City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everyone. I am Mayor Erica A. Stewart. I'm here to say that we are all in the chambers here for the City Council meeting on August 18th. Vice Mayor, can you roll us into the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you. And City Attorney, can you share the closed session report?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. The Council did meet in closed session on two matters as noted on the agenda. One matter of existing litigation in the case of Paso Robles tank versus City of SLO and on a motion by Council Member Boswell Seconded by Mayor Stewart on a vote of five. Oh, the Council did authorize the defense of that litigation and the retention of Mike McMahon to represent the city in that action. No further reportable action was taken on that matter. And then there was also a matter of conference with labor negotiators, with agency negotiators and represented groups, as noted on the agenda. And there was no reportable action taken on that, simply bargaining direction.

Thank you so much. Thank you. and we will get into the city manager report in just a minute wanted to make sure if anyone in the room has public comment there are public comments slips up here and also outside and those of you who are on zoom you will also be able to provide public comment by raising your hand so with that we'll pass it over to the city manager

thank you very much we will bring up some slides and have a few things to highlight for everybody going on the community coming up soon and as well as a preview of our agenda on our next meeting on september 1st so First up, we're gonna talk a little bit about the Higuera Complete Streets project because construction is going to officially kick off next week. This is a major investment in improving safety, accessibility, and pavement conditions along Higuera Street. Construction will begin on Monday, August 24th, and it will continue for about a year, all the way through fall of 2027. While construction officially starts on Monday, residents and businesses may not really see significant impacts right away. This is because our contractor will first mobilize and then progress through the corridor in phases beginning near Los Osos Valley Road and South Higuera Street and then moving north toward Marsh Street. The contractor will be providing advance notice as work moves into specific areas so people have a good sense of what's coming near them as it's coming. Work will typically progress in stages again with crews completing improvements such as utility potholing, curb ramps, and then followed later by paving, striping and other final improvements. As construction progresses, there may be temporary lane travel lane bike lane and sidewalk closures, along with localized noise and other impacts. But business and driveway access will be maintained throughout the construction period with more significant work also potentially scheduled at night to minimize impacts. For project updates and information about upcoming work, please go to slowcity.org slash slow in motion. And while we're on the topic of street pavement, I wanted to also highlight, we've gotten some questions about what's with those sandbags seen along the curbs around town. Those are part of our normal stormwater compliance requirements when we're doing construction. The reason you're seeing them out in so many places is this is part of our upcoming paving project for this year, which happens to be touching a lot of streets in our city. Our contractor went out and staged those sandbags. You'll see there's some fabric kind of rolled up. It's not been deployed yet, but it will be as they get into that area. So just part of our normal construction process. And as that work is done, you'll see those come up. over time. Next up, we wanted to talk a little bit about the progress we've been seeing out on the new slow rep theater site. Why not hear it once if you could hear it twice. We made progress last week on Thursday to do some work around the oak tree on the site expert arborist came together again this past Thursday August 13 to undertake the first steps in a careful. science-based process that will try to save and possibly move this large oak tree. The tree is currently located at the future site of the new Slow Rep Theater over there near the corner of Monterey and Napomo. The goal here is to give the tree its best chance of survival. The first step involved deeply irrigating the tree over the course of about a week. Then again last Thursday, arborists pruned the roots to stimulate new feeder roots close to the trunk to create a stable root ball. This type of work on a tree of this size is complex with a lot of uncertain outcomes, but we are determined to give it its best chance of survival. This is really, again, a science-based process that's guided by Cal Poly tree biologist, Dr. Matt Ritter, in collaboration with a renowned arborist named Brian Kempf. Our expert arborists will monitor the tree's health to determine how it is responding, which will in turn inform next steps as things progress. And I'd like to really give lots of extra shout outs to these community members who came forward with this plan and idea to help save this tree as well as a really big team of city staff who rallied as well as slow representatives to give this a really good try. We're trying some things out there again with the goal of keeping this tree alive and I had the pleasure of watching some of the work out there on Thursday and I never knew that a backhoe could be used So gently our staff and team are really very talented and there was a lot of care being put in place to make sure things were done. Again, with a lot of care and attention so really want to thank everybody who's out there, particularly George our backhoe operator, who is really magnificent to watch. Next up, we want to highlight some. An art lecture series that our team has put together and will be rolling out with the first event happening tomorrow, so a free Community lecture series is being presented by our city public art program and slow county arts this. Art Lecture Series was first launched in 2024 and is now entering its third year. It features local and regional artists, educators, curators, and creative practitioners. And this series is named after somebody very special for our community. It has been renamed Rooted in Art in honor of our local artist and arts advocate and activist, Alan Root. Alan Root's contributions included four years as SLO County Arts Board President, creation of multiple public art sculptures, and support for a lot of our public art maintenance projects. So we really got to work really closely with him. We miss him a lot and we're really glad that there's an opportunity to honor him through this process. The monthly lectures will happen on the third Wednesday of each month from 6 to 7 30 p.m. at the SLO Library Community Room. The first one will be tomorrow, August 19th. It is a multidisciplinary artist, Tim O'Beckwith, exploring the intersection of art, time, form, and the natural world. So we hope folks come on out and then get excited and come to future lecture series as well. Next up, we know, I'm sure people are well aware, it is a very busy week with school starting kind of across the board. Cuesta College began classes on Monday, August 17th. Of course, Cal Poly housing move-in began today for first-year students and will extend through the weekend for upper-class students. The week of welcome, or WOW, begins Wednesday evening and will include two short fireworks displays at Spanos Stadium as part of the big fall welcome, so that's important for our community to know as well, and lots of information is sent out by Cal Poly about fireworks too. The safety enhancement zone as well begins tonight Tuesday August 18 at midnight and extends through Monday August 31 at 7am so super important for people to remember during this time frame fines for noise unruly gatherings open containers and public urination will be doubled. A wide reaching communication plan is underway to inform the community of these requirements and what the safety enhancement zone means and how it operates and to help connect residents to resources should they need help with noisy neighbors. San Luis Coastal begins school on Thursday, and so we're really asking folks and kind of reminding everybody to pack your patients along with you as you travel through our community, because it's going to be a busy several days here as folks kind of settle into this new routine, and we welcome a lot of new residents to our community. All 5,000 wowies or new freshmen will be coming downtown for a wow event in mission plaza and staying at staying for farmers market so we look forward to welcoming all of our new community members as they acclimate and join us here in san luis obispo And finally, just highlighting a few items coming up on our meeting on September 1. For consent items, we are bringing forward a request for proposals for consulting services to conduct an updated user fee study and prepares a cost allocation plan and labor rates. So just wanted to highlight that work will start with a goal of having new fees to present next year to potentially have them in effect by July 1. And then Rolling over to our next page here, we are looking at our broadband project and looking to reject the bids and re advertise in a phased approach because we haven't been able to get bids within budget so far. So just want to highlight that work item and then our police department's annual report, we will be discussing and hearing what I think. and believe will be good news, which is a highlight that just a quick preview, crime is down in our city. And over three years, we've seen more than 60% decrease in crime rates, which is just an amazing accomplishment. So we'll look forward to digging into that more at our next meeting.

That's it for my report this evening. Thank you very much. Any questions for city manager? Okay Council Member Marks.

Yeah in terms of where with the oak tree where are they going to be planting it? Isn't there a large sculpture there? Are they going to just plant it next to the sculpture or do you know?

So if we get to that stage of moving the tree it would be planted in essentially the same location where the sculpture is. The SLOMA or the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art is aware of this The concept and potential need that sculpture is due to be traded out at the end of essentially this current fiscal year, and so it most likely if we need to move the tree there move it in earlier than that, then the sculpture would likely be returned to its owner early.

So the timing will work out it sounds like it will all be okay yeah good Okay, thank you.

Thank you, we're really excited about the tree and this has been a great amount of work behind the scenes and really appreciate all of the city staff and our kind of guest arborists, I guess you can say, and just really thankful for this work. So thank you very much. And with that, we will move forward to public comment for items that are not on the agenda. So we do have some consent items and we have a public public hearing and business section. So if you have public comment for those items, go ahead and wait for that. Otherwise, city clerk, do you have any public comment items?

Yes, Sean Harris, Rob Davidson, and Craig Kincaid.

Good evening, thank you for your time. I wanted to talk about the ongoing and embarrassing whistleblower lawsuit naming, amongst other defendants, both the city attorney and city manager. But instead, our national problems are so pressing that allegations in the whistleblower lawsuit alleging diverting public revenue by these defendants pale in comparison. One, our national debt is approximately $40 trillion. The dollar's lost roughly 20% of its purchasing power since 2020. Our nation incurs roughly $1 trillion of debt every 100 days. Congress refuses to agree on or discuss a balanced budget. Defense spending is destroying our economy and killing Americans, not foreign enemies. Both Medicare and Social Security are on the verge of insolvency because Congress finds a robust social safety net less important than paying for instruments of war. Seven, we're engaged in an unlawful war of aggression in Iran, a hemisphere away, rather than defending our southern border from a decades-long invasion of illegal immigrants. Eight, our industrial base has been sent overseas thanks to Democrat Bill Clinton signing NAFTA. Nine, we're on a drought status in this nation's breadbasket and heartland, with farmers going under every day. Ten, the firewall between public spending and private investment no longer exists, which parenthetically is the definition of corporatism, the control of society by large private interest groups. Eleven, tech CEOs have been commissioned as uniformed officers in the US military, who, if not for their wealth and position, would have never considered joining the military, such as their lack of patriotism. 12, the dollars have been debased so much it has caused runaway inflation. 13, college graduates are unable to find meaningful employment commensurate with their hard-won education. Our nation is becoming like Mumbai, where your local cab driver holds a PhD in electrical engineering. In an act of sweeping bipartisan legislation on par with FDR's New Deal, Congress' solution to this morass is to allow SNAP recipients to finally purchase heretofore prohibited and greatly maligned hot rotisserie chickens with SNAP cards. Our problems are not bipartisan. They're mathematical. The American economy is a giant Ponzi scheme with the public holding the bag through taxpayer-funded bailouts. The era of tax breaks for the rich is over. The only thing this has done for our nation is to go into unprecedented debt. As a registered Republican, I happily advocate taxing concentrated wealth and using it to pay down our national debt, building infrastructure, and aggressively recapitalizing our social safety net. Fellow Republicans don't like this. They better make, uh, the economy work for the many and not just a few. A free market works best when properly regulated, uh, which Glass-Diggle did until repealed by none other than, uh, boomer Democrat Bill Clinton. Uh, again, Bill Clinton. Uh, otherwise, don't be surprised when your, uh, modular shorts or, and polo shirts have been replaced by mouth suits. Thank you.

Next, please. Rob Davidson and then Craig Kincaid.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Rob Davidson. I've lived in San Luis Obispo for nearly 40 years, although it may not sound like it.

Rolf, can you put your phone at you? There we go. There we go.

