City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you so much. I'll call to order the Seaside City Council and the Seaside Successor Agency to the Redevelopment Agency of the City of Seaside regular 5 p.m. meeting Thursday, July 2nd, 2026 in City Hall, Council Chambers. We will come to order. Thank you. Roll call.

Council and agency member Miller?

Here.

Council and agency member Burke's here. Council and agency member Garcia. Mayor Pro Tem and Vice Chair Pacheco. Mayor and Chair Agospi.

Here.

You do have a quorum.

Thank you so much. We have a moment of silence and then we would ask Mayor Pro Tem Pacheco to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Before. Space. And.

Thank you. We've got item number 4, which is the review agenda. Mr. City Manager, are there any issues or corrections, adjustments or additions to the agenda?

Yes, Mayor. Thank you. Staff request the removal of closed session item 13B from tonight's agenda.

Okay. 13B has been removed. I do anticipate some type of recess around 730 hour. we will go on to item number five which is public comments members of the public listening to address the city council and matters underneath our jurisdiction may do so for up to three minutes this is also the time to comment on presentation items uh for the benefit of the record that we ask you to state your name uh public comment is open yes ma'am we'll get you a mic in a sec well well ma'am well I'll speak to that in a minute. Public comment is open. Mrs. Watts. No, I know, but I want her to say it on the record so we can answer it at the end. No, no, no, it's too late for the invocation. Did you want to say anything else, Mrs. Watts? Okay, I'll speak to you. I'll speak to it at the end. Thank you so much. Public comment remains open.

hi linda cunningham seaside homeless commission here speaking as a private person um so many cool beautiful things happening around the city seaside if you don't got your eyes open you're just totally missing it we have the i love the yellow frames around the street lights it just brought your attention to them and they're look very finished the lights on the palm trees beautiful on Fremont we have to cut out after dark the weeds got pulled in the rose bushes at City Hall it looks so much better thank you for the weed pulling crew I like the new signs here at City Hall very easy to read they're beautiful nicely done and the tripping hazard on the ramp to city hall has been repaired which is wonderful for those of us who have had a bad trip and apparently according to my husband is not very graceful i appreciate you repairing that sidewalk and i did want to say i saw the story about the bust for the fireworks aren't we blessed that an illegal firework didn't land in the shed and blow the neighborhood up um because that could have happened and i'm really proud of seaside pd i let my friends at work now i'm sending that picture to everybody i know saying i love seaside pd because i just think it's great that we got all those fireworks off the street and i can't wait for the reenactment story during our i don't know maybe we'll have a little movie about it i can't wait to hear the story and um i did want to say that i'm really excited about our independent celebration here at city hall we've got our beautiful lights that i cannot wait to see i don't know if the meeting is going to go that late tonight our beautiful red white and blue lights and i can't wait to get my picture out front with that patriotic, those beautiful flags Seaside has and those beautiful lights. I do want to thank the city for funding that. It just looks so nice. Our 60 year old beautiful city hall got that like instant facelift and it's wonderful. And I just want to thank the city for doing that. And I just a wonderful time to be grateful that we have a group of people who decided they wanted to rule themselves and do something different than anybody had ever done before. And we had a president who also did something that had never been done before when Washington decided he just wanted to go home and be a farmer. And he passed that on. And that was something that had never been done before in peace. There was no turnover. There was no murders. There were no conniving. Nobody got stabbed in the back. He just said, I'm done and the next person can do it. And it's just a beautiful thing. And I hope that our country can find a way to come together and just, you know, be nice to each other and accept all the beautiful variety in our country and just let people be themselves because it most part doesn't hurt you at all. And I just want to say I'm looking forward to Saturday's big party. Thank you.

Members of the public in the Chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or press door 90 if you're calling from a phone.

Hello, my name is Tony Amarante. I live here on Wanda Avenue, and I can't agree with this other lady. There are so many great things happening in Seaside. You know, I'm relatively new to the city, and I really enjoy living here. So many nice things that I have trouble repeating them, and I don't want to take the whole three minutes here. Okay. But $588.40 for a building permit, for a residential building permit. The trouble in my house since I've lived there is you couldn't get any hot water in the sink because of the way the pipes are re-plumbed. So I went and I paid $185 for a tankless hot water heater and about $200 for all the wiring. And then you got to buy the breaker and everything, and I put it in myself. the permit was more than putting in the hot water heater and i just wondering for for i don't mind paying it because that's that's the way it goes but you know i'm sure people don't like to get skinned for making improvements to their house so maybe if there was some kind of a appeal process or a sliding scale for for residential homeowners who are just doing a little major something on their house there's a little minor thing like putting a hot water heater tankless hot water heater in the bathroom that uh people might consider it and it might not ding everybody so much. And I do like living here. I just want to make you guys aware of that. So thanks for my time.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or press star nine if you're calling from a phone. Number ending in 2287, you now have the floor.

This is Peter Kaiser. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. We are in the moment of a civilization decision to be made by this country. We could restore to the original intent of the founding fathers who were strong Bible believers and in the constitution of limited government, or we can find some other kind of philosophy, or we could actually have this country fail. So we have some tough decisions to make. And Kevin Freeman wrote an article here from the Economic War Room on Alexander Titler, a Scottish philosopher. And he says, most democracies or empires don't last more than 250 years, not because they were conquered, but because they grew comfortable and then complacent and then apathetic and they vote themselves, um, uh, the riches of the treasury of the government, one benefit at a time. And that destroys the country, uh, with a poor, um, economic policy and physical policy. The country's ordinarily, uh, ordinary men and women under God could glorify God in this country for 250 years. But, um, this, uh, demise happened to Rome and Athens and the British empire. And this is how the cycle goes from bondage to spiritual faith, faith to great courage, courage to Liberty, Liberty to abundance, abundance to complacency, complacency to apathy, apathy to dependence and dependence back to bondage so he was saying that apathy is the active disengagement of our civic responsibilities that keep a people free it leads to dependence and democracy collapses when citizens can vote themselves the benefit of the public treasury and this means that politicians auction off their votes bidding for their different voting constituencies with money. And this, uh, goes to, uh, uh, creating dependence for our children. Physical policy is always followed by dictatorship. And that's why the founding fathers decided to create a constitutional Republic, not a democracy, which is, uh, normally considered mob rule. So these constitutional restraints are to stop the ability of the majority of voting each other, each themselves riches at the expense of the future. Ben Franklin called, uh, we have a Republic if you can keep it. So we have to be very careful on this. And then there are the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the red horse of communism, the green horse of rap Islam. God bless you and happy Independence Day.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or press R-90 for calling from a phone. We know other members of the public have come forward.

All right, thank you so much. Seeing no one else, public comments closed. Mr. City Manager, any issues, concerns, or questions you can ask or speak to at this time?

Not at this time. Thank you.

uh thank you so much i i would agree that does wonderful and great things happening in seaside all the time and we do love our our police department so i i would agree wholeheartedly with that in reference to the invocation we do ask any local pastors that want to get invocation uh to let the city clerk know so we can be informed of that and um long ago we we said we won't try to catch any pastors that we have not talked to uh call them down cold uh because that's that's you know i'm sure they would if we were they were called but but um that would not be the proper way but we do think mrs watts for uh allowing yeah no thank you for allowing us to say it every every so often i need to say it and things of that nature but um it's not to do to uh disrespect anyone or that we don't want to do it that's why it's on the agenda thank you so much let's go to item number six which is public agency communications do we have any public uh 6a seaside city news broadcast and comments from c manager yes thank you mayor we'll go ahead and play the news

Hello, Seaside.

Welcome to Seaside City News for July 2nd, 2026.

Here's what's happening in our community. Campus Town. Phase 1A is moving toward its next visible stage. KB Bakewell is preparing for model home construction to begin going vertical with completion anticipated in late fall. Infrastructure work also continues, and drivers may see ongoing traffic adjustments along General Jim Moore Boulevard and Lightfighter Drive. The city will share updates online, in the newsletter, and on social media. Did you know Seaside Animal Control can help with pet microchipping? Seaside residents can ask about microchipping for dogs and cats or schedule a quick scan of an existing chip to make sure it is properly registered. Keeping your pet's chip updated can help bring them home faster if they ever go missing. Call 83189-96744 for details. city of seaside invites the community to celebrate july 4th at red white and blues honoring 250 years of independence join us from 11 a.m to 4 pm on the city hall lawn 440 harcourt avenue for live music food games pony rides rock wall and free hot dogs for kids the celebration will also feature a special time capsule unveiling from two to 2 30pm opening a piece of seaside history sealed in 1976 and revealed in 2026 residents can also join the watermelon eating contest registration is required in person, no alcohol bbq dogs or fireworks of any kind are allowed at this event. The city of Seaside hosted a World Cup watch party for the Mexico match on Tuesday, June 30th. Thank you to everyone who came out to enjoy the game together. We're hosting two more watch parties, Mexico versus England on Sunday, July 5th at 5 p.m. and USA versus Belgium on Monday, July 6th at 5 p.m. Snacks will be available and attendees are welcome to bring their own. Join us to cheer on your team and enjoy the World Cup with the Seaside community. The City of Seaside's 39th Annual Sunday Blues in the Park starts July 12th at Laguna Grande Park. Concerts run from 1 p.m. to 4.30 p.m., beginning with Lydia Pense and Cold Blood and Chicano All-Stars, with additional performances on July 19th, July 26th, August 2nd, and August 9th. Join us Thursday, July 9th for Seaside Summer Sessions at Everyone's Harvest Seaside Farmer's Market. Enjoy Musikan Kalipay by Escuela Hang Pilipino of Boston with Kalipay at 4.30 p.m. and Rondala at 6 p.m. The market runs from 4 to 8 p.m. at 1259 Canyon Del Rey Boulevard. Join the City of Seaside Older Adult Program for a Country Western Dance on Thursday, July 16th at the Old Meyer Center, 986 Hillby Avenue. Doors open at 1030am lunch is served at 1130 and dancing starts at 1230pm cost is $4 for lunch and dancing or $2 for dancing only. that's it for this edition of seaside city news, thank you for staying connected with the city of seaside for more information and future updates visit the city's website and follow us on social media we'll see you next time.

uh just just one more thing to add uh uh following the public comment want to say uh kudos to our police department for the the fireworks uh illegal uh bust uh removing over a thousand pounds of illegal fireworks from seaside city streets right before the fourth of july so thank you

right anyone had any comments i guess the mayor pro tem has some comments just just very briefly um just the correct pronunciation of uh lydia's last name it's pence uh just a little bit she was uh founded by janice joplin back in the day she was hired initially by billy graham one of the founders of music in california she goes in the same years of tower of power

the chicano all-stars have been banned of the year for about four years by the the weekly uh so both bands are excellent so we encourage you to intend thank you mayor uh thank you we will go next to presentations 7a presentations june and july 2026 house of the month awards uh mr city manager yeah this item will be presented by assistant city manager dan levis

Mayor Mrakas, City Council staff Dan me was assistant city manager and I got a brief presentation on the House of the month for June and July just a quick note. Mayor Mrakas, Can you click the house. just uh one of the the main uh programs for the neighborhood improvement commission is to go around the community and select a house of the month and they encourage residents to improve their property whether it be through landscaping through painting through just modern improvements um throughout you know anything that could be noticed from the street and to enhance the curb appeal so i wanted to see just double check if our june uh house of the month a recipient ciro nava or maria villanueva are in the audience today We were having some difficulty trying to reach them, but I did want to just make sure that their name and their house got put on the record. So this was the June house of the month. It was 30 or 1630 San Lucas. This was selected by 1 of our commissioners Stephanie spouse. So we just wanted to make sure that even though they're not in attendance today, they will receive a plaque and the gift card. But I wanted to make sure that their name was put on the on the record. And then so we also were notified by our July winter 2000 buchanan and this is nimri ferris um we we got advanced notice that they wouldn't be able to attend either but once again we just wanted to make sure that they were put on the record and and we we thank them for their efforts that they have put um to beautify their homes and as a liaison a neighborhood improvement commission i just want to thank the commission for going out there and continuing this program our chair is in the audience um they've been doing great work and it's making sure that this continues to move forward so with that that would conclude my presentation

Thank you so much. Any questions or comments? I thank you so much. We thank the neighborhood improvement committee. We thank the chair for his work and what they do to beautify the community and uplift the community. So thank you so much. We will move on to item seven. The receiver presentation and demonstration of the city's A. I. Empower powder powered public search portal developed with Common Cause AI prior to the city's launch, Mr. City Manager?

Yes, thank you, Mayor, Council. Tonight's presentation is an update and demonstration of the city's AI-powered public search portal developed with Common Sense AI prior to its anticipated launch next week. The city already provides a significant amount of public information online. We have a city website, we have agenda in minutes, we have a record system, and we have our transparency portal, which is ran through a program called Documents on Demand. So the challenge is not if the information is available. The challenge is that the public often is confused on where to look and what search terms to put in, which folders to open, and how to interpret those results. in many cases the current tools return documents but they don't necessarily return answers and so that means residents business owners or community members may still have to open several documents scan through long agenda packets scan through long uh youtube videos of the meetings to find the information and the answers to the questions they're looking for This slide shows the experience from the city's main website. A resident may start with a plain language question, such as how do I open a business in Seaside? That's exactly how people naturally think and communicate. They do not always know the name of the department. They don't always name of the title of the form or the exact page where the information lives. So the current website search can help someone point them in the right direction, but it's still a traditional search experience. And so here we see the type of results that come back from a traditional search you would see on the website. There are useful results, but the system is still returning links and documents that the resident has to go further in. For someone unfamiliar with city operations, this is manageable, but for a resident or a small business owner, it still requires a lot of trial and error to find what you're looking for. They might not know that they should click a website or an agenda item, a form or document. So this is the gap that we believe the AI search portal is designed to help close. This is the transparency portal. Again, it's an important piece of our website, which holds an abundance of public records, and it is our transparency tool. It contains a wide range of city documents, agendas, ordinances, resolution contracts. Again, the issue is not that the portal will relax value. It's the issue is it organized like a document repository. So you can see when someone searches, for instance, this is a search of campus town. which returns hundreds of results and documents that are all named individually, and you have to scan through those to find what you want. That's useful from a transparency standpoint, but it also highlights the challenges that a member of the public may have to find the information they're looking for. The AI search portal is intended to help organize the information in a way that's easier to navigate while still preserving access to the underlying source documents. The AI search portal we are introducing tonight is a plain language layer overlay of public information. So this is not changing the public information. This is a tool overlaid upon the existing public information. This does not replace official records. It does not replace the city website. It does not replace the transparency portal. Instead, it helps people search across those public sources and receive a summarized answer with source uh citations the key distinction is the user can ask a question in normal language receive a more direct answer and then verify that result through those cited sources it also allows the user to follow up questions and provides better language accessibility which is very important for serving whole of seaside i'm going to play this video real fast to give a quick introduction of what it is residents looking for information from the city today run into a data fragmentation problem

Information lives in so many different places on the city website in city documents in separate ordinance websites and so on. If a resident asks a complex question on a typical city website. They get a list of links residents have to open these and piece together information to get the answer they need. that's the experience we're replacing. Common sense provides a single system in a single place to search that can look across all of that information and return a complete cited answer instantly. With common sense search the resident receives a complete answer already pulled together without having to scroll through a list of pages and links. It combines city guidance zoning and ordinance information in any public information, the city might provide. And because residents rarely stop at a single question, they can continue the conversation naturally asking follow up questions and getting answers that build on the context of the discussion. Residents preferring languages other than English may have different browser language preferences. The search experience automatically adapts for them and also supports other languages natively. So the same question and answer become accessible without forcing someone to translate the documents themselves. Every part of the answer that Common Sense's search provides is grounded in source material from the city. The information is gathered from the city website, documents on demand, ordinances, and public meeting information. Residents can also choose which source they want information from for a given search. Once they have an answer to their question, residents can see exactly where it came from. Common Sense provides citations that take residents specifically to the sections relevant in their search. As you can see, this is information that's buried in a long document and takes time to find and understand. Citations in the Common Sense search eliminate the need to dig deep to find the same insights. This isn't limited to just documents. And this isn't limited to documents, the same search can reach into public meetings and take the resident directly to the point of the video where information relevant to this search was discussed. Once the resident has what they need, they can share the work directly through a link that's accessible by anyone. For the city, this also creates a complete audit trail that they can review in a staff-facing application. What was asked, what sources were used, and how the answer was produced. This new search changes how answers are delivered, bringing transparency and turning raw information into actionable insights at residents' fingertips. Residents looking for information. Residents looking for information.

the benefits for this system are on both sides of the counter for the public it provides faster path from question to answer it also helps navigate complex topics as we just saw it also supports video navigation so when we're looking through all the city council meetings that can be anywhere between one and a lengthy uh process to look through uh if you again ask the answer it can take you right to the minute the video where someone talked about this topic or this topic So we believe it is a significant upgrade for our public search capabilities. For staff, the benefit is efficiency and consistency. Significant amount of staff time can be spent helping people find these topics on our website. We will still be available to do that, but hopefully the AI search portal can assist. The tool can reduce the burden while giving staff a better sense of what questions in the community are being asked the most so we can improve those answers to the public. This is what the widget will look like that's placed onto the city website. So you will see this placed on the city website. This is the portal where you research the information. The example search that we gave earlier was Campustown. The most important point here is the user does not need to know whether Campustown information is located in the agenda packet, a specific plan, or a staff report, or a project page, or a prior meeting record. They can start with the topic and the system will search across the connected documents. And so you can see the answer that would provide for Campus Town with the site sources and the information available. This is a significant transparent efficiency improvement for the city of Seaside. It directly aligns with the city's strategic plan, particularly pillar one, effective, accessible governments. That pillar speaks to upgrading our digital platforms, improving multilingual access, and improving the user experience while using practical AI tools to create faster, more transparent, accessible, and user-friendly processes. The pilot launch is scheduled for Monday, July 6th. As with any pilot, we will be monitoring its usage, review questions being asked, uh and identify those source gaps to continue to improve this system over time so the goal is not to present this as a finished end state tonight the goal is to launch a practical tool learn from a real world use of that tool and improve our transparency to the citizens with that be happy to answer any questions uh thank you so much any questions uh councilmember miller

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And to the manager, Common Sense, this is the group that our administration decided. Are there other groups that we also looked at?

There are. There are other firms we looked at.

How many other firms, roughly?

Oh, there's a lot of AI firms that are providing municipal solutions across platforms.

Are you able to give us just a brief explanation on why you chose this firm over others?

Yes, I was very impressed by this firm's ability to work with existing municipal source data. Their firm is heavily based in security and secure of that data. And instead of prepackaged solutions that other AI companies have available this was created specifically for the city of seaside and within the city manager's purchasing authority understood thank you and does this have anything to do with if you want to file a public records request with the city would this would this come into play in any way with that this does not but we are working on a potential tool of common sense that will help that as well

the data that people input into this asking it questions of the city does that is that anywhere else um besides it comes to the city it comes to city hall we see that is that information collected is that data collected anywhere no it's collected for city staff to review what type of questions are answered so that we can improve our source data but it's not tracked outside of the city no And recently, in many jurisdictions, there's an issue of data centers and jurisdictions have been having controversial issues on that. Is that at play in this at all? Or is that not relevant?

