City Council and Authorities - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to today's Stockton City Council meeting on this first day of September. Let's go ahead and do roll call.

Councilmember Padilla.

Present.

Councilmember Ponce.

Present.

Councilmember Blower. Present. Councilmember Enriquez. Present. Councilmember Villalpadua. Present. Vice Mayor Lee. Present. Mayor Fugazi.

Present.

We have a court.

Perfect. OK. At this time, I would like to invite up Police Captain Ben Carrillo to go ahead and do our invocation for today.

Go ahead and press the button there. Thank you.

We greet you, mayor, vice mayor, and city council. I've been a chaplain for the city of Stockton, serving it since 2007. And this is a privilege for me to be with you today. I am on assignment. Today is September 1st. I want to wish everyone happy September. On October 1st, we do have our fundraiser chaplaincy dinner. at the First Baptist Community Center. Chaplain Jesse said everyone is welcome. So if you would like to come, let us pray. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for this opportunity, the responsibility, that we have, Lord, as a body of one, Lord. Lord God, everything that will be decided today, it's for your people of our city, Lord, and that the community may continue to flourish, may continue to grow. We ask you, Lord, right now, that your peace be in this place, God, that we may have minds of clarity, hearts to serve you in every aspect. We thank you. Amen. Thank you, man.

Thank you. Mr. Teramoto, can you go upstairs to my office and grab the two certificates off my desk, please? We will now move on to Pledge of Allegiance. And I'm looking for the person doing the pledge. Michelle Sherman, are you here? Oh, I can't see. You're behind the column, so I apologize.

Good afternoon. Can you please stand? Those of you who are able, please face the flag and place your right hand over your heart and rejoice and repeat with me. I 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.

I apologize for the delay. I have the certificate sitting right on my desk. And so as soon as it comes down, then we can proceed with the rest of the agenda. I can say that we have no additions to regular session. We will be moving on to recognitions, announcements, or reports. Do you have it?

OK.

OK, so Ms. Sherman, can you please come up to the podium? So we do have a copy. I just don't have the real one. So I will turn it over to Gabe.

accommodation, whereas in the Joe Michelle J Sherman has demonstrated a long lasting commitment to public service. Civic leadership in the Stockton community in the show was recently selected to serve as chair of the city of Stockton civil service equal. Employment Commission concurrent. Supporting fairness integrity and excellence in public service and Michelle is a leadership Stockton class of 2025 graduate and previously served on the board of directors of the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce further demonstrating her commitment to the civic leadership and Michelle has served as the on the chief of board advisory board supported by the Stockton Police Department Community Police Academy helping strengthen relationships between law enforcement and the community And Michelle has supported efforts to strengthen community partnerships and expand opportunities for those interested in law enforcement careers. And throughout her service, Michelle has brought people and organizations together, encouraged civic participation, and worked to strengthen the Stockton community. Now, therefore, we, mayor and council members of the city of Stockton, do hereby commend and recognize Michelle J. Sherman.

I would like to ask if you wouldn't mind to explain a little bit about what the civil service commission does and the importance of it because not many people do and I know that there are members out in the audience right now from the police department and how essential that role is for the city of Stockton.

Yes mayor. So for example with the civil service we approve recs that are in the system. So if the police are needing hiring, or the fire department, they need hiring, we do what we can to get those job recs approved. Previously, it may take a month, you know, we would come in monthly, and we will approve those lists. And we said, hey, you know, the police officers are down, and we need to be competitive with those other agencies. So if we need to come in every two weeks, every three weeks to get those lists approved, let's do it, right? So now, you know, the police, they're doing a lot more hiring. If someone needs to talk about maybe if a suspension or something like that needs to be rescinded, they will come to us and speak to us about it, and we'll do whatever we can to see if it stays or not. whatever we need to do with that. We're meeting regularly. I believe we've met maybe 13 times this year. So we've had about eight regular meetings, and we've had about five special meetings. So I really like what we do, and we're definitely taking care of the community to make sure that we're competitive with the other agencies.

Take them

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Now we move on to public comment.

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 comment opportunity. The mayor will set the speaking time. 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, 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 in 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 from 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 chambers.

OK, so public will have two minutes.

First, we have Zoila Moreno.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. I want to add my two cents because I'm very emotional because there was no better person to be appointed as the chair as Michelle Sherman. I met Michelle Sherman over three years ago during the first chief of police working Western Ranch. At that time, the administrator of Western Ranch open forum posted on Facebook that no one was to go there because the chief only wanted to meet with the merchants, and it wasn't so. So the only two people that showed up to go welcome our chief of police was Michelle and George . And we gave them a welcome to Western Ranch. And so those are the two phases that actually doesn't take orders for anybody else, because we know what we needed to do for the community. And we've been inseparable. I have seen her more than I have seen then they go as representative on district six. And therefore, after that, I didn't even have any idea who Sam Carpenter is. But you know what? I'm standing in front of you today asking for justice for Sam Carpenter. Thank you.

Judy Nowak.

Hi, I live on Swain Road in between Pacific and El Dorado, now called the Swain Speedway. And I would just like to see if we could have some traffic enforcement. And at Englewood, the sidewalk ends. So it is not handicap accessible. There's a guy that goes in every morning in a wheelchair. And he has to go around the cars while the cars are speeding next to them. So I would just like to see if we could do something about that. And it's only one subject because I really wanted to talk about the school on Inglewood, John Adams. There's no traffic control there and there is no crossing guards. And the kids are just running back and forth in between cars. So I thought maybe we could get some of those little stand-ups that flash, you know, watch for children. But we need traffic control there too because the parents park all the way down the street. I was dependent on you to look into that for me. On the Miracle Mile, there's 14 crosswalks between Castle and Harding Way. And on this street, there's one that the kids would have to walk a block for. Thank you.

Lazy Huron?

Hi, Mayor Christina, City Council. Just want to thank the mayor for all of her posters on Facebook about what's going on in Stockton so the city can enjoy them. And there's a lot. Thank you for the town hall meetings all over the city where the citizens can meet you and ask any questions. And explaining the use of AI for English and Spanish. You truly care about everyone and that all will fully understand what's happening. Thank you. And especially for the after school program, I remember school would get out at 2.30 and I would get off work at 3.30 and it would save me. The kids really enjoyed it and a lot of time they wouldn't want to go home when it was time for me to pick them up. Best of all, their homework was always done. I really hope working parents look into this program. It's excellent. Thank you, Councilman Michelle, for the community cookout. It was the best. Free hamburgers, something for everybody, and I love Latin magic. So much fun. And last but not least, thank you to Stockton Police Department for being at every event I attended, being a stable, friendly part of our community, meeting, greeting, and even playing with the kids, teaching families that You're their friends as well as protectors. Jeremiah 29.7 says, also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Thank you.

Nate Knott.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Nate Knott, 1021 West Acacia Street. Before anyone asks, yes, I walked and rode the bus here today, as I do most of the time. I'm here speaking on behalf of the Stockton Downtown Comeback Club and an organization known as Quad Citizens United Against Decay. recently attending some of their meetings. And I know that they've written a letter to some of the railroads services in San Joaquin and Stockton about the homeless challenges on the riderways. And they've had some success challenging that with Union Pacific Railroad. I'm here also to speak about the fact that a new program is being developed through Quad to work on the homeless situation. I know all of the mayor, the council members, and city manager have all been working on the homeless challenge. We know it's a huge challenge for Stockton. It's the biggest challenge to redeveloping downtown Stockton. The Quad plan, briefly speaking, is based on a successful plan that's in place in San Leandro. It establishes regular ongoing funding to continually battle the problem, send teams of people to outreach to homeless people out into the community on a regular basis. Establish, at least in the beginning plan, five medium sized, not one large monster, homeless shelter. When you put everything into one homeless shelter, that situation will almost always deteriorate and decay. But five moderately placed ones, well run, can work properly. These shelters would have, of course, wraparound services. And the idea of these shelters is to give them enough of a step up to get into permanent housing. Spending a few million dollars now each year In the long run, we'll save a ton of money over spending tens of millions of dollars. First of all, lost revenue in downtown through vacant buildings and things because of the homeless problem. And then through spending tens of millions of dollars with reactive actions every so many years. Thank you.

Victoria Hernandez.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. I'm here because I had a report at 1775 South Center Street, which is District 6. It still needs to be cleaned up, the area. It did some cleaning, the smokehouse, but there's still a pickup full of rubbish. And also on my way over here, there's drug dealers still there. Friday, when I wanted to leave for a meeting, was backed up and we couldn't get through because once cars are packed parked on both sides of the street no one can get through people want to come in and uh one of the gentlemen that was in that truck trying to come into west fourth street he thought quickly and he went straight which eliminated a a fatality possibly you know it's it's not improving we need to get on this as soon as possible. It's very, very, very urgent. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Hold on to.

Good afternoon, Council.

Today, I would like to I'm just going to read. Sorry if I'm not making eye contact because I have a lot to say and I know we're timed. I want to bring up a few things. The last meeting that I was in here, Public Works was being questioned. And I thought that it was a little unfair, not that you're not supposed to question Public Works, but the process of how things are done should be something that we already know. If I took the time to ask, why haven't all of you? Okay. Public Works does a great job. I've met with them several times and questioned a lot of things that the community had asked about them. Last year, when I submitted my 10-year plan and infrastructure and all of you guys received it, you agreed that the Districts 5 and 6 were the most needed. Now, almost a whole year later, have you guys made reports and repairs on our districts? This should not be left to the community. You were voted in. You are paid to speak up for us. I see other council members doing it themselves. Why is District 6 still being left behind? The corridor is screaming for help, and I will keep reminding you. I, again, I'm from District 6. I want to bring up something that is very troubling to me, and I've been saying it over and over, and I'm not the only one that feels like this. We still have three separate meetings. We feel segregated. Western Ranch has people that do it all on their own. They do everything, okay? And our corridor meetings are barely successful. The few people that have showed up, told me they don't want to show up anymore because they're being unheard so I'm going to ask you again to please try to have a meeting together try to be present with them and try to hear your community not just me your community and I just ask you guys to please focus there's a lot of stuff going on but again just please focus on what you guys are really here for I appreciate it a Raya

All right, what's going on, council?

