that they provided and also. City Council Chambers, wanted to thank staff for spending some time talking with me about a few of them in advance, but so I just wanted to make sure that the public saw those.

City Council Chambers, Great Thank you Council member marks.

Yes, I don't want to pull any items, but I did want to just say that I'm going to recuse myself from item 6H, which is the annual monitoring for the San Luis Ranch development agreement mitigation measures and project conditions, because I live in San Luis Ranch, so I can't vote on it.

Thank you. Sounds good, thank you, and I just have one question for six f I don't need to necessarily pull it and have a whole large presentation. But i've had quite a few people comment to me in the past of why don't we clean up as the city, the different encampments on the on ramps and off ramps of the freeway and so my my understanding has been that. there are mous with other cities that caltrans has it's quite expensive to do that so i'd love to hear from us from the city what that looks like for us to do and then maybe how we could tie that into future budgets if people were interested

Thank you, Mr. Cruz. Yes, I'm Adam Bayer, members of council. Thank you, Greg Cruz with Public Works. So I do have some statistics for the last fiscal year, 25-26 fiscal year, for both what the city spent and also what Caltrans spent within the city limits. So I'll start off with the city. Last fiscal year, the city spent $146,000 on encampment cleanings. That includes maintenance staff cost, contractor cost, and disposal cost. doesn't include the kind of behind the scenes and also the law enforcement costs that's associated with the chem and clean us. I did reach out to a caltrans to get some costs for them for the last fiscal year and their same cost so again we're looking at contractor costs maintenance staff cost was $164,000 approximately that was 14 days of cleanups within the one on one corridor. Now it's worth noting caltrans provides traffic control to their contractor on one on one when they're doing that. Which is pretty significant and the requirements for the city or a private contractor to do that traffic control like I said would be significant, so we ran some quick numbers. For the contract disposal, maintenance staff costs, and traffic control costs, staff's approximate estimate would be $282,000 for an annual cleanup. And that's the same level what Caltrans is doing. Now that doesn't account any additional staff time or staff resources. So as you all know, encampment cleanups are supported pretty much by every department within the city. So it's hard to quantify exactly how much staff is sitting on time. So aside from that, If Council does give us direction, we could talk to Caltrans about what that looks like with a separate agreement. Those typically are not included in freeway maintenance agreements. They are standalone agreements.

So with that available for any questions or any clarity, thank you so much, I really appreciate you sharing that and getting those numbers quite honestly didn't expect it that fast. But I know that this is a conversation that has happened, you know through the years, and especially since 2020 and on, so I think this is really good to have these numbers for future conversations for 2729 or beyond sure any questions from my colleague okay. Thank you. Thank you. So with that, nothing is polled. I will go back to the city clerk and ask for public comment on consent items.

Yes, we have one speaker on item 6D and then four speakers on 6I and one speaker online. So our first speaker is Rachel Whalen, then Clifford Petita. And then Babak Nefesi.

There we go. Good evening Mayor Stewart and Council Members. I'm Rachel Whalen, the Director of Governmental Affairs at the Slough Chamber of Commerce. On behalf of the Chamber, I want to thank staff for the thoughtful and comprehensive work that went into this year's annual cannabis update. We appreciate the City's commitment to evaluating the program, monitoring industry trends, and providing transparent reporting on the local cannabis landscape. As the City continues to refine its approach, we encourage staff to explore the potential of allowing cannabis consumption lounges and including your findings in next year's annual cannabis update. The Chamber Board believes that San Luis Obispo is uniquely positioned to support an appropriately regulated, experience-based consumption lounge model. As a regional tourism destination, our community has an opportunity to expand the types of experiences available to visitors while supporting local economic activity. At the same time, consumer preferences are evolving. As norms and traditions change, people are increasingly seeking new ways to gather and socialize. A thoughtfully designed consumption lounge that incorporates amenities such as food, live entertainment, and community programming could respond to these changing trends while creating a unique attraction that generates economic activity for surrounding businesses and additional revenue for the city. We also recognize that this would require careful consideration and thoughtful analysis of the regulatory framework, particularly given San Luis Obispo's longstanding commitment to being a smoke-free city. We are not suggesting that this is a simple policy change. Rather, we believe the potential economic and tourism benefits make it worthwhile to study how other communities have addressed these challenges, what regulatory models have proven successful without being unnecessarily burdensome, and whether a model could be appropriate for San Luis Obispo. or not asking the Council to take action tonight, instead we simply encourage staff to evaluate this opportunity and include their findings in next year's annual cannabis update. So the Community can have an informed discussion based on data and best practices, thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