That is not play because this is a overlay on top of existing public data. So this is not creation of new data. And I should also add that Common Sense AI has both their SOC2 and their CGIS certifications, which are all based in security for sensitive data.

Understood. And this would really only work if the city has uploaded the documents. Is that right?

Correct. This is an improvement over existing available documents for the city.

Because one of the things I found, if you go and try to look for our 460s or you try to find documents with the city, they're just not uploaded. So this wouldn't solve that problem, right?

this doesn't add any documents that aren't already available but it does highlight through the process it will highlight over time what documents we do need to upload and make sure are available to our citizens thank you mr mayor thank you mr manager appreciate your answers i thank you any other questions yeah i just want to thank the city manager and his team for bringing this forward i don't know how many calls we got over the last

handful of years about how do we make it more transparent? How do we answer more questions? How do people find more information on our website, particularly in their preferred language and businesses and we wanna do business with us or just residents want to ask a question. And so I appreciate you bringing this forward. AI is here to stay, AI is moving the world and why not make it easier for our residents to find information about their city. uh so thank you so much city manager and i'm sure we'll have an update about this some other time yes okay thank you let's go on to uh the extent agenda item number eight uh eight a approve minutes from june 4th and the 18th 2026 uh b approval for city checks uh c approval proclamation designated the month of july 2026 as park and recreation month in the city of seaside D, approval measure fund contribution request of $3,000 from the Boys and Girls Club of Monterey County to assist with the costs associated with their eight-week youth summer camp program. E, adopt a resolution authorizing a professional service agreement with Volar Strategic Advisors for media relations in an amount not to exceed $4,000 a month. from july 2026 through june 2027 f adopt the resolution approving a professional service agreement with hdl companies for better licensed tax operation management and compliance services that concludes the reading of the consent agenda is there any items for anyone from the dots would like to move off the consent agenda is there any items anyone from the public would like to pull out the consent agenda any hands on zoom okay thank you so much bring it back to the dice what is the will of the council make a motion to approve i second been probably moved in second uh let's go to public comment public comment is open on our casino agenda anyone on zoom excuse me excuse me No. Thank you so much. Seeing no one, hearing no one, we will close by the comment on our consent agenda. All those in favor of passing our consent agenda signify by the use of sign is aye. Aye. Aye. Mayes have the same right. abstentions ayes have it motion carry but item number nine a public hearing a public hearing to consider adoption of the city's comprehensive youth fee schedule and uh resolution establishing updated fees for city services for fiscal year 2026 2027 uh mr city manager yes thank you mayor council this item was presented by jessica riley our finance director

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight's item is the public hearing to consider adoption of the city's updated comprehensive user fee study. We'll review the consultant's presentation. Oh, no, that's not the correct presentation. This was just in case it was pulled. So we want to move to 9a. Thank you. Again, so this is a public hearing to consider adoption of the city's updated comprehensive user fee schedule. And we'll receive consultants presentations through the mayor conduct a public hearing take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and possible adoption. The city's fee schedule has not had a comprehensive review since 2013. While annual CPI adjustments have been applied, those adjustments don't fully capture changes in staffing, technology, operating costs, regulatory requirements, and indirect support costs. So this study provides a current cost of service analysis and monetizes the city's fee schedule. Under California law, user fees cannot exceed the reasonable cost of providing the service. The study calculates the city's maximum allowable cost recovery, but council retains policy discretion to charge less than the full cost where broader community benefits exist, such as recreation programs and selected public safety services. So this isn't the last slide, but I'm going to read the recommendation from staff, which is conduct a public hearing, receive public testimony and adopt the attached resolution approving the city of Seaside comprehensive fee schedule for fiscal year 2026, 2027, including the updated user fees set forth in exhibit B and the implementation schedule described in this report. So while that wasn't the last slide, I just want to provide a brief outline of the public hearing and introduce our consultant who will be providing a more detailed presentation. First, I'll introduce our consultant, Wilden Financial Services, who will be presenting the results of the comprehensive user fee study, including the methodology, analysis, and recommended fee schedule. Oops. Following their presentation, the consultants and staff will be available to answer questions regarding implementation. The proposed fee schedule and the fiscal impacts and department directors are also here to address any questions about fees related to that specific department fee schedule. Through the mayor, then we'll conduct the public hearing and we can receive public comment. And following public testimony and council discussion, the council can consider adoption of the proposed comprehensive fee schedule. As part of tonight's hearing, I just want to highlight that the council may reduce or maintain proposed fees, but cannot increase them beyond those included in the noticed public hearing. And with that, I'd like to invite Mike Medvey from Wilden Financial Services to begin their presentation.

Thanks.

good evening honorable mayor and council members my name is mike medvey i'm with wildland financial services and we're the firm that prepared your user fee study which is an analysis of the full cost of the services for the for your user fees So just to get started, what is a user fee? It's a fee that's charged for the services that the city provides that result in a private benefit, either exclusively or mostly with limited or no community benefit. And these are necessary activities that the city undertakes, such as planning, engineering, A lot of us are doing the development. Some of it is just providing services to the community on an individual basis. The state law requires that the individual use of the service must be voluntary, and then the fee must reasonably relate to the services provided. um fee levels and cost recovery are determined through the uh through the fee adoption so we are as as your consultant we calculate the full cost the power to set these fees and any amount up to and including that full cost will come down to the city council and i believe staff has their recommendations in the report And I just want to be clear that the user fees are not related to development impact fees. We're also not doing utility rates and nothing that we're considering tonight would be considered a tax measure either. Why update the user fees? I think it's one of the best ways to to increase a city's fiscal outlook, not because it's a direct revenue raising study in any sense. What it does is When we do a study like this, there's the implication that the services that are provided to individuals and to small groups of people are essentially being subsidized by the general fund. Part of what happened when Prop 13 was passed and limited government's abilities to raise revenues more directly is that the services that are provided to individuals became more scrutinized in terms of who should really be paying for this. Is it the person who's benefiting from staff time, from the city services, or should it be through tax dollars, through everybody else? So indirectly, it can It can bring a city's revenues more in line with the expenditures and place the burden of that on the people who are directly benefiting. So the types of general fund activities that do provide a broader community benefit would be things like public safety, parks and recreation, community events and other programs. Sorry about that. Right here. Okay. So the decreased department funding for those departments can definitely impact service quality and delivery. We wanted to provide some clarity on the pressures on city resources, enable the city to strategize and set the fees to the benefit of the city and the community. And then our report definitely fulfills the state requirements for reasonable cost-based fees for a direct connection between the service and the fee that's being charged. So again, our job is to determine the full cost of providing the service. It's up to you, the council, and the staff has made some recommendations on where to set those fee levels. We also identify potential new fees. We remove the obsolete fees. It's kind of a full service look at your at your user fee schedule and then we also set the new fully burdened hourly rates which are and i'll talk in those more detail later but those are kind of the core of the study itself is to figure out what does city staff time really cost the city so we went to each department and i do have to thank staff for their time these studies are Pretty involved. I know that the staff members have their normal job to take care of. And when they have some extra time, they'll help us to go through what they do, how many hours they put into each task and all that. They've really been helpful in putting together this study. And then also to help look at the fees, which ones are most important, which ones promote local policies and objectives. And they've been really helpful in that, determining a good fee level. Again, for the fees that very clearly benefit either an individual or a small group, we typically recommend setting those at the cost recovery level. For ones that provide more of a community benefit, then there's a more open question of, should there be a subsidy? Should we charge something lower than the full cost itself. The departments that we worked with are finance city clerk, building and code enforcement, planning, police, engineering, recreation, fire, and animal control. the primary types of data that we used were expenditures staffing structure central service indirect overhead we also performed a cost allocation plan which is which is something we often do in conjunction with this study to again figure out what what central overhead should be allocated to staff time. Through the budget, we can figure out the departmental overhead. We can figure out how much is spent providing the services versus how much is spent managing or providing electricity and other overhead costs. For the central overhead, we are required to go through the the steps required by the the OMB circulars these accounting rules to make sure that we are that we are allocating out the central services in in an appropriate manner we get the time estimates to complete each task and those are used to come up with the full cost and then we get city staff input on where the fee should be set whether it should be full cost recovery or at a lower level So this chart outlines the steps that I went through verbally. We collect the data. We meet with staff, prepare the cost analysis. And then we work with staff to set the cost recovery level, be it full or partial. We create the fee study itself. And then the last step is what we're doing tonight, which is the public hearing for the fee adoption. There are different types of fee structures depending on oftentimes department or the way that it can be charged to provide the right fee level for the service. Some of these are flat fees where we can get a reasonable time estimate. Some of them are deposit reimbursement or actual cost fees. Some fees are determined by project size, looking at the program, and oftentimes there are different fee categories for each size, such as square footage or some other metric like that. Parks and recreation activities, where we figure out the cost of the full program, the number of enrollees, and then calculate the fee that way. And then for fines and penalties, we aren't quite as restricted by full cost for those. They're determined based on whatever level staff feels is necessary to deter the activity without being overly burdensome, without causing a lack of compliance. Sometimes if the fee is too much, then we have to worry about that. So we try to right size those fines and penalties. Um, so cost of service includes the salaries and benefits. That's the core of it, um, for the employee doing the work. to get a base rate. We then add on the service and supply costs, which is a type of departmental overhead, system and maintenance costs, management, and then also the indirect support costs. So that would be the uh the city council city clerk uh finance department the central services of the city that uh do the uh the management the processing um that those departments benefit from So the fully burdened hourly rates really are the primary driver of this study, along with the timetables that we get from staff. When we put these fees together, we're not just limiting them to one department. A lot of the planning fees especially will have multiple departments working on them. And we always will coordinate those among the different departments and make sure that we get everybody's input and that all the hours that are put into the service are accounted for. So I'm going to go through each department now, just an overview of what we found in our cost of service study. For finance and city clerk, it was primarily a time-based analysis. You saw from Jessica's slides that it's been a little while. We do expect when it's been this long since a fee study has been done that increases in fees are pretty common. So we found an increase to four fees. Three are going to decrease. Two new fees will be added. We're going to change one fee from actual cost to flat fee and one from a flat fee to actual cost. And then seven fees would remain the same. For building and code enforcement, this was also a time-based analysis. We found these were well below the cost of service. The suggestions were an increase to 42 of the fees. 38 of them would decrease. 54 new or restructured fees would be added. One is going from actual cost to a flat fee, and then 25 fees would remain as currently set. The building permit fees were analyzed on a program basis. And we determined through that that the current cost recovery is at 57%. The staff's recommendation is to set the permit fees at 86% cost recovery to achieve a 50% increase over what's existing. For planning, again, it was primarily time-based analysis, found that the fees are not in line with the cost of service. Staff is recommending an increase to 25 fees, decrease in five, four new fees. Seven of the fees would change from flats or actual cost to percentage based on the base permit fee. And two fees would change from a flat to an actual cost fee, and 21 fees would remain as they are. for police, again, time-based analysis primarily, found that the current fees are not in line with the actual cost, recommending an increase to 13. 10 would decrease. There's one new curfew violation for safe and sane fireworks fees. One fee would change from flat to actual cost, and then 19 fees would remain as they are. For engineering, also time-based, we found that they're below the full cost. Staff is recommending increase to 16. Four would decrease. Three would be added. Two would be changed from no cost or hourly to flat fee. Six would change from flat or percentage to actual cost. And then 30 would remain as they are. For recreation, most of these fees are use of government property. The city has discretion in how they set those because in the same way that anyone who owns a property and allows someone to use it would set it at a rate that they feel is reasonable. The department is currently operating around 6% cost recovery. For the time-based analysis, we found that the cancellation fees are below full costs. So staff suggestion is increased to 10 fees. 10 new fees would be added and 94 fees would remain as they are. For fire, it's been a time-based analysis. We found that they're not in line with cost of service. There would be an increase to 52 fees. Eight would decrease, three new fees, and 14 fees staying the same. And then for animal control, again, time-based. We found that they're not in line with the cost of service. 10 fees would increase and 10 would remain as they are. So a general standard consistent with what I mentioned at the beginning is from a public finance perspective that really across the board, any individuals or small groups of people who receive a benefit from direct staff time should be the ones paying 100% of that cost. That's the main thing that we're trying to achieve tonight. In certain situations, I will mention this, that providing a general fund subsidy is an effective public policy tool. If we want to encourage participation, ensure compliance if the cost is prohibitive, that's oftentimes for inspections. That comes up a lot. Or promote access to services. Then in those cases, a general fund subsidy can be appropriate. We also recommend that the city utilize an annual inflation adjustment, and that will help these stay in line with costs. We discussed earlier that the last study was done about 13 years ago. We also generally recommend, and it's not our recommendation as a consultant, but the state controller recommends doing a comprehensive fee study every five years. All right. And I hope I answered most of your questions in the presentation, but I'm available to answer any others. And then Jessica and the rest of staff are here to answer the more detailed questions about the individual fees.

Thank you so much. Excellent presentation. Well done. and informative. Are there any questions at this time? Councilmember Mayor Pro Temp.

Yeah. First of all, thank you for the report. I thought it was easy to read. It was very understandable. It was logical. Philosophy was I disagree with it, but it was a good philosophy. I have about 50 concerns, but I'm going to narrow it down to about seven. Only two for you that I in your comments i i don't maybe you could help me out and then i'll have the rest for staff and this is what i thought you said um you said you mostly raise fees when impacted the individual uh rather than the community as a whole i believe you said but then in my personal opinion if you charge more fees for someone to build a house which could be four or five houses it's the community when you add more fees for a commercial lot or commercial inspection as such your and they can and let's say it's 10 20 2 000 as in one of their fees well i'm going to go to marina or sand city or carmel so that so therefore the resident seaside i've chosen to go somewhere else because of the fees being not comparatively i'm not saying they are or not i'm just saying potentially that could happen on a local person trying to how do you i guess rationalize that Because it does, I think, it impacts not an individual, but the community as a whole, be it the business or the person to build the house. Across the board, we could go into that, but I'm not because it's just too lengthy of a discussion. But do you have any thoughts on that?

Yes, well, I think that is a valid concern for any city when they look at putting together measures for taxes, assessments, fees. You do want to look at the comparative economics and how attractive is our city to businesses, how pro-business, how pro-housing is it. In the scope of things with user fees, generally, and again, I'm just speaking in generalities, but there's There's kind of an asymmetry in the impact on the private individuals versus the impact on a city. Some of that comes down to the volume of the services. Like, for example, if you're going to If you're going to get an inspection and your fee is raised from $150 to $250 or something like that, then that impacts you by that marginal increase which which when you look at the raw dollars it's pretty small um versus the types of you know revenues a business might bring in or in case of a planning fee versus the total value of everything that's being built it's pretty small but when you multiply that by the number of uh the number of those activities that the city does, a lot of people here, that's their primary activity on a daily basis. They do it all year and that's their responsibility. Then that aggregates as a pretty big number, a pretty big impact on the city. even though the impact on each individual who gets this service is pretty small. And then also on the, specifically with new development, and of course we also work on all these other types of mechanisms, but when developers or builders are considering which city to build in or how to square their pro forma and make it profitable. User fees are generally not their biggest concern. When you look at the fee schedule itself and you look at the planning fees or the engineering fees, certainly they look big. They look big because they're being compared with all the other fees, which are usually two or three digits. And a lot of times your planning and engineering fees can get into the four and five digit realm. So you're looking at, wow, that's a really big fee. But their concern is typically more with, if it's a business, things like the sales tax rate or development impact fees, particularly with residential projects. See, those can be in the six and seven figures in terms of what they're looking at. So even though a planning fee can look really big compared to the other fees, in the scope of what a developer needs to pay, it's generally, I won't say a rounding error, but it's a much smaller consideration for them.

Just not for debate. I think for mom and pops trying to build a business, I think every dime matters, but that's just my personal opinion. And the other one I want to clarify, and I think I might have misunderstood. He said fees haven't been raised for numerous years. But I thought I also heard that fees have gone up. I think the cost of living raised for the past, God knows how many years, by probably 2% to 4%. So fees have gone up based on cost of living, not based on the study as such. I agree with the study.

yeah and you know i i'll just i'll just confirm with uh with jessica on that you you have been doing uh cpi on the 2000 i mean i'm just saying approximately two to four percent every year it's not that we have not gone up yeah the city ordinance does allow uh for uh certain uh

CPI adjustment. Those adjustments, though, don't capture staffing costs, technology changes. And that's why we see from this fee study, some fees are actually going down because providing the service has just become more efficient. But other fees are going up just because the cost of providing that service and staff time has exceeded the price of inflation.

But my bottom line question, the fees have generally gone, not all fees, and I agree, but generally gone up a certain percentage.

Yes.

Thank you, sir. My rest of the questions relate to our first staff, I think. But thank you for your wonderful report, even though we disagree. You're welcome. I appreciate it. The planning department is responsible to work with the development on affordable housing. uh resident adus and housing improvements to name a few the city of seaside encourages affordable housing home improvements and better neighborhoods why are we increasing 25 fees an increase of 37 percent for current fees

So I'm happy to answer questions regarding the methodology and sort of the overall implementation. I think the planning department has probably a more appropriate response to this. If I can defer to Andy. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, see imagine any of your department has come now for these questions.

Hold on a second.

OK, see imagine any one of your department heads or you can answer these questions. This different department so.

OK, but also we have a consultant who should be available on zoom. Did she get added as a panelist? Pretty Patel. Because she has more detail on the time effort tables and can assist in staffs response.

I'll just start this answer and ask Andy maybe to provide some context, but when you look at affordable housing, certainly fees are a part of the consideration. But as this presentation started, there is a cost of providing that service for that fee. And if you are not charging that cost of service, it is being subsidized by the general fund. And therefore, you are subsidizing that development. But Andy, maybe provide a little more context.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, City Manager. To try to answer your question, so first of all, most housing projects don't pay planning fees. Home additions, unless they're two-story, there is no planning application they pay. ADUs don't pay planning application fees. So for most housing projects, these fees aren't even applicable. Now, if you do have a new house or, say, a larger project, then yes, they do pay the planning fees. For large projects, it's really very small. Just as an example, the Seagrove project paid almost $2.3 million in various fees for it, but it only paid $1,200 in planning fees. And even under the current proposal, it would have paid around $5,600 in planning fees out of $2.3 million total. So as I think Mr. Medvedev's name stated, it's really a very small amount compared to the overall project and in a few cases so as an example variances for fences where the cost of the of the permit is significant compared to the cost of the project, we actually did recommend a lowering of those fee amounts so that you didn't get kind of that discrepancy where I'm doing a $4,000 fence and I have to pay a $3,000 fee.

