City Council and Authorities - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the Stockton City Council meeting on June 9, 2026. Let's go ahead and do a roll call.

Council Member Blower. Present. Council Member Enriquez. Present. Council Member Ponce is absent. Council Member Padilla. Present. Council Member Villapadua. Present. Vice Mayor Lee. Present. And Mayor Fugazi.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Wonderful. At this time, I would like to invite my friend, Nadeem Khan, up to the podium so that he can do our invocation for today.

There we go. My name is Nadeem Khan, born and raised here in Stockton, and I'm very honored and blessed to be here today to give the Invocational. In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful, honorable council members, community leaders, and residents of Stockton, peace and blessings be upon you all. Today we gather not as divided people, but as one city, one community, and one family, striving toward a better future for our children and our generations to come. Oh God, give us the path, the path of those whom you have bestowed your mercy upon. Grant our leaders grant our leaders to listen to one another with open heart and fairness. In moments of disagreements, let understanding overcome anger and let unity overcome division. At times, people may feel unheard, outnumbered, or discouraged by how decisions are made. But let us remember that true leadership is measured not by numbers, but by integrity, justice, and sincerity toward the people we serve. Let us all remember we do not want to judge another. We do not want to judge one another. Do not walk in the path of pointing one finger at a person, because while we point fingers outward, three fingers point right back at ourselves. Let us first reflect on our actions, our own character, and our own responsibilities to bring goodness into this city. Oh God, protect our youth from violence, drugs, hopelessness, and despair. Open doors of opportunity, education, and success for them. Make them leaders of integrity and mercy. Bless the families, businesses, schools, first responders, and every individual working hard each day to make Stockton stronger. May this city become known not for conflict, but for compassion, not for division, but for unity, not to despair, but for hope. And finally, oh God, we thank you for your blessings you send into our lives at the moment we need them most. Just as a vision of confident clothing came to my family and me at the right time, reminding us of the true richness of life, let it serve as a reminder to all people that real wealth is not measured by money, status, or possessions, but by faith, family, purpose, gratitude, and service to others. Help us remain strong through life's challenges, humble during times of success, and steadfast in our commitment to doing good. May we always carry ourselves with confidence, dignity, and trust in you. We thank you, God, for all the blessings you have bestowed upon us. And I humbly request you to honor and bestow your mercy upon the council members to do the right things and make the right decisions. God bless you all. I lost my parents as well, and I know you lost your father a while back, and I had made this for you, and I know we've been busy, so I like to give this plaque, and I'd like to share it with you guys. This is some pictures of the mayor with her father. So, something for your office.

Okay, next up we're having the Pledge of Allegiance and it is gonna be done by my two YES summer interns, Anthony and Hillary.

Could I have everyone please rise for the pledge?

Begin.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

We do not have any additions to regular session, but before we move to recognitions, announcements, or reports, I would like to invite Maestro Jaffe up to the podium for a quick announcement.

Good afternoon everybody. It's a time for anniversaries. I'm the conductor and the music director of the Stockton Symphony. My name is Peter Jaffe. And we're just about to enter our centennial season. 100 years ago, the symphony was founded by a brilliant Italian immigrant, Maglio Silva. But we're also approaching the 250th anniversary of our country this July 4th. and it'll be a 20-year anniversary since the last time the Stockton Symphony played a July 4th concert at Weber Point Event Center. We actually opened the Weber Point Event Center way back with one of your predecessors, Mayor Gary Podesto. This program is going to include clap-along marches, a Duke Ellington medley. We're going to be ending with Mambo, Superman, and the 1812 Overture followed by fireworks. And before we take the stage, the musical fireworks will really start with Latin Magic, which is a great group that's been hired by the city for many years. We just want to say thank you. It's a great opportunity. And as I understand, it's going to be free. And not only is it going to be free, there's no admission. It's going to be a fantastic celebration of our country. Please tell all your friends. And we just want to thank everybody involved, all the staff, the city employees, the city manager, the mayor, for enabling this to happen. We'll see you there. Thanks so much.

Okay, so our first proclamation tonight is for Gun Violence Awareness Month. So, OVP.

Whereas the city of Stockton recognizes the devastating impact gun violence has on victims, survivors, families, and the broader community, and remains committed to prevention, intervention, healing, and long-term community wellness. And the city of Stockton has prioritized violence prevention through the Office of Violence Prevention, which provides outreach, case management, youth and family support, hospital-linked intervention, workforce development, trauma-informed care, and community engagement. And the Office of Violence Prevention works with community organizations, schools, health care providers, law enforcement, faith leaders, and residents to reduce violence, interrupt cycles of harm, and create safer opportunities for youth and families. And Gun Violence Awareness Month honors lives lost to gun violence, uplifts survivors and impacted families, and reaffirms our shared responsibility to invest in prevention and healing-centered solutions. And the City of Stockton recognizes the dedication of outreach workers, violence interrupters, service providers, advocates, and community leaders whose efforts help build peace and safer neighborhoods. And communities nationwide observe Gun Violence Awareness Month each June, including wearing orange to honor victims and promote safer communities. Now, therefore, I, Christina Fugazi, Mayor of the City of Stockton, and members of the Stockton City Council do hereby proclaim June 2026 as Gun Violence Awareness Month.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, and community members. My name is Ana Contreras. I'm the program manager for OVP. Thank you for recognizing June as Gun Violence Awareness Month. This month is an opportunity to honor the lives lost to gun violence, support survivors and families impacted by violence, and reaffirm our commitment to building safer communities. While gun violence continues to affect communities across the nation, Stockton has seen encouraging progress. Through the end of May, Stockton Police Department data shows homicides are down 47% and non-fatal shootings are down 20% compared to this time last year. These numbers represent more than statistics. They represent lives saved, families kept whole, and the opportunities for young people to thrive. These gains are the result of a collective effort. Community members, faith leaders, schools, outreach workers, service providers, and law enforcement have all played a role in creating safer neighborhoods. Programs that provide mentorship, conflict mediation, trauma informed support, and opportunities for youth and families are helping address the root cause of violence before it occurs. As we recognize Gun Violence Awareness Month, we also recognize that our work is not finished. Every shooting is one too many, and we remain committed to investing in prevention, intervention, healing, and community partnerships that create lasting change. Through the month of June, the Office of Violence Prevention will be hosting community pop-up events every Tuesday to bring resources, activities, and violence prevention awareness directly into our neighborhoods. We invite everyone to join us today at 3 p.m. We will be at McKinley Park. June 16, 2 p.m. at Sosa Park, June 23 at 2 p.m. at Victory Park, and June 30 at 2 p.m. at Oak Park. These events are an opportunity for residents to connect with resources, engage with community partners, and stand together in support of safer neighborhoods for all. Thank you for your continued support of violence prevention efforts and for standing with those impacted by gun violence. Thank you.

Speaking for myself and I would say for council, the work that is happening in Stockton, the reduction in crime that we have, the reduction in homicides that we have in Stockton. So from two years ago, it's down 60% from 2024. You guys are a very important part of that. All of you are an important part of that. And we couldn't get there without you. So we truly appreciate all the work that you do at the ground level to make sure it doesn't start. So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, our next proclamation is LGBTQ Plus Pride Month.

Whereas the City of Stockton is committed to fostering an inclusive community where every resident is treated with dignity, respect, and fairness, and the month of June 2026 marks Pride Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the diversity, resilience, and contributions of the LGBTQ plus community. And the San Joaquin Pride Center will host its 15th annual San Joaquin Pride Fest, bringing the community together in celebration, visibility, and support. And the San Joaquin Pride Center has reached a historic milestone with the opening of its new community space at the historic Stockton Hotel, located at 145 East Weber Avenue in downtown Stockton. And this expanded location will allow the San Joaquin Pride Center to enhance its services, including clinical mental health counseling, advocacy, and other critical support resources for the greater San Joaquin County LGBTQ plus community. And the San Joaquin Pride Center serves as a welcoming hub for connection, support, and resources for residents throughout San Joaquin County. And Central Valley Gender Health and Wellness provides affirming, compassionate, and inclusive health care services that support the well-being of transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, and LGBTQ plus individuals throughout the Central Valley and access to equitable, respectful, and culturally competent health care is essential to the health, dignity, and quality of life of all residents. And Central Valley Gender Health and Wellness plays an important role in expanding access to gender affirming care, education, advocacy, and wellness resources for individuals and families in our region. And through its commitment to serving the community with compassion and respect, Central Valley Gender Health and Wellness helps foster a healthier, more inclusive, and supportive environment for all. And now, therefore, I, Christina Fugazi, Mayor of the City of Stockton, and members of the Stockton City Council, do hereby proclaim June 2026 as Pride Month.

Mr. Olida or Pat, did you want to share a few words? Press the button.

It's been awhile. I would like to thank Councilmember Enriquez, Councilmember Blower, and Vice Mayor Lee for this opportunity to show the support that you express for queer community. It takes change. It takes progressive change. As we saw at the Board of Supervisors from Chair Dolly Wall, Supervisor Kanabunding, to ensure that this flag is raised as you have here at the city level. There will be, oops, sorry. Go away. There will be no more wondering if the flag will pass this year or next year or the following years. The LGBTQ plus community will be represented again and again and again. Thank you. It's funny nobody's looking at me on this side.

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the Council. I know your faces. Good to see you all. I'm John Alita, Executive Director of the Pride Center. I would just like to first say thank you to the Council for making the flag raising a permanent part of what we do each year. Thank you, Council Member Rekus, for your efforts to make that happen. I am grateful I'm sure the community is grateful that we know our city is looking out for us I also want to just make a shout out to our police chief who has been very supportive of us as well I'd also like to just keep ask you to all keep in mind that this is a great gesture but gestures have to go further than this because we our community as many communities is under attack We are being, in some cases, rights are being stripped away. People are not even allowed to be who they are authentically. And while we're fortunate in California, if you just take a moment to look at our Facebook page, you'll just see how much hate there still is in this county for us. So I ask you to please keep that in mind as we move forward and as we face these difficult times as a community with our funding being more challenged than ever. I hope that we will continue to see a Pride Center and a Central Valley General Health and Wellness here for many years to come. And again, thank you for this proclamation, but please keep in mind proclamation is just the beginning. People gotta put their money where their mouth is. Thank you.

Pat, you know the rules, turn your phone off. Let me say, I'm really proud of this council, our mayor, and the community that has totally embraced people who often feel invisible. I know as a man of color, I've grown up in a world where oftentimes I feel like I have to overperform for people, for others that don't and can underperform. As a person that's part of this community, I also feel that don't always need to make it as a part of my introduction but I also understand that by not doing so sometimes allows other people to not see me in the community that represent so I'm really proud of this city I'm proud of our staff I'm proud of this council and I would say to anybody out there that wants to be a part of leading a city as diverse as Stockton as beautiful as Stockton you have to embrace all people we don't sign up to represent some people not these people not those people every single Stocktonian deserves to be represented adequately. And to John Alito, all of the work and leadership that you do on behalf of the LGBTQ plus community and all Stocktonians, I just want to say I appreciate it. And to my colleague, I'm really proud of just all your leadership as it comes to being an advocate. You straddle this activist and politician role very carefully, but your continued consistent support for all people is just so respected. So thank you.

Thank you everyone and thank you all for being here. Mayor, colleagues, I want to thank you all for your continued support for the LGBTQ plus community, to the organizations behind me for receiving this proclamation. I'll never forget last year when we had our pride flag raising when we first, as this council, voted to do the first week in June. And I'll never forget when a father came up to me and he introduced me to his transgender daughter. And I met her and we started having a quick conversation and she said to me, that flag up there, thank you for doing that because I feel safe for the first time. And that moment will always stick with me to know that while some people might think that a flag is not really important, for that child to feel safe in a city means the world to me and it should to each and every one of you. Another thing I also think about is our children, that they're watching us. When we make decisions, when we think about policy, when we're out and about, you know, I always show who I am. I never hide about who I am. I always wear my pride wristband. and go everywhere that I can to just show people that, yes, we have five LGBTQ-plus elected officials in the county, and I'm sure that number will grow. But also, I think one of the things I just want to end with this is that my mom always said, you know, I can't imagine a world where I don't love my child. And I really want people to think about that when your child is questioning, in transition, coming out. to just be there for your child because sometimes you don't know what they're going through. So I want to thank this council, for everyone for being here, and congratulations to both of these organizations on these proclamations. Thank you.

For this next item, we have Ellen from PG&E who is going to be doing a presentation.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, council members, Stockton City Stockton leadership. Today, I have the privilege of presenting PG&E's donation of $100,000 to support expanded youth employment opportunities in Stockton. It is truly an honor to direct the support to the city of Stockton to provide more positive real world experiences for young people in our community. This investment is especially meaningful to me. I was once a student here in Stockton. I also had the opportunity to participate in a high school internship program hosted by PG&E. So I know firsthand how impactful access to opportunity can be in shaping a young person's path. This funding is intended to do just that, open doors for students to gain hands-on experience, build critical skills, and explore future career pathways right here in the city they call home. PG&E is proud to support the city's efforts to advance opportunities for Stockton's youth and families, and we look forward to seeing the lasting impact this investment will have. With that, I thank you, and I present this check for $100,000 to the city of Stockton.

And real quick, just so you know, this will be for at least 20 students, the way we've structured, at least 20 students will have a job because of this donation. So it's not a small amount for those 20 who will get that opportunity. So thank you.

I'll take that off your hand.

Now we are moving on to a public comment. City clerk.

The City of Stockton invites the public to participate in various ways. If you have any questions regarding forms of participation, please contact the Office of the City Clerk. This is the time for public comments for items not on the agenda, announcements, or invitations. You may comment on any subject that is not on the agenda within the jurisdiction of the City Council. If you wish to speak on a specific agenda item, comments will be heard during the item. To ensure sufficient public participation and conduct the agendized city business, the public is limited to one two-minute comment opportunity. citizens public comments are not a time for discussions with the council regarding subjects not on the agenda for this meeting as the brown act limits such discussions comments made by members of the public or council may not reflect the viewpoint of the council we ask that you maintain the rules of decorum as outlined in city council meeting decorum policy the mayor shall preserve strict order and decorum at all meetings Persons addressing the council shall not make personal, impertinent, unduly repetitive, slanderous, or profane remarks to the council or any member of the council, city staff, or the general public, nor utter loud, threatening, personal, or abusive language, nor engage in any other conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise unreasonably impedes the orderly conduct of the council meeting. The city council members will practice civility and decorum in their discussions and debate. A member shall not delay or interrupt the proceedings of the council or use personal, impertinent, or slanderous remarks. Council members will not speak twice on any given subject unless all other council members have been given the opportunity to speak. Every member, once recognized, shall be limited to their debate to five minutes. Any council member who violates the rules repeatedly shall be sanctioned and be barred from further participation other than voting on the subject. members shall not disturb any council members while speaking nor disobey the orders of the presiding officer if a point of order is requested the presiding officer will ask the interrupter to state their point and the presiding officer shall make a ruling the rules of decorum set forth above shall be enforced in the following manner warning the presiding officer shall request that a person who is breaching the rules of decorum be orderly and silent if after receiving a warning for the presiding officer a person persists in disturbing the meeting the presiding officer shall order him or her to leave the council meeting if such person does not remove himself or herself the presiding officer may order any law enforcement officer who is on duty at the meeting to remove that person from the council chamber may i have zoila moreno to the podium followed by armando valerio

Soy la Moreno, distrito 6, Weston Ranch. Buenas tardes, alcaldesa Fugazi, miembros del consejo municipal, administrador de la ciudad y demás miembros de la comunidad. Estoy aquí hoy para compartir una increíble historia de acción rápida y un servicio público sobresaliente en nuestra ciudad. . Okay. . Ellos trabajan incansablemente para proteger nuestra comunidad y nuestra tranquilidad y aún así siguen haciéndolo sin un contrato. El oficial Scott respondió por mí en cuestión de minutos. Ahora nosotros debemos responder por él y por todo el departamento. Exhorto firmemente a la ciudad de que finalice de inmediato un contrato justo para nuestra fuerza policial. Alcalde Fugazi, le agradezco por atender mi llamada y tomar acción. También le agradezco su tiempo hoy y espero que escuche esta historia como un claro recordatorio de por qué asegurar un contrato sólido para los hombres y mujeres de nuestro departamento de policía debe seguir siendo una propiedad principal para su administración. Muchas gracias.

I'm Zoila Moreno of District 6 of Weston Ranch. Good evening. Members of the City Council, City Manager, other members of the community, I'm here today to share an incredible, fast-paced action story and public service tale about an outstanding member of a community. I recently lost my truck. Fortunately, the police department acted immediately. Recently, Officer Scott in particular demonstrated exceptional dedication. He searched diligently and located my vehicle almost immediately. They work tirelessly to protect our community and our peace of mind, and that they continue to do so without a contract. Officer Scott responded for me within minutes. Now we must answer for him and for the entire department. I strongly urge the city to immediately finalize a fair contract for our police force. Mayor Fagazzi, thank you for taking my call and taking action. I also thank you for your time today and hope you will hear this story as a stark reminder of why it's so important to secure a strong contract for the men and women of our police department. It must remain a primary priority for your management. Thank you so much. Zoila Moreno from Weston Ranch. Armando Valerio, followed by Pandora Crowder.

Good afternoon, Mayor Fugazi and council. Here is Delta College Trustee Area 5 to give you an update on what's going on with the Measure K bond. I came to council before and explained how much money it was, and we had two phases. We're in phase one right now. So let me give you a curtain update. So on our energy efficient project, we're going to be starting that on June 22nd of 2026. That's going to be solar panels. We're going to put in EV charging stations. We're going to be redoing the parking lot. Also, we have a technology cabling project that we're going to be working on that's putting cabling into our existing buildings because our cabling is just too old, so we need to put more cabling in there, and also for the IT infrastructure. Also, public safety training center, we're actively looking in the Lodi area to put that in as well. We had a plan before, but that fell through, so we're working through that. Lastly, Mountain House. We're still consistently working towards breaking ground on that. Right now, we're going to solidifying our program and building location in regards to what we want to put in the building and how big is it going to be. And then we're going to do RFQ and RFP, hopefully beginning in July 2026. But I wanted to keep you updated so that you guys are abreast of what's going on in your city. Thank you.

PANDORA CROWDER, FOLLOWED BY THOMAS ALFIERI.

GOOD AFTERNOON, COUNCIL. MY NAME IS PANDORA CROWDER. I AM HERE AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF CONWAY HOMES RESIDENT COUNCIL DISTRICT FIVE. I'm here to give a formal invitation to the council and staff for our Conway Homes Resource Fair being held by the Housing Authority. It is this Thursday from 3 to 5. We will be indoors because it will be 104 degrees outside. We are very lucky to be utilizing the elementary KIPP elementary schools gym so all of our resources organizations will be indoors and we will have a free taco truck as well for our residents and I did send out invitations through the email to all of you personally as well as to your staff, Florence. So hopefully we see you there. If not, then you'll be there with the spirit. So thank you.

Thomas Alfieri, followed by Mary Elizabeth.

I'd like to commend the council for today's proclamations for two wonderful causes that I very much support. But I want to go back in time to, I believe, April 28th. There was a proclamation for Muslim Awareness Month. If I understood, it was for the month of April, which would make it good for three or four days. I'm not Muslim, I speak for myself. There were two community members to accept this proclamation. They were called twice by the mayor to make sure they heard. There were no shows. They did not show up or come forward, and I don't blame them. It should have been done at the first meeting, not the last, like it was today, thank goodness. And to me it sounds hollow and insincere, and not very respectful. Thank you.

Mary Elizabeth, followed by Cynthia Gale Boyd.

Mary Elizabeth, I submitted written comments here summarizing some information that came up during the May Legislation and Environmental Committee. So in that, there was a presentation that wasn't available in advance of the meeting. And I say that and I will keep saying that because that's part of the Brown Act is that the people can be made informed the same as the governing body. So when that material was presented, we learned that the goal of the rental program is that 80% of all of the rentals that are included in the city of Stockton are self-certifying. 80% is the goal. And so we have a lot of problems with, and I've heard it many times, and I've heard examples of it, you know, of slumlords. of absentee landlords. And so I looked at that contract and the actual self-certification form, and there's really no incentive for land owners, property owners, to really be aggressively asserting themselves, except what's in their heart. So, you know, we're relying on what's in their heart because we're not holding those property owners accountable for providing safe housing. We're not providing all that we can to support the rentals. And so... What are the means by which the city of Stockton protects tenants who face retribution for submitting housing violations? That's the question. Last question is, how many seats are we going to have in the new council?

Cynthia Gail Boyd, followed by Tawu Bunn.

I don't feel well, and I'm tired of coming.

Thank God I'm still alive in this racist city. Regardless as to whether you are running for reelection or new to the game, I still hold each of you accountable to your promise. No matter what district you represent, you should be concerned about the entire city as a whole, putting the concerns and needs of the people first, always. Mayor, why do some council members have such a despicable performance pattern and not be penalized? Somehow your eyes look questioning. Last time I spoke with you, Ms. Mayor, it was in the middle of the night, and you spoke up in the defense of Ms. Ponce, saying that... quote, she doesn't have to say anything, unquote. Well, recently the Stocktonian recorded how few times she speaks during city council. Somebody else is understanding me. It does not matter. How can a student be graded If the student never finishes their assignments, or they keep on missing at the schoolhouse, and never speaks up, she needs to be in time out like, what's his name? I'm thinking that maybe there should be some kind of reprimand, but then there's a lot of them still hanging out because I'm still wondering about the little ad hoc committee that only has you and Ms. Ponce, I mean Ms. Padilla in it. Whatever happened to that ad hoc business about Jason Lee? Now, ah, some of that.

Ta'u Mun followed by Raths Ray.

Hi, my name is .

I'm sorry, I'm translating. My name is . Good afternoon, Councilman. I'm glad to be here. My name is . And I would like to send my appreciation to . They've been helping me out since I came out of New Direction. They got me a job. Yeah, he would like to say that thanks to 209 Cares to help him out when he came out a new direction that helped him with the journey from being homeless and able to obtain a job and help support himself during a time of when he needed real help. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi.

Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure. It's an honor. My name is and I'm talking on behalf of . It was really hard for me to come up here because of my cultural. of not accepting help, but Stockton 209 Cares had given me the hope and the strength that I have, that I need. When I came out of New Direction, they were there by my side through my journey when I was homeless with my family. They helped me through the hard time that I had. And by their help, they helped me, my husband, obtain a job, which is helping us financially, so that we can financially support ourselves when we obtain our own place. And I will really thank Stockton 209 Care for giving me the opportunity to have a better life now. Thank you, Stockton 209 Care.

Nancy Lam, followed by Mark Stebbins.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I actually want to rewind it a little bit back to almost a year ago. That family that came in here and spoke was one of our Trinity Park families that was homeless, that had been out there for years. Basically what they did was, with the help of Council Member Padilla, we brought them in into a hotel. Unfortunately, at that time, they weren't ready to accept help. The cultural differences, they grew up not raised to accept help from others, but to do it yourself. So that kind of made a barrier along with some other things. However, they did go into new directions. Rath just graduated last Tuesday. Two graduates tonight. And two is actually on our cleaning crew. So what he has said is that, you know, from going in that Parkway and then cleaning it up and the feelings with the police removing them and everything. And now he's working alongside them helping. You know so it's kind of like a 360 all the way around. They are now working on their housing so they've got to apply for a place that I've sent them to and from there they actually get their daughter back from CPS. They go to court next week to get her back. And this is stuff that they went through from being homeless in Trinity to now being housed and working. So I just wanted to come and share that with you guys. Thank you.

Mark Stebbins, followed by Pat Barrett.

Good afternoon.

I have several items I want to speak to you about, and I'm just going to touch on them real briefly. One, of course, is the council should make room for people to come to the meetings. So if you can't do it here, open the city hall, open something so people can come in and observe the meetings. Anyway, second thing, on your consent agenda, you have to accept an application for funds from Parks and Recreation for Van Buskirk

golf i would hope that you would put mr stevens i'm sorry to interrupt but if you want to speak on that item we can have you speak on that item but this is for time for things not on the agenda

Yes, I understand, but I'm just going to hit on it as well as two or three other items during this time. That way you don't have your time taken up with me later.

Well, I would say do the two other items first, and if you have time, do the third.

Okay, anyway, so... I urge you to accept the grant, but I also urge you to put conditions that allow you to alter what the grant is for so that you may make changes that are necessary. Second thing. At youth meetings when I was in high school, they used to give announcements. And before they started giving the announcements, we had a song we sang. I'll spare you from me singing it to you. Nevertheless, the song goes like this. It's a terrible death to die. It's a terrible death to die. It's a terrible death to be talked to death. It's a terrible death to die. Thank you.

Pat Barrett followed by Barbara King.

Pat Barrett, resident. Okay, you can start. I just want to say, you know, I was sitting up here and I got a proclamation. I was accepting a proclamation. This is not personal. This is an overall observation by a constituent who has the right and the freedom to speak their mind. No cussing, no backstabbing, no nada. But as I was looking at these seven, these three were looking at me. You're looking at me. Those four, you four, were not looking at me. You're looking at me now. The four of you had to do this, had to do that. You know, I don't care who stands up here, whether you see eye to eye or not with them. I've been hugged by you, I've been to your house, you were my friend, you know, I campaigned for you. Bottom line is, you guys have to put away these resentful things. I listened to Nancy Lamb talking about having, I gave her $300,000 last year for picking up garbage, yet Jessica Velez comes up here and says the same thing give me the money I'll get my homeless folks to go pick up their garbage everybody ignores her because there's what some resentment with her yeah don't acknowledge that but the bottom line is this you guys have to give the people at this podium your hundred percent whether you agree with them or not and it's very important because You know, as an old person, comes wisdom. And to see the seven of you, thank you, Randall, for looking at me. To see you guys, it's important that everybody here is thought of as a respectful person and not just somebody, oh, here she comes again with the big mouth. And I describe her as my twin sister with the big mouth, okay? So I just want to say that, but it's really important that you guys do respectfully look at everybody. Thank you.

Barbara King.

Good afternoon, Mayor Fugazi, Vice Mayor Lee, councilmen and women. My name's Barbara King. Mr. Lee, I want to congratulate you for being one of the honorees for this year's BET Black and Iconic Awards, the Culture Trailblazer Award. First, the decision to hold meetings at 1 o'clock p.m. is a direct blow to public participation. By scheduling these sessions during the standard workday, you are choosing to exclude the very taxpayers who fund this government. The vote disregarded our right to be heard and represents a clear neglect of your responsibility to remain accessible to the public. It's clear that the current leadership is acting without regard for the residents of Stockton. We urge you to reconsider this decision. Public opinion is the cornerstone of and is essential to democracy. It is crucial for ensuring representation and legitimacy of the government. Ignoring public opinion about current vacancies in our citizens oversight committees is a substantial problem. It's unacceptable that Michelle Padilla, District One, and Maria, ponte district to have allowed seven seats to remain empty for nearly a year by ignoring the ninety days policy and voting in their own best interest they are neglecting their constituents in failing to do the jobs they were elected for but do you know who is running for re-election with two empty seats voted not to be held accountable for her neglect in failing to field those seats there is Also, no clear plan for our severely homeless population in Trinity Parkway. Trinity Parkway was a catastrophe. You only moved the problem around, and there is no excuse for having them arrested. This is irresponsible and unacceptable. Effective oversight requires public trust and a lack of transparency and community input. Thank you. Thank you.