My name is clipper betta i'm the homeowner at 4220 esperanza lane and i'm also the executor of my mom mother's trust, which includes the property. backed up against avila ranch development, the property 4155 esperanza land across the street for more I live. Last winter, the property at 4155 esperanza lane was flooded with water, along with Elena mcbride's property next door. A lake covered our well for several weeks. Our well got contaminated and our tank got contaminated with brown water and as a result, our tenant got E. coli. We tested the well and they found E. coli in the well. The tenants then moved out, had to be relocated. We had to decontaminate the well and had a loss of income as a result. My mother bought the property in the early 70s and we've never had a lake there. um she moved the victorian house on the property in 1986 for as a rental property and nobody has ever gotten sick from e coli except from last winter this past winter this is happening because avila ranch covered up the seasonal creek and all the properties on esperanza lane um Drain toward that creek and now they've covered it up and this so called pond the drainage from all the properties from esperanza lake. goes through a lane number price property, and now it just sits there. And now just sister for several weeks when ever ranch bumps it out and ends up being polluted. runoff from and eventually just goes downstream and now you've got pollution downstream into the waterways. We did not receive restitution for the decontamination of our well and holding tank. Our tenant did not get restitution for getting sick from E. coli. If this happens again, we will have to drill for a new well. We want assurances that this won't happen again. And it will happen again the way you have set it up with a diesel pump with polluted runoff sitting there for several weeks. So there has to be another solution for this. And that's what I'm asking. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

After our next speaker is Kathy Borland and then Kim Sticklicker.

Good evening, my name is Bob acne fec i'm an attorney I specialize in land use and environmental law, and I have been speaking with miss mcbride who the gentleman before me. mentioned. So her property was indeed flooded. So it's a little bit confusing and disappointing that the staff report did not really address the issue of flooding squarely and provide information to the folks in the community who are very concerned about ongoing issues and really didn't explain what the problem was and how it's going to be solved. So the staff report states that a concern was raised this past year by a neighboring property owner about the interim condition of the mass graded site due to the temporary ponding of water at the northeast corner. This has to be unpacked. First of all, her concern, along with the other folks who are gonna speak, wasn't that there's a temporary pond up there. Her concern was that her property and that of her neighbors were flooded, and it looked very unnatural for this pond to be up there, and as staff report actually mentions, that now it has to be pumped to remove that water. I've just started to really investigate this, but there's a July 2023 document called Operations and Maintenance Plan for Tracked 3089 Avala Ranch. Under general information, it says, high groundwater levels and poor soil infiltration capabilities were identified in phases two and three, which limited greater utilization of retention and infiltration facilities it's not really clear to me what that means, but it seems that it is related to the flooding and the issues and. I want to mention, I only have a few more seconds. Ms. McBride, as other members of the community, have had a very difficult time finding information, answers to their questions, and even getting documents has been difficult. So it is ironic that this issue, this item was relegated to a consent agenda as something non-controversial where it is an ongoing problem. Thank you.

Thank you.

After Kathy Borland, it's Kim Slickler.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name's Kathy Borland. I reside at 655 Buckley Road. I'm passing around pictures to show you this pond. It's a lake that formed on the Avila Ranch property and how it flooded one of the properties. So you can just pass around and look at them. January 15th of this year, I went to Elena McBride's property to meet with Elena, two city engineers, which was Trey Christensen and Gabriel Munoz-Morris. Trey and Gabriel were both surprised at the lake stretching between Avala Ranch and properties on Esperanza Lane, and said they did not know it was there. I believe they are both supposed to be monitoring the activity on Avila Ranch. Trey said he was going to ask the developer what they plan to do about this water. The developer decided to pump the water out of the lake to another site on the property. It took over a week to pump. Another three weeks later, we got more rain. The lake formed again. It took another week to pump. Gabriel started out being the most helpful, saying this is not right and we need to do something, but then went on paternity leave and never responded to our emails again. I am sure the city had a talk with him. It is very clear that Avila Ranch is a sacred cow for the City of SLO, and everyone is protecting them. Seeking a solution to the flooding, we communicated with the County of SLO, the City of SLO Public Works, Regional Water Quality Board, County Supervisor Don Ortiz-Lague, Zone 9 Flood Advisory Board, and the engineer at the Wallace Group that designed the water drainage plan. None of these agencies were aware of the issue or did anything about it. There's a lack of engineering oversight on the development. Regular site visits would prevent neighbors from being first to inform responsible engineers of issues. This is wrong on many levels, one of which is ignoring the concerns of residents. and damage to their property. The development never contacted the homeowners to suggest any kind of restitution. And there is no way they can hold all of the excess water. This has been an issue. I represent Preserve the Slow Life. We sued Avila Ranch in 2018 because of flooding and traffic on Buckley. We told them at the time that the water table was three to four feet on that and water doesn't percolate. They didn't believe us. So here we are. With all of these flooding issues, so the reason that the lake formed on the property is they block the normal flow which somebody already said, and they did not install culverts. During the rainy season to get that water to drain so just formed, as you see the pictures a huge like Thank you and and we, we hope you can do something about this Thank you so much.