And I'll leave it at that. But my question went to the application process, but all the inspection fees that go along with the 25 fees as such, but that's fine. The garage, and most of these relate to you, I think, not to pick on you, but Jessica was aware of the questions in advance. Unfortunately, it may have not passed on. Garage door replacements or repairs, which I believe, let's see, we are, I believe, increasing by about 100 bucks. Is that correct and why? And how do you enforce that? I believe that would be a question for the building official. Okay.

Yeah. Jose?

uh evening uh mayor city council uh city staff members of the public um uh yeah so garage doors uh garage doors i see here uh that fee did increase i'm sorry to interrupt you go ahead yes because you're fairly new go ahead and introduce yourself so i got that part that's okay yeah why the public understand who you are and why you are qualified to answer these questions my name is jose jacobo i'm the new building official thanks thanks for the reminder yeah um so uh I see here that the original fee was $233, and it did increase. Let me see here.

I think it was number 63. I think it's by $100, but approximately, ballpark. Maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah, it went up by about $118. the method used to calculate that increase was to track staff time that would be spent on that type of permit, the processing time for the administrative assistant, the inspection time, and then plan review, if any. And so for our garage door, this one, I think, maybe the inspection time it might have been a typo it says two hours of inspection one hour staff time to process a permit for an inspection for a garage door replacement I believe one hour would be probably sufficient and so this would include there is requirements specific for garage doors they have to have battery backup to be able to open up in the case of a power outage an emergency for somebody to get their car out of there There is a state law requirements for sensors so somebody doesn't get crushed. So these are all items that we look at, including the actual installation of the hardware for the garage door. And so does that answer your question?

Then how do you enforce it? One, on a personal level, if my door fell apart or a garage door or I wanted to get a new electric door, I wouldn't tell you because I wouldn't know. How do you enforce? And I'm not trying to be critical. I'm just saying the average bearer or citizen wouldn't know that they would have to have a new electric door. So how do you let them know?

So I seldom have had anybody pull permits for a garage door replacement. Right. So when it's part of a new a new house or an addition or something that's been altered of a larger project, it's not very common. I don't know if we have I could get back to you on if we actually have issued permits specifically for only a garage door replacement. And so it's it's if they apply for a permit the contractor does their due diligence and actually applies for the permit we then will issue the permit and and go out there and do the inspection and verify that all of the applicable requirements have been met yeah okay um i'm not sure i'll just go on with the question because i'm not sure who would go to um i think it's 177 and 178. we are recommending increasing

resident and i'm not sure what this but resident appliance fees for inspection by nearly 300 dollars can you explain what that is if i read it correctly and how do you enforce that i think this may be um the way it's it's written uh so uh i'm not sure if the other uh the final

the fee schedule has the same column, but originally that fee says it's $15 each, but there's a minimum of 207 for residential appliances. And then for commercial appliances, it's $320 minimum, and then $30 each. It might just be worded backwards. So for any permit issued, electrical permit or otherwise, there is the staff time involved in processing the permit and doing the actual processing, collecting fees, et cetera. documentation file keeping, and then there's a plan review portion of it, and then there's the inspection time. And so there's a minimum, and I think there's $15 and $30 is the additional for additional appliances or electrical equipment. And so regardless if you're replacing one or 10, we're still gonna do about the same amount of processing time, plan review time, and inspection time, but we add that additional unit amount of 15 or $30. So I think the way it was written, it's so for line item number 177, it's 328 minimum, and then $30 each additional appliance. And so... it's showing an increase of, yeah, $298, but because the new fees, actually, that one stayed the same. The suggested fee is $328, and the previous fee was $328 minimum and $30 for each additional. I think the The change is reflecting the additional extra unit price. So that one actually stayed the same. It just had to be rewritten.

And this is on me. So in a very simple way to explain this, if I'm getting a new refrigerator, which I'm not because I can't afford it, is there an inspection fee for that new refrigerator or stuff?

No, this would be Intel. It's under the electrical fees, I believe. So it would entail adding a new circuit, a new breaker, doing a review of the like a load calculation of that circuit. So it would include like an all new installation, typically for residential. These are not a one off permits. Typically, they're included as part of a larger alteration permit for, let's say, a kitchen remodel.

That's helpful.

You know, I just want to add real quick, if you don't mind, through the mayor. You know, again, I think that the answers are going to be very similar. Staff's happy to provide the inspection details of what the cost is, but all of these costs have been set based on the cost of providing service and well within state statute. And so if there is a specific amount or a specific item that you disagree with, it's just based on the cost. So those items we can certainly talk to.

Well, maybe this one goes to you then, Mr. City Manager. um because they're just too and just some of it just doesn't fit with the city's goals and objectives um and i believe it's 28 and 29 in the new construction commercial we are recommending an increase by 25 dollars can you explain why we're doing this when we're trying to increase and promote new businesses

Yes, again, it's going back to the cost of providing service. And so again, the study is taking into account the staff time of providing that service. And so we do not believe the extra $25 is cost prohibitive to opening new business compared to the other fees that opening a new business entails.

OK. and let me just add and and if if again council has the ability to set the amounts any any under what we what we have it's just if if those decisions are made the general fund subsidizes that cost of providing that service so for the sake of time we're just gonna ask one more well two more questions but one more related to these fees um well not that too because it just just doesn't make sense to me and i apologize for wasting the council's time There's a fee, I think it's 117. And I know what you're going to say, it's going to be cost associated. And I disagree, but I understand that concept. But as I read it, there's a $250 increase for repairing stairs for inspection. That seems to be a safety issue. And if I have a kid or not a kid, or I'm a senior, and the cost of living is so high, we're making it a challenge and who's going to enforce that. That's, you know, I know that's, I know I'm gonna get the same answer, but somewhere, you know, the health and safety brings a concern.

sure and that's again uh the decision that city council can make to to adopt a fee lower than the amount recommended but that is the cost staff has uh gone through this study with our consultant to identify what it costs staff to provide that inspection service okay and then same same probable answer but it just bothers me um because it just

I just know a lot of people are suffering in this neighborhood, and to fix stairs and to pay $250 is impactful to that person. It may not impact the city council or another resident, but it impacts their family, and that's where it bothers me a lot. But in here, we are recommending increase for solar water heaters by $250. But the goal of the city is to protect the environment, encourage solar use and other things to protect the environment. I don't understand what we're saying. Save the energy, save the world, but we're going to charge you $200 and $50. I know the same answer, but it just bothers me. That's all.

yeah you know again the mission of this uh this project to the fee study is to identify the cost of providing that service and to uh submit reasonable fees that staff feels are appropriate and if council uh elects to to uh to reduce those fees due to environmental policy that's that's what staff will adopt okay and then my last question is not a specific item but we could decide to put a freeze on all fee increases is that correct

it you yes you can correct okay that's all my questions thank you sir anyone else uh council member thank you i as well have a few questions here and in regards to the staff report in exhibit c it has two columns 26 25 26 and then 26 27. So it says last year's fee and then this year's fee. But the title of that document is only for certain departments, building, engineering, planning, and recreation. Then if you go to exhibit B, I don't see a similar two columns that shows what the fee was before and what the fee was after. So I find it extremely confusing.

I can answer that question, and I think the exhibit C you're referring to is addressing the timing of implementing new fees. The reason for building, engineering, and planning being displayed in exhibit C, where we're showing the fees that were approved by council in the 26-27 adopted budget, is because fees related to development can't take effect for 60 days following the public hearing and we just to be general and for the ease of implementation assumed all engineering planning building fees are going to be related to development The recreation department is also listed in Exhibit C, which is relating to the timing of implementation, and that's to coincide with the publishing of the activity guide. So an issue we've found in the past years is very often when we're sampling receipts and doing our annual financial statement audit, or finding some receipts with the recreation department aren't matching with the fee schedule and in looking into that we found that the activity guide was being published in may and then fees were quickly changing one month later in july so to make sure fees charged by the recreation department are consistent with the fee schedule we had to adopt a specific line item that just says that the new fees are going to be effective january 1st okay so is there a document that shows all of the old fees and what the proposed new fees would be all for all the departments that were listed in the presentation All of the old fees are going to be in the comprehensive user fee study, which was Exhibit A.

Right. So is there a document that has all of them side by side with the increase?

that will be in exhibit a the full uh fee report and the um the only difference between that and exhibit c is just to give an idea of when the new fee will will take place okay so i mean i'm looking at exhibit a here and what i see is just all of the current

No, I guess it was much simpler for me on exhibit C where it clearly delineated the two. And I think that's helpful for the council because when we're talking about fees being decreased, it was difficult to find those ones. But my concerns are really about two departments that I had the most concerns about, and that is the police department and the recreation department. and within the recreation department, it just greatly concerns me that some of the fees that our residents enjoy in the cities about recreation and the cities about getting out and being with your families and being together and being active. And we're setting this fee schedule. It's concerning to me that the fees have increased significantly in some areas of the recreation. And then in terms of the police, if we look at the police increase and some of the things that concern me the most were building security services fees. So when your house is burglarized, we charge you a fee to secure your building of $116. And if my house was burglarized, I would be very upset or I would feel concerned that I'm now having to be charged for no fault of my own. I hope that could be understood. I have a couple questions for the Chief, if the Chief would be willing to come down. And thank you, Chief, for being here. Here in the fee schedule, Thank you. Here in the fee schedule here, we have false alarms, 245. Is that something that we regularly charge for?

For false alarms, yes, and we do it on a basis of repetitiveness. So the one that you just cited about the police department, that's not for a resident who's burglarized as a victim. That's for a commercial business that has an alarm that goes off, a burglary alarm, where officers have to respond repeatedly, and then a fee kicks in for our response to secure their building.

I should have asked you before I made the statement. I was assuming that was for residentials, but that's just for commercial property.

That's for commercial property. It can be for residential, for repeat false alarms, for repeat alarm calls. But if somebody is actually burglarized, they're not charged a fee at all.

They're not charged. Do we typically help them?

We investigate, we try to capture who did it. But this is for alarm specific where officers are responding. And we can give you examples of places that don't work with their alarm companies to get it repaired. We may have to respond six, seven times to a location. And they don't change anything where officers still have to follow protocol to make sure each one of those seven is not an actual burglary in one evening.

Understood. So really like the first, maybe if it's just one time event or it's a residential house and it's a one time event, are we pursuing our revenue on all of those? It's just when it gets repetitive.

Correct.

Okay. That makes more sense. And I appreciate that because I feel like a false alarm could be for a number of reasons and only a one time thing. And kind of I feel our city has an obligation as a service to to respond and to take a look. Thank you. And so and then also the same thing for disturbing the peace. Two hundred forty five dollars. Is that something that has to also be repetitive?

Not necessarily. We also do that for repetitiveness, but that could be for a peace disturbance of loud music, loud parties, where the police have to get called multiple times to a party at 1, 2 in the morning, and they're not turning the music down. We can implement a fee to that location, and that's what you're seeing there.

understood thank you for that and then my last question for you chief is is the fireworks and uh did this city at one point have a higher firework fee uh for site administrative citations issued by the city and not a criminal citation if i'm saying that correctly

yes yes they did it was 2500. it was 2500. it was 2500. that's correct was that found to be excessive or was there a problem with that 2500 it's really difficult to defend legally a 2500 fee and we found being consistent with what the laws are that a thousand dollar fee is consistent with criminal law and we're trying to be reasonable and have an effective way for our city attorney can actually defend these cases

Understood. So if what you're if I understand you correctly, chief, is if you were to get and I've talked about this before, there's two types of citations, you can get an administrative citation to the city and a criminal citation. Do you still agree with that?

Correct.

And so if you have a criminal citation, and it's a misdemeanor, is that correct?

Misdemeanor could be a felony.

And the misdemeanor aspect is that when you receive a citation, let's just say you plead guilty and the judge assigns a fine, that's around the fine that you would get for that kind of offense?

That's right, yes. Thank you for all your answers. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.

Appreciate you. And I just wanted to draw up somebody from Recreation. Somebody from Recreation is available.

uh thank you we'll go to council member brooks oh i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm sorry you can go no no no it's fine no i thought you were done go ahead um so uh thank you dan and uh and uh

I just, I just wanted to express my concern over some of these fees, uh, increases and in one of our most precious departments, I believe, um, one of the sound funny, but one of the things that stood out to me was if you want to, if you want to have a barbecue at a park and you pay for a permit and you want to have a beer, you have to pay $638. Is that correct?

That is a deposit.

And you get that back.

You get a percentage of it back. I believe you get 65% back.

So we're going to make the deposit from 365 to $915 deposit. Yes. Does staff time change? No. Does anything, nothing changes.

So can you re the question is about the, the alcohol deposit fee, correct? Yes.

Okay. So it goes to $915. So if somebody wants to have a picnic with a beer or a glass of wine or wine,

For the record, alcohol is only allowed in parks on a case-by-case basis with approval of the recreation director. So it's not something that is out there for everybody all the time. It is stipulations with that.

And in whole, on all of our recreation activities, I see a majority of them have significantly increased.

We raised the fees based off of the CPI. That was the main increase other than cancellation fees and other ones where staff costs were charged, more staff costs was involved.

Do you have any concern that the residents might not participate in our activities if we raise our rates this much?

I do have concerns because it has happened in the past and we haven't raised our fees in numerous years. And so in an area when we are trying to be more fiscally responsible, we definitely need to raise those fees where we feel necessary. As the finance director stated, the rec department is at a 6% cost recovery, which is extremely low for a recreation department of a city this size.

Could you elaborate on, you said that this has happened before, that we raised the fees and less people were using our services. Do you understand that?

When I first started, we raised the fees. It was like probably my first year here. And I remember the fees got raised significantly for some of our programs, after school programs and things of that nature. And we did see a decline. And we did, I believe we lowered them the next year, but those fees aren't the fees that were being raised right now. We only raised those usage fees for those programs by the CPI at this time.

So those fees that were raised when you first started and they reversed, those aren't being raised here?

They're being raised just the 3% for the CPI. That's it.

Just the 3%.

Yeah.

Because some of them, and I can give you exact examples, but some of them are being doubled or tripled.

Some of those, those are the deposit fees. And those are more of those fees that we can see that there's a lot more staff work that goes involved with that. Like, for example, you know, if someone comes in and you mentioned the alcohol fee. And so, you know, when you have a party with alcohol, if the deposit is so low. They can damage the facility. They can make a lot of unnecessary work for the staff. And that minimum fee that was there, that's nothing for them to be like, you know what? I don't want to clean up my mess. I don't care if I damage the facility. It's only a couple hundred dollars. So we got to make those fees a little bit higher. So it helps keep the public kind of in check. So make sure that we're maintaining our facilities in a proper manner.

No, but for me, it's like not paid. I mean, for me, it's like more likely they're just not to pay the fee. But okay. And so I also noticed that a significant amount was raised in regards to the pool. Um, lapse from our adult swim, all of that double, a lot of the rates are doubled. Is that because the pool is factoring in the price of the pool?

That is correct. The pool is extremely expensive to operate. And when you think about that, most pools operate at a 70% cost recovery if you're able to. And when we look at departmental hole at the 6%, we have to make sure that we are able to. provide lifeguards at a living wage in order to keep them so we can keep the pool operating. The energy costs that cost to operate the pool is, I believe I heard earlier this week that the pool is the facility in the city that has the highest energy costs. So we definitely need to make sure that we are covering some of those costs where we can.

So the 6% cost recovery, that's just for the recreation, you said?

Correct.

And so with these new fees, what is the estimated percentage there?

We're staying right around the 6%. It didn't, it didn't, we didn't go up. It so those fees are staying consistent so we can maintain that 6%.

So, our, our, our programs and recreation costs 94%. Correct.

We substitute we subsidize that much.

Okay, thank you. Mr. listen. Thank you. Mr. man.

Thank you. Councilman. Well, we got customer works and other people customer works.

Yeah, I think for the city manager, I completely understand the concern for increase our what our economy is doing with for everybody. But is it safe to say that this study is also making sure that we are thinking about our employees and paying for the cost that they're giving us rights like fairly paying them for their services?

Correct. Yes. Personnel costs continue to rise and so.

Okay. And then for, like, a lot of the stuff that Mayor Pro Tem brought up under planning. Most of those fees, most of those services or permits aren't really being pulled individually, but are usually for a bigger one time event.

Right yes, they're usually wrapped into an overall project.

Yes, just because it's pretty. Challenging, like, he stated to determine if someone actually fix a staircase or bought a new refrigerator. Correct. Okay. All right, thank you.

May I put just Mr. one more question because on Mr Miller's. For clarity purposes, I guess you said the fees. were 6% increase across the board, right? And that we subsidized 94%.

So our cost recovery rate is 6% and we subsidize 94%. Right.

But that's inclusive of all the free programs. Correct. So, yeah. So, like, Sunday Blues and all those that are free, that, so it may, it doesn't, I, just to be, you answered my question, when you include the free programs along the overall thing, yeah, then it's 94%. But if it's just fee-based, it would be,

would be a different number correct and so like when you look at our budget as a whole um and when we went through that last uh a couple meetings ago the finance director laid out how much of the revenue we were getting right but that didn't you know that was six percent of what what the cost is to run i think you answered the finance wanted to make sure it was inclusive of all the kind of free events that we offer to the community that's you know that's a difference to maker to that because there's a lot of great things that you do

they're free for the public to enjoy and participate as families. And that's a good thing. Thank you.

Thank you. I got a couple of questions before we go to the public. I don't know who's best to answer it. me let me well there's one for each one of you guys so let me just i i think the consultant i just want to set set the discussion for myself in a better understanding uh the consultant was clear we're talking about fees for voluntary activities could you just come on up i guess i'll take turns and so what you're saying is no one has to pay these fees right so i see i'm not yeah because because it's pretty straightforward they're voluntary meaning like the mayor pro temp said if you don't want your steps to be inspected well then you don't call us and we don't know to go out but if you call us to come out it's a cost to that Does that make sense? Yeah. And I'm just giving an example of voluntary. So if you don't call us, then we won't know. If you don't go down to the Audemars to ask to use the park, then we don't know you're using the park. So these are voluntary calls, right?

They are. Yeah. I mean, there's the penalties as well. But again, that's still a voluntary action to break code or to do something you're not supposed to do.

Yeah, volunteer, right. Okay. No, I got you about the breaking of the code. So, and then your, is this unusual for any city to have a fee schedule for these voluntary acts? Is it unusual for us to charge fees?

Not at all. And this being a primary part of my work, I might be biased, but I'm often in front of councils having these same discussions and promoting the usefulness of a user-free study.

