City Council - Regular Meeting

And before we start tonight, I'd like to take a moment to clarify where things currently stand related to our short-term rentals or STRs. This is an important topic in our community and we appreciate the continued interest and engagement. At our March 9th city council meeting, the council directed staff to move forward with a professionally conducted survey by an independent firm to better understand community perspectives on STRs. Staff is in the early stages of preparing for that effort and the results of that survey will be incorporated into the next presentation brought back to the city council. staff. At this time, short-term rentals will return as a continued business agenda item at a future meeting which is anticipated to take place in May. No final decisions have been made. For those who want to follow this when this item is discussed, city council meeting agendas are published on the city's w city's website each Friday prior to our Monday meetings. That will be the best way to know when STRs are scheduled for consideration. With that, let's proceed with our meeting. City Attorney, do you have anything to state about close session?

Thank you, Madame Mayor. There's nothing to report out of close session. I did have one clarification. Um, I originally thought that the agenda was wrong when it said that there were five items and that it was four, but it was in fact five items. Thank you. Former council member Visera, where'd you go? Will you please lead us in the flag salute? Please join me in saluting our flag. Raise your right hand over your heart. Ready to begin.

Ice to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Roll call, please. Council member Ayala, here. Council member Rhodess, here. Council member Judge, here. Mayor Prom Litster, here. Mayor Kavanagh, here. Are there any items for agenda review? Madame Mayor, there are none. Thank you. I move that all resolutions and ordinances presented tonight be read in title only and all further reading be waved. Second.

Call for the vote. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. If any member of the city council may have a conflict of interest or any reason why that member must abstain from consideration of any matter on this agenda, he or she should so declare at this time. I will be recusing myself on item 5A. My employer has a relationship with the applicant. So at 5a, member pro 10 will take over. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, the first item on the agenda is item 1D1, presentation of a proclamation declaring the month of March 2026 as problem gambling awareness month. And community services coordinator Ryan Fowler is here to present this item. Good evening, Mayor Kavanaaugh and members of the city council. The month of March 2026 is recognized as problem gambling awareness month. To accept the proclamation, I would like to invite the following individuals to come forward to the left of the podium. Jasine Kanguro, Nandiha Krishna Morphy, Sadi Row, and Surya Ravi Kumar. I would also like to invite Serena Kangura, ninth grader at Royal High School, to the podium to share a statement.

Gambling is defined as gambling behavior that is damaging to a person or their family, often disrupting school, work, and relationships. Youth are particularly vulnerable. National research shows that adolescents have higher rates of problem gambling than adults. Studies published by the National Institutes of Health estimate that between 4% and 8% of adolescence experience serious gambling problems with another 10% to 15% at risk. With the rapid growth of online gambling, sports wagering, and mobile gambling platforms, youth people are exposed to gambling more than ever before. These platforms often normalize betting behaviors and increase the risk of harm. Youth problem gambling is associated with serious consequence including higher rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, poor academic performance, and financial difficulties. But prevention is possible. Education, open conversations between parents and youth, and responsible gaming safeguards are proven ways to reduce risk and protect young people. Problem gambling awareness month is observed nationally each March to increase public awareness and to promote prevention, treatment, and recovery services. The Seami Valley Youth Council recognizes the importance of educating young people and families about the risks of gambling and promoting healthy decision-making in our community. Thank you mayor and city council members for proclaiming March 2026 as problem gambling awareness month in the city of Sunni Valley. Thank you.

I can talk loud enough.

We're very proud of our youth council and all of the good projects that you do and all of the hope that you bring to our community and I look forward to seeing you guys up here many many times and also in your future. We're so proud of each and every one of you and thank you for taking on this subject. THEY'RE all done. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is item two, public statements on appointments, special presentations, andformational reports. We have no speaker cards for this item. Madame Mayor, members of the city council. Next on the agenda is item 3B1,formational presentation by youth council member Sadi Row. Good evening, Mayor Kavanaaugh and distinguished members of the city council. My name is Satie Row and I'm a junior at Semi Valley High School. I would like to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for your continued support of the Semi Valley Youth Council. Your investment in our program allows us to grow as leaders and actively contribute to initiatives that positively impact the youth in our community. It is an honor to be here today to share an update on our recent efforts and upcoming work. The month of March has been filled with meaningful engagement, impactful

programming, and continued preparation for several major initiatives. On March 2nd, 2026, youth council members had the opportunity to attend and facilitate a leadership workshop at Hollow Hills Elementary School. During this workshop, we work closely alongside fourth and fifth grade students to help them identify challenges within their school environment and guide them in developing actionable solutions. Through collaborative discussions and interactive activities, these students were able to think critically about leadership and advocacy while youth council members further strengthened their mentorship and philos facilitation skills. In addition to this workshop, we are currently supporting the every 15 minutes program, an impactful initiative designed to raise awareness about the dangers of impaired and distracted driving. As a part of this effort, youth council members are conducting studentled interviews at Seami Valley High School to promote the importance of making safe and responsible decisions. These interviews encourage students to think about safe and alternatives to drinking and driving as well as potential consequences and broader impacts such decisions can have on individuals, family, and the community. By capturing authentic student perspectives, the initiative fosters meaningful dialogue and encourages peers to think think critically about their choices. The entirely studentled nature of this project highlights the leadership initiative and commitment of youth council members to creating a safer community. Looking ahead, the Seami Valley Youth Council is also preparing for several exciting events. Tomorrow, March 24th, members will attend the Ventura County Office of Education Equity Conference, moderating and participating in panels about student engagement, student civic engagement, where students will engage in discussions surrounding equity, inclusion, and representation. This conference provides an important

opportunity for youth council members to broaden their perspectives and bring back ideas that will help us better serve the diverse population of Seami Valley. We are also excited to share the success of our third annual roots and rhythm multicultural night which took place on March 20th at Santa Susanna High School. This event brought together community members of all ages to celebrate the rich cultural diversity within Semi Valley. The evening featured over 25 cultural booths and 11 performances showcasing tradition, music, art, dance, and cuisine from all around the world. The event created a welcoming and inclusive environment where individuals can learn from one another and appreciate the many cultures that make up our community. Additionally, I would like to invite everyone to attend our upcoming 8th annual community talent show on April 11th. This year, we are excited to host two shows, an afternoon 2 p.m. show and an evening 7:30 p.m. show featuring a wide variety of performances by talented Seami Valley residents. This event is not only Youth Council's largest fundraiser, but also an opportunity to highlight and celebrate the incredible creativity and talent within our community. Cash prizes will be given to winners at both shows and Aximishes can be sent in through the link. Um the link is bit.ly talentshow2026. That is bit.ly talent show 2026 and are due today, March 23rd. We strongly encourage those listening to attend and support these performers as they showcase their skills and passions. Tickets will be live soon at svcac.org and will be $18 for adults and $15 for students. Another important update is that we are currently accepting applications for the 2026 2027 Seami Valley Youth Council term. We are looking forward to welcoming a new group of dedicated and

passionate students who are eager to make a difference. The program is open to both middle and high school students in Semi Valley and applications are due on April 22nd, 2026. Students under the age of 15 are required to submit a hard copy application. However, anyone who prefers a physical copy may complete one and either drop it off here at the city hall or mail it to the city hall address to youth council coordinator Ryan Fowler. Students who are 16 years of age or older may complete and submit their application online. We highly encourage interested students to apply and take advantage of this opportunity to grow as leaders and serve their community. Please mark your calendars and join us for our upcoming field day on May 30th at Royal High School. This event will bring students together from across the community for a day of connection, collaboration, and fun while continuing to build strong relationships among youth in Seami Valley. Lastly, I would like to encourage everyone to stay connected with the Seami Valley Youth Council by following us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at Seami Valley Youth Council, as well as on Tik Tok at SVYC2929. Once again, I would like to thank Mayor Kavanaaugh and the city council for inviting me to speak this evening and for your continued support of youth council initiatives in our community. Your commitment empowers us to create meaningful change and we are truly grateful. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have at this time. Thank you.

Anyone have any questions of Satie? Council Mayor Pro Tim Litzer. One question, but first a compliment. Satie Favas, wonderful presentation. I was trying to keep track numerically of all the things you've been doing and have coming up. And I and for the rest of the of the people in attendance, we're talking full-time students in high school and middle school who are doing all this in addition to um their heavy school load. So, thank you for truly being the leaders. Yes, of course. Okay, here's my one question. The very last thing you said, if I wanted to follow you on TikTok, not that I've ever followed anybody on Tik Tok before my entire life, um SBYC 2929. Yes, correct.

What is the significance of 2929? That is a wonderful It's the address of city hall. Yes. Okay. I should know that. Yes. I should know that. Okay. Thank you. That's brilliant. Brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you, Satie. Thank you very much, Satie. We app always appreciate you council presentations.

Thank you. Have a good evening. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is item 3C1, quarterly economic development update, and assistant city manager Luis Scarbe and assistant to the city manager Angel Sierra are here to pro present this item. Good evening, Mayor Kavanagh and members of the city council. As part of tonight's economic development update, I'd like to share uh some recent business activity in the community. Uh as you can see on the screen, recently um we had the privilege of welcoming welcoming Portalos uh which is a casual Italian deli offering sandwiches, cured meats, cheeses, and prepared foods with a focus on traditional Italian flavors. Additionally, we welcomed California Fish Grill, a fast casual seafood restaurant featuring grilled fish, shrimp, tacos, bowls, and healthier uh dining options. And lastly, we had the privilege of welcoming Piccolola Tiny Homes, a a designer and builder of modern tiny homes offering compact, efficient housing solutions here in our community. I'd also like to highlight a few businesses that continue to move uh uh through the permitting process. Semi Valley Brewing Company is making progress. City staff is assisting wherever possible to make sure that they get to their u the finish line as are Bunker House uh Bunker Clubhouse and Pickle and Play. They're also engaged with the various agencies that require

review uh and they look to open in the near future as well. Whole Foods Market is also making its way through the uh tenant improvement process and uh hopefully this will this will open soon as well. Um but this will bring another grocery option for residents here in town. which is expanding into seami valley have two locations in the San Frernando Valley and they'll be uh expanding here into town and they're going to be offering authentic Mexican food here uh near the poo loco site. Raising Canes also has submitted their application and is uh currently under review and uh lastly as you can see on the screen uh IHOP the existing IHOP location here in town is being repositioned into a dual branded concept uh with Applebees. So they'll be uh introducing this new dining option format in the city which are very few in the state actually. So overall these projects reflect continued momentum and confidence in Seami Valley as a place to invest and do business. And uh in the first quarter of 2026 we did see uh 260 business tax certificates issued. uh based on available data uh quarter uh quarter 4 data uh regional employ un unemployment rates continue to show uh overall improvement um I will note that there is no October 2025 data because there was a p uh pausing collection of data uh during the um the government shutdown um but semi valley continued to stand out with unemployment uh decreasing from 4.2% 2% in November to 3.9% in December. Uh maintaining the lowest rate amongst uh jurisdictions and outperforming both the county and the state. When we're looking at industrial vacancy rates across the region, uh Semi Valley does stand out with a 9.3% uh vacancy

rate, which it does remain higher than uh higher than both Ventur County and Los Angeles County. Um there are several factors that could be contributed to this elevated vacancy. That includes uh supply and demand where new and available space has outpaced tenant absorption uh in certain markets uh shifts in tenant demand um including business optimizing their space usage uh relocating or just delaying their uh leasing decisions due to economic uncertainty. Uh those are all things that could lead to potentially uh the temporary increases in vacancy.

So to help fill some of that vacant industrial space, we continue to actively promote Seamu Valley and really position ourselves as a safe and businessfriendly alternative to LA and the San Frernando Valley. A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to participate as a panelist at the LA Business Journal's uh event here uh held at Sea Sun. uh and in addition to write an op-ed piece for the inside the valley magazine uh highlighting Seami Valley as a pro business uh and our pro business approach and our businessfriendly uh city council. One of the things we're also working on that we're getting ready to launch as well is a new brand initiative specifically aimed uh for our economic development marketing purposes. Um, we've purposely taken a pause on updating some of our marketing material to wait uh till the new brand comes out so that we can update all of our materials at the same time. Uh, this is something that's not uncommon with other cities in terms of that are aggressive about economic development. Uh, we'll be doing the same. I I would tie it to really being a a brand extension of the city's logo, but really focusing on more on the business community to get the bu uh to get the word out there uh to our businesses and potential businesses. Um, Semi Valley saw strong sales tax performance in the third quarter of 2025. This is the the most recent uh or the most available data that we have uh with receipts increasing 8 18.6% compared to the same period in 2024. Uh this does reflect a solid 9% gain outperforming both Ventura County at 3.9% and the broader Southern California region. Uh the growth was driven largely by the city's business and industry sector which expanded 5.1% due to uh continued strength in in fulfillment centers, office supply and furniture spaces, uh computer and office equipment and light and heavy industrial activity.

Uh in the retail market, Semi Valley's four quarter 4 vacancy rate of 8.7 uh remains higher than Ventura County at 5.5 and LA County at 5.6. Uh again, vacancy rates are influenced by local conditions such as tenant turnover, shifts in consumer preferences towards e-commerce uh and mismatches between existing space and current retailer needs. Uh in addition, one contributing factor to vacancy rates uh are unfulfilled uh unfilled spaces and retail centers that are actively working to revitalize and reposition previously underutilized or underperforming spaces um such as you know Santa Susanna Plaza, Semi Valley Town Center. They're all working towards revitalization projects in those areas.

Now to help to fill in some of those retail vacancies, the city's currently working on a retail recruitment plan and strategy. Now, most people don't realize um the data and advanced analytics that most retailers use when uh when they're looking at selecting a new location. So, through this process, we're going to better understand um what our com consumer spending patterns are, demographics, psychoraphics, uh and and really make sure that we're matching and aggressively going after the retailers uh and fitting them in the spaces here that are currently available. Uh we've already started our um our outreach plan for the ICSC show that's going to be in May and setting up those meetings with potential retailers and developers to help gain some interest here for Semi Valley. Filming activity in quarter 1 2026 uh we hosted 28 production days with an estimated economic impact of approximately $500,000. And what that is is uh these figures represent the total impact to the community uh including money being spent at local businesses like restaurants, hotels, and gas stations. Uh this level of activity reflects continued interest from the film industry and highlights the city's growing role as a as a productionfriendly location. Uh this momentum, you know, is reflected in the variety of different productions that have filmed in Seami Valley recently. Uh that includes uh some of the the um productions that you see on the screen here. Uh includes uh The Paper, Apple TV's The Stick, um America uh the American Girls music video featuring Airy Styles, and uh commercial shoots for major retailers like Lowe's, Kohl's, and Tommy Jeans. Um, we also had recent media coverage which has further elevated Semi Valley's profile as a filming destination. Uh, in

addition to that uh to that segment uh on ABC News, um we were featured on KN&X News local or a radio station and a local ACORN article all highlighting the trend of productions looking outside of Los Angeles and choosing Semi Valley for its film friendly approach. Uh this vis visibility has also extended to regional discussions uh with Mayor Kavanaaugh recently participating in a panel focused on film and economic development sharing semi valley's experience and success in attracting production uh production activity here in town.

So this is one that we're really excited about. Um just just last week uh we received word that a prospect that we had been working with and trying to woo to the city uh had finally made the decision and chose Semi Valley for their new location. Um this is going to mean a substantial number of jobs uh for the community. Uh and it's also going to help fill an existing vacant space um and and repurpose that uh for a business use. So, uh, we can't say too much yet, but, uh, we hope that we'll be able to make a formal announcement with all of council and the community, uh, in the coming weeks, but it is going to be a very, um, a very good business partner and a great addition to the Seami Valley business community. So, with that, uh, Angel and I are happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. Just so you know, they won't tell us either. I tried. Any questions from um the dis council? Any compliments on what they've done? Council member Rhodess,

great job of the report. Um it is often said, especially during this political cycle, that Seami Valley has to do more to recruit businesses and get good jobs in here. Guess what? you you may not see it all the time but we are is a constant uh work in progress to uh get the right balance of of housing businesses traffic um transit transit um but um you guys are are killing it and um I so I only had one question um who's the um no okay all right

thank you and I I know I've personally talked to the the bunker house people and they were very appreciative and he was hoping to open any day now. So that that'll be good and I was glad to see that Whole Foods is continuing. Um I was in their parking lot on Saturday or last Wednesday waiting and I saw people coming in and out and I'm like that's a good sign something's going on. So good very glad to see that too. Any other questions? Great report gentlemen. Thank you very much. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is item 3C2, quarter quarterly Wrunk Canyon update presented by Jim Vaugh, partner at Procopio. Honorable mayor and city council members, good evening again. My name is Jim Vaughn with the Proopio Law Firm. We are the land use council for Wrunk Canyon. My partner Jordan Ferguson was here for the first quarterly update in December. Uh he and his wife uh gave birth to their second child last week, so he is otherwise occupied tonight and I am pinch hitting. So I will do the best I can to answer any questions you have. Good. The good news is, excuse me, the good news is that uh in close collaboration with uh city staff and the city attorney's office, we are making great progress, which you're about to see a few highlights of. That's just a copy of the start of the milestone table, but it shows what we'll be talking about. There's really three components. There's the first four estate lots, there's the senior housing component, and the senior rec center. That's item two. And then there is the remaining 21 estate lots that are going to have their own uh plan development permit. Okay. So for the first four

estate lots, you can see them there. The status is the grading permit was issued. The reertification well the grading was completed. The regrading uh that's today and uh the reertification uh was submitted earlier today as well. So, we're targeting building permit issuance April 1st. You'll see a rendering of the first two lots and the second two lots or homes. Okay. The senior community kind of see how that lays out. The status is we received administrative approval for the updated elevations in January. Uh the planning comments were received on January 8th and plan check comments in February. We are preparing responses and we will be resubmitting next month. These are on target for uh start of construction before the uh end of September as targeted. Same for the rec center. CUP administrative application was approved this January. First plan check comments have been received because those were submitted at risk. We're preparing responses and we'll be resubmitting with the condo uh comments uh next month. Plan development permit application for the remaining estate lots. Um the master plan set was again prepared at risk and submitted. So those plan check comments were received in February of this year. Uh we're preparing uh responses and those will be resubmitted next month with the uh overall PD application which of course has to be approved before the the plan check can be completed. Uh we met February 9th to review progress on the application responded March 5th with corrections. City immediately turned around their

next set of comments a few days later on March 10th and we resubmitted on March 19th. So again, working very closely and moving fast. Uh that either will be or has been deemed complete. Neighborhood council meeting is already scheduled for next month on April 21st. And the planning commission meeting has been scheduled for May 13th. So this is a couple months ahead actually of the schedule we set out last October. Here's just a few shots of where those estate lots are. Couple more slides. The project schedule again. The senior site administrative review was complete late last year. Uh the planning commission uh hearing for the remaining 21 estate lots. Don't know why it says approved. It will be approved we hope. Uh at the planning commission hearing on May 13th. Uh we expect the first building inspection on the estate lots in approximately May. uh the senior site construction expected to commence in September along with the rec center itself and uh we think that if all goes smoothly we'll have the first four state lots completed with uh certificates of occupancy or final permits by the end of September which is about three months before the target date. Last thing is just an update on the community at RL Canyon. As many know, there are still three streets that need to be completed. Buckbrush, Purple Sage, and Talbert. Um, great work on this as well. The public works department requested a third party review of the pavement sections themselves. That has been the site work has been completed. The reports are being finalized and those will be submitted next month. Same time frame for the geological review. The site work has been done. The reports are being completed and those will both be submitted next month. Soon as that is

reviewed and the city staff and Canyon agree on exactly the punch list of what needs to be completed, that work will be undertaken and completed. And that is the end of the update, but I'm happy to try to answer any questions you have. And if I can't answer them, I will make sure that we get back to city staff with answers quickly. Thank you. Are there any questions from council? Council member Rhodess. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh Mr. Vaughn, great pinch hitting. Well done.