I'm Kim Stickler, and I'm at Buckley Stables, directly across from them. And I have the two creeks that meet. I have the two creeks that meet. And when they made the new channel into one of the creeks, they took the bank out and made a new channel for water to flow through there and blocked, I guess, the back. And when that pond was made and they started moving water around, Our creeks were usually quiet and clear, but you could tell when they were running water moving water from place to place, because it would get fill up one creek would fill and it was murky water and so that's they were moving waters around and I could see it in our creeks so. that's all I have to say.

Thank you so much.

Our final speaker is online, Alana McBride. You can unmute.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

City Council, friends and neighbors, thank you for listening and I'm grateful for any advice you can offer. My name is Alana McBride. I'm the owner of 4251 Esperanza Lane, a property located in the county of SLO bordering the city property the northeast corner of the avala ranch projects last winter the developer raised the natural grade behind my property by approximately 15 feet prior to the rain season and did not install anything to move water out of the newly formed lake bed the tank farm also drains to this area on the avala ranch as well as the majority of the properties on esperanza lane Historically, water would run off of my property onto Avila Ranch and then move into the creek. My fear is that the engineering design to handle stormwater on Avila Ranch post-construction will continue to flood neighboring properties and downstream properties long-term. Why on earth would I believe this? Well, there have already been many failures to manage stormwater on Avila Ranch. The first one, the ponds at the corner of Buckley and Vachelle were engineered to catch stormwater and restore it to the aquifer through percolation. every local resident knows the surface water is very high in this area and these ponds do not percolate rather i have observed water being manually pumped frequently with loud portable generators with bright lights 24 hours a day located just outside of the neighboring houses when those ponds fill on the avala ranch development number two the rainfall data utilized for engineering calculations on this project is from the years 1948 to 2010 an average of 1.9 inches in 24 hours in recent years we have had more than 15 storms that have produced more than 1.9 inches in 24 hours including 2022 to 2023 when our county was considered a disaster area from large storms third the phase two and three of avila ranch were unable to meet the required storm water retention volume due to technical infeasibility which was quoted shallow groundwater and poor infiltration rates this statement came from trent buchanan the engineer of the central coast water board and number four i believe the current post construction engineering engineering design calls for wetlands that are supposed to infiltrate to be located at the northeast and the southeast corners of the development southeast corner is buckley road remember we've had historic flooding on buckley and buchel for all period all time remember water does not percolate here so those will both be standing water of lakes i have spoken to engineers at five local governing organizations including the wallace group the developers engineer asking them all to answer just these three questions why did my property flood

ensure me that it will not happen again and recalculate and redesign the post-construction stormwater plan for this project including the recent assumptions of rainfall and thank you thank you thank you very much thank you for your email as well um at this point in time that's all the speakers yes at this point in time um is there any update that staff would like to provide on this Thank you, city manager.

Thank you. Yes, our community development director, Timmy Tway, can provide a little bit of additional information and we can kind of take it from there.