And for the last 20 years, we've lived on Laguna Lake. Before that, we lived on the other side of town and probably didn't really know much about Laguna Lake at all. But in the time that we've been here, we've really become much more appreciative of what a wonderful asset it is. And I know that we've talked to many of you over the years in lobbying for Laguna Lake, And I think everybody that we've contacted has voiced their support for it, but nothing much has happened. And that's what I'm here to talk about. Now I sent out last week a status update on Laguna Lake via email to all of you here today. Has anybody seen it yet? Good, good, thank you. Well, I'm not gonna go over that part. I'm really here on behalf of Friends of Laguna Lake, which started mainly with residents, but most of the residents really got involved because like me, they've lived there and become to appreciate what a wonderful asset it is, and it's underappreciated by everybody else in the city. Part of that was because the good views are all across the other side of the lake and there isn't much access to it. I will point out by the way that the last lakefront lot is for sale on Ocean Air if the city wanted to provide access there, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here because the state of the lake at the moment is a continuation of the neglect that, not this council necessarily, but has happened for the last 60 years, when the budget process has gone through the whole capital improvement program, and what we're really looking at is 60 years of neglected maintenance. And I'm very pleased. We've been working with Bob Hill over the years and he wrote the master plan that if it was done, we'd be in good shape. And they have formed a cross development team the Laguna Lake team, which we're very pleased to see because we believe that the lake is the responsibility of not just one department. It impacts Parks and Rec, it impacts Public Works, it impacts others, but there isn't really a cross-departmental group that's focused on the lake itself. And we think that's a great start. But what I'm here to do is try and request that council continues the increase of that focus on the lake in the future, in terms of figuring out how to do the funding, how to do the budgeting. I mean, I've been through the budget and there's little bits of it here and little bits of it there, but I've also seen it go through the process when things have got tough and oh, well, we can put that off until next year. And that's happened for 60 years, I guess. So basically, I'm just here to ask Council to help. And I will also say that Friends of Lagoon Lake, we've talked to Bob and we are going to try and sort of more expand our operations so we can provide public input to them as they go forward. Thank you. And we're asking Council to follow up and keep it going. Thank you so much.

After Mr. Kincaid is Barry Price and then Angie Kasperczak.

Mayor Stewart and council members, my name is Craig Kincaid. I've lived in San Luis Obispo for 20 years and I've had a lot of enjoyment on Laguna Lake kayaking and fishing until recently. I can't kayak on the lake anymore I can't fish on the lake anymore it's covered with seaweed. This is something that you've probably learned about, but I would like to urge you to take this matter seriously and allocate some funds to clean up the lake Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart, Council, staff, Barry Price representing the Tenants Union. I'm here tonight to thank the staff and the Council for the presentation on the rental registry to the League of Women Voters last week. That was a very helpful and informative session. so now that council has directed staff to pursue a mandatory rental registry and to make it part of the next financial plan we'd like to offer our thoughts on next steps first we want to be sure that the program is fully funded for the 27 to 29 cycle and that the work program includes both development and implementation of the program And second, we want to ensure thorough and comprehensive data collection, and we're prepared to offer input on the specifics of that. And again, I really wanna commend the staff for the great work that they have done and put into outreach and communication really over the past year. I mean, we've had several hearings, multiple study sessions, and they've done a lot of one-on-one meetings with about multiple times with various stakeholders. So really an outstanding job that there's no need really for additional hearings beyond those that may be mandated for an ordinance let's not waste precious staff time and funding repeating what they've already done let's put that effort into installing the software and rolling out the implementing ordinance and we ask that you make it a for a first quarter work item for staff in the new fiscal year there's no reason to delay that and speaking of rollouts i'm going to shift gears now to another topic we've discussed before and that's mediation and access to council it's been more than a year since we lost creative mediation services and more than eight months since the new center for dispute resolution was announced to replace it why is it taking so long for the city to review and approve that rfp This is a critical piece of public infrastructure that supports low-income tenants who can't afford legal representation. It was supposed to be operational, I understand, by September and clearly it won't be. You know, how do we justify that delay? This seems like it's kind of an easy lift and something the City could do now to show renters and voters you're doing things to materially improve people's lives. So please, let's move that forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. All of your campaigns have always resonated with me and with my hope for a more equitable future, one where all of our voices matter regardless of wealth and privilege. It's no secret that our wealthier community members often have more resources to donate to your campaigns and consistently show up at the polls. So I feel like a lot of times their voices are prioritized. Their vested interests can overshadow the needs of those who struggle daily, those who lack access to basic necessities, housing, healthcare, and opportunity. and also those of us that are just doing fine, but live paycheck to paycheck and are one small emergency from losing our own housing and wellbeing. While our affluent neighbors voices are loud and their influence undeniable I urge you to remember that you have a duty as elected officials to serve all constituents, especially those who are often overlooked. i'm sure that most people in this room right now have more in common with the real estate people that showed up. To speak against the rental registry than they do with the renters that are having to contend with their subpar. landlords in the city of San Luis Obispo. And I'm sure that if you guys want to, you could blame bureaucracy and whittle down the robust mandatory rental registry that we've been asking for that would benefit two-thirds of our community. or even prolong the process for as long as you wanted. But by doing that, you would be prioritizing the needs of the privileged while keeping the disenfranchised from ever having a real stake in our community. I implore you to focus on policies that uplift and protect the majority of our population who cannot afford to own property here in SLO and most likely never will. You represent all of us, not just friends, family members, and well-to-do community members that don't want to be inconvenienced. I support our current city council because I think you all are our best choice to advocate for our most vulnerable populations. Who you prioritize impacts real lives and you get to choose which side deserves your protection, the landlords or the renters. I'll repeat what Barry said and ask that you please fund the rental registry in full in the next cycle and then make it part of the staff work program during the first quarter of the fiscal year and not prolong this any longer, thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? City Clerk?

I have no more in chambers, and I don't see any hands raised.

Okay, thank you so much. I don't know, City Manager, or do you want to ask staff? I noticed there were a couple of things during public comment I thought you might want to comment on, because I know there's some work that's been moving forward at Laguna, et cetera.

Sure, thank you. We do have a couple of staff members present who would be happy to come up and provide a little bit more information about the work that is underway related to Laguna. Maybe not what is happening, say, visibly right now, but the work that is happening behind the scenes in order to get us ready to do work out there to address what folks are describing. So amazing team here standing at the podium. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, City Manager McDonald. I'm Bob Hill, Sustainability Natural Resources official. I've been working on Laguna Lake since 2013 when I first started the city, when I met Rob Davidson and Craig Kincaid and others from Friends, but many neighbors around the community there. Council may recall we prepared a conservation plan for Laguna Lake as part of a natural reserve, and in that we really prioritized several items. One was sediment management. Laguna Lake is filling in. We prioritized water quality and aquatic health. and habitat. Over 300 species of birds have been identified around Laguna Lake, and we also identified recreational uses. It was really clear and dominant in our public outreach at that time, particularly the easterly part of the lake, what I call the down lake moving down towards Madonna Road. So we are actively working on developing projects. We do have funding in our CAP. I think Mr. Nelson can talk more about that a little bit, where we're talking about On going sediment management, but also needing to now incorporate vegetation management recreational uses aquatic health. So those are some of the things we're doing right now we've recently had like the symmetry done which again back in that plan we identified the need to understand lake depths and sedimentation rates on a decade old basis so we're there now and then also. Uh, developing permitting for any time you are doing work in Laguna Lake. We're talking about California Department of Fish and Wildlife Regional Water Quality Control Board. If we're dredging Army Corps of Engineers, those kinds of things. So we're actively moving those pieces forward right now as well. I also want to say and that laguna lake in and how we're planning in our cip and how we're looking out and incorporating our plans is uh what we're doing in the next year over several years but also as we know we have a el nino predicted coming up this winter and so laguna lake also plays an important part in flight control so we have actually last meeting council approved still removal projects on consent including a project that is down immediately downstream from laguna lake and we'll continue work there and we'll also be doing vegetation management around the inlets and outlets as well. I'll hand it over to Mr. Nelson, thank you.

Thank you. Mayor, members of council, I think Bob covered pretty much everything, but I have a few other points too. Just as a reminder, we did do a dredging project in 2021. The city invested a million dollars roughly to remove several thousand cubic yards of sediment buildup in the lake. We did some silver removal as part of this emergency storm response projects and the perfume arm which prevented roughly 8000 cubic yards of additional still propagating into the lake. Under that emergency work and as Bob mentioned, we are doing a silver removal downstream of the Madonna outfall to free up the outfall and the flows from the lake should it fill up again if we get a lot of storm. and flows into the lake. And in terms of our capital plan, we have $500,000 budgeted in fiscal year 28, 29. So two years from now, two fiscal years from now. So we are working right now on coordinating with our environmental consultant on the scope of work to reestablish those environmental permits, which are expired. We can't actually do anything in the lake right now because we don't have permits. So we need permits to do any weed removal, you know, To the abatement things like that, to make the the lake, you know more passable and for active recreation, but also to do any so removal as well, we need to renew those permits and that's roughly a two year process. Which aligns with with what we have in our budget, so we wouldn't really be able to anything for a couple years, regardless. But as we kind of look through our financial planning processes and and start on those conversations over the next year, we'll be looking for community input, like from the Friends of the Laguna Lake on how we prioritize that work. And we'll have those ongoing conversations on how we should prioritize weed abatement or soap removal or a combination thereof.

Thank you, and I don't know if either Mr. Hill or yourself would like to expand a little bit. I know we've received on City Council, we've received an algae update, I guess you could say, from Mr. Otte. I don't know if either of you have that information you'd like to share out loud. It would be great. If not, we could always publish that later.

Thanks. I'll be the algae person tonight. Thank you. We're seeing a couple of interesting things in the lake. I want to start off by one thing that we monitor annually. We do this in partnership with the Water Board is we look at toxic blue-green algae or cyanobacteria, or also called HABs, which stands for harmful algal blooms. Anyway, there's a large database. We work in that framework. Laguna Lake on a couple of occasions in the past has tested sort of low level risk watch not necessarily the highest level. We in this season and in last few seasons we've been non-detect or very very very low levels so that's been a the toxic algal blooms have been something that have not been as much of a concern as they have been in years past. There are some floating mats of algae out there right now It's fairly common in a warm, shallow freshwater lake. The main concern that's out there, and this is really, as indicated in public comment, sorry, that is impairing recreational uses for boating is there's what's called a sago pond weed. The pondweed is connected to the lake at the bottom, and it was present last year, sort of went away over wintertime as lake levels rose, and then it's back again this summer. It makes it really hard to get around in the lake. The Natural Resources Conservation Service has published a brief on sago pondweed, where on the one hand it is seen as being valuable for bird habitat and for feeding, but on the other hand it's clearly impairing aquatic uses. parts of the lake in our conservation plan are identified for recreational uses, whereas the westerly part is going to be for the birds. And so it's a challenging thing to look at. We have received several proposals from vendors with different ways of approaching it. They're all more expensive than our current budget is today. So it has some benefits potentially for habitat. It also is keeping the lake turbidity from being a big issue where oftentimes it's windy out there and then we have wave action and more erosion on the shoreline. So there are some positives, but there's also definitely some negatives there. City Council Chambers, working on it, we were developing solutions we're talking about how we can manage this if we were able to remove it, then we also have to dispose of it and so there's some logistical questions we're tackling as well.