Thank you. Um um I I'm going to speak for the entire council even though I'm not allowed. Um thank you for this report and uh it has been uh a great thing to have the partnership now that we're working together. Is there anything that um the city can be doing better to assist this progress? It looks like it's ahead of schedule. Can we go faster? Is it is there any hiccups from the city that we can deal with?

Good question. Um I don't really think so. I think that you know I'm sure just for our our team as well. We probably have people that maybe could have done something a day faster or two days faster. Maybe it's true for the city as well. I'm not sure. But I think the results speak for themselves that generally speaking, I think everyone's very pleased with how well this is going and we hope that continues. We're sort of past the starting line at this point, but we haven't put any homes up yet and we haven't started construction on the rec center and the senior condos. So, we really hope that over the next few months and the next two reports that we come in for, you're going to really see great progress on vertical construction and and completions out there. That's awesome. This pro this project's been going on since before Council Member Ayala was born. So,

thank you. Even I haven't been involved that long. Thank you for the report. Mayor Pro Tim Litster um echo the kudos. Thank you for the report. It is encouraging to see that deadlines are being made and even occasionally ahead of schedule which is great. Just a reminder, can you remind remind me how many senior condos are part of this plan and I'm maybe I should That's not fair, is it? That was not part of the report.

I knew this answer a year ago. I think it's 132, but let's see if I can find out. I don't I guess I'm asking as you as you dig that out just because it's it's important to the community and it's exciting that that there is u development being specifically targeted towards our senior population and and that it's actually getting plans checked and hopefully started I believe you said September but that's all right if you if you don't see in somehow I'm just seeing deadlines and targets deadines it's fine it's I know that it's it's sizable so anyway thank you again for your efforts we'll get that back to the council. Thank you very much. We're glad to see everything is ahead of schedule. Thank you. Thank you.

Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is item four, public statements. During this agenda item four, the city council will hear public statements from the first 10 persons who have submitted speaker cards. After the first 10 persons have spoken, subsequent persons who have submitted speaker cards will be called on to speak. under agenda item six, which is a continuation of agenda item four. Agenda items four and six are the times allotted for public statements on all items other than public hearings, appointments, andformational reports. In accordance with the protocols that were adopted in October 6, 2025, if 20 or more speaker cards were received, each speaker's time will be automatically reduced to two minutes each. We have received 43 speaker cards. Each speaker will have two minutes to speak. Persons addressing the city council are requested to state their name and community of residents for the record. Madame mayor, unless you have any comments, we can begin public statements.

Please proceed.

Thank you. I will call three speakers at a time so that you know who you follow. The first three speakers, Ben Davis, Dena Shaveck, and Steve Thompson. Good evening, mayor, council members, and city staff. My name is Ben Davis, president of Picola Tiny Homes here in Seami Valley. Thank you for your time tonight. Over the last several months, I've spoken to many of you about movable tiny homes as ADUs, not just as a housing concept, but as a practical opportunity for Semi Valley to lead with clarity, compassion, and common sense. Tonight, I'm not here simply to repeat the case. I'm here to help move it forward. In my hand, I have a packet that I will be giving to each of you. It includes a sample ordinance, an application checklist, examples of municipalities that have already approved movable tiny homes, and a letter from the president of the Tiny Home Industry Association. This is not an abstract idea. It is a workable policy path supported by real examples, real processes, and real precedent. I know this council cares deeply about serving the people of Seami Valley. You care about thoughtful planning, public safety, neighborhood character, and making decisions that move the city forward responsibly. This issue speaks directly to all of that. Movable tiny homes are not a shortcut around regulation. They can be clearly regulated, carefully reviewed, and responsibly implemented. What they offer is another housing option for residents looking for practical and dignified solutions. There has already been work done on this issue. Information has been gathered by city staff. examples exist, a framework is available. At this point, the question is not whether there is enough material to begin the conversation. The question is whether we are willing to bring that conversation

into public view and give it the consideration it deserves. So tonight, I ask that this be brought forward for discussion as an agenda item. This is exactly the kind of issue that deserves an open conversation about process, policy, and possibility, and about how Seami Valley can make forward progress while preserving what makes this city special. Thank you for your time, your service, and your consideration. Good evening. And I would like to express my support for allowing STRs to continue to operate in Seami Valley. STRs bring visitors who spend money in at local restaurants, grocery stores, and small businesses, adding valuable revenue to our local economy. STRs also support local jobs. Properties like ours rely on plumbers, house, pool cleaners, gardeners, etc. Our STRs uh helps create consistent work for them. Another benefit is consistent prop property management. Owners invest in cleaning, landscaping, repairs, and help keep homes in pristine condition, helping to maintain the neighborhood's appearance and property values. I would like to share a personal side. My dad is the homeowner of the STR. He is 87 years old and proudly served our country in the Navy as well as Ventura County Fire Department. He now lives in assisted living, which is very expensive. He earned too much money to qualify for VA assistance, but not enough to easily cover the rising cost of care. Since his home is paid off, we turned it into a short-term rental in June to help bridge the gap. It doesn't generate a large income, but it does help offset the care, the cost care to maintain and maintain some financial stability. We take great pride in how we operate our STR. The home is kept in pristine condition, and we maintain very strict rules. We also enforce quiet hours and maintain communication in his neigh uh uh quiet hours and no parties and

maintain communication with his neighbors so they can contact us immediately if a situation arise which we would in turn address immediately. In closing, STRs benefit our city. They help keep homes well-maintained, create jobs for local service providers, and bring visitors to support local businesses. Taking away an income source that helps a 60-year Seami Valley resident while also benefiting the community doesn't feel right. I ask that you consider the people behind this decision and the positive impact it does have on our community. Thank you so much. Hello, mayor and city council members. My name is Steve Thompson and I have been a short-term rental host here in Seami Valley for 5 years. During that time, I had extremely strict rules and never had a complaint. In fact, my neighbors compliment me regularly and sometimes rent my home for their extended families. Short-term rentals have been operating in Semi Valley for many years. During that time, there had been virtually no complaints from residents other than the poltergeist house and absolutely no negative impact on public safety or neighborhood character. A total ban is a very extreme response to a problem that doesn't exist here. There are very reasonable alternatives with the use of regulations that address concerns without eliminating a longstanding and peaceful use of property. Many homeowners rely on the ability to rent their homes or rooms some of the time. A ban will have real financial consequences for residents who have been doing nothing wrong. I am 71 years old and if there was a ban, I personally would lose my house and be forced to leave Semi Valley. That would be devastating for me. Thank you. And I ask

you to consider a balanced approach, regulation instead of ban. Mayor and city council members, please do not make your decision based on a handful of loud people screaming wolf because there is absolutely no wolf here. Thank you for your time. The next three speakers, Jim Lester, Bevon Abby, and we have um Ben Quuan Prrisk has a statement that will be read by Paul Cleet.

Honorable members of the city council, good evening. My name is Jim Lester and I'm a 22-year resident of Seami Valley, a neighbor, a parent, and a patriotic citizen just like all of you. I am here to speak on behalf of the residents of Semi Valley who would like to see in God we trust displayed in our city. As we gather here with just a few few short months until July 4th, we stand at the heart of America's semi-quincentennial, the 250th anniversary of our nation's birth. This nationwide celebration calls communities to reflect on our founding ideals, honor the contributions of all Americans, and envision a brighter future. This moment invites us all to participate. The Declaration of Independence invokes God four times, anchoring our independence in eternal truths. First, the laws of nature and nature's God. Second, as creator, third, as supreme judge of the world. And finally, as divine providence. In this semi-quincentennial year, as the nation recommmits to our founding principles, let us join cities like Anaheim, Bakersfield, and Fresno by displaying in God we trust, our official national motto, prominently in our council chamber and over the entrance to city hall. This would powerfully echo the spirit of our founding. Last week, I sent all of you an email regarding some of the details for this project, but tonight I'd like to focus on why the national motto. First, it reminds us of a moral order beyond human invention. Second, it affirms that government is not the source of our rights, but it exists to secure them. If rights came from government rather than God, they could be taken away. They would not be unalienable. Third, it reminds us that there is a judge to whom we all must answer, whether as citizens or elected officials. Fourth, it gives us hope. In this 250ear experiment in self-government under God, we are not alone. We appeal to the same providence our founders invoked. Upholding this motto aligns with the America 250 call

to celebrate our heritage, reflect on enduring values, and inspire future generations. I'm sorry. Sure. Your time is now up. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, esteemed members of the city council. My husband and I have been serving the hospitality community through host hosting and co-hosting short-term rentals since 2016. It's been an amazing opportunity to not only um keep families in our homes, but to help other people have their homes be either used when they're not there or um to help them save their homes when they are not able to afford them without rental income. One of my favorite things about renting running short-term rentals is providing families with safe, clean, and homebased experiences for their travel. Many people come for celebration, loss, weddings, graduations, and they want to be together as a family. They don't want to stay in a hotel and have to meet at a restaurant in order to spend time together. They want to play games. They want to spend time outside. They don't want to feel like they're trapped in a box. We often ask what our rentals provide for those families and they say words like relaxing, peace, community, quality. Um, short-term rental is also now a part of the vernacular of today's culture. Many people do not want to stay in hotels. They want to stay somewhere unique. They look for an opportunity to stay somewhere fun and that matches their personality. We recently went to an Airbnb conference at uh Sofi Stadium that was all in preparation for the FIFA World Cup and they were talking about how just in the LA area there's going to be over $61 million worth of income through people staying in short-term rentals. Um I also want to echo the fact

that we provide job opportunities. We um handymen, cleaners, the houses are in pristine condition all the time. And I'd like to also offer a rebuttal for people that say that businesses should be only business districts. There are many homes in Semi Valley that h people have permits to have their Sorry, your time is now up. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Good evening, uh, Honorable Mayor Kavanagh and council members. My name is Paul Sllay. I'm here representing Bingham Quinn Prrisk who's standing here with me. Uh Bingham is a homeowner at 1140 Elmonte uh Drive and the owner of Herbal Therapy Wellness Center here in Seami Valley. Because she's uncomfortable speaking in English, I'm here um reading her statement on her behalf. I Binguin Quinn Presul permanent resident and I am deeply invested in the future of Seami Valley. This past December, I purchased a brand new construction home on El Elmonte Drive, which included an ADU. I'm an outside I'm not an outside investor. I'm a resident and a stakeholder who is personally invested in preserving the long-term character, safety, and quality of my neighborhood. When I purchased my home, my financial plan relied on using my ADU as a rental to supplement my income and responsibly manage my mortgage. To address the city's concern regarding noise and nuisances, I manage my property with the same professional rigor that I apply to my business. My screening process includes I limit occupancy to two guests at all times, eliminating the risk of large gatherings. I require governmentissued identification from every guest. and I enforce quiet hours beginning at 900 pm with a zero tolerance policy for outdoor noise. As someone who employs people and serves this community throughout my business here in Seami Valley, I ask that the council choose regulation over a total ban. A blanket ban does not distinguish between absentee operators and homeowners who reside at the property and actively manage their rental and maintain strict uh standards.

Please allow responsible homeowners who reside on the property to rent their own unit with the with this level of care. Your time is up. Thank you. No problem.

The next three speakers, Anthony Een, James McGillis, and Alin Een. March Madness. My name is Anthony Een, a resident of Semi Valley. At the end of the last city council meeting, a council member insisted that now they want a survey of the public on short-term rentals. They say they fear that people who support a ban are trying to create a false narrative. Politicians resort to lies and personal attacks when they can't defend defend their position with facts. The facts are clear. This person has had more time has had more than enough time to ascertain public opinion on the subject. This individual from day one has been against a ban of short-term rentals. This person has not fairly considered a ban. If they believe there wasn't enough public opinion to begin with, why did they proceed with a draft ordinance to regulate? How can they claim there isn't enough for a ban? From November 18th, 2024 to March 9th, 2026, if this person truly felt they needed additional public opinion, they had 1 year, 3 months, and 22 days, which is 68 weeks in a day, which would be 477 calendar days to get public opinion. The only public opinion they reluctantly agreed to get after public pressure and advice from the city attorney at the December 15th, 2025 meeting was that of the neighborhood councils. They choose to ignore and not acknowledge those decisions. This motion is being made now because of the resulting decisions of the neighborhood councils and planning commission. Both bodies unanimously

rejected the ordinance. They both recommended a city-wide ban. For this person to now claim they care about public opinion is a charade. Council members, follow the reliable recommendations you have received from your neighborhood councils and planning commission. Direct staff to drop an ordinance to ban STRs. Mayor Kavanaaugh, members of the city council and staff. I'm James McGillis, a resident of the Seami Valley at the March 9th, 2026 city council meeting. Agenda item four, five community members spoke in favor of a ban on short-term rentals. During the agenda item 4A, the time reserved for council members to speak on that subject back to us. No one spoke. During agenda item 10B, the time set aside for city council members to request items to be placed on a future city council agenda. One council member spoke in summary. He said, "I fear that we are hearing from a very loud three to 10 people framing this in such a way as to create a false narrative. I'd like this survey to be completed by the time the staff report for short-term rentals returns." In 2020 2019, the city of Seami Valley broke with its oral traditions and adopted a code of ethics and conduct designed to ensure public trust requiring officials to act with integrity, impartiality, and fairness. Members of the public and council members shall refrain from abuse of conduct, personal charges or verbal attacks upon the character or motives of council members or the public. At the March 9 meeting, there were several breaches of code of ethics and conduct. First, one council member went out of order, shifting the comments of our public comments back to number item 10B, imputing the motives and veracity of three to 10 unnamed people. Second, regarding the desire for a public survey, the same council member failed to make an actual motion. The motion was not restated to the public, thus precipitating an unknown staff action regarding a secretive survey. There is no council discussion on that subject.

No, on the non-motion, there was no vote on the non-motion. By verbally criticizing three to 10 unnamed members of the public during item 10b rather than 4A, that council member opened a new hearing regarding short-term rentals. when the public was not allowed to comment. That new hearing violated California's open meeting law known as the Brown Act. The city council has vacated its 2019 code of ethics conduct and has reverted to its old to oral traditions. This council needs to reassert its own rules. Robert's rules of order or Rosen Rosenberg's rules of order. Without enactment, we will not have

Thank you. Your time is up. Hi, I'm Alen Een. I'm concerned that that despite a clear unanimous no to legalizing and regulating short-term rentals from all the neighborhood councils and the planning commission, at least two members of this council continue to propagate a false narrative, perhaps a desperate one, that there is no clear message from our city and its residents. While informing and educating SEMI residents about short-term rentals, we circulated petitions at various community events and neighborhoods. There were over 430 residents who signed to ban STRs. They all said no to legalizing and regulating. When people say no, it actually means no. Unfortunately, several members of this council do not appear to understand the meaning of no, or they refuse to accept a decision that does not align with their personal view or position. At least two members of this council were totally indifferent to surveying and hearing from the residents of Seami, something I suggested in my council address on December 1st, 2025. But now they're frantically seeking a way to justify forcing their views on the community, which has rejected their ideas in every vote allowed so far. If you actually want to hear the public what they want, this council should put STRs directly on the ballot in November. On your websites, one of you describes yourself as being trusted, transparent, selfless, and putting the needs of people first. Really? Another council

member says they represent fairness to residents and taxpayers. A third says they are all in for improving people's quality of life in Seami. And a fourth member says they will be doing the work, doing what's right, and doing it with heart. Do these phrases sound familiar to any of you? It is time for each of you to live up to your stated values. As I said before, just say no to SDR. Thank you. Your time is up. The 10th speaker is Rosa Gomez.

Hi. Good uh good evening mayor and council members. I'm Rosa Gomez. I'm resident from Sime Valley. I'm Airbnb cleaner. Uh, and this is an income to my family and helps me to drop off my kids to school and go and do my job and pick them up. And uh, as a as a an Airbnb cleaner, sorry, I'm a little nervous. Uh, I noticed that that that they don't cook. They they stay there and everything is nice. everything is good. So, and they don't they don't cook the the oven and the stove is is clean. What that means that they're going it outside and and that helps our community to um to create a a CB valley economy. So, and and this helped me a lot with in my income. So that's all.

Thank you. Thank you.