That concludes the general public comment. We do have several items for the consent.

Okay. Before we move to those items, are there any items that council would like to pull?

6.18. Okay. 6.7, 6.17, 6.19, and 6.23.

7, 17, 19, and 23? Correct.

Okay, are there items outside of that that the public pulled?

Yes, quite a few.

Okay.

Do you want to go ahead and? Okay, just to make sure, I have pulled 677, 617, 618, 619, and 623. Correct. Okay. Then we can go ahead with public comment.

Okay.

For item 6.1, I have Ned Labuck.

I'm Ned Leba. I am the chair of the Measure A Committee. I'm also active in the American Accounting Association, government nonprofit, CalCPA, Professional Conduct Committee, and Not-for-Profit. I do not speak for any of those esteemed organizations, but I want to thank you. I see we are going to have an audit of Measure A. I thank the mayor. I thank each one of you. I thank the city manager and the CFO. I think you need to clean up the language a little bit, and I see that there's a provision for the manager to make it clear that we're having an audit of Measure A financial statements and Measure W, and, you know, measure and so that's all good i hope you'll think about making the audit of financial statements from two thousand fourteen forward if you take a look at what's happened before we have what's called an relationship to opinion on part of the expenditures of Measure A. So it's not too much harder to capture all the old expenditures within the audit. So I hope the city manager will think about that. I think the cost should be relatively mild. You have some issues, which I think I have shared in writing with people to kind of sharpen up the language. But again, I'm really here to thank you, and I hope you'll look at REQUESTING THE AUDIT FROM INCEPTION, IT WILL SHOW WHERE ALL OF THE MEASURE A FUNDS HAVE GONE AND THERE'S A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF MEASURE A FUNDS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR OR SUBJECT TO AUDIT. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

FOR ITEM 6.2, MARY ELIZABETH.

So, you know, Mary Elizabeth, frequently, you know, I come and I talk about water issues because I have training in water and it's essential for human existence. And we pay, the city of Stockton residents pay the most of anybody in the eastern San Joaquin sub-basin. So I previously, you know, in comments that I submitted on the budget, you know, requested that the water advisory group be used as a outreach for requirements under SGMA for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. I'm here now today specifically to remind the appointee that within 30 days of appointment, form 700 is required. And so I have not made it, you know, like quiet or, You know, I've been like sticking on this because it's like a basic requirement and still, you know, going back on some of those that I have already submitted, you know, I find that not, it's not followed through. So we're not learning. And so I want to make sure that we develop a culture that statements of economic interest are not just saying none when there's clearly some salary coming from somewhere, but it's not being disclosed. And so it's important for transparency and trust, and I'll be coming up and saying the same thing. If you like, I could make that very quick. And... Community development, but I do have something else.

I do have something else for the community about so you have the same comment for 6.3 and 6.4 not 6.4 I have some extra for 6.4. Okay, but 6.3 is yes form 730 days. Okay form 730 days, okay So you want to move 10 to 6.4 for Mary Elizabeth Is there someone else Yes, I do have other commenters.

For 6.2, I have Pat Barrett.

I'm not sure. Was that on the water advisory group, 6.2? Okay, so I sit on that, okay? Advisory groups are like opinions, and we know what opinions are like, right? Everybody has one. So this advisory group is supposed to meet twice every quarterly. When I got onto that committee, there was three meetings in two years. Advisory meetings are dotting I's and crossing T's. This meeting, it's like we go, we get up, we go, we take our time to go to this meeting, because it's important to us. Our water is important to us. I learned a lot through this thing, but the bottom line is this. We need to have the importance of this committee to where people come and it's not canceled. Not, well, it's not a big deal, so, you know, this person won't come or that person doesn't come, and so we get a canceled meeting. It has to be serious. Council has to, the staff has to have presentation ready for us prior not, well, it has to be done today because it's got to get on city council next week and whoop, whoop. No, you should have came a month ago. SO MAYOR, MAYBE YOU CAN SPEAK ON THIS TO WHOEVER RUNS THE COMMITTEES. LET'S BE MORE ORGANIZED AND MORE MINDFUL OF THE PEOPLE THAT COME TO THESE MEETINGS BECAUSE WE DO COME. WE COME BECAUSE WE CARE. WATER IS IMPORTANT. WATER IS VERY IMPORTANT. MY SON SAYS IT'S OVERRATED BUT I DON'T THINK SO. But the bottom line is I just want to bring it to your guys' attention. City, that water advisory group, please, please, please, please.

For item 6.4, Mary Elizabeth.

I counter and support what Pat said. And why I bring this up about the Community Development Committee is when they were sitting right here, they normally meet over in North Hall. But the last one, they sat right here. And they felt the same thing, that they are coming and wanting to work on housing issues. And they're not given enough authority. and you know we need to have somebody looking over this rental program we need to have somebody you know monitoring all of these different contracts at that legislation meeting that uh... i referenced at last month And there was no presentation available when the economic department was going to present about their continuum of housing. There was no presentation there before. And it was canceled at the meeting, but then it was available. And so I see this one slide. This one slide, and this is where the people need the help, and there was a column of contractor vendors, and there was a column, several columns of tasks that they do, but no matching. You know, we need to know. So I bring this up about the TCC, which I've referenced in some coordination, and they had to do a housing. That was part of the grant, is that they had to do a housing. And at that meeting that they had last week that I was able to attend partially, YOU KNOW, THEY SPOKE, THIS WAS LIKE AN OUTSIDE GROUP LOOKING AT WHAT WE'RE DOING, AND THEY SAY, YOU KNOW, THE CITY HAS TO HAVE A WEB PAGE WHERE ALL OF THIS INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE, NOT RELYING, AS YOU KNOW, ON 211, WHICH GETS INFORMATION FROM THE CITY, AND YOU'VE BEEN APPRISED OF SOME OF THOSE ISSUES, AND SO I SPEAK, YOU KNOW, WHOLEHEARTEDLY THAT OUR COMMUNITY NEEDS FORM 700.

for item 6.5, Thomas Alfieri.

As a member of a school site council for nearly 20 years, holding a variety of positions, including secretary, where it was my responsibility to record, publish, and distribute minutes from the last meeting before the next one. The first item, always after roll call, without exception, was accepting the minutes from the previous meeting. When I saw this in the agenda for five Minutes going back to last year, six months ago, I was really surprised. I know the minutes are taken. I read them and they're done very well. I mean, whoever does them does an excellent job. Why they don't get to you, I don't know. Maybe they get to you and you don't recognize them, I don't know. There may be someone who's not being responsible. there may be a bug in the system i don't know but i really believe that somewhere in some rules of order the minutes are supposed to be given out approved or disapproved or discussed that's it for item 6.6 mary elizabeth

okay so this is addressing the council and so i submitted comments which i i forwarded you should have got them that i submitted to the uh the ledge committee ledge environmental committee when this was brought up there was no response to those comments no acknowledgement of those comments First of all, I have to say that what Pat said, and I hope others will say, is not having the presentations available in advance of the meetings preclude a thoughtful comment. And there's not been any, and I've submitted lots of cease and desist orders about this issue, and still there's persisting, you know. And I just mentioned that meeting from May. where two presentations that were very important to our community were not made available. At this point right now, if those are not available, when that item gets started and they start talking about that, then nobody that hears this information for the first time will ever be able to respond because of that provision there. Once an item starts, no more cards will be accepted. And that is just unacceptable. when the city has allowed that to occur. And so then the other, the real other big problem that I pointed out in those comments was, you know, Monday meetings. So if there's an agenda that comes out on Thursday, there's no working that goes on on Friday and then comes Monday and those comments need to be submitted, you know, right on Friday. You know before the Monday meeting if it's at before noon, and so that's also not acceptable For item six point six Pat Barrett Last time I promise

It's on these devices thing. This is what's killing me. You know, I sit on commissions, committees, advisory groups, nonprofits, I think pretty close to 12. None of them do I have a laptop in front of me, a tablet in front of me, a Bluetooth, an earplug, headsets, nothing. It's all about the paper. And speaking of paper, the advisory water group They give us this great booklet, so everything's right there. We don't even have to go to our cell phones or our tablets. I don't understand why y'all have to have a tablet because there's some council members up there that when it comes to a comment, the things at the end of the meeting, God knows I don't know when that is anymore because this thing's all messed up, but I'm willing to change. But they're reading it and half the time they can't even pronounce some of the words. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, people, if you can't talk from the heart, don't talk. Well, some people are going to have a problem with that. But at least talk about what you're supposed to be talking about and you know the meaning of it. Because reading it, that's not a reality. You don't need your tablet. You get the paper copy. You read the paper copy. But the tablets, and we're supposed to trust you that you're not watching something else. Thanks.

For item 6.9, Mark Stebbins.

You left, okay.

For item 6.11, Mary Elizabeth.

So this is Mary Elizabeth, Agricultural Land. in uh... while it's not at the border of our community there was a pledge in the general plan that we were going to have some kind of uh... agricultural buffer around our community and so what the city uh... staff did was they went in and a uh... without anybody knowing as as happens which some of you know happens and changed it to urban ag. And so urban ag doesn't have the same kind of value in terms of agricultural land mitigation. And so I'm calling this is prime farmland there, and I'm calling not only, you know, the county asked for $800,000 to cancel their property tax, reduction, which is called the Williamson Act for allowing agriculture to exist. I'd like to find out, you know, is the city of Stockton collecting agricultural mitigation funds as that land is developed? Now, it certainly makes sense that, you know, there be, that that be urbanized, because there's urban on three sides anyway, you know, not adjacent there to the river, and it seems like there's going to be a homestead back there. But we need to pay attention to those urban lands because we had some promises in the general plan that the city was going to help with more urban, making more available urban gardens. And there hasn't been a single new urban garden, you know, that has occurred. You know, having people be able to plant food, you know, with city-sponsored water, you know, I appreciate that the Port of Stockton, you know, has, with some development funds, gotten some water for Bogstrak Farm, but we need... Thank you.

For item 6.18, I have Thomas Bryan followed by Mike Hakim.

Can we, if it's the items that we've pulled, can we wait on those? If you would like to, yes. Yes, and then let's just go to the ones that weren't pulled so we can approve the consent. Sure.

Okay, thank you.

For item 6.21, Mary Elizabeth.

Yes.

Mary Elizabeth, you know, I've spoken, I've showed you pictures, I call it, you know, affectionately Mount Annunciation, and it has to do with the grading and the design of the curbs, and it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. When I go around and I walk around a lot, I see all of these different configurations. Some are more friendly for pedestrians and for those that are using some assisted device to mobilize. These investments are long-term investments, and we will be stuck with those designs for a long time. And I know that there was talk about some town halls, and I think that that should definitely be a topic, because there are all different configurations. There's one over there on Park Street that when you're crossing the street, you get a flat. And so they want people to go all the way around, right, and this is a busy street, to go all the way around to get up onto the sidewalk. So flooding sidewalks, poor design, create inaccessible methods for people to get around. And this is for connectivity. So, you know, let's think about being smarter because these investments are not just using grant funds that are available, but are investments in our community for years to come.

For item 6.22, Mary Elizabeth.

This is the park and ride. This is the, okay. So, you know, I read through that report. I'm wondering, you know, there was no basis for increasing the fee, the residential fee for air quality mitigation from So I don't know how that is going to work when that justification wasn't available. I couldn't actually find the fee schedule in the budget material. But I think that it's important to note that some of those, that there hasn't been any study. of the park and ride, and that where there was park and ride connected to transit, that that seems to have been the most successful. And I'd like to see, you know, there was like a list of topics there or some capital improvement projects that that money could be spent for. And I appreciate the fact that, you know, it was even disclosed that there was that huge amount of money, you know, that has been put aside that we've been sitting on for years and years. So that money's been in there for a long time. And, you know, it should be used for something and to improve air quality. And I hope that, again, you know, that there would be some forum, you know, where community involvement can be, incorporated rather than relying on the first come first serve because there's parts of our community that in the general plan the city committed to increase investment preferentially recognizing that those areas have not been invested in, that there's blight, that there's all kinds of problems. And just putting in a bike lane that is very difficult to maneuver, lots of people are complaining about those bike lanes, are not helpful. Thank you.

The remaining comments are for items that were pulled.

Okay. So were there any additional items, or I will entertain a motion for the rest of the consent calendar absent 6.7, 17, 19, 18, and 23.

So moved. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. Motion carries seven zero. We're gonna go in order of request. So we will then move on to item 6.18 and that is discussion of a Stockton's franchise agreements and commercial solid waste collection uh... services and uh... now's the time for disclosures i will disclose that i met with waste management uh... i also got an email uh... from uh... mister hate gum uh... and i did get uh... conversation with uh... will kelly from and via left And had a quick conversation at State of the City with Kevin Basso. Go ahead, Padilla.

I will disclose that I met with Cal Waste, Cal Waste Management, and spoke with Mr. Hagan.

Okay, go ahead Mr. Enriquez, or Councilman.

Thank you, Mayor. So yes, I would like to disclose I also met with Waste Management, had a conversation with Mike Hacom, and a phone call from Cal Waste representative from the Port of Stockton.

Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Mayor. I want to disclose that I met with Waste Management. I received an email from Mike Hacom on behalf of Republic, and I received a call from Anthony Barquette on behalf of Cal Waste.

Councilman Blower?

I'd like to disclose that I met with Cal Waste, spoke with Mike Hickam, also spoke with Will Kelly.

And Council Member Villalpudo.

Yeah, as well as Mayor. I disclosed that I met with Solid Waste and spoke with the Republic, took a tour of the waste management. Thank you.

OK, thank you and I do want to read what the recommendation says. It says receive information regarding the city's franchise agreements and recent requests to allow a third company to provide commercial solid waste collection services and provide direction from the City Council as to desired next steps, if any. So we'll go ahead then with public comment.

I have Thomas Brian followed by Mike Hagum.

Just a point of information before we get started, because I had these meetings today.

Okay, so wait, not a point of information. You have a question?

Well, yeah. My question is, why was this not a presentation for new business? Why was this put on as a discussion item? I don't know. I just don't know how it got on the agenda. So I just would ask that question.

It actually came from us as a consent item, understanding that it was for discussion and that you would pull it to actually have this discussion now.

But there won't be any presentations, just a conversation?

Correct.

Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, my name is Tom Bruin. I'm counsel for Sunrise Sanitation. I sent you a letter on May 27th regarding this matter, which I believe you've received. I'm speaking to you today from personal experience. I was at the negotiating table in 2019 when the current exclusive franchise agreements between the city, Sunrise, and Waste Management were hammered out. The concept behind those agreements was that both companies would have exclusive residential collection areas within the city. And the exclusive right, only between the two of them, to compete for commercial customers for their solid waste collection services in the city to the exclusion of any other parties. So the only competition as a practical matter that was envisioned was competition based on quality of service, not price. because the prices for both residential and commercial collection services were fixed in the current agreements. Rates were set by a rate consultant hired by the city and negotiated with company officials. The commercial rates were set to subsidize lower residential rates. The commercial rates also subsidized various services to the city such as public trash receptacle collection, event services, services to city facilities, to name a few. Sunrise agreed to lower its residential rates based on the subsidization provided by its exclusive commercial collection rights. To allow a third party to come in now and undercut those commercial rates will destroy the economic package, the deal that was entered into in good faith that support lower residential rates in the city. Thank you.

Mike Hakem followed by Kevin Basso.

Madam Mayor and Council Members, Mike Hakem appearing on behalf of Republic regarding item 618. I was also at the negotiating table in 2018 and 2019 when this existing exclusive franchise agreement was negotiated. There's no doubt in my mind there were specific negotiations to include exclusive franchise for both residential and commercial. The language in the agreement references that residential was for two equal and exclusive geographical areas, and that the commercial had no geographical exclusive area, but it was citywide for both of the parties, Republican and Waste, to compete with each other. An important provision in the agreement, and also negotiated, was for the collection rates to balance each other, as Tom indicated, and actually to have the residential actively offset and subsidize, the commercial to actively offset and subsidize the lower residential rates. After all is said and done the bottom line this afternoon is the question of whether the opportunity for commercial collection is Exclusive to Republican waste or can the city open it up to a third party? I went back through my files in the negotiations and I found a letter to Kevin Bosso at Republic and to waste which I believe provides the answer I'm gonna hand that out and out of the council In my remaining 23 seconds, I'd ask you to review the highlighted section at the bottom of page one. I believe that this letter confirms in writing the city's commitment to award the two franchise competitors exclusive rights to the city-wide commercial waste. In closing, the contract obligates you to use your best efforts to enforce the agreement, and we would respectfully request that you enforce the agreement as it's written and as set forth in the letter. Thank you.

Kevin Basso, followed by Nicole Sidner.

Good afternoon. I'll be brief. My name is Kevin Basso. I'm a lifelong resident of Stockton, been in the waste industry here in Stockton for 34 years, recently joined with California Waste And before that, I was actually general manager of Republic Services. Cal Waste is not new to Stockton. We've been holding an industrial permit for over three decades. We service all of the Stockton, Lincoln Unified Schools. We service Lincoln Center. We are already servicing this community every day. Competition drives service. And that's what we're looking to do, is be a competitive service provider here in Stockton, We're not asking to take any customers. We're asking to earn one at a time, and only if we provide a high level of service. If Republican waste provide a high level of service, we gain very little, and that's how competition should work. What's out here today is two options. One, to kick this back to staff and have us discuss how we can become a competitor in this market or do nothing and keep it the same. You're going to hear from some folks here today, some business community leaders asking for competition. that's what we promote is the ability to come out and compete for service every day and by doing so everybody's everybody's service levels evaluate or elevate and when service when competition comes to town everybody gets better in a better service so that's all we want to do is move forward as staff rec one of the options is sit down with the three haulers or ourselves, Republican Waste, and move this forward and see if there's an opportunity to create competition in a marketplace that is clearly non-exclusive, written by the contract. It doesn't call for co-exclusive. It doesn't say Waste and Republic. It says non-exclusive when it talks about commercial waste. And we want that opportunity to come into this market. Thank you.

Nicole Sidner, followed by Dave Vaccarezza.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of council. My name is Nicole Sidnor, and I am the owner and broker of Metzger Property Management here in Stockton. We've been in business since 1975 and currently manage close to 1,000 doors, commercial and multi-family units here in Stockton, including apartment communities, retail centers, office and warehouse facilities. I'm here today in support of allowing an additional qualified commercial waste hauler to participate in Stockton's existing collection system. From our years of experience with commercial waste companies, adding another service provider will benefit not only our company but the entire Stockton business community. Competition encourages accountability and better customer service. Ultimately, as a consumer, service quality should be the deciding factor in whether a company earns and retains a customer's business. We believe that all service providers perform better when customers have choices. Bringing an additional qualified hauler to Stockton will encourage every provider to elevate their service levels, improve communication, and become more responsive to the needs of the customers they serve. This is not simply about one company. It is about providing Stockton business community with options and ensuring that service providers remain accountable to the customers that they serve. For those reasons, we respectfully urge the council to support the staff recommendation that provides Stockton businesses with the freedom to choose the service provider that best meets their needs. Thank you for your time.

Dave Vaccarezza, followed by Steve Herron.

Good afternoon, honorable mayor and vice mayor and members of the council. My name is Dave Vaccarezza. I'm the owner of California Waste Recovery Systems. I've spent the last 59 years in this business, and next year our company will celebrate 100 years of serving the communities of San Joaquin County and the surrounding area. I'm proud to say that this is still a family business. My two sons, Casey and Rudy, are leading the company today, coaching the next generation of our organization. Our name, reputation, and legacy are tied directly to the communities we serve. I'm not here today simply asking for an opportunity to collect garbage. I'm here asking for the opportunity to earn the business of the Stockton commercial sector. Throughout the history, our philosophy remains simple. Customers come first, employees matter, communities deserve a service provider that is accountable and responsible. Today, CalWaste provides trash collection, recycling, and resource recovery services across five counties. We employ hundreds of local men and women and continue to invest in the future of this region. One example of that commitment is our state-of-the-art recycling and material recovery facility located right here in San Joaquin County region. CalWaste has invested over $45 million in developing that facility. We currently process over half a million homes a week and nearly 20,000 businesses every week. We've come to be recognized as an industry leader in recycling, diversion, and resource recovery because we believe our responsibility extends beyond simply the collection of waste. At Cal Waste, we have a motto. It goes like this, we give more than we take. Our commitment to recover resources, saving landfill, protecting the environment, and building a sustainable future for the communities that we serve. Cal Waste is one of the three industrial waste permits authorized by the city of Stockton. We're proud to have operated as a hauler of the city of Stockton for 31 years.

Steve Herron, followed by Jason Molinelli.

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, my name is Steve Haram. I represent Waste Management. Let me start by saying I urge you to look at the excellent staff report that was prepared for this matter. It's too bad we didn't have a presentation. It says very clearly that the right to pick up commercial hauling is between the two franchises and nothing else is allowed under the contract. Having said that, and I agree with Mr. Bruin's analysis, if people want to have a meeting, let me tell you, waste management is willing to meet. We've been a partner with the city for over 30 years, and if someone wants to have a meeting, just tell us where and when, and we'll be there. But with the proviso that we're not going to relinquish an important contractual right that we have under the agreement, which is a co-exclusive to pick up the commercial along with Republic. So we can have a meeting, but we're not relinquishing contractual rights. But if people want to have a meeting, we can always meet. That's not a problem. But let me say that I think there's a misstatement that's been said here. I know that people have been told that competition creates better prices. But let me tell you, if you've been told that, you've been told a half-truth. And let me tell you what I mean by that. number one the prices for commercial are set by the city so you can have as many competitors as you want and it's not going to change the price it's going to be the same in this instance it does not reduce the price but it's actually going to increase the price because as Mr. Bruhn told you is that the commercial is subsidizing the residential and if there's a loss of that consideration by bringing new people into collect commercial there's going to be a need to have a substantial increase in the residential so this is one of those oddball situations we're literally if you allow the competition is being requested you're going to have to make the hard decision of increasing the residential rates in order to compensate the current franchise holders and i don't think that's a good idea There's a good system. It's working. And this is, as a former chamber president, it's hard for me to say, this is an instance where competition is bad and not good. Thank you.

Jason Molinelli, followed by Tony Faso.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. My name is Jason Molinelli. I'm an attorney for Jackson Legal Corp. serving the foothills, the valley, and the Bay Area, predominantly in the solid waste industry. I've been doing this for quite some time, more of a tidbit and less of a pertinent fact. My father ran Stockton Scavengers on Charter Way. for waste management back in the 80s when I was a teenager long before I was a lawyer I just want to very quickly address some of the the legal contentions you've heard with respect to I've read that the franchise agreements the Municipal Code with respect to the contention that the the term non-exclusive meant anything other than non-exclusive in those agreements these are great lawyers uh had it had there been a mutual intent of the parties to express anything other than the plain meaning of that of that word it would have been reflected in the agreements and any subsequent uh the letter before you is barred from consideration, were this a court of law under the parole evidence rule to show the intent of the parties, you can't use outside intrinsic sources under that rule. I'd also like to very quickly state that the rates are fixed. Again, any assertion that opening this up to a third permittee would increase those rates. That's overreaching in fact the current structure allows these the current two permittees to compete Potentially to the detriment of the other and so adding a third would not fundamentally or material change that in any way And and I see my time's up.

Thank you very much Tony Passo followed by Mary Elizabeth

Good afternoon, Mrs. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, council members. My name is Tony Faso. I'm the owner of Delta Marine Yacht Center down on Fremont Street. And we have five other commercial properties here in town. I've been a Stockton resident for a little over 25 years, been a part of the community. And I just wanted to come here in support of the staff's recommendation today. There's been a lot of talk about whether or not competitions can kill the price of the residential market, etc. The whole recommendation is to have that discussion, and I think that's what we're here for. We want to understand what are the implications, what are the repercussions of bringing in a third party. If you ask me, competition is always a good thing. It raises everyone's game. I mean, we're talking about fixed pricing. We're not talking about anything other than what companies can do to better serve their customers. And their customers are who we are all representing here. We're representing the businesses of this city. uh... personally you know when you look at corporations uh... you know national companies versus a little more local i'm i'm firm believer in bring your best if you're a national company here but walmart bring it on you if you provide the best service good for you but if your local company needed just as well he should have a chance as it is as my understanding of this uh... Agreement the contract that they went into it's my understanding. It's non-exclusive If if you guys read it differently, then that's something to be discussed as well But I think it's certainly worth having a discussion so that we can better serve the businesses of Stockton.

Thank you Mary Elizabeth followed by Sarah van Dale Mary Elizabeth obviously there's a lot of money at stake here and And the staff report that people are talking about is recent requests. So a recent request from a third party to add themselves in. And I know it was within the last year where they got that industrial contract to pick up garbage here. That was something that happened this year. I'd like to remind the staff about costs related to legal action. And, you know, the actions that you take can expose us to more legal fees. first off. So please, you know, when you're reading that, and I hope that that information is all posted as well as the emails that were received by city council members so that the public can know. The notion that those fees were established to help offset residential costs. So I want to make sure that we're understanding that. Is this third party going to be subsidizing rental or residential costs? Is there going to be like some portion of their fees that go back in to offset some residential fees? That wasn't discussed at all. But the purpose of those two splitting up the commercial was that those funds would be shared and to offset the residential for those two. So I'd like to say that. Then the last thing is, you know, the city is not really doing their part to enforce all of the rules.

Sarah Vandale, followed by Tucker Langston.

Hi, my name is Sarah Vandell. I'm with Kazakian Property Management. Our company has been around for over 30 years in the city of Stockton. I'm VP of the HOA Management Department, and I am in support of CalWaste and including competition into our community. I can tell you, I can give you a really good story about all kinds of things that have happened, honestly, but I think what you really need to hear is about from the consumer and the person who has to deal with waste management and Republic on a daily basis. I have not had any good service from Republic or waste management. Every time I have a problem, I have to go through their system, which is not fun. And we all have that. I know in the city of Stockton and in our communities. But let me tell you, when my dumpster burns down from a fire or when I have a lid that's broken or when I have homeless breaking into a dumpster and I need a new lock, I can't get a hold of them. And I was going to give you a really nice speech about how competition is great and we need that. But to be honest, customer service is the most important. We all have to provide customer service. And if we have that competition, maybe we'll get a little bit better customer service. Thank you.

Tucker Langston followed by Liz Franco.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tucker Langston. I'm a groundskeeper for the Garibaldi Company. I've worked there for four years and I mainly deal with solid waste every single day. Currently, we are contracted through Republic and over the past two years, I've noticed a severe drop in quality. We have had promises broken, promises have not been kept, service has not been done. Not only does it make my job more difficult and the jobs of my colleagues, but it also affects the hundreds to thousands of people where I live. And I agree here with CalWaste that it's only fair that there is a opportunity for better quality of services. And when these companies do fail to provide the services contracted, it does negatively affect not only the people who have to work with them, but also the people who have to live with it. Thank you.