Nice to see you all again. I'm grateful to be here. I'm very privileged to be here. I want to recognize that many working class folks cannot be here because they're working. And those voices are arguably the most important. So I hope that in the future we can reconsider having city council meetings so early at a time that is so inaccessible for so many people. But that's not why I'm here. I just want to share with you that my family has suffered firsthand the policy failures and intentional disinvestment. I have feels who have died from overdoses, who had been institutionalized by prison, suffered from poverty. Both of my grandmas died from aggressive cancers. They both happen to live in 952. or near the port, OK? And that is because the city council of the past made a terrible decision, and despite public opposition, decided to bulldoze the historic Little Manila, Japantown, Chinatown, ,, and even the historic black community of Bogstrat. which now suffers from a great deal of pollution. They called these areas blighted. And when they made that decision in the 1940s, 50s, whenever it was, they called these areas of South Stockton. That was actually a thriving tax base of downtown blighted. And they had all of these racist ideals. And despite public outcry to not destroy those areas, they were. Because it was supposed to usher in progress. Tell me, does downtown, has it progressed from that time? Absolutely not. So today, with this economic development plan, we're all here because we have this shared interest. Of course, we want to see Stockton develop economically. Of course. But why would it matter if after the ports game, I get to go to a brewery and I'm breathing in toxic air? I work with youth. Most of them go to Edison. They have to walk home. Stockton is extremely hot. How would their lives have been radically transformed if they had been able to recreate with the Delta, if they had been able to take a dip in the levees? Get more creative. AI centers might be a quick fix to your fiscal issues, but it is not the long-term impacts of our children. My children's children is not worth it. Do not pass this.

Yolanda Amen.

Yeah, I just want to give one reminder that the item referenced is coming up on the agenda. It is item 10.2. This time is for items that aren't on the agenda. Thank you.

Yolanda? Amen?

Good afternoon. My father-in-law passed away last week, and this man was 97 years old. He worked for the city of Stockton for over 35 years of his life. He was a very gentle and quiet man. This has made me reflect on where we are as a city, and I believe we're in crisis. And here's why. We have known criminals putting emails and private phone conversations on blast on social media, constantly creating havoc to try to make themselves relevant again. that ship has already definitely sailed. Several people posting outright false statements about people and events. And unfortunately, the mayor's own PIO attacking people online. The list can go on and on, but I'm only given two minutes. It's truly a hot mess. This is the most definitely not the city he used to live in and was so proud to work for all those years. We are a total embarrassment. So I once again ask you, Mayor Fugazi, what are you going to do to get this city back on track and fulfill those promises you started during your campaign? and work on the city's needs. A good starting point would be to replace your PIO with a professional who can effectively get your message across to our community. Publicly sever ties with all known news outlets known to cause chaos in this city. Bring this bias back together by working together for our city. And most importantly, care. Show the same care you displayed when you were running for the seat that you sit in. I'm tired, and I know Stockton is tired, and I know that this damn community is tired. So I ask you all, and especially our mayor, to do your job.

Mary Elizabeth? Mary Elizabeth?

Peace in my heart, I do believe. We shall overcome someday. So I come today, three things. I spent a lot of time writing comments. I submitted these for the record. You should be receiving them regarding Vision Zero. And that Vision Zero, it is critical because we have a lot of bike riders and a lot of pedestrians that are being killed regularly. And it called for the continuation of a task force where people can come and discuss. And I think that I included some recommendations there. And this letter was signed on by the Delta Sierra Group and Catholic Charities Environmental Justice Program. So I just wanted to give you a heads up on that. I brought this to you. 7-6, so we're now almost two months later, when I ask that you consider bringing up the City of Stockton Police Department amendments to the municipal code regarding open container. And we have a lot of blight. People are saying, oh, well, nobody wants to go downtown because there's all this violence and unexpected activity related to substance abuse. And yet it hasn't come. So is this a priority to remove the blight in our community? Or is it something that somebody thought it might be a good idea, but that maybe it really wasn't? Last thing is, you know, Leave No Trace is why I joined the Sierra Club. I believe in that. I've started a group here that I provided some information there. It says, Stockton, say yes to reuse, reduce plastic waste.

Thank you. Elazar?

Hi, my name is .

I'm speaking in regards to the data centers that was described. It was really a post on Facebook, so I'm just responding to this. And the need for it is basically good and bad.

Can you pause this time, please? That's an item on the agenda. It's item 10.2. So when that item comes up, you'll have the opportunity to speak on it.

OK, cool.

OK, thank you. Just make sure that he's in the queue for that.

Cassie? Cassie A? Hilda?

Hello. Hi, my name is Hilda. She, her, a pronouns. I'm a community member resident of Stockton. I do have an essay to work on later. And so I just wanted to share a little bit about something else I wrote that is on the topic of increased water use and something that I wanted to share. So a little section. So one impact from the excess use of local water resources is shortages for drinking water meant for community members. This occurred in 2019 in South Carolina after Google had agreed to limit its use of groundwater for its data centers after a two-year fight by local groups against a sudden depletion of their aquifers that forced Google to agree to a reduction of its groundwater use. This issue intensified.

I'm sorry. It's data centers again. That's item 10.2.

Would I be able to speak because I am on a time limit and so I chose to give public comment? Generally, because I do have to leave soon.

Okay, if you want to focus on water use, focus on water use.

It's on water use pertaining to data centers, but the priority is grant water use. Is that okay?

Well, it's supposed to be on items not on the agenda. But focus on the water. But it's not fair. Excuse me. It's not fair. Excuse me. Listen. Remember, everybody gets a right to speak under public comments. It says specifically that it's for items not on the agenda. I realize you have a time constraint. If you can focus on water use, we're good. Okay? Excuse me. This is your warning. Another outburst like that, you will be asked to leave.

Well then I'll definitely do my best to rewrite my comment as it was based on data centers and considering I do have to leave early, so I'll do my best as I can. So definitely with this issue, with intensified forecasting, which anticipates it's going to be a huge use on water infrastructure, especially pertaining to the fact that a lot of our water systems are very outdated and this has happened in several different communities. And so really ensuring that when we're considering options that may increase water usage, it's important to acknowledge that a lot of community members are facing increased water costs this is both for electricity bills for water bills and especially when we're not working towards more affordable options that can help community members that are perhaps facing really high bills that they're not able to pay for and so what we as a city should really be prioritizing is ensuring affordability for community members who are struggling in so many different areas and so we have to be considering options that are sustainable promote actual growth in our community investing into our youth rather than investing into industries that will not be supporting us perhaps giving some jobs but also these jobs are not going to be sustainable nor are they going to be very high paying and so ensuring that we're able to focus on our community focus on our youth and really invest into areas that do matter thank you Benito Adriano

Hello, I'm Benny To. Yes, I would like to speak on pollution and climate change, as well as, yes, the water shortages. We cannot afford to do anything drastic in this city that would drain excess amounts of energy, thus negatively impacting the environment. We also cannot afford to be doing things that would use an excess amount of water that would also affect the environment, as well as depriving our citizens of drinkable water. And that's not safe. We have kids here. We have people who are sick. And doing anything that would affect that negatively, such as burning poor water resources using reckless construction, would be terrible. Also, the temperature problem. It has been 100 degrees multiple times this summer alone. And we need to take affirmative action to make sure that nothing raises up the temperature any higher than it's already been. Climate change is a huge, huge disaster. that has been confirmed by many scientists and has been confirmed several times over. It is just a fact at this point. And the fact that we're not doing more to prevent it and are letting companies build horrible buildings that will effectively make climate change even worse than it already is, that's a disaster. Let's avoid making buildings like that. Also, people need to get home from work at night. Make night buses more accessible.

Sofal Chin. Sofal Chin. Eliza Eberhardt.

Good afternoon. I actually just wanted to take the time to address everyone on the dais and everyone in the room, because I'm actually really fearful that our city is going through empathy burnout. We're being hypercritical of everyone's actions. And meanwhile, the people that are suffering the most are the people on the streets. They just keep getting shuffled from encampment to encampment. I actually volunteer with the food sovereignty group in town. We don't get paid to do any of this. And we try to focus on zero food waste and feeding people at least once a month, because that's all we have capacity to do, because we're tired and we work really hard. And the conversations that we have had with people on the streets that are hungry and are struggling with substance use is that they're exhausted. And the reason why they're using or not able to recover or pull themselves up by their bootstraps is because they need to be hypervigilant to avoid violence, and not even just violence from each other, but violence from the police. One lady had her father's ashes taken from her and thrown away because it was labeled trash. Why are we living in a society that condones this? This is really sad. How would you feel if someone threw away your dead dad's ashes? We call neighborhoods blighted because of these people. But guess what? They're still people. And just because you don't want to look at them and you don't want to see the trash or the dead dogs on the side of the street or the people passed out because they're exhausted or whatever the reason, doesn't mean they're not still there. They're not still people. They deserve dignity. They deserve access to resources. We need more shelters. We need more food banks in town. And we really need to focus on actual solutions and not just moving people from levee to levee because it's not working.