We will continue public hearings after the uh public hearing. I mean public statements after the public hearing. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is public hearings. This is a time for testimony on public hearings on the consideration of matters as presented on this agenda. that the records show that due notice was given as required by law and an affidavit to this effect is on file in the office of the city clerk. All comments submitted by email have already been provided to the city council and will be record. However, they they will not be read by the city clerk this evening. Madam city clerk, we skipped item 4 a the council member response. We were going to Are we waiting until after 6A? We're going to continue to 6A.

Yes. All comments submitted by email have already been provided to the city council and will be made part of the record. However, they will not be read by the city clerk this evening. Speakers will be called on in the order in which a car was submitted to speak for this public testimony item five for a period and number within 5 minutes each. Persons addressing the city council are requested to state their name and community residence for the record. Comments shall be limited to matters relevant to the item on the agenda and may be ruled out of order if comments are unrelated to the item. The reports of city staff relating to these matters shall be made part of the record of this meeting. If you challenge in court any of the city council decisions made here tonight, you may be limited to raising only those issues you or someone else raised at this public hearing. The time within which judicial review must be sought is governed by California Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.6. Item 5A, a public hearing to consider adoption.

Madam clerk, let me recuse myself before we go any further. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Public hearing item 5A. A public hearing to consider adoption of a resolution approving the issuance of revenue bonds by the California Municipal Finance Author Authority to finance or refinance the acquisition, construction, improvement, and equip equipping of multifamily rental housing project located at 2267 and 2295 Tapo Street, Semi Valley, California. The reading of the resolution is as follows. Resolution number 2026-06, the resolution approving the issuance of exempt facility bonds for a qualified residential rental project by the authority for the purpose of financing or refinancing the acquisition, rehabilitation, and improvement of certain facilities for the benefit of Semi Valley Pacific Associates to LP and assistant to the city manager Angel Sierra is presenting this item.

Thank you. Before we begin, um, are there any exparte communications to report? Uh, thank you. Staff may begin with the oral report on this matter.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tam Litster and members of the city council. We are here this evening to conduct a public hearing pursuant to the Federal Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act or TERA. Pursuant to section 147F of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, TER requires that a public hearing be held by the governing body of the jurisdiction in which a project to be financed with taxexempt financing is located and that the governing body approved the proposed financing. In accordance with those requirements, the city published a notice of public hearing in the Ventura County Star on March 12 March 11th, 2026. Tonight for your consideration is resolution 2026-06, a request to approve the issuance of revenue bonds by California Municipal Finance Authority or CMFA. The city joined the CMFA in March 2014 through adoption of a resol adoption of resolution number 2014-11 to support economic, cultural, and community development uh through access to bond financing programs. On June 25th, 2025, the city received a planned development permit application from AMG and Associates LLC on behalf of Semi Valley Pacific Associates for a proposed 220 uh 240 unit affordable housing project located at 2267 and 2295 Tapo Street. The applicant has asked that CMFA be the issuer of taxexempt financing in the amount not to exceed $60 million of taxexempt revenue bonds to finance or refinance the acquisition, construction, improvement, and equipment uh equipping of a multifamily rental housing project. The action before the city council tonight is to conduct the required public hearing and consider adoption of a resolution approving the

issuance of the bonds by CMFA. This action is solely for TERA compliance and does not constitute approval of the project itself which which will still be subject to the city's standard review and approval process. The debt to be issued by the CMFA will be the sole responsibility of the borrower and the city will have no financial or legal obligation or responsibilities regarding the repayment of the debt. All financing documents will carry disclaimers that the loan is not an obligation of the city. The city will also bear no costs in the issuance of the proposed debt. This is a private loan with borrower uh with the borrower and the bank. This concludes staff report and I'm available for any questions as are members of the CMFA and the applicant team.

Thank you. Um, are there any questions of staff from city council members? And I don't have the buttons that she does, so please feel free to speak up. Oh, yes. Council member. Thank you for for the report. I just want everyone to you to clarify for everyone because when we hear bond sometimes we think we're going to have to pay it back. So can you uh clarify who's issuing the bond and who is responsible for then paying the bond.

So so this and I would welcome CMFA if they'd like to contribute to this uh response. Jared. Uh, but the CMFA will be the issuer of the bond and, uh, yeah, the responsible party for ensuring that that bond gets paid. Yes. Good evening. My name is Jared Suzuki with the California Municipal Finance Authority. We are the bond issuer on this transaction. And as Angel stated correctly, the developer of the project will be responsible for the repayment of the bonds. the city has no legal or financial obligation or responsibility regarding the repayment of the debt.

And then in the report it talks about um the city receiving some money from this. How do we receive money back? So that's part of the fee schedules uh that CMFA has. Uh they just they they indicate that the the CMFA shares 25% of all issuance fees and so that's based on whatever the the issue amount is. So right now it's a it's an approximation that could change. That that's exactly correct. As part of our closing fees and since the city of Semi Valley is a member of our JPA, uh we share 25% of the closing the issuance fees with the city and it's currently an approximation. Um but we'll it'll be finalized once we get closer to closing on the bonds.

Okay. And then the last thing is the the just to clarify that tonight we're just um approving the bond issuance, nothing to do with the project. That's correct. This is solely regarding the financing of the tax ex the issuing of the tax exempt bonds. That's correct. Very good. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Yes, Council Member Rhodess.

Thank you, Mayor Prom and Jared. Thank you for being here. It actually lends this um what qualifies this project um for TERA versus anybody that wants to build a a building in Seami Valley. So for this type of affordable housing project, there is an extensive application process where the developer applies for taxexempt bond allocation from the state as well as an award of 4% tax credits. This organization is called SIDLAC, the California debt limit allocation committee. On its on its committee sits representatives of the state treasurer, governor and controller. So this is a highly competitive process. Um and this project was deemed high enough to win an award and this continuing on this process is going through the city and holding a TER hearing.

Thank you. And um and this project is basically in the running at all is because of the uh affordable component of the project. Correct. This Yeah, correct. So the u has this developer done other projects in the city um in Semi Valley or Yes. Yes. Yeah. Um and um it's my understanding that in that project they took several allowances for density bonuses and affordability. I I don't have the information in front of me.

Um what the the developer is here to to speak if um that developer didn't want to speak the last time that they were uh here presenting a project. So Oh, you like that'd be great. Well, and as a reminder, we're not approving the project tonight. just the fin I'm just trying to understand how we're getting to the loan. Hi, I'm Amanda Lock with AMG and Associates. Um, so your question was about the affordability levels of the project. Is that right? Um, well, is that you're in the qualification process uh for TERA because you have affordability and you're taking advantage of that and have taken advantage of the density bonuses in the

correct. Yeah, it's 100% affordable. So, um, that grants us use of TERA and the allowances you speak of.

Excellent. Um I'm if I if there was a way um I would be against uh the city participating in uh the issuance of these bonds for this project, not for the bonds in general because we need affordable housing. Um we have a track record unfortunately with um this particular developer creating a project that didn't participate in collaboration with the city and we ended up with one that I hear of every single day that I am on council. Why did I let that happen? And the answer is we can't say no. Um so the project itself can go forward. I'm not sure why um we would want to participate in getting cheaper money uh for the developer to do that. I've also been advised that we probably can't say no because the lawsuit would come out and then we would end up having to say yes again. So, I just wanted it to be out there on the record that um uh we're doing our best uh to look out for Seami Valley. And um and with that, I don't have any further questions.

Thank you. Um any other questions? I actually Thank you. Appreciate it. I actually have one if that just to take it back to the um effect for the city. Does this um passage of this bond does it in any way affect our bonding limits or personal bonding authority? Does it count towards what for instance if the city wanted to go out and and um seek a bond? Does this count towards it? Because obviously there's a there's a total that can I I don't believe it does. I can certainly um get back to you on that, but um as far as I'm concerned or my knowledge, I don't believe it'll affect our ability to

I I would tend to agree with uh Mr. Sierra because this isn't a bond that the city would be responsible for repaying, but we can of course confirm that. Okay. Well, thank you. Yes, council member. If I know that we cannot not approve the project itself, but if we do not approve the bond, what happens? The project could still go forward. It just wouldn't have tax exempt bonds attached to it. So, the developer would have to actually proceed with the project just with without the the tax exempt bonds. is

and and I just want to clarify that what you're approving is the issuance of the taxexempt status, right? So that is the focus and if you that the idea behind it all is that um tax exempt status results in the loss of revenue for the federal government and rather than the federal government making that determination because it's going to have some local benefit. They've decided that the local entity should have some sort of say and ensure that there's some kind of public benefit to the local entity, which is why they have this hearing under the IRC code. So really, what you're doing is ensuring as part of any findings you would make, and if you decided to deny it, you would have to make some kind of finding that it wouldn't have a public benefit. Um, which given the fact that they mentioned affordable housing would seem um problematic to do. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? I'm willing to make a motion. Um, we're not quite there yet. Um, sorry. Um, at this time, I'd like to open the hearing for anyone in the city council chambers wishing to be heard on this matter. Do we have any public statements,

Madame Pro Tim? Yes. Uh, we do have one public speak uh speaker, James Greenfield. Good evening, Mayor Prom Council. Thank you, Council Member Rhodess, for your comments and obviously you know my my feelings. Um, this should be a no. This should be a no to high density housing. We don't need that in our community. That's not the kind of community we have, nor do we need the SDRs. Um, I We need to not encourage bad projects and we've seen what this developer has done and we need to not bypass planning and approval and legislate away local control when they can bypass planning and push their push their highdensity projects on us and we have no control over. We need to say no to this. And with all due respect, developer, go find another community to exploit and destroy. These kind of projects do not belong in Seami Valley. It's what what makes Seami Valley a place that we want to live and not a place to flee. And so we need to protect our community and we're counting on you to do that. So, thank you, councel.

Madame Mayor Pro Tim, that was the only public testimony. Thank you. Does staff desire to respond to any to the the speaker? Okay. No response. Thank you. Um the hearing is now closed unless there are further questions or comments. So I can now entertain a motion.

Right. While I emphasize with the speaker's comment, I've been through this rodeo before and it costs our city money. I move that the city council adopt resolution number 26-06 approving the issuance of revenue bonds by the California Municipal Finance Authority in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed $60 million for the benefit of Semi Valley Pacific Associates 2LP to provide the for the financing or refinancing of the acquisition construction improvement and equipping of the Tapo Street Apartments. Is there a second? I will second it then. So, it's been moved and seconded. Call for a vote. The motion passes with council member Ayala voting no and mayor Kavanaaugh recused. Thank you. We can proceed to the next item and invite Mayor Kavanaaugh back. Madame Mayor and members of city council, next on the agenda is item six, public statements. During this agenda item six, the council will hear public statements from persons who have previously submitted speaker cards and did not speak under agenda item four. Speakers will be called in in the order in which the car was submitted to speak for this public statements item item six for no more than two minutes each. Persons addressing the city council are

requested to state the name and community residence for the record. Again, I will call three speakers at a time so you know who you follow. Jay's Mystery, Richard Hollowman, and Ellen Schneed.

Good evening, council members. My name is Jay's Mystery. I also uh live and have been residing in Semi Valley for plus 25 years. My girls grew up here and we love living in Semi Valley. I accidentally came to own an ADU which I built for my father. Unfortunately, due to CO, he decided not to live there and not to move. So, the property sat there empty. In the meantime, my girls decided, "Dad, why don't you turn this into a rental?" Too many horror stories. So, we decided against the idea. So, my daughter, she said, "Dad, how about Airbnb STRs?" I said, "You know what? I don't even know what one is." So, just during COVID, she decided to take it upon herself to turn this property into an STR. And I was thinking to myself, who wants to come and visit Sydney Valley apart from the Reagan Library and the beautiful areas as you can see. I thought there's no opportunity for anyone to come and visit. But behold, there's people that reside in Sydney Valley who've moved out and they come back to visit their family and friends. And I was very surprised because every weekend we'd have people coming from all across the country and they would stay in RSTR and I made so many friends across the US a including the world from Russia from Japan from and they're bringing their kids here to go to school at um properties in I mean um schools in Thousand Oaks and other areas. So slowly but surely I built a community within my STR that people come to stay to bring their kids. Now one fundamental um

reason I'm here is to support my uh STR um um family who are also concerned. Thank you sir. I'm sorry your two minutes are up. It goes very fast doesn't it? Doesn't it? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Richard Holman, Ellen Schneed. The next three speakers, Robert Lickens, Matthew Abby, and Martin Ericson. Hi. Uh, good evening council members and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm Robert Lyens. I've hosted uh Airbnb STR for 5 years. Um, it's second guess an ADU on my property. I have this chat GPT that we put together, but all these guys have spoken so well and it's just duplicating some of the stuff. So, I'm just going to say what cool things we've been able to do STR. One of the big things and I think a lot of people don't want STRs is because we're taking a house away from potentially somebody else buying that house. Well, that's not a lot of the scenario isn't that. You know, we share our home when we're not there. We share the extra house to people that are visiting for baseball leagues, little leagues, softball. We do all kinds of hosting events, Bible studies, uh um CLU come over instead of staying at a hotel, they get to have their family reunion at our place. Just really cool stuff that we get to do. We have housekeepers and landscapers that we couldn't afford to have. Um but we can because we have a little bit of revenue from the STR. Um, yeah, just it's it's a pretty cool thing we do and it just makes our house welcome to a lot

of other people that get to come and visit. So, thank you.

All right. Good evening, council. Uh, my name is Matthew Abby and I'm here to express my support for short-term rentals. I've served and supported the people of Semi Valley for 23 years. Teaching at Semi Valley High School and Santa Susanna High School. Now I'm looking for Semi Valley to support me by supporting short-term rentals. I no longer teach, but instead run short-term rentals for owners here as my sole source of income. And it significantly changed my life for the better. I've been running short-term rentals for 10 years now. I think data is important when it comes to decisions that affect people for decades to come. I have over 2,000 reviews to sort to support short-term rentals and they're all publicly verifiable. I've hosted over 12,000 people. I've hosted approximately 20,000 nights and I've only ever had one issue on one night and in 45 minutes the problem was resolved. So, these issues are not widespread. I have an owner who needs short-term rental income to keep his house. The family built the home a 100 years ago. With California's new step up in basis on a home that's passed down through inheritance, he now owes 40,000 a year just to pay his property taxes. So renting short-term is the only feasible way that he can keep that in the family. I've helped another Semi Valley family keep their home for a year when they had to leave work, leave the area for work, but needed to return once every four weeks. Taking a long-term tenant would not allow for the flexibility to do this as the home would be occupied full-time and they needed the income to support them when they were out of the area. I'm available to you all this the city anytime because this is what I do full-time is take care of the people of this community as I have done my entire career. Um the rules that you guys have already put in place that are out there are very um they make a lot of sense. Get a permit occupancy limits of two people per bedroom plus two. quiet hours that are tighter than the actual quiet hours of nine to eight, no events. And then there's a lot of income too that you guys can take in as well just by setting up directly with Airbnb VBO to have the top sent directly to the city among some other things. Thank you for

your time.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Kavanagh, Mayor Pro Tim Listister, and city manager Arbrite. My name is Martin Ericson. I'm the executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, and it's an honor to be back here, the city of Seami Valley. I'm here for a dual purpose tonight. The first is to share with you relatively hot off the presses and hopefully in front of you now our annual community impact report for the transportation commission. I also have left copies in the front. Um BCTC as many of you know is the county's transportation commission. I report to a board of 17 members which include the five county supervisors and a mayor or council member from each of the 10 cities and also two public members. Um, city of Seami Valley has been aly represented by council member Mike Judge for for many years and I want to personally thank him for serving as our chair last year which was a banner year for VCTC not only in terms of the grants we received but for the services we continued to provide for all of Ventura County's residents which include our youth ride free program, our college ride program. Both those programs allow any college student and any youth in Ventura County to ride any transit bus for free. Council member Judge also serves as the chair of the transportation committee for the Southern California Association of Governments representing VCTC. SKAG is our MOO. that stands for our metropolitan planning organization and it represents the six counties to our south uh over 20 million people or nearly 20 million people. So, it's a key partnership we have for regional

transportation planning and many of the critical grants we get and I want to thank him for his service as chair and continued service on the commission. Again, we honored to be here and continue the great partnership we have with you, your staff, and your entire council. Thank you.

The next three speakers, Heather Moss, Sarah Wixski, and Linda Bosley. Good evening everyone. I'm Heather Moss, longtime Seammy Valley resident and member of the business community. After a year and a half of city discussion and over seven months of multi-level review on the issue of short-term rentals, Seami Valley's four neighborhood councils and the city's planning commission overwhelmingly voted to recommend a ban on STRs. Short-term rentals threaten the stability of our neighborhoods and are detrimental to our city. Seami's slippery STR umbrella has reached a scale and density worse than anticipated or previously discussed here. About a mile from here, a modest 1960s singlestory single family home and its entire lot now operates as a six to seven unit Airbnb for up to 24 transient lodgers daily. The various units were carved out through peace mill largely unpermitted modifications. Now with a halfozen kitchens, numerous bathrooms, multiple laundry areas, deliberately contrary to a lawful single family home, the property was altered without all required city building or safety permits, yet is openly advertising and booking through Airbnb and Verbbo with no inspections and no code compliance verification, packing and lodgers far beyond what is lawful or safe. It's the new breed of unregulated short-term rental slum lords right here in our city. This is the extreme greed some STR operators pursue, turning homes into highdensity, multi-unit short-term rentals for quick profit and blatant density abuse with a constant stream of non-resident transient lodgers. These are not mom and pops renting out a room

for a few nights a month to make ends meet. Most are investor-owned properties charging inflated nightly rates. Whether carved up or whole, the home is a full-time transient lodging business on a single family zone residential street. They don't belong here. Please vote to ban short-term residential rentals citywide. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Kavanaaugh, city council, city staff. My name is Sarah Weski, and I'm going to invite anyone who hasn't already joined us up here who has a poster to come join us. Um, what you see behind me is a memorial to everyone who was killed by ICE in 2025. So there were 31 people not including Haime Alanise Garcia and others who died outside of detention centers. I spent many hours over three heartbreaking days researching the stories of each person shown here and many of them did not have much information outside of their death. Each person represented here was a lived a life had family, friends, neighbors, co-workers who dis who honor their memory, and each person up here deserves their story told. I'm also going to read the names of the 13 people who have been killed so far in 2026. I apologize for any misprononunciations. I'm doing my best. Royer Perez Jimenez, Muhammad Nazir, Pakawal, Peshan, Carneas, Najafari, Emanuel Clifford, Damas, Alberto Gutierrez, Reyes, Hyro Garcia Hernandez, Lor Sim, Alex Prey, Hera Sanchez,

Dominguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Renee Nicole Good, Parade de La belion Cruz Luis Gustavo Nunes Cares Heraldo Lunas Compos Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Linda Bosley. Tonight, I am speaking on behalf of the coalition made up of residents, management, and owners of Villa Royal Mobile Home Park, as well as local business owners on West Los Angeles Avenue. Our coalition deeply appreciates the city's actions in early January to clean up the homeless encampments adjacent to our homes and businesses. I would like to update the city council on happenings since the cleanup. Sergeant Johnson attended our homeowners meeting on January 27. He explained that CMI police and sheriff's department will visit the former encampment sites regularly. The no trespass order will be enforced if individuals return to the site. As of March 4, a small group of residents from Villa Deloyo walked approximately three miles of the former homeless encampments. We did not see anyone living there. However, we did encounter an individual named Connie on the banks of the Aoyo. Connie explained to us that she is there doing her laundry and bathing. She said she visits the area every day. Connie stated that she now lives with a large group of the former residents of the encampment outside of the Oak Park County Park area. During our walk, we observed a lot of debris on the banks of the Aoyo, as well as utility and shopping carts and recent tracks from bicycles and carts. As we walked along Los Angeles Avenue, we observed appliances and other trash dumped on city property a few feet from the sidewalk near the no dumping signs that are posted. Our coalition would like to ask the city about the possibility of putting fencing along the sidewalk from city limit sign to the first bit business at 900 West Los Angeles Avenue to prevent dumping of trash and hazardous items. It would also

act as a deter. Thank you. I'm sorry your time is up. Thank you. We'll have the city man. You can reach out to the city manager's office. Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers, Gregory Gonzalez, Michael Shaw, and James Greenfield.