Liz Franco, followed by Rudy Vaccarezza.

Hello, I'm Liz Franco. I am an association manager with Kazakian Property Management for over 35 years. I've been managing homeowners associations, commercial and residential condominium associations. And I've seen a lot of change. A lot of it's good, but unfortunately some of it's bad. And I'm here to support Cal Waste because, like Sarah said before, the service that we get is not good. And the problem, everybody's talking about that all the costs are fixed, but they're not. They have what they call overage fees and contamination fees. I have associations where we pay somebody to go through all of the, before the service is picked up, They go in, they make sure that all the boxes are broken down, everything is where it's supposed to be. And they will pay any overage fees because they're that confident that they can do that. What's happening is that the service pickup is being delayed. And it may be delayed for a couple of hours or it may be delayed an entire day. So I have one of these associations, last month had six overages. And that was just less than $600. I have another association where we got an email that said, your service is going to be delayed a day. And their monthly service fees are a little less than $600. They got charged $151 for overage fees because the service was picked up a day. Now, you would think that they would be able to know if the service wasn't being done on time, but they don't. In order to have those overages credited back, you have to prove that it wasn't the customer's fault, that it was the service provider's fault. So you have people that are getting charged over and over again for something that's not there. Thank you.

Rudy Vaccarezza, followed by Duane Andre-Lacour.

Hello, Mayor, Council. My name's Rudy Vaccarezza. I'm with CalWaste. Technically, I'm a fourth-generation sanitary professional and garbage man. A lot of things have been spoken here. I mean, we've been operating with an industrial permit in the city of Stockton for 30 years. I'm a lifelong resident of the Stockton-San Joaquin area. And with that said, it's something that hasn't been discussed here, but it's jobs. We are here to maintain the jobs that this industry is related to and the service that is provided. From our standpoint, we're an employer, and I was raised that way. What we do is we hire and maintain a high-level, for garbage men and women in this county. The other thing that's been spoken about is the price. Yes, the price is fixed. Something that's been talked about is customer service, and we do believe that we are the premier customer service garbage company in the region, and we want to give that to the businesses in Stockton. A lot of things have been said about you know, the larger corporations. We're not that we're a family-owned business We're here if since the price is fixed we there's We're not going to gain a single customer if we're gonna do it just like the other two haulers are gonna do it So we just want to bring that accountability to those people doing that in the city of Stockton, and we think that we can do that. I respect your guys' decision moving forward, and we just hope to continue this conversation with you guys. So thank you very much.

Dwayne Andre LaCour, followed by Ralph White.

Hello, good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name's Dwayne LaCour, and I'm here representing the Garibaldi Company. Our company owns and manages multiple apartment communities in San Joaquin County and Stanislaus County. We've had the unique opportunity to work with both Republic and CalWaste. More recently, one of our communities located within the uncorporated island area inside Stockton has transitioned services to CalWaste. Since making that change, we've experienced noticeable improvements in communication, responsiveness, and overall service. Now when issues arise, we speak directly with local decision makers who know our properties and respond quickly. As property managers responsible for thousands of Stockton residents, that relationship and accountability matters to us. Equally important, we believe that local businesses should have the opportunity to support other local businesses. Cal Waste is a long standing local family company with deep roots throughout San Joaquin County. And we appreciate having the ability to choose a provider that is invested in our community. We are not here asking the city to disrupt the current system or to change rates. We're simply asking the city to allow another option to compete within the city's existing commercial structure so business and property owners like us have a choice beyond two national corporations. Thank you for your time.

Ralph White, followed by Emily Hanson.

First of all, I was here before either one of these got their contract with the city. I'm not satisfied with neither one of them at the present time. Also, you have a contract. You cannot breach that contract with these companies that you have already. You owe yourself another lawsuit. I'm intending to file one pretty soon anyway. I would ask you to continue this on because landlords is responsible for people who live in their places right now, and that's not the way it go. Every person should, the city get 23.5% of the gross revenue from each one of those companies. So that make you a partner, that make you in business. And you set those rates and things on people, and you're a partner, and that makes the cost of living go up on people's houses. So I would urge you to just continue this on for another, what you got, two years left on the contract? Don't break that contract. Because this man right here and that man sitting over there, those are some damn good lawyers. You break that contract and they're going to get you. So do not break your contract. Mr. Hagan? You know I'm telling the truth.

Emily Hanson.

Good afternoon, Mayor Fugazi and Vice Mayor Lee, Emily Hanson with Republic Services. I'm new to Republic Services. Prior to this, I was employed by HF&H Consultants, which was your consultancy that did the negotiations. And a big part of my job there was negotiating contracts and also establishing rate and rate methodology mechanics. We've already touched on the law bucket. I agree that it's a breach of contract. I'm not a lawyer, but I have a law background. I think that it would be a costly endeavor to venture into that legal battle. But what I wanted to talk about today is the economics piece and also the integrity piece. From the economic side, I know there's been a lot of discussion about the subsidization and I just on a practical matter want to make sure that everyone understands what that means. You have two current service providers and each of them are providing residential services. If the commercial rates subsidize the residential rates and you were to invite in a third service provider, you need to make your two current service providers whole. Otherwise, you would be unjustly enriching CalWaste. So in order to do that, you would have two options. Option number one would be to raise your residential rates so that your two current service providers would be made whole by the loss of any commercial business. The second option would be you would have CalWaste revert a payment to Waste Management or to Republic for each customer they take away. Because at the end of the day, Waste Management and Republic Services entered into a bargain with you guys. We entered into a contract and we need to get the benefit of that bargain. So if you take away the commercial customers or invite or allow Cal Waste to come in and take away those commercial customers, then we, Waste Management and Republic, are harmed and we need to be made whole. Something that hasn't been mentioned is the timing. This is a 2029 expiration date, so while I don't think it's unreasonable for Cal Waste to want to play in this field, the timing is not appropriate. From an integrity standpoint, you don't want to be known as the city who breaches their contracts. Thank you very much.

That concludes public comment for this item.

Okay, moving on then to council comments. We're going to start with Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to everybody that spoke. I've learned a lot about waste in our city. I've learned a lot about this business, and I want to thank everybody who met with me or spent time on the phone with me explaining this. I also want to thank our city manager, our city attorney for the meeting this morning so I can get caught up to speed. A couple things. One question was asked to me earlier. How do items get on the agenda? Just really quick. Three ways. Either the mayor puts it on, the city manager puts it on, or two members of the council in an open forum. Obviously, two members of the council in an open forum did not do that. I don't know how it got on the agenda, but here it is. I also want to be clear that I totally agree with the integrity piece of it. And where I'm concerned is that if you remember when I first came into office, I was very hot. with our economic development director at the time around the ASM contract. And I said, why are we discussing a non-expiring contract 18 months prior to the expiration? This contract with our current partners exists and is not expiring for another three years. So I don't know why we're even having this discussion. And I am really annoyed that we are wasting the public's time with this. That's the first thing. The second thing is competition is important. I am a business owner, and the one thing Ralph White always says is there's no business people up there, so they don't know what they're doing. I am a business owner. I'm an entrepreneur. Competition is absolutely important. And, in fact, when I was really disappointed in Republic service prior to you getting here when they left trash on our streets for weeks, it was Kevin who called me and actually put me in touch with Republic because we had no answers, and Republic did a horrible job communicating to our constituents what was happening with trash and garbage all throughout our city, and I was really frustrated, and I'm still frustrated about that. But even in being frustrated with Republic over that, this is not the time in my opinion for this discussion. I think the city manager is more than qualified at the expiration of these three year, these contracts that are still existing with our two current partners that in the staff report outlines their exclusivity rights under the agreement that I understand Kevin partially negotiated when he was over at Republic. That is something we as a city should honor. We should not expect anybody to want to do business with this city if we do not uphold our agreements. There's not a marriage out there that is a partnership that you would let your partner Violate your agreement, and I think that it's a bad message to send to any potential future partners and our current partners. So it always makes me wonder when things like this pop up on the agenda, where is it coming from? Who is it connected to? Why? Why now? I don't know those answers, but I know the staff report is clear. I also think that competition is great, so it's not a matter of if you do it, it's when. The commercial prices, what I hear right now that the council, I hope, heard is that the offset or the subsidizing of residential prices, to our constituents happen only because of the deal that includes the commercial payment. So to subject potentially, and again, I think what's also important to note is that this is an item for discussion, not new business where we get presentations and ability to question people. There's no way we should be giving a contract to anybody with a three-minute presentation. I think, again, that's another red flag for me. And I think there was a better way to present this. I think the potential substantial increase of residential prices as a result of this unnecessary timing could cause a problem. The other thing is I spent 11 years working in a union as a member and as a chief steward, a steward executive board member, and a staff person. So to the union members that are in the room, I think it's ridiculous that we would be considering a company with non-union representation to come in and impact union jobs. Three campaigns up here right now, and I think you should be very mindful of that. The other thing is we just had to overpay our city management department, I mean, our city attorney. We had to give her another $450,000, I believe, or $750,000 to do litigation because we overspent on our unnecessary lawsuits. So, yes, can we win it? Maybe. I don't know. Can we get in there and play Matlock? Maybe. Maybe. But we don't need to play around with taxpayer money and get into unnecessary lawsuits. Because whether you win or lose, the taxpayers lose if we waste money trying to fight in matter that we shouldn't even be discussing right now. Again, I have no stake in the game. My trash gets picked up by Republic when they pick it up. I am fine with paying the fees that I currently have. I'm a business owner that supports competition. But I do want to just end on the last comment that you said about integrity. We prioritize economic development as a council for the next year. There is no development that can happen and there is no boost to this economy with partners who don't believe we have integrity and can uphold the word that we put in the four corners of a contract. And I can tell you right now as an entrepreneur who sues people and who gets sued, I lean on the words that we agree to in our contracts. And the last thing I will say is that I just think that having a conversation of this magnitude that has impact or could have impact should be accompanied with a presentation that we can dissect because the devil, It exists in the details, and we don't have it right now. So I'm not going to make an emotional decision to say yes, because in three years the manager can have any discussion with anybody on this matter.

Councilwoman Padilla.

Thank you, Mayor. And I just want to clarify, this isn't a time that we're going to make a decision whether somebody is going to entertain in business. This isn't a time that we're going to decide whether or not we're going to break a contract. We are having a discussion whether or not we have our city attorney review our contract and get back to us and give us information whether or not we have any financial impact, whether we have any risk to the city. And I strongly support our union workforce, and I want to ensure that there aren't any change that considers to have any unintentional harm to their job, to their wages, to their benefits. But at the same time, I believe it's important to fully understand what we're considering here. All this is would be a direction for our city attorney to research any complications or research this contract thoroughly to see if there is any risk for entertaining a third party. The other thing that I'd really appreciate would be information with the potential impacts of union jobs, existing franchise agreements, and the overall benefit to Stockton's business and its residents. What would be the residential impact? What percentage of the two other companies be What are they competing? So we really need more information. This isn't a time that we're saying we're just going to wait. It's just a time for discussion and I just wanted to make that clear.

Thank you, Mayor. I do find this whole thing has been an interesting discussion. I mean, hearing the different sides of this. I'd say philosophically the thought of competition, you know, I'm very much in favor. I think about, you know, the example of my current options for Internet at my house. I wish I had more. I have basically Comcast and that's about it. So the concept of more competition, you know, giving people choices i i'm not opposed to that but i also as a as a real estate broker i work with contracts uh... everyday and so that to me the whole issues come down to what you know one of the contracts a so and another thing is a real estate professional i routinely tell clients i can't give you legal advice i'm not an attorney so that's where we have to rely on the information given to us uh... buyer attorney so looking at the staff report um but city attorney can you kind of elaborate on where we are with these two contracts and the exclusivity um element of that i can't i and nor would i recommend that i stay here today in front of all these other legal attorneys and give you advice or recommendations on interpretation of the current contracts so this is something that would like to send it and have more discussion and you can give us discussion

That is why we are here. That is why this staff report is before you, is to provide direction on whether or not you'd like us to entertain an interpretation. We don't even have the other, the third contract to consider.

Again, I think it all comes down to getting the legal advice from our attorney, something that we don't, you know, you're the one that we're going to rely on. so i i am not opposed to having more discussion on this i just think that you know looking at at what we've been told it seems like we would have to get the other parties together like you said you haven't even seen anything from uh the other side from cal waste so i'm i'm not opposed to more discussion i do have concerns about you know the labor issues and that sort of thing um but again you know i think contracts are contracts and i you know i would not be in favor of us Breaching contracts that we have but that's where we would need to know more information Councilmember Enriquez Thank You Mary.

Yes I agree with that all everything that all my colleagues have shared so far in terms of just what the next steps are and then also with the public Should know as well. I think that's helpful for me to know city attorney and Thank You councilman bar for pointing that out is really understanding what the next three year three three and a half years looks like and I'll be honest I mean I When I was looking at the attachments for today's meeting, one of the things I was hoping to get, and I think I did ask some staff in the back earlier, was data. And I think Council Member Padilla mentioned it briefly as well in terms of you know how many families work in all these companies what is the percentage of what are the rates and you know someone said look online yes we can all look online but when it comes to a presentation which i think would be more appropriate for us to be able to dissect and the public can see the different rates what's working what's not working you know i appreciate the folks have shared some grievances in terms of customer service i think it's great to always let people know what's going on At the same time, you know, these companies exist to hear these situations going on all the time. So I don't want to get too into the weeds of that. I also, too, want to respect a contract and not be known as a council that doesn't agree to a contract and they can change it one way or another. I would like to see in the next three and a half years, to be honest, is just to be able to have continued conversations, but more particularly from your office, city attorney, is what is the specific... A direction you need from us, whether it's something we have to do offline closed session, and then we do a more flushed out presentation for counsel for us to have PowerPoint and to be able to ask questions. And, you know, 1 of the questions I asked earlier was. are the current any are there any major issues currently with our two partners from the city perspective and the answer was no uh... and that's something that made me feel a bit better was to say what's good to know that there aren't any issues so it goes back to the question of why now to the vice mayor's point where we have in this discussion when we're still three-and-a-half years out uh... also supporting our union jobs as well something that it for me is really important so i i'll leave it at that but i again i know you know understanding a bit more of how CalWaste wants to provide commercial solid waste collection through a non-exclusive manner. I also know Republican Waste Management currently do provide commercial solid waste collection. And again, going back to the data as well, how much do they do on both sides? That's helpful and that's not included in our brief for council to consider as I think that will be very helpful. Thank you.

Council Member Villapuidua.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I as well agree with my colleagues. You know, just bad timing. Contracts, respect contracts. I'm going to just thank the unions, Teamsters, for coming out here today. Knowing I got a bunch of calls this morning and this afternoon. and I am a big union supporter there in my district so I care about their jobs I care about the people especially right now we're you know we're still going through a lot and to lose jobs you know it's a big impact in our community but that being said competition is great as well coming in but we shouldn't have that type of a discussion right now if they're still on

and contracts so i would uh... like to revisit this a later time so thank you uh... so i'm gonna go ahead and and chime in first of all i did not put this on the agenda any uh... reference to that would be false and the city manager can attest to that uh... i'd also want to say that as leaders uh... we have to do what's in the best interest of our city and everybody that lives here and works here and when i go through the staff report i do want to say i do have some concerns because in one instance it says on the bottom of to page two of four commercial waste collection services are based on an open market non-exclusive which means businesses are allowed to choose waste collection services from either republic services or waste management so i read that but then if you go on to the next one It says commercial service on page three. If you go halfway down to the second empty bullet point, it says commercial service areas remained open market, non-exclusive. So there is kind of a double speak there, which causes me pause, which then I said that we need a solid legal opinion. I respect all of the attorneys that are in this room. Everybody has their stance on it. Actually, I was here when we renewed the agreement. I remember we didn't even put it out to an RFP. We went ahead and said, if it ain't broke, why fix it? And we went ahead and did an extension of the contract. So from 2004, we've been with, well, I say Republic. but sunrise sanitation and waste management since 2004 and we are in it until 2029. Do not want to open us up to any litigation. We don't need to be spending money unnecessarily. However, I do want a legal opinion that solidifies what this means. Is it exclusive, non-exclusive for two parties? Is it non-exclusive in general? And that's where I'm at in looking at this and saying we need a better answer on that as to where we stand because I, you know, union member myself, I, back on July 8th, if anybody remembers on July 8th last year on a very hot, hot, hot day, garbage set out. It set out on the 9th. It set out on the 10th. It set out on the 11th. And the guys in here that know, know I got on the horn real quickly and was like, pick up the garbage, pick it up. We don't care. It's a health and safety issue. It took three weeks and it was three grueling weeks, but it eventually got picked up. So I just know that None of us want any jobs lost. And I don't believe that there will be, because again, it would be a freedom of choice, which is something that we are afforded to in the United States of America. But in the end, we need a solid ironclad legal opinion on this before there can be any discussions about having another company just go ahead and start asking for commercial services, and that's my position, okay? Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. And I remember the video when the waste was sitting outside because I reposted it and I posted my own. I was extremely frustrated and so was our city. I just want to say that one point of clarification, I never said the Mayor put it on. What I did was educate the community how items get on the agenda for the record. I think the legislative record's important. Three ways, two council members put it on in an open setting, the manager or the mayor. But the council agenda, we all know, is created in partnership between the mayor and the manager. Again, how it got here, I don't know. I agree with Councilman Padilla. We need more information. I don't think we have enough information in the fact that our city attorney was brought into a meeting without being prepped to say, hey, you need to have all the answers and be prepared, shows that we as a council were not prepared for a discussion on such a significant matter. I agree with Councilmember Villalpudo on the union issue. And that said, what I want to do is just go ahead and make a motion that We refer this entire matter to our city manager and our city attorney to work in partnership to assess the needs of our city as it relates to waste. And if there is ever an option that we need to add a third option, let the council know, should we put out an RFP? Because a single source third party contract to me is also questionable. Why would we not look for, why would we not put it open to everybody? Because we're all saying we want our constituents to get the best deal, the best service. We also are saying that we wanna make sure as a city we're getting the best deal and we wanna be respectful of union jobs. So with that said, I would make a motion that this entire matter go back to our city manager and city attorney to work in partnership as you've heard from council to get more information and to determine when it's best to come back. The caveat would be that it come back as a new business item so we can have healthier debate and we can have an opportunity to get presentations and ask questions of the people.

Second that.

Thank you.

I do have a question. Go ahead, I do agree with that motion but penny if I could ask you because waste is such a complex issue if we didn't have this discussion when would you typically start processing are looking out for RFP.

probably in about two years or even a year and a half before the current contract expires. Because it takes a long time for staff to work, to hire a consultant, and to work with the consultants to be able to do all the work that we need, specifically on rate studies and all the needs for the city. So about two years, between a year and a half and two years.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Okay. And I just would like to add just a little bit before we go to voting. I remember we were cautioned against extending the contract, but council voted contrary to that request and we supported our waste haulers as it stood. But again, as we've heard from potential customers out in the audience, our waste haulers need to do a better job, and it's not the haulers itself, it's the companies need to make sure that they are communicating with people, that they are ready and available. And with that, we have a motion to kick it back to city attorney and city manager. We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. motion carries seven zero thank you okay moving on then to item six point seven uh... adopt a resolution to accept Okay, we're gonna go ahead and take an 11 minute break coming back at 3.20. Okay, we are calling our meeting back to order. And our next item that was pulled was 6.7, which is adopt a resolution to accept $1.5 million California for All Youth Service Corps Round 4 grant. Hi, Grant.

Hello.

Go ahead, Ms. Padilla.

Thank you, thank you. While I fully support this program and I'm grateful of all the opportunities that it provides for our youth, I do have some questions with regards to the proposed expenditures. And my full intent is to make sure that we maximize as many students so that they can benefit from this program and offer additional jobs and wage opportunities. So in the 25 round two grant, it's listed as fellow costs and other costs, which total about a million dollars. And in the 26 round, it changed to fellow wages and other fellow costs. So if you could just explain what those expenditures are.

Yeah, so the fellow wages category or the fellow cost category, that's just the straight up hourly pay going to all the, they're called fellows broadly regardless of their actual title at the work site, but so the city, we employ about 106, and then through our partners, they employ many more as well, so it's a blended total between the three of us, so it's not just our program, and I believe it's the fellow wages line, and then there's a benefit line, so those two, are both going to just like wages and benefits for the workers that are employed both in our program and then the two programs that we support.

So it just says fellow costs and other fellow costs. So does it mean city staff or those are the actual youth applicants?

That would be only to like the fellows themselves. So like wages.

I'm sorry if you can explain what fellow means.

Yeah, so they just consider anyone employed by the program. So our student workers, for example, the state calls them fellows. We call them student workers. They may be called a barista working at a nonprofit, but the state considers them fellows.

And if you don't mind what you were saying, so there is other fellow costs are workman's comp, Medicare, insurance premiums, all that kind of stuff. So that adds to it. So there's the actual hourly wage, and then there are all the other costs that are associated with the students. And then there's administration, operating costs, and wraparound services.

I saw that. Thank you. I just didn't understand what fellow meant. And then From 2025, there was a balance of 86,000. Does that go back to the state or is that in our remaining balance still?

No, that goes back to the state. So of that 86,000, that's again between us and our two partners, so on our end of that, I got a little curious myself looking at that. Our remaining balance was $3,370. The rest of that came from our external partners, so that's definitely something we'll be looking at moving forward. We're going to be doing another RFP this year, or NOFA, I think is more accurate, to see what community partners exist that can do this work. So we definitely want to make sure we're trying to expend as many of these resources as we can. I will say in the grant funded world, it is a bit tricky. You have to be conservative because the only thing worse than spending 3% less would be spending 3% more and coming back to you all and saying, hey, we need more money. So we try to be very careful to never allow that, obviously, to happen. Unfortunately, being a little overly careful can obviously lead to some money left on the table. But on our end, we basically did spend almost 100%.

And I remember in prior years, we used to, fund laptops. Are we still doing that or not?

I believe, yes. Yes.

And approximately how much does that cost? I didn't see it here.

I don't know. What was it? It was $86,000. $86,000 for this year. Okay.

Thank you. I have no further questions unless someone else does. Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Mayor. So with this grant, is this the YES program?

It's YES program, and it's basically we take whatever money we think we can use that year. That's YES, that's our staff, all that. And then if there's any remaining leftover, then we do a NOFA to find community partners that can use that money as well. It's like Yes Plus. Right.

So the city manager and I had a conversation at some point about all our different municipalities that have budgets to help really look at how we're enriching the lives of young people. Do we work in partnership with SUSD, MUSD, all the other school districts?

Mm-hmm.

to see on top of this 1.5 or whatever million that we have they have this they have that and collectively we have this pot so we go after more kids because I think it was last year when we got in I think the mayor had talked about the year prior where I think only 100 kids got a job or something I'm just trying to see how we do more with more and with more community partners is that something that happens?

Yeah, we absolutely partner with them on recruitment for our programs. We also partner with them at the end of our program. We have like a big jobs fair, essentially. So we try to invite everyone else who has other opportunity, right? We're only here for five or six weeks. So we try to find other opportunities to say, hey, you know, you're done here, but you could go off you know, work at this organization, that organization, there's all these other opportunities out there. A lot of kids end up coming on as part-time staff here at the city, so there's a lot of different pathways, you know, forward. As far as, like, a broader strategic conversation about, like, where are all the youth programs and who does what and how does that work, I don't... I'm not sure about that.

Yeah, I'm not asking that. What I'm saying is, for example, I'm sitting here as you're talking, even in four or five weeks, are we engaging probation to see at-risk kids who may not... have the excitement about work, but can be excited because they're exposed to a job opportunity is, you know, what we're always thinking is, you know, how are we creating pathways out of poverty, right? So poverty alleviation, that's getting people jobs, getting people skilled, getting people exposed to opportunities. So I'm just wondering outside of like, yes, we're going to get the grant, but like, do we talk to Dr. Rodriguez to see what SUSD has and how this 1.5 with this 1.5 with this 1.5 collectively, can work together to target X amount of kids, and then are we targeting some of our at-risk kids who need an opportunity? Those are just questions I have in my mind.

Vice Mayor, and I can help with that. Yes, we are looking. Audrey, who serves now as the Interim Community Service Director, we're gonna be keeping her on for a little bit longer, and she's gonna be doing special projects for me, And that's one of the things that I'm going to be tasking her with is working with the different organizations throughout the city and even in some cases, the county to begin to pull those entities together to do exactly the type of thing that you're talking about. Um, even within the yes program where we've in the past had students that have gone out of the YES program into full-time employment. And actually Grant was one of those folks that did that. And so, yes, we're gonna begin to look long-term in the future, especially with the young people that are working in the different programs and also trying to leverage the money that we have in the different programs across the city and not just the YES program.

And OVP too, you know the other thing I would say is like today having PG&E come in and donate the $100,000 right, I'm sure there's organizations and companies out there that would be excited about this, I mean I just don't know is there an opportunity to create a more expansive approach to how we're doing this, I don't know the answer to that, it's in my mind.

Councilman Enriquez.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, so, Grant, I just want to say congrats again. I was at your kickoff welcome ceremony, I think, two weeks ago. I know myself, the mayor, a couple others were there. I would say leading up to it, I think one of the things I would like to learn more is just to see a one pager, the end result, the summary, so to speak. I know there's students that work with departments. I know here you mentioned PLACEMENTS ACROSS CITY DEPARTMENTS, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS, WHAT ARE THEY, HOW MANY DO YOU HAVE, FINANCIAL LITERACY TRAINING, HOW MANY OF THEM DO YOU HOST, WHO LEADS THEM, RESUME DEVELOPMENT, MENTORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES, HOW MANY STUDENTS ARE MATCHED WITH WHO, JUST TO SEE THAT REALLY BROKEN DOWN VISUALLY WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL. as ambassadors, so to speak, of the city, we can get the word out leading up to the application deadline. Going, have it down in our calendars of the ceremony, both opening and closing, seeing how we can be incorporated or be more helpful day of in terms of logistics. And then, yeah, I think just the workshops themselves and to what my colleagues have shared, just what other opportunities we can help out with moving forward.

Yeah, well, I appreciate the shout out. All the credit belongs to Dale and my wonderful team who throws on all these great events every year and really runs the day-to-day of the program. And we do actually generate an impact, we do call it an impact report every year. We usually forward it to the city manager, so we'll definitely make sure y'all get a copy. And yeah, we try to talk about hours of service dedicated, how many parks did we clean up, how many things did we get painted, all that kind of good metrics that really justify the program. So yeah, happy to provide.

So I was thinking, you know, when you were a fellow, it was a stipend.

I was one year too early, sadly. Okay.