Thank you. And thank you to all the commenters. I apologize. Gabe is not here today. He is on a planned vacation. He is the technical kind of expert on the city side for all of this. We are aware of these concerns and the real kind of standing water that is happening when it's raining. We immediately contacted the developers team once we realized this was happening, and Gabe and the engineering team at the city have been working very closely with the engineering consultant for the developer to get designed and approved some additional culverts for this phase where there is masquerading, but the permanent infrastructure is not yet in place to attempt to ensure that you know similar things don't happen in the future in addition we're working with them on some other potential solutions for that there are also other governing bodies that we you know they have to get approval for certain things um I am really sorry to hear that there's been a miscommunication between city staff and the neighbours. We're always happy to meet with people. I have an email from early July where we were going to arrange a meeting through Don Ortiz Legg's office with neighbours and we were ready to do that and then It said that that meeting didn't need to happen so if that was a miscommunication on our part i'm i'm very sorry we were ready to meet with neighbors on that we're more than happy to meet with anyone who wants to go over plans provide you with plan sets if we can and try to connect you with the developer as well. And so my email is ttway at slowcity.org. And I work closely with Gabe every day. So I'm happy to kind of let him know if there's an interest in meeting with the community members and talking through, he will be able to outline for people technically what he has reviewed at the city staff level that was proposed by the developer for solutions while the project is in this state, and then whether or not we can compel changes for the future project per that last comment. So he really is the point person for the technical aspect on this, and I'm more than happy to facilitate any conversations or meetings or exchanging of documents.

Thank you. I have a question with that. So I'm looking at the alternatives in our staff report. And so if there was ‑‑ if we continue this item to a future meeting so we could have more understanding from staff and with the community members in this area, what would that do to this project at this time?

So this really is just a ‑‑ annual report out to mostly highlight whether or not developers and builders are complying with mitigation measures development agreement conditions conditions of approval, and so it wouldn't really do anything negative. we can absolutely do that we also either way we'll go back and talk with the development team and the concerned neighbors and i'm also happy to you know write city council an email with the results of that if you don't think it warrants bringing it back for a full item thank you i appreciate that vice mayor

Yeah, thank you for your response. I'm glad to hear that there are some solutions being worked through right now by the developers team. I know that these things sometimes can take a little bit of time. And I know there's probably some concern from the community in that area about predictions of a super El Nino. And I'm wondering about the timeframe on getting a major engineering project like that approved and constructed ahead of the rainy season.

Yeah, absolutely. I do believe Gabe has looked at the solutions and potentially even already approved them from the city side for an additional culvert and some other changes in this area. I will double check with him when he's back from vacation next week. But this is a high priority item for us because it is having Real impacts on people right now, you know as opposed to projects that are not yet constructed so. She does tend to kind of drop things when this item comes up and make sure that we're addressing it as much as possible so we're committed to. Truly doing whatever we can to move this forward, especially considering that rainy season, you know we're it's summer but it's coming.

And that's the city side. What levers do we have to compel Avalo Ranch developers to ensure that that construction gets going as quickly as possible?

Yes, that's a great question. You know, I will say we don't have a lot because this is not, you know, in these reports you'll see places where we say, hey, there's some conditions of approval that aren't quite met yet or that they will need to meet. This is not that. It's kind of an unanticipated impact of the grading, and so I will say that the development team as far as I have been aware, has been very willing to come to the table and work with city staff because we're noticing these real impacts. and come up with solutions when, you know, we don't really have anything we can hold from them at this point. You know, the project is approved. So they have really shown a dedication to trying to brainstorm and figure out how to move this forward. And we have a good working relationship with the development team, and I hope they continue to work with us so that we can get some real solutions out there, whether or not we can

You know, require it or not, they have come to the table i'm glad to hear that they've been a good working partner so far, I am curious, though, because it's sort of like an emergent issue it's something that we weren't anticipating so it's not written into the contract is there. Some potential down the road if things aren't being appropriately addressed to you know, be able to withhold some future building or kind of navigate the situation and maybe we don't get into hypotheticals today, but just curious about you know what's what's the path forward if things aren't getting addressed quickly.

Yeah, I would have to look at the approval documents and the development agreement not off the top of my head. I mean, I understand this is really impactful to people going through it right now and I'm very concerned about that and I will say the good thing is that this is very good lesson for us with these larger developments of ensuring that When things are in a unfinished state like grading, but not the final infrastructure in place that we're thinking through all of the potential impacts, how long will that be and what are the some potential. mitigations that can happen, then so you know I know it can be really frustrating for people when housing projects take a long time. But these are the types of things that we're working through during the approval process and we're looking at public improvement plans and building permits and things like that. This is why it takes a long time because we want to try to think through what are all the things that could happen. And so it's a good reminder of the importance of making sure we're really taking a close look at plans and working with developers to understand site conditions and things like that.