Good evening, your honor. Council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Gregory Gonzalez. I've been a uh Semi Valley resident for 50 years or more than more than 50 years. The past five or six years, my wife and I have run an Airbnb out of a guest house on our property. We have yet to have we've had over two 250 guests that we have yet to have a single negative incident. Our guests are respectful, responsible people like you and I. They're here visiting grandchildren, attending graduations, weddings. Nothing out of the ordinary. Regular people doing regular things. and invariably they utilize or or patronize our businesses, our our restaurants and so forth. And to my knowledge, there's been no meaningful issues tied to short-term rentals here in CB. Um, not even at the so-called polter poltergeist house. I suppose a rogue element is possible anywhere under any circumstances, but we have yet to experience that and so has this city. So the question becomes, are we creating new restrictions based on real problems or on hypothetical concerns? For many of us, hosting isn't just extra income. I mean, we we wouldn't share our home with with strangers for no reason if we didn't if we didn't think there was a possibility for needing more funds in the future. Without it, some of the longtime residents may be forced to leave California. And we all know people who have left California for financial reasons. For me, that would mean leaving my 90-year-old father, a couple of dozen nieces and nephews, seven siblings, and so forth, and a great great nephew who's going to be born any minute. I grew up here. I served in the Air Force. I came out, me and my wife bought our first home, and we bought our second home. We raised all four of our children here. It would be a shame for us to have be forced out for non-existent reasons. We're not ask We are not asking for special treatment. Please don't take this away from us. Do not punish responsible residents for problems that don't exist or for what actually are

imaginary crimes. Thank you for your consideration. Good evening all. How are we today? Some exciting times. We We have a new bicycle master plan. I I That was an accomplishment. We did something. Um also, you know, this last Saturday, uh speaking as my yes advisory board, we had a great great job fair over at the library. Uh if you missed it, too bad. Um but it was good. And uh also, you know, we're still looking for neighborhood counsel for anybody behind me. Um we need everybody to be involved and come down here and participate just like we're all doing tonight. So, that's great to see. Um next month, you know, we're going to have a roundup festival. A lot of good things happening. We got our our film festival coming in September. But um what I wanted to talk about mostly, remember I gave you guys this book, okay? Well, I I did it for a reason. Um what was it? Three, four weeks we heard all these brave young kids come up here and testify about the racism in our city schools. And it was it was it was heartbreaking to listen to that testimony. And what I'm asking this council to do now is let's do something about it. Let's maybe put it on the agenda to find out are we going to put together a commission. We have to

address it. So, um that's what my ask is for tonight is that we don't sweep it under the carpet. We do give it the serious attention it deserves. We don't need to see any more kids beat up. We don't need to hear about all the horrible things that are involved with what goes on with racism. All we need to do is have the political will to do something. Thanks you guys. Good evening again, council. Um, couple things. ST str I know I don't like living next to one and I don't like to have to fight for parking in my residential neighborhood and see it converted residential property into commercial properties. We have zoning and those things belong where they belong and possibly encourage a developer to build a hotel. We've got some appropriate places for them. Disappointed on your vote. Quite quite discouraging. What I really wanted to talk about was the we're approaching our 250 year anniversary for our country and we've seen over the last 75 years an effort to remove God from the public square much to our detriment. And it it is time to reset our foundational cornerstones for our republic so we can make it another 250 years. And I would encourage a discussion item for the placement of our national motto in here. In God we trust. It'd be appropriate to have the ten commandments displayed as in the past and consider opening your pray meetings with prayer just as the US Senate and

Congress does for every session. So this would be fitting as our president his plans to rededicate our nation at the 250 year celebration to to one nation under God. So I hope you consider a discussion item for that. Thank you.

Thank you. The next three speakers, RPM man, Carla, and Todd Taylor. Good evening. My name is Root Man. I'm a law student and a lifelong Seami Valley resident. Being a law student this last year has left me at a loss for words. Seeing law enforcement running around the streets in my very own hometown, but all over the country um and acting in manners that are not according to the law has been very disheartening to me. Um as I don't feel like I can do anything about it. Um at least not yet. Um I've been trying my best. The last two weeks in Semi Valley um have been hard. ICE has been running around the streets with impunity terrorizing the citizens. Two weeks ago, in a residential neighborhood, um ICE officers rammed into a vehicle um of a well-known activist named Leo Martinez, and it was the second time that they had targeted him specifically. Now, I don't know about you, but that's terrifying to me. Additionally, last week, two United States citizen children were taken on their way to Burlwood Elementary with their mother.

No one. No parent should be afraid to take their child to school in the morning. No one. The Seami Valley City Council needs to stand up and protect all of its citizens from this from ICE terrorizing all of us. No one wants to go missing. Nobody wants to see and no teacher wants to look out in the morning and see little chairs with nobody in them. I implore you to stand up and I implore the Semi Valley Police Department to do better and stop colluding with ICE. Thank you.

Thank you. DEAR AMERICA, OUR administration has failed. They passed laws against our people, took away our rights and our freedom, and still expect to be hailed. Chalice. Dear America, you and your administration caused fear. Fear through separation instead of building trust with our people. Do y'all prefer this racial tension? Oppressed. I live my life in frustration. You make the connections. I speak for the victims that pay for this scam. Together we stand. We demand our respect. We want our dignity back. Our roots run deep in this country. Now, that's a true fact. Dear Americans, you might be asking yourself, what's the whole point of repeating these facts? Well, I am here to let you know we want to feel safe whether we're brown, Asian, or black. We don't want your jobs. We don't want your money. We're here to work hard, pay taxes, and study. The fight has begun. You all can try to justify your actions. Try to make excuses. Do not consider this a threat. Our intentions are to continue making this country great. It's time to begin standing up for what's right. Criminalizing children, separating families, our national security. Does this make it all right? We have been here for almost a year demanding transparency and accountability for the atrocities committed in our city. As the speaker before me mentioned, now mass men are preventing children from accessing their education and children are disappearing from our streets, your streets. Hey,

if you haven't done so already, please contact the Seami School District and request clarification on what steps are being taken to keep children and families safe from unidentified individuals and especially of guns. Let's not forget they all carry guns and we don't even know who they are. And now they're snatching kids off the streets. How many people must disappear? How many people must die? We are tired of being here. No justice. No peace, NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE, please respect it. Otherwise, we'll have to clear the room again. I don't want to have to do that. Thank you. No comments. Thank you. Next up.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Kavanaaugh and council members. My name is Todd Taylor. I've been a Seami Valley resident for over 16 years, homeowner for 13, and a small business owner. There's been a narrative that STRs lead to parties, noise, and disruption, but that ignores how platforms like Airbnb actually operate today. These platforms actively prevent bad behavior. They require identity verification, track guest and host behavior through reviews, and remove users and hosts who violate rules. There's real accountability on both sides. They also use technology to flag and block high-risisk reservations such as one night local bookings that are commonly associated with parties and provided 247 neighborhood support line to respond to concerns immediately. The system is already regulating itself and it's doing so effectively. At most, we're talking about a very small number of problem cases, not a widespread issue. CM Valley already has no ordinances, parking enforcement, and nuisance laws in place. These laws equal apply equally to everyone, whether it's a short-term rental, long-term tenant, or homeowner hosting a party. We also have a great police department that is highly responsive. Personally, I've been hosting on Airbnb platform for over eight years. During that time, I've hosted approximately 300 guests and received 243 reviews with an average 5.0 average rating. In my experience, short-term rental guests are not typical party groups. These are families visiting loved ones, professionals traveling for work, people visiting local attractions like the Reagan Library, and individuals who need something more flexible and comfortable than a hotel. There's also financial reality that should not be overlooked. For many homeowners, this income helps offset rising costs, mortgages, insurance, utilities, and unexpected expenses. In my case, it has provided financial flexibility to help fund vacations. For many, it can mean the difference between staying in their home

or being forced to sell. Don't regulate what isn't broken. Enforce the laws we already have and hold the bad actors accountable. Thank you.

The next three speakers, Aaliyah Euing, Dale Steinck, and Karine Lightfoot. I have spoken to you guys many times about ICE kidnapping people in Seami Valley, but I am coming to you today to implore to your humanity. Do you not feel like you're monsters for allowing ICE to take children off of our streets on their way to getting an education? Elementary age children. A middle school child was just taken from Morpark in the past couple of days. Three children in one week. Volunteers last week, the week before that were being physically abused and illegally arrested and detained by ICE agents outside of their jurisdiction. The two children taken from uh on their way to Barrelwood Elementary last week were citizens. Not that that should matter because we are people [ __ ] first. Okay. Oh my god. Not the gasp. Gasping at me cursing but not gasping at the children being taken is insane. Shame.

You should be ashamed. What if that was your child? Your grandchild. Sorry, I should say because your guys a little old. But, you know, elections are coming up and you guys really want to be known to your kids, to your grandkids, as the racist white people held in a position of power, allowing children to get snatched up off the street because their hair color is different, because their skin color is different, cuz they have a little bit more melanin. What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you care about anything other than yourself? For the love of God, Mike Judge can't even look up. He's probably on [ __ ] Facebook right now.

What the hell, man? Oh, thank you finally for the attention. I appreciate it. Y'all take our tax dollars to do nothing for our city. No offense, but this STR conversation has also been going on for a year and I'm [ __ ] tired of hearing about it. I am. What the hell? Kids are getting snatched up and you guys are out here wasting time talking about short-term rental units. If that was your child taken, how would you feel? Just remember that parents will do anything for their children. And I mean anything. Your time is up. I feel a Thank you. It is my turn.

Hello, Mayor Seami Valley Council. My name is Dale Steinick. The packets before you explain what my company, Ultimate Locations, can do for Seami Valley residents and business owners in having their properties used as TV and film locations. The film industry works very quickly in making decisions. The although the Chamber of Commerce has a lot of responsibilities and serve a purpose, Seami Valley really needs an actual film commission dedicated to just filming whether marketing or answering phones or answering questions. Basically knowing Seami Valley inside and out locations already listed as locations with listing agreements in place. I've said before I want the whole pie, not just a piece of the pie. When a production company comes to Seami Valley, Seami Valley should not be satisfied with just one location being utilized. Seami Valley should want to fill 100% of the production company's location needs. Homes, businesses, schools, churches, even empty buildings that once were stores full of shoppers and now left empty, as are the empty stores on LA Avenue by the BFA. Those spaces can be used as soundstages. I have been negotiating filming contracts since 1994. I wrote the book My House a great location located in this library in Seami. I know many many location managers in the union 399 for years. We Seami Valley needs a dedicated film commission for marketing and information for them as well as others in dealing with just filming. I am knowledgeable of the process and the sequence of the decision-making process. Seami Valley Film Commission 100% of the time and no less. My packet explains much of the process. Questions? Call me, text me, email me. I live here. Film See Valley. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Karine Lightoot. I am a resident of Seami Valley and my story sounds very familiar to what we've been hearing about tonight. I'd like to speak about the positive impact of our experience in hosting short-term rental property. An opportunity to work as a Seami Valley senior city planner brought my dad Jim Lightfoot uh to and our family to Semi Valley in 1984. And this has been home ever since. My brother and I are now tasked with the responsibility of maintaining and caring the home our parents bought. while our mom is in care in a care facility. Offering our home as a short-term rental has allowed us to afford the maintenance and upkeep needed for that house. We have been amazed at how many people need a temporary home in Semi Valley. In the nine months we operated last year, we had 220 nights of occupancy. The majority of our guests have been visiting family in the area, weddings, graduations, as said before, visiting the Reagan Library, and working temporarily temporarily in the area. We've had no noise complaints or parking complaints from our neighbors, and our guests have followed the extensive house rules, which include a cap on numbers for guests, types of gatherings, and quiet hours. We feel confident in using the screening process that's available to us through the Airbnb platform, allowing short-term rentals to continue operating in Seami Valley. We'll continue to introduce guests to our fabulous city, bring families together, and for our family, provide an income source to maintain that beautiful home, and care for our mom. It'll also allow us to keep our family as residents here in Semi Valley for generations to come. Thank you. Thank you.

THE NEXT THREE SPEAKERS, Nathan Evansson, Gary Hartman, and Juliana Kaiso. Hello, I'm Nathan Evansson. Um, I emailed you all back in November and I think I spoke here in December, but I'm here with all the other homeowners here in Seami um in support of short-term rentals. I also um do Airbnb with my my pool house. Um it's a huge benefit for my family. It allows us to stay here and see me. Um the way that I see that it benefits CI, we get people from all over the world, all over the United States. If you understand the the the Airbnb tourist, they're not going to stay in a hotel. They're looking for a unique experience, one like we give. We have over 500 five-star reviews here in Seami. And our guests, they didn't come here for Seami. They came here for the the experience, but then they fall in love with the city. And I get repeat guests who come over and over again. They spend money in the the restaurants, nail salons, dry cleaners, you know, just like the the the lady was speaking earlier. Most of my guests never even use the kitchen. They're out there spending money. They're exploring. They're falling in love with with Seami Valley. Unlike some of the the hosts, I want to be regulated. I want to pay you $1,500, $2,000 a year for an annual permit. I want to be regulated so that the bad ones are not here in the city, that the good ones, those of us who live on our property and make sure that guests are acting responsibly. You know, we ask all of our guests, act like a neighbor. You're in a neighborhood. And we've never had one noise complaint. We live

on a culde-sac. Anyways, I would encourage you to maybe look at approving where the the host lives on the property. Approve those type of property, you know, um regulations and don't allow people who have LLC's to buy properties. We're more than Your time is now up.

Okay. Thank you. Mayor, City Council, I'll get right into this. I know I only have 1 minute 59 seconds. Good evening. My name is Gary Hartman. I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight and share my experience with short-term rentals here in Semi Valley. My family moved to Semi Valley in 1969 when I was a small when it was a small, quiet town of about 57,000 people. just a handful of stoplights and a wonderful place to grow up. I've been proud to call this community home ever since. After my parents passed away many years ago, I decided to rent out our family home as a long-term rental. Unfortunately, that experience was extremely difficult. Broken leases, lost rent, costly repairs, repeated late night calls from neighbors about disturbances, and police activity. After nine years, I made the difficult decision to sell the home. I share this because long-term rentals are not always the stable, problem-f free solution they often are assumed to be. Later, due to health reasons, I needed to find a way to step back from full-time work and transition into retirement. I decided to explore short-term rentals and came here to the city hall to make sure I followed all the rules. I spoke with multiple departments and I was told there was no paperwork required. When I asked for a supervisor, I was told, "It's your home. You can do what you want. With that understanding, I invested a year of my time and thousands of dollars improving improving my home to create a highquality welcoming space for guests. Today, I'm a fivetime Airbnb superhost and consistent five-star with consistent five-star reviews. I take great pride in maintaining a clean clean, safe, and beautiful home with the help of a dedicated cleaning team. Over time, I've

learned that many travelers prefer short-term rentals over hotels that my guests come from all over the world. My family, weddings, youth sports tournaments, business trips, reunions, and yes, visits to the Ronald Reagan Library. These are families and groups who want to stay together in a home, not be separated in hotel rooms. I'd like to share some of the few brief comments from my guests. We have a fabulous time with my parents who flew in from Germany and our three kids. Gary's place was amazing. We felt right at home instantly. Our stay was amazing. And we would recommend Gary to anyone traveling to the area. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Uh hello everyone. My name is Juliana. I am a Sim Valley resident, born and raised my entire life. Um, I just wanted to give a shout out to uh Council Member Judge and remind everybody about his Facebook posts from the 2020 uh protests uh over racist police murders and he said that the protesters should be sprayed with sewage. So, um and then he doxed a teenage black girl uh on his Facebook. So, you cannot be trusted to ensure the safety of young people of color in this city. And frankly, the rest of you are kind of on thin ice because you just stand by and we don't forget the people of color, the young people of this city. We are not ignorant and we are not oblivious and we have to go along to get along. Sometimes the detention facilities where they are taking the youth of Seami Valley children from our schools. These detention facilities are rife with sexual abuse. They are feeding them moldy food. They are denying them uh medical care. There was a suicidal 13-year-old girl who uh committed self harm and they gave her sleeping pills and deported her to Colombia. End of story. That's what they did. So that's what you're um allowing to happen in Seami Valley. And these are community members. I want to be in a community with Latinos, grandmothers, uh hardworking gardeners, and not fascists with guns and masks. Thank you. Oh, and uh if anybody wants ice whistles for your friends and family,

time is up. Thank you. The next three speaker cards, Austin, Asil, Chris, and I have one card that has Karen and Scott on one card. Hi. Uh, my name is Austin and I operate a professional property management company managing homes across Southern California. I understand why residents have concerns around short-term rentals. Those concerns are valid like noise and parking and bad actors can they can absolutely impact neighborhoods. Um, from my experience, those issues are typically tied to inexperienced or poorly managed operations, not professional managed homes with clear standards and accountability. I think this important to recognize that we're still early in the process and it's critical to that the city has hears a broad range of perspectives as we move forward. There's also a significant number of homes currently sitting available on the market, which shows that it's a more nuanced issue than just short-term rentals. Um, this is an opportunity to put a framework in place that allows responsible operators while directly addressing the concerns being raised. The goal shouldn't be eliminating short-term rentals. It should be eliminating bad operators. This also impacts local homeowners and small operators, not large corporations. And many of the guests we serve are people in transition like families displaced by insurance claims or remember when the all those fires

happened in Pasadena and in Malibu. I had clients from that. So, I'd like to encourage the council to focus on a clear enforcable standard and practices put in place that make an already awesome industry better instead of cutting it out. Thank you.