Well, I remember there used to be a stipend. It was a set amount. Right. And, you know, I'm thinking, you know, if that's the direction we could go in, only because I think it's less payroll intensive. on that and we can hire more, which is why I said, you know, I'm looking at at least 20 kids with that $100,000 just to do a stipend with, you know, sliding scale hours. So I'm going to pilot it. We'll see how it goes. But if we can maybe... If it works out well, go in that direction. So more of the money gets to the kids as opposed to all the other things. Because I printed this out and you know me, I love numbers. So I printed out your grant proposal budget and was going through those. And so looking at all the items there, as well as the fact that we're working with partner organizations, those partner organizations really need to be very mindful. We shouldn't be giving any money back to the state. And I don't know if they can kick that back to the city or what they can do, if we can stay on them about it. But we've got so many kids in need in this city that all that money should somehow find its way to them. But I am happy that there's 191 kids listed on here with 85 getting $17 an hour. Because in Atlanta, they get $15 an hour and they have 6,000 kids in their summer program. But they also have over a million people in their city. But when Mayor Dickens said, oh yeah, we got 6,000 kids employed. What?

What?

How can we? We only need one sixth of that. And then we could, you know, really make a even bigger splash in the pool. But I'm happy that this is continuing. I don't know what's going to happen after 2027, after next summer. But the fact that we have those funds, like we need to make sure we're getting the most bang for our buck on those dollars and getting it to our kids. So thank you.

There are no other questions. I'd like to make a motion to approve. Okay.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Council please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Okay, moving on to yes. Moving on to the next item, a motion to execute a one year extension to the standard agreement with hard luck animal welfare associates in an amount not to exceed $3,969,675. Hi Ashley.

Thank you, Ashley. I completely understand the critical issues that we have with our animals and the need for veterinarian services. It's just a comment that all I would like to see is maybe a staff evaluation of what it would be like to hire a veterinarian. You know, I know Banfield, they utilize interns from UC Davis, and they're doing the veterinarian service work. And I researched salary of a veterinarian, it was like 150 to 180. So just to see what would be a more cost effective way, because overall, didn't this add up to like $10 million?

So that's the total for the entirety of the contract, which would be the three years that we've had with them, plus the one year extension, plus the four new positions. So. Right.

Right. So if we could just, you know, in the future. Sure. But other than that, I have no other comments. Okay.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Since you pulled it, I'm thinking of Betsy's suicide. So I asked a couple of questions about a pet overpopulation. As you know, in my district, we recently had the attack and it's a big issue and it's been a big issue for a while. And just a disclaimer. I'm an animal lover, but understanding that we do have a city with an over pet population What is our process so you you catch the dogs or cats you take them to he walk me through that process and

Yes. So our highest priority calls, of course, are sick, injured and aggressive animals. We go out and let's just use dogs as an example. We go out, we capture the dog, we bring it into the shelter. They have a 72 hour state mandated hold period for the stray weight. At that point, that animal can be evaluated for placement, whatever that type of placement may be. If we deem it adoptable, we make it available for adoption. If we don't deem it adoptable, then we either go a rescue route or a negative outcome route.

So the negative outcome is you put Betsy Sue to sleep?

That is correct.

So when dogs or cats first come in, are they chipped right away or spayed or neutered at all?

Not right away. We do that before they leave, or we do a foster-to-adopt program if we're booked out just a little bit for our alters, to where they come back, get altered, and then the adoption's finalized at that point. But we wait until somebody's interested in them to do that process.

Okay. And then at what point do we, or what point does the, what did you call the euthanization? What is that?

A negative outcome.

Okay, a negative outcome. At what point does the negative outcome happen? If they come back again, or? If they stay there for too long and you can't find a place?

So it's if they start to decompensate in kennel, meaning they start getting kennel stressed, they start lunging at kennel doors, just mentally suffering. If they are physically suffering, so any sort of injury that we can't repair or treat in shelter, we can make that decision. Or if it's length of stay at that point.

And what's the length of stay? Just understand that.

Our average length of stay right now is about 30 days, which is one of the lower lengths of stays for the shelters in our area.

So after 30 days, if you can't find their owner or you can't rehome them or they can't go anywhere else, then they're put to sleep?

Then they are put on a list, yes, for that recommendation.

And I heard on the audience tonight, and I asked the question, one, just so that way everybody hears it, because oftentimes council members I'll see on Facebook, we're all getting attacked because we're not catching dogs, but part of that is the owner responsibility to keep their dogs at home. She has, I don't know how many dogs you got at this point, and her dogs had like 10 puppies or something, but she knows where her dogs are. I know where my dogs are. And I think that for me, I always want to think of what's the solution, right? Nobody wants to put an animal to sleep. But we also don't want people mauled on their walks or kids bitten or other things. So my last question is, is there an ordinance right now in the city where it says, you know, Jason Lee can only have X amount of dogs? And if so, what is that?

There are. So we have a limit of three dogs per household. There are a lot of households that exceed that amount, and we do try to work with those households as we can. But unfortunately, it's one of those scenarios that we have to weigh in. can we help them at a later date and take the animals that are on the street right now off the street sort of thing and that's why we're trying to expand our community resources because those that have more than three animals at home typically those came from an unwanted litter right and so if we can avoid that by offering more spaying and neutering or more of our community wellness programs then that will mitigate a lot of that issue well thank you for all the work you do we know you love the work that you're doing and your team is great

I'll defer to the mayor, but at some point I would like us as a council to hear from you all what we can do to help policy-wise or resource-wise or something, because we see the issues and I don't have the answer.

Absolutely. Thank you. I'm sure she'll say there's never enough money, give her more money. But I would like to say that I appreciate that you saved nearly 5,000 animals. I think it was like 4,979. Well, 79 is the percentage survival rate. So I know that's above the national average. So I'm proud of that number. I'm also super excited about the number of spay and neuterings that are happening. uh and how happy the public is uh i stood in line over at fremont and the woman in front of me she had three cats and one cat was pregnant and she's like i you know she's just like oh uh um but it is and she was just so grateful everybody in line was super grateful And the fact that you also microchip, trim their nails, you know, give them all their shots at no cost to them. It's OK. Our tax dollars hard at work. But still, these people otherwise would not get it done. And when you do get them in, I know They're scanned for a chip right away, a microchip right away to try to find their owner. And also the fact that you go down into the sloughs and encampments, that your animal service officers are literally engaging with animal owners every single day to help them be better for parents and improving the quality of life for their babies, I think is, I mean, I think that's God's work, just saying, because animals, they are solely dependent. These are domesticated animals that are solely dependent upon humans. So, okay, we got Graviette up here. Are we in trouble?

No, ma'am, you actually took my thunder. Thank you for the kind words, but I just wanted to, as the mayor, vice mayor, city manager, and council, Ashley and her team do a tremendous job, and they keep upping it every year. One, through grants like as this, and the outreach that we're doing, whether it's the spay and neutering, The placements and anything else so you you hit the nail on the head I just wanted to comment this gives a shout out to Ashley and her team. They do a tremendous job Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, we'll continue to look forward to that but for what they're what they're doing It's been a tremendous amount of work and they do a great job. So

And I will add that, you know, we're doing our best. We drove by an animal in the street and Anita stopped right away. I tried to make sure traffic didn't hit her as she, you know, picked up the animal and made sure that it was no longer there. But I know that's one of the biggest calls that we get is, hey, there's this animal, it needs to get picked up. So it's tough. I felt bad for that animal, even though it was no longer with us. But to have to pick it up and I think about the person that hit it as well, I would lose it if I hit a cat or dog. I appreciate the work that you do and I think we all do up here and keep up the good work and you know if we find some golden donor out there we can put their name on the animal shelter or something if they want to donate 10 million or how much do you want? Do you have like a wish number?

I could do a lot of work with 15 million. Oh, 50?

Oh, okay. And I wanted to say, I was just at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. We have Keith's Healthy Food, Inc. here, and they are owned by Mars. Mars owns Pedigree, and they said, do you guys need dog food or cat food? I said, uh-huh. And then they also own Bannafield. And they said they send out people to do free spay and neuterings. And I said, come to Stockton. I mean, I'm just like, whatever you have that can help us in the city of Stockton. As Councilman Padilla pointed out, they have UC Davis. Hey, we have operating rooms. You know, the vice mayor didn't like looking in them. But we do have operating rooms. So I am entertaining that conversation with them. And I will include you in all of that communication. It's not 50 million, but it's still something. So thank you.

Thank you.

If there are no other comments, I'll make a motion to approve.

Second.

Council, please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Okay, moving on to 6.19. This is approve a motion to authorize standard agreement amendment number 14 and authorize professional services contract for number 11 for the new city hall renovation and relocation project. Yes, we got Penny, Ms. Padilla.

Thank you, Penny. Do we know what's remaining in the contingency fund balance? Because it said no financial impact because that's where it's coming from.

Yeah, good question. The answer to that is we have sufficient funds right now to complete the construction. As you know, we're moving into it. So we're getting pretty close to the end of the balance to actually move people in. And to finish construction.

Can we confirm there will be no additional amendments or costs added?

Okay, go ahead. Yes, I asked that question Okay, so the short of it is as you know these projects we are in a construction we're presently talking with the contractor and negotiating the final cost of the project because of the changes and so we've talked with the city manager and we have plans to bring in the additional funds as needed City manager made his promise that

We were going to stop asking at a certain time.

Stop asking.

Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council President, for that statement. And although we're giggling, as the chair of the audit committee, we did order an audit on the City Hall renovation project, and it did not happen. I just want to put that on the record again, reminding that when the new auditor comes in, I do plan to bring it to the council to have that discussion, because it almost seems like every time we talk about the new City Hall, it's like more pay, more money, more this, more that.

We'll be more than happy to work with you to get that information for you. Thank you.

We have a public comment.

Mary Elizabeth, please.

So I did get this a little bit to start here. And so what we're hearing, you know, like millions and millions and millions and millions, you know, of overrun on this project here. The newspapers have all, you know, gone in and got lots of kind of information and, you know, spelled it out. And, you know, it comes to the change orders. I just wish that when we get into projects like this, that it can go to some kind of public committee, to even have the city staff be accountable. because we have no idea about how many different changes have gone on and what were those changes for. And again, you know, people are asking, and I just asked today, and even the Planning Commission, you know, have asked about it, and they haven't been told how many seats are we going to have, you know, for the people at this meeting. 90, so 90, of a city of over 300,000. And I think about the Tracy City Council where 300 can be held and what that could have been used for. And when we're looking at staff prioritization versus community prioritization. And less than 60% of the staff that is currently working for the city actually live within the city. And so, you know, those are the people that live here are people whose families are going to be here, whose grandkids are going to be, you know, going here. And, you know, when we are not held accountable and just even when you've got people coming over, you know, you clean up your house. If you've got to go and talk to some committee, you're going to have it in line.

That concludes public comment for this item.

I just want to make a comment on that. Some of the people that have to be held accountable to are our contractors and our managing contractors. Great guys. I don't have a complaint. But there are times, though, when things are not done on time, not done on budget. and this kind of was the whole cluster of that. But I don't think we should pay for other people's mistakes. But I do know that there potentially will be some more costs and I only bring that up because if you have a eastern facing window gets awfully hot I mean even the metal around it is hot to the touch and so I don't know how to mitigate that but there are things invariably that come up either with the HVAC or the plumbing or something like that but I do know that there's contingency fund that is set aside specifically because you might say oh I'm gonna do a hundred thousand dollar remodel on something and then it's like oops there's this this and this and I didn't know till I opened the wall up that I was gonna find this and then there it is so do you just stop the project then with your wall open you most people don't so just know to add a percentage on that for contingency did we go well above and beyond that when we were sold this project we were told 25 million all-in Yeah, we missed the mark on that substantially. But again, we didn't know what we bought at the time was gonna require the amount of work that it ultimately ended up being. And so that comes from council not having all the information to intelligently make a decision. So with that, if there are no other comments, I'll entertain a motion. Second. Second. Okay. Second your motion. I guess I motioned. Okay, council please vote. Motion carries 7-0. And then the very last one from Councilwoman Padilla, approve a motion to authorize professional services contract amendment number seven for the animal shelter renovation project.

And I think this is just a continuation of the conversation that we just had. It seems that every project that we have comes back to council with additional funds. And while I understand that there's unforeseeable circumstances, whether we have weather issues or things that we just didn't know about, how can we ensure that we're exercising fiscal oversight so that when we approve a budget that you know we can have confidence that when we say it's going to be ten million it's going to be ten million thank you council member padilla i think uh... madam mayor kind of alluded to some of those things that

We certainly can improve on in terms of project management, creating a sense of accountability and proper and accurate reporting back and accounting for all the change orders and the spending and holding contractors accountable to as well as ourselves as staff. And being good stewards of the city's finances should be a priority and certainly something that in future projects that we'll definitely be looking to emphasize more often.

I appreciate you saying that. And is this scheduled completion to be October of 2026? That is correct.

Okay.

Thank you. I have no other questions.

And to that point, I would say look at Victory Park pool renovation and look at McKinley Park on budget, actually under budget, both of them on time as close as possible, but done right. And we had funds left over from those projects. So we're able to do it. It just we need to be on it to make sure it actually happens. So, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. To Councilman Padilla's question of how do we ensure that a project that's $10 million is $10 million, I kind of agree with her, but I want to go back to what the Mayor said on the previous item. And to clarify, this Council had no, I didn't have any responsibility in that. But from my understanding, from what she said, the project was slated to be 25 million, ended up ballooning to 100 million. I think there's a difference and a distinction between 10 million and 11, 25 and 100. And that's why, again, auditing that time, because I said earlier, you did something funny with the money, you need to go to jail. And I still believe people should go to jail if they did anything wrong. I don't know that they have, but I do agree if you come before council and say we have a $10 million project. goes from 10 million to 100 that's why I think staff reports making sure we're getting the right assessments getting all the information so we know we're making the most well-informed decision because 25 million to 100 million it's kind of crazy but anyway thank you thank you I'll make a motion to approve second council please vote

Motion carries 7-0, Banner 9. So moving on then to our next agenda item, we have moved out of consent and we have administrative matters. I don't know, council would like to weigh on items at this time or wait for their council comments. We will get to them. Okay, unfinished business, none hearings. Okay, so we can do a couple of these now. And a couple we have to wait till 5.30 because of the public notice. So 9.1, a 2026 public hearing on workforce vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts pursuant to government code section 3502.3 AB 2561. HR. She's on her way.

Here she comes.

Good day, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I am Alicia Figueroa, the Deputy Director of HR, and here to present the Assembly Bill 2561. There we go, thank you. This Assembly Bill 2561 was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 22nd, 2024. This requires public agencies to report annually on current state of vacancies within the agency and recruitment and retention efforts. Specifically, agencies are to track job vacancies, present information on the status of the vacancies, and recruitment, including retention efforts. Also to identify policies, procedures, and recruitment activity that may present obstacles in hiring. Additionally, information may be required where vacancy rates in a bargaining unit meets or exceeds 20%. Also, the vacancy report that is being reflected today needs to be adopted prior to the adoption of the final budget. The next slide is going to show our current vacancy rates by bargaining unit. As you can see, the total is 13.07%. Also note that no bargaining unit exceeds 20% as of May 12th, 2026. Here is the unrepresented vacancy rates. We are at 13.92% as a total.

I'm sorry, I have a question, Mayor. Sure. Which one? Go back to the last slide, because you're going through this fairly quickly.

Go ahead.

So you just kind of went straight over that. Now, these vacancies, I understand PD's vacancies are, I guess, subject to all the hiring challenges we've heard many times. But with all these other vacancies, and Mayor, help me when I ask this question if I don't say it right. Are they vacant because departments can't find the people? Are they vacant because department heads are just holding on to vacancies to keep money in their departments? I don't know how this works. I'm just trying to understand.

It really is answers to all of the above. In here? Yes. We have positions that we intentionally leave vacant. We have positions that we have issues with hiring and finding enough people to work. And so it's a combination of all of the above when it comes to the vacancies.

The reason I ask the question is because later when we talk about the budget, and we talk about budget approvals, understanding there are some departments that may be understaffed and need things, but they don't request them. And then other departments that are intentionally leaving vacancies. I'm trying to understand the rationale in that. And I don't know if you want to get through the rest of this presentation and spin the block to explain that, but I need to understand that. However and whenever you want to tell me.

Just like the city manager stated, it's really a combination of situations where.

And Vice Mayor, we even leave positions vacant for budgeting purposes. So yes, it's all of those answers where we're leaving positions vacant because we also understand that there's not and will not be a year where we will have 100% positions filled. So it's a natural, and I don't know the percentage, but typically governmental agencies will run a vacancy rates of 8 to 11% throughout the year. And so we sort of budget and plan on those vacancies as part of balancing the budget. Maybe that's education for a later time because it looks like it's a really long and heavy discussion but we can walk you through that whole process in the mind set in the mind process with thinking to doing exactly that leaving vacancies.

And the reason why this question I do recall at some point there was a quick conversation that the vacancy rate was somewhere around I thought seven to nine percent right now it looks like it's thirteen point zero seven percent so If we're almost double the average, I just need to understand that. Right.

And a lot of that can be more so from public safety where they're having a little bit tougher and harder time filling vacancies. So, yes. Okay.

Any questions on this?

No?

Oh, I have lots of questions. I'll just ask them later.

I'd like to introduce our workforce planning supervisor, Adrienne. She's going to come up now and take over the rest of this presentation, and then I'll come back. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Again, my name is Andrelin Petate. I'm the supervising HR analyst over our workforce planning division. So I did want to provide a snapshot into what it looks like for our recruitment process for civil service positions, so classified positions. Essentially, what happens is when the department identifies a vacancy, they submit a requisition in our applicant tracking system. That's NeoGov. And then that requisition goes through an approval process to include the department head as well as budget. And then once the requisition is approved by NeoGov, HR reviews the vacancy details and then additionally we consult with the hiring department. So again, this is looking at civil service positions. So at this point, what we do is HR will verify if there's an active eligibility list that's been approved by Civil Service Commission. If there is an active eligibility list, we do what's called a certification for appointment based on number of vacancies. So if there is one vacancy, the department receives 10 names from the certified eligible list, and then they can start their interview process. If there is no established eligible lists, that's where this comes in. So essentially, we would meet with the department, as I mentioned, we would go over the classification specification, so the position's job description, and then additionally go over the recruitment flyer and see if there's any other additional job advertisement boards that we can post the position on. So some examples, we do social media postings. We also post with the different chambers as well as MMANC, which is what we utilize for public sector vacancies as well. So essentially what we do, like I mentioned, we go through the entire recruitment process, which includes an examination per civil service rules. So an examination can be assembled or unassembled and some examples would be our online written examination, our practical, our oral examination, and then our examination for training and experience. Once we have conducted our examination, HR will place the candidates on a ranking list based on their scores from the examination and that is what we take to civil service for approval. Once civil service approves the eligibility list, then from there we can send and refer names to the department for certification of appointment, and then they can start their interview process. Any questions on this process before I move forward? Oops. And then now I wanna go over non-civil service process. So we call this our unclassified positions that are not covered by civil service. So it's that same beginning process. If a vacancy occurs, the department is instructed to enter the vacancy in our applicant tracking system, which is again, NeoGov. From there, it gets approved by both the department head as well as budget. Then that's when HR will consult with the department to see how they would like to move forward and proceed with the recruitment process. We would open the recruitment based on different types of job advertisements we'd like to utilize. Again, that's social media or any other job boards that are associated with the classification that we're recruiting for. We would do an applicant screening to ensure individuals meet the minimum qualifications. And then from there, we can send those individuals who meet minimum qualifications to the subject matter experts, which is typically the hiring manager for the department. They do a review and they can select candidates that they'd like to interview. so they do their candidate interviews and then hr you know will proceed through our applicant tracking system to submit a conditional offer and go through our pre-employment process as well and then of course lastly they're scheduled for a new hire orientation any questions on this slide before i move forward all right So the next slide identifies our full-time hires within the last 12 months. So for administrative services, we have 12 hires. The city attorney's office, we have five. City clerk, two. City manager's office, 15. Community development, three. Community services, 14. Economic development, four. Fire, 35. Human resources, six. Information Technology, 4. Municipal Utilities, 22. Police, 76. And then lastly, Public Works is 13. And then this will also give you a snapshot of our full-time hires within the last 30 days. So admin services, we've hired one. City attorney's office, one. Community services, one. Fire, two. Human resources, two. Information technology, one. Municipal utilities, one. And then police, eight hires. So we also wanted to show you some recruitment and retention incentives that we have for SPOA. So these are additional side letter incentives to include a $15,000 new hire sign-on bonus, relocation assistance, 40 hours of advance vacation leave, Citi pays the entire employee share of monthly health plan contributions, enhancements to things like shift deferentials, standby pay, and longevity pay. The callback pay increase as well as a 5% SWAT ad pay. And another incentive that we have for our telecommunicators within the police and fire department is a $10,000 new hire sign-on bonus that will sunset June 30th of 2026. With our current situation, so right now we are reviewing civil service and finding ways that we can modernize and be more efficient in our hiring process. We do recognize our modern employment market and we can also acknowledge the slowdown or prolongment of the hiring process, especially in terms of civil service. It's detrimental and it's a major hindrance in remaining competitive, again, for the highly desirable candidates, especially, you know, with local and different like Bay Area, et cetera, being able to compete with the prolonged hiring process that is something we recognize. We are currently in the process of reviewing our civil service rules and finding ways like I mentioned to modernize our recruitment through proactive sourcing so Neogov actually has a proactive search engine where we can look up candidates through Boolean searches based on their skills for hard to fill positions or any positions or Recruitments that we currently have open with the city Some additional efforts. So to date, workforce planning team for fiscal year 24-25, we have attended 17 outreach events. This is a combination of different university hiring fairs, college career days at high schools, as well as local community events. We have an upcoming event. It's Juneteenth. So we're really excited to attend and table there. We've also tabled at Cinco de Mayo as well. One thing we're really working on and working through is enhancing our employer brand. How can we attract candidates through enhancing how to work with the city? So some things we're looking at is through social media and again modernizing our recruitment process, we want to be able to partner with the city's optic team to create either a recruitment video or have a better presence in the social media for city of Stockton to be able to fill these positions. We've been doing electronic onboarding, which includes conditional offers and new hire paperwork. There is an exception for public safety since we do have to follow some public safety hiring guidelines, but most of our positions are through electronic onboarding for conditional offers. And then essentially one of the newest things we've done is we've partnered with Work for America. If you've never heard of Work for America before, they're a nonprofit. They assist public sectors with hiring processes and we're currently mapping the police officer trainee recruitment process to see if there's any, identify any gaps that there are in the process and then also address those bottlenecks and work directly with the police department to address those as well and find ways that again we can modernize and be more efficient when we are hiring for their safety positions and then lastly we of course wanted to thank you and then the next steps is to see if you have any additional questions for myself or for the deputy director Alicia so I do have a couple questions but it might be the city manager that needs to respond to it

So all those bonuses up there, looks great. What about bonus for fire engineers since we're hemorrhaging those? Just throwing that out there. Don't know if it's a possibility, but if we're able to entice somebody to come here or test, become, whatever, we need to make sure we have fully staffed

We would be more than happy to go back and look at it and bring you up to date on that.

And then the other thing was the police department having their own dedicated HR person to get the people through the...

I've already started talking with HR exactly about that, Alicia and I, and hopefully we will give you an update on that fairly soon also.

Great job, thank you. Okay, public comment, we have a public comment and then I'll, sorry.

Mary Elizabeth, please.

I was not planning on making any comment because I had seen that presentation, it's posted on the website, but on June, Thank you. June 5th, this presentation was not available. And so while people can see this presentation because of your good work there, when there's committee meetings, that isn't the case and so I I just say this for public information because as that item had already gotten started I Would not have been I'm not allowed Tomorrow right because you've now passed that provision disallowing any comment cards to be submitted after the item has initiated. And so I just wanted to take this time to really understand what consequences there are when city staff doesn't have the material when the agenda is published. And this is for all committees. Because people can see this now, but if this were a committee meeting, all they would see is you all. Because this gentleman is not... here during committee meetings and so it's really critical for public involvement that that information be available particularly now that you've curtailed how the public can address the council thank you that concludes public comment for this item councilwoman padilla thank you mayor

I'm aware that there are some issues with regards to civil service. Specifically, what type of issues are you working on and how long will new things be implemented to speed the process along?

So currently what we're working on, especially on the public safety side, is we want to be able to identify any rules that need amendments that are limiting the hiring process. So an example would be essentially, like I said, our police officer trainees. We're trying to find more creative ways. They're on what's called a continuous examination list, meaning we do monthly PD testing in collaboration with our police department. I know Mayor brought up an HR analyst committed to the department. We do have Eric Tor, who's our HR analyst, and he's also there for monthly testing. In terms of reviewing civil service rules, of course, we would partner with the city attorney's office as well as any additional city departments to ensure that when we are looking to revise these rules, It's in accordance with the charter and how we would look into it. But we have been looking at things like our certification process, and then additionally, how many names can be referred to departments dependent on the number of vacancies since it's really just written out on there. How can we modernize that and ensure that We're providing an ample number of candidates for our vacancies and then additionally still be in line with civil service and the ultimate goal of civil service is for it to be merit-based hiring and for there to be no hiring bias as we're going through the recruitment process. So we just want to ensure we're still following the bones of the civil service rules and regulations.

And are you meeting with directors also getting their feedback with regards to issues they're having?

Yes, we're doing that. That's definitely a directive that I am taking to make sure that I'm meeting with those as well as the workforce planning team. They meet with all of their departments regularly to ensure that we're understanding why the vacancies are, what are we doing to try to fill those positions and understand those situations.

And just for public example, I had spoken to a director and one of their processes is that they have to interview a person three times regardless of, typically if you're a director, you know right away if that person's gonna be a right fit or not. that director may just say, you know what, this person isn't right for this job, just doesn't fit. But still, regardless of that, they have to have them interview three separate times. And even as an applicant, I would think, you know, oh, I got a second interview, you know, oh, I got a third one, you know, and then ultimately they just never were a right fit. So, you know, just little things like that I could think would hold up a hiring process. Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I mean, I have lots of questions. I'm going to reserve them for meeting with the manager to just ask them before I conclude on my concerns here. But the one thing I will say is we as a council have done a lot, and the audit committee, and all of us have done a lot of work to make sure that we're hiring properly, that we're above board and above approaches that relates to jobs being posted in competitions. Again, my understanding is the vacancy typically is around 7 to 9%. And I understand from previous discussions why that was baked into the budget, 13.07% concerns me. And also again in a market where you know people are looking for work. I just want to know where we're intentionally leaving Positions open or where we're having challenges finding people for jobs because I know there are people out there that do need jobs But lots of questions, but vice mayor we'd be more than happy maybe one of the meetings in July and

and come back and sort of give the council a whole update on HR as it relates to recruitment, retention, and everything else dealing with vacancies and all of that good stuff and even how it relates to the budget.

yet but also you know and i just want to know where it is i want to know more knowing more i can government effectively i mean i learned of the last week and budget session supplanting didn't know what that was i mean most people can expect me to come in off the street and know all the rules and all the laws but everybody working around here know they're smarter than me. So if I see two vacant positions and no VP, I wanna assume it's because we can't find anybody, not because we're playing a shell game to get grants. Again, wanting to understand more so I can be more effective in my job, but I have lots of questions. You got it. Thank you.

Okay, so seeing no other questions, I declare the public hearing closed and bring it back to council. We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to item 9.2, public hearing to adopt the fiscal year 2026-27 annual budget. Approve the capital improvement plan, approve the 2627 fee schedule, approve the fiscal year 2627 California constitutional appropriations limit. Adopt the fiscal year 2627 annual budget for the parking authority of the city of Stockton. Adopt the fiscal year 2627 annual budget. For the successor agency to the former Stockton redevelopment agency Public hearings open Good afternoon mayor vice mayor City Council.