Mark Stebbins. Mark Stebbins.

Good evening. I hoped that you would improve your sound system somewhat. A $100 million building, and you must have about a $30 sound system. I have three quotes for you today. The first one is from Rufus Harley, an improvisational jazz musician who innovated jazz on the bagpipes. He said, do the right thing, W-R-I-T-E. The second thing, quote, is from Albert Camus in the fall. And he said, the problem for modern man lies in not taking what you really don't want. And you can apply that to iPhones and AI. Finally, from the Bible, look to the hills. It's time to establish a vision for an agricultural future in Stockton. The three feet of rich adobe soil that's being paved over and housed over is depriving your citizens of economic liberty, economic activity. So when you want economic development, look for an agricultural future. Thank you.

Pat Barrett. Pat Barrett.

Pat Barrett. Oh, citizen, I think, sometimes. Number one, the Pledge of Allegiance. You know, I started this with Mayor Lincoln a couple years ago. I said, you know, why can't we have kids join in on our civic duty here at City Council? He said, you bring me the kids, we'll get it started. Not adults. And I really find that hard. Nothing against this, but I'm saying we shouldn't have adults doing that part. It was focused on getting our kids in here. Number two, South Stockton. Nah, people don't speak for me, whether they mention my name or not. We started this group a few months back. It is hard to get people to come in the district of the El Dorado Corridor. The oldest, the most run down and neglected district of District 6. And none of you pay attention to us, OK? They gave up. They paid minimum taxes probably. And you probably don't respect them as you do on the north side. But they gave up because why would we be a part of something to improve it if you're not going to listen? uh number three i saw that thing about josh harter and where he says enough is enough and you want to know why he's stealing you're saying well i hate to tell you but you're not the only one that says enough is enough and we're still waiting when is enough enough okay uh number three ad hoc after nate not got up and talked about the uh unhoused no This other lady back there started talking about District 3. I got up, introduced her to Ask Stockton. You sent over Michael. I mean, Council Member Blauer, you sent over your card. Good job. But when Nate and I got up and started talking about the unhoused, Council Member Padilla walked out. It was like, you didn't even give him a card. You didn't even send him over a card. You know, when it comes to unhoused people, and as Eliza says, says, you know, they're people too. And I think one of our biggest concerns is our own house. That's going to cut me off.

This concludes public comment.

Okay, so we are moving then on to the consent agenda. Are there any items that council would like to pull? 6, 4, 5, 6, and 10. 6, 4, 6, 5, 6, 6, and 6, 10? Correct. I think I need to pull 611 as it, I might, or I don't vote on that item.

So, yeah, if a council member wants to declare a conflict, you just announce that you're not going to vote on it.

OK.

If it stays on the consent calendar.

OK. So I will not be voting on 611. And it is because it runs right by my house. So the bike lane will be going on Lincoln. So I have to recuse myself.

And I will not be voting on item 6.3.

OK.

Wait, wait. I'd like to pull 6.3. OK.

So comments from the public?

First up, we have Mary Elizabeth.

For which item?

Wait, hold on. No, no.

For 6.3? No. Yeah.

We'll wait for 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, 6-6 and 6-10. People will be able to comment when those items come up. Otherwise, are there other items? If not, I will take a motion. Motion to approve. Second. Oh, okay. I will still, I'm still going to. There's one for 6.8 and that is.

Okay, you made the motion.

Yeah. Okay.

What's the name for 6.8? Mary Elizabeth for 6.8. Yes, please. Yes, correct.

So this is in regard to some stormwater drainage. And I'd just like to say again, we heard it today and so glad because we need to remember it. Because even though it really hasn't been that hot of a summer here, we've been pretty blessed. It's been hot and boiling someplace else. And climate change is now. And one aspect of climate change is extreme weather, whiplash, they call it. And so drought and then big rain, drought, big rain. And so the city of Stockton stormwater master plan does not incorporate higher precipitation values that even were observed in 22 for their 10-year design plan. And so I'd also like to say that the climate action plan that you should be considering at some point but has already been submitted to the funders, US EPA and the California Growth Council, Strategic Growth Council, recommended that the stormwater plan be updated. And I just, you know, about stormwater, you know, I just think it's the biggest shame that we didn't pass that. And I think the city needs to take some responsibility for that, for not having meetings. So you heard about 25 meetings the Civil Service Commission has had in the last year. They've had two. WATER ADVISORY GROUP MEETINGS. AND SO, YOU KNOW, IF WE WERE HAVING REGULARLY WATER ADVISORY GROUP WHERE PEOPLE COULD ASK QUESTIONS AND THERE COULD BE MORE LEARNING ABOUT STORM WATER, THAT MIGHT VERY WELL HAVE PASSED. WE GOT TO PLAN BETTER. AND THIS MAINTENANCE DISTRICT NEEDS TO KEEP THAT IN MIND SO THAT WE DON'T END UP WITH A MESS UP THERE. AND THEY HAVE A NICE WATERWAY GOING THROUGH THERE. THANK YOU.

We have no other comments.

OK. So we have a motion by Councilman Enriquez and a second by Councilwoman Padilla for the rest of the consent agenda. And I am recusing myself from 6.11. So roll call vote. And I'm recusing from 6.3. No. That one got pulled by Vice Mayor.

OK. Council Member Padilla?

Yes.

Council Member Ponce?

Yes.

Council Member Blower? Yes. Council Member Enriquez? Yes. Council Member Villalobudua? Yes. Vice Mayor Lee? Yes. Mayor Fugazi?

Yes.

Motion carries 7, 0.

Except for 6, 11, which is 6, 0. OK. Let's go ahead and move on to item 6.3. Does anybody else need to disclose or recuse themselves from 6.3?

I'll make a disclosure. I don't know if it's a disclosure or not, but we were obviously the nonprofit that I am the chair of was awarded a grant by the state of California, but it's unrelated to this matter, and I won't receive any financial contribution or benefit from discussing or voting on this matter, but I will make that disclosure.

Okay. Thank you for that, city attorney. I don't know if that's an issue or not.

So this is a quasi legislative item. So as long as there's not a financial benefit to the council member, it's not a legal conflict of interest. However, to the extent that the council members feel they can't be unbiased or make a decision that's based on the merits of the application, then they should recuse themselves.

Okay. So you can do that, correct?

I voted on it the last time it came before, so there's no conflict. I'm not going to recuse myself.

He just said based on the merits of the...

There's no financial benefit to me, so I won't be recusing myself.

Okay. So you pulled this agenda item?

Yes. Can staff who are presenting or handling this please come to the podium? The reason why I'm pulling this item, just I think our legislative records need to continue to be recorded. This matter came before the council. That was not on an RFP or any other announcement to the community. We just awarded this person $300,000. We made a commitment. I think we've since asked if the money had been released. I think the city manager had informed me that the money had not been released or somebody in the city manager's office had not been released yet. My understanding, after this award, or when this individual made a presentation to council to get this award from the city, there were commitments that he represented he was going to get from the county. My understanding is the county decided not to move forward and give any funding. And in addition to that, my understanding, talking to Behavioral Health, is that the county hasn't even issued a letter to support this business. to provide the service, and one of the expectations and conditions of receiving the funding from the state requires that. And so what I need staff to do is give me an update or give council an update on where this individual or this applicant is in the process of obtaining those other necessary documents and support from the county in order to move forward. If somebody is here to answer that, it would be helpful.

I think you asked it of staff. Well that was a question for said, but if if he has information that has a let let staff comment first and then we'll have public comment. OK OK.

Hi, good afternoon. Alex Bailey. I'm a program manager with the city manager's office. So in response to your question about the county providing support for this, we do have a letter from the county. You do?

It has been shared with us, yes. Can it be shared with council, please? Can we see that?

Yes.

Because it's it's not I don't have yes, we'll we'll after towards the end if there's no more other comments Alex will go up and get the letter bring it back.

But I mean in terms of considering this item right now, I think Council needs to be well informed and see it now or we can hold this item and come back later.

He would do that we can do that and we'll just move then down to 6.4 if that's okay. Yes, okay So if somebody can let councilman Padilla know to come back for item 6.4 which is Accept the annual health benefit report and adopt the monthly premium rates for the city's to 2027 employee health plans

So first of all, I want to thank your department for bringing this item so early on in the year, because traditionally we get it towards the time that renewals are due. So I really appreciate you guys working on that. This has always been a concern of mine, because myself has to pay for health insurance, and I know health insurance premium rates are continually rising. So what I hear from employees is that they've asked several times, and I know I've asked City Manager Ford in regards to a percentage-based model. The employees are asking for equality and consistency, and we should all know the reason behind that. And secondly, you know, what I saw on there is there was only two insurance companies offered. Now, I'm not comparing this to other companies, but an employer of mine, I had in excess of eight options. Now, we all know that Sutter is like the Cadillac of insurance and is the most expensive, and it's continually creasing. And the other one is Kaiser. And the concern is, is that the majority of employees probably have to go to Kaiser because of the lower premiums. And so they don't have any, you know, they don't really have many choices. And so that is one of my concerns is that, you know, the only two options they have is that very high, high, and then just one other. And then I don't know if this is a question for Mr. Garcia with regards to a percentage-based model. So if you can answer just only two insurance companies available.