Thank you. We're har. Good evening, Mayor Kavanaaugh, members of the city council, and our city manager. My name is Karen. Hello.

Karen lives here in Seami Valley, and I'd like to invite you to the Kowanas Club Seami Valley Roundup at the Country Music Festival, Saturday, April 18th. We're excited to bring this event to the community. Great with country music, dancing, and fun for everyone. And we are excited to share that this year this lady has proposed 25% of the proceeds to be donated to the Seami Valley YMCA. Wow. The capital expansion project we believe is important investment to the city's future. We hope we'll see you and come out and join us. Oh, and we're also looking for volunteers. For tickets information, please sign up and go to the roundupc.com. And lastly, thank you again to the city of Seami Valley supporting us through this special event grant

and sponsors. I'm looking for Yes, you are. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Is called a speaker Chris. Is that

last year when Leo Martinez was t-boned by an ICE vehicle in Oxnard, I warned you all that it was only a matter of time before this type of unjust violence came to our streets. Now, two weeks ago, we had an attempted ice raid here in Seami Valley. When Martinez showed up to the scene, he was immediately tear gas, ripped out of his vehicle, and violently detained by ICE agents. He was later released from the hospital the same day without any charges. Another community member had her car rammed into a by ICE vehicle on par. They blamed her for the collision and then confiscated her cell phone cell phone for recording the activity. From what I I can tell from a live stream of the incident. It appears that the Seami Valley PD that showed up did not bother to check that these armed mass kidnappers for their IDs, ask if they had had valid judicially signed warrants, check that their license plates match their vehicles, or any bit of legal accountability. From my perspective, the Semi Valley PD did nothing to help the citizens from another unjust violent ICE encounter. Our community member that had her car hit is a social worker that works with kids. Now, just a week ago on the word on their way to Burrowward Elementary School, we had a mother and her two kids taken by ICE. Over the weekend, they took another youth in our neighboring city, More Park. These are the exactly these are exactly the types of people she's out there trying to defend. When nearly 1 half of every city tax dollar goes to our police department, I expect more from our police department in preventing and protecting these kidnappings from happening in our city limits. The local PD needs to firmly stand by the people they are sworn to serve and protect. And you can, as you continue to increase the police budget in the face of our city workers not receiving competitive living wages, I beg you to hold PD more accountable in public safety matters and protection against ICE.

Thank you.

The next three speakers, um, this one appears to be Ariana. The last name is G R E D A N G. The next speaker is Jamie Sanchez and Alexandra Viegas. Good evening. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you all tonight. I'm Ariana. Um, I am just a high school student, a freshman at that. I wasn't even planning on speaking here tonight. I mean, I'm wearing sweatpants and a tank top. I was not planning on speaking here, but um, I'm educated enough to know that I need to use my voice because what is happening is not okay. Um, my classmates and friends have already been scared to leave their homes in Seami Valley because of the deportations happening and now they are even more scared to go to school where they are supposed to learn. name. I got an email back from Miss Nograss on the school board talking about the actions that you guys took in the Seami Valley Unified School District against ICE. And honestly, nothing happened. No, all all they can do is use their voice. Their mass gunmen are still allowed onto my campus. My friends are still feeling scared going to school.

One of you mentioned working on changes behind the scenes that we can't see. These are changes that have been needed to be made for years. I need to see these changes now. I don't care if they're behind the scenes. I need to see them. And no offense, either you guys aren't doing your jobs right or you're not working on these changes at all. It has been long enough. Um I know none of you up here care about the voice of one high school student, but um there are many of me in see me. We are the future of this city. And you guys need to listen and wake up and listen to your youth if you are actually cut out for the job that you say you are cut out for. and make my campuses safe again for me and my friends. So, I will leave you with this. [ __ ] ICE and [ __ ] this city until my friends feel safe at school again.

Thank you. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that we are gathered on the tra traditional lands of the Dumash people. I honor their enduring connection to this land and pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Good evening, council members. My name is Jamie Sanchez. It's been a while since I've been here. Life has been busy because as all of you wear many hats, I'm a student studying psychology, an intern film, an intern in film studies, a wife, a Navy veteran, an act advocate, an ad activist, and most importantly, a mother. As someone living with traumatic brain injury, as this is also brain injury awareness month, daily life can be challenging. But no matter what, I never forget to show up for my community. What I personally witnessed on March 10th is exactly what that me why that matters. What happened was unacceptable. A legal observer, someone act acting fully within his rights and was detained by ICE. What began as a reported traffic incident quickly escalated with multiple pres officers present while they s the situation unfolded. We heard conflicting explanations about what happened and it appears this was an unlawful detainment. What happened, Chief Shields? I I I I I could have sworn you said your officers did not work with ICE agents. That is not what I witnessed. Close to 10 officers standing around for what? A traffic accident which was ultimately stated as an intentional crash. During the same incident, I w I witnessed an agent invade a woman's personal space without cause. As a woman, I was it was intimidating. As a domestic violence

survivor, it was triggering. As a veteran being institutionalized, I understand chain of command, but watching local police stand by while ICE agents violate civil rights and intimidated community members without cause is deeply concerning. And this isn't just an incident. Children are being kidnapped. I understand the city council may not always agree with community members, but what need what more needs to happen before this ch change occurs? Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Alexandra. My family has been a part of this community for well over 60 years. I grew up here. I am a product of Seami Valley and I'm actually very much grateful for the fact that I grew up in this racist town because it actually built character. With that said, how the hell can you guys sit here? Sir, sir, uh, what's your name? Rocky. Yes, thank you. Uh, with that said, what are you guys doing to protect our children? I can't walk outside without thinking, shoot, I might actually get detained or kidnapped, even though I'm a citizen. What What are you guys doing? Like seriously, what how are you going to be able to help people feel safe? Now, the interesting part about everything that's going on tonight, you know, obviously economically the situation with the housing and whatnot, um, have you guys stopped and considered that immigrants uphold the framework of this community, of this society, right? Everybody has something to contribute here. So, if you want to continue to to build and have a community, you need to step up and protect our kids. Oh,

it it's ridiculous that people have to come up here and make a scene because many of you, I'm going to say, lack character and morality. How are we supposed to follow the justice system when there is no due process? How for I'm just at a point where I'm I'm beyond enraged and it's just I'm trying not to cuss at anybody right now. I'm trying to keep my composure, but it's absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I have a nephew who's autistic, who's biracial. I have an elderly mother who speaks with an accent, right? How do I not know when they're out on the street, they're not going to be detained? Okay. Not only that, but my fellow citizens, my fellow um community members, how do we not know that when they go out to the grocery store that they're not going to make? I'm

sorry. Your time is now up. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. The next three speakers, David Benjamin, Amanda Benjamin, and Pauline Santos.

All right, mayor, city council, I want to thank you for the time tonight. Appreciate you guys. Uh, I wanted to speak on behalf of STRs and not as an owner operator, but as STR adjacent. I mean that quite literally. I'm a neighbor of an STR. Uh, have been for about 5 years now. We have yet to have a problem. I think the biggest thing I can say uh in recognition of that is just that we hardly know that they're there. Our neighbors are respectful. They're quiet. They've had many guests in and out. have been absolutely blown away at the number of people that have come to stay in our town and who want to stay in a more local type setting. They want to meet people that they wouldn't otherwise be able to meet when they visit. They want to spend money in our town. Overall, we've had no parking issues. There have been no noise issues. Uh we get guests from all over the world coming in to stay in our neighborhood and it's just absolutely incredible to see. And I think, you know, what better way to welcome people into our town than when we have owners who live at the house, they rent out a portion of it, and we get to welcome them in by meeting residents and staying with residents. And I think that, you know, the most sensible solution for bad actors is some kind of regulation, rules that must be followed, and a way to weed them out without actually banning everything in town. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi. Hi. My name's Amanda and um I did come here to talk about short-term rentals. Um but I wanted to take this time to say something really fast hopefully because I know I have very little time. After listening to so many passionate voices, I wanted to impress upon all of you and everybody I think in this room and anybody who ever listens to this um we end up on so many different sides of things and we really do take sides and that's really easy to lose humanity and empathy for what we see and hear. So as you guys move forward and and make decisions for us on behalf of us and as everybody comes to speak, I think we could all take one minute to remember that we are all people that we all have hearts and minds and we are passionate and we need to remember that and take again a second just to put yourself in their shoes and really consider what it means to be a human and then I'll get back to short-term rentals. Um because again I don't have very much time. Um my neighbor rents has a short-term rental um Nathan and he is amazing. He's the ideal rent uh person who run these. He runs them well. I don't know that they are there. I think maybe once I heard some music and I said, "Hey, Nathan, that was kind of loud last night." And he said, "I am so sorry. I will make sure that that never happens again." And it did not. I think if we regulate things, if we find ways to make it work, if we can get money from these rentals over time throughout the years through permits, I think it's a really great opportunity for everybody. I think we can all win and

find a way to make that work. So, I just want to take the time and tell you that I've had a great experience with my neighbor. Thank you.

Thank you. Hello. Um, my name is Pauline Santos. I'm a resident of Seami Valley and I'm a student um, studying music therapy at Sea Sun. Um, let me pull up my notes real quick. I come as a naturalized citizen myself and am a concerned community member. I find it abhorrent and absolutely vile that ICE is permitted to terrorize, profile, and kidnap members, including children of our migrant community in Semi Valley in broad daylight. How is it there was no tangible action in place to prevent two citizen children, from their kidnapping on their way to Barrelwood Elementary School? I am just one of a number of individuals in CEI who have come together for our mutual interest in keeping ICE out of our schools, streets, and community spaces. ICE does not keep us safe. In fact, they have proven the opposite. Brown and black folks and migrants alike have had their families violently separated, leaving behind family members, pets, entire livelihoods, and heartbreakingly enough, their lives themselves. We as a community cannot allow these kidnappings to continue. Detention centers are torture chambers on purpose. Detained migrants face medical neglect, lack of food, violence, and abuse to the point of death and suicide, self harm, and suicidal ideiation. Why? For the purposes of promoting selfdeportation. The very presence of ICE, especially with the profiling of children and black and brown citizens, is terror. The main message is clear. You do not belong, and for that reason, you must be disappeared. How cruel, how is it that this can happen to children in our city? How many have gone missing as a result of ISIS violent actions? As an art teacher and um who works with the

special needs community and volunteers with children, my heart cannot fathom the level of cruelty permitted in our streets. The border does not exist for wildlife like the beautiful monarch butterflies that surround us currently. If you are like me and concerned as a community member, please check out linktr. Sorry, your time is now. Activist toolkit. Thank you very much. THANK YOU. THE NEXT three speakers, Alex Viegas, Natalie Kaufman, and Ashley, Alex Viegas,

Natalie Kaufman, Good evening, mayor and council members. So, um unlike everybody here, I am not prepared for this right now. Um but I am a shortterm uh rental homeowner. Um a member of this community my whole entire life. When I was born, there wasn't even a hospital here. So, um, I'm a single mom and I really depend on the income of my short-term rental to take care of my daughter and also my mom who lives at Oakmont off of Royal. If it was not for the income that I generate through my short-term rental, I would not be able to put her in such a nice place. Um, I understand everyone's concerns around the short-term rentals. This is at my home and I make sure that there are no new nuisances, loud noises, or anything like that. I don't even think my neighbors even know that I have a short-term rental. Um, so, uh, and within regards to everything else, you know, happening in our community, you know, I I've never been to one of these before my my whole life. I'm just You guys are a little intimidating, by the way. Um, you know, just everyone look out for each other. And I'm sure, you know, if we had a magic wand, you know, things that are happening here today would not be happening. But it's kind of sad and brings kind of tears to my heart for everybody's suffering. And um my daughter is half Salvadorian and I'm scared too that some something might happen to her. Um she goes to a charter school in the in the San Frernando Valley and they do um a lot of like outreach and things like that. Um so I don't know that's something the city's that looked into, but anyhow, thought I'd hit both topics that seem to be hot tonight. Um, thank you for your time and for listening.

Thank you,

Ashley. Demi Fox. Is that Ashley? Good evening, city council. I'm here today not to ask anything as you know what you need to do. And it's evident that much of this council prefers to protect and excuse aggressive, violent, targeted behavior against not only its citizens, but the constituents you serve. I'm here to alert the board and residents here that two weeks ago concerned community members on their lawns, in their cars, and on their streets were accosted, threatened, and assaulted by ICE agents right here in Seami Valley in a residential area, armed and untrained in front of people's homes. Additionally, last week, a mother and her two children were stalked and abducted on their way to school. a mother, not a criminal, and her children, your child's friends, their classmates and neighbors at a local elementary school. A completely normal family just picked up and disappeared within 24 hours. This last weekend, a seventh grader and their mother and father were kidnapped by agents in Moore Park. Their three-year-old now left to the care of extended family. What now? Just good luck. Hope you can make that work. It's escalating and the suffering is spreading like wildfire. And this is only getting worse. Our neighbors are disappearing. Your vendors, clients, your friends. These families are ones that own businesses. They're first generation students, teachers, administrators, and local government officials. We should not have to give qualifications for you to see them as people. However, certain council members on this board post online and make statements openly expressing their lack

of concern of day laborers, children, and how these people take up their congressional aortionment and dilute his share of power. They are not fit to be mayor, much less a leader to this community they call home. To the community, some of these people definitely not here to help or support you. If you witness an abduction, see, or hear of anything suspicious, or suspect your loved ones or neighbors are missing, please call or text the 805 undocu88855 or VC Defense 8052961119. is Demi Demi.

Good evening. Thank you for having us tonight. Thank you for being here. This is way past my bedtime. Um, I just want to talk about the short-term rental because I I'm involved in many ways. I'm a real estate broker for near quarter of a century and I know I don't look that old, but it is. And I often get phone calls from people asking me if I know of any place like this to stay. An example, I had a great customer of mine, client that um she had 10 family members, um siblings, grandchildren, all that coming in town for a wedding from India and I found her a very beautiful place for the family to all stay together. uh they spend 10 days and this is very valuable because they couldn't afford to stay each separate in rooms and things like that. Like many people already mentioned I I'm also an owner of an Airbnb or short-term rental not in state but out of state and I can say that how it I help so much this little town that I found this property and I know that Semi Valley can get the same results. Um, I prepare a package for people that are traveling from all over the world. And so they know exactly what to do, where to go shopping, where to go eat, what to buy. You know, I try to find out what's their passion and they like antique shopping. I guide them through where to go. We have a whole list. They don't just come here. I think there's a negative um image of an Airbnb. And I think it's just not it's just a misunderstood situation. And all of those great people that own this property are very proud owners of those homes like all of us. They don't want their property to be destroyed. And so I just ask for a compromise with you know instead of banning them work with us that makes us happen because you're going to see the result financially also if you look into what those people bring

into the city when they travel over here and you get to meet so many amazing people. Thank you so much. Thank you. Madame Mayor, that was the last speaker. And next on the agenda is item 6A, city council comments regarding public statements. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Are there any council members wishing to speak? Council member Rhodess.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, thank you everybody for coming out to speak tonight. There's um some real issues that um the city gets to deal with and um uh it's a struggle and an honor to be up here dealing with those. Uh I want to especially thank um those that came out in terms of short-term rentals and having that discussion. the um the effort that you go through on city council is to get input from all sides and um I certainly felt we were getting input from a side a particular point of view and we weren't hearing the other side. Um I think you've given us a lot of things to think about and for that I uh appreciate your efforts and being out here. Um, this is it's not a foregone conclusion one way or the other how this short-term rental thing is going to turn out, but having multiple voices in the room is essential. So, thank you for being here. Um, there there are those that um maybe didn't want your voice heard and many of them are not here right now listening. Um, there was so many other things. Um uh oh I did uh the in God we trust um we had two speakers on that topic. Um I think it is worthy of a uh an agenda request to see if that's something that we can do. Um and mayor that's all I have.