I'm Gilbert Garcia CFO I'm gonna provide a high-level overview of the budget. We did do an in-depth survey of the budget on the second and The budget priorities are enhancing public safety, supporting economic development, and investing in infrastructure. Total citywide expenditures for all funds in the budget were about a billion dollars. This chart shows the same information that was in the pie chart, but it shows year over year changes. So the total budget went up by about 7% year over year. CITYWIDE REVENUES, AGAIN, THIS IS ALL FUNDS, NOT JUST THE GENERAL FUND, $973 MILLION. THAT IS LESS THAN THE EXPENDITURE BUDGET, BUT THAT IS THE PLANNED USE OF FUND BALANCE FOR CAPITAL PROJECTS. SO WE TYPICALLY FUND OUR CAPITAL PROJECTS. WE PAY IN CASH, SO PAY AS YOU GO. WE DO NOT TYPICALLY BORROW MONEY. FOR OUR CAPITAL PROJECT, SO WE USE PRIOR YEAR MONEY. SO THIS IS AN INTENDED USE OF PRIOR YEAR FUND BALANCE. AS YOU SEE HERE, OUR CAPITAL PROJECT BUDGET IS SPLIT BETWEEN UTILITIES AND TRANSPORTATION PRIMARILY, SO UTILITIES MEANS MUD. TRANSPORTATION INCLUDES OUR MEASURE K FUNDS, ALL OF OUR GAS TAX. And you see we have a very small percent of our budget for capital that is general government. So that is what we have for our facilities maintenance, for all of our kind of more discretionary capital projects. General fund expenditures $344 million about set now 77% there's probably some rounding differences, but last year our budget between police and fire for safety was 76% now it's 77%. This is you know most cities in California spend more than half of their general fund budget on public safety. So this is not anomalous. Our revenue budget equals our expenditure budget, so we do have the balanced budget. With most of our revenues in the general fund coming from sales taxes and property taxes, I did point out during the hearing that our sales tax is a smaller percent of our budget now, of our revenue, so we do see declining growth in sales taxes. We're not seeing an actual decline yet, although that might be, it wouldn't be a surprise to me if we did. Our general fund balance, so this is what's available for the 16.67%. So that bottom line number is what's available for our working capital reserve. AND IT'S BROKEN OUT IN GREATER DETAIL HERE. SO THAT $52 MILLION IS WHAT'S AVAILABLE FOR OUR WORKING CAPITAL RESERVE. WE DO HAVE LESS AVAILABLE PROJECTED IN 26, 27. SO INSTEAD OF HAVING THE 16.67%, WE'RE MORE AT 15.47%. IF EVERYTHING HAPPENS THE WAY WE ESTIMATE IN THE NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET. SO WE ARE ACTUALLY NOT QUITE ABLE TO MEET THAT RESERVE TARGET BASED ON INFLATIONARY PRESSURES PRIMARILY. SO THE RECOMMENDED ACTIONS, I HAVE TO READ EVERY ONE OF THESE, BUT BASICALLY WE ARE ASKING COUNCIL TO APPROVE THE BUDGETS AND THE FEE SCHEDULE. In addition to that during the budget session the City Council directed the city manager to build in additional support for Florence in the budget and So to that end staff is recommending the establishment of a new position it's the agenda and legislative services manager and So that position will support council agenda preparation and coordination, legislative workflow and compliance oversight, which is basically keep the department heads in line, making sure we're complying with the city's municipal code and ordinances. policy and staff report review, citywide interdepartmental coordination, system administration and process standardization, high level operational support to the city council and to the city manager's office. So that'll be what the position will be doing. The funding source for that will come from the city manager's budget, so some of that will come from the city-wide marketing budget. So we did mention that there'd be $150,000 in that. That is gonna be less now because that will help fund the position in addition to funding from the city manager's operation and maintenance budget. The rest will be charged out to departments. So we're requesting authority to put that position in the budget, to add that new position, and to establish that position. And that concludes my presentation.

Do we have public comment on this item? Okay.

Mary Elizabeth, please.

Thank you.

So thank you very much. I submitted comments when you were considering this in your study session, and I've submitted comments for this item today. Particularly, I'd like to call the highlight of nurse emergency communication manager and public safety information systems analysis and I'd like to you know see the city you know step up a little bit on air quality issues we have you know we have Fires that go on, you know, neighborhoods that are impacted with commercial barbecuing, you know, constantly. And so I'd like to, you know, see some effort to look at air quality public health issues with those three positions. Also, I'm glad to hear, you know, I was hoping that the agenda analysis position would be helping to make sure that, all of those departments get their presentations in time so that the people can speak. But now I'm hearing also that we have compliance with municipal code. And in my non-agenda comments today, I pointed out the fact where the rental department is doing inspections every five years when the municipal code says that inspections are going to occur every four years. So I've also pointed out in the legislation on numerous occasions where the city of Stockton has been fined for environmental violations. Budgets are more specific than city numbers. And so I have tried to look, and particularly in regard to animal services, because we have such a critical problem right now. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't figure out how much they're spending on this, how much, you know, what is the total cost for that service? It's a disservice. Thank you.

That concludes public comment for this item.

Okay, I will ask council if you have questions for Mr. Garcia and I see Vice Mayor Lee.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Mr. Garcia and City Manager, for the presentation and all the work that went into getting us here. And I appreciate more than all of that, the transparency and the honesty. We had a really good full day and actually got out early in going over the budget. I want to ask a question with respect to the position for Florence. I'm assuming you all talked to her about what she needs help with before creating this job. Yes, we did. What's the position title?

We're looking at edge agenda and legislative services manager, that's very similar to positions that are in other cities like Riverside, Sacramento, it'd be a brand new position. And what's the pay rates, Mayor? It'll probably top out. Again, we did a very preliminary comparison of the city's about 156,000 a year in base pay.

Okay, and so for all of us up here who are supported by one individual who does all the other things, I heard you going off the different job tasks. One thing that we need help with is with the council liaison is to following up on all of our different district issues. So like tracking and making sure that following up with constituents complaints because once we pass it off, sometimes I don't even get an update. And it's not because staff don't want to, it's just we need help, right?

Duly noted I'll take full responsibility for that and yes that will be one of the tasks that we will be asking for to help me and my office with making sure we're responding to you in a timely matter.

Okay the two positions that were available in OVP that were never filled that we budgeted last year what happened with those two positions did they just go back into the general fund or are you moving those somewhere?

They were eliminated, and so the savings is in the general fund. That's correct.

So did we evaluate if OVP needs additional staffing, or are they saying that they're adequate with what they have, or are you just saying based on the grant that we got, they should be okay?

That is correct. Based on the grant that we have, we should be okay.

Okay, the last thing that I have before we get into this, and I still have four minutes left, I want to bring again, top of mind, OPTIC. I've said from, I mean, I'm going to have my staff compile a video of how many times I've said we are wasting money in OPTIC, not telling the Stockton story. Every single council member has talked about the importance of needing to have our story told. I saw we have a new podcast suite over at the new city hall, so I'm assuming a podcast is coming. But when you look at fraud, waste, and abuse, and when you look at that as elected, and how we're spending taxpayer resources, I still don't know what the plan is. I don't want to come here and say, at the top of the year, we have a new council, I'm bringing it right back, and I'm going to eliminate the funding for that department. But that is where I'm at with it, because at this point, I have said over and over and over and over and over, we are wasting taxpayer resources. We are wasting taxpayer resources. I still will go back to Councilman Padilla months ago saying, maybe even a year ago, where she said, if by April I don't see something, and it is now June, and I don't know if she saw it, but I didn't. And I just have to say, I run a very lean business that makes significant amount of money and has global impact for almost as much as we're proposing to pay. and i asked you gilbert how much we've spent and thank you for sending me the email that kind of broke down what we spent so far what we are but based on what was presented last time after this department was uh created outside of council approving it what we what we were told we were going to get versus what we got doesn't line up so i don't feel right in my own conscience to approve a budget that has uh funding for an entire department that is under delivered There's this document here. Maybe we can just pause my time and if you want to explain this to me, this would be great. I don't know if the public is seeing this or not, but we should make sure that the public has access to this document, city clerk.

so this is a list of accomplishment uh from optics uh that i requested for fiscal year 2025 2026 and so this information that you have in front of you have sort of give you a snapshot of the work that has been accomplished and the future steps that we plan to take to increase the department's workload okay so do you want to like let's have a real discussion on it because I based on that I just did just quick math and

It says they did 156 social media videos up from the 26th year before. My company publishes 18,250 videos in post annually. And so, again, the disparity, like I don't know what the expectation is because I don't know how the bar has been set. But based on that, what we were told previously is the department would be focused on enhancing technology and all those things. Do we have anything in here that tells us what technology was enhanced, specific than 156 videos?

Let me see if I can get Tony Manor to come to the podium.

Yeah, please. And then I can come back later if other council members want to talk. And as they figure that out, I just want to echo what the mayor and I both talked about coming into office was we do want to, and I think that's what it is, that we do want to tell the Stockton story. We do want to promote the Stockton story. But if we're going to pay almost a million dollars to do that, I just think we need a very clear definitive plan that we can track and be accountable to.

Hello, Mayor, Council, Tony Manor, Public Information Officer for the City of Stockton. How can I help you guys today?

Yeah, I mean, you're in the back. You heard my questions, right? What are you all doing? I mean, I don't know how else to ask the question more than what I just said.

So, sorry, give me just a moment. So the city's public information officer provides a variety of services, everything from responding to PRAs in coordination with the city clerk's office, being a member of the emergency operation command, coordinating with county office of emergency services for communications across various channels. We also... manage all the digital assets for the city of Stockton. Sorry, I have something stuck in my throat. If you could just excuse me for just a moment. Thank you so much. In addition to that, We have three members of the OPTIC team that report to the PIO office. Their work has been the accomplishments that are listed on this document. To go through those, prior to OPTIC joining the city, the city's social media work was about 26 video posts per year. that has increased to 156. These are individual unique social media videos of events that are happening around the city. So that is not just an increase in communications, it's an increase in presence. So it's not shooting one video and producing 15 different videos from that one video. These are each individually unique. And there was direction from council and from city manager's office to start to explore some of the cultural enrichment programs that are taking place inside the city. So we started our Stockton Tapestry campaign, which includes going out to, excuse me, going out to things like the Cambodian Festival, the Sikh Festival, Cinco de Mayo Festival, things of that nature and covering those events, sharing those videos to give not just the people in Stockton but people outside of Stockton a perspective on what it's like to actually be in Stockton. It's not the things that you see on the news but these are the events showing that there are people that are going out into the community that are enjoying the resources that the city has been able to provide. and showing the rich cultural heritage of the city of Stockton and participating in all of these events. This is something the city has not done previously, so this is a new endeavor for the city of Stockton. There was also a direction given to expand the use and awareness of our Ask Stockton platform. Last year we saw an increase of 3% of city response to our service submitting reports, things of that nature. So the OPTIC team built a campaign to bring awareness to the public that went from a 3%, 4% increase, up to a 14% increase with that. And we see those videos during our council meetings. During breaks, you'll see those also on social media and regularly repeated. Now, the response has been pretty overwhelming. The folks that are engaging with our social media accounts have been engaging with the content, sharing it, commenting on it. And as a result, we've seen not only an increase of posts published, now the 156 social media videos are just the videos that are being posted. As far as total posts, it went from 532 the prior 12 months to 1,746 posts, which is a 228% increase. over last year. Our impressions, these are how many people are actually viewing it, went from 600,000 to 3.8 million. So that was a 527% increase in visibility. These are people that live in and around Stockton that are seeing all the amazing things that are happening in Stockton. So our outreach results have been staggering. The engagement, this is when people are sharing, commenting, clicking on a button to then go in and follow up with something. went from 23,287 the prior 12 months to this year, 181,345, which is a 679% increase. So they're seeing the content, they're seeing the stuff that's being produced, and then it's causing them to react. Once we facilitate and engage with the public in that way and we start getting that buy-in from the public, then we can start presenting them with additional things that we want to mobilize the public to do things like coming out to our 4th of July festival that's going to be happening at Weber Point. It's that critical method of getting not just an overwhelming amount of information out to the public, but in a way that makes them want to engage back with the city. So that's been the strategy up to this point. So one thing that maybe folks aren't aware of is that the optic team, public information office, we are responsible for acting as sort of the communications team for all city departments, except for the police department. They have their own communications team. But every other department, whether it be public works, CSD, the fire department, they all coordinate with the optic team to create content, and that content could be stuff that the public sees, and sometimes like today, it could be training videos. So today we had a member of our team went out, there was a training on equipment that had to be filmed, it got prepared, edited, filmed today, and back out to the fire department same day. So there's a lot of stuff that isn't glamorous, but it is a function of the department, it's a function of the city in order to better train, better prepare staff. In addition to that, we had a couple of other small campaigns. We had a lifeguard recruitment video campaign we did for community services, which helped our community services department reach their lifeguard hiring goals ahead of schedule. The optic teams also created two characters based on the Ollie the otter character for the community services department, as well as Duke the fire dog, that's going to be used to provide child support in education programs for safety. Duke, for example, will teach kids how to be safe around fireworks this summer. Ollie the Otter, maybe this year we did a part of our egg extravaganza celebration that we had at the park. Ollie hosted that for kids. The pools, Ollie was animated and was the character that invited kids to come out and learn how to swim. So we've been already engaging the public in that way. The public information office and the PEG engineer are also responsible for everything that comes with broadcasting council meetings to the public. So the board operator that you see in the back, that's broadcasting over U-verse, Comcast, online. That's part of the responsibilities of the Public Information Office. In addition to that, as we move into New City Hall, we have some exciting new things that are happening in that regard as well. So we'll be expanding our reach and our ability to get the message and council meetings out to the public. So there was a question about the technology that the OPTIC team is working on. There's five different projects currently that they're in development on. One of them is a new website for the Economic Development Department. I know that went out a couple years ago, so if the council is interested, we can find that contract to find out what that offset might look like. We are also developing, to meet our ADA digital accessibility requirements, an application to help the clerk's office and the CDD department to convert our PDFs into a ADA accessible documentation. Also helps with searchability and translatable services. So that's something that we're building in-house. And I will tell you, after communicating with many PIOs across the state, no other city is anywhere close to where we are in that regard. So we're way ahead of a lot of the other even much larger cities. We also have... Some other smaller projects we're working on, one being an accessible signature generator. That's probably not something that's super exciting. But what it does is it allows city staff to create a signature file for the emails that is ADA accessible. So when they're dealing with the public and they're using screen readers, that those are then readable. So there's things like that where we're just moving closer and closer to that accessibility requirement, federal requirement, ahead of schedule. The city website is also something that we've taken on. So we've already entered back into discussions with our city website provider to encourage them to provide us with some options in order to meet the request of the council as well under the direction of the city manager. So that's just kind of a taste of the things that are happening day-to-day with the OPTIC team and with the Public Information Office. So with that, if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them for you.

Yeah, so I still have time. In terms of analytics, and I'm not sure what your report looks like, I'm going to put you on an email, and I'm going to put you on an email with Morella Manila from META. I'm going to ask her to give you a report that digs deep into our analytics so the numbers that you talk about show us where that growth comes from. We've had a mass shooting. We had the Wilding Out fiasco. People Google Stockton for many different reasons. I need to see, based on what you're reporting, what this is actually related to. All the other things that I heard, I still don't understand what any of that means or represents. I don't see the work. And I will just spend the rest of this time before my colleagues who want to chime in and say something. i saw the mayor getting attacked online for i'll call it slurpy gate because she was promoting a new business that's not something our mayor should have to go out and promote i learned what's going on in the city from her social media or from my colleague social media which is great we all have our social media but i think you know it's it you know if councilman padilla wants to bring wonderland the skating the snow skating thing work or whatever that is a snow thing Why don't we create content building that up and building up to that so there's momentum in our city as it relates to storytelling that get people excited about the things that we're building and bringing, moving into City Hall, those type of things. I'll yield my time, but again, I just don't think this has been adequate enough for me.

Councilwoman Padilla.

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, this is the first time that I've heard some of the things that you mentioned, and I kind of question why your department is handling it. For example, PRAs, I thought that was handled in the clerk's office. So why does your department even have any part of that?

According to the charter, the responsibility still lies under the PAO, but in addition to that, there's often requests that come in that require me personally to go and investigate. A good example would be today, there was a PRA that came in a bit ago that wanted all the documentation that revolves around accessibility, policies, procedures, training materials, things of that nature. So that wouldn't be something that the clerk's office would go hunt down. They would contact me, send me the PRA, and then I would do fulfillment on my side. But that's specific to my function. There's also other things that require me to go out and get information from different departments. So I coordinate with the clerk's office all the time. Sometimes there's media inquiries that go through the PRA process. So I get looped in on those. It could be anything, really, but it's still a coordinated and a team effort.

So wouldn't IT pull information like that?

Yeah, IT would, especially with things like emails where they would have direct access into a dump or calendars or things of that nature. But sometimes you'll have documentation where the file name isn't It's not clear on what the contents may be. So with my responsibilities, these are documents that I deal with all the time, so I know exactly kind of what they're looking for so I can put those things together. And I'm sure the clerk can give you more background on that as well.

I guess you make me more confused because, you know, all this stuff that you're mentioning just sounds like busy work. just a lot of busy work.

We do stay busy.

And so it's like if you're doing all that busy work and things that involve other departments, how are you going to be proactive in sharing our story? Even handling our website or ADD website, shouldn't that again be handled in IT?

No. It's always been held under the Public Information Officer's Office.

So like I said, again, I am just lost. And And I don't mean to downplay what you do. Like I said, all this stuff that you're telling me is like busy work. And how can you be productive when you're working just pulling documents for all these departments? And so I can see like why there's only these, I consider few under working across every department because I think that you should be, and this is just my perception, mainly focused on telling all of our stories. Again, I still haven't seen the veterans video. Veterans Day passed. It's gone and over with. Your photographer was out there with Brando and I, and Veterans Day is gone, over with, we're done. I think those things need to be shared and mattered, but again, I guess now I understand why you can't share our story because you're doing all this paperwork and um so i i don't know if the position needs to be reevaluated and and jobs need to be um focused somewhere else but again i've been echoing what vice mayor said all this long all this time and it has been over a year and a half and i i you know i will see city of stockton things And again, I don't mean to be rude, but they don't thrill me. They don't make me look at them long enough. And I'm just being honest here. You know, sometimes Mario's are more interactive than, I mean, you know, characters, colors. You've got to attract the person. And I just don't see that happening. So that's all I have to say.

Councilman Enriquez.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Yeah, you know, just a couple of things. I know this is something that I mentioned at the last at our budget session meeting. So I know, you know, I see your staff at all the events and I appreciate them. And I know when I see them, I always say hello and say thank you for being here. And, you know, I don't ask them the specifics of what the task is because obviously I'm not their boss, but I know they're there. working or they're there to capture content right I just don't know the steps afterwards right I don't need to get into that but to my colleagues point right I think one of the things where is that whether it's the beginning of the year or now the beginning of the fiscal year is having a laid out plan of what is your plan for the year so let's say you you compared last year to this year with post publish engagements engagement rate The Ask Stockton. One of the things I was also thinking about was even the Ask Stockton, I use it very heavily, but I guess my question was from a branding perspective, what's the AI cat? It's cute, I get it, but the AI cats in all the Ask Stockton, how do you report a fallen branch? I like it, but I don't get the story or I don't get the point of it. But also the Ask Stockton doesn't have like a visual. It should have like a visual of what the app actually looks like, how to download. You do a video like, hey, I'm going to download the Ask Stockton app. This is what I do next versus an AI cat. So, I mean, just having more specifics of like those actual like step by step. I think it would actually increase your Ask Stockton percentage, the one that you have here in the blue box, but more specifics of how to versus a cat going by a dumpster, a trash bag saying, how do you report illegal dumping? Even like on Instagram, when you're scrolling, there's a new size now. So all of some of them aren't the proper size. So sometimes the city of Stockton logo is cut halfway through. The community office hours that some of us do, uh... aren't the appropriate size uh... if you do a video select the appropriate cover page that way you don't just upload a video and then things might be cut off like that throughout as you go down the feed on instagram in particular but i mean i i know the contents there but it's also looking at the final details also really matter at the end of the day because if you're scrolling you see things aren't consistent but it goes back to the what's the the brand what's the story you want to tell for the city as we start the year right and i think that's something even i didn't realize you all had a newsletter i mean that's great i mean i didn't know i mean that's great to know that but i didn't know that until this document so i appreciate that you're finding ways to engage folks the staff different departments about what you all are doing events things like that so i appreciate that but also you know um with uh the the consistency too right is how we had that pride flag fiasco where you know i was told by staff that oh we don't post flag raising announcements but then I took a snapshot and I said yes you did on June 5th 2025 city of Stockton made an announcement of the military branch birthday flag so not to say that I was lied to but when I'm told we don't promote flag flag raisings but yet the city of Stockton Instagram on June 5th 2025 we did promote it with a graphic that I created it then goes back to say I'm not here to get anyone in trouble I just want to make sure we're consistent and we're on brand so if we're gonna do it on June 5th for the pride for the military then once we know that the next flag is which is pride we should be ready to go with a brand and an announcement and specifics not me having to go back and forth and You know as you all saw I updated the 2026 flat military flag races because again I just want to make sure that we all look good and that we're just consistent throughout and I think at the end of the day it just makes us look better and we know who's doing what we know when it's being posted we know when it's on our calendars we have the templates of however whatever brand you're creating and I think once we all know it's going to help us in the long run.

Councilman Villalpudo.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Tony, just a simple few questions. What does your day-by-day operations do? I know we just had the Sousa Grand Opening. It was fantastic. I'm pretty sure you guys got a feeling of that. I know this weekend I was at Unifest, which is right outside MLK Park. And we were talking about all the mothers that lost all their kids through violence. I didn't know that your team was there. So my question is, from that day, because this weekend, how long does it take for that to get up? and letting people know what was going on that day. I think that's a lot of the questions my colleagues wants to know. How long does that take? I mean, whose role is that? I mean, I don't know everyone's roles or what they do. Sure. And I think it's just a simple question like that, if you can.

So it depends on the event, and it depends on what's in the production pipeline. So we'll have things that There's really sort of a drop dead timeline on, for example, we might have the state of the city video that we were working on. So we'll have some events that get pushed or training videos that we're scheduled to film and edit get pushed until after that event to make sure that everything's dialed in and ready for that show. For that particular event that was shot on the weekend. So city staff might be there, but they're not necessarily scheduled to work weekends. So if they're coming back in on a Monday, we can't expect them to work seven days straight. Sometimes they're not coming in on a Monday, or they'll take a Wednesday off in order to offset those sort of things. But I think that kind of gets into the weeds a little bit. But what I wanted to illustrate is we have a finite amount of time that we have to navigate through. And then we have to prioritize on top of that. So with that particular video, I believe that's due to release tomorrow. One of the things that we have to take into consideration, which is really tricky, is FPPC has certain laws that we have to abide by, and one of those being especially during an election year. So any video that comes out that has a council member in it that might be in an election year, we have to make sure that they're not highlighted. So if there's three or four council members at an event, each one has to have as close as we can get to the same amount of coverage in a video so it doesn't look like the city is providing any sort of resources to that particular candidate that's a law if we get in trouble with significant fines if we break that law We can't really use city resources to sort of advertise for a candidate. So it's a weird line that we have to sort of dance because we want the public to know about these amazing things that are taking place. We want to make sure that all the council members and dignitaries who are present get the exposure for being there, participating, interacting with the public. But we have to do it in a responsible way so that we're not violating the law. So that's where I sort of come in. So when the videos are being produced, then they get kicked back to me. And it's like, hey, we have to adjust this. We have to do that. Let's add this in. Maybe there's some content in there that doesn't best represent what was happening at the event. So there's an editorial process that takes place.

Now, is there your role as well through information to get out before? So for example, on Saturday, a lot of people didn't know what it was until I had to make a live video. So is there things that you could let people know previously, a couple of days ahead, a week ahead, that we're going to have this event so the community can engage?

Absolutely. And when the departments that are responsible for throwing those events let us know, Sometimes they let us know the day before. So we're scheduling, we're running out to that to cover it, to then do a post after the fact. As they're letting us know, we do add it to the calendar and we do try to get out to those events. We're working on, and that was the purpose of the newsletter that was mentioned in here, was at the bottom of that is also for internal staff to let us know when things are happening so that we can't get them on the schedule, so that we can start promoting that after the last council meeting when that was brought up. So we are working. We also made a small change inside of the optic team to where we are starting to post photographs from the event at the day of the event and then posting a video after the event. So we're listening to what council wants and through the city manager, we're trying to meet that. All right. Thank you, bud.

Okay, before we go to public comment, if Florence can start making her way out, but I do have budget questions because this is the budget item. So if I go to the general fund balance, I don't have a question for you. Oh, okay. Thank you. If I go to the general fund balance page, so we have revenues for the general fund, $344,477,047. Then we go to expenditures and we're at, $344,477, or excuse me, $47. That's what we're supposed to have. We need to be balanced. And the last conversation we had was about being structurally balanced. Because if you go look on the overall budget that's 1 billion 50 million, we're a little off.

Right. So that one, again, would be the use of fund balance for capital projects primarily. Right.

Well, I just want people to understand that because I just was at the US Conference of Mayors, and mayors were talking about their deficit, their deficit. I said, well, we're structurally balanced, and they're like, what? And I was just saying, no, our capital improvement projects, we're not going to be able to fund all of those, but we'll still be able to provide the same services, you know, there aren't any layoffs, there's nothing of the sort. And so I just wanted to make sure of that. Florence, you got to come up to the podium. And the other thing I noticed is, you know, making sure that we have the funds because we are in negotiations, you know, and those are ongoing funds that we have the revenue to sustain THOSE NEGOTIATIONS, YOU KNOW, WHATEVER WE DECIDE ON THAT, WHATEVER THE BARGAINING UNITS AND US COME TO AN AGREEMENT ON. AND SO THAT IS AVAILABLE WITHIN THE BUDGET. IT'S BUILT IN, SOME OF IT.

THAT IS AVAILABLE WITHIN THE BUDGET, CORRECT.

OKAY. FLORENCE, SO THE AGENDA. LET'S MOVE TO THE PERSON TO HELP YOU WITH THE AGENDA. IT USED TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE THAT DID THE AGENDA, AND THEN IT JUST KIND OF FELL IN YOUR LAP, CORRECT?

What the agenda process is actually all the departments do their own agenda and where I come in or the person that was doing that would do the final review before to make sure all the pieces are there before we publish.

Okay. And sometimes you are, and I hate to use this word, you're continually contacting individuals to say where's your item, where's your item, where's your item. Has that happened? Yes. So when there are things that are missing, you know, because we had Mary Elizabeth say, hey, but where's this PowerPoint presentation or where this information is? Sometimes it never gets to you to then put and have posted, correct? Yes and no, yes.