And I knew that because I caught when you said you don't agree with the state doing one every five years. You would like cities to do a little bit more often, right? I caught you. Listen, I tell people I'm listening. So with that, though, is, you know, you did the data, right? You're the scientist in this. You're the expert in that. By law, we can't charge more than what it costs for our services correct and you suggest that we don't try to recover 100 i think you said we're only recovering 87 if if you wanted my quick recommendation it would be for development services to achieve cost recovery at 100 percent yeah but i i'm just i thought you said in general and this will get us up to 87 overall yeah right so so that means still the general fund people that are not using these things are supplementing the cost of it that's correct okay and and i want to use the example someone said about the pool that means everyone that doesn't swim or use that pool is supplementing that pool correct okay And then right now, our building fees are only recovering 57% of what it costs for us to do the work.

Correct.

That means people that have nothing to do, they haven't improved their house, they don't want to improve their house, they are not building a new condominium, they're supplementing the rest of that if we don't increase our fees.

100% correct, yeah.

Okay. And then how many? You know, we went through a couple of fees, but how many total lines of fees already? When you think about it? Do you remember like, is it 200 or 300? It's I think it's more Jessica's got the exact I just went to a rough guesstimation for the for the public has come on up. And I think I think we're through with you. Thank you so much. When you talk about the line items or the number of fees, how many are we talking about?

I would say close to 500.

Okay, around 500. Okay. And I'm just saying so. But each and every one you went through, you establish what was a reasonable cost to recover.

Yes, every fee in was reviewed and several aren't even on this list because they were removed.

Okay. And some went up and some stayed the same and some went down. Yes. So it's not, we're just trying to raise them all.

That's correct.

Because the ones that went down, you found out over time, being more efficient and effective, it costs less to provide that service.

That's correct. Yes.

Okay. I think we, and I'll just end with you. It's about recreation, but you know the numbers. Right now, Someone said earlier, I think we all agree that we want our residents to use the recreational services and we give a lot of free stuff away, so to speak, or provide a lot of services to the point where the general fund is subsidizing our recreational services by 94%. right is that correct that's correct right and a lot of that comes from the blues in the park free stuff but if we don't charge a fee for our fee-based activities that number will go up from 94. that's correct and then we will be subsidizing someone using that you know after school program that serves for the kid we love the kids but the the people that don't have anything to do with it would be subsidizing that program that's correct right and so i'm i'm i'm with everybody uh that's that's fine that's it i'm i'm with everybody about you know how do we reduce these fees how do we lower these fees uh and and and i'm open to well then don't charge anything But like I think the city council member Burke said, we still got to pay for it, right? Because staff time is not free. The resources are not free. What is it? The resources, you know, in the rec department, the pencils, the kickballs, the soccer, all that stuff is cost. And so I'll save my comments on the question, but I would just open it up for public comment.

Members of the public in the Chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or press star nine if you're calling from a phone.

Ray Reardon and If it's a dog and a really dog, you close it down and that would be the pool. There's a lot of cities that don't have public pools. They just don't. And we have a pool right over at the high school. I believe that maybe we could use that. But if we're losing that much money on a dog, you know, get rid of it. I've never been in the place and I know kids love to go swimming, but I believe we have an ocean right over there too. you can go swimming all day long so i don't and also i've never been at a city council where free is so used so much you know like the car week coming out i don't think we charge those cars to park there when i used to go to hot august nights it cost me five hundred dollars Didn't matter what kind of car I drove there. Those guys are pulling in with a $100,000 car. They should be paying $150 registration fee. I mean, it's common sense. They have the money. Yes, they are dumping money in our city, but also they can dump money in our city for the police department or for them to clean up the city, to clean up the mess. They don't pick up the messes. I'm just saying maybe we need to look at this is great what this gentleman did for us, I think, but maybe we need to start looking at free should not be in our vocabulary anymore. That's all I got to say. But especially this pool thing, just close it down. It's that simple. I know it's a bad taste in people's mouth, but you can't keep dishing money into a dog that's dying. You just can't keep doing it. And I think it's common sense. If you had a swim pool in your backyard and it was costing you $1,000 a week, you would just concrete it in probably. So act like it's your own money, not the city's money that you're spending. So that's all I got.

linda cunningham speaking as a private person not for the homeless commission i'm grateful the city did this that of course prices have changed it's great to know some are up some are down some are out which is absolutely great i um totally disagree with getting rid of the word free maybe we should be charging everybody at the pickle court pickleball court because i think pickleball court is free So just to say, you know, so I'm not sure about the pool. I'm a fan of the pool. It's expensive, but these are really hard decisions city has to make i don't like the idea that all the work for seagrove was only what twelve hundred dollars it's not going to make a difference in the 22 million dollar budget another couple thousand dollars that you know if you're changing your mind because the fee is too high there's a lot of other reasons you're not happy because a lot more goes into picking where you're going to do a development than what the fees cost you have to have the right people the right place all the things you guys have all been a part of that and um I don't think we should be, I think I liked what the gentleman said. The building fees need to be covered. I don't know how we run around the town to find all these fees to do. God bless that people do it. I know there's probably things I've done at my house. Sounds like I didn't know I was supposed to tell the city we were doing that. So we didn't tell the city, so we didn't pay the fee. I don't, there's part of me that hates subsidizing people. I'm really sick and tired of subsidizing the bajillionaires. We do a lot of that. We subsidize a lot of rich people. Somehow we don't want to help kids and feed people. I don't know. I don't understand that process either. but i i do um think that this we paid a professional to evaluate these fees it sounds like everybody at the city did a really good job about this these fees nobody likes the fee to go up but as the mayor said these are voluntary activities and and i um really don't like that you know we just keep building these giant too expensive and we're celebrating a housing development that's got 12% affordable housing when we should be really saying it's 88% unaffordable housing and ask why are we building so much unaffordable housing? It feels like it's insane. Why are we building majority unaffordable housing? Who's living there? Again, 12 cars at every house because so many people have to live in a house. and and again i support the recommendations they all sound reasonable to me i'm sorry if your fee might go up and again let's if we're charging people to use the pool maybe we should charge people to use pickleball court thank you

Mayor, City Council, City Manager, my name is Ken Fitcher. I'm a 40-year resident of the City of Seaside. Just a couple of questions and maybe one comment. Did the analysis study previous assessments and whether or not it increased or decreased developments in our community? Second thing is, I'm sorry, but swimming lessons save lives. That's generational. And that's the reason why communities have swimming pools. And the other question is, was there analysis of the drop-off rates for any of the services, recreation or otherwise, due to fee increases?

Thank you.

Phone number ending in 9902. You now have the floor.

Good evening. My name is Nina Beattie. One issue that is parallel with this is that the county of Monterey is looking at petitioning, apparently, the state to reapportion the property tax revenues to increase the county share. They get 15 cents out of every dollar. Most of it goes to schools, which are funded by multiple mechanisms. cities only get six cents out of every dollar for a property tax and that is not you can't run a city on that and it makes it very difficult to balance budgets um to to make fees affordable for for services when there's the residents aren't unintentionally aren't paying their own way this needs to be addressed and i encourage the city of monterey i don't know that they've done it But I encourage the City of Seaside to join with the County of Monterey and urge Sacramento to reapportion property tax percentages so that Seaside gets a larger portion, at least double what it's getting now, that can help fund services and keep costs low. Thank you.

One number ending in 2287. You now have the floor.

Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. This is Peter Kaiser again. Just like that man who spoke earlier during public comment that he was putting a, like a water heater in his, automatic water heater in his bathroom and the planning commission fee, planning department fee was actually more than the total cost of his project. So there should be a reasonable relationship between the fees should never be more than, of course, the cost of the project. It should only be a certain low percentage of the cost of the project. And we hope there's going to be a reasonableness to the fees at the swimming pool and other places where you may have a number of people on fixed income and elderly some of them on Social Security. So those fees should remain reasonable, hopefully. And that would be very helpful. And thank you for this very intense review. And I think it's very useful, and it should be done every so often. So I wish you having wisdom on these decisions. And of course, we need to have a balanced budget. we we hopefully can maybe reducing some expenses because i think even monterey has a 12 something like a 12 million dollar deficit or something and the state has billions of dollars of deficit we need to avoid that in seaside thank you so much laura james you now have the floor

Laura James, please unmute.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Oh, perfect. Thank you so much. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Every policy we adopt should answer one simple question. Who should bear the cost? Should it be the taxpayers or should it be those whose actions create the expense? When it comes to animal overpopulation, the answer is clear. Irresponsible breeding creates enormous costs for our community. Animals are abandoned, surrendered or dumped at our local shelter and taxpayers are ultimately paying for animal control, sheltering and medical care. And those creating the problem should bear a greater share of the financial responsibility, not all the residents of Seaside. i support increasing the breeding permit fee to a thousand dollars this fee better reflects the true cost of breeding animals and helps ensure that breeding is treated as a serious responsibility rather than a casual decision the city of seaside has already demonstrated what thoughtful leadership looks like mayor ian oglesby recognized early on that investing in spay and neuter programs was not simply an animal welfare issue it was a smart financial decision his vision was straightforward with the city invested in prevention Shelter intake and sheltering costs would decrease over time. That is exactly the type of return on investment every city should strive for. When shelter intake is reduced, everyone benefits, fewer animals enter the shelter, taxpayer dollars stretch further. Those savings can be redirected to other community priorities such as public safety, parks, youth programs, neighborhood improvements, and community events. Prevention is always less expensive than paying for the consequences. And we cannot ignore today's economic reality. As the governments at every level face increasing budget pressures, cities must ensure that fees accurately reflect the cost of providing services. Asking those who choose to breed animals to pay a fee that better reflects the public cost is a fair and fiscally responsible approach that helps protect city resources while encouraging responsible ownership. i respectfully ask you to support increasing these fees and to continue investing in the prevention programs that have already shown positive results for seaside finally this november will be an important election for our city i encourage every resident to remember the leaders who have consistently worked to protect all residents both two-legged and four-legged Mayor Ian Oglesby has demonstrated that commitment every day through thoughtful, fiscally responsible leadership, and I hope voters will remember that when they cast their ballots. Thank you.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star nine if you're calling from a phone. Mayor and other members of the public has come forward.

Thank you so much. Seeing no one else, public comment is closed. I'm bringing it back to the dais.

Mayor, can I have a few more questions? Of course. And then I'll make my comment on that same frame. And I forgot to ask this question or a couple of questions and a couple were brought up during the comments. And I apologize for the time, but this is an important issue. When residents paid taxes property tax sales tax hotel tax um god uh and a variety of other taxes the city charges doesn't that go to the general fund as well for services so this is you know i mean the people are already paying sufficient a lot of taxes is that a fair statement

goes to the general fund and i just it's important to note that all comments about taxes don't relate to this fee study and the fee study isn't creating new revenue where a tax would create new revenue and would have to be approved by a valid measure and i this would help if we increase all these this would help pay for the cost of the staff or whatever that's a fair statement right

a tax measure would help the general fund these fees also would help the the fees would help in a different manner in that um in it would help recover costs okay let's make it real simple the fees that are collected would go into the general fund is that a true statement yes okay then um so let's see your taxes And I guess it's for the city manager, and I might come back to you because my notes are all over the place. They mentioned housing as, you know, 12% or 15. I think it's more than 12%. But if we charged, I don't know, try to get 50% of people to subsidize or a developer to subsidize the housing, a developer wouldn't wouldn't do that because they have to make it make their own money that's why it's at 20 is that a fair statement i'm not sure i understand the question one of the residents spoke about we should subsidize 88 percent of uh costs so that would be more affordable housing as such but if we tried to allow pay for more affordable housing by giving them whatever people wouldn't develop, owner wouldn't develop if the cost were so expensive, a developer.

Developers certainly look at costs. However, the planning and engineering fees are not the costs that developers are really keen on in a development conversations. They certainly matter, but there are other agency fees and property. There's a lot of other things that come first on a developer's conversation.

But a lot of, let me try to phrase that, and thank you for that. The hands of a developer, pretty much decide if they're going to develop based on what they need to make. Is that a fair statement?

Yes, a developer is running cost perform on how to be profitable.

And then back, now I found the question. On the appeal process from the planning department, you increased the fees, I think, by $1,000 for a resident to appeal to the council, I think I read. If that is true, does that make, it wouldn't, it would make me second guess if I wanted to appeal something. Is that a fair statement and why so much? I know, and I do understand it's a lengthy process.

so let me answer your last question first which is why so much and the answer is that appeals uh i believe that the actual cost recovery is about four thousand dollars and we set it at about half that which is two thousand dollars um the reason in appeals are tricky because unlike all the other fees um the appeals fees are sometimes borne by the opponents of the project rather than the proponents um it's a balancing act if you were to say charge no fees then people could just appeal even if there's really no grounds to do so and every appeal we're spending about four thousand dollars worth of staff time and that's time that we can't spend processing other applications um on the other hand you set that number too high and you make it difficult for people some people to afford to pay for the appeals so we looked at other jurisdictions and i looked at five other jurisdictions and four of those other jurisdictions charge more we're well below average um i only found one city that charged less than we would be um under this okay so that was where we came up with those thank you so very much and for mr mewis just one question um

And obviously, I'm very much a proponent of the pool or swimming in general, obviously, in a way. But is it fair to say, I mean, two questions, actually, fair to say, I know at least five people that have saved lives. I mean, kids have been saved because they knew how to swim. I know about 20 kids that knew, that got scholarships because of the swim center. I know probably 100 kids that got jobs at the swim center because they learned how to swim at the swim center. I know countless, and you probably know far more that are still alive, that gained their fitness and their health because of the swim center, because that's where they exercise, the water exercise, the lap swimming and all that. I know the police department has said, not to pick you on them, but when kids are involved in activities, they're less likely to be involved in crimes. And you offer, I believe, increased recreation, swimming during the summertime, you offer on weekends, et cetera. Do you think all those comments are true? And do you believe in your professional experience? uh the pool has a value to providing services and and teaching kids how to side for a lifelong sport that there are very few of those absolutely okay that's wanted to point that out um and then the other one you may not know this before your time and i think this relates to mr miller's question or your comment um in the 80s and 90s they increased and we are not doing this now I'll make that perfectly clear but they increased fees so significantly it dropped the attendance by three-fourths so in reality the city lost money because the fees were so significant that no one wanted to play Does that ring a bell to you? And if you were to quadruple your rates, let's say, you would probably lose, it'd be that same kind of impact.

I do feel that if we were trying to operate at a higher cost recovery, like a lot of other jurisdictions do, then it would jeopardize the participation and the attendance for our programs here in CSI.

And then, therefore, if it jeopardized, and I think if you, let's say, quadrupled it, you would also potentially lose money because the lack of students or activities as such. Is that a possibility?

I mean, there would be lots of... staff hours in the planning and preparation for those programs and then having to cancel so yeah so there would be you know staff time put into it and then if you're not able to operate the program because you're not getting the registration yes there would be time lost there so and what you did in your planning for these fee structures and all you tried to find a balance

of fees and freebies. Freebies may be the wrong word, but fees and how much to increase it as far as providing an opportunity for people to still attend. That's kind of the tug and pull at it.

That's correct. And, you know, just want to put out there that we haven't raised fees in the recreation department in at least 7 years, you know, and I know we've been trying to keep it even not even the CPI or even keeping it pretty static for a really long time. So we felt that this was an opportunity. The time to do it, given the city's fiscal challenges, and we need to kind of get back up to where that that is.

Thank you. And then I'll just make my comments now. so that way I won't waste anybody else's time and thank you mayor for your uh allowing so I cannot support the fee recommendation I believe this is the wrong time in the wrong city I think the cost of living has gone up seven to nine percent in the last two years I believe residents cannot keep up with property taxes, sales tax, car taxes, hotel tax, a wealth of new taxes to include water fees, PG&E fees. We encourage people to acknowledge residents to improve their homes, yet we are going to increase fees. We want families to have a safe home, yet we have fees for repairing stairs. new businesses yet we increase the fees we encourage affordable housing yet we increase fees i think somewhere this needs to be stopped and allow the opportunity for residents to live a positive quality of life um i believe we need to create a different vision of incentives and opportunities consistently increasing fees i believe should not be the answer for us when affordability is becoming an impossibility in our community I know too many kids, to include my own family and other friends, that are making over $100,000 cannot afford to live in this community. And these fees, that type of fee, just increase greater fees by the person that's selling their property or trying to sell a hamburger. So I'm going to vote no. i would hope that city council would consider a freeze on all fees for increase of fees as as an alternative and prove all the other lower fees or existing fees and that's my recommendation but for those reasons i can't support this because it's times are tough and it's hard to live and it's hard to live in our community with all the fees and it's hard for our young people to live here with all the fees and all things associated with the fees not only by our city but other nonprofits, profit-making groups, utilities, et cetera. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? No one else has any comments? Go ahead.

I agree times are tough, but I also agree that we need to pay our employees so that they can continue to live a fair life in our community. So the only way we're going to be able to provide the services we're continuing to provide is through looking at something like this which is a study that's looking at not just increasing but where we can decrease and where we can maintain so I'm in favor of this uh thank you anyone else is there a motion yep I motion to approve a recommendation to consider and conduct well the resolution approving the city of Seaside comprehensive fee schedule is there a second

No one supports that? Okay, I will second it. It's been probably moved to second and so on the question. Anybody have any comments? No comments. You want to speak on your motion?

I'm just repeating what I said is the other half of this is that we're trying to still provide services and we're thinking of the quality of life of our community. And so we can't just say no, not pay people for the services that they're doing, whether it's recreation, police, fire, they deserve to be paid for the work they're doing for our community.

Through the mayor?

No, no, you can speak.

Yes. 10 seconds. No, you can take as much time as you want. Just on the opposite side, I think people are paying the property tax, the sales tax, the hotel tax, all these other taxes and fees that we're already paying. And in this time with this, not this administration, not the city administration, the leadership of the federal government and the state, sometimes too much is too much and i think now is too much to for extra burns when we're we're trying to get people to come back to see that our youth etc i just think it's too much and uh that's my opinion okay anyone else all right i'll close the debate on this uh you know i'm just gonna uh again just put some stuff out there uh it was just said a few minutes ago it's too much property tax too much hotel tax

That's not affecting anything. That's not affecting our community and other fees. This fee schedule is for the services that our employees, we the city, provide the residents or whoever else wants to use them. We can only charge what it costs. We already said on average, we only charge an 87%. So that means it comes from the general fund, which everybody pays for. When you're talking about right now, I think on average we're only recovering 57%, so it's not even going up to 87%, it's still at 57%, meaning the general fund, meaning that money comes out of the fire department, that money comes out of the police department, that money comes out of every other department when people do not pay a fair, reasonable cost, recoverable cost for that service. And so when we talk about not uh raising what it costs to pay then if this is not going to pass then pretty soon the city manager is going to have to come down here and talk about what we cannot afford And so if we're talking about, well, it's tough times, and so we shouldn't charge people for the services that they're volunteering asking for. And I want to go to the example someone used about a staircase and it costs so much. Well, it costs for that inspector to come down there and check that staircase. If you don't call us, then we don't come. But when you call us, it costs a certain amount of money to send that person there and to do the paperwork so i i want to encourage people to do the right things when they when they feel they're doing the right things uh if somehow we are not going to try to recover the true cost a reasonable cost of what things cost nowadays then pretty soon we can't do free And so what are we cutting back? We're going to cut back on the police, the fire, and everything else so we can do a free Blues in the Park. So we can do a free Oaxaca by the Sea. So we can do a free June 19th. So every time someone comes down here, use the Odomar and ask for a waiver, we're going to continue to say, waive the fees. And so we're going to allow the city to go down that road. And so I don't support that concept. And so I don't support the concept of our city somehow can't ask the people that use these things to pay a reasonable cost. Someone said about the pool, it's costing so much. How does it stay open if we're not going to raise the fees for people to swim in the pool? how does it stay open because city manager is going to tell us that money is coming from the general fund that money is coming pretty soon it's going to it's going to hit the police and fire department uh we just took money out all of us just took money out of the reserves to continue to put money in our kids for recreational services and um um and for projects throughout this community And no one said save that money so we can supplement the cost for this fee schedule. We're again talking about it's too much money. And so I'm going to support for it. And I'll be here when the city manager on his own accord, eventually, I don't know how we provide the service if we're not going to pay. And then I got one more question for you, Mr. Assistant Mayor. You said something about If the fees are too high for these recreational programs, somehow we lose money. How do you lose money if the fee is too high and people don't go to the program that costs money to actually have an employee there?