City Council Chambers, Great Thank you so much, you're welcome Council remarks, did you have any.

City Council Chambers, Thank you i'm just curious about the oxygen level in the lake in terms of the well being of the fish.

yeah Thank you so that's a part of what we talked about in terms of aquatic health and so if dissolved for everyone's benefit if dissolved oxygens get low, then, then we can have fish die off so we're not seeing those kinds of levels right now yeah. Great Thank you.

Well, thank you and then Councilman shorts been question.

Yes, thank you, I also just wanted to follow up if we're done with that topic, I wanted to follow up on a couple of the other comments about. rental registry and particularly the status of the mediation funds and contract I don't know if anybody's here that can kind of give us an update on where where we've left things and and what's happening next. On the rental registry and the mediation contract so.

So I can or Greg can start and I can update where we are in my office.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor and council members. I'm happy to talk about the mediation piece. So we've been working with the attorney's office in Cal Poly on releasing an RFP. We've been going through some conversations with them about the procurement process that they would like to go through. Looks like we're probably going to be doing a separate RFP at this point with them for the services and entering into separate contracts. So that's been a little bit of a delay. We've worked in the past to establish interim mediation services so that those are available. Should we get inquiries in via our police department that we want to refer out to that? And so we would look to continue that program into this fiscal year. We did execute the grant agreement for the one-time startup funding for the Center for Dispute Resolution shortly. And we actually just were able to send over that check to them to be able to provide that support. So we're continuing to work through that process.

Thank you. That was a great synopsis. City Manager?

Thank you, I was just going to tag in my teammate here perfect development director to me to a to give an update on the rental registry discussion good evening, thank you for the questions so for the rental registry we've currently have housing staff looking at creating a more. specific estimate of what it would take to get that off the ground, so that we can provide that information to the Council for their consideration for the next budget cycle. As we discussed at the study session so we're looking at comparable agencies, the staffing they have the timelines that it took. different options for the software to use. And we will be bringing those details to the city council for their consideration for a work plan item and budget related to that for the next budget cycle.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilor Marx.

Yeah, my question is, Is Cal Poly, Cal Poly and the city are doing separate RFPs, but a lot of the folks who live in the neighborhoods are Cal Poly students. So how are they possibly going to divide that up? Are they saying if you're a Cal Poly student, Will do the mediation and are they going to be doing mediations with our permanent residents or or I don't understand. How the division would work. If if it will work I don't know.

Thank you for the question. We have not finalized RFP language, but essentially there would be a service that's available both to Cal Poly students and to residents to be able to access mediation services. It would be jointly funded by both the city and Cal Poly and available to anyone who is interested in being able to access those.

Okay, but if they're having two separate RFPs, is that what you said?

Right. The content of the RFP would be effectively the same between the two different organizations.

All right. Seems unnecessarily complicated, but there you go. Okay, thanks.

City Attorney.

Each time we try to make things not unnecessarily complicated, there seem to be forces working against us. So we agree with you, and we wish it could be simpler and more straightforward, but we're both public agencies. We have separate procurement processes, and there have been negotiations necessary, and there have been delays related to other workloads circumventing the resources that we have available to work on that.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, sorry, just one more quick follow-up on that. I know that there have been delays based on this conversation, but do we have a ballpark of when we can anticipate that RFP being released?

I don't have an estimate right now. I'd love to be able to circle back with the team and provide a follow-up.

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Thank you. If you could provide a memo, that would be great, just so we all are on the same page. That would be awesome. Thank you. With that, we will move forward to our consent agenda. Today we have quite a few items in our consent agenda and wanted to check with the council members here if there's anything you'd like to pull. Personally, I would like to pull the... 6g it's the support of nomination of five senses tracks to the state of California for designation that federal opportunities own 2.0 program I just have some questions would love to be able to have those set out loud any other things items Council remarks, thank you.

No, I just had a comment on. 60 acceptance of state coastal conservancy grant funds for the city of San Luis Obispo open space wildfire resilience project, and I think that's fabulous so I just wanted to say yay on that. And also on the 60 the um. amendment to the memorandum of understanding with the friends of the laloma adobe and that's something else that i really feel is great so um both of them had a girl thank you um city clerk do we have any public comment

not on these items on these items okay um well i also want to say yay as with council remarks really excited about the friends of aloma adobe i'm excited about the wildfire resilience project because really we keep talking about how can we get some funding to help our community with protecting our homes and our community from wildfire as well as protecting each individual themselves. So thank you so much for all the work that everyone on the team has been doing. This is really exciting. With that, can I get a motion for the Consent Agenda minus 6G? Vice Mayor. Sorry, I have Council Member Shoresman, sorry.

I beat her to it. Yeah, just kudos to the staff on all the grants. Always appreciate seeing those grant opportunities come before us, too. And with that, I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda minus 6G.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'll second. Wonderful. City Clerk, can we have roll call?

Council Member Schorzman? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

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

Yes, the motion passes 5-0. I was very excited about item 6G until I took a re-look at it. I don't know, I think it was yesterday afternoon at some point, and I saw that the area that didn't make any sense to me of Santa Rosa Street does not run into Loomis and Grand, so I was confused by the process. had to dig a little deeper into that and I was hoping that just if it's possible, thank you so much, I see Laura walking up here, that just you could maybe explain that map just a little bit more in case anyone else ever desires to come back and look at this. um when i first came on council this opportunity zone was a frustration for a lot of people that live near cal poly because let's be real no one needs a tax break to build something over by cal poly they can make plenty of money if you're in walking distance from cal poly however understanding this opportunity zone uh the way that the census tract is um shaped i guess you could say is a different story and how it affects our our three and our four zones as well so i think i've babbled on long enough to be able to get the picture up so thank you i will pass it over to laura all right

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Laura Fiedler, Economic Development and Tourism Manager. And I'm just excited that somebody is into the weeds on these opportunity zones as I am. So I appreciate the question. And apologies for the unclear map in the staff report. But as you can see here on the map, which we provided as part of the staff agenda correspondence this afternoon, you can get a sense of the shapes here for the various census tracts. There's one. kind of shaded here 112.01 which is north of foothill kind of encompassing that open space with bishops peak west of highway one. On the northern part of the town and some of those neighborhoods here there's 109.03 which is around cat police care campus and some of the neighborhoods surrounding cal poly. This one that you are referencing in your questions and remarks just immediately south of that is 109.02, which goes from Santa Rosa Highway 1 there east towards Grand Avenue and up towards Loomis Avenue up there by El Churro Regional Park. You're correct that that was the original census tract that was designated as part of the Opportunity Zone 1.0 program. starting in 2017. So it is interesting that as part of the Opportunity Zone 2.0 program that we had an additional five census tracts that met the federal criteria for Opportunity zone designation. We also had eligible this one one one point zero one that kind of goes through our downtown core a little bit north of Santa Rosa down the South Higuera corridor. Also this one that's kind of a very long narrow strip that kind of stretches from the downtown. down along South Broad all the way here to Ricardo Court and encompasses some of our residential area here and industrial and commercial serving businesses in this section as well as this large, I don't even know what shape that is, this is testing my polygons, but this one up here that encompasses the upper Monterey, some of this open space, some of our hospitality serving businesses and then out on this Johnson Avenue, quarter which has some additional education and hospital facilities medical facilities in here and so the state's eligibility criteria was pretty pretty narrow just basically looked at income and poverty levels excuse me, the federal eligibility criteria was pretty narrow. It just looked at those two factors. The state, when they were looking at which of these opportunity zones to prioritize, because the state had over 2,000 that were eligible and they're able to nominate to the federal government 618, they applied an additional layer of screening criteria. So that included things such as crowding or the percentage of households that pay 35% or more of their income on rent. They also looked at what regional and state economic development priorities and um and some of those qualitative as well as quantitative factors they didn't release a specific calculation or scoring sheet you know if it meets this percentage or this indicator then it gets this amount of points and this is how it's going to be nominated they did kind of describe in general how they were looking at these tracks and what they were considering, but it didn't get into a specific criteria that you kind of back out and understand why some of these tracks are recommended by the state over others. But we do see that the ones that the county nominated over there around Cal Poly's core up here were recommended by the state on this draft list, as well as this one here that is kind of around our upper Monterey and Johnson Avenue. But I think what it's important to note here is that this designation doesn't mean projects are happening. It doesn't mean development is happening. It doesn't mean that any zoning or project control, anything that the city would have control over is superseded or by this type of designation. It's just a type of an optional investment tool that a developer could look at as they're trying to finance projects. Provides opportunity for projects that are already meeting market conditions that are already meeting all of our additional general plan our land use plan all the planning documents decision that the city makes. If it's making already making sense with those marketing conditions and what the city is looking for and what our community is looking for, then this just makes it a little bit more feasible. Is that helpful? All right.

Anything else I can elaborate on? No, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for that and your agenda correspondence. I think in the last paragraph or two talking about it does not supersede or alter our local land zoning. I think that's really key for a lot of people. So thank you for putting that in there as well. And thank you for explaining the interesting census tract. took an extra drive around from both angles today and I was like this still doesn't make sense to me, but I understand the census tract and we'll go from there. We don't have a choice of what the federal government does, so thank you on that.

Yeah, I will just add me we did look in combination with our Community Development Department kind of comparing with our Our housing element, you know What is the residential capacity or the capacity to build or have development in these areas? And so that was part of the consideration that we looked at whereas the city already identified that development is feasible and or desirable and that was part of that prioritization that went into our Staff recommendation that you see in the resolution. That's perfect. Thank you councilmember marks. I

yeah um well it's interesting to me that some of the territories outside of the um the url of the city and like cal poly is already non-profit they don't have to pay the taxes so they'd be getting tax breaks they would not need tax breaks so i'm i'm not clear why the city would be applying for something that is labeled as Cal Poly's core campus, although since the streets are not called out sufficiently, it was really hard for me to figure out what the heck we're talking about. Why should the city apply for something that only pertains to Cal Poly? And then my other question has to do with the open space there that is

uh foothill and uh connor way and and all that so on the first one um that tract we're looking at i just want to be um super clear that the text descriptors that are in the quotation marks those are just kind of for ease of reference because the census tracks are really long those aren't official names of neighborhoods or something that the city has designated or that um the federal government has designated as part of the census tracts. Those are just kind of reference points as we're discussing them. So while it does include a lot of the area that is owned by the State University, there are some residential streets in there. It's not exclusively Cal Poly State University. But because this census tract was I believe it was upwards of 90% outside of city limits. The city did not actually elect to nominate that one. The county put that one forward. But I do think, in general, as part of my recommendation in the resolution, the draft resolution for your consideration tonight, If there is to be some sort of private investment or public-private investment that occurs in and around campus that would support general economic development or research and development or other types of activities on campus that have general economic benefit for the city as a whole, that would be a reason to consider supporting the county's nomination and the state's recommendation of that particular tract.