Correct.

I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus.

No, no, no, no, and that's correct. Go ahead.

So, you know, my thing is, is having this person is a position we used to have, but somehow became your job to do. Yes. Okay. And then the other question I want to get to is the PIO. So the PIO position through the city manager's office was actually on the ballot for approval from the voters. Yes? Yes. Yes, okay. Because the mayor's office had a position, but there was a community relations officer, and that was held by somebody where Tony's office is now. and i bring that up because they had you know two people that worked in there uh... but would you say that that i'm trying to think of that person ever showed up to anyone of my events i'm talking about connie did she show up to any council members events

It depends on, well, she's at, are at the community kind of town halls, those type of events.

So the Christmas tree lighting.

Yes.

Yes. You know, things that were like citywide, but I know if I did something, you know, unless it was, let's say a public works event. you know, like the ExoLoop. ExoLoop.

She's there at the ribbon cutting, yes.

Yeah, for that. But community events, I'm trying to think if I ever saw her, and I don't know if Council Member Blauer, Padilla, or Villapudua can say in their experience with that. And I just bring that up because there's this Narrative yes, what it was on us It was on us as council members to go out and sell which is why I did my council members digest and all that kind of stuff I mean I did all my own videos my own social media posts and I knew that kind of fell on me because I Nobody from this I couldn't ask the city manager to have somebody do that for me She was at the city sponsored events.

Okay that are operated by the city.

Okay Okay. Thank you And then you know, there's this Last year's budget and Gilbert you are soon. Mr. Garcia. You can confirm this. What was the budget for? the for optic last year and

Well, we estimate.

No, no, no, what was it? It was $325, according to the budget book. Okay. $325 was what they were allotted. This year, it's gonna be $30,325, and so.

For like the materials and supplies?

Yes, I consider that budget, what's the budget. So I realize that, oh, and then one more question. because I'm running out of time. So city attorney, I have a question for you. Can you, section 408 of the city charter, is the PIO in the city manager's office, is that council's employee or is that that city manager's employee? You are, it is the city manager's PIO. So what's section 408 in the charter?

The provision that administers the control that the city manager has over his employees, is that the one that you're referencing? Yes, the city manager controls the employees under his purview.

So we can express maybe our displeasure about an employee, but ultimately it's the responsibility of the city manager as to the day-to-day operations of the employees that are under them.

Correct. Council can express their views to all their appointees on how things are ran, but you are correct that it is the appointee's responsibility concerning their employees. Okay.

So I'm looking forward to seeing the newsletter. I'm looking forward to seeing more things go out, but I just want people to understand that this position is not for us individually. It is for the city of Stockton. And with that, we'll go to public comment.

Yolanda Amen. Good afternoon.

I had to come up here.

I'm out here in the public. I'm on social media. And I learned what's going on in Stockton from Vice Mayor Lee's page, from Mario's page. I learned a lot of stuff that you're putting out there, upcoming events. I don't know what they're doing back there, but I don't see it. I do not see it. I've gone to many events here in the public that all of you are at, and I don't see anything on social media about it. If I'm doing something with my nonprofit, and I have a major thing coming up, I am on there constantly, weekly, putting things about that, things coming up. This is what we're gonna be doing. Deadline dates, this is what's happening. The things that I see on their posts and the things that I see that you post, I don't see anything. And that city website, is very very hard to navigate. I have to constantly tell people how to get on there to watch the public meetings. It needs to revamp totally. I don't know if maybe a suggestion is you get some UOP students down here, get some young people up there, their life is social media and I can guarantee you they will turn this around. I don't know what you're about to pay these people but I'm telling you right now it is failing. Because I don't see anything out there. And the things that I have just attended with you, Memorial Veterans, all this stuff, I haven't seen a thing about it at all. And I am looking for it. But if it was not for some of you and some of your social media posts up here on the dais, I wouldn't even know the events that are coming up unless you put the flyers out there, unless I go look for it myself. So whatever you have going, all of this wah, wah, wah, Charlie Brown, he just said up here, I'm sorry. It's just talking, talking, talking, and I don't see what they're doing. I don't see it. And I don't think they should be getting any more money so that I don't continue to see what we're doing in our city.

That concludes public comment for this item.

Did you have a question?

My light's blinking, I've been waiting.

I know, but is it a question?

We're talking about approving a billion dollar budget.

No, no, but I'll close the public hearing then if it's not a question. Sure, sure. Okay, okay, so any questions for Mr. Garcia or the city manager?

Wait, actually I do have one question for him and then I have comments. The mayor just asked you how much we paid for optic. You sent me an email, and members of the media can request this through PRA, earlier last week, where I asked you specifically how much we paid. And you said, let me tell you what you said. You said Vice Mayor Lee, the fiscal year to date optic expenses are $833,238 currently projecting an additional $67,079 through 63026 for a total of $900,317. And then you said the total proposed spend for optic staff and operations for this budget year is $1,038,027. Of that total, $817,606 would be for general fund and $220,421 will come from other funds. Do you remember that email on June 4th?

I do.

Do you still stand behind that? I do. Okay, thanks. All right, that's all the questions I have for you, but I do have comments.

So I have a question then. So K-25, K-25 in the book tells a different story. And I was talking about, yeah, what their budget was, their office budget, which you alluded to. I said it was 325, and now it's 30,325. But it says 702,102 for projected, and the budget is 817,606 on K-25. And that's the general fund piece. Yes. Okay, okay with that close the public hearing.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, I'm not really sure where you were going with the comments that you made earlier, and it seems as if you're defending the decision that you made when this was a council issue and a prior city manager introduction of this optic team. It was Councilman Padilla early on in our entry into the city as a new council that said, let's move PRA down to city clerk's office. She took the lead on that. I didn't agree with it at the time, but she was smarter than me on that, and we did that. So that task was taken down. That's a very burdensome task. that the city clerk's office has been managing very efficiently. Councilor Villalpudo brought up an event. I don't know where the mayor was going with that, but his pool event doesn't come off to me as a campaign event. He's a sitting council member. He's an elected council member. He had an event in his community. It was a community event. and it should have been covered. Mario Enriquez, our council member, just gave a lot of grace, but I'm going to say this as an openly gay vice mayor of the city. I should not have to call the city manager after hours and go on and on with him and on and on with my colleague on my personal time about why we are refusing to call the pride flag race city event refusing to give city resources so he can do a press conference to promote visibility for that community we just sat here and gave a proclamation and but behind this curtain there was a whole bunch of circus acts going on getting that up and I want to thank the city manager for actually fixing that that's not something that we should have had to spend that much time and resource on again a million dollars towards the department that all the council members up here have pretty much said we don't believe we're getting the bang for our buck And our fire department has had to figure out, with the money that they have, how to create their own engaging content to tell their story. And they're doing a phenomenal job, but should not have to do it on their own. I think everything that's needed to be said has been said. I gave the mayor some grace about the Slurpee video, but I'm going to go there. I don't need help from anybody creating content. I can make a viral video right now, tomorrow. In my sleep, I can go viral. I don't need any help. And I've never asked you all to film anything for me, because I don't need you for that. But I have more resources than my colleagues do and they should all be able as sitting council members and the mayor to be able to have city resources to create the Stockton story. For the mayor, I would have created content with her writing her speech for the city. State of the city, I would have had some engaging content with each council member, engaging members of the public. I would have highlighted our community partners. I would have had, maybe through the lenses, I would have given glasses to our fire chief to go through. I would, through the lenses of our city, Stockton is ready, I would have had engaging content. This shell game of we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that needs to stop. But the other thing that needs to stop is we need to take responsibility as a council of what we did. And we trusted the interim city manager to put forth the budget that we trusted, and it lacked transparency. Couple things that happened that we say the voters aren't smart and they forget things. Well, let me remind you, we waived the minimum requirements for the job. We hired everybody at the top scale of the positions. We did not post those jobs for competitive review. And we don't even know what the plan is. what i heard is we will do this will do this will do this i heard that over a year ago the other thing is i don't know that the council approved creating an economic development website i know that i've heard our websites needs to be worked on and that is something that happened in the pio's office but none of us said let's create a whole new website so if there was a whole conversation outside of council where one or two people got in a little room with a dim light and said, let's create a whole new website. And who's going to pay for that? Because we didn't approve it, and it didn't come before us. So turn the lights on, and roaches will scatter. We ain't doing that. No backroom decisions and deals. We didn't approve it. If you want to do it, bring it to council, present it to us, get a budget approval. The other thing is I know me and my colleagues disagree on a lot of things, but I've listened to every council member down from the end, and I didn't hear from Ponte, but I know where she's at. We don't believe we're getting what we're paying for. And so I know nobody wants to be the bad guy and say, oh, whatever, but I would say for me to approve this budget It would require the city manager, and I think the mayor just highlighted Section 408. Thank you, city attorney, for reading us the law. That gives the city manager all the authority to go back in his sole discretion without any council influence to make the best decision to come back. Because at this point, what the mayor just read via confirmation from the city attorney is now it's on you. That's what I heard. So I'm okay with passing the responsibility to a very effective manager. But what you're hearing from this council is that we don't believe that we've gotten what we were told. And Councilman Padilla is the one that actually gave a little bit more grace than me the last time to say if by April, it's by June and we still have nothing. Oh, say one more thing. Got 17, 16 more seconds. We also say as part of the budget approval process, the enhancement of the Ask Stockton app. Is that in here?

Yes, working with IT, it definitely is in there. Thank you, sir.

Councilwoman Padilla.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, me being confused, when we went to the voters with regards to adding additional PIO, one for the mayor and one for the city manager's office, I don't think there was clarification as to the job description. I understand what the previous PIO, when she retired, what her job description was. And she had no involvement with regards to taking videos, telling our story. That wasn't her job. But then when we got sold on Optic, that was a completely different position, new thing that involved telling our story. And now here today, it seems like it's encompassing both that old PIO position and additional video content. And like I said, I don't think the two marry each other or work because there's a lot of tedious paperwork that prevents all this telling story and getting videos out on time and really getting the content out. So I don't know if the title needs to be changed or the description needs to be changed or or what. But again, I haven't been satisfied since a year and a half with the content. Now, if that position is different and is just doing, you know, posting when our office hours are because I see on next door, you know, office hours or important information. Just posting but it's just city related stuff. No videos just dates and times and where locations are Then that's completely different. So again, I'm I I'm not satisfied with What is being received by the department?

okay well I appreciate everyone's comments I know the budget is vast it is thick I literally went through every single page of the budget we are required of anything that's a hundred thousand dollars or more an individual that comes before us there's a lot of nuances that i believe that the city manager does that does not come before us does not require our approval and i would say the website it this website that we got was when i was a council member and i said right away that i did not care for it that it was very difficult to navigate and i i'm sure katherine remembers me saying it i said it quite often because I'd have to give everybody step-by-step circling, click here, click here. So I agree that the website that we inherited from the previous administration needs some work. And then what did we see in the previous administration? because we have public transparency, information, and communication. That is what the title is. But going back to the budget, I appreciate all the work that went into the budget. I am happy that we're... We're balanced in the way we need to be balanced. I can't wait to get the update for the 25-26 budget. When that closes out, we should be getting an update here for second quarter.

I'll probably skip straight to third quarter.

Okay, great, because if we got done with the fourth quarter by December, I'm gonna throw you a big party. I'm gonna pay for it, okay, just so we all know. Because we haven't had it done by December in quite some time. We actually used to have it done in November, cuz that's when we had money to play with, so to speak, if you go back, when we had Kim Possible, Kimberly Trammell, but we called her Kim Possible. but otherwise i would say overall this budget it is thorough it is meeting the needs of our city do we have more you know obviously we have 1.4 billion for capital improvement things from deferred maintenance that we need to get done and hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of some different programs and grants out there and being creative to get that done. So I will bring this back to council then, because I already closed the public hearing. I did ask you a question, but it's now time for council to decide.

I mean, I'd like to make a motion to approve the budget with a caveat based on all of my colleagues' positions with respect to OPTIC that within 30 days you come back with a plan and it's whatever you think it is that's going to answer all of the requests that you've heard from council in terms of proper staffing, proper focus, proper plan, not a I'm gonna, gonna, gonna. It literally needs to be whatever you decide based on your charter authority to reconfigure reimagine or go in a whole different direction but what we were sold on and if you want to take meetings with each of us to understand what we're sold on and i think council media can speak for me because she just did um what we're sold on what we're going to be sold on needs to be something that is executed so that i i think you guys have done a great job on the budget as the mayor said i would make a motion to approve it with that caveat that within 30 days We know exactly what it is that we've approved here and that it's going to deliver on their promise Councilman Padilla I was just going to ask city attorney.

How would we?

How would we approve the budget with exception of because it debt falls under city attorney's Office So how would we?

city manager sorry sorry i think you prove it today is that what your question is and then you've given him direction to come back to you all in 30 days i don't know if that's sufficient time so council video we're giving him the authority to have the budget so he has the money to deliver what we're saying as a council we want because we still want that but then now he has to come back to us and tell us because he wasn't here when we when the first government he's going to come back and say this is what it is and this is how you'll get what

So today you approve with the direction that in 30 days, and then you'll have the opportunity to meet with each and every one of you for direction.

Does that make sense? Second the motion.

But the budget has to be. Close the public hearing. You seconded. The budget has to be approved by June 30th, though.

but that's what he's doing i think so what i'm saying i'm i'm making a motion to approve it he has the money in the department or the division to do what we're all saying we want we're based on your point going to make sure he has the clear authority without any of us influencing that to go back and within 30 days tell us this is what i'm going to do with that money at that point we can always give direction and say oh you know later we want to do this we want to do that right right we can give direction but at least you'll have the authority to have the resources to

And I I agree there should be a communication plan. I mean every every department should have the overseeing department and then the offices under that should have a clear work line and especially if you're you know public transparency you know information and communication there should be a communication plan.

there so I agree with that and so there's a motion and a second I'm sorry through the chair I'd like to add that you need to make sure you amend the budget to include the position for Florence

So Vice Mayor, do you include the position for Florence? Yes. And Councilman Blower, you said, okay. So we approve it with the position.

Okay, with the position. Yes. Okay.

Okay, so that's the motion, to approve it with the additional position, to do the agenda, and take some things that need to get done by somebody else.

And if I can just be very clear on the motion, because I want to be very clear. I'm making a motion to approve the budget with the caveat that within 30 days, that money that we're funding for the optic division be assessed and how it is being executed with a plan communicated no later than 30 days. And then at that time, the council can decide, yes, that's going to work or not, but that includes you having full control to decide how we move forward. Thank you.

And we have a meeting on July 7th, so today's the 9th. That should make it happen.

We will have it then.

So we have a motion and a second. Council please vote. 7-0. Thank you, Mr. Garcia. Moving on to item 9.3. It is 524. Do we need to wait six minutes or is there one we can go to? We'll take a break. Okay, we'll take a come back at 525. I mean, excuse me, 535, 535, 535. Welcome back to our meeting on the 9th of June. We will continue our meeting with item number 9.3 proposition 218 public hearing to consider storm water rate adjustments. I now call the public hearing to order.

Really quick, there won't be a presentation on this tonight. The presentation did occur at a previous meeting. We will be accepting public comment and any ballots that need to be submitted during the public hearing timeframe. And once the close of the public hearing is done, then I'll go ahead and make an additional announcement.

So let's go ahead and have public comment.

Lawrence Test followed by Mary Elizabeth.

Press the button so you can hear me. I always get accused of talking loud My name is Lawrence Test. I'm a civil engineer and a landscape architect. I've been providing services to public agencies for the last 50 years, both civil and rate structure kind of projects. First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your service here. It's not a very glamorous job, but I'm sure it's really challenging all the time because Nothing ever goes easy, that's for sure. When I first received the stormwater rate flyer that was sent out, I was kind of taken aback because I looked at it and said, man, this is a real big increase and I couldn't figure out why. Being an engineer, being curious, I downloaded the study of the rate study and I downloaded the master plan that came up with rates that were suggested to be set. In May, I sent Mayor a letter along with the city manager and one of the councilmen a letter. Unfortunately, I'm sorry it was so long, but it detailed all my concerns and my questions of why the race needed to be what it needed to be and how did we get to the place that we are today. Then I learned that... And I have to say this, and I'm going to laugh a little bit, the city has not increased these rates for 34 years. And I sort of feel like, well, that's maybe a failure of not this council, but the council 34 years ago or 32 or 31 years ago. Had this issue been addressed, I think at that time maybe we wouldn't be in this situation where it seemed like we're making a huge rate increase. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. There's a two minute. I should have told you there's a two minute time limit on that.

May I finish it?

I'd have to let everybody finish it.

Okay, well then, may I make one more?

If you have a written comment, you can write something down, give it to them, and they'll give it to us.

It's definitely written.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Mary Elizabeth, followed by Steve Martinez.

Mary Elizabeth, so for over a year I've been talking about that master plan and my concerns regarding the precipitation values that were used for sizing. Also, my concerns in regard to the stormwater infrastructure versus stormwater projects. and the number one project that the city identified in the stormwater master plan was over there in box track and there was some discussion about and look at me you know some discussion about talking with the county about partially paying for that when you know like i've been working with the the port and the port you know just submitted Their annual report said that they've taken care of so many things because of property that they own there. And so why are we spending $17 million there when we have so many flooded streets? That's one thing. And then the second thing is I want to let you all know about that. Ask Stockton. And, you know, I have been asking for, you know, a special category of Ask Stockton for tobacco complaints, smoke shop complaints, alcohol complaints, you know, and it was like it's impossible, right? When those are special uses that have special requirements that the community covenant was made that they're not going to be a nuisance. And, you know, so, but there is, there was one for the stormwater plan. So I sent a little comment. I said, oh, it's good to know that the city can, you know, make new Astokton categories for people to use. And, you know, they closed out the account, you know, closed it out and, right, that was it. But I wanted to let you know about that. And the climate action plan calls for an update because climate action wasn't considered.

Steve Martinez, followed by Yolanda Amen.

Hi, good evening. My name is Steve Martinez, and I did know what the last speaker said. I do just have questions for the next two minutes. One, who authorized the usage of the stormwater services and what department it is? Two, where are most vulnerable places that we have here in Stockton listed in this program? THREE, WHY IT TOOK SO LONG TO COME UP WITH THIS INCREASE AND NOT LIKE GRADUALLY FROM THE LAST 34 YEARS. FOUR, WHO PUT THE BUDGET TOGETHER AND HOW LONG IT TOOK BEFORE THEY CAME UP AND CREATED THIS IMAGINARY NUMBER. FIVE, WHAT DOES THE CITY CONTRIBUTE TO AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? NUMBER SIX, I'VE GOT uh who who is the um who's considered industrial and why are they paying only the same as i'm paying right i mean what shouldn't they just be paying more um i mean i appreciate the the uh the the utility rates going up and the need for it. But as a concerned citizen, I plan to live here for the last 20 years to 25 years of my life. I'm 63. I plan to either I'm retired already, but I also look at my budget now and that budget of 825 and that's only till 2031. What's going to happen afterwards as far as like the next 10 years and the next 10 years and so forth with people that are moving in? How is that encouraging people to move into Stockton when they got to look at a budget of just for the water that it's going to cost them over $10 a month just for the storm rain? when somebody could have put this program together as far as like increasing it gradually without having to be digging into somebody's pocket deeper than it should have been um that's it that's all i have to say thank you and thank you for all your services appreciate that yolanda amen

I had an opportunity a couple of weeks ago to bring them out to talk to Western Ranch community. I wanted the community to be informed on what this was really about before making that vote and casting their vote. And there was an actual vote prior to this, don't quote me on this, it was 2015 or something, but it was turned down by the city. They said no. If we do not pass this, then we will be in severe trouble next year and beyond because there won't be any money you'll be calling for services no one's going to come out to help you because they may have to cut the department or they will not be able to have the resources to come out and help us in our community i realize the times that we live in a really hard but For me, I know that it's going to cost me a lot more money if something does happen, as opposed to me paying the $2 and then going up to the $810, I believe, at the end of the five-year period. If you look at the bigger picture, it is actually going to be cheaper for us. If we do nothing, then we're all going to be back here in about a year or two years complaining about why it cost me $2,000 or $3,000 or $4,000 to come and fix this thing that happened on my property or happened down the street. So I know that it's hard. I know that there wasn't a lot of information in those pamphlets that came out. But at the end of the day, too, it's also my responsibility to learn what it's about for me and my house and my community, which is what I did. So I'm hoping that this does go through. I do believe in this program. And I think it's going to be better for the city. But at the end of the day, it's going to be better for every Stockton resident that they'll be able to have the resources and people to come out and help us should there be a flood. For us that live in the flood area, which I do, if those levees or something should happen, I want to make sure someone's going to be able to come out and help us. So thank you.

That concludes public comment for this item.

Okay. Okay. So a call for all ballots to be submitted. Have they been submitted?

If there are any further ballots in the room, I just need to receive them now before we close the public hearing. Bring it on over.

Thank you. I now close the public hearing and city clerk. What is the date, time and location with which you will be counting opening and counting the ballots?

Ballots will be open and counted starting on June 10th, 2026 at 9 a.m. in the city clerk's office at 501 West Weber Building 1 first floor.

OK, so the new new city hall. Correct. And you said starting at what time? 9 a.m. 9 a.m. On the 10th, okay. And then this will come back to us at our June 23rd meeting with the count.

Correct.

And whether it passes or not. Correct. Okay? Okay. let's move on to 9.4 that is adopt the budget for the fiscal year 26-27 central stockton lighting maintenance assessment district in district 4. so i declare the public hearing open and staff will present is that you oh mr schneider How's Colin?

Mayor, council members, Paul Schneider with Siegfried Civil Engineer for the assessment districts. I will try to keep this brief because I think you have four or five of them. So the one that we're hearing at the moment is the lighting district, which is specifically associated with Caldwell Park. It was actually passed a good maybe ten years ago now in the same fashion as the storm water rates with the Prop 218 vote. This particular one is really to fund the special benefit, which are those green fluted sort of acorn top. They're similar to the ones that are here in downtown. It's the character of it. It's to replace them when they're knocked down, to paint them, to maintain the wiring. So it's very specific. It's assessed based on linear footage of your frontage on the roadway. Each year, you review the engineer's report in the prior meeting. You basically review the maximum allowable assessment and the annual budget, and it provides for the operations of everything that I just described. I always make sure we include this. In this case, there's always the maximum allowable assessment that we track, and there's the actual assessment. So each year, the budget is the actual assessment, and we increase the maximum according to the consumer price index annually so that we keep track of that. This is the area of that particular one for the Central Stockton Lighting Maintenance District. Again, mostly around Caldwell Park off of the Miracle Mile. This year, the maximum assessment went up by the CPI, which was 3%, and we're down to about 69 cents per linear foot of frontage. The actual increase in the assessment is 3%, or the maximum, I'm sorry, is the 69 cents, and we're actually at about half of that, at about 30, almost 36 cents. And the average for a 50-foot lot is about $18, so this isn't a very large assessment. THIS IS THE SUMMATION OF THE NUMBERS FOR THIS. THERE WERE SEVERAL OTHER DISTRICTS. THAT'S WHY IT WAS ACTUALLY ZONE NUMBER FOUR. THOSE OTHER DISTRICTS DID NOT PASS. SO THE RECOMMENDED ACTION IS THAT YOU OVERRULE ALL THE PUBLIC HEARING PROTESTS AND APPROVE THE BUDGET MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE ASSESSMENT AS WELL AS THE ACTUAL ASSESSMENT AND THEN LEVY THE ASSESSMENT.

Yes, thank you. First, I want to say thank you for this presentation. It's already been a year. I feel like we were just here the other day talking about this. But I know this is pretty standard for the residents that live there in my district, so I know it's pretty common practice. I'm also in that vicinity, so I also appreciate the lights that we have uniquely positioned there in our area. In terms of just for next year, obviously leading up to this meeting, I didn't get any negative comments from my constituents regarding this. Again, it's pretty standard. But for next year, will there be any opportunity to, do you all do any promotion or getting the word out leading up to this meeting or no?

So the annual process, may I answer? So the process for this is when you review the preliminary reports, really what happens in April, that is one of the largest times for someone from the public to come to that council meeting and ask questions about it, because that's a point at which we could actually influence the budget. And if there's something like they're saying, listen, it's not being painted. They're not being maintained. Some of them are dim. The wiring's failing. That's a point where we could try to take action and then work that into the budget. As you can see, instead of roughly 76 cents or 77 cents, we're at half that right now on the assessment. That's because we're not seeing as many knockdowns and the maintenance isn't as... as difficult or onerous as we would have thought it was originally and in a lot of cases the the rate the PG&E and the fact that we we've upgraded a lot of the lights in other areas we have lower rates so anyway I think at that point that would be when you'd want to get folks involved so we could try to see if we want to reach out to the the folks that are in the district prior to April would be most most advisable

And I'm glad you brought up PG&E. How often is PG&E, do they work on any of these lights or they just work on the surrounding?

These are all City of Stockton owned and maintained. The only thing PG&E is involved is they have a standard fixed rate per fixture, depending on the type of light that's in there. So there are things, and maybe where I was going down a bit of a rabbit hole, is if there are LED conversions for these lights, that would then lower the rates for PG&E. So those are things that could be discussed prior to budgeting for the next fiscal year.

yeah definitely no thank you and the reason why I bring it up is because I know the vicinity map is really helpful so that way the public can see visually because I know over the last year and city manager knows there'll be times where I'll get comments messages emails saying PG&E's here and they're doing all this work why don't you tell us and then we find out that it wasn't city-led so it's always hard to to balance that especially in that area where there's a lot of active constituents so I appreciate it

Okay, I don't see any questions from anyone else. Are there any public comments?

We have none.

Okay, so I declare the public hearing closed and I will bring it back to council for a motion.

Motion to approve. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you. Okay, moving on to item 9.5, adopt the budget for the fiscal year 2026-27 Stockton Consolidated Landscape Maintenance Assessment District number 96-2 for districts one, two, four, five, and six. I declare the public hearing open.