Thank you council member Ayala. Thank you. Uh again, thanks everyone for for for coming out the I want to you know let's start with the the group here on this side. Um there someone a speaker came up and talked about passion and I think it's also compassion right it's it's the passion you have for any topic I think we appreciate whoever's coming up the passion that you bring and it doesn't mean and I think it uh just because we're up here at least you know people can speak for themselves it doesn't mean that we don't have that we can't have humanity that we can't have empathy towards what you're towards what you're And um Miss Lucheski, you know, we can see that when you speak and in the emotions that you have and I think that even if it was for people who for whatever cause it might have been that you would still be here. You would still be here regardless of it. So, thank you again for for coming out and for um always giving us the truth, your truth as to what what is happening because we need to know that. uh for the STR group the like council member RH says we need to have both sides it's one group is going to go back go home happy one group is going to go really mad that's just how it's going to be and um we're going to see what that it's going to be a very interesting meeting in May and everyone is just going to have to u you know realize that we've taken a lot of time to examine everything. Lots of we're all all of us have done so much homework behind the scenes on this. So, I just want you to know that we don't take any of this lightly and we are listening to you and uh we will do the best we can with all

of this. Okay. So, thanks everyone for coming tonight. Have a good night. Mayor for Chor Litster. So, with 43 speakers, boy, that I should I could spend a lot of time commenting. There's some some very impactful, strong things that were shared tonight. And so, thank you for coming. Thank you for staying even with a a hearing in the middle. I know that's so disruptive for you, but thank you for being part of this. I first actually wanted to start by saying Sarah, um, thank you for putting together such a beautiful memorial and having everyone come forward and show pictures of lost loved ones and reading names. I just want to say thank you that we hear you. We we recognize that there is some some difficult things happening in our community and in and in our in our nation. So, thank you for putting that together and and we hear you um and see you. Thank you. Um Karen and Scott who came forward to do the uh the show together and in and to talk about Roundup. It is a great great thing in our community and so please everyone go to see Roundup. It'll be wonderful. How lovely that the proceeds might go towards the uh portion to the YMCA. Very deserving. Um those who spoke about um in God we trust. Um I will say that I love our our our when we say our pledge of allegiance and we say one nation under God, there's actually not a comma and there I've shared that here on the um that it actually should be one nation under God. That those are my beliefs, but I I'm grateful that we we can share them and talk about them in this context. So, thank you for those gentlemen that came forward. Um, short-term rentals, this is Thank you for being here tonight. I know it's late. In fact, I thought about the abbies and I know De uh Bevon has to go to teach early in the morning. Um, she's gone. I understand. Um, thank you for coming all of you on all both sides. Um, the reality is we love our community. We want it to be beautiful. We want it to

be best and we are trying to figure out what that is and it's a difficult conversation. So, I just want to say thank you for all of you who are here for that topic. Ben, this is number three or four for you today. Number three. Okay, he keeps coming. Appreciate what you do with your business, Tiny Homes. There really are beautifully constructed and we need to find a way that they can have a permanent place here in our community. So, thank you for being here. Um Dale, I don't know if she's still here. Um she's the one that suggested the film commission. Um, I thought that was very interesting, some of her her thoughts about maybe expanding the role specifically on on a city, what that looks like. I know we s certainly have permitting, but anyway, I'll continue to talk with Dale and and lots of many wonderful ideas shared tonight. And again, all I can say is thank you for being here. Thank you for your contributions. Thank you. I would just be repeating what Council Member Ayala and and Mayor Prom Litzer just said, but Council Member Ayala, you were so eloquent in how you explained to Sarah and the group. So that compassion needs to be there and humanity needs to be there and we do have it. It may not be what you want right this second, but we are here to listen. We will try and do what we can. Um, this is our community. They are our community members, period. So we want everyone to feel safe here. I know I have kids, grandkids, and I would be scared. So I understand. So we have heart. I have heart. We will do what we can. Um the STRs, like they said, somebody's going to be happy and somebody's not going to be happy um in the long run. But I think we have an ordinance there. We'll review it. Maybe some changes need to be made to it to accommodate everyone. Maybe we already have what we need there. So, I think that will be a a an item that we will all be really studying and working on and looking forward because it there

are benefits to the community. Also, I I understand that um there was a negative because we have a famous house that was going to be used more as an event center than as a short-term rental. And so, I think that kind of uh was the cause of a lot of the um uprising, I guess we'll use the word, uh to get that straightened out. But, I think we we're getting a clearer picture. we'll get a little bit more education on it and then we'll look at that. It is beneficial economically to our community. Um as well as the uh Dale was here uh recommending the filming. We make we do very well in filming here in Semi Valley. I know we were just on channel 7 news. Our city manager was we were just on the radio with that. Um we it's very good for our economic development here in the community. So that's something we can focus on that doesn't we don't have to expend a lot of money to bring money into the community. They eat at our restaurants and they shop at our grocery stores and they buy gas here. So, and they may be in short-term rentals, too. So, um it's a a big positive to our community. And I think that was about it. But again, thank you all for coming out here. Those of you, one or two of you, it was a first time. It's it's nerve-wracking standing up in front of us. I did it to the board of supervisors a few months ago and I was nervous. So, I I understand it takes passion. And it takes commitment. It takes caring for your community and for those around you. So, thank you each and every one of you for being here tonight. M

Madame Mayor and members of the city council. Um I was just going to say before we move to the next item, uh can we do a fivem minute recess? Yes, we will recess for five minutes. Noice. No peace. All right. Peace.

ready. Thank you. We'd like to call this meeting back to order. Madame Clerk, where are we at on the consent calendar? Yes. Okay. Madame Mayor and members of city council,

can you please close those doors? Thank you. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is item seven, the consent calendar with one resolution for your consideration this evening. Consent item six, resolution number 2026-07, a resolution of the city council of the city of Semi Valley, California, adopting a policy establishing the procedures and criteria for indigent status determination as it pertains to candidates during general and special elections pursuant to California elections code section 13309.

Thank you. Is there any item that needs to be pulled from the consent agenda? Otherwise, I am open for a motion. I happy to move consent. Second. We have a motion. First and second. Call the vote. Thank you. Oh, it went too fast. Sorry, let's cancel that. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you,

Madame Mayor and members of the city council. Next on the agenda is item 8A, a progress update on city council focus area goals for fiscal year 2025-26 and city manager Samantha Argabbrite is presenting this item.

Well, good evening, mayor and council members. Um, you all have a very comprehensive staff report in front of you, but I'm going to hit the highlights with an update this evening on the focus area goals and I am pleased to present our mid-year progress update uh for the goals set by the council for fiscal year 2526. And these goals continue to guide and how we align our department work efforts, resource allocation, and policy direction to prioritize our work across the organization. The city's focus area goals originated from the council's strategic retreat held on June 10th, 2025. This was formally adopted at the council meeting on August 4th, and an initial update was provided during the November budget workshop the end of 2025. Tonight's report provides a mid-year update on progress made since the adoption of the council's focus area goals with activities primarily reflecting work completed in late 25 and early 26. Several initiatives have advanced into implementation while others continue to progress through planning, coordination, and evaluation phases due to their complexity and policy considerations. So just as a reminder, the city's six pillars of excellence are public safety, excellent city government, reliable infrastructure, fiscal stability, thriving community, and economic vitality. And these pillars serve as the foundation for how the city prioritizes work, allocates resources, and delivers services. As shown on this slide, each pillar includes a brief definition to help clarify what it represents. The council identified nine priority focus areas to guide city operations. And these range from economic development and revenue strategies to workforce planning, technology, and infrastructure. Tonight, we'll walk through progress and what's coming next for each of these areas. So first economic development also

related to the semi valley town center. This remains one of our most active focus areas where significant progress is happening behind the scenes as you heard earlier with multiple efforts underway to position the city for long-term economic success. This includes continued engagement with targeted industries, advancement of a retail recruitment strategy and ongoing negotiations related to the semi valley town center mixeduse development project. We are also focused on improving the development experience by streamlining processes through municipal code updates and hosting a workshop for brokers, property owners, and businesses. Our goal with this workshop is to help people understand the city's entitlement and permit approval process, as well as the coordination we do with other agencies involved in project review. In the near term, we anticipate bringing a development agreement forward to the city council related to the Seami Valley Town Center along with several implementation items underway this summer. Related to film and tourism, city staff continues to actively position Seami Valley as one of the most film friendly communities in the region. We've made strong progress laying the foundation, evaluating permitting software, identifying funding to begin implementation, and expanding media outreach to increase the city's visibility as a filmming destination. Next steps focus on execution, including launching new permitting tools, evaluating fee structures to remain competitive, and building out a comprehensive database of film locations. On this slide, you can see that we've explored cost sharing opportunities with the school district for services such as crossing guards and school resource officers. At this time, due to financial constraints at the district, they are unable to participate. City staff will continue to monitor and re-engage with them if their conditions change. We've initiated work to evaluate a potential increase in the transient occupancy tax, including finalizing a consultant agreement to support this process. The goal is to return to council in early summer with data and options allowing time to meet ballot deadlines if the council chooses to move forward with putting this on the November ballot.

Related to compensation and succession planning, this remains a critical priority tied to recruitment, retention, and long-term workforce stability. We've completed a compensation study and have taken initial steps through recent labor agreements to begin addressing market disparities. In the next month or so, city staff will return to the council with implementation strategies to further enhance competitiveness for POA, PMA, and unrepresented management employee groups. At the same time, we will continue advancing succession planning and supporting long-term workforce planning efforts for efficiency in public private partnerships. As part of the city's annual budget process, staff continues to evaluate service delivery models to identify opportunities for improved efficiency and cost effectiveness. And this includes reviewing best practices and potential partnership models and identifying targeted investments such as allocating additional funds to support sidewalk assessment in the next fiscal year. This work is ongoing and will be brought back to council as opportunities and recommendations are identified. AI is certainly a topic that's on everyone's mind right now and it's an area where the city is taking a thoughtful and very proactive approach. We've completed a city-wide assessment of AI use across departments and identified several high impact opportunities in customer service, permitting, and reporting. Next steps include advancing development of an internal AI policy framework in coordination with human resources and legal to address privacy, transparency, data security, and responsible use. We will also initiate targeted piloted programs to evaluate practical applications of AI across city operations and align future investments in technology and staff training with the city's broader service delivery goals. For code enforcement, this is another area where we've seen strong engagement and results across city departments. Staff has strengthened coordination among code enforcement, the police department, and city attorney's office to address complex high priority cases more effectively. Since the council adopted these goals, we've opened more

than 500 cases, closed over 600, and escalated several of the most serious cases for legal action in the last six months alone. City staff is also continuing to enhance tools and processes to improve efficiency and cross-dep departmental collaboration. This is a longerterm effort related to water and desalination um focused on sustainability, reliability, and strengthening the city's local water supply. Work to date is focused on evaluating local and regional supply opportunities, including active participation in regional planning efforts related to groundwater del water exchange programs and overall supply resiliency. Staff has been engaged in technical discussions with regional partners to better understand feasibility, infrastructure considerations, and potential options to improve long-term water reliability for Seami Valley. Given the complexity of this effort, it will continue to evolve as analysis progresses, regional coordination advances, and additional opportunities are identified. And for staffing resources and commitment, as shown on this slide, these focus areas represent varying levels of staff time and organizational effort across departments. As we continue to implement the council's priorities, it's important to align new and emerging initiatives with available staffing resources. To support disciplined execution, significant new efforts will be evaluated through a formal rep prioritization process. This approach helps maintain focus on council established priorities while allowing flexibility to respond to evolving needs. So tonight we have our goals update and our next update will be held later in 2026 and we will continue advancing these efforts in the meantime. And in summary, we've made meaningful progress across several priority areas with others continuing through planning and coordination phases. I also want to thank all the departments and staff across the organization who continue to advance these goals. This progress reflects a strong coordinated effort citywide. With that, staff recommends

that the council receive and file this report. And we're happy to answer any questions. And we have our team leads available for each of the priority areas if you all have questions and would like additional detail on any of them.

Thank you. Does anyone council have any questions or comments? Council member Rhodess. Right. Um, thank you for the uh presentation and uh I'm I've only been at this three years, but the fact that we sat and had a goal setting uh workshop and that that manifested into a document with with the pillars and now we're getting the uh reports on the progress of those pillars. Um it's really hard sometimes to take stock of your successes when you're dealing with the problem of the day. And um we've had a lot of successes and you and the department heads, thank you. Um we're really moving this thing in the right direction. Um uh my one question is uh I I just attended a uh conference and I got a um really interesting maybe for the first time comprehensive um framing of AI and how it can uh help industries and and what its actual function and purpose should be. Um, I saw Gary here and I thought maybe he wanted to give us a primer on AI in the city and what's going on.

Gary, you want to come on up? Gary and Heather Sumagisai have been working really closely on this. So, I will let them both chime in on that. Wherever you are, wherever you want to be. You can go you can go to the podium. Um, so where would you like me to start? Where are we using it in the city currently? And are there um goals for implementation versus just goals for um guard rails?

So, um we did a survey and uh looked at 18 80 198 employees across the city. Um about 16% of them said they knew AI tools well, 62% said they knew a little bit, 22% were not very familiar, and 47% said they said they were already using it at work. the tools that they're using range from chat GPT to um co-pilot to the um the common tools that people grock those kind of things they're using them for everything from research to coordin uh writing helping write some staff reports um cleaning up some language inside of those is the most common ones. there was a lot of discussions as far as pain points and where people thought that uh they could tool AI tools could help them out. Um from there we kind of narrowed it down and we've got a list of about five different um initiatives that that we're going to look at that range everything from permit intakes so that when people come to the front counters or online they know which kind of permits to ask for. um looking at some better things for reporting uh general use AIS like what you see with chat GPT and stuff like that. Um going to take a closer look at those because there was a feeling from the feedback from the entire group that those kind of tools could make people more productive. So we are we are investigating all of those. Um the next step on it is putting some guard rails in and looking at some tools to make sure that data doesn't leak out either be via the um AI tools or intentionally or intentionally. So those are kind of the next two big things that that I'm going to work on is from a security standpoint. Um we haven't narrowed down exactly what we're going to do with AI. That is kind of the next step of this

thing is we're going to like I said take some closer look at the tools are out there. um set up some projects, set to get some initiatives and figure out what they can be used for the city. Awesome. I uh I appreciate that. And the one the one remaining concern that I had going into that conference that I came out with an understanding of how guard rails can be put in place is um I had a big fear of data sets from the city ending up in AI and then therefore ending up out there. Um, but you have to specifically put that data set in. And what are our guard rails about doing that?

So, there's two of them. One of them is going to be policybased is um we're going to write that we've got a draft policy, but I wanted to make it through these listening sessions before we finalize the policy. And the draft policy says a lot of things in it is um don't upload things with social security numbers. Don't upload passwords. Don't put your don't put your passwords inside of the system. And um the big overarching one is um don't trust and verify. So these things are known to hallucinate. They're known to take people down the wrong roads and not answer questions truthfully or just try to appease the user and to um that people really need to verify especially with a lot of the legal terms and a lot of the stuff that we do around here to make sure that that information is correct that's on there. That's really the policy side of it. The other side of it is actually there's technology out there called DLP which is data loss prevention. And if you're not familiar with that term, you will become familiar with it over the course of the next few years. And data loss prevention is kind of like it sounds is what is the data that we have inside of the city and that is leaving the city because actually that's the biggest risk that we have. There's a couple different tools that we're looking at that looks kind of like an anti virus from a from the user standpoint, but if it is designed in the way that either if an AI bot or if a human using um one of the chat engines copies and pastes social security numbers or credit card numbers or um PII such as you know addresses and names and those kind of things into a web page or another chat, it will stop them.

And so that is actually one of the things that we're we're investigating too. So it's a policy as well as tools that we're going to implement. Awesome. I didn't know about DLPs, but next thing to data loss prevention. I'll ask chat GPT. What does that really mean? Yep. And my employer were already using that and you try and send it and it blocks you. Yeah. It's just like, oh, okay. So it's good. It is great though to use it. We're using C-pilot. So I really like Copilot quite a bit. Yeah. One of the things that we did related to this goal

working there we go. One of the things that we did related to this goal is we looked at the entire scope of the year and we broke it out by different quarters. And so we just finished that initial phase of our assessment of where we're at with staffing. So then we can now frame up our policy framework and then we can identify what the highest high impact priority areas are that will give us a good possible return on that investment in in software as a service but also looking at what are some of the challenges or the opportunity areas that we're looking to capitalize on because we know that hey cost effectiveness is a really important asset that comes along with this as well. All right. Thank you. U Mayor Pro Tim Litster, did you have questions for Gary or he can sit down?

Well, actually I had actually stay there since you're here. I had one that I wasn't may but since you've already started that topic um and then I'll go to all my others. Um I guess my question is is whether we are already paying for AI license usage right now because the city is not

and because which concerns me a little bit when you give me the percentages that are using it because as I understand it if they're using some of these tools and it's not a license then it is you what they throw in is used to teach it and is also becomes becomes part of available for others to be to have access to and I'm and I understand things like social security numbers etc that you absolute nicksay you know don't want them but but there's some other general city information that I'm not sure we want populating every other people's anyway so I I share that same concern yes okay

um the the yeah the free versions are out there's some of them though like Microsoft and co-pilot which is um embedded inside of if you're using the newest versions of Outlook for example it'll have copilot up on the right hand side and you ask copilot some questions Microsoft's privacy policy is pretty good about not distributing the stuff and not uh scrubbing the information, letting the AI learn it, scrubbing the information so that if um a bad guy or another city or anybody were to ask specific questions about the semi valley, it doesn't come back with that that information. But these things do act in a vacuum. They really don't know what they're doing. So it is possible. So yeah, that actually is one of my concerns is the use of AI without having some good policies and some good um guard rails in place.

And some of our employees do actually pay for it themselves. They'll pay for the Yeah, the paper. Did you ask that question? Who pays who doesn't? Just um we didn't we did but we didn't to that specificity in the survey. And the other thing is even Google or Google Chrome now has AI enabled that you can just hit that. So in that sense, you don't have to have a subscription, you don't have to download an app, you can now use a web browser as well. Yeah. And some of the software we have, all of it for for the legal department. You can't even buy software without AI now. So all of the legal res in essence, it's licensed through the software that you've purchased. Understood. Understood. Okay.

Which we will also continue to see that trend on other services that we contract out um such as permits. Got it. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you, G. You can sit down, Gary. I'll I'll I'll have other questions. No. Um, okay. Thank you. Actually, going back, this might be Sam, and you can just tell me who to direct it to. Just kind of in order of of the pillars as we went through them. In your report, you talked about, for instance, on page three, um a 500,000 square foot new industrial business park that might be coming online, which um and so I was I was just curious a little bit about the details of that. Is that something that was presented earlier tonight or is that something different?

That's something different. Um that is uh raw land right now that the owner of that property wants to develop. And so we've had numerous meetings um with the property owner as well as their consultants to determine um the best way to move that project forward and if that's going to be something that we'll be able to bring forward to you. Um at this point it does look positive. There would be some amendments required to the general plan and the specific plan that governs that area. Um but those conversations have been going well. It's just going to be a matter of if that project pencils for that developer.

Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. several couple places. Um, as I read through the report and the slides, it talked about the demolition of the old sheriff's station. Of course, we own that property. Um, and in years past, my the impression I have had is that if we had a good offer on something to be done there, then we would discuss doing that work, etc. What I'm sensing is that we have decided somewhere that we're we want to go forward and demo and and clear that parcel and then talk about it. And I guess I wasn't really aware that that is taking place. And so maybe you can help me understand Sure. where and when and how we made that decision and what the thoughts are going forward with that.

So during the um the budget update conversation that we had in November, um staff came back to the city council with cost items for the council goals and priorities. And so this was one of those items that the council had identified was a priority um as part of our economic development plan to clear the sheriff to remove

to make it a more viable property for um development and for revenue generation for the city. So as part of that um we have been working with a consultant to do the soils analysis um and then potential design options and cost estimates. So, um, right now we're just looking at what it would cost to do the demo depending upon what that cost is and obviously we would have to come back to city council um to for any further action on that because I can guarantee you that's going to be outside of my authority. Okay. Thank you. I'm just trying to understand the context. Do we have a specific uh party or something who's that we're that are actively trying to use that or

We don't have we've had um a number of developers approach uses over the years for that property. Um there's a variety of uses that we could that could be used at that property. Um it's just going to be a matter of really what is going to be the best and highest use of that site. Fair enough. Okay. I just want Thank you. um the film area. Um it page four talked about maintaining a database of possible set locations etc. Are you envisioning that being under the city's control or is that under someone else's control that we are gathering that data? What what what is intended by that topic area and information?

I'm gonna have assistant city manager Gay respond to that. Good evening. This is so fun. We could talk about all the stuff because you put it in. Well, we don't want to talk about all of the things. Of course. Our hat too early. Just a few things.

We're exploring a lot of different options. Um what we found is as we're having conversations with property owners, developers, businesses that are interested in partnering with the city, um there might be opportunities for us to go in on a property um and help them develop it as a back lot or um a film location. A lot of times, especially like on the outskirts of town, um there's areas that don't necessarily they just want to be a film location, um where you don't have to put a lot of infrastructure in it. And so a good example is kind of um kind of in those areas that provide those back roads and

hill hilly backside and all that other fun stuff. So again, we're not we're not necessarily what we want what we're trying to do is be open um in terms of having some flexibility to partner with somebody to do these things when when those right opportunities come up. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that, Lisa. And since you're here, let me just for in this in this topic. Sure. um when someone comes and for a permit to use a certain space right now, do we have the capability or do we say great, happy to approve this and what else are you using on your and would you uh have you thought about using X Y and Z areas in Semi Valley? Do we have that part of that process or is that

we're building it? So, one of the things as part of the direction that council provided the last time, one of the things that we've done internally is we set aside or we set up an internal subcommittee um that's led by Heidi and others throughout the city to talk through some of those things. And that's actually one of the things that came up as part of the discussion. I think that's what Dale was referring to earlier in public health. How do we leverage those opportunities? And again, instead of us just processing permanence, how can we be more entrepreneurial about it and again find other ways to partner? And one of the things that came from that subgroup um that I think is listed on here is again building that database so that if we know a um I use the Setters Mill uh restaurant again that's that's a really unique

place that you probably couldn't rebuild today um could be a really great filming location and they're not there all the time. So can we work with them to uh make it into a filming location? There's people that have unique homes or backyards or all those things but then we would keep that database. We would have to build a database. And what we found is that there's a lot of pieces out there, but there is no central location for all of it. And what we want to be as a city is we want to be that central hub because we know that we can we can help put that together. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Can I say no? I have a few more questions, but you can go to someone else and come back to me if Nobody else has questions. Seriously,

I know, but this is a chance to discuss it further. Otherwise, we have to wait a whole year. Thank you, Lee. Um, okay. Um, I would the code our cross department cooperation between code enforcement and SVPD. Um, I just wondered what um what is that? It says continued refinement of cross department cooperation I think is the verbiage that was used. I guess my question is what is that looking like now Mr. Drago? So they they they want to talk. They've been here all night. No, they want to go home. They do want to go home, but I promise

they've been here all night, so we might as well let them talk. So what that looks like is training staff to to interact the legal process with the city attorney with the police department because in the past our code of enforcement group has been less focused on the hard types of enforcement, you know, substandard dwelling units, massage parlors, those kind of things. They've been more focused on weeds, trash cans, those kind of complaints. So working with the city attorney, learning how to do warrants, learning how to go through this legal process and get off the investment or to get off the investigation and move towards the enforcement rapidly within due process. That's that's a training thing.

So we have to have that process. We have to learn how to use it and learn how to use our resources. So that's what that is. Okay. And so far we've done this this last six months 17 cases that have gone into enforcement which is substantial. So staff is learning and doing a great job. Got it. So Okay. Thank you. Okay. Did you want to add anything, Chief? You did a great job.

I don't really I really I don't really have much to add. I think what we want to do is we just want to be good partners. Um from the police department standpoint, some of the problems that cross over between law enforcement or the police department and code enforcement are solved by multidisiplinary uh work on a property to mitigate or abate the issues. So um our foundational meetings which included bringing in some outside agencies that are that are known for being pretty dynamic and dealing with debatement is making sure we understand where people's responsibilities begin and end and how we can work together to debate issues in a timely manner. Uh you know our also our current concern is making sure that the building and safety and code enforcement can do their job safely and where can we offer training um um our systems with records management things that we can recommend to help them get up and uh be able to be more proactive.

Very good. Okay. Thank you chief very much appreciate that. Um I guess the last quick question and this is it. I I just the um page nine we talk about the kaigus brackish groundwater supply studies the the whole water issue. what what is um I guess the question I have is trying to understand what are next steps what are where are we right now actively we participate in that study is there anything internally that we're working on so uh we participated in the study we've provided comments on this the draft study um and I'm going to call up Wanda and Chris um they too have been here all evening and I'm sure they're

I know they have and they want to go home but thank you for coming I'll ask that question.

Um, we provided comments on the scope of work for Kyagus to initiate the optimization study of where those dysalters might be built in any hybrid combination. And I believe that they're going to award that contract uh next month very soon. So Kaiagus is leading that effort and there's a lot of different retailers within their service area that are contributing and of course we've contributed uh significantly.

Okay. And what do we stand as a city to benefit if I mean if and as this goes forward? Well, I think most people know that we're state water project dependent

and so we want to have some local resources available to us. So that could be development of groundwater here in Seami Valley. It could be groundwater development somewhere downstream of us, say more park, Camrio. Could be any combination of that. and then having that water be available to us. Either um Kaigus providing additional supplies without that water being pumped up to the upper zone or as we commented perhaps um evaluating the opportunity for that water to actually be pumped up in case something happened to the Santa Susanna tunnel for example. So, we're ex hopefully um I believe expanding the the the scope of opportunities for our benefit to our community.

Wonderful. Thank you, Wanda. Appreciate it. Thank you. That's it for now. Any other questions? I hate to ask. Any questions for Justin? I can't wait for Justin's presentation next. So, uh do I have a motion to receive and file or do I need one? I will so move. Please second. Thank you. Call for the vote.

The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Madame Mayor and members of the city council. Next on the agenda is item 9A. Approve the Semi Valley traffic signal conditions assessment report. Establish a new capital improvement project for traffic signal upgrades. approve a supplemental budget request and amend contracts with Ecoite and public works director Ron Fui and engineer traffic engineer and we're very excited about this presentation Justin Justin link

well I I'll do a quick introduction and Justin you can ask Justin all the questions you want so good evening Mayor Kavanagh on council members and of course you know Justin link our city traffic engineer. This evening we are recommending several steps to begin the to begin to improve the city's traffic signal system. The council members are well aware that in recent years there have been many issues with traffic signal operations at several locations throughout the city. This includes signals operating in flashing red for several hours or even days. traffic signals how many malfunctions and signals not operating at all and not just because of PSPS. To address these issues, last year the city retained a consultant to conduct a complete and thorough inventory and assessment of all of the 121 city traffic signals. The consultants review included uh the condition of traffic signal cabinets and controllers as as Justin has shown on the screen. Uh traffic signal poles and equipment, underground equipment including conduits and wires. Uh video and loop detection, pedestrian and equestrian push buttons and interconnect connect systems just to name a few. Um in fact the it always amazes me but in fact the inventory and assessment was so ex extensive that the report turned into a 5600page report. So everything you wanted to know about any traffic signal. So after assessing all of the 121 sig city traffic signals, the consultant developed a three-phase improvement program. Phase zero, phase one, and phase two. Phase zero would be accomplished near-term. Phase one would

be short to midterm, and phase two would be long-term or identified as more complex projects. Phase zero improvements would consist of replacing the city's oldest and unrepairable traffic signal controllers. Phase zero is estimated to cost, excuse me, cost $250,000. The intersection plan for phase two phase zero improvements are listed in the staff report and shown on the PowerPoint slide on the screen. To accomplish the phase zero improvements, staff proposes to use existing contracts with a conolite control products inc for controller p purchases and a conolite services inc for controller reprogramming, removal and installation. And these are two different obviously they're conelite companies but two different and separate companies. In future years, phases one and two would replace additional controllers and also wiring wiring and other equipment that are the source of other malfunctions that may cause abnormal operations. The development of a separate capital project to complete phases one and two is ongo ongoing. Phases one and two are estimated to cost $14.1 million, including contingencies for construction and engineering. It is estimated that phase one and phase two projects would be a multi-year effort over 10 years to reduce the number of facilities simultaneously under construction and the impact on the general fund. In summary, it is recommended the city council approve the recommendations outlined in the staff report, including approving the S traffic signal conditions assessment report, establishing a new capital improvement project to complete the phase zero recommendations, approving a supplemental budget request in the amount of $250,000,

amending the contract with Econolite Control Products, Inc. to purchase new controllers and amending the contract with Econolyte Services, Inc. to install the controllers. That concludes our staff report and Justin's available for questions. Well, they're lighting up the screen here, but I have a first question that I just wanted to actually a comment that I wanted to share to make sure everyone was aware of it. City manager and I discussed it earlier. I always assumed we had a system that knew when a light was out and I was told no we don't. Our system is each of us. So if you are if you see a light out blinking red during during working hours you call Justin. Actually you call public works. And if it's after hours you call the uh Semi Valley PD's non-emergency line 5836950. So those are the two ways to report a light out. I text the city manager, but she didn't want everyone else texting her. So, other than that, so let's get on to some questions. Uh, council Oh, and she texted you, so we're good. Okay. Um, council member Ayala, questions.

Yeah, I just have a couple. The when is phase zero starting? What is near-term after this evening? Is that really this? Correct. As soon as you authorize the funding then yeah then we can get started.

And then um on for the controllers I I wasn't clear what what's their main function. So let me go back and give you a visual aid here. So there is quite a bit of equipment. So this is our black box in essence. So there is quite a bit of equipment in that black box that does various different things. But the controller itself is responsible for the signal timing. So there are various parameters associated with how long a light is green. how long the light is red, yellow, etc. Each phase, each direction, that is the in essence, if we were to call that cabinet a computer, that is the CPU.

Does it also con um it talked about being network ready? So, is that also then another function of it alerting you is part of that?

Correct. So, if you look, this is one of our older cabinets and this is one of the older controllers. This is We've been lucky. Uh these these controllers are fairly robust, but this is probably about 30 years old. This this controller right here, this is the latest generation. And if you notice here on the left hand side of the controller, those are Ethernet ports. So the ASC2100 lacks those Ethernet ports. It uses a much older protocol. It does not have the ability to beworked in the more traditional or modern sense, if you will. Does the rust in any way?

This one would be recommended for replacement. I could have told you that by the way if I if Yeah. The And then just real quick, the last question is on page 14 does someone first. Does someone have to actually push the This is a very elementary question, but does someone have to push the button for the light, the little man to come up to say to walk the street? I'm assuming it. Is that correct?

Yes. Unless there is an issue with that button and then the traffic signal goes into a phase we call pedestrian recall. So I would So on page 14, one of the things that is identified for phase one is uh push button installation for a couple of intersections where there is a missing pedestrian button and one that is needs repaired. It's not working. And so and for that it's only $4,500 for those three, but it's in phase one. And I think I would propose that as we're approving this that is there a way we can move that to phase zero because I think it's important that that's a big safety issue that we don't have working buttons.

These are actually things that can be replaced using our existing maintenance contract. So I'd imagine what had occurred is that these were observed when the consultant was reviewing the conditions at the intersection. We have since reported those. So they have documented them in the condition assessment, but they can be repaired immediately with our maintenance contract. Great. Without us having to change anything. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That was it. Okay. Mayor Pro Tim Blitster. So that comes to the question, how long have we been using Econolyte as our repair and fix things and keep things working? Econolyte as a consultant or or as or contractor or as a contractor. as a contractor

as how long have we been using them as our contractor? It's been about five years I believe.

Okay. So, they have been our contractor during a lot of this problems that we've been observing the last year or so. Um Okay. And I'm I'm really glad the assessment was done. I think it was absolutely critical. Um and I guess I have some questions about interconnectivity because I'm told that there's unique parts etc. And so we want to keep using the same same equipment etc. the same supplier. But to be honest, it's felt like Econolite has been reactive, not necessarily proactive with our problems. And when we've had when we had failures, it seems it's taken time to find and purchase replacement parts at great distress to our residents. Some of some of these have been out for a week or two. Um I'm just feeling like Econite could or should have anticipated. I mean, they've been our been there. uh the age of our controllers, they could advise us about needing to acquire parts, maybe upgrading things. Yeah, I don't sense that they've done that. Um but what we're being asked now is saying we want to use them going forward to do all this great work. Um so I guess um so it just feels like our efforts have been internally generated including this assessment study. They didn't come anyway. So that being said, I've got I made my soapbox concern. Um, is there really no other company that makes interchangeable parts with our current system right now

for econolite products? No. Okay. The software can be platform agnostic which means that you can talk to various kinds of controllers but for the equipment to so you you couldn't take a McCain McCain Swarco is another company or uh actually Unix uh but McCain Swarco controller would not work in this style cabin. Okay. Um and so and if I understand you have the econite that we buy them from and then another part kind of like WM I guess another econolite that does the repair. They're not the same company. Is that correct?

They are different companies under the same umbrella. Okay. How do we assure if we go with this great proposal? How do we assure that they econite is going to be immediately responsive? because in the past I felt like they I mean they've didn't quite have the right parts and I guess that's a different part of their company but how do we assure that they are going forward that they're now immediately responsive? So I think there's a distinction there between what's repairable in the cabinet versus some of the for lack of a better term the the high ticket or the the high dollar items. So Econolyte Systems who is our maintenance contractor, okay,

is able to repair some of the smaller parts. So, the equipment that you see in there minus the controller. The controllers themselves are are a little bit more than $5,000 a piece and they are not part of our maintenance contract. So, that falls back to the city. So, when we have equipment that is aging or has aged significantly, it's not to say that it's old, but it's old in computer years, when it's over 30 35 years, a failure is unpredictable. And if we don't have sufficient number of spares or the equipment is incompatible uh in this case then it takes a little bit of time to get somebody from Econolyte control products in Anaheim or Santa Ana to actually come up and program them. So the programming for the controller that's on the screen now does not have the same programming as a Cobalt controller which is their latest version. So there is a conversion that needs to occur in order to translate the timing parameters from an older controller to a newer controller. That's where we're finding a lot of the issues is that if we have a controller fail, well, we can go pop in another controller, but it's going to take time to translate that information. So that's why we'll find that that there's a signal. It's going to be out for extended periods of time. The other issue is and and I'm coming up with things that I can't find for, you know, lack of better term, but gremlins. So we run into issues like rodents or ants that will chew through wires. They love the insulation on the wires for some reason. There may be a failure in between a conduit that runs from one side of the street to another. And when you have an intersection like Tier Rahada, LA Avenue and Madera where the conduit run is 100 125 ft, the issue may lie on either side of the street and there's no access point in between the pull boxes that are in each corner. So you don't know what has occurred. So eventually what happens is we have to rewire the entire intersection.

Sure. And that's an all day, in some cases two-day process. So, it's not so much that they're unable to repair, is that the repairs that we are seeing now with the equipment that is aged so significantly, they're not the easiest repairs anymore. It's not popping one part out and popping another part in, it's a wholesale replacement.

Got it. Okay. Well, and so, and you have faith. I I I hear I'm hearing you. Okay. Let me let me one last question then. If I understand this report or um basically we have we have the opportunity to purchase 25 um new econite cobalt controllers basically and we're want want to buy the new new and then we as a city have decided that these are the most I mean yes the report helps us but you've made the decision that these are the 25 locations that you think are the most likely to fail or most needed. Is that is that accurate? It's based on age. So there's various iterations of the ASC2 controller. There's the ASC2, ASC2 2100, ASC2 2100s. The oldest is the ASC2. And we've looked at those locations that have the oldest controllers. In fact, we have an ASC 8000, which hasn't been made for 25 years, 30 years. So it's not at an intersection that requires a lot of computing power. It's at Volunteer Park. So it only it's you push the button, the light turns red, people cross the street. That's all it has to do. It doesn't have to run a a large intersection.

So do we need to change? No. Okay. We don't want to wait for it to fail, especially at a pedestrian intersection where I I hear you entirely. Okay. Thank you. That I I appreciate your answers. Thank you, Council Member Rhodess. I don't have questions as much as comments. Um the first comment is in your report, Ron, you talked about um equestrian sidewalk button. I might be the only one in the room that's actually used one of those. So, um I appreciate that they work when they work. Um the other one is, "It is not lost on me that I finished reading this staff report, got in the car, and the lights at First and LA were out." Conspiracy. I'm just saying.

Thank you for the I I think having this report and then being able to put these things into uh the queue and spread it out over 10 years is really the most responsible use of money that we can do. And so, thank you for putting that together. All right. Excuse me. Thank you very much. I was very much looking forward to this um after all the complaints we've had about lights out. And I know it's an aging system like some of us. So, this was just a really a good assessment. Get them in place, get them start to be replaced, and people will be happy that their lights are working correctly except PSPS. So, we have to remind them of that. We can't can't do anything about that. But, thank you for the report. And do I have a motion? So he can fix things.