Yeah, like building a hotel on Prime Island, for example. Anyway, thanks for that explanation. But the city is not then coming up with these designations. Their census tracks, correct? OK. And in terms of Cal Poly campus and also the areas around Cal Poly, the reason that the income is so low is that it's mostly students who live there, and they have part-time jobs. So if you drive around that area, it's already like a construction zone. I was just on Albert Drive where we used to live for over 30 years. And it's amazing how many houses are being destroyed and how many ADUs are going in. So it's not clear to me that any of these property owners really I'm not sure how this is going to benefit the city. If you want to expand on that, how would this benefit the city?

City Council Chambers, I would say, in general, having an additional economic it's just a tool voluntary tool that the city can share with people who are interested in development in these areas. City Council Chambers, It is primarily used for kind of larger projects mixed infill development I don't believe i've seen. Any research information about it being used for you know, like ad us are very small types of projects, it is does take investor or type of project development team. With a level of knowledge and sophistication to be able to take advantage of an opportunity zone designation and to be able to follow all the reporting requirements that would be required to work on this with the irs so I would. You know. I think mostly what I am seeing from the economic development community or from GO-Biz is thoughts about how to help make, thoughts that maybe the program isn't being used even as much as it might have been intended from a policy perspective. So I would say that it's just one tool that could be used to make good projects more feasible.

City Council Chambers, So if there were an affordable housing project, besides the tax credits that they pursue independently, this will be another source of additional tax credits.

City Council Chambers, Potentially, yes, it kind of it rewards long term investors usually equity type investors.

City Council Chambers, Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate the expansion on this topic. I just wanted to really make sure that it was clear and that we could share this with the community in case people were asking. So thank you so much. I see no other questions. So any public comment?

No, not on this item.

All right. With that, can I get a motion for item 6G, Vice Mayor? Yeah, I would like to move approval of staff recommendations. Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

I'll go ahead and second.

Thank you. And can we have roll call, please?

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

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes. And the motion passes 5-0. Thank you very much. Looking forward to hopefully helping someone get some additional housing for our community. So thank you. With that, our next topic today will be a public hearing regarding the approval for, or sorry, a business item for the approval of participation in the Nassimanto Water Project 2026 Revenue Refunding Bonds. And I will pass it right over to our department chair, Erin Floyd.

Good evening, mayor and council members. Aaron Floyd, public works and utilities director. And I am joined this evening by Shane Whittington, who is our utilities business manager. And Shane has been the shepherd of this project up until this point. And we are really excited to present this opportunity to council this evening. And with that, I will turn it over to Shane to give the presentation.

Thank you, Erin. So tonight's presentation is really broken out into three parts. So first, we'll talk about the history of the project financing, and that's really to provide Council with context on where that project began and how that led to where we are today. Next, we'll talk about what the debt financed and how it's been a community asset. And then lastly, we'll talk about estimated financial impact. Because these are based on estimates we have only a loose understanding of what the financial impacts could be and we really won't know what those final numbers are until when bonds are issued at the end of September. And my goal with tonight's presentation is really to provide enough context that Council can make an informed decision on whether or not it makes sense to participate in the refunding of these bonds. So a little bit of background. We first entered into the water delivery entitlement contract in 2004. And the bond that was originally issued for the construction of this project was in 2007. Since then, we've refunded or partially refunded the bonds in 2015 and 2018. And really, the inclusion of this slide was really just to underline or emphasize that This is not a bond for a new asset, but really an opportunity for the city to refinance the existing Nazi debt and hopefully save the city some money. So talking about the asset that this actually funded and the, I guess, the value that it adds for this community. It funded the construction of the Nazi pipeline and over the last 10 years about half of our source water have come from the Nazi pipeline. And while year over year strategy of water use changes with operational need, NOSI remains a key piece in our long range water strategy as well as an asset for us today. And then a little bit of just administrative context as to why this is a business item versus something on consent. The long and the short of it is it's state law that this is required to be a business item, so we're giving you a presentation, and those are the government codes, but I won't bore you with reading through those verbatim. So heading into the financial impacts, I'm gonna pause here for a moment, because this slide really does a lot of the heavy lifting of the presentation. There's two metrics, so this slide and the next slide. So net present value on this slide, and then gross savings, which I think is helpful contrast on the next slide. Net present value is basically, an adjustment on the gross value that basically translates the value of savings in today's dollars. So kind of an oversimplification of it would be to think of it as an inflation adjustment. So basically it's just acknowledging that a dollar saved today is worth more than a dollar saved 15 years from now. And the reason why this is highlighted is because one, it's what consultants and industry experts use to, I guess, gauge whether or not refinancing makes sense. But also it's what our policy as well as Low Counties Financing Authority's policies reference as our policy thresholds. So our minimum policy threshold is 3%. and our kind of general policy target is 5%. And since we've published the report, we've actually received updated numbers, and both those numbers are on the screen currently. So 6.82% is the number that the consultants had identified as the estimated net present value savings as of June 29, 2026. Since then, we've received updated numbers as of July 30, and that's falling at 4.76%. And so I guess long story short, this is really the, I guess, like the policy test of whether or not refunding makes sense for us. Gross savings, much more intuitive, and hopefully I'll have to speak a lot less to this. Basically, it's just after refunding based on current estimates, what we can anticipate as far as estimated annual savings. So total savings across the life of the loan at current estimates is about $2.3 million, and that comes out to about $175,000 annually. And last slide for financial impact. This is a slide that's basically just acknowledging that the bond market is volatile. So while the item tonight is asking for the delegated authority to city manager, finance director, or delegate to execute any documents on behalf of the city if refunding makes sense, We do have to see where the bond market lands in late September to see if it actually does make sense. And that will be a consideration by approving the resolution tonight, you're not saying yes, we're moving forward, but you're delegating staff to at least explore the option. And that brings me to the end of this presentation. And I'm happy to turn it back to Council for any questions or comments.

Thank you so much for making a very complex item pretty smooth. And the additional agenda correspondence surprised me as far as the change in amount. But again, we're always looking for, yes, can we save the city some money? And you are looking at that. And so we greatly appreciate that, especially in regards to water. Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you, that was a good segue to my question, which was you know the benefits of doing this refunding process because of the change in interest rates has. gone down, unfortunately, from the time that the first estimate was looked at so and I understand we have a floor of 3% so. If things continue to go the wrong direction and we get below a 3% will you all come back and tell us in some way that. the proposition failed, basically, that we're not moving forward, or will it just kind of quietly disappear into the night?

We could certainly notify Council if it were to deteriorate, if the bond market were to deteriorate to such a point that it was no longer economically viable. It would probably end up being just like a memo.

Of course.

I wasn't asking for you to come back and present to us. That wasn't, but just some follow up to let us know. I mean, I hope that doesn't happen, but just some follow up to let us know that we missed the boat, I guess, so to speak, on this one. And also just wanted to, I guess, clarify that this isn't the last opportunity that this could happen. And we've done this twice before. And so if conditions in the bond market change, we could be back here at some time in the future if it doesn't work out this time. We're always looking for ways basically to save the city money, right? Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you so much for the great presentation. So this came to ‑‑ I'm on the Nascimento Commission and this came to us at our last meeting and we had a lengthy discussion. One of the items that came up was the idea of once this goes through the whole process, we get to September, we're checking in on the interest rates at that point, if they're not at the threshold that makes this make sense for us, is there some period of time where these permissions are still good so that we can wait a month or two or however long and see if the conditions then improve for us to be able to take advantage of getting all these permissions from the different municipalities that are involved.

That's a great question. I don't think that the resolution necessarily sunsets it. I do know that it specifies that the bonds are called 2026A, so it would probably make sense that it ended calendar year 2026.

Okay, so that does give us a little bit of wiggle room to kind of watch the rates over that time. And are we locked in once all the permissions are in place, we get to September? Is there some strategy in sort of watching those rates to make, obviously we can't predict, but to make reasonable predictions about if next week they're expected to go up or go down? Do we have wiggle room to kind of wait that out? Or do the consultants have the wiggle room to wait that out?

I believe they do. So KNN is the municipal advisor for the county, and this is what they do, right? So they have, I guess, good awareness of what the market is doing and when it makes sense to actually issue those bonds. I think they still are targeting end of September, but should market conditions change, they may revise their strategy.

Well, thanks again for the great staff report.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is a county-wide effort. So the figures in terms of the savings, did that only apply to our city, or was that the whole county that would experience that?

Yeah, absolutely. So the growth savings slide, which I'll go back to, is specified for the city. So that's city-specific. The net present value slide, so the $175,000 annually, that's city-specific. The net present value is across all the participating agencies.

Okay, thanks. Thanks, and now I understand. Who in the county is actually managing this?

So the participating agencies are ourselves, the City of Paso, and Atascadero Mutual Water Company, and I'm missing one. It's Templeton. And then the financing authority, the county financing authority is the actual debt holder, and they're the ones that work with the municipal advisors as well as the underwriters to actually issue the bonds.

Okay, and is our investment oversight committee involved with this at all?

I don't believe so.

OK. All right.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. Without any other questions? OK. Any public comment?

No, we have none.

All right, with that, we're going to come back to deliberations. And I feel like this is, as I was kind of saying earlier, always a fan of when we're trying to find money for the city and also taking care of our water. So for both of those things, I am excited to move this forward. And I also appreciate Council Member Shoresman hearing an update. If this isn't something we should move forward and it's not going to save us money, then of course, hearing that update will be really helpful. So we'll just leave it at that. Vice Mayor. Or sorry, it that went away. Council remarks.

I'd like to second that motion. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, can we have roll call?

Mayor Stewart? Yes. Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Vice Mayor Francis?