Because there's planning that goes involved with that. So if we're planning for programs that don't essentially run all the staff time that was put into putting that program together is essentially wasted because now we don't have that program to offer to the community that we're putting out there.

Okay. So at the fee that you have now, the fee that you suggest now, are you saying that's too much?

No.

Okay. Because that's what I'm saying.

I don't believe so. No.

You think we would still be able to provide those programs at the fee level?

Correct.

Okay. I just want to be clear, because it sounded like you said these fees are too high.

I was just trying to answer a question on how it would look, how we could lose money potentially if the fees are so high that people aren't coming.

But on this document, the fee is too high?

No.

Thank you so much. Mr. Meyer, come on down here, please. Are you recommending fees that are so out of whack that you don't think, first of all, we know it's illegal to ask them higher than what it costs. Are you thinking the fees, you said you checked five other cities. Are these fees reasonable within other cities as to a reasonable cost recovery?

Yes, for the fees I spot checked, we were below the average of all of them. And in no case were we higher than the middle of the pack.

okay in no case we're higher than the middle right i think the highest we were was the exact middle of the five cities okay okay thank you so much and then i'll just end with the city manager city manager what do you think would be the outcome if we don't you know again some of these fees are going down because we saying they're too high because we are we can provide the service uh at a lesser rate so now in a sense if we don't adjust that isn't that well you're not the legal eagle but i'll come back to the city attorney if we're charging fees that are more than what it costs to service them i thought we said that was illegal too so shouldn't the fees that we suggested go down go down Yes, I'm asking you.

I'm not sure I understood your question exactly, but the essence is if we charge more than the reasonable cost of providing the service, then we are basically charging a tax, which requires a vote. This is not about that. That's why we did a fee study. Okay.

Never mind. Thank you so much. So now I'm asked a question about what I want to ask. i thought city manager was several fees that we said we need to adjust down because we're charging too much because we can provide the services cheaper is that correct or not correct and a lot of that is due to technology and process improvements over time and so this study looked at holistically it wasn't a study to increase fees it was a study looking at the cost to provide those services and based recommendations increased and decreased from there thank you thank you so much but i just want to get to it's more than increasing as a as a couple things where we're doing with this motion and one of it was reducing some of the fees because they are too hot is that correct correct because we can provide the service cheaper correct which the law requires correct okay thank you so much if we're not able to make a reasonable increase with these fees, what do you think the outcome would be if these fees don't go up?

It continues to be subsidized from the general fund and the increases will compound over time that we do not try to cost recover when we have the opportunity like this.

Was the increase of these fees in the budget? Okay, so, so, okay, so we won't see, or you won't it won't show up until. When do you expect it will start showing up that this excess money would, you know, these fees will not come in if approved.

Most of these fees would go in immediately. I believe the development fees would take 60 days. I would like to defer to. Is that correct? Jesse.

yeah maybe you should have had the consultant respond uh who had pointed out that a large portion of the fees were targeting uh voluntary services which are building uh planning and uh these are or identified as fees related to development and legally can't take effect for 60 days yes thank you no i i guess i'll just end with this all i'm just trying to do is put on the record

that this is normal for cities to do. We are in the middle or the lower end of fees as other cities surrounding us. It is a cost if we don't so-called correct these fees to a reasonable amount. and uh it'll be subsidized by another part of the uh the budget so i just wanted to put that on the record i'll call for the question all those in favor use the regular sign and voting which is aye aye aye nays have the same right no abstentions okay the motion fails uh two to two all right uh nope not tonight not tonight all right so let's go on to the next item so uh we will go to well we're supposed to take a a recess around the 7 30 hour why don't we just do it what the next business item let me see if you guys want to continue next business items is business 10 a receiver update on seaside car i think that should go fairly quickly uh mr city manager and for this item like call dami what's the city manager

Evening again, Honorable Mayor, members of City Council, staff, Dan Mewis, Assistant City Manager, and I got a presentation on Car Week, which is coming up in August. The date's August 10th through August 15th. So Seaside is lucky to have seven Car Week events this year. They will be kicking off on Monday, August 10th with the Porsche Monterey Classic, which will be held on Del Monte Avenue from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday, also Monday through Wednesday, August 10th through the 13th, we host or Embassy Suites host the Automobilia Collectors Expo, which is more of a, you know, there's not a lot of vehicles involved. It's more of the collectibles type of auction and exhibits that's going on in the Embassy Suites. Friday, we have the Paddock Monterey. So this will be the second year coming back and their second time being on a Friday event, which is nice. It's up at the Black Horse and Bayonet Golf Course from 3 to 8 p.m. And then as we go to the meat of the events, we have four events that will be held on Saturday, August 15th. So let's start with Concours des Limons, which is here on the City Hall lawn from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. And then making their comeback to Seaside after a hiatus since 2019, we got the Lemon Rally, which is associated with the Concours des Lemons. They used to be at Laguna Grande Park back in the day, you know, side by side, we had two events on each side of the street, and they are coming back for their 10th anniversary this year. uh we also have the concorso italiano at the black horse and bayonet golf course from 8 a.m to 4 p.m and then the the big ticket item is exotics on broadway 11 to 4 on broadway and the new street of del monte So we'll just run down a few of these events real quickly. We got the Porsche on Monday. I say at 4 to 8 p.m. on Del Monte. It's a free event highlighting Porsche and everything they have to offer. It's a nice event. The road will be closed from 3 p.m. to about 9 p.m. over on Del Monte. And Porsche do, they pay all their fees, the special event fees and everything associated with that. Public Works does assist with the closure of the road. uh the automobile collectors expo this is you can buy a one-day pass for thirty dollars or you can buy the three-day um ticket for 60 and there's just a lot of rare automo automotive automotive history um you can meet other collectors and just discover all the unique treasures um that is associated with cars and so for new for this year over there they will debut with a kind of a forum where they'll have different automotive personalities and enthusiasts will be sharing side stories and their expertise on a variety of different vehicles. Patek Monterey, the tickets are $100. 13 and under are free with a paid adult. They're kind of going back to the diverse array of vehicles while they are associated with Concorso, which is primarily Italian automobiles. This one is a variety, anything from the 80s and 90s and all the way up. It's kind of an eclectic collection, if you will. And then Concours des Le Mans, 8 to 1. This is the worst of the worst, if you will. The funky and the unique type of cars, the strange, showcases the unforgettable collection of automotive oddities. And I know that they have some quirky awards that they like to give out for those vehicles. It's here on the City Hall lawn and it is quite a spectacle and it is pretty packed. So the Lemons Rally 10th anniversary, they're building this as Hell on Wheels Rally. And what it is, is it's a multi-day road event. So a lot of these vehicles, they tour the country, if you will, and they go different, unique uh routes to get here and then their their final stop is here in seaside um to be part of the the lemons uh concourse the lemons event um as i mentioned there last year in 2019 they did submit an application in 2020 but the event was cancelled due to the pandemic And of course, the Italiano, these tickets are general admission are $250, $1,300 free with paid adults up at the Bayonet Black Horse. And this is just the premier celebration of Italian automotive vehicles. Everything from Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Alfa Romeos. They do have a lot of other global exotics there as well. And then exotics on Broadway. So it is free on Broadway. They're a $40 emission ticket for the paid section on Del Monte. They are anticipating roughly 25,000 people in attendance. They will have over 200, two to 300 vehicles. The road closure will start at 10 p.m. and it will run through 8 p.m. 10 p.m on friday the 14th and run through 8 p.m on saturday the 15th i mentioned it's from broadway on broadway from del monte to fremont and then on del monte from palm to teoga it will have 40 to 50 vendors they will have stages on both streets so broadway will have its own stage for the free area and then there'll be another stage in a vip area on uh del monte So when we think about exotics, we know it's a large scale event, a lot of people coming. So how the city is going to prepare for that is public works will be, the sidewalk will be pressure washed the week of the 4th and they'll do it again on the 14th. there'll be street sweeping and they'll be going through making sure all the planters are clear and everything is looking nice and fresh for the event. Some of the communication that's happened already, there's been a letter sent out to residents and businesses notifying them of the event. We will send another letter out as the event gets closer right around the beginning of August. They've held So they've had two Zoom business meetings. One was specifically for the auto dealers, and another one was for a variety of other businesses. And they're anticipating to have another one, I believe, on July the 13th. We'll be using social media and press releases to get the word out. Exotics is using their channels to push everything out as well. We will be doing everything we can to advertise where the parking is going to be. We'll be putting our message boards out the day before, advising the public, you know, cut some of the traffic. And then we'll be working with Velar to assist with our traffic advisory, media advisory, and any other type of messaging that we need to get out to the public. um some more preparation so the police and security for uh side of it pd uh seaside pd will have six dedicated officers for the event parking team will be out monitoring the area we will be having mutual aid officers on standby i know Exotics will be providing 40 or more security officers, but the minimum of 40. PD operates the command post at the courtyard, and then we have advanced video surveillance throughout the event that we will be setting up prior. The fire department will be providing two on-site first aid stations. One will be held at Del Monte at the 705 building, and then the other one will be in the VIP area on Del Monte as well. I meant Broadway, 705, Broadway, and then Del Monte Wild 12. There will be an IAP for the event, and then the drone team will also be on standby to monitor everything. So we look here, we got the map. This was provided by Exotics. This is the Broadway street. So you can see we'll have vendor cars all the way up and down. The stage will be right here and kind of right in the middle. This is 705 Broadway, actually right here where my pointer is. So this will be right here in the alley and we will go all the way up to Fremont. So there'll be a lot of cars, a lot of vendors in the free area, open and available for the public. And then when we look at Del Monte, so there's going to be starting basically right here. This is Contra Costa. So the main closure will be right here just past the light. But the northbound lane here will also be closed leading up to it. And then the southbound lane will be open for exiting from Sand City. But it will also be available for if emergency personnel need to get into Sand City if there's anything going on in there. So there'll be, we got the VIP area, the main stage right here in the middle across from Clementina and the cars all the way down. This area, this red area here is going to be VIP parking for lot of the show cars and individuals that will be attending in the vip area which leaves the city to be able to use this whole extra space all the way up to tioga for our own parking on-site general mission parking and so the the city manager and the team will be looking at how we're going to best maximize that that parking area but we we anticipate that we're going to be able to get at least 200 cars parked in this space And we have a full traffic control plan. I'm not gonna go through the details of this plan, but I just, you know, it is in your packets that the council can review. And if anyone in the public, it is in the staff report as well in the packet, but we have a full detailed staff report, which basically gives the community where all the signs are gonna be, where the best path of travel in the city with the closure of Del Monte and Broadway. So this first one kind of is showing everyone We're diverting everyone basically down Fremont the whole way down to CDR and over. This is a look, a closer look when we have, this is Tioga right here and the closure of Del Monte. So we see the traffic going up and down Fremont. And then this is like the full holistic look, looking at basically coming from the freeway. This is Del Monte here coming up and down all the way over. This is what it will look like on Fremont and Broadway. We will be using Santa Barbara right here. This is going to be the turnaround for the shuttle bus that will be up at Eucalyptus Road. So they'll be able to come straight down Broadway, come right through here and then use Santa Barbara to turn around drop off and then they'll come right back up and up so if you remember last year the shuttle kind of had to circle all the way around with the because the closure kind of blocked all of Fremont so we feel that this layout the way it's going to be it's going to be able to allow the shuttle to turn over faster basically General Gym to Broadway and up and down the the whole day Right here on the right, this is basically Toyoga. So while this Toyoga and this is the beginning of the Ottawa and the Costco gas is right here. While this road is closed here, we will have people stationed here as we allow for vehicles to come in and park. While people stationed monitoring, you know, as the lot gets full, we'll have signs out saying lot closed. But if three people leave, we'll allow three people to come in and kind of, you know, work through that. This is just from last year. The Exotics on Broadway put together a 2025 restaurant map. The plan is to do that again. We're just making sure that we're updating it and get all the details for 2026 and all the restaurants that we have within that span. And this is just showing the parking and the shuttle. So we have, you know, everyone's going to be parking up on Eucalyptus Road. The shuttle will be coming here and then they will making their way back down to the show location. And that concludes my presentation, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for the presentation. Any questions, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Miller?

Just one simple one. I think you mentioned there was parking available, you know, 200 spots or something. Are you going to... allow or can we allow i'm making this up but like i don't know village project cpy whoever to man those gates charge 20 or to as a fundraiser for those groups or just i mean because people can park I remember last year someone parked down the street and they sold their parking spot in front of their house for $30, $40, and it was five miles away. I'm not speaking up. I was a mile away from their event. Are we going to consider doing that so that way nonprofits or the city can make some money or whatever can make some money?

That is something that we are having discussions about now and making sure that whatever way we decide to go, we have a process for it. But it's still, it hasn't been solidified whether or not we were going to charge or have it be free general mission parking.

Well, just my gut feeling is if the city can make some money or a nonprofit can make some money or youth group, it seems like Braille's is charging money. We should take advantage of that for our youth or for the city or whoever. Thank you.

Council member Miller. Can we pull up the map again?

Which one would you like?

Showing the new part of the Broadway, Del Monte. That works there. So on Fremont, can you show me where Fremont is on that map?

Fremont is going to be way over here.

Oh, okay.

So this is Broadway right here. So if we look at this one, Fremont is here.

And so are we having, is there going to be a gate there at Fremont?

No, because this is a free area. So all of this is going to be just free open to walking through like it was like when they first came here. So all of this is going to be open. No gates, no fences. There's just going to be, you know, barricades right here in the alleys.

then so we're not both lanes on fremont both left and right can be our cars can travel through yes and all those businesses will stay right are accessible but on del monte we're going to have fences yes and it's going to be fenced in yes so the the fence will be basically in the street so you'll still be able to access the sidewalks on both sides but this area will be fenced in And so at the very beginning, at the front there, is there anything? We're going to park like a car there to prevent.

Yeah, we'll have barricades here. We'll have the big barricades. And so just like we do, like the full, the K-rails.

That's the concrete?

The orange ones that we fill with water.

Okay.

Those are strong enough to...

And then, like I said, too, like these are all these spots here, too. These are this is like their VIP. So we're going to have a couple of levels here before they actually get to the show.

I was just asking, Fremont seemed to be the issue last year, and I'm just happy to learn that we're not. I know we voted on pulling this more towards Del Monte, but I was thinking it would be Del Monte, Broadway. And since we've gotten so big, possibly some section of Fremont, but we're completely gone.

and i'll just say that we've had some coordination meeting meetings with sand city just to you know be good neighbors and one of the main things here was just to make sure that this section remained open because you know the plan initially we wanted to do this would be a closure all the way through here but this is one of the main exits out of stan city and then it's the fastest entrance in for public safety if they need to get in there so we definitely needed to keep one lane open here understood thank you

Hi, anyone else council members last year exotics did a great job promoting the paid portion of the show. Did we talk to them about making sure they're promoting the non, you know, the entire show?

Yes.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

And that was part of it, making sure that there's going to be similar experiences on the free area as the paid area. That's why we're going to be having, there's going to be a stage, there's going to be a DJ, there's going to be music, there's more vendors and everything over there as well.

Yeah, I'm not sure which slide it was, but you were talking about people walking, I guess it was on Del Monte, walking on both sides of the street around the fence. That was a concern last time where people didn't know exactly how to get to Broadway because depending on which way you came, you were blocked by the VIP fencing. So I just wanted, you know, we need to just think through that because there's going to be people walking down Del Monte from both areas. And if you get caught on the wrong side of the fence, it's how long do you walk or what directional sign says, hey, you know, the open area is this way. So just get at some thought. But my main question goes to what are we doing to help and promote our restaurants and our businesses down there? So, you know, what are we doing?

Economic development is going out there, making sure that she's providing all the exotics team with all the information they can for our restaurants. This restaurant banner here, the one that we had, this will be in the shuttle buses. It's up there. There's a QR code that people that are coming into town, they'll be able to scan that QR code. We'll take them to this list so they'll be able to see what restaurants and businesses that they can visit when they soon they get to the area. And we'll make sure that we highlight them through our social media as well too.

Hello.