Mayor Pro Tim Litzer starting tomorrow. Starting. He's starting tomorrow. As long as he gets We We have to give him some money. Okay. I move that we approve the city of Semi Valley traffic signal. Is it Is it on? No.

You just turned me on. Okay. Thank you. I move that the city council approve the city of semi valley traffic signal conditions assessment report that we establish new capital improvement project to complete the phase zero recommendations of the traffic signal conditions assessment report that we approve a supplemental budget request in the amount of $250,000 from the general fund and authorize an interfund transfer to the new CIP project that we amend the contract with econolite as long as they promise to get right on it control products to extend the contract for one year until October 6, 2027 and increase the not to exceed budget by $175,000 for a total contract not to exceed amount of $375,000. And finally, that we amend the contract with Econolite Services, Inc. to increase the not to exceed amount by $75,000 for a total contract not to exceed amount of $1.2 million.

Second. Thank you. We have a first and second. Call for the vote. It's not showing. Let's try it again. You might have to fix this system, too.

The motion The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Very excited. Madame Mayor and members of the city council, next on the agenda is city uh city council member reports. Council member Ayella, you are up first.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh Wednesday, March 11th. I attended the every 15 minutes program at Semi Valley High School. So, thanks to everyone who helped put that on. I believe Mike Court, you helped put that on, did you not? As well as the Semi Valley Parent Teachers Student Association. So, thank you for that. On March 12th, I attended the neighborhood council number three meeting and we had a presentation from our public works regarding the flood program. And I don't know if a lot of people know that we are part of FEMA's community rating system and by doing different activities, our public works department, it reduces the flood insurance premiums for the people in our community. So, it's a really good program and we our community members benefit from us being part of that program. On March 13th, I attended the Kyagus uh grant um that Congresswoman Julia Brownley presented. And what I learned was the capacity of Lakebard is 10,500 acre feet, but due to hydraulic limitations, the plant can only access and treat 7,500 acre feet of that. And so what this grant did, which was was over a million dollars, it will allow Kaiagus to treat the remaining 3,000 and provide fully treated water in the event of of an emergency in our community. So it's a really good program and it's going to it really helps us in case um of an emergency or lack of water supply. I also attended the on that same day the Fourth of July committee meeting that we're planning that two-day event and uh again I presented some of those things. I will let you guys know if it's cme2250.com is the website and it lists it already has it's already built out and has a summary of all of the events that are

happening for th those two days July 3rd and 4th. Uh March 17th I had my touchbased meeting with the city manager. Thank you for taking the time for me with that. On March 18th, I had the youth employment services uh committee meeting. The um two things. The big one was getting prepared for the job fair. And the other was they're thinking of a workshop for local businesses to to give them information on u the job permitting process um hiring students, things like that, which will really be an an uplift for the students who are looking for jobs. On March um 18th, I also met with a community members who represent an organization called For the Future. It's a nonprofit that helps uh girls here in um Semi Valley with group homes and we'll probably hear more from them. They're looking for some more community support and to be more active in our community. On March 19th, I attended the Salute to Excellence um awards at the that the chamber put on. I think all of us were there. It was a great event. Congratulations to all of them. On March 20th was also an awards season. It's the It was the Elks first responder of the year. U the Elks responder of the year awards and um the Elks did a great job. The food was amazing. Uh Mike, your your group there did great. We're great hosts. Thank you for that. A special congratulations to our two local winners. Um, officer Steven Filbrook was the officer of the year and also for the Ventura for the Ventura County Fire recipient. Oh, he left it was Engineer Company 43 here on LA Avenue and Yusede. So, they were recognized too. So, we had some local um recognition winners, which was really great. On March 25st was the Youth Employment Services job fair. I

think Mr. Fowler said about 350 to 400 people attended which was really great great turnout. uh they did not have their normal coffee sponsor this year so I went ahead and c and sponsored the coffee this year and so they'll be Hi Rocky and um they had to go to someone else and um also on that day uh the seropimus hosted a a small reception for for Fred and Debbie Thomas at the Straurn because their bricks were being placed in the memorial garden and so I attended I attended did that I did not know um our former mayor but I know him just through what all the stories that people say and it's like nobody ever says anything bad about him and um so and so I just can it's like every there's also now a bench in front of the boys and girls club dedicated to them as well. So just the fact that they have all these different dedications just tells me how much of an impact he had on the city and what a good man he was. and also um Debbie as well. So, I wish I could have known known them, but I did not have a chance to. And that's the end of my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rhodess.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. On March 10th, um Mike Judge and I attended a meeting with Glenn Misera over a a new idea that he has. There's always a new idea. Um, also on March 10th, uh, the staff was kind enough to use short sentences and small words to try and explain the financials to me. I had questions about, um, how the, uh, accumulated interest was being allocated in the budget, and now we figured it out. Um, oh, and then on March 10th, um, I participated in the interviews for the CPG grants, uh, review committee, and we selected a great, um, member to to participate in that very, very difficult committee. Uh on March 11th, I attended the um every 15 minutes event and Mike Court, congratulations on another successful uh pulloff. I have um I've now seen the complete event. The last year I got to see the assembly but couldn't go to the crash site and this year I got to go to the crash site but couldn't go to the assembly. Um it is moving. You can't look at that and not internalize and personalize what's going on as if it was your own kid. And uh and terrific event. Well done and glad we have it in our community. Um I left that night for Tampa where I attended a coffee trade show and learned about AI um at a coffee trade show. the uh on March 16th um I attended the Skagg Sacramento summit. It was a two-day event. Um Council Member Judge and I were up there representing Skagg. Um I'm on the uh community economic and human development

committee, this housing committee. Um the the two days were on day one panels. people came to the room where we were and they we had discussions and we had panels on labor, housing, carb um and um I didn't jump over the desk on every any one of those to give my opinion to the panelists, but um it was sometimes uh informative and sometimes very tough to listen to because it's a political year every year up there. Um the second day was a lobbying day. Skagg is bringing forward two bills. Um one to um uh alter the RENA process slightly and get more permanent funding and then the other one is to um alter the regional early action plan and expand it to eight years instead of four which I think is a very reasonable request. and we did what's called pitching in the swing space. And um yeah, it's it's a building where all the electeds are and you run from floor to floor and door to door and you have 15 minutes on this weird speed dating uh experience and say the same thing over and over again trying to get um support for the bills. That was my first time I've gone up on a single bill to a single representative before. I haven't done this thing. We did 12. Well, well, there were four or five teams and we each had about 10 to 12 meetings each. So, we were lobbying hard. Um, watching how the sausage got made. I can never unsee that now. So, um, and oh, and I couldn't do coffee at the event because on March 11th,

technically, I celebrated my birthday, but on that Friday and Saturday, um, my wife took me out to Yamava for a concert, so I couldn't do the coffee calling me out on the day. Anyway, you sure? Uh-huh. All right. Anyway, mayor, that's the end of my report. Thank you. I pointed him out, so it was good. Council member Judge.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. On March 10th, I uh I too um met with Glen Bera um about some issues he had. Uh later that day, uh same place, we met with the city attorney for lunch and we discussed some stuff going on. Always great to meet with our city attorney and talk about things going on in the city. That evening, Rocky and I did committee or did do the interviews for the CPG uh committee and I think yes, I agree. We made a great choice for that committee. On Monday, excuse me, March 16th, I was up in Sacramento and I think Rocky explained that very well. I can assure you that I know it's shocking, but I kept my mouth shut the entire time except to say thank you to the legislators for hearing us and hope that they support Skagg's proposals. On Thursday, March 19th, I attended the Sim Valley Chamber of Commerce Solita Excellence Awards and it was a great event, always, always a good event put on by the chamber and I'm looking forward to the next year. On Friday, March 20th, um I too attended the Elks First Responder of the Year Awards. Um, I love that event. The elves do a great job and I'm so glad they invite all the local electeds and all and honor every one of our first responders from AMR, uh, fire district, our police department, sheriff's department, and our local CHP. Congratulations to all the recipients. On Saturday, March 21st, I too attended Fred's and Debbie's brick brick laying over at the Straurn. I always like to point out when I'm there that makes me feel real old seeing the Strath Museum because their brick is laid behind the uh old St. Rose Lima Church which was the church I was baptized in that same building when it was on Pacific and across from that is my barber shop that used to be on LA Avenue. So I always say it's kind of makes you feel old when you see the old businesses from when you were a kid and they're on a museum. And later that evening um later this

evening we're going to adjourn our meeting. So, the mayor has kindly um granted me permission to talk about something. Um we had a member of our Elks Lodge and our Elks Lodge here in Semi Valley is about 900 members strong. It's a huge family. They do great things in the community. Last year we we donated over $60,000 to our local nonprofits and um other things in the city just to help out and make sure that people get their galas on, they can get money for different things. one of our members died suddenly and tragically um the weekend before and so Friday or Saturday night we had a great fundraiser for him at the Cork and Batter restaurant led by Justin Hansinger and his band to raise money for his family because again it's a tra it's a tragedy when anybody dies but it's double the tragedy when it's sudden and unexpected. So my wishes go out to his Robert Johnson was a great person. He was a great human being. He cared about this city a lot. He did a lot of good work for the Elks and my heart my heart my condolences go out to his family because he can't be replaced. That's the end of my report.

Thank you. Mayor Brutan Litster.

Thank you and thank you for that. Mike. Um, on Tuesday, March the 10th, I um got together with Debbie Klene, who's the director of institutional advancement and community relations at Morark College, and we um talked about some of the wonderful ways to collaborate together in in in the finer arts and appreciate the work that they're doing there at Marark College. Um, Wednesday, March the 11th, um, was part of the, um, Han Yosph put together a discussion about Amgen's growth in our region and what it can mean for us as well and how we should work together to collaborate in doing things to to take advantage of that growth. Also had the opportunity of attending the every 15 minutes program that Mike Court so graciously and tirelessly put together and he's done that multiple times. So, thank you for doing that for our community and for our young people. Um, saw the cr saw the crash site on March 11th and attended the beautiful memorial beautiful um assembly that is held on March the 12th. And I will tell you that that is truly you you if you if you can only go to one, I would encourage you to be that uh assembly. It's truly a moving amazing program where where it hits home just the impact of uh that comes about by some of these poor choices. But I again I want to thank Mike Court. I appreciated too that he arranged for Lauren Kibinger to be the um featured speaker and she lost her son a few years ago. Sam Susanna pass and just her story if that alone was shared would would would help all of us appreciate the consequences of of our choices and actions. And so thank you Mike for that amazing lesson. Um, also on Thursday, March 12th, I attended VCOG's um, council me uh, the VCOG board meeting in Camaro

um, where we had actually a where, um, we I think we you've shared with us the state of the region. In fact, you were part of this, I believe, but anyway, it was a discussion of some of the statistics about Sumi Valley and in the whole whole region. It was it's a great product. If anyone doesn't have one, I know they can choir one. Um but also in that um presentation too we talked about some of the different I think it was David Maron that that that presented to us but also um in the discussion we also hear about some of the legislation that affects us. One of the things they talked about is Michelle talks about how she coordinates uh with local cities and I and maybe how at least we could meet quarterly so we can join forces together and and so again appreciate the work being done and and encourage us to be part of very active with that. Also on Thursday March the 12th I attended at Moore Park College their in the Heights production. Talk about first class production happening in our community. Really well done. just the music and the acting and just very well done. Um, Friday, March the 13th, I attended the Semi Valley Educ Ed Foundation's teacher of the month presentation where we honored Patrick Kelly who is a teacher at Seami High School who is part of their um biology um biotech program and has probably raised and many scientists who are saving the world. So, thank you to Patrick for his efforts there. Um I too attended the um presentation for by Congresswoman Julia Brownley and think that's a wonderful addition to our community. So glad that that was championed by Charlotte and those at Kaigus team to make to make that happen. Um that night I guess it was my night for the arts. I went to Royal High School attended their performance of Mamma Mia. We have some talented musicians in our um and performers and in our community. So, congratulations to

Susie Jeffs and her wonderful team there. Um, following week on Tuesday, March the 17th, I attended AWA's water issues briefing where they um spoke where they had a presenter who talked a lot about about our the water basins throughout our county. I thought I would share that and I didn't realize this that we the water groundwater near us is part of the Lasposus Valley Basin that it is actually divided east and west. We're kind of in the east side which actually has higher elevation 100 ft higher than the west basin. However, the east basin is we re recharging is not occurring as well. And so we actually have have some issues there to be aware of. Um the other thing I learned about is arundo which I'd never heard of before which is basically very thirsty plants that grow in our royal etc and takes water that could be used for other things. And there was there have been a rundo removal projects that maybe we need to again revisit so that to um again maximize on our pot water that is available. Um so also on Thursday March the 19th I um attended um I'm sorry that was that was Tuesday excuse me. Also that evening later that evening I attended the SM Valley Youth Council that met at the Cultural Arts Center where they are planning this amazing talent show on April 11th. So get your tickets soon. Wednesday, March 18th, u join the mayor and our city manager Argite in attending uh another discussion about what can be done to collaborate with our um with our with our uh school counsel attended that even that afternoon SCce's GAP or our government advisory panel quarterly meeting. Some of the things

that came out of that for me that claims is when growth happens it actually brings costs down. So in other words, if we have more projects that need more, it will actually bring cost down for everyone. um also talked about um infrastructure and um how it is very important for us to engage with them early as we and we're learning that the hard way and and the right way now that the minute we hear about something we need to reach out to them so we can get the power that we need in the pipe because it's critical because there's not enough to go all around. They didn't say that. I'm saying that but I'm that's my observation. Um, they also talked about their mobile education outreach that they have available that we can take advantage of and I understand we will be using that with the senior presentation coming up at the senior center. Um, also that was on I'm sorry Wednesday on Thursday also attended a VCOG's admin committee meeting. Appreciated meeting with our city manager and also attended the salute to excellence. Appreciate the chamber for honoring some outstanding people and it was good to be there. Um, also appreciated attending the Elks Lodge first respond of the year awards. Thank you again to to our outstanding Elks. I'm sorry that I missed I had wanted to be at the Debbie Tom at that the the friend Debbie Thomas brick laying ceremony, etc. But I'm afraid I was down in Torrance playing the harp with a wonderful lamb of God presentation and going through the four or five. I'm just telling you this last weekend was not was a was um a difficult feat. But we are blessed to live in the community that we do that doesn't have some of those issues. So that concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor, could we take a five minute recess?

You may recess. Go ahead. I still want to be home by 10:30, I'm thinking. So, um, thank you. I know I've got five minutes. On Wednesday, March 11th, yes, I attended the, uh, MGEN meeting at the Semi Valley Unified School District. Uh, it was very u informative. They had MGEN there and uh went over what they're expecting with their new um uh new building and campus in Thousand Oaks. They're expanding it by $660 million. So, they kind of shared that with us. And then what was very interesting is they had the gentleman from the foundation there actually explaining what and what areas the foundation concentrates in and all the things they that they do do for our local communities. So, it was veryformational. On Thursday, March 12th, I attended the opening night of the Semi Valley Citizens Academy with our chief. So, I go first and then he gets to entertain them afterwards. So, let's see. Um on Wednesday, March 18th, we again met with just this um just the UN Sema Unified School District superintendent and then two of the board members to discuss anything that we might want to move forward with with the Amgen expansion so that we could complement the area and and get ahead of it. So, unfortunately, I did not make it to the every 15 minutes, but I'm going to age both my daughter and Corey Baker. They were in the first one in 2003. They were both students that were selected for the very first every 15 minutes. So I was one of the parents participating. Extremely moving even though you would you knew it wasn't real. It's still it was yeah it was very very moving and to see all the her friends that was they all learned a good lesson I think that day. Um but it's a very good program. So thanks Mike for continuing to to help promote that. On Thursday, March 19th, I also attended the Chamber Salute to Excellence Awards.

They do a great job. Everyone that earned an award. It was welld deserved. Um, I attended the Elks Lodge first responder of the year awards that they always do a great job. It was very good. The food was a stuffed stuffed chicken and for going to a banquet type thing, it was very good. And it was um station 43 C shift that received the engine of the year. It's Captain Becca Merrill. She um played softball with my daughter when they were kids, so it was good to see her. And on Saturday the 21st, I also attended the the Yes job and career fair. Ryan, great job. I got there later and there were still tons of people there. So very, very interesting. And then I also attended the little memorial service for the Thomas' at Strathn Park. And yes, Mike, I could see seeing those things there move there would make a difference in your life. Um, that's all I have for my report. So, the last item on the agenda is 10B. Do we have any agenda items? Mayor Prom Litster. Um, yes. Just uh I was approached by a community member and there's a group that would like to consider placing a plaque on um there's an oak tree that we have built a road around to preserve which is on Yeusede. It's where you somebody turns into Cottonwood Drive. It also Evening Sky Drive is off of that. And as I understand that um our former planning commissioner chair Larry Frerieded, am I saying his name correctly? That he was absolutely instrumental in saving that tree, but and but it has now become a beautiful beautiful spot in in that in that community and people that live there would love to maybe have a plaque that that commemorates that occurrence and that tree and tells a little bit history. um they said they'll take care of the cost, but um if we were amendable, they'd like the city maybe to identify location or parameters if if

that's something we would consider doing. So, I'll second to put it as a discussion item. So, that would be to discuss whether we could allow a plaque at that location. Any other items? Um, I don't know if it's for agenda or if it's a a staff ask, but uh the uh putting our national motto up in city hall and as per the request of the community members. Is that a um something that needs to come to council to uh to do? Okay. Then I would ask to have that brought back as an agenda item.

If um staff can put together a memo of boxes for uh the council's review um and then following review of that, if council would still like that to come forward, then we can do that. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So tonight we are closing in memory of Johnsia. He's Oxnard Police Department and a DA investigator with Ventura County. as well in memory of Robert Johnson who Mike spoke about. He's a local resident and an Elks member. And thank you. We're adjourned. Yeah, I'm done by