Yes. The motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much for your hard work and looking forward to hearing your future research and going from there. So next up, we have the 7B, which is Introducing an Ordinance Amending the Mobile Home Park Rent Stabilization Ordinance, SLO MC Chapter 5.44. And we will have City Attorney Sadie Simmons give the report.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening. Good evening, council members as well. Is this not working? one moment okay all right um thank you my name is sadie simmons and i am the deputy city attorney and this item is to introduce an ordinance that will amend the city's mobile home park rent stabilization ordinance which is found in chapter 5.44 of our municipal code This is a follow-up to Ordinance Number 1757, which was adopted by the City Council on June 2 of this year. And so that we're not here until midnight, I will refer to the Mobile Home Park Rent Stabilization Ordinance as the RSO. So some background, the city's RSO was originally adopted in 1981 to regulate the allowable increases in space rent that may be charged by a mobile home park owner. Previously, all long term leases, which is defined as any lease over 12 months were exempt from the city's RSO and this was required by state law so back. Back to 1985, state law dictated that any local jurisdiction that regulates space rent within a mobile home park must exclude long-term leases from that ordinance. This changed back in 2021 with the passage of California Assembly Bill 2782, which repealed that requirement that local ordinances must exempt long-term leases. And this went into effect on January 1st of 2025. It's important to note that ab 2782 did not directly repeal any ordinances or automatically void any long term leases that were within local ordinances. It just gave local agencies the discretion to remove that exemption to sort of bring long term leases into the protections of their ourselves. And then, with this discretion, the city opted to do to do that. The city removed the long-term lease exemption and expanded the Rso protections to long-term leases on with adoption of ordinance one, seven, five, seven on June second, and that went into effect on July second of this year. After adoption of that ordinance, the city received letters from mobile home park owner representatives as well as from a resident advocate with some conflicting opinions and assertions on whether the ordinance was retroactive, meaning whether it applied to long-term leases that existed as of that effective date, July 2nd. Park owners were asserting that application to existing leases would constitute an unlawful interference with those existing contracts. and the resident advocate was asserting that the ordinance was automatically retroactive and applied to pre-existing leases it has been the city's stated position that as written and without any further findings or action of the council that that ordinance the repeal of the or the removal of the long-term lease exemption is applies prospectively meaning only to mobile home leases that executed that were executed on or after july 2nd So, because the the correspondence received reflected potential exposure to litigation, the City Council did meet in close session. Earlier this summer to confer with legal counsel regarding that retroactive applicability and the amendment proposed for introduction tonight is intended to sort of clarify that application to long term leases and also makes a few other changes which will be discussed momentarily. So the cities are so kind of first and foremost regulates maximum annual annual rent increases so what we typically think of when we think of rent control or rent stabilization it's those the amount that rent is increased every year for a space. But in addition to that, it also regulates how much a park owner can increase the rent if the mobile home is sold or transferred to a new owner. So not not the annual rent increases, but upon sale. And so, in that case, the monthly space rent cannot be increased more than 10%. Then what then the rent that existed before the sale happened. However, tenants with long term leases were previously exempt from the Rso. As, as I had mentioned, so they were not protected by this sort of limitation. So when they went to sell their homes, they were not protected by the by the rent cap upon sale within the Rso. And over the past few years, city staff have heard directly from mobile home park residents within the city who have these long term leases and went to go sell their homes and were provided with notification from their park owners that the space rent was going to be increased significantly for whoever bought the mobile home and moved into that space. Sometimes these rent increases were in excess of 200%. And understandably, these extreme space rent increases adversely affected their ability to sell their homes to otherwise qualified buyers and significantly reduce the value of their homes. So the proposed ordinance, if it was adopted by the Council, would expand the part of the RSO that regulates that space rent increase upon sale. So it would apply those protections to pre-existing long-term leases, specifically long-term leases that basically don't otherwise protect the tenants. So leases that are either silent on space rent upon that transfer or that which expressly allow an increase greater than the limit that's within the city's Rso, which again is ten percent. So those leases, regardless of execution date, would now be subject to that specific provision of the Rso. And the reason for this proposal is that the city has a significant and legitimate interest in protecting the ability of all mobile home park residents to sell their homes when they choose to do so and to prevent these exorbitant space rent increases from severely affecting their ability to do that and from diminishing the value of their home. So the proposed amendment will ensure that all long-term residents, regardless of when their lease began, are protected by this 10% cap, either through the city's RSO or through the terms of their lease. So this expands the protections of the RSO to address a concern that has actually been raised to the city that we are actually aware of, while still respecting to the fullest extent the reasonable, you know, these privately negotiated existing contracts. And then, just for clarity sake, the second column here shows that all leases executed after the effective date of the ordinance that removed the exemption all of those leases will be subject to the full terms of the RSO. So sort of in summary of. Of this component of the proposed ordinance it would. subject some long term leases as discussed to those increase upon sale rent limitations, but it would leave other provisions of those leases unaffected. I think notably and to clarify the draft ordinance as proposed would not affect annual those annual rent increases of any leases that were executed. Prior to July 2 even if those increases are in excess of what the RSO would allow those rent increases those annual increases would continue to be determined by whatever the terms were negotiated in in those leases. Additionally, the ordinance does not affect or attempt to recover from park owners any increases in rent before July 2. So I know that when we say retroactive that might sort of raise concerns that we're going to go after, you know, past rent increases that the proposed ordinance does not is not retroactive in that in that way. And I think, finally, we did get some concerns from park owners that repealing the long term lease exemption from the RSO was a ban on long term leases. That is definitely not that state law, the mobile home residency law protects the. ability for park owners and tenants to enter into long term leases if they choose to do so, and the city cannot preempt that law this ordinance does not in any way. This ordinance or ordinance 1757 do not prohibit or ban long term leases within mobile home parks. So, as I said at the beginning, there are a few other changes that this ordinance would sort of put into effect. So far we've just been talking about the limitation on rent increase when it tenant moves out, and this is referred to as vacancy control, which is a form of rent control that precludes park owners from raising rents immediately on new tenants. So in the context of mobile home parks with sort of the dual bifurcated ownership of the space versus the mobile home there's also the situations where. The resident moves out and they also take their mobile home with them so there's there's a complete toner turnover, not only of the the resident the 10 in the space, but also a new mobile home. um so there's this sort of separate situation is currently addressed within the rso by referring to the languages the vacation of the space and in that situation the space rent may be adjusted to fair market rent and this is called vacancy d control where when the tenant moves out the space can be increased to market. There has been some confusion in the past with park owners who have taken the position that this means, oh, the resident vacates the space and that That would kind of render the rest of that section meaningless, because when the when the resident vacates the space and the mobile home stays. that's when sort of the 10% rent increase limitation kicks in, so this is really specifically meant to be. You know the mobile home is also removed the 10 or is also they also leave the park, and this is a new mobile home coming in a new tenant and, in that case. The park owner may raise the the space rent to whatever market is so to clarify that. And sort of in line with prevailing case law regarding they can see control the proposed ordinance would change that language. sort of as shown on the screen basically just making it clear that it is removable mobile home and abandonment of the space Lisa the tenants leaving as well. And the agenda packet does not include this last sentence, but this last sentence was added to the draft ordinance which was published in the agenda packet, basically just saying that this, you know, this would not apply to a tenant who is just replacing their mobile home with a new mobile home and staying within the park. In that case, the owner would not be able to raise the rent to market. And sort of the last component of this amendment is related to notification by park owners to their residents. So currently the RSO does require park owners to notify prospective tenants with the terms of the RSO if their leases would be exempt. So it's a very narrow notification requirement currently within the ordinance. This would basically expand their notification responsibilities and require them to provide notice sort of in three situations. The first is all new residents would be given a copy of the RSO. And then anytime the RSO is amended, park owners would also be required to notify all of their residents of those amendments. And finally, if the city directs park owners to do so, then the park owners need to notify their residents of any other changes in law or policy that affects mobile home residents. And again, sort of the reason for this is that the city has a significant interest in ensuring that mobile home residents are aware of their rights under city code and other applicable laws, but the city does not have and cannot reasonably obtain the contact information of every mobile home resident within the city and park owners and operators are in a much better position to have that information and to provide this information to their residents. So in summary, the ordinance attempts to do three things it, it clarifies that any lease any long term lease executed before July 2 will be subject to that narrow provision of the Rso governing space rent increase upon sale. If their leases either expressly or implicitly allow those increases about 10%. And again, this part is really intended to make sure that all residents all mobile and residents within the city, regardless of when their lease started, are not going to be subject to these excessive rent increases when they go to sell their their mobile home. The proposed ordinance also again clarifies that vacancy decontrol, that mobility of a park owner to raise the space rent to market, it really only applies if the mobile home and the tenant are both leaving that space. And finally, it expands the notification requirements and will require owners to provide notice of the RSO, any amendments that are made to that, as well as any other changes in law or policy that affect mobile home residents. And with that, I will take any questions that the council may have.

Thank you so much. Again, these complex ordinance and processes that we're talking about today, and you really, I appreciate the additional clarification that you shared today. Any questions? Council Member Shoresman.

Yeah, I still feel like this ordinance needs like a decision tree. If this, then here's the result, because it gets confusing very quickly, at least for me. So if I'm understanding correctly, No, so my question is if if there is. An individual with a lease that expressly allows or expressly says that they can increase rents more than 10% say their lease has a clause in it that says that they can have a 12% increase every year does that least get superseded by this ordinance.

So in that case so we're really looking at the whether or not the least has a term that governs that increase upon sale, so if we're looking at a lease that was executed, you know let's say in in 2020 before before July 2 of this year, any lease that existed prior to that is not. this ordinance does not affect those annual space rent increases regardless um it's not going to affect that even even again if if the lease would allow for a rent increase in excess of the rso and i think that the um in terms of the annual rent increases under our rso it's not as cut and dry as 10 it's based on the change in cpi so it's usually going to be lower than 10 so but this really only impacts um when there's a change of ownership

That that is correct, and for these yeah for existing pre-existing leases. Yes, and so if there's a pre-existing lease, and there's a change in ownership of the property, does the least stay with the property. And so, or does does a new lease get established if a new person owns the

If the new so that will also be governed sort of by the the other terms of the lease, I mean the city is not privy to every. Every mobile home lease in the city, but the ones that I have seen generally do say that the new owner sort of assumes the lease. And this ordinance would really only affect for for those pre existing leases the transfer upon sale, it would leave the rest of the provisions of those existing leases in effect until the end of their term.

So there could be a small number of leases we don't know that actually explicitly have a an increase more than 10% upon sale as language in the lease and there's nothing we can do to about that.

It is possible I again I have not seen those I think I think more than the issue is that these all of these long term leases had been previously exempt from the RSO so in that case owners were permitted to sort of do whatever they wanted with the rent increase so it is likely a small number I I'm not sure though. Great Thank you so much.

Thank you Councilmember marks.

Thank you. Yeah, and my understanding is that if someone is buying a mobile home in a park, that there is a relatively new statute that states that the management cannot force them to take a long-term lease. Is that correct?

Yes, so this is, as I understand it, the current state law says that a park owner may be offered a short term lease, which is less than 12 months, a 12 month lease, or a lease longer than 12 months if agreed to by the park owner and the tenant. So that is, that is in state law, yes.

A new buyer will actually, once they buy the mobile home, could say, well, I know you want me to assume this long term lease, but I want a short term lease. So is that correct?

If a new owner comes in to a space that has an existing long-term lease? As far as I understand it, it The the the law that allows the long term lease applies to existing residents, but I am not sure I could i'm actually not sure about that situation all right no that's that's my reading, but I just wanted to to raise that because I think there's more.

My understanding is that there's more. discretion on the part of the the new owner than there has been in the past.

Yeah, and again, I apologize not able to answer that exact question, but I think it is worth clarifying that mobile home parks within the city are also subject to the state residency law and the city can't preempt those. The city's RSO is really just sort of about rent increases in those two situations.

Okay, thank you.

I don't see any other questions. All right, is there any public comment?

Yes, we have one person in chambers, Mark Morrison, and we also have one online.