Actually, I'll take that for you. Councilwoman and members of the council, within the last seven to 10 days, I've had a meeting with the unions. I think we had... four of the eight requested a meeting with me to open up dialogue on a percentage basis. I will tell you at this time frame we feel there's not quite enough time to go into that discussion to get it as part of the upcoming health plan but we heard them we told them that we would have ongoing communication with them to begin to look at the difference the options that we may have to develop a percentage base so that's going to take a little bit more time and we wanted to try as much as possible continue with this process but what we have now can tell you on a initial look at it we have exceeded an 80% now that we're paying, but we didn't quite have all of the numbers to be able to digest and look at the different type of options. So we are committed to looking at the options on a percentage basis. We will need more time and we will work with the unions, all of them, except police, because I think they are already in a position but we will work with them to give some recommendation, but also understand in the long run what's best for the city. So we have had open communication to see exactly where we would go over the next three to six months.

Okay, I appreciate that. And so we're just approving the rates today and From now till three to four months, you'll be working on that model. Correct. Correct. And working with the unions. Okay. I just want to make sure that our city is financially feasible and that we are giving our employees choices. Because I've been a setter insured all my life. And at one time, my spouse then said, I can no longer afford it, so you're going to have to go to Kaiser. And, you know, it was like, oh, gosh. So I would just like, in the future, any way, you know, if we can get some more options for the employees.

And we do, when we come up to renewal, we always work with our insurance broker who does go out and shop and see what plans are available to our group in our area. So last year, we brought three additional Sutter plans. So we are offering six Sutter plans and three Kaiser plans to our employees. And coverage, of course, is different, and employees can select whatever is best for them based on their needs. So we did do that last year, and we're bringing all those nine plans back again this year.

Okay. What about, you know, there's UnitedHealthcare, there's Blue Shield, Blue Cross.

Yeah, we did explore all the options we had. One option from United Health this year that was presented to us, it was much more expensive than the most expensive Sutter plan. The coverage was not near as good as Sutter plan. And in addition, we looked at... the coverage that's available to our employees based on where employees live and what kind of specialists are offered in this area. And our availability of specialists is in that high 90 percentile so we don't have employees who are or I should say we have enough coverage for our area for our geographical area for all the specialists that might be needed okay thank you I appreciate that of course thank you

No, I did have a question.

Go ahead.

Council member Pita kind of asked it, but I was just wondering what sort of other options, because I think that's great that you have more things within Sutter and more things within Kaiser, but I'm wondering, you know, what would it take to bring in like a third?

So, like, yeah, we tried with the UnitedHealthcare, and this is the only plan that they had available for our group in this area for us to look at. And that was not a good option for our employees. And we looked at it not just from HR perspective, but also from ASD perspective as well.

Now, percentage-wise, what percentage of our employees have Kaiser versus the Sutter?

So, let's see. About 64%. Yes, we have 64% with Kaiser, and the rest are with Southern.

So does that become problematic if it's more and more lopsided, in your opinion, with one of the providers?

It may be if we decide to look at other pools again, because we did try to join pools in the past, and even this year, and we were rejected from one of the pools. And one of the reasons, there's many reasons why we were rejected, one of them was high Kaiser enrollment.

And we are being definitely sensitive to making sure just exactly that, that everything that we can do to encourage our employees to use both plans and get very close, because what we don't want to do is to get in where we only have one provider.

Yeah, and it does seem like you'd get to a tipping point where that Sutter would pull out.

And we are taking that it's very sensitive issue with this and we are aware of it in making sure that we continue to look at even more options. Okay, thank you.

If there are no other comments will make a motion we have public comment. We have public comment on this one.

Yes, we do first up we have on the Russell Vargas.

GOOD AFTERNOON. MAYOR, VICE MAYOR, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL AND CITY MANAGER. MY NAME IS ELMIROSA VARGAS. I'M THE PRESIDENT OF THE BNC EMPLOYEE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION. TODAY I'M SPEAKING ON ITEM 6.4 WHICH IS REGARDING THE MEDICAL RATES. WHILE CITY LEADERSHIP RIGHTLY EMPHASIZES STABILITY IN MEDICAL CHOICE, THE STABILITY IS CURRENTLY APPLIED SELECTIVELY. Under our fixed dollar contribution model, employees observe over 95% of surging healthcare increases, while one bargaining unit receives 100% city paid coverage for the employee and their families. If healthcare stability matters to the city, that protection must extend to everyone. This inequality drives a stagnant cycle, with Kaiser representing nearly 65% of enrollment. Rising costs makes alternative options unaffordable, shrinking choices further. To break this cycle, employee associations ask for an 85-15% split model applied consistently across all plans. Moving to an 85-15% model achieves four vital goals. It preserves the benefit value as premiums increase rather than shifting the financial burden to the employees. It provides a genuine budget predictability for families without anxiety of sudden health care costs every year. It creates meaningful medical choices, allowing employees to select plans fitting their actual health care needs, not based on costs. and it strengthens recruitment and retention, ensuring Stockton remains an employee of choice that takes care of all of their staff. We're not asking the city to value any one group less, but rather to value the entire workforce consistently. We're respectfully urging the city council and city manager to adopt an 18-15 percentage based model and extend true security to all city employees and their families. Thank you for your time, your leadership and dedication to the city.

Thanks.

Next we have Devin Robson.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, City Manager. Devin Robeson, Local 4056, Stockton Professional Firefighters. I'm here to speak on the same, to address the equality, stability, and consistency options that need to be available for all employees, not just a small group of employees. Equality, there are two different current models, percentage based and a fixed amount. One bargaining unit is allowed up to 100% of their medical premiums paid by the city, whereas the other majority, has a fixed amount and actually incurs the cost of the premiums increase by 95% and goes to the burden of the employee. This begs the question, why does the city hold the value of any group's health and well-being for employees and their families higher than any other? When there's a majority of the population of the workforce, 1,000 employees do not receive that luxury. We are currently asking for the percentage model versus the fixed income or fixed amount for all. Stability, we want to have stability every year for the premiums when they do go up, if they do go up. This creates a financial instability more out of pocket and change if we don't get this. With the percentage-based model, this moves to increase the reasonable, responsible way to manage and budget for the future years. Consistency. Employees find themselves every year having to decide if they can keep the same plan and or coverage for their families or they're forced to due to inaffordability to choose another. People want to stay consistent for themselves and for their families. Choice. Current model does not allow for this to happen. This is a constant, normal thing. It's a theme in the health care systems called the Kaiser death spiral. Once they get into the system, they seem to take over and then exclude any other possible outcome. Thank you.

We have no other comments, Mayor.

Okay, bringing it back to council, I do have a question. I'd like to know what is the, what's the cost of if we went to a, what if the cost if we went to a percentage base and then that would mean that there are no plans that are funded at 100%?

No, we have. So with Kaiser, we will have two plans that are covered at 100%.

But I thought if we did the percentage, it would be across the border. It wouldn't be across the border.

Well, if we decide to go to 80%, 80-20% split, then employees who decide to go to two of the Kaiser plans will actually have to pay now premiums instead of having the city pay 100%. And then with Sutter plan out of six, we will have one plan that's 100% paid by the city.

OK, so what would the cost then be if we were to go to the percentage rate on the?

We have not ran those numbers. Mr. Garcia is coming up. OK.

I figured you did the calculations while you were back there.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, Gilbert Garcia, CFO. We have not crunched the numbers to see what the cost to the city and to the employees would be if we did an across-the-board cost-sharing percentage base. Also, you know, we would probably just do it, make those calculations based on how employees are choosing health care now. Of course, that could change how employees choose to choose their health care. So we wouldn't factor that. But but we can certainly get those numbers to you. But we haven't run them.

So with that being said, I know we have to have this done by October 1st, I want to say. We have two more meetings in the month of September. Could we bring this back on September 15th when you have those numbers? Is that possible? Because we still have a meeting on the 29th of September.

I think the 29th would be a more realistic timeline and we pretty much would have to have a report completed this week in order to get it on the 15th agenda. And then of course we have a holiday coming up so I think that 29th is certainly very very feasible.

I would support that if my Council would support that.

I know we were talking about 85-15, but if you could also do a comparison with 80-20 just to give us some options. Absolutely.

Thank you. So I made a motion. Second. Okay, so roll call.

Council Member Padilla? Yes. Council Member Ponte? Yes. Council Member Blower? Yes. Council Member Enriquez? Yes. Council Member Villalba? Yes. Vice Mayor Lee? Yes. Mayor Fugazi? Yes. Motion to carry 7-0.

Wonderful. OK, so since we've got the document, we're going to go ahead and go back to item 6.3, which is, I've got to turn to it on my paper here, and that says the, which will be for the service first BCHIP grant change of location as I try to find it.

6.3.

Yeah. So we'll bring 6.3. Oh, sorry. Councilwoman Padilla has to excuse herself.

And thank you, Alex, for the letter. And I did confirm as I sat here that this letter is one of the requirements that were met. So thank you for that. The second question I had is that my understanding is tonight we're considering accepting the location change. Is that what we're being asked?

Yes.

And so my question is, did the budget, because the 10% match for the grant, I believe at the time was $800,000 based on an $8 million award. If the location is changing, my understanding is the budget is significantly changing for this project, which means the match would change. Are we still saying as a council we're authorizing $300,000, or are we saying as a council we're authorizing up to a certain amount, and how are we managing the amount of money that we're assigning to this if the budget is to change and the cost goes down?

Well, I'll answer the first one as it relates to staying 300,000. So that's number one. And then, Alice, you want to take the follow up? So yeah, what I one and I think through to follow up what we've decided to use to funding for dedicated for was for the purchase of the building is that correct.

Yes, okay.

It's okay to find out what I'm confused the city's not buying a building.

Now they're 300,000 will be used for the additional funds for the purchase of their building.