Right, that's what we highlight too, right, about, you know, you can come down and get something neat also. But I think, you know, it should be maybe a couple more places where the QR code is available, you know, in the middle of the block or something. You know, people, I'm not necessarily looking around in the bus for the QR code. But if I'm downtown, you know, and come across it, if it's a billboard or something, come across it that way. I think you had one down, like, at the corner of Fremont and Broadway that had a QR code.

we'll work on that especially too to make sure like on there like if you're parking on del monte and you're trying to get to the free area we'll have it like right there so you can see it when you're walking down the street or in those areas yeah okay all right let's just take it out for the public public comment is open members of the public in the chamber please approach the podium members of the public on zoom please use the raise your hand feature or dial star 9 if you're calling from a phone

Bring it all the way down. Good evening. Annalisa Mitchell, Seaside resident. Car Week is one of the most exciting weeks among many exciting events that we host in the city of Seaside. but i just have one simple question to the mayor and the dais and mr muis why don't we include um for this event why don't we include our faithful seaside car club perhaps they can park at social services or something but i think that this that car week is like the highlight of any car organization and then to exclude them from car week that says something different about us maybe if we can park them at social services or something or because i remember last year walking from parking at victory temple and walking all the way down broadway so for people that's making that kind of walk that maybe there's something in between um to just put them there it's just something to consider it's just my thought thank you for your consideration

Linda Cunningham, private citizen, member of the Southside Homeless Commission. I like this list for the restaurants and food, but it needs to be a category. People can't read a long list like that. It's just a list of restaurants, Mexican, Chinese, dessert. You know, take out there needs to be some kind of categorization there. If you got kids, you don't want to go to Melange. You want to go to the pizza place? Possibly. I don't have kids, but, you know, here's the bar. You know, here's the not the bar. Help people figure out. They don't know. Just a big, giant list of restaurants. Overwhelming. People can't read anymore. I'm one of them, but I've just learned to work bullets. Less words. I thought I remembered last year somebody was disabled, really struggled with parking. I don't know where disabled people, just went to an event with a disabled friend. We luckily found a place to drop her off with her walkers, all these people, difficult. Where's disabled people who want to attend this? How were they parking? Is there a good signage? My husband ended up at line at Togo's or somewhere. The dude behind them made 200 bucks shuttling people down Broadway. Uber, Lyft, whatever, where are they turning around? People got tired of walking, waiting. It was a fortune to be made shuttling people down the hill, up the hill, maybe more up the hill than down the hill. But how do they fit in this plan, which is a much better plan? It's getting better. Everybody put effort in. It looks like it. We can see it. and um then the only other thing is the sound well hopefully in an outburger i don't know about our friends at the big parking lot at home depot i love this idea of let's get our local car club somewhere where they can be to show off their cars let's do it um but the sound the the technique the the tools we have to ticket the loud cars i don't know how we're doing that but I'm in my neighborhood. Let's hope he's moving. I just heard a motorcycle fly past the city last night when I came down to look at the lights and that motorcycle was way too loud. So I don't know how we're dispensing that, using that, ensuring that we're stopping the too loud vehicles and it's very very exciting for seaside and it's great to see this event and i hope that all of our businesses do well and um congratulations for everybody in the city who put this in and i agree with dave if we can make some money off of parking let's make some money off of parking whether it's for the city or um whoever the youth groups he or mentioned i'm not sure how to do that but it can be done thank you

Colleen Courtney, please unmute and make your public comment.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Wonderful. Good evening, Mayor Oglesby and council members. My name is Colleen Courtney and I'm the Director of Community Relations for C-Monterey. Thank you for this update on Monterey Car Week 2026. And I'd like to share just a bit on how C-Monterey is preparing for Car Week this year. After coming to your council a few weeks ago, I was able to meet with your economic development analyst, Laura Collada, and we connected on a number of topics, but we specifically touched on Monterey Car Week events and how we can work together to ensure open communication and collaboration. So thank you to Laura. So See Monterey has built a three-pronged approach to make sure this set of events runs smoothly for residents, visitors, and event organizers alike. First, we held a kickoff call on June 23rd, bringing together event organizers, city representatives, and county representatives, so everyone starts the event season aligned on logistics, expectations, and communication. Second, we will host a media roundtable on Tuesday, July 21st with event organizers giving press a direct line to the people running these events and helping to ensure accurate, well-informed coverage throughout the week. And third, a media resource center, which will include press kits for events, making it easier for journalists to get the information they need without adding the extra burden to our local organizers. And as it's already been stated, Monterey Car Week is one of the many cornerstone events in this region. And we're lucky to work with local jurisdictions like the city of Seaside to highlight how this region is the epicenter of car culture in the world. And many folks who visit Monterey County during Car Week come back at other times during the year. So that's why throughout Car Week, we will be sharing our Right Path Messaging, which is our approach to responsible travel. It's guidance that helps visitors have the best possible experience while respecting neighborhoods, roads, and residents that make this community so special. Our website is actively updated with event information and is already a great resource for those who would like to learn more about events scheduled for this year. If there are any event organizers your city staff are working with that would like to publish information on our website, please contact me and I'd be happy to work with them. We are so grateful for the city's continued partnership and we look forward to another successful Monterey Car Week in 2026. Thank you all.

Phone number ending in 2287. Please unmute and make your public comment.

Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, this is Peter Kaiser. This is an exciting car week. One thing we again need to be careful is I was walking by one time and this car was about maybe 20 feet away and it was revving its engines so high that it was hurting my ears. So I walked, I don't know, about 50, 60 feet away. And he was showing off his car. But I think we have to be careful. That could damage people's ears, and especially if it's children and so forth. This may even be permanent damage. So they shouldn't be revving their engines with pedestrians within a few feet of them. So I hope this event goes off well and thank you so much laura james please unmute and make your public comment

Good evening, Council and Mayor. Leadership is about recognizing opportunities and having the courage to seize them. That is exactly what Mayor Ian Oglesby demonstrated when Monterey decided not to host Exotics on Broadway. Rather than letting that opportunity disappear, he stepped forward and welcomed the event to the city of Seaside. That decision has brought thousands of visitors directly into our community. These guests aren't just here to admire incredible automobiles. They're staying in our hotels, dining in our restaurants, shopping at our local businesses, and discovering everything Seaside has to offer. Events like this generate economic activity, increase tourism, and showcase our city to people who may return throughout the year. as we continue to grow this event i'd like to offer a few ideas that can make it even better first let's consider providing a golf cart shuttle for seniors and residents with disabilities so everyone can comfortably enjoy the event from beginning to end accessibility should be part of every successful community celebration and second let's partner even more closely with exotics on broadway by promoting seaside hotels by promoting seaside hotels, restaurants, and local businesses on the event website and social media. We could even create a special promotional code that participating businesses offer during Car Week that would encourage visitors to spend locally while giving us valuable data to measure the event's economic impact and demonstrate the return on investment for our community. Mayor Ian's willingness to think differently and say yes when others said no is the kind of leadership that moves the city forward. Thank you, Mayor Ian, for your vision, for believing in Seaside, and for continuing to create opportunities that benefit our residents, our businesses, and our future. Thank you.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star 90 for calling from a phone. Mayor, no other member of the public has come forward.

Thank you so much. Mr. City Manager, are there any questions, issues, or concerns?

Yeah, just a few. Certainly, there's no intention to exclude the Seaside Car Club if there's an opportunity to work with the event organizers and figure out something that works for everyone. We'd certainly be open to that. The free parking area, the parking area on Del Monte does allow us some opportunities potentially to address ADA parking. So we're considering that at this point. Law enforcement is working diligently about and has a great plan for curbing after hours after event activities this year. Appreciate their efforts. And then, of course, appreciate C. Monterey, who continues to amplify our events to a larger regional group. Thank you.

So, I think that was just informational. So, manager, we're not voting on anything, right? Correct. Okay. I'll just end by by saying that, you know, I guess we'll continue to get an update on this and what's going on and things of that nature. It seems like a. A better plan is always changing, so that makes sense. I did think it made sense about the categorization of the restaurants. The only thing I want to add to that is you might want to ask them what category they want to be underneath. uh then my last thing is i i spoke with the classic car club myself and and i think they have ideals on what they're trying to do so it's not for us to exclude them um they they i told them to speak to the chief in particular i don't know if he even spoke to them yet but they're supposed to be speaking with you all right uh all right we'll just end with that and go on our recess uh we'll turn at the sound of the gavel

Thank you.

Is a doctor resolution renaming the county social community social service grant program as the youth opportunity grant program approving the revised policy for FY 20 2627 request for proposals. Mr city manager.

yes thank you mayor council this item brings back the community social services grant program for final action under the new youth focus direction previously discussed by the city council tonight's action would rename the program approve the revised policy and approve the fy 2627 request for proposals As a brief reminder, the Community Social Services grant has awarded approximately $2.5 million to 19 community serving organizations in the total of 43 grants to date. Council adopted the formal grant policy on June 4th with a clear direction to focus future funding on youth serving programs and bring back the draft RFP before issuance for Council review. Council also asked staff to return with a clear name that better reflects the youth focused purpose of the program. The proposed resolution renames the program from the Community Social Services Grant Program to the Youth Opportunity Grant Program. Staff believes this name better reflects the Council approved direction. There are no other substantive changes to the policy being proposed beyond the name change. policy establishes the overall framework for the program it defines eligible applicants eligible program areas eligible expenditures. The annual rfp process evaluation criteria reporting requirements and participation in the blue ribbon task force, the intent is to provide a consistent structure, while allowing the specific annual priorities and scoring criteria to be set through the rfp process. The proposed RFP included in the packet includes a $400,000 funding allocation, which was included in the FY26-27 budget. It also includes a minimum 10% cash or in-kind match proposal requirements and also a 100-point scoring matrix. The highest weighted category is community need and target population, followed by program design, anticipated outcomes, equity and reach, organizational readiness, partnerships cost effectiveness and match and all those categories and guidance on those categories is clearly defined in the proposed rfp the tentative schedule for the issuance of rfp would be released on july 6 with applications due august 7th evaluation would occur through early september with the city council considerations and recommended awards anticipated at the city council meeting on september 17th Evaluation per the RFP will be conducted by city staff and or an ad hoc committee. Council may also wish to discuss the merits of having the Public Safety Advisory Committee serve as that ad hoc committee for this year's annual RFP process. and with that my recommendation is staff uh the city council adopted resolution renaming the community social services grant program to the youth opportunity grant program approving the revised policy and approving the request for proposals be happy to answer any questions uh thank you so much any questions any uh uh may i pretend this one is there a because people have asked me is there a difference in points if you are a service group

with an office in Seaside versus an office space outside of Seaside servicing Seaside?

No, we have not made any distinction with that. The program requirements do require the beneficiaries of the program to be Seaside residents.

Right. Okay. That's fine. And then on the other question is, have you determined or will come back to the council or deciding what's the max dollar amount? Let's say from the, I don't know, seaside dolphins. For example, if they wanted $100,000, is that the max? Or is $50,000, or will that decision come back?

at this point there has been no max of individual awards in the policy so will that be part of your recommendations down the road whenever that group decides as we've handled it in the past years uh applicants are applying for their necessary grant uh um ask that that facilitates their program they're proposing and then the city council determines it from that point so individual groups are asking for different amounts throughout the process.

And then it'll come back to the council. It'll ultimately come back to the council. I'm making this up. Instead of getting $100, they might get $80. Instead of $80, they might get $40. Instead of $40, they might get $90, whatever it be.

The council has that discretion, correct. However, this RFP does have those initial proposals reviewed first by the city staff and or an ad hoc committee. And then, of course, council has the discretion to modify those recommendations.

So one group, I'm making this, I'm being a little facetious, but one good group could ask for $400,000 if they chose to do that.

They could, correct.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Thank you. I want to thank the city manager and his team for updating this program and sending that survey out. and adjusting i won't say readjusting but really focusing on what the program and was really supposed to engender and support within our community those you focus grouped groups that are really moving the needle on youth activities. You know, I think it's room to always continue to focus better. Uh, but I think this is a great step. I do support the, uh, the review panel being the, uh, community social service. What is the Community Safety Advisory Commission? And, uh, we'll we'll take it from there. Uh, public comment is open.

members of the public in the chamber please approach the podium members of the public on zoom please use the raise your hand feature or dial star 9 if you're calling from a phone good evening mayor city council city manager and city attorney bobby maxwell

Being a member of the Youth Violence Prevention Task Force, that's a great renaming of this grant program. However, I want to ask a question because I noticed that there is a requirement of attendance for the programs that do get the grants. to be in attendance at the task force and i know in the past a lot of the well i'm not going to say a lot just a number of the groups that have been granted funds didn't attend very very often and uh The task force is a great program. You were one of the ones that started that. So I'm just wondering how is that going to be enforced or is it going to be enforced or is there going to be a penalty if they don't follow up on the attendance part of it? So thank you.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star nine if you're calling from a phone.

Ken Fitro, City of Seaside citizen for the last 40 years. I think that renaming actually increases a focus on a very specific need for our community. My experience as a person who is actually an executive director of an organization that actually did get recent funding several years ago is that it seems to fund the same organizations year after year after year. which doesn't really encourage innovation. And I would just ask you to consider that.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star nine if you're calling from a phone. Maybe no other member of the public has come forward.

I thank you so much seeing no one else public comments close, bringing it back to the dice. What is the world on council?

I'll make a motion to approve, but then on the 2nd, 2nd, as we probably moved in 2nd on the 2nd. Just briefly, I think the name change is very positive. I think. In all things over the years. as we learn and we grow and we develop, things get tweaked and we get better by them, and I think this has been tweaked to where now it seems to have an emphasis, a goal, a way to measure those recommendations, and it's come a long way through a lot of hard work over the past four or five years and now it's at a solid place i think will make it easier for the applicants as well as those that are awarding the funds as such and with some educational experience and background and uh i think it's a a real positive step forward in the process and it narrows the focus to what I think the initial goal was to youth, to guide, to teach, to mentor in my vision or my hope. And I just wanted to thank staff for moving this away in a way that benefits the youth as well as finding a process that potentially enhances the program. And we'll continue to tweak as we go through this process, I would assume over the years. Thank you.

Uh, anyone else no one else.

Uh, yeah, quick question. Um, public safety advisory committee. Was that a 1 time thing like this year? Because that's what it kind of sounded like city manager stated versus is that the committee we are agreeing to having the committee.

Yeah. So the policy says that it should be reviewed by city staff and or an ad hoc committee. And, you know, this year we were recommending the public safety advisory committee. Certainly that can change year to year. But in this RFP, if if council would like that to go out in the RFP, I just need to know that this evening because we will release the RFP early next week.

if if you want to be uh transparent up front that this will be reviewed by staff and the certain committee of council's choosing all right and then the other question do you want can you clarify as far as what participation in blue ribbon task force means is it a one-time presentation is it monthly meeting like yeah oh that's dan to speak to that so the idea behind that is as we excuse me

So we try and get these organizations to participate on a monthly basis. So we would require them to attend monthly and then provide two climate reports. So right now, the climate report is something that organizations voluntarily do to kind of provide an overview of what their organization is doing, the individuals that they're assisting and helping and what their challenges and opportunities are for that program. So this would provide a focus that these recipients would have to give to climate reports, attend monthly, and then we do take attendance at those meetings as well. So we would be able to track whether or not they do attend.

And is that in the application then so that applicants are clear that that's the expectation?

Yes, that will be included.

Thank you.

anyone else councilman thank you mr mayor i'll just ask the motion maker which is the mayor pro tem if he would uh be considering of amending his motion to include the public safety advisory committee as the evaluation committee i'll second that as well thank you mr mayor

Thank you. That's my concern too is that this is not a one-time thing. We want to continue to move it forward and the addition of the community service advisory committee is a great addition to this. Again, what we don't want to do is the city council be the first check. We want the recommendations come from somewhere and we get a little bit more community involvement as opposed to having the staff do it. That's that's that's where I stand with that. So I definitely support the motion with that concept. Uh, so, uh, as opposed to a one time oversight, I just think we just give it to them. And this is just something they do as other commissions, uh, uh, do the same. Uh, if there's no more questions, all those in favor use the right sign of voting, which is I, I hate, um, knows I have the same, right? Abstentions. I have a motion carry. Let's go to 10C, approve the Seaside Library mural and utility box program selection. Mr. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This item is presented by Keon Higgins, our Recreation Superintendent.

The mayor, city council, members of the public, staff, my name is Keon Higgins, Recreation Superintendent, and I am presenting item 10C, approving the Seaside Library mural and utility box program selection. First, we'll start with the Seaside Library project description. In May 2026, an RFP went out to the public for the design and installation of a mural on the steps of the staircase at the Seaside Library located at 550 Harcourt Avenue, which is About 50 yards or so across from City Hall, the RP was looking for proposals and designs that celebrated Seaside's history, uniqueness, identity, along with connection to the Seaside Library. And of course, this library was opened up in 1975, named after former city manager Gordon R. Forrest. So on June 16th at the Art and History Commission meeting, they selected international muralist BEIS. I think it's BEIS when I talked to him. His name is also Pedro Gonzalo Garcia to design and install the seaside mural with the budget at $11,500. So the budget is actually lower than the allocated budget for the mural, which is $15,000. So he's a bit lower than that. As you can see here, very vibrant colors. We did some conceptual changes to his original design. You'll see on the left-hand, right-hand side, it's a few books that are there. It might be hard to see. We made some additions to that as well. I have written here for you that we wanted to include two books. They're written by Carol McGiven, who's written two books that are relevant to see Seaside, Racial Beachhead and Images of America Seaside, which Beecher Seaside talks about the history of seaside. So those will be along with on those vertical columns there. And then on the design, you'll see two things we wanted him to make sure is like representing seaside and something unique to seaside so on the top left corner you'll see i think a tree that's relevant to ford ord and then on the right you'll see the bird which is a hermann goldbird which is relevant to seaside as well and so throughout this whole process the seaside library was involved in the very beginning as far as getting their inputs what they wanted to see they recommended the uh the book spines the the titles of the books to be part of the mural and so once we got a few designs um this is the one that the the commission selected to be recommended tonight for city council i'll also save sorry i'll get back on um pedro gonzalo gonzia he is an international muralist uh you'll see in your packet uh he's uh send murals in uh spain italy uh also australia as well uh he's worked with municipal uh government agencies but also privates and um festivals doing uh murals too So next is the utility box program. So in March, 2026, an RFP also went out to the public asking for artwork to be wrapped around five city-owned utility boxes around the city and the selected artists would receive a $500 stipend. And these proposals, we're trying to, you know, aim for anything that celebrated Seaside, what makes Seaside unique to its residents and our community. And since 2024, we've installed 10 utility boxes. So with these five, there would be 15 total. And you can see a few examples of material driven around Fremont or General Gym. You've seen them all around, beautifying, just really before the steel boxes. So I think they make a great addition. And these are proposed locations. We can do up to five. They selected five. So you'll see on here, Broadway Avenue, Fremont, Frontage Roads, and then two on General Gym, one by Hillby, the other one by San Pablo. And these are the selections. These are five selections. Eliza Jane is one. and a few others. And I do want to make notes. You might be wondering, the top middle, there's a bird or a seagull with a hamburger. And this was designed by a fifth grader who goes to school at one of our local schools. And there's, he said, a resident. And there's a story behind it is that her father was eating or having a hamburger, a cheeseburger, and the seagull took it. The commission thought it was quite humorous and funny, and they really, really liked that. I think it's the first design I've seen that is adding humor, but is also representative of seaside, that food can be taken by seagulls around here. And the mother is very, very excited. She's very proud of her daughter. So those are the five selections for the utility box. The fiscal impact is going to be for the mural, $11,500, and utility boxes, which is five for $8,500. That includes the stipend, but also the installation and the wrapping on the boxes. And both these projects are going to be funded by the NICTOT allocation, which is approved during the 25-26 budget sessions. So recommendation is to approve the Seaside Library mural and utility box program selection. I can answer any questions.

Thank you so much for the presentation. Any questions? Council Member Miller?

Thank you Mr. Mayor. Just for the public, do we own these utility boxes?

We do.

Okay, because there was a discussion before about there are some utility boxes that we don't own.

There are, yeah. There are some that we don't own. These are, this is actually the last batch that we own that we're wrapping ourselves. And other ones are owned by PG&E.

Got it. And are you the liaison for the arts and history?