Well, thank you to your team for working on this as quickly as possible. I appreciate you.

Yeah, and I invite anyone in the audience, please email me, give me a call and I will connect them with Gabe. I'll sit in the meetings as well.

Thank you. Council Member Shorespin.

Yeah, just following up on the Vice Mayor, thank you. You hit on some of my questions. I I still wonder if there are other I think the term you used vice mayor was levers that can be pulled or pushed. I know I first encountered these women, and some of these neighbors in the zone 9 committee several years ago, when they had some really, really severe flooding. back from 2023. And so I'm, are there any other groups or bodies, you know, that can collaborate with us to help support other, you know, the water goes where the water wants to go, but there are other avenues outside of this project and below that, is there anything else that we can do in collaboration with Zone 9 perhaps to help move the water through their properties or around their properties, rather than. You know this project is going to be happening for a long time it's a multi phase project it's already been happening for a long time so just want to make sure we think about all the possible avenues to kind of help with this issue yeah.

I will take that under consideration i'll absolutely pass that on to Gabe who's connected with zone nine and a lot of the other entities that are involved in this.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Director Tway, and I look forward to hearing a report back as to how the next steps go. Any other public comment?

No, there are not.

Okay.

I thought not, but I just all of a sudden questioned my own thought. Okay. At this point, is there any other feedback, City Manager, you'd like to share on this topic?

I think that's it, unless there are any further questions.

Okay, great. Thank you. Council Member Schwarzman.

Yeah, just want to clarify, if we're going to move the full consent agenda, I know Council Member Merk said she's going to recuse. Do we need to provide any direction on a memo for feedback on Avila Ranch, or will that just be something that the team just fills us in on as they, okay, we would need to?

Yeah.

Okay, So then do we need to pull the item in order to, or just I think it depends, you know, if you're comfortable moving forward with the receiving file.

And so just again to reiterate to anyone this is an annual report out. that is a receive and file item. We will be back again next year with another report out. In the meantime, clearly tons of work happens on this project and we will continue to provide updates to you all. We also fully understand and hear the concerns being expressed, the need for us to continue working on those real solutions and providing assurances to folks that the, flooding, the experience will not happen again, which is a very reasonable expectation. We know we need to let you all know what the outcomes are of those conversations. So typically we might do that in an email. But if it seems like if you would like a more formal memo, happy to provide it in that fashion. If you want a report out in a public setting like this, you could either delay a receiving file of this report and then provide direction to essentially dig into that issue some more and come back with more information. We could come back with a kind of intermediary report. We don't have that would just be an item on a essentially a consent agenda that's similar to this, but it would be probably between now and the next year when we normally would come back. So there's a lot of different options there. We're happy to follow whatever direction you'd like to provide. And again, certainly we'll be doing a lot of work on this issue in the coming months.

i think i'm comfortable to make a motion to approve the consent agenda with the extra direction to give us regular updates at whatever interval staff see is appropriate on this issue hold on councilman remarks would like to comment i'd like to second it i beat you so okay

Okay, so we have a motion to move the entire consent agenda forward with additional report back we have a second from Council remarks Council remarks, would you like to add your two cents on San Luis ranch regarding recusal well yeah i'm just not going to vote, I will vote on everything except ch when it's my turn to vote perfect Thank you so much, and with that can we have roll call. Council Member Schwarzman?