Thank you for letting me speak here. I was apprised of this by a member of our community. I'm Mark Morrison. I'm actually the president of the Residents Association at Laguna Lakes Mobile Estates, also a member of Golden State Manufacturing Home Owners League. And so some of this will resolve around that as far as that communication with that organization um first uh thank you for i mean all your work on on writing this up you've done some very good work you've you have uh you've got a lot of things fixed that have been broken so thank you for doing that The other thing, so I want to say, part of what I have seen and heard from in our park and I'm sure other parks is a small community of people who have already sold their houses or had their rent raised already and it's been done for maybe five years. I'm not sure at the time, but there are some that are impacted by this previously happening. So I would like to advocate for them that Maybe if we can get there is retroactive to somebody who's been paying you know, maybe $500 more a month than the standard is for the park. To be go back retroactive because there's houses for sale now that people can't sell because of the space rent is so high. And so this is that this is a mo worms are low income predominantly. And so when the space rent. I mean, it's, for example, space rent goes anywhere between $600 to $1,800 a month. I don't I'm just, you know, somewhere in that. So some people it did bump up from like $700 to 1700 or 18 so it's a big change when that happens. So if there's any way for a to include in this that they can go be rector actively and at least let's put them back down if we can't say okay we're going to recoup that money but okay let's put it back down to what it was when that was sold and and help the communities in that way A second thing is I appreciate all your questions too. They're really good for the community here. Do all residents sign a long-term lease? That's something I'm gonna go back and ask our managers at the mobile home park. They've been very good in working with us and working with the residents. I love our mobile home park and they're very, in fact, they're following most of these recommendations already. And so there's not a whole lot of change for where I am. But, but there's apparently maybe there's other parks that don't. So that's a really good question is, is, you know, is it a new lease required from each sale. I think that's probably predominant but I don't know. So I'll find out. The next thing I would like to find out is will this lead parks to short term rentals.

Sorry, your time is up. But thank you, I appreciate your questions and feel free to also send in anything via email as well. And we have someone online.

Yes, Nick, just one moment. Okay, Nick, you can unmute yourself.

Hi, can everybody hear me?

Yes, we can.

Great, I haven't tried this before. You guys might recognize my name. I've been writing a lot to you guys on this issue. I just wanted to clarify Councilman Marks' question about whether incoming home buyers have an option for getting a short-term lease. And the answer to that is no. under the state law and in in case law and the homeowner is defined as somebody that already has a lease within a park. So that's the loophole that corporate park owners are using to walk people into long term leases. In the case of Harmony Communities, they only offer 10 or 20 year leases, and it's a take it or leave it situation. And oftentimes buyers are not aware of those terms until after they've already put down money. So we're not talking about. And in their parks, they've in their writings to the council, they've bragged about how 90 percent of their tenants, for example, at South Peaks are under long term agreements. They neglected to mention that those agreements are oftentimes 10 to 20 years. So by. You know, with with the action of this ordinance to exempt those long-term leases, which the council does not have to do. We're talking, you know, grandfathering in 10 to 20 years of increased space rent above market rates for those existing residents. And the council has the power to apply the rent stabilization ordinance to all leases, regardless of when they are signed. So I am strongly, you know, advocating for this council to stand up for those residents because a lot of those people don't understand the agreements that they're getting into and they don't have a choice and they just they're looking for an affordable housing and they don't understand the implications of What the terms of that lease is saying in terms of how much the park is able to raise the rent over time so. yeah i'm really strongly pushing for this Council to to reject the current ordinance proposal or to expand it to cover existing leases, because that is a loophole that the park owners are explicitly using to target these residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment online?

No, that's it.

Okay, thank you. Okay, Vice Mayor.

Yeah thank you for that and thank you to everybody who came to give a public comment. I did see a response here from the City Attorney or either of you on the assertion that there are 20 10 to 20 year leases that would be exempt then from the provisions here and I was wondering if we could maybe dive into the weeds a little bit more on that.

So any so again, any leases that are any 10 to 20 year leases that are executed or were executed after July 2 are subject to all provisions of the Rso, which would include those annual space rent increases. And it's it's unclear from my comments from the previous speaker whether he's referring to those annual space rent increases or the increases upon sale. But again, for any lease that is executed after July 2. They will be, they will be subject to the RSO regardless of how long they are, but yes, it is possible that existing 10 to 20 year leases or in the middle of that term would continue to be exempt from the RSO either fully if they again if they limit that increase upon sale or. Or they would be subject to just to just that one provision of the hour so so so yes, I guess, that is correct if I understood correctly, I believe it was in response to Council member marks's question about whether or not.

A new buyer of an existing unit with an existing lease would be forced into taking that lease and I believe the speaker was. clarifying that under current law that that generally is the fact that people are forced to take on the existing lease so if it's a. 10 to 20 year lease then that that is then exempt from the provisions that we're laying out here in our updates is that. A fair assessment of what I heard there.

So I think that maybe we're talking about two different things, the first being whether or not new residents are required to assume the existing leases, and then whether residents are required to enter into new long-term leases, which are different things. Again, the leases that I've seen, some of them do include provisions that whoever moves into the space. But basically, that lease essentially runs with the space, and the new tenant is required to take it over. In that case, really the only thing that this ordinance would affect is how much rent that new tenant is initially charged. It would not affect any other terms of that existing lease if they have to assume it.

Okay, I guess I got a little bit lost in that first part i'm trying to understand if if somebody comes in there's a 20 year lease it's say five years is. gone they've bought this new unit, they are being forced to take on the existing lease from the previous owner. They have any do they have any additional protections underneath this new so, so they would essentially they would be.

The initial rent that they pay when they move in would be capped at 10%, either by the terms of that lease or based on the sort of limited retroactive effect of the RSO. So the initial rent would be no more than 10% of what the previous resident paid, but the annual rent increases after that date, all other terms of that lease would remain in effect through the duration of its term.

So the first year rent would be capped at no more than 10% of the previous year's rent. But if that 15 years remaining on this hypothetical lease had a provision that said they could do 20% increases or whatever it happened to be, then every year consecutively after that, they could have a 20% increase on their rent. Is that correct?

If that's what the long-term lease says, yes. And again, obviously, we have not seen all of the leases. But of the ones I have seen, many of them do also tie it in some way to the CPI. So it is, in a lot of cases, it ends up being very similar to the city's RSO. But again, that is not all leases. I cannot speak for all.

leases within the city yeah thank you for the clarification thank you councilmember schwarzman

Thank you, yeah, further clarification following up on that. So taking that same hypothetical lease five years in, 10% increase the first year, if that lease, this is kind of going back to my previous questions, if that lease had a clause in it that upon change of ownership, the increase could be more than 10%, would this RSO still apply? yes so that it would automatically make it so that person could still only have a 10 increase that first year even if the lease said a new owner would have a 12 or 15 or whatever percent increase upon sale yes that is correct okay thank you um when when would this um when would these changes that we're talking about assuming that we um that we approve this ordinance change tonight when would these take effect

So, because it is sort of a substantive change, I mean if you look at the legislative draft it does attempt to add a new or doesn't it adds a new exemption to the exemption list to kind of you know narrows the prior exemption. That's actually a good, I mean, my understanding is that yes, it would be 30 days from the date of final adoption, which would be, I believe, if introduced, adoption is in, I believe it is the next council meeting in two weeks.

Okay, so 30 days after September 1st then, theoretically, or thereabouts. So in regards to the question that our member of the public sort of sparked in me, if there's, so if there's a unit for sale now, What happens to those units if they are sold either before this becomes effective or after it becomes effective. Would they be subject to the new provisions of the ordinance if it's if it's for sale now and it gets sold before. Would that be September 1 for your saying.

It would they could raise the rate at whatever level, because the ordinance hasn't passed yet right right so as the as it stands, the nothing we've talked about is is effective so yes, as it stands that.

The this limitation would not affect existing leases okay, but if the sale actually happens after this becomes effective, then that buyer would only be allowed to be charged 10% more.

Right, and so, when it does go into effect, it does sort of have that retroactive effect back to July 2 so any leases executed after or before that date, it would apply to.

So that kind of maybe goes back to what our speaker was also saying is, is there a way to read so if people have our if I have already had a bigger increase upon purchase bigger than 10% increase upon purchase of their unit. Are they able to retroactively get their money back.

City Council Chambers, I am not aware of any mechanism, the city would have to recoup what was at the time a lawful rent increase yeah so no that's what I was afraid of, but I just wanted to make sure that I was understanding that correctly.

City Council Chambers, I think that's what he was sort of implying, though, that it would be great if there was a way to do that, but doesn't sound like there really is practically. City Council Chambers, Thank you appreciate that.

City Council Chambers, Thank you, Council member marks.

Yeah, sorry I didn't mean to introduce confusion, but my understanding is that a mobile home owner can request a shorter-term lease, but a prospective buyer is in a situation where the park can say, well, we're not going to lease you this unless you agree to a long-term lease. So the person my understanding would would would be in the position of saying okay i'll bite the bullet off by mobile home and then i'm an owner and then I will start to negotiate with the management, so that I can go to a 12 year trade 12 month lease or month to month place. So I think the I just checked it again and it yeah, so that that's my understanding. But I do I do just one word deliberation now. Right. I think this is a great step forward myself. It's not the whole thing, but approaching the problem incrementally, I think, makes a lot of sense. We can see how it how it works out. And then there's a lot of litigation right now. We'll see how. how the courts determine the equities in this situation. And then we can, this council or the next council at some time could possibly further amend the ordinance to make it even more equitable. We know what we want. We want affordable housing. So anyway, I will support the motion.

Thank you, City Attorney. I just want to be clear that that distinction between long-term, short-term for leases executed or offered after July 2nd is not really all that relevant anymore because all of them are subject to all provisions of the mobile home park run stabilization ordinance. So it is not the same weighting as perhaps it used to be when there was an exemption for those long-term leases and people were being forced into them. The gray area, because we are not party to private lease agreements and we don't know what all of their terms are, is what's going on in the unique provisions of the existing leases and how those folks might be affected. That is pure speculation on our part, except as to the ones that have been shared with us that Sadie has reviewed, and that is the problems that have been raised in those leases are the problems that this ordinance seeks to solve.

Thank you, well said. Vice Mayor.

Thank you for the clarification, City Attorney. And just coming back to the clarification that Council Member Marks was making here, just to drill down a little bit, am I understanding correctly that the request to switch from a short-term or long-term lease by a new owner would be at the discretion, though, still of the park owner, whether or not they wanted to negotiate that new lease with the new owner?

My understanding is that state law now says that the owner of the unit can say can is cannot be forced to accept a long term lease, which I guess in some ways, the problem, the problem is when a person is going to buy the unit. there's still this he referred to it, Nick or was it Nick the fellow who called in he referred to it as a loophole. So the prospective buyer doesn't have any rights. The owner does have rights.

But if the prospective buyer is then forced into a long-term lease but then is allowed by law to renegotiate it immediately, then they then are protected by the new provisions because it isn't an existing lease. Then it's a new lease. Is that a correct analysis?

That's my understanding. I'm not a city attorney, but that's my understanding.

Okay. That feels like an important detail there. So I just am a little bit curious if we can maybe figure out if people are allowed to renegotiate their leases by law immediately after assuming ownership.

City attorney.

City, go ahead.