I am.

Are they, after this round, are they considering the private?

Absolutely. Oh, they are? Yeah. We're working with the public works director. He has a relationship with PG&E. They've already begun that. Hey, this is where it happened. Could we do this? I've received a verbal kind of, hey, this could possibly work. And so it's approved by council.

right in particular if you can go back the of the that keep on going back a little bit further sorry uh the one in the middle box number two yeah that that one i'm i'm so glad to see that one because that one's had uh graffiti art on it and is right in the major intersection there is that a traffic signal box is that what those are i believe so yeah are they all yeah uh yes all control the traffic yeah

you mr mayor thank you thank you uh anyone else uh no let's go back to i got a couple questions easy questions let's go back to the the mural and so we have a couple dollars left over we do yeah well before i get to that okay i know what two books are what are the other six books

So these are recommended by the library. Wombat Walkabouts by Carol Digby Shields. Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman. Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz. Big by Fausti Harrison. Dogman by Dave Pilkey. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. So that's actually eight, if you include the two other ones I mentioned. And then there's two others that I think it's... Ramona Quimby, H8, Beverly Cleary. And then I think the other one is Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

Okay, but where to add? If you only have four spines, you're named more than eight.

So the two that I mentioned, I think they were on there initially in the packet.

I guess really what I'm trying to do, Mr. Mayor, I would like to know a little bit more about who the authors are and who the... what the story is in these books and exactly where they come from. I know Dr. McKibbin, so we understand those two right there. But I want to make sure the books are inclusive of everybody, and everybody seems welcome into the library. That's the whole object of it. And then my thing is about the mural. Are we going to have some type of way to know who the artist is besides the little name on the bottom? Is there a plaque or something? Because people are going to say, that looks beautiful. I wonder who did it. And I don't know. we can't we can find a place uh next to the stairs or above the next to some college inside the library so it's just something because you know i mean you want to honor the person if he's world renowned um yeah

concept don't you have those code things that you have all over the city like i don't know the right version i apologize um yeah the code so that way you can do that and put all the books and all the authors whatever you want to do to as an easy information uh process just just go that's a great idea that's a great idea

yeah i just wanted you know to if he's you know world known then you want to say he did something in seaside so um and then people may want to know is you know so we could do that qr code some type of way uh okay can you go to the and then oh well never mind just that's something else no that's all right i'll worry about it next next year whoever's up here next year i'm worried about it so about the boxes we don't control We just need to make sure we get in writing that contract because they go in there and they do the work and they tear it up or the box falls or disrepair, then what do we do after it's wrapped? I've just asked City Manager to look at that. And then my last thing about Seagull and hamburger, I mean, that's wonderful, right? But are we known for that? Seagull stealing our food here? I mean, we're trying to get rid of, right? Thank you. Thank you so very much. Yeah, don't hype it too much, but I thought the... The mural for that young person was a beautiful thing for the NIC to grab a hold to. But I'm going to watch my food for now. Don't put it down.

Through the mayor, I'm sorry. I'm going along with that concept, and I was hesitant to ask it, but the the seagull or whatever it was on the stairs that looked wonderful, and I'm not going to fight it, but it's that we're promoting something that we may be trying to get discouraged from their activities in seaside and on people and in cars and, you know, I'm just asking the question. It's not something to argue about, but I'm just wondering why does a seagull become our best friend when he hurts our, not mine.

Can we go back to that picture while people, while you're saying, people can look and see maybe what you're saying.

Yeah, I mean, it's a nice picture of a seagull, but it looks very nice. I'm just saying sometimes we promote things that we don't want in our, on hooping on our cars.

Yeah, or whatever.

I'm just wondering.

Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I think it's a fair question, right? And we know we're down the road on the design of it, but I thought it was a fair question. And I think going forward to imagine we had to think about that, which is we don't necessarily want to be the promoters of seagulls, associate seagulls with seaside, right? I mean, I think we got a little bit more to offer than that.

But go ahead and speak to the design. Yeah, I mean, part of it is the Herman goal is a native to Seaside. It was part of that. However, the muralist, he and I have been, you know, he's I think a day ahead of us. So we were playing like, you know, email tag. And I can make some changes if you guys would desire.

no no i don't think that's what the city city um may have pretend the same you know we just we just you know wondering why is there it's appropriate to get stuff that's in seaside so um does anybody have any problems with the overall design to change it yeah it looks beautiful uh and so we will go out to public comment

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star nine if you're calling from a phone.

Here goes.

I'll do my best, buddy.

linda cunningham seaside homeless commission speaking as a private citizen i'd love to bring the picture up of the mural again um i don't know if we're allowed to but the sides are just cement If there's some extra money on the sides of the step, it's just ugly cement. Can't we paint the sides of the rails just a color so there's not two cement sides on this beautiful steps? Same with the squares. You're going to put the books on. Make them a book all the way around. Make them a book across the top. not just the front it's 3d everybody's going to see it from the top everybody see from the bottom around and from the sides i like the goals i think it's a money-making opportunity for seaside when you're giving goals that the only place in the continental united states which means the entire known universe that you can see these goals if you're a birder fastest growing leisure activity in the world, you would come to Seaside to get that bird on your list. I get it. Not everybody's birders, but I have seen birds become a tourist attraction way up in Arcata, Nowhereville, Northern California, and people travel from all over the world. There's a bird sighting. It's across the globe as fast as possible so people can get there and see that bird. That's how much birds mean to people. I feel like God gave us the birds. Can't we put the fill island that they were living on in the lake back in the lake. So the birds can live there. I think what people don't like is where the birds are living. again i think it's a beautiful mural i would love to see a little bit of money sprinkled to paint the side cement so it just doesn't look if nothing else paint the cement white to match the rest of the building it would just make the mural look nicer and i love the boxes they're like little jewels hidden around the city you pull up on them and i can't wait to see the new ones because especially because the green ugly one is in my traffic zone and it'll be lovely to see that and um i appreciate that the city even with the budget being tight is sprinkling this money around to make these beautiful there's another thing people do again first place i saw this was arcada back in the 80s that place is covered literally they are now painting the fire hydrants because they can't find enough space to paint because they have so many murals it's an attraction it's it's something for people to do San Jose's got a lot of cool murals. Sand City, these can be attractions. And I'm really grateful to see the city of Seaside is putting that mural in. And I think it's beautiful. And I like the goal. I'm here in support of the goal.

Thank you. Laura, please unmute and make your public comment.

hi uh good evening uh mayor and council i'm here to speak on behalf of the here men's goal it's actually a unique goal for the city of seaside it only lives in one other location and that is a small island off of mexico and for some reason they decided to move to roberts lake and then they have stayed here and never went back home so the human's goal is um only in seaside in the whole entire united states besides mexico so it is a special bird in fact the fledgings the little baby birds are going to be popping off the rooftops pretty soon so the audubon society is working to start tagging them and you guys will all see signs along broadway to designate to ask people to slow down. Even though some of these speckled birds look like they're full size adult birds, they're actually baby birds. And so anytime you see a speckled seagull, that means that is a youngster. They most likely cannot fly. And so our goal is to protect them during this critical time. So I appreciate that the mural is going to have that. And I do second what Linda said about adding some extra paint to make the rest of the behind the scenes look great. And thank you for the utility boxes. And I love the little kids painting with the goal and the hamburger. That is special. Maybe they can do a field trip for that kiddo and their class to go do the unveiling. So thank you all for spending money on art in our community. We appreciate you. Thank you.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star nine if you're calling from a phone. Mayor, no other members of the public has come forward.

Thank you so much. Seeing no one here, no one else. Public comments closed. What is the will of the council?

I'll make a motion to approve it on the second. second has been probably moved in second on a second just question just very I I think the mural is great and wonderful and looks terrific uh just my thought process um And this is really silly, and I even doubt questioning it. My only defense for that, many of us dodge seagulls. Many of our cars are damaged by seagulls. Our kids work, walk on seagull poop throughout Laguna Grande Park and City Hall. There's countless wonderful birds throughout Seaside, I'm sure more than one. I think it's fine. I'm not even arguing the point. I'm just saying many of us, if we're speaking honestly, try to move around and park where areas where our cars and our kids aren't working on the stuff that they leave behind and that's part of nature and i get it i'm fine with it but i think there's also sometimes we can look at other animals other birds other things that represent our community as well other than just the lovely seagulls that we all admire thank you anyone else

No one else? I'll just say some words before we close. No, I think, well, there's two things. I guess three things. That was my hesitancy before about the picture was I've seen those white sides. So I do agree that's an opportunity lost if we don't get those sides. And I just want to go back. Can we go back to that picture? And so what I seen was, you know, I don't know what that animal is on the right side. It's some type of octopus or something. But on the other side, it's right, I guess, above the book drop. It just seems that it's missing something. It doesn't seem symmetrical, right? And then I agree where the white railing should be painted. There's extra money or a color he thinks should be going up there. And then I do agree with, the top of the cement light pole, right? I mean, that's really gonna turn on a kid. When a kid goes up and get that height, they go, oh, it looks like a real book, right? So if there's money, and I'm sure the muralist could easily do that. And so hopefully that can be done. Then I would just add about the mural itself. No one's against the seagull, and we're famous for one type of seagull, I guess. But it's more than seagulls and sea otters in seaside. And so I would have liked to have seen this way before the final night to weigh in on what ultimately got picked, in a sense. But it's a beautiful mural. I look forward to, I guess, stepping on it, using it. But I think next time, City Manager, we have to just think a little bit more through these things and about what we're trying to capture as a city. but we don't know what books are going on going to be out there you know um i guess you read them off but for me this is the first time i'm hearing about them and then i'm not sure if if if i'm comfortable with the books and then you know then i'm voting for the books and then it's permanent and so i i think go ahead so uh out of the eight six are recommended by the library uh some are local artists or local uh authors uh other ones are

represent monterey county i guess you could say the two that obviously uh mckibben those are the ones that we recommended them they said that was fine so the six that's what they recommended to to the commission obviously to city council no i i know it's a local uh a book out there by angelus and i forgot her uh co-author but it's it's you know i'm saying we we

I'm willing to move forward, but I'm just saying, you know, I want us, the city, to be having a little bit more say on what's going on with these type of projects. There's nothing there. Okay.

Let's just go on to... Can I make another point? I'm agreeing with you on that. Just really quick. It's our money. It's the city funds. It's our outdoor venue. And I'm not asking for it. Maybe the Art and History Commission could have been involved representing just Seaside because it's not inside, it's outside, which is our responsibility. I'm not asking for feedback. I'm just saying, or having other people make choices that our county facility, when that area is ours, we're gonna be fixing that.

it a book or be a a lovely otter that i admire you know my best buddies thank you no thank you i mean i would be supportive of adding you know her book and her co-authors book if that would be open to the something the council wants to do i i think we take opportunities to celebrate a little bit more locally you know uh if this was monterey and someone said hey let's put you know uh uh stop that book on the side of the the the what is inside of a building that would make perfect sense right but but we have people that's been working in seaside that's been published in seaside you know to make their home in seaside and so um does um so i don't know how we solve that tonight mr city manager yeah i mean we can take that input back uh is there is there opportunity to to change books

Okay, I just want to be clear. It's my understanding. This is the 1st. Have we have we had this level of approval prior? Okay, so this is the 1st time I believe in if this would change in this process to to come to council more direction and approval. That's certainly something we will. Yes, sir.

for our first mural, the fire station mural. I think we came back at least two times, two times. And that was that was that was great.

That was statement about this is the first time we came back to this level. That's not correct.

This is my misunderstanding.

I understand that someone helped you with it. But I think every mirror that we have done has come up to us and we talked about changes. OK, not only the fire station, but I was incorrect.

You know, escape.

I wouldn't say again.

It's an escape part.

There you go. That's right. Right. And so we're not doing nothing unusual i'm just that's the point we maybe we need to put in there that everybody knows that draft is coming up to the uh city council yeah and and maybe the city council will take a look at it you know the rough draft but uh thank you so much city manager go ahead and finish yeah well staff will follow whatever process council desires on the mayorals moving forward okay i would i would see if the motioners want us to come back with some adjustments uh can let me just make yeah i just want to finish with my um the qr code i think we should be doing uh so maybe you put this in your motion if you want the qr codes the sides of the railings the cement the tops of the light poles um and of course we'll talk about the books that's there uh then um that's that then i wanted to get just covered the seagulls for a little bit right no one i'm gonna speak for myself and maybe the city maybe the mayor pretend no one is against the seagulls in our community we are proud of having a certain species of seagulls what part of our overall responsibility is what they leave behind on our property uh private property and and our infrastructure and our businesses downtown that's our concern and that's something we have to work on that doesn't mean we don't like seagulls uh but i'm not gonna walk around and we i don't want my city covered in droppings so we can have uh you know bird watchers from around the world come down here and watch them fly and poop on everything and when we talk about you know other communities and i think that what someone said was uh it's close to nowhereville you know they're probably not dropping their stuff downtown in arcadia right and so no one's against it but we do have to care about uh private property being um the way it looks. And I know I go down Del Monte and look at the back of the, uh, the car dealerships and I tend to try to look straight. And so I know the city manager is working on that, but I just, you know, I just for the public, it's not, we don't care about birds. It's just that issue. So Mary port, Tim,

if you turn on your master at your advice can and that's a good point that we brought other pictures back twice or murals back twice can we and there's no deadline for this mural to go up could is it feasible for them to do the suggestions that the um mayor um suggested with the books or whatever it be as well as the railings and all those things for it for lack of a better word a second bite at the apple by the muralist and the uh whoever so as we have done in the past and is that open for a conversation yeah yeah yeah yes it is i i don't what what i'm getting to now i don't think we need to ask anybody that okay if that's what you want to do we'll go tell them to do it because all we're saying is

paint the sides of color that the muralist thinks fits within his mural and make lines on top of the cement to make the books look real. I mean, I don't think that's a heavy ask to ask the muralist to do. And then I do think bringing back the types of books is appropriate. And so I don't know if there's a lot of asking, can we do that? But mayor, I mean, city manager, go ahead.

Yeah, could I ask staff, is there any timelines we should be aware of with the artist?

So the contract was signed by the muralist. It was approved recently by all staff. Him and I have been going back and forth. He had a proposed date to fly the third week of July to do this mural. So that leaves some room. He has another mural thing in another country, and he's trying to mix it part of his trip. But I believe we can get all this done with those recommendations, the additional stuff on the cement blocks.

Could we bring this back on the 16th of July at the next meeting? Yes.

Yeah, yeah, I. Right. You know, and so I don't know what the timeline for staff was before this meeting. But I know you just said you signed a contract to make that happen before we voted on it, right? And so I don't necessarily hold myself to that if it doesn't work out. And so maybe that's no harm, no foul, right? Or just no foul at all. I just think it's important to reserve the rights of the council to make those type of decisions. OK, thank you so much.

so what was the what was the motion so i mean if i can reset my emotion if that's doable yeah just to adjust those um suggestions and ideas and concepts as part of the overall motion to come back on the 16th and as necessary i think the same manager understands that and it's enough to to uh yeah any other questions on that adjustments okay yes of course

So would that include getting the list of the book titles prior to the 16th so we could review?

Yes. Yes. Good point. All those in favor use the reciting vote, which is aye. Did we go out to the public? All those in support say aye. Aye. All those no have the same right. Abstentions? Ayes have it. Motion carried. D, adopt a resolution authorizing city manager to sign an amendment with PACER AI for additional year for the software subscription in the amount of $29,430. Mr. City Manager.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, Council. This item is proposed one year renewal for the city's PACER AI software subscription. The resolution would authorize the city manager to sign the amendment for an additional year in the amount of $29,430. The city has used Placer AI since last year. At a high level, Placer AI is a location analytics platform that uses anonymized cell phone location data to help understand foot traffic, visitor patterns, trade areas, customer behavior, and retail trends. For Seaside, the value gives us the market data that can be supportive for economic development, business attraction and retention, tourism, and reporting. The platform supports several municipal functions for recruitment and economic development. It shows brokers, developers, and retailers whose seaside reaches and what our market looks like as a whole in specific corridors or for specific properties. For retention, it helps existing businesses better understand customers and visitor patterns. And it also supports planning, event analysis, tourism, grant reporting, council updates, and partner conversations. It provides all of that with consistent data. This is an example of the data from a type of a tourism travel data available report through the platform. It helps us better understand where visitors are coming from, how visitation changes over time, and how Seaside fits into the broader regional economy. This type of report can also help us with tourism-related conversations, including regional partnerships, destination marketing, and understanding visitor connections to local businesses. It gives staff more data-informed way to discuss Seaside's role in the Monterey Bay visitor economy. This slide shows another type of analysis for facilities or location trends. The city can use this to understand visitation to public facilities, to commercial areas, corridors, and specific project areas over time. So you'll see a snapshot on the screen of it. Again, very difficult to read. I apologize for the layout here, but it shows city parks and it shows change activity over certain durations of the month. So blue is a high use frequency and then orange is less. Again, it helps us analyze our city facilities. This is another example of that use, and it's a trend analysis. Instead of relying only on anecdotal information, we can look at how activity changes by the day, by the month, by the season, or after certain improvements or events at different facilities. Another type of use of this data is for business attraction and retail strategies. For business attraction, PlaceRite helps tell our market story. When speaking to retailers, brokers, developers, and property owners, we can provide that data of customer reach, visitation, the trade areas for that business, and comparable locations. This is an example from CounterPoint Coffee, which is showing 43,000 visits over an annual period, and unique in visitors, and how often those visitors returned on average. This is another example of that business attraction and retail data. This shows weekly visits throughout the year, shows trends over the past few years. Anyone care to guess where that big spike is? That would be on August, mid-August for Exotics on Broadway of last year. This information is especially helpful as we continue to work on our specific corridor areas, Broadway, Campustown, Main Gate, and other economic development areas. It does provide this data in real time to potential businesses that are looking to locate in our market. PlacerIL also provides origins of those customers who can provide businesses with those marketing insights. So a business can look at a heat map like this and understand where their customers are coming from, where to market to, how to make their business more successful, where they're not drawing customers from. And again, it's just additional business insights. So this does not replace, obviously, business judgment, but it gives our staff and our partners better information to work from. This is a real case example of how we're using this currently in one of our programs to the seaside business inside sessions. We can provide this as a no cost benefit to local businesses and we are. This is intended to provide businesses local business. place your AI information at no cost to include that foot traffic, visitor reports, customer demographics, and trade area, and the other data that we earlier talked about. This connects the software directly to small business support and not just internal use. So we encourage businesses who would like a copy of their free report and discuss that data to contact administrative analysts to Laura Collada in our Economic Development Department. The proposed renewal for this software is for one year for a platform access fee of $29,430, and this amount is included in the FY26-27 budget. Staff has also had a significant positive experience with LACER AI's customer service. They provide customized training on a biweekly basis to our staff and are available on the drop of a hat to provide any report that we may need, staff may have access to. This renewal aligns with our strategic plan pillars number two for vibrant local economy, particularly with the mixed use of commercial development as we look to recruit businesses and attraction and tourism and provide small business services. with that uh recommendation is to adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to sign an amendment with place for ai for an additional one year in an amount of twenty nine thousand four hundred thirty dollars and i'd be happy to answer any questions uh thank you so much any questions uh councilman miller thank you mr mayor is uh the place for ai uh uh company located around here I recently learned through the Monterey Herald that it's based out of Israel, and that was news to me. But it's used by municipalities all across the United States and multiple countries.