Right. So the 10 percent, I understand how this works, but what I'm trying to understand is when this originally came before council, they were given a contribution letter of $800,000 without council approval. Once we brought it to council and we reviewed it, council was then tasked with a decision on what to do. This council voted six to one with me dissenting to award $300,000 to the individual towards the 10 percent match. My understanding is the budget is changing because the location is changing, which means it won't be $8 million. The grant approval will be less than $8 million, which means the 10% match will be less. So what I'm asking is, one, you're saying we're committing $300 grand. And the $300 grand, does that change if the total cost of the project? I guess I'm trying to understand what oversight and accountability we're having to this grant.

No so that the answer is that it's going to stay 300,000 as far as we know they still are receiving the same amount that the initially received.

Right and so my point is if that amount changes does our amount change and if not then the answer is no no OK thank you. Well that's that's the only questions I have obviously these needs are important to our community and I guess I would want to understand, so when the location changes, has the state accepted that change or what's the next process?

The state has accepted that change in the sense that it's contingent on these documents that are submitted. So the letter from behavioral health, which has been provided, and then after council approval, assuming we have council approval tonight, then city manager would issue a letter supporting that change of location as well. So those are the things that are needed on this side.

The last question, thank you, is once we submit the letter, What then are we doing to close the loop on this so like what's the vote look like do we then get a letter from the state or can we request a letter from the state confirming that everything is good or what was the process.

Yes, you can yeah, you can we'll make this is a note that you would like a letter from the state to send this process is complete to make sure you get a copy.

OK to the council is fine correct. OK, thank you.

I'll make a motion to approve. We have a public comment? Yes. OK. First, Mary Elizabeth.

So I live downtown in midtown area and you know that park has become really problematic and both locations were you know near the park and you know there's regularly garbage all over the place and I just am worried about this but first off And the Brown Act calls for making available around-the-bench memos that was provided to every single one of you to be made available for any public member that wanted to be here. But now, you know, I'm just saying, for a process, you know, we're always... like ignoring those important steps that make information available to the people. And so I just wanted to point out that example, and now I'm looking over here. The other thing is I attended a San Joaquin Behavioral Health Committee meeting. And in that meeting, they discussed their housing wellness approach. where they look at the individual, the client that they're serving for mental health needs, and where would be the best place to put them. And I think that it would behoove the city to do whatever they can to partner with San Joaquin County Behavioral Health Services, because that's where stability happens. So you can put a person anywhere, but they may not have the capabilities to be able to maintain that residence, and then they're out on the street again. And there are people that cycle through. Thank you.

Julie?

Mayor.

Go ahead, City Manager.

Yes, we just made a copy of the letter from the counties in the back for any public viewing.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, I'm going to speak in opposition of this. Allocation of money not that I'm opposed to the project because it's much needed but because I don't believe that the developer has the ability to deliver the project in the time frame that we needed in our city. I base that on the fact that they just did a groundbreaking on Hunter House last week, a project that started in 2019, which the city has $3 million invested in. They also have another project called Fontana Towers that is from 21-22 that the city invested $3 million in that sits as a vacant lot right now. This doesn't even address the debt service to the city they have on previous projects. In two days they need to provide to the state proof that they have site control and additional detailed plans on this project. This isn't just a site adjustment. You're going from a two-story building built in 1960 to a four-story building built in 1912 that's had a fire in it recently and is uninhabitable. The prior building for this was inhabitable and currently inhabited. What are the plans for the new site? They're certainly not gonna get in there what they had before. Using the mayor's favorite tool, I did a quick calculation, and it calculates that they're gonna need $12.2 million to do the seismic retrofit, fire suppression, environmental abatement, and build out of the units to have this as any kind of usable facility. I don't think this is a wise choice investment for us right now. Our needs are immediate. We need something that can be able to be built within the next 24 to 36 months to address our needs, not six to eight years and coming back for additional funding.

Yolanda? I agree with Julie. It's not that I don't agree with the project. I think it's something that's much needed. But even sitting here just now, the questions that you're answering, it might be, it could be, we don't know. You're running upstairs to get letters that should have already been sent to you prior to this, and now the letters are going to be in the back. I just think that you need to put the stop on this. You need to make sure you have all the information. I think that once again, things are pushed to the council really quickly, and then it's just voted on. And if Julie's numbers are correct, then I think that the finances need to be looked into. The building needs to be looked into. Because if it is true, then they're going to continue coming back to you for the next 3K, the next 3K, the next 3K. We do need this project, but I think we need to stop, and I think we need to really evaluate their finance manager, their project manager, who is running this, and let's really see what's going on with this. Otherwise, it's just gonna keep coming, and it's just gonna keep milking our city. So I am asking this dais to please, not necessarily not approve this, but please just hold on this and do more investigation as to what is truly going on. I just think there's a lot of money here, and we need this money in this city. And if this project, if you see or feel, oh, it's going to succeed, then 1,000% approve it. But if you see there's too many things that's going to cost us too much money in the future, then take this money and filter it into things we already have now.

Dr. Raines?

Good evening, my name is Dr. Verena Costa DeSil.

I'm the academic biographer of Reverend Al Sharpton, and I'm gonna do something strange. I'm gonna praise the police of the city of Stockton. I work for an organization called Brighter Day STRTP, and you have been doing a wonderful thing in Stockton. You have been secreting and protecting young women who have been commercially sexually exploited and trafficked through our agency. We've been having a very hard time in just getting a basic mental health service provider approval from the behavioral health services. So I need to know which council member is from area code 95212. And then my personal area code in my little commuter house is 95209, because I would like to ask you for your support. for this mental health services provider area. We are an alternative to this. Our agency is also opening detox centers, very small. Everything has been done and done out of the pocket of the lady who owns the organization. Privately, her and her husband have been able to do everything. They're gonna be opening up new detox centers city on their own. So I want you to know that you do have alternatives to this that are available to you. I want to thank you, Jason Lee, for privately, because you support foster care, taking the letters and things like that from us. You totally deserve all the praise that you get, and I want to see you move higher. And we in Black Women Organized for Political Action will be supporting you. So I want you to, if I can have those two things, the people that represent 95212, and I can have the 95209, and also to let you know that there are people that are working through smaller organizations that might be able to do some of these things as well since you don't have the accountability. Thank you.

This concludes public comment.

Okay. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. Sorry, I did have another comment as I was thinking and hearing the comments. I want to clarify, just because the legislative record is important, why I started by saying I want to make a motion to accept this. Obviously, you know, this is a process that I'm familiar with and I know the needs of our community. Our community needs support and getting grants is not an easy task. But I want to slow down a little bit to say I started with the reminder of how we got here and i want to remind the community that this actual grant and the process in which we got here is already under review at the state controller's office as part of the audit it was forwarded through the other agencies that this committee voted to and so it did go there the second piece is that here's the challenge that i'm conflicted with i agree i staff should have given us all the documents that were part of the consideration for this this packet We didn't get it. So to run upstairs and have to get it and bring it down, it's sloppy and the public doesn't have it. That's something that staff can discuss at a later time. The second part is I do think for this council and for the public who's watching, I think that people walking in off the street with no real presentation and getting money from the city is crazy. It didn't happen before I got elected, which me and Council Member Blauer were literally talking upstairs about before we came down here, how crazy it looked when I came here for the grant before. Even though I was well-intentioned, I had all the ideas, and I wanted to do it. Once I got denied, I know how that felt. And we were laughing because now when you look back at it, it was so crazy then. And it's still crazy now. And so I think that I understand the public sentiment. I also don't know what the new site plan is, what this is going to look like, who are the partners, who are the operators. And there's still all those things. And this is where I would say to the city manager, what contingencies can we put on this approval that give us the because I do just to be clear, I do attend to support whatever it takes to get resources for our community to turn away $8 million grant is not something that I'm going to do today. But what is it that staff can do to address the concerns you're hearing from the public?

No, Jordan, would you please come up? Yes.

Hi, Council. Jordan Peterson, Economic Development Department. So the resolution does contain language around requiring a deed of trust and regulatory agreement. So if Service First packages all the required documentation, sends it up to the state by the deadline, the state accepts it. Staff would develop a deed of trust which secures the city's 300,000 pending approval Funding and then a regulatory agreement that would say effectively you were going to do what you agreed to do per the terms of The agreement and then that will live with the property so to speak to be able to hold their feet to the fire in terms of the requirements for the project I

And so how then, before you leave, how then are we utilizing the letter of commitment of support for this match? How are we holding the funds given the concerns that were raised that were discussed recently in an audit committee, which is going before audit? How are we holding or addressing the funds from being released prior to knowing that the project is going to move forward?

So it depends on how the funds would be used. It's potential that it could be for the acquisition, for the construction, for the rehabilitation. If it's for the acquisition, it would go in through escrow. So it would never go directly to them. They would have the purchase and sale agreement. They'd have all the money, just like if somebody were buying a house, then it would go into escrow, and that's how it would go into the project. If it was for rehabilitation or construction, then it would be on a reimbursement basis.

Has the city verified the other $500,000 that was required for the 10% match? Have we verified that? Because here's the challenge, right? If we do give the $300,000, and then they use it to acquire the property, and then they're not able to move forward on the grant, then the city then owns another property that we're not going to use. Because we're not going to just gift them a property.

Yeah, we have interest in the property. I'm not sure how that works out.

And I'm not either. We have that entertain that at this point. But well, let me ask our city attorney.

So given what you're hearing, we give 300,000, it goes into escrow to purchase a building. The building gets acquired by the applicant. The applicant unsuccessfully gets the grant from the state. Now what? How do we recoup our money?

So what also goes into escrow are the regulatory documents and the resolutions. So nothing gets distributed to anybody until everything's in place.

But what I'm saying is you can buy the land and then not get the grant. So what I'm asking is what is our... what can we do as a city in obtaining those resources back? So we give the $300,000, all those documents, it goes into escrow, they acquire the property, the state denies the grant. What do we do then?