Mayor, council, again, same story. This one is for the consolidated landscape districts. There's 27 zones within this district. So this is very much citywide across all of your districts in one way or another. So again, it covers 5,500 trees, you know, 68 plus acres of open space, miles of trails, including Weston Ranch has a lot of them, Spanos and the different developments. So you can imagine, and we'll get into the vicinity map. Council Member, as you mentioned, it's very helpful. But overall, this particular series of zones has a budget of almost $8 million. So this is a very vital piece to the city to keep these going. Again, each year you review the report, you adopt the budget, and then you get to this point a little bit later on after the publication period. So I probably won't repeat this slide five times on you if that's okay. I'm happy to answer questions when we circle back. In this particular one, there are several zones that do not have a cost of living increase. So there are some that do not get to increase over time. So they become increasingly more and more difficult to maintain on really what is a fixed budget. It doesn't go up with inflation. It doesn't change at all. So we work with the city and the city folks do a very good job of working in the maintenance that needs to be done while trying to still maintain the special benefit. these zones as I indicated they really do cover quite a bit of the city and What's happening just as a side note is not only do some of them expand the number of homes that are in there so as you go out towards a little bit north of Murata and Holman you see a lot of development out there towards eight mile road That is expanding some of these zones and expanding the assessment So you'll see over time that the total assessment is going to increase because more parks get added more street landscape gets added And there are potentially some new zones that are coming in we have several Subdivisions that are on the north end of town that will create new zones within this so you'll see that at some point We'll go from 27 to 28 to 29, so don't get married to the 27 number. It's been that way for quite a long time Oops my apologies So again, I won't go through each individual one of these numbers, but basically we are giving you an average. Probably the most important thing to point out is really kind of what the average assessment is in some of these. Some of them range from $46, some of them are $200 or $300. really depends on the intensity of the landscaping improvements and the amount of amenities that are on the parks and the streets. So you'll see quite a variance as you go down that one column. And in a lot of cases, you'll see the maximum assessment in some cases is significantly more than what the proposed budget is. And that's that difference between the maximum and the actual. There are some of them where they don't have the cost of living. Like the first one there is Weber Sperry. It's been that way for as long as I've been doing this for the city. For 25 years, it's been $62,117. It doesn't move. But there are other ones where you can see a little bit further down, like the Blossom Sperry. We're at $345,000 for the budget, but the total is more like $575,000. So again, we're being very careful with the funds that are being collected and used within each one of these. So that's what the zone assessments are. Again, the recommended action is to overrule the public hearing, any public hearing protests, approve and adopt the budget, the engineer's report, the maximum allowable assessment, and the actual assessment, and then levy the assessment. Thank you.

Okay. Vice Mayor? Oh.

Yes, I do. Western Ranch, we had a meeting about Western Ranch landscaping and I love that this is in here, but want to make sure we're having discussions with our vendors that the Western Ranch neighborhood doesn't feel that we're getting adequate service. So are we going back with the same person, same group of people?

If I understand the question correctly, so the Weston Ranch, there are several zones that overlap in there. There is the master zone. Two of them do not have a cost of living increase. So one of the challenges that that community is probably noticing and facing that they're maybe bringing to your attention is that we're attempting to try to budget within that limited amount of money that is fixed, trying to continue to provide a minimum level of service of the amenities that are that special benefit. And in some cases, that means like if a shrub were to die, the shrub does not get replaced. But the trees and the walls and some of the other things remain a priority. So what has been discussed for well over 10 years now in several of these zones both for the landscape maintenance side as well as the storm drainage side, which we'll get to with the other team members in a minute. In order to increase that or even to apply a cost of living increase would require a Prop 218 vote of those in Weston Ranch. So if you wanted to sort of start and have that dialogue with the community, we need to start opening up the the fact that this is a fixed amount and costs keep increasing and I believe that the city in many cases augments this a little bit from other funds as best they can so that that's where it stands I'm not I'm not sure I answered your question well at some point maybe we have a conversation about it then and take it to them and let them in participate in that discussion and then ultimately that decision Yes.

I think that's prudent. The other question on here, the Western Ranch fence, is it that fence on French Camp Road? Because I thought we already fixed that.

It's the walls. So the fixed concrete or CMU walls are the ones that are within the district. If it's the temporary fence, which is more chain link or the one that's the ag fence that's along that one side of French Camp, I do not believe that is within the assessment district. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Public comment.

Mary Elizabeth.

Oh. I believe that. No, you're just fine. Just for a second.

So I didn't see this presentation. I didn't look for it, but I don't see it on the agenda either. So just for that. But what I want to say is looking over there at E1 and E5, all those areas in there, people in the AB617 are complaining about trees. I really think that while we're looking at this budget now, and I appreciate your comment to bring to light those issues, because we need to have all parts of our community attractive and shaded. And so, you know, are those 5,500 trees part of the city tree inventory? Is it going to be part of the master tree plan? So those are questions for you. Thank you. Photosynthesis power.

That concludes public comment for this item.

Okay, so I do have a question. I haven't closed the public hearing yet, but I do notice, so the area that was just mentioned, you know, we have Little John Creek out there, which is pretty much a standalone community in south-southeast Stockton. I think that, is that the E3 section?

I believe so, yes.

Oh yeah, it says Little John Creek, yeah. So are the trees there our responsibility, or is it the assessment's responsibility?

Anything that is within the boundary of this particular map, and I'd have to go review the diagram, and if you wanted to get back to me with a specific question of is this particular road part of it, it would be identified in the diagram that's in the engineer's report. If it falls within that diagram, that tree would be part of the assessment district.

because the concern is you know we we're gonna have what 103 degrees this week I mean with impending drought possibilities and making sure that we protect our tree canopy and we can put you know all the money we can to the side but we got to be doing preventative maintenance which I know is not yours it's for the city manager to hear and if it's within the assessment district the funds would would come from the assessment district from these funds to protect those trees Great, okay, thank you. Since there are no other comments, I declare the public hearing closed and I will entertain a motion.

Motion to approve. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to item 9.7. It is a public hearing for the approval of the engineer's report for, huh? Oh, 9.6? Man, I'm trying to get through this. A PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE APPROVAL OF THE ANNUAL ENGINEERS REPORT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2627 ANNUAL BUDGETS AND CONFIRM THE LEVY ASSESSMENTS FOR THE STOCKTON CONSOLIDATED STORM DRAINAGE MAINTENANCE ASSESSMENT DISTRICT NUMBER 2005-1. OPEN. PUBLIC HEARING.

OKAY. ARE WE ON TO THE NEXT ONE? Okay, so this is the consolidated storm drain. There's a series of basins and within a lot of the subdivisions that have been developed over the years, this also includes stormwater treatment devices, which are part of the global city's stormwater quality requirements. Trash capture, removing sediment, removing debris, they started getting implemented back in 2003. So there are several zones within this that are private development driven and again funded by the homes that are specifically within those zones. The next one we'll talk about after this item will be the industrial basins. So there are again, oops, my apologies. It looks as though we, did I jump to the wrong agenda? Or am I on 9-6? Okay, my apologies. I might have misspoke when I heard it. So these are the industrial basins. Same concept, stormwater and the basins. These are associated with the industrial basins. The consolidated zone is on the next agenda item. So these are usually associated with the industrial areas. So you go out to Arch Road, you go out to Airport and Zephyr. There are several large basins that are fenced in associated with the industrial buildings. They take large watershed areas. So these, unfortunately, in many cases, you see the asterisks. In some cases, many of them are fixed. Some of them were put together in the later 70s, and they did not have a cost-of-living increase. But because they largely are a dirt basin with a fence around it, in some cases a storm pipe that sticks into them, they require very little maintenance. So, so far, Municipal Utilities does a fantastic job of working within that budget. So a lot of these are fixed, and you'll see – What they are in some cases the budget is a little bit more like Western Pacific is a great example. The budget is a few thousand dollars more than what can be collected from the businesses that are there. And much like the discussion we sat on Western Ranch, the only way to increase that assessment would be to have the folks that are in it vote. So you'll see that repeated in a number of cases. But generally, we are within the maximum in every case, and in some cases, we're assessing a little bit less. But just like the other ones, we would want you to overrule any public protests, adopt the budget, and then levy the assessments.

Any questions from council? Any public comment? No public comment. I declare the public hearing closed and bring it back to council. to approve second have a motion a second Council please vote. Motion carries 7, 0, now we're moving on to 9.7 public hearing for the approval of the engineers report fiscal year 2627 annual budgets and assessments for industrial storm drainage base and maintenance district 5 and now declare the public hearing open.

I think one last time. So forgive me for the repetition. This has the 15 zones within it. These are the ones that are largely driven more by residential development as well as some of the water quality devices. But the same concept there spread throughout the city. Most of them again are named after the subdivision that they were in. You can see that the average Some of these assessments are as little as $7. Some of them can be as much as $400 or $500, depending on the number of dwelling units that are contributing to it. The smaller it is, the more expensive it is for some of the folks. But the vast majority of them have a cost of living index. increase on them, which was 3%. And that was applied to the maximum. And in a lot of cases, you'll see that we're underneath the maximum. In several cases, Westlake Villages is one of the ones for Spanos development, as you would probably refer to it. You'll notice that we're well under the maximum that's there. It's because it's still developing. So it's always going to be an annual effort to figure out exactly what is necessary, create that budget that you see in April, and then only assess what is necessary. Nothing more, nothing less. So those are the assessments. And again, recommended action is to overrule the public hearing protests, adopt the engineer's report, the budget, the maximum assessment, and then levy the assessment.

OK, I do want to say I misspoke. I think I said District 5, and it's districts with an S, not a 5. So any questions from council? Seeing none, public comment?

No public comment.

OK. I declare the public hearing closed.

Move to approve. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to item 9.8, public hearing to consider adoption of the city of Stockton 2025 urban water management plan and the water shortage contingency plan, all districts citywide. I declare the public hearing open.

Good evening, council. My name's Travis Small, deputy director of water resources. And let me make sure we're at the right spot. All righty. So we have our public hearing for our urban water management plan, and with me I have Ashley Smith with Verdantis, who helped prepare the plan, and then Clara Isha, our program manager, who is the project manager on this. So I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Clara. and uh...

Good evening, council and council members. I know tonight has already been a long evening, so we'll go through it fairly quickly. I've been working on the urban water management plan. I want you all to know that this is a recertification and an update for something that happens every five years with the city of Stockton submitting the first plan in 1986. So this has been going on a long time. So we'll kind of just breeze through it. We've already presented at city water committee, water advisory group. There was a public comment period and everything is available for review so I'll go ahead and pass it over to Ashley Smith. She's the project manager with Verdantas.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Ashley Smith. I've been helping the city prepare this urban water management plan. Like Claire mentioned these happen every five years. So this is an update to a prior document and I'm going to breeze through this quickly for you all. Once I figure out the mouse. There we go. So as Claire mentioned, this was presented previously at the Council Water Commission on March 12th. It was presented to the Water Advisory Group April 1st, and we're now hosting our public hearing today. And then it is due to the state. Everyone's urban water management plans are due to the state by July 1st. So the water supply portfolio that Stockton has is the San Joaquin River from the Delta Water Treatment Plant, wholesale water from Stockton East Water District, wholesale water from Woodbridge Irrigation District, and then some groundwater supply as well. And the primary overarching conclusion of the Urban Water Management Plan update is that we're demonstrating the city's water supplies are adequate to meet the projected demands. So every five years, they're projected on a 20-year forecast with the option to include a 25th year. So this goes through 2050. So we're using projections for population consistent with the San Joaquin County general plan. So estimating 1.44% per year. or 7.2% every five years and targeting growth rates to match that. So the long-term water supply reliability, this paints the picture of the whole urban water management plan here. So for 2025 and projected out into 2050, working alongside both WID and Stockton East, getting information from them to be consistent we're showing that we have a projected supply that will meet and exceed the demand. Another aspect of this is the Water Shortage Contingency Plan. It is an appendix to the Urban Water Management Plan, but it is also a second document to adopt and approve. This is basically the protocol for what happens in water emergencies or water shortages. There's six different shortage levels, and it tells you what to do and how to communicate water conservation metrics and how to enforce them. And so this is required to be readopted. It's very similar to the one that was developed five years ago is when these were newly adopted. So our recommendation after the hearing today is to approve the 2025 urban water management plan, a second resolution to approve the water shortage contingency plan, and authorize the city manager to take all appropriate actions in water conservation.

question the Delta conveyance project now I know that we're pulling from the Delta how could that potentially impact this because I see we have supply and I see we have demand but if we put in that tunnel it could it could impair the water quality going from our San Joaquin River supply

So like bromide might increase, which would increase bromate through our ozone treatment, which is a disinfection byproduct. So it would make our water quality, it would lessen our water quality. And then make us invest in more treatment techniques to remove bromide, chloride, and any of the other bad constituents that would be in the delta.

I ran into a former student of mine from Franklin who went to UC Davis. I said, oh, what are you doing? And he said he's working for DWR. And I said, oh. And then he said, why did you say that? Why that grimace? And then I explained why. He goes, it's a great project. I said, wait, you're born and raised in Stockton. How do you? Anyway, I just bring that up because anything can happen. And I want to make sure that we're prepared for it. Even though I know it'll take some time, it still will have a huge effect on us here.

Correct.

Okay. Any public comment?

Yes, Mary Elizabeth, please.

So I started submitting comments on this May 17th. And then also in April.

at the Ledge Committee to notify the fact that yes, they did talk about it at the Water Advisory Group April 1st, but the report wasn't out. So they said what they were going to do, but not actually seeing the report. So I found out about when the actual report was happening in May, and it was a public notice in the newspaper. And the public notice in the newspaper, if I had read all the way to the end, would have told me to look on the City of Stockton water quality page. But, you know, I just had to call them up because I was looking through it. I couldn't find it. So when all of those presentations to the Council Water Committee, to the Water Advisory Group, never had a link to the report. Not one. And so that's worrisome. I'm over in Cal Water. Cal Water is my service provider. And so I contacted Cal Water because I didn't see anything about the public health goals. You know, and the PFAS, right? I found that out at Cal Water, but the PFAS wasn't identified in the City of Stockton public health goals. But I want to find out where is, you know, this report? Well, Cal Water did the same thing. Published a newspaper in the newspaper and that was it. And so I think, you know, when we come back to it, a general plan calls for better public outreach and, you know, continuing to rely on a newspaper is inadequate.

That concludes public comment for the item.

Okay. I declare the public hearing closed and I will entertain a motion.

Motion.

We have a motion and a second. Council, please vote. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you. Okay, now we are moving on to the city manager's update.

Hello, council and mayor. My name is Tony Manor, PIO for the city of Stockton. Was that it? All right. I'm here on behalf of the city manager's office to present the city manager's report.

Well, I'm gonna talk about our police aid program that we started back in 2024. Again, we had conversations in our community and in our department and with the city manager on how we could support the youth in Stockton, how we could create opportunities for the youth in Stockton. And we came up with the police aid program. It is a paid program for those that are between the ages of 16 and 25. And what we do is it gives them an inside look behind our door. And what I mean by that is we are a police department, but we do more than just policing. We also have an animal shelter. We have code enforcement. We have a lot of opportunities in our department that we want them to find a home somewhere. So every police aid we onboard, we rotate them every four months to a new assignment. One quarter, they may be at the animal shelter walking our four-legged community members. The next quarter, they may be working with our evidence technicians, learning how to preserve evidence. Another quarter, they could be up in our homicide unit looking through cold case files. There's so many opportunities throughout the department for them to find where they fit in. We have some of these police aides that have wanted to become officers have shifted to say, you know, I think I want to be a dispatcher. And we have one of them in the selection process for that. We recently hired one to be a police officer that came on. You know, we've hired him to be CSOs. So they're finding where they fit in, what they like to do. Some of them thought they knew what they wanted to do. But as we rotate them at different assignments, they really have said, you know what? I thought I wanted to be this, but this is what I want to be. I really care about animals and I want to be with animals. That's the type of career I want and we support that. So it couldn't be working any better than how we expected it to work. It's spreading like fire. We currently have 14 police aides and right now we're interviewing where we have over 100 candidates for the position. These police aides are spreading the word. Our community members are spreading the word to give the Stockton Police Department a chance to learn many things. Regardless of their major, some of our police aides are college students that are finance majors or social science majors, all over the board, but there's a place in this department where it's in line with what their passion is about. My message to all the youth out there is to give us a chance. We have a job for which you will be paid for to learn about the police department, for you to perform a public service a way that you want to. Not necessarily as a police officer, but it could be an animal control officer. If not an animal control officer, you can be a code enforcement officer. If you want to be a code enforcement officer, you can be a dispatcher. If you don't want to do dispatch, you can work in our records unit. There's so many options. Come learn more about us. Please go on our website where we talk about the police aid program and how you can apply. But absolutely, we would love to see you put in for it.

Hello, my name is Haley Townley. I am a police aide here with Stockton Police Department. I have been employed here since October of 2024. Since being here, I have been in six different sections. It started off with being in recruiting. After that, I went to Chiefs Relations. After Chiefs Relations, I was assigned to SIS, which is Special Investigations. And then after that, I was assigned back to recruiting, and now I am assigned to the Sierra Vista substation. My goal here was to become a police officer, and starting June 1st, I will become a police officer. Some benefits as being a police aide, this is a paid position. They work very well alongside your school. If you are in college or you are getting your extra or have any extracurriculars outside of this job, they work very well with your schedule. While being here, I learned there are so many different sections and not just a patrol officer or police. Like there's administration positions, office positions, animal shelter. There's an outlook for in a place for everybody here within this department. And ultimately, if you don't want to be an officer, this position will give you an outlook within the department to figure out where you want to stay ultimately.

So my backstory actually starts with my family. My dad started at San Jose Police Department, and he used to take me on tours throughout the department. He used to let me go to the homicide unit, and homicide's always been my biggest interest, so going there definitely, definitely inspired me to want to be in law enforcement. At the time, I may not have known to be a police officer, but I definitely knew I wanted to be in law enforcement. So it started out with him, and we slowly actually started to transfer to Stockton PD together to where we both work here now. I think I actually found the police aid program on Instagram, if I'm not mistaken. I had actually first applied to be police aid one. And at the time I was rejected, but it actually gave my father a great opportunity because at the time our captain had pitched me that position for my dad. And that's how he was able to transfer from San Jose PD to Stockton PD, which later gave me the opportunity again to come back and apply as a police aid two. And now I'm here at Stockton PD as a police aide too. I started out in recruiting. That's kind of where I like to say that's our little hub. It's where we train. It's where we learn how to be a police aide before they essentially let us out the nest and go out to different units. Right now I'm in my first rotation of the chief's office. So I get to work alongside the chief and his team with their PIOs, with their engagement and relations and all sorts of things. And I make connections with our community to try and be that bridge between essentially our community and the department. I would love to finish out my degree at Stanislaus in criminal justice forensic science. I hope to be in the academy by 21, 22 hopefully, and be able to become a police officer and later on join our detectives unit and hopefully be in homicide specifically. That's something I've always been interested in. How many 19-year-olds can you say have a relationship with a captain or a deputy chief or even the chief of police for the city that you live in. Being a police aide doesn't just mean that you're gonna be a police officer. Some people don't wanna carry guns. Some people don't wanna be out on the streets like that, but they love law enforcement anyways. So being a police aide can actually teach you about FET because you get to go to our evidence technicians unit and you get to work alongside with them and you actually get to do ride-alongs with them. You can even go do sit-alongs with dispatch. Maybe you want to be a dispatcher and you love to be up there listening to the calls and dispatching them out to our officers. You could even be in records. You could be a record specialist, learn all about the behind the scenes and the computers. and the reports and things like that. So there's many different areas you can go. You don't have to necessarily just be a police officer. There's so many different other things that you can do, whether you want to be on the streets fighting crime or be in an office doing your paperwork and your desk stuff and things like that, but they're still quite important as well. I'm very grateful to be a police A2. It is one of the best experiences I can say I've ever had, especially to get paid to do something you love at the age that we, or most of us are. Being 19, being able to say you get paid to work alongside such important and strong people at the police department, it's a great thing. People ask me all the time, do you love your job? I love my job.

I am a police A2, Zion Pitts. I was at Stockton Police Department National Night Out event when I got recruited by an SPD employee. I told her my interest in law enforcement and my goals and that I want to go on a ride along. And she contacted me later on, sent me the link to a job and encouraged me to apply for the police A2 position. When I read the description of the position, I was super excited because it was a perfect opportunity for me to get my foot in the door and as well to learn the inside of how the department operates. So far, I'm in a recruiting department and my experience with the police A2 position has been amazing so far. I've learned a lot along the way that I didn't realize that I was going to learn in the beginning. Some of the day-to-day things with the police A2 position in the recruiting department is making wagons, going to events, recruiting people, as well as making those connections with your community. We also answer phone calls and send out emails for people who have any questions about the position of any available position that's open on Stockton PD website. My end goal for Stockton Police Department is I want to become a police officer and this position will definitely help me get there and get my foot in the door. I'm making all of these connections so far. My end goal is to be a police officer because I also want to serve my community as I'm doing right now. But I would like to continue that when I'm a police officer. This position is a great position to start at because it teaches you a lot about professionalism, your manners, a positive growth mindset within the department. You're also learning and talking with officers along the way. So if you do want to do something in the law enforcement field or all these jobs as open dispatch, animal services, anything like that, this position is great for you. I went on my first ride along here about a month ago. We did seven calls. It was pretty amazing. It was my first time actually being on a ride along. And I got to learn a lot about how to use the computers inside the vehicles, as well as what districts are they handling as well. It was kind of sad at the same time seeing what happens on those calls and people needing help a little bit. They're a little bit desperate for help as well. And you being there to ease their calm and ease their nerves, you know, it was a little bit amazing to see how the officers took control and helped them through that situation.

That concludes the presentation.

And the only other announcement tomorrow, 1130 employees appreciation and hope to see you all there.

Okay, thank you. Moving on to council comments. Council member Blower.

I think I'll keep mine fairly short and sweet, but I'm pretty excited about the stormwater rates to see how that all came out. I appreciate the people who showed up. Hope you got information you needed. One thing that's really important for people to know, it's Prop 218, so the people have to decide whether or not to increase those rates. It's an enterprise fund, so the only way that it gets money is through those rates. So we can't give money from the general fund to do the maintenance that needs to be done. That rate has not been raised since 1992. And I've said this before, the only thing I can think of that hasn't come up in price since then is a Costco hot dog. So very, very few things have not gone up in price since then. So that is the money that they use to bolster our system. And there is crumbling infrastructure. There are a number of pumps throughout the city that are very, very old. So this is how they have money to do that. So it's really important. There was an attempt 16 years ago. This was put out and it failed the voters. did not pass it. And so unfortunately, another 16 years of deferred maintenance has gone by. So very, very important. And I'm just fingers crossed that I'm hoping that the citizens saw the wisdom of raising this. Because again, what we're putting into it right now is insufficient to do what needs to be done to protect us from these storms. And we certainly have seen in the last few years when an atmospheric river comes through, it's gonna flood. Another thing that gives me concern is if this didn't pass and if we do get to a point where our infrastructure crumbles enough, FEMA could come in here and map the whole place and require everybody to get flood insurance. So an extra few dollars a month, I'm not discounting that, but in the big picture, it's probably gonna save a lot of people a lot of money. Again, I'll be just on pins and needles until we get that result, and hopefully it'll be a good one. Just a couple quick things. I'm excited that tomorrow at 10 a.m. is a press conference, a pro sports franchise announcement, so... That will be exciting, so I'm looking forward to that. Then the very next day, another press conference for the pro hockey team. And so they did, narrowed it down to four, the four top names. Number one was the nostalgic one, go Stockton Thunder. And so that, I think, was the leading one. The second one was the Port City Pirates. Then in third place, I think, was the Spears, like Stockton Spears. for like an asparagus spear. And then the fourth place one that didn't have a whole lot of votes but was Stockton Steam, which was like a steam engine, which I'm not really sure what the connection was on that one. But we'll know Thursday what our hockey team's gonna be called. And then the last thing I want to announce and just invite any of my colleagues, this Thursday the California League of Cities Central Valley Division meeting will be down in beautiful Merced. So if anybody wants to road trip to Merced, let me know. Okay. And that is my comments.