Yes. Council Member Marks? Yes, except I recuse myself on items 6H. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes. And the motion passes 5-0. A big thank you to the community members who came out. Obviously, there's some next steps that we need to continue to work on, and our staff is ready to do that. So that's really great. Thank you so much, City Manager, as well. And with that, our final topic of the day is leads on reports and communications, and it is not 11pm tonight. So we have some time. So with that, I'll just give mine really quickly because most of my items on the item seven are quarterly or monthly meetings that were canceled for july but i did go to two things i wanted to highlight on june 30th and july 1st i went to the tribal stewardship convening that was in sacramento put on by the california natural resources um agency and really had some good conversations around land protection, federally recognized versus non federally recognized tribes, funding resources, and trying to look at some additional trust building. There was also a lot of people were really interested in what we were doing with the cultural burns here and they wanted to know more about that. but there's really some concerns around federally versus non-federally tribal communities because some people are asking other nationally recognized communities to come into our area and that's a problem and so for us as our local and local municipality we need to make sure that we're continuing to work with our to work with ytt in our local communities and i will say that up in sacramento bob hill did get a shout out that they felt they were that he was working with them on a very regular basis and really appreciated that. Also, last week I was at the Cal City statewide board meeting. Let's see, a couple things. One, we had a clean audit. That's always good. Two, we also took some additional money from our reserves, which we were a little bit over on our reserves, and we paid that money for CalPERS, also for the unfunded pension liability. They're not immune to that. And of course we have the September 23 or 25 annual conference, so we talked about the updates for that and again I just thank you Councilman marks and boswell for being the resolution committee representative. Lastly, I will say watch as two more things on the governance subcommittee we talked about how to improve our onboarding process for. Any and all new board members, because many people come on from a caucus or. a region and they don't really have as strong of an onboarding process. So we're definitely talking about that. And then lastly, we voted on whether we should support or oppose some ballot initiatives for November. And one of the things that was, I'd say, the most controversial was Proposition 45 and builders versus CEQA was, I guess you could say, in a nutshell. And we decided to not support or oppose There were a number of cities who either supported or opposed. And because of that, we felt that we should let the community continue to look into this and have their own education in their own process. So that is my update. I'll move on to Vice Mayor Francis.

Thank you very much, a couple of things over the break that we had here got to attend the grizzly graduation on the 13th of June, which is always just such an amazing Community highlight super inspirational was privileged to get to join them there. also wanted just to give a shout out to all of the community organizations involved in putting on pride in the plaza and trans pride in the park just incredible attendance from community partners organizations and businesses and community members in just a really joyful celebration on both fronts We also had an Independence Day celebration on the third and really appreciated Council Member Boswell getting us organized to do a reading of the Declaration of Independence and appreciate all the community members that showed up for that. Also last week attended housing trust fund discussion around funding for affordable housing and the future of that for our community. Really interesting all of the affordable housing providers in the community showed up and really talked about some of the challenges that they're facing. And so I appreciated having a seat at that table just to kind of talk about what we could do to be on the cutting edge of all of that. And then last week we had not cemento commission special meeting where we voted on a bunch of things, but the most important was we're looking at reissuing our bond and potentially saving up to depending on the interest rates on the date of the refinance. potentially saving up to $5 million on that bond, which will translate into over $1 million of savings for the city over the course of that bond. So pretty exciting news, and fingers crossed that everything goes well and that gets reissued in September. That's something that will come to this council for approval, I believe, next month.

Awesome. Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Thank you. Yeah, well, I wanted to just say that the Air Pollution Control District Board, excuse me, met on June 17, and we adopted the budget. And we also decided to eliminate the regular executive committee meetings and say, if we need one, we'll have one. And that was approved by the board. So it's interesting. The next meeting is in October. In terms of the County Water Resources Advisory Committee, tomorrow the county desal draft, it's a study of desalinization, will be released, July 22nd. And I assume that that's going to be the subject matter of our next meeting, which is September 2nd. And on July 16, I attended the police promotion ceremony here in City, City Hall. And as usual, it was just really moving and very inspiring. And I have to say Chief Scott is a great public speaker, and the families were very excited. So I also wait, hold on. Excuse me. I also did not intend to address this tonight, but since the mayor brought it up, I wanted to just let people know that I have initiated a complaint and request for censure process. First, this is with our policies and procedures, Chapter 8 of our council policies and procedures. manual. And I wanted to just explain a little bit of my thinking in this regard. I'm very concerned that the matter has been tried in the press, that it's been discussed on television, it's been discussed in a radio show. No, it's been discussed on all kinds of different media. Tonight, we heard a very heartfelt message from the mayor. But the one group that hasn't been able to discuss this is right here, the city council. We are left out of the conversation. Now, why is that? It's because of the Brown Act, because we can't really have a conversation with each other about this very important issue unless it's on our agenda. And so that's why I started the process to put it on our agenda. It's going to the personnel committee. They'll make a determination whether or not the issue should be put onto the agenda. And to me, the issue has to do with our high duty not to disclose confidential information We're looking at the grand jury. We're looking at the penal code. We're looking at the city policies of confidentiality. And I did what I could to very narrowly tailor the complaint in such a way that we're not discussing personalities, we're not discussing the context, even the content of the report itself. But the main thing is that I want to make sure that our mayor is treated fairly and that this council has an opportunity to deliberate and talk with each other about um the matter and then make a decision uh one way or another i'm not i raise the issue so that we can have the conversation i'm not i haven't made up my mind whether or not a censure is really the appropriate thing that we want to do i need to hear from everybody else so um just want to just want to clear that up i don't know what the timing will be i don't know when the personnel ad hoc committee will meet. Then the next step is it goes to the personnel board as a whole and then they communicate with the city clerk and the city clerk has to find a place to put it on our agenda. So it may be in September. I don't know exactly what the timing is. But I do think that we need to speak up. And I'm very concerned. I don't know if you've heard this, but I've heard this from people that the city council in some way, by not saying anything is just saying, just condoning what went on. And so in any way, thank you for listening to me about that.