Yeah, I think that would have to be a condition of escrow is that the grant is awarded so that we're not buying a property that isn't going to have a function.

Yeah, I think the way this grant works, having gone through it, it's kind of cart before the horse. So I understand the sentiment of not wanting to lose the opportunity. I think we just for legislative record purposes and for the public watching, I think we just need to know, OK, we approve the $300,000 today. It goes into escrow with the paperwork. They secure the property. Now they own it. And then they don't get the grant. Do we now own a property that we can't operate?

No, and I think we can put conditions into the regulatory agreements and the other documents to ensure that we're not spending money on a piece of property that's going to stay vacant.

Okay, so that would be my only concern, and that is that if for whatever reason, because this is a really interesting process, that they're not able to move forward, that we're able to control those resources. That said, and that caveat, and that's what I'm hearing we're going to do, and what I'm hearing very clearly is we're not going to give the money to a project that's not going to move forward, and that we will have all the legal, the stuff you went to school for to learn how to put in agreements to protect those resources.

Yes, we will do everything we need to do to protect the resources for the city.

Well, based on that, I know there's people that like the project, don't like the process. I share the same disliking for the process. And still, everything I've said before back on November 18th stands true. But I also am somebody that understands the needs of our community. And those needs need to be met. And this is a unique opportunity that will not revisit itself. And so with the caveat from our city attorney's office of making sure that we're protecting those resources and not absolving myself from the referral that I made to the agencies investigating it, I will move to approve.

We have a motion in a second Council will call.

Yes, that's where our yes, it's very good. Yes, it's very good. Yes, it's really yes, if it doesn't yes motion carries 6, 0 with comes from the recuse so.

OK, so let us have Councilwoman Padilla return. We are moving on to her next pulled item, 6.5, approve a motion authorizing agreement with Global Retirement Partners, LLC, Chester Advisory Group, a hub international company for investment and record keeping administrative services to support the city's deferred comp plans. Welcome back. Hello.

This is Maya Reft, Human Resources.

Thank you. In the agreement, it says $48,000 is deducted from the annual assets, and then it says there is no cost to the city. Correct. So can you clarify who bears the cost then?

So the funds are the fees deducted from the plan itself, from Empower. So it's the fees that are collected from employees during their regular year of deductions.

So then it's basically coming from the employees' assets?

It's coming from the plan assets. Yes, every year the plan earns interest and part of those part of that is paying for the for this service.

Okay, so then does this mean that it's no cost to the employees or the city?

It's well, it's no direct cost to the city. We used to pay directly a monthly invoice to Schuster. But now this is how the the plan is paid for. And this is a standard in this industry.

But is there no cost to the employees?

There's no direct cost, so there's not something that employees have to pay in addition to have this, no.

Okay, that's all I have.

Go ahead. Okay, so I'll bring it back to council for a motion. Motion to approve. Second. Roll call.

Council member Ponce.

Yes.

Council member Padilla. Yes. Council member Blower. Yes. Council member Enriquez. Yes. Council member Villalobodua. Yes. Vice mayor Lee. Yes. Mayor Fugazi. Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Thank you.

Moving on then to item 6.6, that is the resolution or motion authorizing agreement with Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. for benefits consulting services.

So they've been with us since 2022, and it just says that they've saved the city money. Is there any example of... how they save us in excess of $150,000 a year. Like, are they saving more than we're paying? Does that make sense? So they're consulting services.

So the annual cost is $150,000.

Correct. And they're a consulting service.

Right.

And it says that they're saving us money. So how much money are... they saving us and is it more than what we're paying them i'm sorry can you point to the page that you're looking at on the staff report oh i'll have to so it states that uh we're signing a

$750,000 contract for 5 years, $150,000 a year. The question is, give us some examples where they're helping us to save funds.

So they're helping us in a lot of ways with the compliance parts, you know, in case we get audited by the IRS or any kind of regulatory agency. They help us with ACA reporting. They help us with shopping for different plans for vendors. They help us with vendor management as well.

So just out of curiosity, we do this because of lack of staff.

Well, we do this because, you know, some of the expertise, they're outside of the city's scope of knowledge, and yeah.

And typically, councilwomen, they have the experience, they have the... the knowledge and a lot of the information at their fingertips because they're doing it for multiple clients. So, yes, it's information that they do on an annual basis, monthly, weekly, gathering information, and we use them for all different type of resources that, yes, it would be a whole lot more staff time that we're putting into it, whereas we can contract the services out for less amount of money.

OK, thank you. That's all I have. So I'll make a motion to approve.

We have a motion and a second. Roll call.

Council Member Padilla? Yes.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,

We have Deputy Chief Pierce from Stockton Police Department.

Thank you, Deputy Pierce. This is more of a comment. And just thank you for facilitating this grant. because we are getting constant reminders how bad our traffic is. And this is going to give us additional resources in which we can focus on DUI monitoring, as well as traffic enforcement. So I just want to say thank you, because anything we can do to help keep our streets safer and not bringing you know, not using funds or general funds is a benefit to everyone. So I just wanted to say thank you.

Well, thank you very much. And I'll just have to like to say the traffic section works very hard to improve traffic safety within the community.

There's no other comments. I'll make a motion.

So with this grant, can y'all come to Western Ranch? Because I'm getting eaten up on Facebook today about the traffic. But it's everywhere. And I say, part of it is that people in the city just need to slow down. But yeah, bring some of that money to Western Ranch.

So with this grant, it is citywide, right? So it'll be all over the city. And you'll see in the grant, it's a bunch of different enforcement type missions. You have DUI saturation mission, some primary collision factor, which is going to be your speeding, and then distracted drivers would be like individuals using cell phones and stuff like that.

You know, now that you're promoted, you're so politically savvy. I still want you to bring it to Western Ranch. Thank you. Did you make a motion?

Motion to approve. We do have one. Mary Elizabeth.

Thank you so much. I'm happy about this too. It's good that we have some more enforcement. You know, my concern is we have a tobacco enforcement grant. We have a DUI grant. And when are we going to have like a sustainable enforcement environment that doesn't rely on grants? You know, so I just, you know, hope that this can be, you know, like how can we streamline this. One other aspect of that grant included pedestrian awareness through communication and education program, specifically to the unhoused because we have some unhoused individuals that are very vulnerable because they're walking around at night. and there might not be enough visibility. The Vision Zero report included a number of recommendations. I'd also, which also was included in there, is that there should be signs at all of the required for an ABC license. in Stockton or any alcohol sales that they have, posters about reminders for DUI. Make sure that, you know, that that's a requirement that when you go in and you check these liquor stores and alcohol retailers that they are being good neighbors. Because we know that we have some alcohol licenses out there that are not good neighbors and create a lot of blight and problem for our neighborhoods. And, you know, we need to have that kind of level enforcement as well, you know, besides getting behind the wheel or else walking around perhaps under the influence. Thank you.

We have no other comments.

Motion to approve. We had a motion. Second. And a second roll call.

Councilmember Padilla? Yes. Councilmember Ponce? Yes. Councilmember Blower? Yes. Councilmember Enriquez?

He stepped out.

Oh, he stepped out, sorry. Councilmember Villalpadilla? Yes. Vice Mayor Lee? Yes. Mayor Fugazi? Yes. Motion carries 6-0.

Okay. We are now done with the consent agenda. And we are moving on to administrative matters. Are there any items that council wish to request for a future item? I mean, a future agenda? No, seeing none. Oh, Councilman Villalpudo.

Yeah, Mayor, I would like to formally request that we bring Section 407 on the next meeting or the meeting after to put on the agenda 407 on the charter regarding a council member for a discussion for a potential vote. Can I get a second?

Second. Second. Okay, the staff, if you can look in that, I don't know if that's the city attorney then for that, or city manager, but just so you know it. Okay, any other items? Okay, no unfinished business. We will move on to public hearings. Public hearing for the proposed use of the 2025 Edward Wren Memorial Justice Assistant Grant. I declare the public hearing open and I don't know if Deputy Chief Pierce is coming back out or who's doing the presentation.

All right, good afternoon, council, mayor, city manager, and community members. I'm here to talk about the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. Where am I pointing this thing at? Yep. There we go. All right. So this grant is a joint effort between Stockton Police Department, San Joaquin County Sheriff's Probation, San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, and the District Attorney's Office. The first memorandum of understanding was established in 2011 for three years, and we've continued to re-up that every three-year period. We're asking for Amendment Number 14, which would memorialize agreed-upon funding. We are required to have an annual public hearing to approve that funding split between the city and the county. And then our activity includes roughly four overtime missions and then evidence investigations, supplies, and surveillance. This is a report on calendar year 2025 grant enforcement. Total number of actions completed was 164 throughout our four joint agency missions. These missions range from simple probation search missions to high visibility enforcement and sometimes even more focused than that. Part of this grant also encompasses our firearms units. Our IBIS unit entered a lot of firearms, a lot of casings into this with several high confidence leads. Those high confidence leads lead to investigative steps that we can now further make arrests and have enhanced prosecution. Of note with our firearms unit, we are actually performing above the national average with 78% of our entries within 10 days of a firearm seizure. The national average is 40%, so we're actually being looked at as a model for other agencies to follow with this. So the allocation formula is set based off of crime trends, city population, things of that nature. The initial allocation had the city of Stockton receiving about $280,000, with the San Joaquin County, all three of those agencies receiving a combined $60,000. The proposed reallocation is asking for a 51 to 49 percent split and the reason for that is all of the resources are coming into Stockton for these missions and those agencies are footing the bill for that so even though we're giving up some of that money it's for their resources to come in and help us with these operations. And the recommendation is to approve Amendment 14, that's the MOU with the funding recommendation, the total amount of $340,000, approve the appropriation of the grant funds, amend our fiscal year 2026-2027 annual budget to increase the police grants and special programs budget, and then authorize the city manager to execute all grant documents. The only amendment to this is the change in the funds. That's all I have.