Okay. Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. I actually like the Port City Pirates the best, and I will not be going with you to Merced. But shout out to Merced. Okay, first of all, I want to say that I have never prayed before I walked into this chamber before on my own in private, but I had to today because I knew that I had a lot on my mind that I wanted to say, and I'm going to take my time to do that. Everybody that follows me on social media throughout the city sees all of my updates on my social media, so I'll put all of my district stuff there to save time for me tonight. The reason why I prayed on is because I do know that I have a voice that travels outside of this chamber in this city, and I know that sometimes words can create a lot of discussion outside of its intention, and so I want to be very intentional about what I'm going to say. First thing I want to say to all my colleagues tonight, really, I'll take Brando's words and say, what did he say? We accomplished tonight. I don't know what his line is, but we did accomplish a lot today, and I do appreciate. We had a lot of wins today. I appreciate us all being able to Have discussion on things that matter and are important and that move us forward as a city So I do appreciate my colleagues doing that. I Haven't been here since at this council meeting in the chamber since I was barred from the meeting and although I've mentioned my comments to the mayor privately at the State of the city. I'm gonna take time to do it right here in public You know, earlier in May I went on vacation and I was on an island all the way outside of, on the other side of the country. And I would have had to fly back, do city council, then fly back to New York for press, and I decided to do the meeting in New York. I followed all the rules that we have in the past. I wasn't told that I had to post something on the hotel door where I was having the meeting, but I was set up. I put a picture up. I noticed the city clerk where I was. It was on the website. It was out to the agenda. Everybody knew where I was, including the hotel that I stay in often. And I didn't receive any call. I was surprised when I logged in that I was being told I was not gonna be able to participate. And I know that there's this thing, this unnecessary competition that has been happening for some time. here in the city with this perception that I want to be more than a council member. I'm fine with just being Jason, and I've said that many times. But for whatever reason, the alleged phone calls to check to see if there was a post outside the door, in my opinion, should have been a phone call to me to say, hey, the voice of all your residents, the most disinvested constituents in our city who we promise to uplift their voices, should be heard tonight. I want to make sure that we followed all the rules so you can be there. That's what leaders do. That's what a quarterback does. A quarterback doesn't make sure that the cornerback's not in position or the wide receiver's not in position. They are making sure that every player on the field is lined up to win the game. That is what leadership is, and this council failed to support me in that manner. You know, was there a posting on the door of the hotel? No. But was there an effort to call me, like there was an effort to call the hotel to check to see? No. My colleagues, I do want to thank all of you individually, those of you that have come to me to say you were surprised, shocked, didn't know how to respond, didn't know what to do, because all of you know how passionate I am and all of you know how much I am juggling to make sure that I never miss a meeting because I took the oath to represent my constituents and I take that oath extremely serious. And this game that's being played in front of the public, people are not going to forget it. And now that my award show that honors the work that I do for young people in Stockton is over, I have a lot more time to commit to talking to as many residents throughout the city that I can and I am getting ready to. I am extremely concerned about this next topic that I'm going to get to, but before I do that, I want to respond to the comment earlier about us looking down at laptops. There's a lot of information up here that we have to get into, so we have to look into our laptops. There's reports here, there's presentations, and so please don't think we're watching movies or on Netflix here. We're doing that, and we do need these laptops. heard Cynthia Gail Boyd earlier where she said, and I quote, thank God I'm still alive in this racist-ass city. And I have to tell you, I thought she was going to say this dangerous-ass city because that's usually her line. But when she said this racist-ass city, I said to myself, I started really pondering on that coming into this conversation that I want to have. Because I've had an interesting experience as a newly elected. And I don't know if this is something that's happened with other people in the past. I know Michael Tubbs has had his history here, and managers, different people that have been African American have had their issues here. But I'm not one to use the race card because I've been black my whole life, but I've also been white my whole life. And I know that sometimes race, depending on the circumstance, can be an easy out. But at some point, you have to ask a question. When I first got here and there were press conferences to say that I was violating the law, in press conferences to say that I was being aggressive and threatening. Then there was the lynching, the lynch mob created, that Councilwoman Padilla, she was supposed to chair this, whatever they call it, ad hoc to pursue whatever they could find about me for up to a year. And we're going to use whatever resource to do it that hasn't bared any fruit. When I was moved to the end of the dais, you know, all the political and racial dog whistling, the tropes of characterizing me as something that would make a woman in the South clinch her purse as a black person walks by. One starts to question this pattern of behavior. What is it? Locking out a person who represents the most fragile part of our city, who you know is fighting every day. What is that? Inclusion, exclusion. I just start to ask myself when I heard the question, and I prayed on it before I came here today, because I think about a conversation I had with the mayor's PIO. He represents her, he speaks for her. He is the person that she puts in a seat to speak for her. Who does not live in this city? Who was not born and raised or bred in this city? Had the audacity to take me in a room after the governor granted me the grant, granted our nonprofit the grant to support the youth of Stockton, knowing that our constituents have been asking for a youth's facility for years. and told me that he believed that I was not eligible or qualified enough and thought somebody else should have got it. So what did he do? They contacted the governor's office. That went nowhere. Then he told me, you need to file indifference to the mayor or you're going to keep getting all these political L's, and went on to tell me how the Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta, and how the state controller, Malia Cohen, are his friends and that they're not going to be doing any action. Well, I followed up with both of them, and I can tell you right now that that was a lie. In fact, the state controllers asked to come here to one of our meetings and said that she will be delivering a report soon. So when I thought about that conversation and the fact that I just hosted a show with some of the most powerful people in politics, the culture, entertainment, to raise awareness for the work that I'm doing right here in Stockton. The fact that I had congressmen and women, my two colleagues here that were there to witness that. I was surprised to be given a Facebook post from the mayor's PIO that went on to say that he can't believe the unions are supporting an F-list celebrity, me, and went on to attack SEIU on Facebook and attack me, the city and vice mayor of the city. He also told me since I only had 6,000 people vote for me, I shouldn't really feel like I'm entitled to this position. Now I'm gonna go ahead and say the rest of my remarks in terms of the things that I think he's doing illegally, but besides him saying that Sam Phan will be stopped at the border by his federal agent friends, besides him saying you shouldn't have given MoTeC the proclamation and now you need to listen to him and how you're no longer gonna listen to them, I don't care what political fight's going on behind the scenes with the mayor and her people. But what I will say is everybody in Stockton and around the world that I run into says, you don't even have to be there. You could be doing other things. You could be anywhere in the world. But they know that I choose to be here because I believe in this city and I live and lead with optimism that the people in this city are not going to allow this circus to continue. And if this council doesn't take control of how we govern as a body and hold people accountable, including this stranger who doesn't live in our city, then we have fallen to our knees and we have given up the power of the people. I don't have a problem acting as the city council member or the vice mayor because that is who I am. If I wanted to be the mayor and if in 2028 I decide to want to be the mayor, I will do that. That is not what I want. But what I won't do is allow this continued trope and personal attack and undermining of the office that I earned by the voters to happen while I am sitting here. It is a poor example to our staff, is a poor example to our constituents, is a poor example to our partners, and more importantly, it is an embarrassment to people outside of Stockton when they see a Facebook post from the mayor's staff person saying these things. Now, I will tell you, I don't believe that the mayor told them to do that. But I'm bringing it up now because if it continues, the Bible says when you know better, you do better. The Bible also says that touch not my anointing and do my prophets no harm. So when you wonder why things are going in the direction you don't want them to, it's because you're doing the work of the devil. Now, lastly, as it relates to the Cynthia Gill Boyce question, thank God, or a statement, I'm still alive in this racist-ass city. I don't believe our police department is racist. I don't believe our constituents are racist. I don't believe that our staff are racist. I don't believe that this council is racist, but I do believe that it is easy to slip into oppressive, strategic oppressive policymaking and conversations and actions just by way of how you carry yourself. I have never in my life walked into the White House and told the president of the United States, Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris, the vice president at the time, that they weren't deserving of the office that the people put them in. I have never said that. And I may have disagreed with every single person up here, but I have respect for the courage and commitment it takes and the conviction to stand as an elected in a time where you see every day on the news divisive behavior and attacks on democracy. I just honored Representative Justin Jones from Tennessee. And every day I look on his Instagram where he's fighting the Nazis, he's fighting the Ku Klux Klan. And when I think about his experience in the South, I'm dealing with the same behavior here. They just don't have the white sheets on. And my thing is, I'm going to say to this council and to the community watching, everybody here, staff and everybody watching, and you, what I said to you in that room, just call me a nigger and get over it. Stop playing around. We don't have to play games and act like we like each other. We don't have to play games and create these games and finger-point and call names. And when I told him, he warned me, no, I'm going to warn you and anybody else. If you have a problem with a strong, intelligent, resourceful, unafraid, and unapologetic black man, that is what you got here. And until the people tell me they don't want me here, that's what you're going to have. But what I won't do is allow anybody to undermine the work that the people want, whether it's $6,000 or $60,000. Because if you want me to text $326,000, tomorrow I will. And I've done it before to help the mayor get in office. The last thing I will say is that the ego stroking or the desire to continue to do the buck breaking of let me put you in your place, boy. Like I told the last interim city manager that you had here, I'm not nobody's boy and I won't be treated like that. And everybody black listening knows exactly what I'm talking to. Again, whipping up racial dissension within our community. This is me literally calling it out. Just like I call out, turn on a light and the road start moving or come out into our audience. Let's be very clear. We have serious things here to take care of as a city. and to do the behavior that I am seeing, attacking the constituents for how they're voting, attacking unions for who they're deciding to support. This is not the South. This is Stockton. And the last time I heard our message to the city is enough is enough. And so when will enough be enough? When? When somebody goes to jail? Because I'm still waiting for somebody on this council to go to jail. Is it when the controller releases a report that everything we've been saying is true? I don't know where Rob Bonta is. Maybe he got the text from his friend not to come to Stockton. But I'm not afraid of the Attorney General, just like I'm not afraid of anybody in this room, because I don't do anything illegal. Now, the other things that I will reserve for a later time that are potentially unlawful, I will say this. What's done in the dark has already come into the light, and it's just a matter of time. But for now, I hope that we can stay focused on the work of the city. The other thing I'll say is that I looked at the job description for the mayoral public information officer, and I understand that we pay Mr. Teramoto over $100,000 of taxpayer dollars. Those are taxpayer dollars. Those are not mayor dollars. Those are not any individual council dollars. Those are your dollars. He works for you through the mayor. And when I look at the job description where it says acts as the mayor's spokesperson for press inquiries and represents the city and meetings with the media, community groups, and local stakeholders, ensures that the mayor's communication strategy aligns with the public policy, I hope this ain't the mayor's public policy, and I hope this ain't the mayor's communication strategy. And I will go on to say, as much as we disagree, I know damn well she ain't told him to do that. So again, call me nigga or get over it, because I'm not going anywhere, and that's it. But one last thing, by the way, I was also in the same day that I saw this post and got mad, invited to speak at Harvard. And I just want to say I'm grateful for the people that do see me and respect me. And in my own city, I should be given the same respect I do get at Harvard or anywhere else. I've earned that. It's not something that I'm asking for on top of any extra. It's not an extra privilege. It's what I've earned. So with that, I'm done. Thank you.

Councilman Villalpudoa.

yes thank you mayor as well thank you everyone for coming here this evening still evening right um yeah it's been a good couple weeks it's uh good to be back um you know summer's here for the kids so i've been real busy with my little one and all his friends and you know just just being a childhood right um the other week we had the uh the grand opening of souza park pool it was amazing seeing the kids the mayor thank you for stopping by um just you know it's it's been neglected for a long time and this year uh i was not gonna let it happen i was not gonna have another kid go to a different pool and i say nothing wrong with other pools but that area needs their pool so i was very excited to be there that saturday As well as Sunday, so I'm just waiting for the whole year of excitement for the kids. Another thing as well, I just want to thank, it was a big clean up last week on Lincoln and Church Street. So I want to thank Two and I Cares, Public Works, Department of Ready to Work as well. And a big, big shout out, thank you to Sergeant Patrick Hive. for really getting that done and uh thank you as well as mayor um and as well uh as last week uh i came by charter unbound community stockton charter school those kids i've been with them since i uh been in office i just went to the ports game came by the last day of school wishing them uh you know great great coming year their fourth grade so um coach you're hearing me you know looking forward to this coming year with them um tomorrow uh stripley park i got my neighborhood watch from three to four come by come say hello let's talk about the neighborhood I'm always having good donuts coffee for all my constituents in that community yesterday I have a really really good I got in with Ricardo the new economic development director so we took a really great tour of my district and seeing all the things that I'm looking to have what can bring also to the my community so we're gonna be in touch and I will be informing our our community and the stuff that could be coming into our community and district 5 I did not know yet I know that myself the mayor were We were talking about Columbus Park. It is done. I've been communicating with the community every week. Beliefs like the sod, we were, if I'm not mistaken here, city manager, we were waiting for that. So any day, I don't know what day, I think we looked at the 16th, if I'm not mistaken, 15th. So hopefully, yeah, hopefully we can get that in so I can announce the community and have another great park in District 5. And then I know I have, so I just want to thank also just city staff, chief police, fire chief, public works, code enforcement for everything you guys are doing in our community every day. So you guys are really our true leaders in our communities. That makes us look great. And that being said, I want to thank my colleagues for all the great wins tonight because it was a, a really great night uh seeing everyone so until then have a great week and great weekend thank you uh oh um councilman enriquez

Thank you, Mayor. So I will start off with my favorite topic, which is infrastructure. I want to thank Penny and the Public Works team. You all may have seen online, we opened up our at Oak Park right before Memorial Day weekend. So it was a great way to get that open for a busy weekend that we had. I was able to drive by a couple of the times, and it just was great seeing families, everybody was utilizing it, and just to have that option. And I know our second ex-slew is also opening up, and I'll be sure to give everyone the timeline. So we'll have two ex-slews at Oak Park, so we will be sure that we will get to work on that. And then also, I did talk to our public works team, and I asked if they can work on giving council a list of the three phases of all the ex-slews that have already been installed at parks and will be coming at parks that way council knows the public knows in terms of you know when folks might say why don't we have a restroom at this park then you can see on the list you'll see okay that's phase three we're currently in phase two phase three might be two three years down the road but at least now it's going to be given out to the public and then that way you can keep all of us accountable especially if they are in certain parks in our district so I really appreciate that we'll get that information and then also to my folks that live on Bianchi Road we will be having another community update regarding speed bumps to help slow down Bianchi Road so if when you're going down Pacific Avenue when you take a right lots of folks speed so we uh The staff did their due diligence to ensure that we found the right way to slow down traffic. So once that meeting is scheduled, I will let everybody know so that way we can get to go on the timeline. Oxford Circle, again, thank our staff. We had three community meetings since I want to say January to last month, three community meetings to get input about different concepts of how they want to see Oxford Circle. The people decided. Next step is the 300 plus residents in that map will get ballots and they will vote on what they wish to see. Basically, it's a yes or no with hopefully another option if we can get it to work on our ballots. But I want to thank them for being very active. All right, potholes. So we got a total of 19 fixed in my district. But then also I thought about it. When we just say the city, there's like 20, 30,000. So even though- 25,200. So 25,200. So even though my number may sound small, I want the public to know those are ones that I reported. So it's not to say that other people aren't reporting. To me, 19 may sound like a lot, but when I compared it to the number, I was like, oh, wow, that's tiny. So we did one at Pacific Avenue going southbound towards UOP right before you cross the bridge. And again, I appreciate someone on Facebook said, It was basically a pothole post and I loved it because they kept saying, the city better pay for my car misalignment and it's damaged and who do I report it to? I almost want to respond back and be like, you know what? I helped out with that, but I didn't. But again, it just goes to show that to some people one problem may not be a problem to them but to others it's really a big deal so we want to acknowledge everyone has an issue in our city whatever that may be and just be respectful if we're getting something done in one community it's not to say we're not paying attention to another community there's just different timelines and different things that we are all doing so i just wanted folks to be aware of that We got seven potholes fixed at the corner of Dwight Way and North Tuxedo Avenue. And this was one of my favorites. I was actually driving and just happened to be the crew was there doing it when I was driving by. So you know me, I pulled over and talked to Kevin and Michael and another crew member who I didn't get his name. And I thanked them because I told them I actually submitted this area on Ask Stockton. So to see the seven that they were doing, I think five, six days later was amazing. And I wasn't planning it because they don't tell me when they come out. We also got six more at the corner of Lucerne Avenue and Columbia Avenue, which is just one block away from Victory Park. five fixed at the corner of west bianchi and pacific avenue it's right there along the small businesses including tigers yogurt so again prominent spots that people actively drive through so you can't miss the bump whether you try to or not so overall 19 fixed that was able to get reported and also another issue we had a metal covering that was taken off which is across the sidewalk so i was worried about those that were on wheelchairs because if you were on a wheelchair you wouldn't be able to get through so we were able to get that metal strip, stripe, I should say, fix right around the corner of West Elm Street on Manny's Restaurant on the Miracle Mile. In terms of events, May 13th, I attended the Ribbon Cutting for Bliss, Wellness, and Beauty on the Miracle Mile. This was great. It's a mother-daughter Latina duo that runs the business, so they've been working really hard the last year to get it open, so it was nice to meet both of them as they get their business going. May 16th, Lewis Park, the mayor and I were at the Lewis Park community cleanup. I was happy to have donated a Brisbane box tree. And then also special thanks to Tree Stockton and the many volunteers. We had over 140 volunteers, planted 30 trees, added around 30 native plants, removed over 300 pounds of litter, spread eight cubic yards of mulch, and cleared a full 40-yard dumpster of invasive green waste from the delta and boat ramp. On May 23rd, we had our monthly mornings with Mario, with the police. We shared our crime stats, and we had a good turnout. Again, thank you to our police officers who came out to share that important information, to share that crime has been going down. May 31st, I joined the Pacific Southern Little League. This is the team that I promised we would have a restroom open for Victory Park at the start of their season. They now have their closing season fundraiser, so I went over to Pacific Bowl and spent a couple hours with the kids and their families. And then June 3rd, we kicked off our first concerts in the park at Victory Park in my district. It will be every Wednesday from June 3rd to August 19th, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. I made it a mission to be there at the first, middle, and end because the gays know how to party and they put a big chandelier and a rainbow flag and a big community potluck under a tree. So go to the first, middle, and last one and find the chandelier. And trust me, you'll have a good time. Valley Brew is back. I want to thank Kelly and Eric, the owners of Valley Brew on the Mile. For those that don't know, they had a fire two months ago. So we were able to help them get media coverage. KCRA 3 came out to spotlight their grand reopening, I should say. I unfortunately was in Fresno, but I came back the next day and my mom and I had dinner just to support and say hi to Kelly and her husband. Let's see, legislation, we're doing continued work on housing, tenant protections, and then we will be having a town hall as I promised at the last ledge meeting. currently working with staff to get a date and time as this will be a very specific tenant town hall. So if you rent, this is a place for you. Upcoming, we have an American Legion Park cleanup this Saturday at 8.30 to 11.30. That evening, we have Taste of the Mile, which is the big fundraiser of the Miracle Mile over at Tuxedo Court. It is a cowboy theme that I know some of my colleagues will be joining me. And then June 19th, for those that always wanted to get me, be like, you know what, that Mario guy, he just always annoys me. You have your chance to get me because on June 19th, I will have a District 4 Summer Community Celebration at Oak Park Pool. So I will be at the water dunk tank. I think Councilman Villaputua did something similar. So you have your shot. So I will be there for four hours. Please join me. And also, I invite my colleagues, if you want to attempt to dunk me, now's your chance. And then the last thing I'll say is, yeah. And then the last thing is, June 20th, I have my June Mornings with Mario at La Palm Creperie on the Miracle Mile. The owner, Manuel, him and I went to UOP together a long time ago, but he owns La Palma and La Palm Creperie, so I'm gonna go out to support him. Other than that, I think that covered everything. And again, I just wanna thank everybody who came out to the pride flag raising on Monday, June 1st. And what I really enjoyed is, I didn't say it earlier, but even though we had an increase, I would say of online hate, I think I probably saw the most homophobic local online hate that I have in the last five years that I've been back to Stockton. And I think a lot of it just, I don't know what it is, but I've been seeing it across the country. But I want to thank the grit of this community because we had one of the biggest turnouts we've ever had for the Stockton Pride flag raising. And the fact that we had not only a bigger turnout, but we had the media there. Like KCRA3 was live. We were doing a live TV interview of the Pride flag and how important it was to be a top 10 city and appreciate all the different communities that make Stockton great. So yeah, I was just really, a lot of pride when it came to that. And then speaking of Pride Month, I want to thank the Pride Center. They gave me an elected official award. But what made it even more special is that I did not accept it. I was in Fresno coming back from Southern California, and my mom accepted it. And my mom was like, Mario, I can't really speak really good English. I said, Ma, don't worry. Just say it in Spanish. There's a translator there. Great. But I think people can feel the emotion of what you're trying to say despite the language you're speaking. So I saw a little clip, but my mom, everyone's saying that she did really well. She's a good speaker. Probably get it from her. But she did about a three-minute speech in Spanish to accept the award. And it goes back to what I said earlier about why it's so important to have parents that support LGBTQ youth and their children. And just to be a representative meant a lot to me. So I will close it with that and have a happy rest of your Pride Month. Thank you.

Councilwoman Ponce.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have a quick reminder. The Stockton Animal Shelter will provide a free spay and neuter services to District 1 and District 2 residents. At this time, the clinics only for District 1 and District 2 residents and proof of residency will be required on the day of appointment. This is by appointment only and is happening June 12, 13, and the 14th. Please register by email now at animal services at StocktonCA.gov. And then also to my constituents, please feel free to reach out to me directly to my cell phone 209-645-4251 for any questions or concerns. I'm more than happy to help. Thank you.

Okay. I want to start with a public comment. There was somebody that was concerned about the proclamation for Muslim Awareness Month and they selected the date we did not do that and also it's two proclamations we tried to limit it to two proclamations per meeting so it's first come first serve but the the we did not pick the date for that the rental property inspection Fee program is not new. I know it was reported as oh look at this new program It has been around for quite some time. I know it's been around since 2014 because it was a hot item that was discussed when I first was running for office and yes, they recertify it or they inspected themselves because guess what it's cheaper and It's cheaper if they inspect it themselves. It is on a five year calendar. I think it should be based on calls for service. We're one of very few cities that have that program, but I get it. about people attending the meetings we will have 90 chairs I wish there were more in the new space but there is a another room off side of it that isn't too far away that hopefully people can watch the meeting in there but we we want people to participate We currently don't have a 90 day policy for filling vacancies and I think tonight every vacancy got filled I think tonight so there are no vacant positions. A commission attendance, yes, yes, yes, I agree. We need to make sure that our commissioners are attending their meetings because yes, staff does do a lot of work. I know city clerk calls and reminds people, but they need to show up. I also agree that the community development committee should be able to review all of the applications. It should not just be the ones that were already pre-selected. But that's why we appointed them. They should be able to look at them. Oh, as far as the cutoff cards, that's part of AB 707. Is it AB or SB 707?

It's SB 707.

Yes, SB 707. So it's because people from around the world can if they wanted to participate in our meetings. Okay. Now, a Sousa Park pool opening, I will say. Councilman Villalpudo you did jump in but you didn't jump all the way in you didn't get your hair wet and that doesn't count so you have to do all the way yeah the dunk tank and you held on to the side I thought you're gonna break your arm so don't do that yes yes yes you got to jump all the way in UOP is getting a med school There was a huge event the other day. It was raining, surprisingly, in May. But this is big. 2030 is the estimated date of opening. You know, we have St. Joseph's adding beds, expanding a brand-new emergency center, a new ICU. This is not just about having doctors. I mean, this is a huge win for our city because it's more than just doctors. You have to have more personnel. Definitely driver for us, environmentally it's good for us. It's just good all the way around. You don't have people having to go to the Bay Area to go see their specialist and be in that traffic. They can be right here in their own community. Neighborhood parks, I know people are like, hey, why doesn't my park have a pool? I mean, not a pool, but a bathroom, an . If it's a neighborhood park, the infrastructure is not there to support having a bathroom there you have to have plumbing uh... and the neighborhood parks are just that neighborhood you live in the neighborhood you can run home and go to the bathroom and you know if you need to uh... let's see uh... oh big item on the two big items i would say on the uh... consent agenda tonight park oak fremont street and a part of lindsay are getting completely redone from purging all the way to wilson way you might have already seen it It's already started. I can't wait until it's done because it's something that I was working on when I was on council and I had residents just begging, begging, begging. We do need to put red curbs though. They cannot park all the way to the end because people are, I can't see, I drive it every day and I can't see on Oak Street and Lincoln, you know, I have to be very careful about coming out. So red curbs, to limit how far they can park to the corner and then the other item was restriping 49 intersections using sb1 funds are being restriped and it's using the thermal plastic so if you've noticed any new restriping it's super bright it's reflective you can see it and that's a good thing because that helps keep us safer Alicia's Place, MOU for the state application. I don't know where we're at on that, but it was supposed to come back to us with an MOU so that the city is a co-applicant.

We're working for June 23rd.

Okay, great. Oh, town halls. I will be starting my town halls on October 13th. I'll be at Ursula Meyers Community Center and Library Stribbley Community Center, Van Buskirk Community Center, 9 a.m., 1015, 1130. This is the public. I'm not going to just stand there and talk. It will be interactive. uh... public please come out and participate love to uh... i see you there uh... and staff will also be there from different departments to answer any questions and offer resources uh... okay of u s conference of mayors huge huge huge thing u s conference of mayors fifteen hundred mayors from across the united states uh... showed up at long beach and i went to a number of sessions and i tell you workforce development uh... working with our academic partners creating those pathways in those job trainings but we need to make sure we have employers who are hiring for those positions first we shouldn't train a whole workforce and then not have the jobs for them but actually there is uh... programs out there where the city gives that employer a thousand dollars if they employ one of the People that go through the training program and then if it's a livable wage job, it's $3,000 That that company recoups some of that investment for that Asking some of the people here, do you plan on expanding your workforce and your business? We need to be out there doing that and there is a business in Stockton that wants to put in between 100 and 300 million dollar expansion to their existing operation because they are booming. And that means more jobs and this particular company is owned by the Mars and that's why I brought up earlier about the veterinarian and the food and all that, which I can't wait to see what they need in order to do that. prioritize expansion retention and recruitment what's going well what needs work how can City Hall help people's businesses and then jobs education and workforce community gardens as was mentioned but using hydroponics and doing it indoors they had these You know like vegetable trees or whatnot that you can grow that require very little live water, but you can do them year-round There's something called fork farms and there's actually one for mayor's but it's food access technology and it's to feed America learn how to manage a farm and I know we have things like Edible schoolyard that are doing a great job, but there are way more people in this city. Um that need to learn how to do that. Illegal vape, gateway to crime. So one of the mayors that was there, he called it vaporize, he wanted to vaporize the smoke shops. But there is money out there, 200 million for enforcement, and I have on my schedule here to reach out to Congressman Harder to see about Stockton getting some of that money. And we're not just talking about crimes with uh... tobacco but it often is uh... guns uh... heavier use drugs money laundering i mean there's other things casinos that are going on in some of these smoke shops and we need to actually have uh... registration you know where we have a list and We need to go around and make sure that they have the proper documentation, need a list of smoke shops. And I know that Mary Elizabeth has done quite a bit. And we do spot compliance checks. If they have a license, our officers have every right and our code enforcement officers have every right to be able to go in and say, we're going to do an inspection. We want to make sure. Because they're usually hiding the stuff in other places in the back. You get to look throughout the entire building. So those of you out there, if you're listening, yeah, just know you better be in compliance. Oh, one of the best sessions I went to. uh... had to do well one was with the arts and one uh... it was combined arts and sports and chris klein uh... he is part of uh... fee for uh... the host committee he had something called hometown soccer where they are getting all the mls teams and they're looking for new locations for them they have soccer centers and they play uh... twenty four times a year uh... and then there's something called league one volleyball w n b a of women's volleyball uh... and it is to uh... have more volleyball and i know we used to have the the port buildings we'd have hundreds of volleyball teams that would come to stockton but we now our our club teams are somewhere else so they have a program um that i said hey come to stockton uh ot7 overtime football i need to reach out to vince because they have um seven on seven leagues and it's not just through eighth grade it's and it's also uh girls and it goes through a high school and they have a foam pit at the end of the end zone so they can all jump in after they score their touchdown because you know everybody wants to stunt out there. Open water sports, boat house in the box. I said, hey, we've got a delta, you know, come and check us out. And then they were talking about, I brought up hockey. Did you know that we can capture rainwater and use it for the Zamboni? There's already places that this is being done, arenas where this is being done. So really great stuff that happened there. A lot of contacts and there's people already scheduling meetings to come to Stockton and work with us. And it was funny because one of the guys says, oh, we've been looking. We've been looking at your arena. We've been looking at what you guys are doing in Stockton. And hence, we're going to have an announcement about our hockey. We're going to have an announcement, another announcement, a sporting announcement. Hush, hush. But you will know tomorrow at 10 a.m. they will be putting that information out, and I'm excited about Columbus Park opening. I mean, there's just a lot of good things happening in the city of Stockton, and don't let people tell you otherwise. And that activity guide, anybody that has teenagers, listen. There is transportation, lunch, and food, I mean, excuse me, entrance to Great America for free in the activity guide. There's going to a Giants game for free in the activity guide. There is going bowling for free. Sky Zone free, Zap Zone free. There is all kinds of things in there. Teenagers, you're looking for something to do this summer. It is there, and it goes, like I said, it goes from preschool, pre-K, all the way to those of us that are 55 and older. There are some great things out there that I'm like, ooh, I want to take advantage of that and that and that. But anyhow, good stuff going on. And then I did want to answer... the one question that was asked by Mr. Martinez. So stormwaters through our municipal utilities district mud, why does it take so long? yeah that's government for you unfortunately uh... uh... and people you don't have to weigh whether they want uh... to vote on something or not because of whatever that climate isn't coming out of bankruptcy you know we didn't two thousand fifteen is when we came out of bankruptcy and we didn't want to hit people again because they were already struggling as it was uh... uh... and i i look the array of the rates for the first year all went to three sixty five from 210 to 385 that first year and then it tops out at just over eight dollars which I don't drink coffee but I know there's some people up here that drink coffee and it is at least five dollars yeah at least five bucks more okay okay and with that that is it for me we are going to be going into closed session oh I forgot to show you it's on my lap here I have to put air in them. But these are the official soccer balls for FIFA. I mean, for World Cup. So I gotta blow them up. But there's gonna be a watch party at the ports. And I have already registered. If you haven't registered to attend, it's free. And I am getting 200 of these balls delivered to Stockton so we can give them out to those that are attending the game. So they'll be able to take a little piece home with them official piece home with them so they can remember it forever so That's it. Okay, eight seconds. Okay, moving on to, I think I was the longest. No, we were tied. Moving on to closed session. So this body will recess to conference with labor negotiator 14.1, authorized pursuant to section 54957.6a of the government code. We will also 14.2, conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation. which is pursuant to section five four nine five six point nine D one of the government code and there's no public comment on this so we will recess to closed session if we have something to report out we will