Councilmember Schwarzman.

All right, I'll get back to liaison reports. So I think our last meeting, it's been a while, but I think it was not only before Pride, but I think it was before Juneteenth too. So I attended Juneteenth and read the proclamation and NAACP did an amazing job putting on a really great event. And if you all didn't get out there to see it, you missed out and hopefully they'll do it again next year so that we can all appreciate that again. Most of the committees that i'm actually on still met over the last month or so. Downtown slow board met on the fourteenth, and they were all very excited and still somewhat tired from the enormous amount of work that they did on the block party on July third, which was a huge success by their report. Unfortunately, I was out of town, so I missed the recitation of the of the Declaration of Independence that you all or some of you participated in. So I hope to maybe get another personal viewing of that at some point. Our IWMA meeting was canceled, mostly not necessarily just canceled, but the IWMA has changed the schedule of their meetings, and now there will not be a meeting in July. So going forward, I believe the meetings are going to be about every other month, and they're changing the schedule up a bit, so that'll be a little bit different. HSOC, the Homeless Services Oversight Council, met last week. Lots of funding decisions made. there was one piece of the hap five and six allocations the prevention funding that the committee opted to postpone the decision on there was lots and lots of discussion about the formula used to allocate those funds and how it was divided up, and so I think there will be an ad hoc committee and some more discussion about that particular piece, but there was lots of funding for other services that were approved there. Then on the same night as the HLAC meeting, I attended a Meals That Connect partner celebration at the Lalamita Ranch, which was super happy, and Meals That Connect is such an important organization that does so much for the community and for our seniors and they had a great showing out there. I also attended the police promotion ceremony, which is always a treat and saw some of my colleagues there. And then bittersweet, not necessarily as a council member, but as a parent, I had the opportunity to attend slow days. for my rising Cal Poly freshman of two days of orientation about what it's like to become a Mustang and heard all of the presentations and it was really, really interesting to be a council member and to have all these discussions with cal poly about how we can support our community and support the students and how those things can align hopefully and we can all row in the same direction and it was really actually i was very i wouldn't say surprised but um they they really do hold the students you know they there was a lot of messaging about holding students accountable for adult behavior and the expectation that when students are out in the community they represent the university as well as just representing themselves so it was really good to hear that as a community member as a council member and as a parent so thank you awesome council member boswell

Yeah, let's see. There was a June 18th meeting of LAFCO, but it had no items relevant to the city. This is often the case. The July 16th meeting was canceled. CAPSLO had CAPSLO board meeting on 6-19, relatively short agenda, so nothing to report from there other than ongoing good news, particularly around I'm so excited about the progress we're making on veterans homelessness in the community. The numbers just keep getting better and better. And also finally had my full orientation after little pieces of orientation, but I finally got my full So now I know what's going on, maybe. Attended the police promotion ceremony. That's always a great event. Congratulations again to Deputy Police Chief Aaron Schaefer for his promotion, the awardees, and especially our new officers, which were fun to meet. And then I also attended the July 3rd event where we read the Declaration of Independence at two bands and a whole day of events. Very exciting. Just want to thank again Vice Mayor Francis for her thoughtful reflection on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. Thanks. That's all I have.

Thank you so much. I will say, Vice Mayor, that I definitely, as I walked around that day, heard people tell me that they were brought to tears by your comments. So I just really want to thank you for what you were saying. Absolutely. So just we'll see you all here. The next regular scheduled meeting is on Tuesday, August 4th. Hope you enjoy your early evening. Don't know August 4th will be the same, but we'll see you then. Enjoy Terrace Hill this Saturday.