Sorry, I was taking notes. Okay. Any questions from council? Any public comment?

We have none.

Okay, bring it back to council then. If you want to accept the money.

The motion to approve.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, great 9.2 public hearing to approve the annual budget and assessment rolls for the 2026 27 holiday Park maintenance district. I declare the public hearing open.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is a public hearing to approve the 2026 tax assessment of the Holiday Park Maintenance District for Holiday Park Pool and to approve and authorize a subsidy of $208,000. $208,000. $208,727. So background, so the city acquired the parcel on Kermit Lane in 1968. In 1969, the Holiday Park Maintenance District was formed and the pool was, the city contracted with the Holiday Park Recreation Association for the maintenance and operations. In March of 2019, the Holiday Park Recreation Association chose not to seek renewal of the operator agreement and the city took over the operations of the Holiday Park pool additionally April 28th of this year council provided direction staff to move towards moving decommissioning the holiday park pool and looking into turning that area into a splash pad that roughly cost 1.3 million dollars to to construct

Councilwoman Padilla, you have a question? Yes, I do.

My concern is long-term sustainability. So as taxpayers, citywide, we're going to continue subsidizing this neighborhood pool. And I know we talked about giving the pool back or releasing our liability from the pool. Do we have a long-term exit plan? Because I don't want to approve another 200,000 in 2027.

So currently, staff right now are taking the previous direction of looking at options on how to fund turning the pool into a splash pad. That would roughly cost $1.3 million along the last assessment. The $208,000 subsidy that you provide today is assuming full operation of the pool. So if we didn't operate the pool this summer, it wouldn't necessarily cost that much. But that's how much it would cost us to fully operate as if we had.

So you mean operate in 2027?

this upcoming summer, correct?

Okay. I have no further questions.

This is the assessment district map. There's about, there's 304 parcels in there. In attachment B, there is a larger image, more detailed. This is some basic operations of the facility park pool, of its facility and its operations. The pool does have a small taut pool that's out of commission currently right now, restrooms, parking lot, fencing. This year we opened up from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The hours are Tuesday through Friday, 1 to 6, and Saturday, 12 to 6. Once the schools go back in session, we do go to weekends only. This year that happened on July 25th. This is some basic usage. So our last swim season from last summer in 2025, we had almost 4,000 people enter. All the way through the end of July 31st, we've had about 2,300 people enter. We are finding that is that we are trending less than we did last year with this pool. So the assessment that you're approving is to assess the parcels that would bring in $46,598. It's been the same since 1996. There will not be any change. This assessment will be assessed to the cost of chemicals, repairs, maintenance, and landscaping insurance, an additional $208,000. $1,727 is needed for pool maintenance and operation. A strong communities fund and general fund appropriation has been included in the 26-27 community service department budget. So the recommendation to adopt resolution to approve today is to approve the 2627 assessment for $46,598, authorize the CFO to assess the parcels, and then authorize the subsidy in the amount of $208,727. $13,200 will come from the general fund. $195,525 will come from strong communities.

Okay. Any questions from the council? So, again, our options moving forward on this, could we sell it? I mean if they're only putting in.

They're only putting in $46,000 and I will say this yes, we will go back and look at options.

Any public comment on this item. We have no public comment here. You had to have put a card in if you wanted to speak. Before the item was announced? Okay, come up, state your name for the record.

Hi, I'm Joanna. This is my first council meeting, so thank you for having me. I wanted to go over that I understand that this is a really hard job for you guys, and I appreciate that. It's hard to keep everybody happy. It's an impossible job, really. But you guys are doing it, so... I noticed that you guys have no problem saying yes to paying 300K for things that the community won't see. And that's a little bothersome. I mean, giggling even while you're accepting it. It's kind of a slap in the face to this community. I've grown up in this community. I've been here for 30 years now. Things that will actually support people who are trying to find reason to live in this city, you guys just passing it off with no consideration, no hee-hee-hooing to that. I don't think that's how you create a community, how you show us that you guys care. So I just wanted to comment on that. I think this is a great way to actually support the community. Thank you.

OK. I will close the public hearing and bring it back to council. Approve the budget or not approve the budget?

Move to approve the budget.

And a second from Councilwoman Ponce. Roll call.

Council Member Padilla?

No.

Council Member Ponce?

Yes.

Council member Blower. Yes. Council member Enriquez. Yes. Council member Villalpa-Dua. No. Vice Mayor Lee. Yes. Mayor Fugazi. Yes. Motion carries 7-2. 5-2.

Oh, 5-2, sorry.

Wrong number.

Okay. Before we go on to new business, if we could take a 10-minute break and come back at 3.05, that would be perfect. So we are adjourned until 3.05. Okay, calling the meeting back to order, we are under new business, item 10.1, approve a resolution authorizing an initial issuance of special tax bonds on behalf of the City of Stockton Community Facilities District, sorry, number 2025-1, Canary Park East, in an estimated amount of $7.65 million and not to exceed the amount of $9 million.

Good afternoon, Carmen Barragán, Denton Treasury Manager. I'm here for Special Tax Fonds Series 2026, EFD 2025, County Park Ease. Okay. CFD 2019-1, County Repart 2, was formed in May of 2019. It contains a fixed annual special tax rate of $1,600 per year on a single family residential unit. The total bonded indebtedness is $15 million. To date, there has been two series of bond issues. for the CFD. CFD 2025-1, Cannery Park East, will include just the portion originally acquired by the developer, Gen California 31, as shown in the map in the right-hand corner. The acquired portion is already in CFD 2019, Cannery Park 2, and the special taxes payable by the property owners will be in addition The fixed $1,600 of facility special tax, the property owners will be in addition to the $1,600 per year of facility special tax and the services tax already collected in CFD 2019-1, Canary Park 2. CFD 2025, Canary Park East, consists of 331 single-family residential units, and the CFD will help fund the acquisition of the authorized facilities and fees. The facilities tax rate ranges from $922 to $2,386 per residential unit annually. And there is a 2% escalation on facilities tax. And the total tax rate is slightly less than 1.8, which is consistent with other CFDs in the region. The 2026 bonds. has a not-to-exceed $9 million. However, the expected issuance is expected to be $7.65 million, with a final maturity date of September 1, 2056. The sources of use in some funds, the part amount is expected to be $7.6 million. The estimated cost of issuance are expected to be $235,000. Here is a breakdown of the cost of issuance. The next slide is our debt service coverage. And as you can see, it is fully expected to mature in September 1st of 2056. Items for consideration is official statement. Upon council authorization, it will be distributed by the underwriter and is used for the primary marketing document to prospective bond purchasers. The agenda packet includes a preliminary version of this official statement and will be deemed essentially final. And a final version of this document will be made available shortly after the 2026 sale of bonds. The physical agent agreement, this agreement governs the terms and conditions of the 2026 bonds and identifies the net proceeds of the 2026 bonds. The continuous disclosure agreement, this agreement governs the terms and conditions whereby the city will provide holders of the 2026 bonds an annual report updating the status of development in much of the same form of the official statement. In addition, should a material event notice occur, As listed in the agreement, the city will provide immediate disclosure to the holders of the 2026 bonds. The bond purchase agreement, Hilltop Securities as underwriter will execute this document agreeing to the 2026 bonds contingent upon city satisfying the obligations imposed within the agreement. The underwriter agrees to make a public offering of the 2026 bonds and purchase the bonds as authorized by council. there is no financial impact to the city of stockton for the issuance of the 2026 bonds and the 2026 bonds are not a debt of the city Staff recommends that City Council approve the following resolution authorizing initial issuance of the tax bonds on behalf of the City Stockton Community Facilities District 2025-1 Canary Park East approving and directing the execution of a physical agent agreement approving form a preliminary official statement approving the sale of such bonds and approving other related documents and actions With me tonight, I have the city's municipal advisor, Ken Baker of Del Rio, the developer, Jen California, along with bond counsel, Dave Farmer. Any questions?

Any questions from counsel? I do have a question. So come 2056, when many of us in this room won't be here any longer, people will be able to, I think about Western Ranch. I think about other areas that have had a Melrose or a CFD. It's been paid off, yet they still end up getting charged. If this is paid off, do they then, are they, do they then, the owners have to apply to, Applier vote to get rid of the CFD tax to see if the special bond tax goes away It is no longer. It's written in there that it goes away. So as of 2056 Nobody will be having that attached to their tax bill.

Correct. There is a portion of a second is like a maintenance portion that goes I believe in perpetuity but that is not related to the bond so on that maintenance amount then because I know that it can grow you know at up to 4% if I remember correctly

does it go then back down after 2056 or could it potentially just stay that amount because it's for maintenance and continue to go up no i believe it does uh if i remember correctly i'll have to check okay good before i give you an answer i want to let me make sure and i ask that because You know, when people are filling out their loan documents, you know, they often kind of skip over it. They're so excited. They're buying a home. It's the home that they want. And they're signing all these papers. And they don't even realize what a CFD is. And they don't understand that it's on there. But it is. And then as it grows in perpetuity, it could eclipse someday what their property taxes are. as it grows, potentially. And I see we have our consultant here, so I will turn the floor over to you to answer my illustrious question.