So I may need to be corrected here and I want to be very clear as well that we are not mobile home park specialist, we are looking at the city's mobile home park law. I do not hold ourselves out in any way as an expert on the mobile home on the state mobile home residency law mobile home parks. act any of that we'll we'll do our best but i don't want anyone relying on this as legal advice in negotiating their private agreements they need to seek individual legal counsel because i i am not at all clear that any of us are right on this and i think we may be talking about different things so i want to be very very clear about that what i am understanding the question to be is Can a new resident entering a park be forced to accept a long-term lease? I believe that they have to be offered the option. Further, under our current ordinance, the distinction between entering into a short-term and a long-term is really only the term, because in terms of the allowable rent increases, the rent increases upon transfer for someone entering into a new long-term lease right now, they're all going to be, all of those provisions are going to be subject to the limitations in our rent stabilization ordinance. i think the the delta that you may be concerned about vice mayor is the an existing a space that is being purchased by a person that is subject to an existing long-term lease and i think the question was can you except enter into, assume that long-term lease, and then as soon as you're a resident demand to renegotiate it. I don't believe that would be the case. I believe that if there were an expired lease, then there would be, if the long-term lease you were under expired the next year, then you have to be offered a new lease term that includes these options is how I understand it. And again, I will defer to Sadie who is more expert on this than I, but I wanna make really sure that we are not providing false information, guessing at it or misleading people to rely on it because we are not competent to render that advice and we cannot render the advice that private parties can rely on.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Yeah, just a couple of comments. I'm going to be supporting the staff recommendation. I think it's just important for us to acknowledge that this is another incremental step in really improving on the action that we took just last month. It does not solve all the problems that have been raised by the public comments or in some of the agenda correspondence that we've gotten. partly because there's a lot of complexity here. I can imagine there's some fascinating provisions, particularly in some of these older leases regarding how leases transfer Yeah, so I think it's important to support this incremental step because I do believe it's a good positive step. It will add, it will create a new set of beneficiaries beyond our previous action. And I would hope that as a council, we would continue to watch what happens both in mobile home law statewide, but also probably litigation coming out of some of the recent legal changes. to see where we might have some additional flexibility in the future to take yet another progressive action towards ensuring affordability in these mobile home parks.

Thank you. Vice Mayor, did you want to add back to what the City Attorney was saying? Okay. Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you, Council Member Boswell, and thank you, City Attorney, for clarifying that we can't provide legal advice to people. I could see the situation where you purchase a new mobile home and then you're there in your space and you have to have a lease so it seems like a vulnerable position to be in where you may want to try to negotiate something but your park owner could say no you you get what you get and um you could be stuck in a That situation. So I would kind of think that this would be something that you need to look at really closely before you even purchase the unit. It just seems like, you know, similar to some of the vulnerable situations that some of our non-mobile home renters have where they rent a place, and then it's unsafe after the fact and here they are they're stuck without any place else to go so um but i agree council member boswell this is an incremental step it's it's something that we can do now and we can continue to watch what happens because we certainly want to continue to make sure we preserve this affordable housing option for people so i'm ready to support the motion or make it right now I'll go ahead and make the motion.

Okay, Vice Mayor, do you have additional comments or are you looking to second? Okay, because I haven't made my comments yet either, so I probably would like to do that before we move forward if that's all right. All right, Vice Mayor.

Yeah. So I know that this is a council that has been really thinking hard about how we make sure we get this right. And I appreciate that there's been several of you who have mentioned that this is an incredibly fraught realm, that there is litigation ongoing. And I think we wrestled a little bit with whether or not we wait and watch and try and get the whole enchilada at once but I think the impulse now is to get as much as we can in this moment so that we protect as many people as we can as soon as possible with the hope and what I'm hearing from those of you who have spoken already that we will keep a very close watch on on this realm and trying to make sure that we get as much as we can as a way of protection for people who are in our mobile home parks across the city. This is an incredibly important source of housing in our community, and I know it's also been an area where we've heard a lot about some abuses of the system, and we want to make sure that that doesn't happen again in the future. So I appreciate all of the hard work that the city attorney's office has done on this front. and to the commentators who have come in and given a little bit of context from their personal experiences and also from their reading of the law, I think that's been really helpful in kind of giving us an eye to where we want to push next. I really wish we could help folks with the retroactivity to recoup costs but that's just outside of what what the city can do in this moment. But I appreciate that that is a big issue. And I will be supportive of this and eager to second when the opportunity comes.

Thank you, and I know a lot of this will be a repeat, but I also agree. This is incremental, and I wish we could go back, but yet I also understand we have a reality around retroactive, and people have contracts, and we can't just jump in like, we don't like your contract, because that could get real challenging as we go into lots of other sectors. But I do think that, as you mentioned, Vice Mayor, we really did talk back and forth about should this be something that we bring forward now or should we wait until we hear about legislation about lawsuits and where we're at. And as far as for me personally, I wanted to make sure we don't do any more delays. And so I wanted us to really help as many people as we could as early as we can. That being said, i think january we all saw this and went can we jump now and that was that was really the question was how do we do that so i think um just really appreciate um i know people have written in to us that are online or have been on online in the past i know we had some great comment in um public and i really encourage you to please stay on top of this as well for your communities um you know i know that there are hoas and there's different names for the different mobile homes but there's different resident groups and owner groups please stay tuned stay in touch with whatever group you're part of because this is an evolving conversation and if we need to come back into this conversation we want to make sure that we can get back into it as soon as we possibly can or need to so i'm definitely willing to support and ready for that second vice mayor i will second staff recommendation Thank you. Can we have roll call, please?

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

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes. And the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much to the city attorney team. This has been a huge amount of work. Literally, as we were sitting there, legal input was coming in at that moment from the state level. And so I just really appreciate your work. and your nimbleness. All right. And with that, we'll move on to liaison reports and communications. This is the last of it. I'm going to skip our break. Hope you all are OK with that. First, before we get into the reports, I just want to say a big thank you to the personnel board. I know this has been a challenging conversation regarding my censure. And I know it's been a lot of time and energy and detailed work for the city attorney and city manager and administration team as well. So thank you for that. With that, I do think there is still one more cleanup that we have to do based on this conversation of a grand jury, which I do think that we should update our city council procedures. And there's particularly chapter seven is around confidentiality. Excuse me, but I think that when we look at the council, okay, thank you, we can't talk about it yet, that's okay. When we look at chapter seven, I do think you should also, as we have this conversation for the future agenda item, if you all are okay with this agenda item, I think there's a couple other locations in the, Council procedures that may be useful as well, so I just think, as we have this conversation, hopefully next month, if it works, I only see a couple sentences that probably need to be changed, but I want you to also make sure that you're thinking about is there anywhere else in the Council procedures that you like that update now might as well do. any and or any and all updates on this conversation um whether it is just the pure aspect of confidentiality or whether it is the grand jury and how the procedures happen in the council procedures there is nothing that says anything about the grand jury process and not every person in the world has gone through a grand jury inquiry So I think there's some general briefing conversation that needs to happen from the city manager or city attorney, depending on what is best in that specific inquiry. So we'd like to do a quick council procedures update. in September, if you all are okay with putting that on our agenda. We do seem to have some time based on the forecast, and I did ask City Clerk if that would be all right, and City Attorney for that matter, and City Manager for that matter. So I'm going to bring that here, and if we could talk about that first before we go to the reports. And when I say talk about it, of course it's not on our agenda. What I'm talking about is is it okay to put it on our agenda for September, Vice Mayor?

Yeah, I haven't had the opportunity to review the existing language, but based on what I've heard from you, it sounds like there's some gaps that need to be addressed, and I think it's always valuable to address gaps where they exist, so I would be in favor of agendizing this item.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Yes, I'd also be in favor of putting it on the agenda. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yes, I would be and I have also, the Mayor and I have discussed this earlier and I've also copied Chapter 7, just to pass these down to the other guys. I do want to say though when we come back from the break that I will bring up the need that I feel is very, very important and I'll talk about it more later to agendize the issue of censure. and we've all seen the advisory opinion uh to the council and um i feel it's it's very important that we um discuss it as a council and i i understand that there may be time on the september 8th calendar to agendize that so we'll talk about that more when we come back from our break but i just wanted to get it out there in the open i don't see it as an either or i see it as both

Well, there's no break. So we're talking about would we like to agendize the council procedures? So your answer is yes.

Yes on that.

OK. Thank you. City attorney?

You may already be ahead of me, Mayor. I was just going to suggest that we keep those two things distinct because, of course, you'll need to step away from the conversation on the latter item. So we don't want to conflate those two things.

Right. I just wanted to make sure that we didn't substitute one for the other. So thank you. Yes, let's come back from the break.

Thank you. Council Member Schwarzman.

A little confused about what and maybe we can't really talk about it in much detail, but i'm a little confused about what we would be changing in the Council policies, I guess, just re looking at all of 7.1 is that maybe you can just answer that question for me.

I think there's a couple points personally in the Council procedure, we can update that will be beyond just chapter seven.

Okay, well, it sounds like you've already got four votes, so it doesn't really matter what I what I think still matters. So I guess we're going to be looking at that hopefully in September if there's space. As to the other item councilmember marks that you want to agenda is as far as the. we're not I don't think we're having a break.

But I can step aside, so you can talk about the other because we clearly had enough. We had enough votes to move forward with the Council procedures update so we'll add that to our September meeting will come back with a date on that probably September 15 because September 1 would be way too soon, I will step out, so you can talk about the Center.

Can you recognize the Vice Mayor so that she can run the meeting? I don't know if I need to turn mine off.

I'm a little bit Wizard of Oz-ing it since I really need Theresa to push the buttons for me, but I will do my best. I know that Council Member Shoresman was in the middle of a comment, so I'm going to allow her to finish what she was saying there, and then we will go to Council Member Marks.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So I'm going to respond to Council Member Marks to your request to put a discussion about censure on our agenda. I believe that's what you were proposing and wanted to know if there were enough votes to do that. And I'm going to just actually read. I normally speak pretty extemporaneously, but I'm just going to read these comments about that topic. We can all agree that this was a truly unfortunate situation. I know it has impacted all of us. I feel terrible for our mayor and for our staff who have all spent countless hours thinking about this, sifting through documents and emails to understand the chain of events, doing all the work it takes to support the personnel board through its process and answering inquiries from both the media and the public. It's been a lot for all of us. It's now pretty clear what happened. The mayor has recognized her error and sincerely apologized for it. It was an isolated accidental incident and I believe it will not happen again. The personnel board heard the matter and all the arguments, not once, but twice, and it has been thoroughly discussed and analyzed both times. They did not recommend a censure hearing before the council in those two discussions. It's time to move on to making important decisions that move our city forward, decisions that make our city residents' lives better. More time spent on this issue will not do that. I'm ready to move on and from the feedback I've gotten from many, many residents, they are too. This does not need to go any further and I do not support taking any further action. Thank you.

Thank you Council Member Shoresman Council Member Marks.