And do you have any concern with the data being shared with the wrong So the data that we collect, we own that data?

We are not collecting the data. Placer AI is providing an access to their data owned by the company, which is, again, sold. It's anonymous cell phone data that's sold to multiple companies from our phones and our location tracking services. And this is one of those uses of that data.

I see, so we don't, we just have a license to use the information. Correct, this is not under data. We don't own any of the information, okay. And then I just, would you be concerned in any way about this potentially affecting somebody's privacy rights or anything like that. You said it was anonymous, so.

I am not.

And this is, so it doesn't, somebody's cell phone doesn't really tell you who that person is, right? Correct. If I understand correctly, so.

Yes, it's just basic demographic data and location analytics.

And this has been helping us pretty significantly.

Correct. Yes.

And also when retailers want to come into our city, they want some kind of data to establish the customer base here.

Yes. They want to know as much detail about our market as they can. And in addition to just business coming here, our existing businesses are starting to use this to, again, like discussed earlier to better market their position.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mr. City manager, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Mayor for this one. Um, It seems that the information gathered can impact stores and storefronts and et cetera. Do we or can we proactively, rather than wait for someone to come visit us, provide information to those businesses via newsletter, sitting newsletter, or any kind of communication so that way they have the information rather than waiting to hear the councilman, which they won't, that this is available to them or somehow make sure they are aware that they can come here. Or I think even just throwing in the newsletter and I'm making it up once a year that this is the impact it has via somehow.

Yes, correct. This flyer has been in our newsletter several times and has also been shared on social media. We will continue to do so. We'd be happy to share general community data from Blaser in our newsletter, but specific business insights, we would not share that at a large level. Thank you.

Anyone else? I think this is a great continuation, City Manager, on what you said you're going to do a while back here when you got here, is to continue to bring us forward with this AI information, and particularly as it relates to economic development. And this is just one program that would help us with different projects. And I think it's important. The question was asked earlier, and I thought it was a good question, Where is this information coming from? How is it collected? And to be clear, this information is already collected.

Yes, this information is being collected from your cell phones right now if you don't have your location data turned off.

and it's being sold to other people to use it for whatever they want to use it for. I mean, you know, not in nefarious needs, but I'm just about other, whether it's developers or business or anyone is trying to get those people with those demographics to their service, they are paying for this information already.

correct this these this data is used in multiple uh software applications and and this one is just a municipal uh based um software system for um predominantly economic development yeah for municipalities we're getting that program of it but a developer can buy it so to speak and and maybe even a college or you know just a hospital whoever wants to Whoever wants to correct. In fact, one of our local businesses already has a subscription to this as well. So we learned that through the business insight session.

And then my last point is, if we didn't have it or have the ability when that new business or that current business owner comes into our economic development department and we're not able to tell them some of this data, we're behind.

We are. Communities are using this data to market themselves in a real way and tell stories. So then our ancillary, they're providing the data to potential businesses that are looking at their markets.

And if we're not able to do that, we're behind.

We are.

Right. Because you can't tell a person, well, I don't know that data. And then the person is going to say, well, I'm not going to pay to figure it out necessarily. Or it's better that you have it. Correct. Okay. I'll just take it out to the public. Public comment is open.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or dial star nine if you're calling from a phone. Phone number ending in 9902, please unmute and make your public comment.

Good evening, this is Nina Beattie. I asked the city to reject for the contracts with Placer and unfortunately I missed the first part of the meeting where you were discussing common sense AI. AI has a huge negative impact. It's not magic. It's not green. It requires data centers. The destructive environmental and health damage by AI data centers includes extreme water usage, endangering aquifers and local water supplies, electric use straining the electric grid and leading to high electric rates for the public, pollution from generators, toxic chemicals, high EMF emissions up to 20 miles from data centers, and constant low frequency noise. They're frequently built without public process or consent. This is happening in Gilroy right now. These have been built in or near low-income communities of color, including Memphis, Tennessee. Seaside residents should be extremely opposed to contributing to that system of discrimination and damage. AI is surveillance. Using it infringes on the privacy and security of everyone who interacts with Seaside. The example with camera data sharing here in Monterey County caused the city of Santa Cruz to terminate their contract over the uncertain security of its data despite assurances by that company. Anonymizing data? Stripped of identifying information? Trust us, they say? No. The holes in this make it Swiss cheese. The slide states that it has visitor origin. Therefore, it's not anonymized. In addition, Placer is a foreign firm and an Israeli firm. I'm concerned that the city did not know that. It is widely known that technology firms in Israel have connections with the Israeli government and military. The UN just issued a new report on the targeting of Palestinian children by the Israeli government. Genocide, apartheid, and the maiming, torture, and murder of children, health professionals, teachers, aid workers, reporters, and adults, the destruction of hospitals, schools, farms, homes, and communities is and has been happening in Israel-Palestine assisted by technology firms. CSI should not be using foreign tech, especially from Israel that gathers information on Americans. Furthermore, this type of AI pings people's phones, which means greater microwave radiation exposure for the user and the public around them without their consent. CSUMB is located here. Approach the university with your marketing and community assessment needs. Many students there, especially through their field of study, are trained in gathering information and conducting surveys and could do so in exchange for getting college credit. They have skills and this can provide real world experience useful for building their resumes. This would be a win-win for the city, the students and the university and might reveal human common sense insights that a tech driven approach would miss. Please take a proactive approach. All these two AI projects, they aren't good for the city or the public. i shop in seaside frequently but if the city proceeds with this it will force me to rethink and reduce my shopping visits here and find alternate routes to bypass much of seaside please take action on this and rethink this proposal thank you members of the public in the chamber please approach the podium members of the public on zoom please use the raise your hand feature or dial store 9 if you're calling from a phone

We are not a member of the public has come forward.

Thank you so much and no one else closing public comment what is going about to does what is a little bit of council.

Make a motion to approve.

Some probably moved is there a second. As we're probably moved in second. On the question. Any other final questions? A couple comments, Mr. Yes.

In regards to the the commenter, Mr. City Manager, was there any concerns there that before we take this vote that you think we should consider?

No, I have no concerns with Placer AI. I've been using it professionally for the last five years in economic development. And again, we hope if a citizen is uncomfortable with sharing their location data, that is a decision with a cell phone that they can make for sharing their location data. But that location data is being sold to multiple firms and then acquired by a company like Placer and many other firms. And this is Placer's product with that data.

So if I understand correctly, Mr. Manager, if somebody doesn't want to participate in this, they can change a setting on their phone to stop participating in this activity. Correct. That was all my questions, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else comments? No, I'm comfortable with this. I think the city manager set the tables well, which is your cell phone for lack of a better word, your cell phone keeps the cell phone The cell phone company tracks their cell phone. Let's take the person out of it. The cell phone company tracks the cell phone where it goes, and they sell it to whoever they want to sell it to for whatever reasons. Our small businesses or businesses throughout the United States want to know where people are going, where their cell phones are going, so they can market to them. And so again, Seaside needs not fall behind when we're talking about struggling economically. And this is one way we can help our small businesses know their customers, know where their customers are coming from. And we can use this information to tell people that we do have a certain amount of people coming to our city, staying how long. and go from there. So I trust the city manager and his judgment. So all those in favor use the regular sign of voting, which is aye. Aye. Nays have the same right.

I abstain.

Hold on, let me get there. Nays have the same right. Any abstentions? Abstain. Thank you so much. Motion passed. Was it 3-0 to 1? All right. Let's continue on to item number 11, council members request. Is there any council members request? New council members request, is there any follow up on previous request, Mr. City Manager?

Not this time, thank you.

We'll go to item number 12, city attorney, city manager, city council and mayor's comments on reports of committee assignments. Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, members of the public. I had the opportunity to attend the change of command, change of responsibility at the Presidio of Monterey, welcoming the new Colonel Dalziel to the Presidio. I also was fortunate to attend the unveiling of the mural at Lapidus. It was a wonderful event and very colorful, very meaningful story in terms of the representation of the mural and what it represented. And finally, I was reappointed to the League of California City's City Attorney Brown Act Committee for a new two-year term that began yesterday. And that concludes my comments.

Thank you so much.

Mr. City Manager. Yeah, thank you. I was able to attend a Sea Monterey event hosted by Sea Monterey. It was a friendly soccer match between Monterey Bay FC and the corporate partners for the Australian World Cup team. It was held at Cardinale Stadium. It was a great opportunity just to meet some of the Australian partners that are here and watch them experience and enjoy Seaside and the Monterey Peninsula. attended the second quarterly meeting of the auto mall stakeholders that is a something we will be doing every quarter again just a collaboration and information sharing for the best To achieve the best results for our auto mall and dealers who represent a significant portion of the city's sales tax, I was able to attend a leadership Monterey County Day. I also enjoyed the watch party held at Old Meyer for Mexico versus Ecuador. I'm looking forward to the two upcoming events and then finally attended the homeless commission meeting last night.

Councilmember Miller. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Our city manager quite is quite busy. So nice, nice long list. I just went to the Ace Hardware, the Ace Hardware grand opening. So that's all I have to report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Burks.

Yes, I attended Lupita's nine year anniversary and the unveiling of their mural by Jorge Torres, who's from CPY. So it was a great collaboration with the Arts Council. I mean, yeah, the Monterey Arts and Our community I also was at the watch party for soccer looking forward to the next two And I did ask the city manager for a resolution to honor the sirens inaugural season They're the girls soccer team and they're on their way to playoffs. There'll be a think it's the on the 10th that they're having another Game, and so I think it's been a great Representation for our young girls in the city of Seaside. They're super excited to see women out there and they're doing really well. That was it

Thank you, Mayor Portem. Thank you.

I attended the Fossil Park Cleanup at Highland Oaks, followed by the FOSPA community event at the same park. There was great music, dancing, information, and interactive youth activities. I think it was their first time doing that event. It was very successful, I thought. And just wanted to thank them for all the hard work and everybody that showed up. I think it was a real positive event. Tinted Hot Cars Cool Nights on Broadway. Countless cars, a lot of people, a lot of fun. And it kind of highlights Broadway. attended the grand opening at ace hardware great new store it's an anchor store in seaside and and that area of the city a great addition attended the biggest swim lesson program petulo swim center it was a great program many first-time students that never swam before were there, as well as some that I just learned. And any time you get kids to feel comfortable in the water, I think that's a big step forward. Tenant, the unveiling of the mural at Lapidus, paid for by the City of Seaside with some funding. I think that's important to make note of. I think it's a great addition to the community. the city of seaside being the lead player in that and with the help with the monterey county arts council i think it was a big step forward uh for broadway and the all the residents that go up and down that street thank you mayor uh thank you i tend also attended the highland oldest park cleanup and then the celebration well done by fosfa uh they really turned that park into uh

really something special. I remember me and Ameriport Kim maybe about two and a half, three years ago, pulling the weeds when it was really decimated and nothing was growing before the softball court. volleyball court was put up there so the transformation is there right and then they had the celebration they had a band uh some some dancers uh and and and some music and it's like three different levels over there so it's well done by false but really turning that park around to probably what people envisioned when it first was made so hopefully the city can continue to work and and and and keep it at the level that it is and then we can move on to another part but i want to think possible for that to the lavco meeting uh where we again open up the seat the public seat member seat so that's out you know if you're interested in that public seat you can check the lavco website uh for the uh the application and apply uh we're looking for uh a new primary public member Lieutenant Tampsey meeting discussed the AI coordination lights on 68 and the possibility of roundabouts. We're not sure about the number of roundabouts. I think you know i think we're down to about three from nine but we haven't made any official decisions so i don't want to act as though we made any official decisions but we had a deep long discussion about that i think the meeting lasted about three and a half hours uh because we got uh talked about the round bouts and and how do we move How do we weigh in at the state level about the reduction in the gas tax and moving the gas tax to a vehicle, travel miles? And so what is fair for people to have to get up and go to work 30, 40 miles just to get to work if they're paying the same amount as someone else that only has to drive three miles to work? what is fair. But my view is you need to make sure it's fair, but you also need to pay for the infrastructure of the roads that those people travel on. So we're still discussing that at TAMC and that's a lot of That's some deep thought there. Tenant of leadership, homelessness committee, council meeting about homelessness and how do we continue to use what little bit of grant money we're getting from the federal government and the state government to comply with the federal regulations. And so now that they had to update with the new federal law, they had to update how we approve grants and part of the update is the people that are not happy with those approvals get to appeal somehow i got voluntold to be on the appeals committee there so the work continues on how we make sure we have homes and housing for our homeless people I attended the UC Santa Cruz Journey to Learning, a community tour. It was really about what they're doing at the old airfield in Marina and at their embass site, the University of Santa Cruz embass site over there in Marina. We talked about AI and what AI is doing and the drones. the drone company over there and all those things surrounding that and how santa cruz is working to to push that forward doing a lot of good work there and then they also are trying to uh begin start up a medical school medical training over there so right now I think the nearest medical school is in Santa Barbara and the Bay Area. So all of our local doctors and people that want to be physicians and doctors have to travel. And once they get their degree, they really don't come back to the Central Coast. So working with Santa Cruz University to do that. They're working with the University of Davis because they have an excellent medical school there. And I want to thank the chancellor of UC Santa Cruz for putting that together. I did share with them, city manager, that we may be open to some type of presentation on how that impacts our community and our residents, what they're doing at their hub at the Invest Center. I could make the LAFCO former executive directors Kate McKenna as a retirement party, but I want to do a special shout out for her now with her over 48 years of public service. I believe the last 15 as the executive director of LAFCO did an excellent job of the balance between necessary growth and the protection of uh prime ag land open space so i want to thank kate mckenna for her work well done attended the new ace hardware hardware grand opening ribbon cutting was an excellent ribbon cutting i appreciate the city manager and our economic development team for being there So that was well done. Attended the pride parade. I want to thank the organizers for those that were able to attend. You know, you don't have to look too far down the road to see, you know, if we don't stand together we'll be standing together with no rights, with no human rights and no equity if we don't stand together. So I want to thank those that put the Pride Parade together. A special shout out to the Arts Council of Monterey, Lupita Bakery and the artists and of course the City Council of Seaside for the grant and then Councilmember Garcia-Zola for his support at the Arts Council and bringing that forward and representing us in those locations. I attended the Monterey One Water meeting on behalf of Council Member Garcia-Zola, he's the primary. I'm the alternate. He asked me to attend it. And so what went on there was on the agenda was an increase to the sewer rates by $2 a month or $4 bi-monthly. And to me, it seemed like they did a lot of work, and it made a lot of sense that we need to pay for the infrastructure for Monterey One Water. We were talking earlier about how tough rates are, how tough it is, and how expensive it is to live in this community. But what really allowed me to understand it better and appreciate why it made sense to do it was, you know, after I heard the other three mayors support this increase in a sense, and then when PG mayor made the motion to increase the rates, I think he spoke so eloquently about the need to increase the rates of monowave on water. So I wanna thank the mayor of Pacific Grove for standing up for what is right because if we don't increase the rates and pay for uh the pipes and infrastructure for monterey one water then eventually we don't have good drinking water and we're not processing uh the gray water and my last point about that is a lot of that processing and gray water uh goes back into the basin as clean water recycled water now i don't want to get i don't want to be confused the rates for one don't pay for the other but the administration of one does both projects. And so we save a lot of money with the recycling project. And so it's important to have a strong Monterey One Water. So I stand in support of that. And I want to thank Count, I mean, Supervisor Church at the same meeting uh putting forward the the or re-upping the residential low use variance program where if there's a senior uh using a a low amount of water uh they can apply for a program where over the next five years they can get fifteen percent off of their bill that's a few dollars like fifty dollars to for the application right because you can't do it for free but over the next five years you can get 15 off your bill uh and i want to thank supervisor church for making sure everybody that applies monterey one water board says you will be able to be eligible for the program if you're eligible for the program we will find the money to pay for it but i'm just the alternate uh i very seldom go over there so i put that in their hands attended the world cup uh party uh continued to build i want to thank the city manager for continue to build a partnership between uh monterey bay uh union sfc and what they're trying to do is build more uh connections with the community so i appreciate the watch party and uh it was a great night mexico won know it could have been it couldn't it could have could have turned the other way even though it's 2-0 it could have been the other way but it's a great night and i look forward to the next two watch parties in our community attending the seaside groundwater basin uh water master uh we're updating our groundwater model to make sure we don't have or we could track uh potential um seawater intrusion then they supported us with the new proposed monetary well on number four to make sure we're monitoring sea water intrusion the best we can and I know it's two things that was on a generous city manager that we voted to support seaside in and I think someone said it earlier but I was glad to see the picture so I want to think Well, before before I get to that, it was I think it was.

Yes, two things I want to I want to.

I want to end on a happy note, but I want to make a comment on another. A couple of days ago, we got a report that a little girl was struck walking across the street and someone hit her and they kept going. so i just tell parents to be careful uh whether you're five years old 10 years old or an older adult just be careful people are not stopping at stop signs uh and people are speeding a little bit too much but i do want to thank the police department for quickly uh finding that person. But the thing is really about us and being careful when across the street. Sometimes people are just not paying attention. Then I was pleasantly surprised about the picture of the fireworks that the police department came up with. I want to thank them and their detectives. And I'm sure it's, you know, the police chief is throwing his mind into it to be able to put resources behind these things. So, you know, I just end with It's going to be a lot quieter. If you're next door to whatever goes off, you won't appreciate it at all. But catching 1,000 pounds, and not all of it would have been blown in Seaside, right? But we caught 1,000 pounds so far. So I want to appreciate that, because that's going to make it a little bit more quieter. And I do think, yeah. So thank you so much. I will ask the city attorney to read us in closed session.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, members of the public. The council will have a conference with labor negotiators pursuant to government code section 54957.6. Agency negotiators are the city manager and the human resources director risk manager. Employee organizations are all of them. They will also have a conference with legal counsel pursuant to government code section 54956.9 on one matter of existing litigation. The case name is Crisp Company versus Kramer Engineering et al. That's Monterey County Superior Court case number 26CV002758. For the benefit of the public, I do not expect there to be a readout of any actionable actions taken during closed sessions.

Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. I will open up for public comment on our closed session items.

Members of the public in the chamber, please approach the podium. Members of the public on Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature or press star nine if you're calling from a phone. May the member of the public has come forward.

thank you so much seeing no one else here no one else pubcom is closing our closed session items we will uh move into closed sessions