Yes well uh I I wanted to go first so I'm sorry I wasn't able to but I I do want to um say that uh I know that all of us on this Council including the Mayor truly wish this had not happened. This has been a huge heartache for all of us. But the reason that I decided to actually initiate the process that brought it to the personnel board was because I believe we have a duty to actually and the duty well just so we have a duty to actually discuss this among ourselves um i think it's a huge um it's a huge issue uh the personnel board was split three two and i'll just a quote from the newest uh personnel board member shin tan Desai, who said respectfully, this is not a trivial traffic matter. Grand jury confidentiality protects the oversight on issues that directly affect residents. So I am not interested in the person, actually. I'm interested in the conduct, which is breach of confidentiality. I have my oath of office here that we all We all swore, okay. And besides upholding the Constitution, which is important, we also furthermore agree to abide by the rules, regulations, and laws of the City of San Luis Obispo. The Personnel Board Advisory opinion did say that the mayor's leaking of the confidential grand jury report to Cal Poly um was a breach of the city's policy of confidentiality and i think that that's something that does deserve a discussion at the council level about does that kind of violation of the city policy on confidentiality actually merit a censure of any of us not necessarily even this council i'm talking about the future I really feel the council owes itself, city residents, city staff, the grand jury, presiding judge, Rita Federman, a thoroughgoing consideration of the facts in open session. We need to discuss the situation with each other, deliberate, and decide whether censure is appropriate in this situation or not. I would like to hear from my colleagues. And because we have not agendized it so far, and the personnel board advised us not to, if we just maintain silence, I feel like we're being part of a cover-up, frankly. And the reason that I feel that is is you've received my letter to the personnel board where I detail the the reasons for that basically. It did not come to the attention of the public or this Council until the compliance report came out on April 27 of 2026 that the leak had occurred almost a year earlier now.

then it was only a public what chair vice chair i do want to caution the council that argument deliberation persuasion it's a brief statement about whether or not you wish to put The item on the agenda, but going through the full argument is approaching a line that's.

You do have my letter, I hope you had a chance to read it. I did also have a conversation with the mayor about. Chapter seven what we have decided to agenda is and um. I made these, I told her I'd bring copies to the meeting tonight. So I just want to say that I feel it is really our duty to step up and discuss this issue. It's been discussed in the press, it's been discussed on the radio, and I think We as a body need to discuss it with each other. So I'll stop right there. And you can see if there's a consensus about what to do. I guess we need we need three votes out of the four. Is that correct? To put it on the agenda?

Okay. Councilmember Boswell, did you have comments?

Yeah, thank you. So I'm going to try to be brief and just speak to the proposal, whether to put censure on the agenda or not. First, I do want to thank the Personnel Board for their careful consideration, attention to facts, and productive discussion. Probably not what you sign up for on the personnel review board. Well, maybe it is, actually. But I know it was a challenging discussion for them. And I want to thank all five members who I thought carried themselves very well and represented the city well. I appreciated everybody's comments. I watched both the personnel board meetings and read all of the materials that they had been provided, including additional materials provided us by the city. You know, it's my general posture is to support recommendations of our advisory bodies, typically unless I think they've made a really clear error or they have not considered all aspects of the issue. Again, I watched both meetings. There were two meetings. I won't quote from their statement, but I generally agree with the statement that they put forward, which included a recommendation not to move forward with a censure. So I'm going to be supporting that. I do want to be clear, though. I do believe that Mayor Stewart violated the code of ethics. This should be publicly acknowledged. I know it was disappointing to many in the community. It's disappointing to me. i thank her for her apology to the community and to this council and at least to me individually as well and accept that apology and look forward to continuing to to work together i do believe that censure is not merited based on this was not a violation a pattern behavior it was in good faith and not an intentional violation of the code thank you

Thank you, Council Member Boswell. It appears we don't have a majority here, but I will go ahead and make some comments as well, because I think it is really important that the community hear from all of us on this issue. We're held to incredibly high standards for ethics and honesty as we should be. And this has been a really challenging time on the council. I wanna thank my colleagues for the opportunity to quickly address this issue. And also as my colleagues have done, I wanna thank the personnel board and staff for holding two hearings and particularly at that second hearing, really having a substantial and robust discussion of this issue. I want to be really clear that I absolutely agree with the personnel boards assessment that this confidential grand jury report that the sharing of it was a serious lapse in judgment and I condemn it. And I've thought long and hard about how to proceed because I I err on the side of more transparency is good. But I also am a big fan of process and we had two formal hearings on this at this point and uh the request for a formal disciplinary hearing for censure is a big deal um and uh you know the the request itself came with significant weight on intentionality and in my reading of the the record and my recollection of that period uh really points the other way And i've been thinking about you know how, how do you understand the difference between sort of a conspiracy versus. mistake and I always come back to hand lens razor it's a good reminder that where we think there might be malice it's more often a mistake and I view what happened as an occasional good faith lapse rather than intentional misconduct. Our mayor generally operates with strong ethical and moral compass, and I trust this will not happen again. In my mind, the value of a censure hearing is an opportunity for transparency and to evaluate the record. And from my perspective, that's happened at the personnel hearing. And for that reason, I don't believe a censure hearing is warranted in this case, but I'm grateful that we have had the process up through this point.

and i will leave it there for now and we can uh call or see if there are additional comments here uh council member marks another round of comments because we're getting into deliberation and debate i i think you've each had the opportunity to make a statement a brief statement which is within the bounds of whether or not to agendize an item but i if you want to allow additional comments i just want to caution you that the you're approaching a line

mind do you want to make any additional statement no i i accept the uh the will of the council here in this regard um obviously i think it was a mistake i went to a great deal of effort to bring it sorry councilman marks i think because of the city attorney we want to maybe stop there No, I'm just saying that to bring it to our attention, I think it was important that we at least had this conversation. And I do also appreciate the effort of the personnel board. And, you know, bringing the issue this far, I feel was incredibly important. And when The confidentiality policy is brought on to our agenda later there's all kinds of ways, we can tune it up so.

yeah Thank you for that I look forward to that discussion and we'll take a moment here to bring the mayor back in for our liaison reports. Okay.

So, City Clerk, you have everything you need for agenda items, okay. From there, we'll go on to the liaison reports. For myself, on August 5th, I had the SLOCOG meeting, the day after our City Council meeting, and I'm sure most of you read the paper that Measure H is no longer on our ballot this November, which is the self-help ballot for transportation tax. We also talked though about the Mariposa Pass, which will be for people who have the highest transit need. We're talking about low income seniors, youth, college students, veterans, residents with disabilities, long distance commutes and people who are new to transit. We're looking at that combination of people and the Mariposa, the name itself of being able to have our local monarch on the pass is just kind of an extra plus. We also talked about the RHNA numbers, the regional housing numbers, and for, I'm sure many of you heard about our original 17,000 housing units that was planned for the county, and now it is 14,500. So we'll learn more about which cities get which numbers of units, and we'll have to figure out what we do from there as to how to build those units. On August 7th, I got to attend the Cuesta licensed vocational nurse pinning ceremony. And I tell you, going to a graduation is one of the most joyful moments and being able to watch everyone's joy in their lives was pretty awesome. Some people were going to school for the first time and some people going back and had their kids shouting yay for mom in the audience. It was really cool. On the 15th, I got to join the Slow City Farm Games, and Council Member Marks was there, and of course, Executive Director Steven Marks, and you have not experienced life until you've experienced the Slow City Farm Games hoedown. People were out there chasing chickens and catching chickens and running around and... Egg toss and even some audience participation, because the chickens ran out of the area so anyway had a great time with. Aaron primer and grant tally being able to be judges on that and then of course with many of you went to convocation yesterday. hearing the Cal Poly's plans. Of course, that hotel plan was not part of the conversation during convocation, but there were a lot of plans they brought forth, and I wish all of the students and staff and faculty the best of luck as we are going to be experiencing in the whole town and on the whole campus, the brand new semesters, and I wish everyone the best. With that, I'll pass it over to Council Member Shoresman.

I am going to keep this short, sweet and to the point. A few things happened in the last couple of weeks since our last meeting. I was able to attend the Central Coast Construction Trades breakfast with Senator Laird. Always good to see him and he is just such a great advocate for our area. really lucky to have him in the State Senate representing us. I also got to attend the last Monday meetup of the summer at Duval Park on the 10th. It was very, very busy. There were lots of people out there and it looked like the food trucks were doing some good business too, so that's always good to see. This past week, we had the downtown slow board meeting and then this last weekend, I was able to attend the convivencia celebration at the Abdul caters home, and it was just lovely as it always is so thanks to them for holding that and that's it for me.

Thank you, and I do want to add one of our retired police officers, Eric Lincoln, was honored and given an award for being someone who could really communicate and deescalate situations. That was really a pretty cool experience to see. Council Member Boswell.

Thank you. In terms of past, the only thing I have to report on is attended convocation, Cal Poly convocation. So I want to welcome back the faculty, the students, and the new students. Exciting day on campus today. It was hopping. So Cal Poly is back and it felt like it. So very exciting day. Looking forward, the LAFCO meeting this week is canceled. So no LabCo, and then Thursday I have Capsule board meeting.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thank you so much. I also had the opportunity to attend the labor breakfast with Council Member Shorsman and Senator Laird and Assembly Member Hart and several dozen of the local labor leaders, which was really cool and always inspirational. Also, slightly unrelated, but I hope everybody saw the news today. I know it's of great interest, or yesterday, I guess, great interest to those of us locally that PG&E and the county reached a settlement for the next two years to replace the unitary tax with the continued operation of Diablo. I know that there's been a lot of folks coming to speak. on this issue at our council meeting so please look up the press release from senator layard's office i know they've been working hard on that issue and i will leave it there for now thank you councilmember marks

Thank you. Yes, the DSEL, I've been talking about DSEL now for the County Water Resources Advisory Committee. The comment period is over, and it's still a draft regarding the feasibility of DSEL is now circulating. And I spoke with Aaron Floyd a little bit about the various issues regarding the city's role. It's all pretty vague, but that will be coming back to this council or another council when we start and also to LAFCO looking at the the sort of the sprawl aspect of wheeling water outside of the city's urban reserve line but that's all in the future right now it's just the feasibility study on the 9th i was able to join with women lawyers association to volunteer to help stuff the bus to bring backpacks and school supplies to children whose parents may be incarcerated but also low-income children in general and that was a great success we were handing out checklists the people were going into target buying the goods and then coming immediately donating. It was just great. Yes, I went to the personnel board on the 14th of August and testified, as we've discussed. On the 15th, I went to the hoedown, which was a fundraiser and it was oversold. It was actually, They only said 100 people could come they actually had a waiting list of another 40 people who couldn't sorry we couldn't accommodate we don't have enough food you can't come so. Anyway, it was a great success and. Then. Yes, the convocation. It was interesting to hear about the integration of the maritime academy and in Vallejo. And cal poly and how it sounded to me like their staff has been working incredibly hard to transfer to semesters to integrate maritime and to also try to deal with building more housing which unfortunately is delayed, but I was really impressed by the complication so that's all for now thanks.

Thank you. Yeah, the integration of maritime sounded like a great amount of work. So really exciting to now be kind of, I guess, unofficial, of course, sister cities with Vallejo. So with that, we are wrapping up today nice and early at 8 o'clock p.m. I hope you all enjoy your evening, and we'll see you back here on September 1st here in the City Hall Council Chambers at 5.30 p.m. Good night.