Good evening, members of the council. Ken Deeker with Del Rio Advisors. To answer the mayor's question, there are several pieces of special taxes related to this district. There is the tax that's in 2019-1, that's $1,600 per year. With that, there's a services tax that the city puts on the tax bill every year. Then there's going to be the taxes for 2025-1 if approved tonight by the council. And then in 2056, when the last of the bonds are paid off, a portion of what was to be used to pay debt service on the bonds will become the ongoing maintenance because at that point, you're going to have 30-year-old streets that need resurfacing and everything else. So the idea is to help offset the cost of that continued rehab of those facilities. So the tax for that portion of the maintenance tax will never go away. It continues in perpetuity.

Well, I know there's people even in this audience as well as this city that would love to have streets that were only 30 years old Because we have streets that are much older than that. Maybe a hundred and thirty years old Okay. Thank you any questions from council? Public comment we have been okay bring it back to council Move to approve second we have a motion a second roll call vote

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, moving on to item 10.1 everyone everyone's waiting for approve the motion of the 3 year economic development action plan 2026 28 Ricardo you're on.

Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and members of the Council. Ricardo Nogueira, Director of Economic Development. Over the next several minutes, I'm going to share with you the three-year economic development action plan. And I have moved away from these laborious strategic plans that sit on bookcases across the country and move towards action plans that can be accomplished in many cases over a three-year period. I do want to share with you, because I've heard earlier in the day folks were here to discuss the data center item. This is not the data center item. This is an economic development action plan, much broader than what you would hear from those who may be advocating or concerned about data centers. So there are two takeaways I want to leave you with, I want to leave the whole audience with, and those who are watching on television. And this is key. The first is we need to promote a buy and dine local campaign citywide. And I'll get into more details during my presentation, but I can guarantee you there's a lot of sales tax leakage taking place in Stockton. We're the 10th largest city in California. There are a number of folks that are on the northern side that are shopping and dining in Lodi and further north along that 99 corridor. And there are folks at the southern side that are patronizing businesses in Lathrop and Manteca. If we can get a commitment from the folks who call Stockton home, To maximize their purchases of vehicles, of food, of dining locally, your COR sales tax revenues go up considerably. The second point I want to leave you with, so this is almost like giving you a precursor, is promoting a positive image of Stockton locally, regionally, and beyond. People beyond San Joaquin County need to hear from you. They need to hear from the people who call Stockton home that this is a great community. When you travel to see family and friends in other parts of California and beyond, when you're on vacation, you need to speak positively of this city at the edge of the delta and talk about all the positive attributes. So those are the two takeaways I want to leave you with. All right, let's talk about the components. There are ten components of this plan that cover various areas of the city. The first is downtown. The second is the industrial district. The third is retail shopping centers and the auto mall. There are several projects projected to be completed at various times. Some are short term, a year or less. Others are medium term, one to three years. Others are long term, three or more years. And then there are others that are what we call ongoing, which means the city must continue to plan and implement for the foreseeable future. What affects the plan's implementation process as well as new and existing projects? Well, the first is market conditions, which unfortunately we have no control over. The second is sites available. We're aggressively marketing sites across the city to attract new investment. But as those sites become acquired and developed, they're no longer on the table for investment. The third, and as you can see over the past couple of years with interest rates, we have no control over interest rates that is at the federal level. And then lastly, and this is where you all come in, council's objectives. What are council's objectives? Council's objectives affect a lot as it relates to economic development. Folks always say, all right, economic development staff, We have a wand. We don't have a rand. And in many respects, in economic development, we are initiators. We don't often play lead roles. And in fact, we play support roles. One example is with the Miracle Mile. The Miracle Mile road work improvements is being led by our public works department. That $23 million project, our economic development staff or on the sidelines assisting where we can. All right, I mentioned this is our first area, image enhancement and promotion of the community. This is one of the most important components of the plan and it's really to proactively and on an ongoing basis enhance the image of Stockton. without a television studio or news media, we must continually promote the several positive activities taking place. Here are a few examples. And I've been promoting this with the Sacramento Business Journal. we will soon have four professional sports teams. No other city in California can boast, all right, so we don't have the Dodgers or the 49ers, but we do have four professional teams. The Kings, the Ports, the hockey team, I don't know if that's the Crusaders. The Thunder, thank you. And then we'll have the arena, Crusaders next spring we need to maximize this and not only go out and support them we have to I told some friends this in Berkeley that this is your four teams hockey yeah and I know Oakland's getting a hockey team we need to continue to promote this across this region second St. Joseph's Medical Center. I toured the facility with the CEO about six weeks ago. $850 million in expansion underway. I used to live in Berkeley. I got to Berkeley in 1986. They had three hospitals. Today, they have half a hospital. All debates on Ashby and Telegraph is about to shut down. All right, right next, just a mile from UC Berkeley campus. Hospitals across the country are either merging or shutting down. Whereas here in Stockton, our hospital is expanding. It's expanding. And from what the CEO shared with me, you have doctors and nurses that are gravitating to come work here in Stockton. We need to promote this. And then our waterfront activities. We have a beautiful waterfront as you can see in the photo that we need to take advantage of and continue to promote. And then lastly, as relates to my department, our economic development website needs to be updated to reflect what's happening across this city. All right, revenue enhancements. This is where I may touch a few nerves out there. So expansion of the city's tax base is key for a healthy Stockton and supports public safety, utilities, parks, and much more. In order to have a strong economy, And to support your police, fire, public works, utilities, you have to have revenue. And if your expenses will continue to climb, if your revenue is not climbing with that, you're creating a gap. And we know what happens when cities have gaps. It creates a lot of challenges. A few examples of where we look at revenue enhancement. More recently, the city negotiated to deal with Home Depot to create a homedepot.com at the port. That's going to generate quite a bit of sales tax for the city. Next month, October 8, hopefully you all received an invitation by now. walmart.com is opening up in the industrial district over 1 000 new jobs that are coming in over a thousand and guess what that's point of sales so that means the city will get one percent of the total sales from that center and they're delivering to people's homes to compete with Amazon in addition to that Big box retailers such as IKEA. I was able to bring the second IKEA to Northern California in East Palo Alto. No one thought that would happen back in 2001. Their format has shrunk, but they're still looking for opportunities, and we have an opportunity to attract them. And then, yes, there are a number of communities across the state looking at data centers. In addition to that, auto dealers. And we have a nice auto mall. Of course, Tracy has an auto mall. Elk Grove has an auto mall. I was at a meeting with the city manager recently, and I asked the folks, how many of you purchased your cars in Stockton? I didn't see a lot of hands go up. We have a number of good dealerships here, from Tesla to Toyota to Mercedes-Benz. We want to encourage folks to purchase your cars local. $7 million a year we're getting from those auto dealerships. We need to boost that. All right, attraction and diversification of employers in the industrial district. I have dubbed this the city's economic engine. And I don't know how often people from Stockton drive down French Camp and drive from I-5 to the 99. There's a lot of jobs down there. And there's a lot of revenue. In fact, more than $7 million a year in sales and property tax coming from companies out there. The city's industrial district has historically served as the logistics and warehouse hub. proximity to the port, the airport, BNSF, the rail, and so forth. And if you've been observing over the past couple of years what is taking place, it's diversifying. You're getting more jobs per square foot. You're getting advanced manufacturing. And I know Lathrop's a little bit ahead of us on that with 3 million square feet, thanks to their relationship with Tesla. But there are more opportunities to bring more advanced manufacturing, aerospace, food processing, shipbuilding, drone industry, and medical device. Just worked with a company in the past two months that leased another building. They now have 250 employees here in Stockton. So what is happening with our industrial buildings? We're getting more dense. They're getting higher quality buildings, not just your typical warehouse. They're getting more machinery in there and more equipment and higher paid jobs. Downtown development, the 18-hour community. I'm not tooting my horn, but when I was in Cape Coral, Florida a few years back, and I drove through back in 2019, the folks said to me, I said, where's downtown? They said, you're on Cape Coral Parkway. You just passed it. There were only two or three buildings that were two stories. I was able to bring in a North Dakota developer and an Indianapolis developer. Today, both of those developments are finished. Each of them, of course, they have redevelopment. Each of those projects are worth over $200 million east. We have an opportunity, and I'm going to be meeting very shortly with some of the historic developers in the downtown that had been quietly acquiring buildings, some of these older buildings. They're acquiring them, rehabilitating them. They're bringing, believe it or not, office tenants.

That's a foreign word.

They're bringing office tenants. They're repurposing these buildings. They're bringing in, and it's not just affordable, it's market rate housing too. I hope to come back to you in the next few months with those same developers to share with you how they are transforming and revitalizing their buildings. In addition to that, there are opportunities, these parking lots and underdeveloped properties surrounding the waterfront. And the mayor has allowed a lot of this. calling in developers and property owners. We're meeting with developers and property owners across the region. I'll be going to a conference in San Francisco next month, a BizNow conference, to meet with multifamily developers, market rate, to bring them here and to introduce them to the opportunities in Stockton. And also working very closely with our police department to really share all the positive news and how things are transforming here in Stockton. I know I get beaten up on this one all the time. Retail, restaurant, attraction, and shopping center enhancement. Our staff have been strategically meeting with the different owners of the shopping centers across town. It's challenging when you For example, Weberstown is 90% lease. There's not a lot of space to add new tenants. And of course, some folks will say, well, I may not like the list of tenants they have. I don't have control over that. However, there are opportunities for infill. For example, that former auto tire shop, 13,000 square feet, we're going to ICSC in a couple, International Council for Shopping Centers in San Diego in a couple weeks, and we'll be promoting that site along with Weberstown and their brokers. We're also talking to folks about the former Sears and the former REI, so there are opportunities to attract national retailers that are not in this marketplace from a Nordstrom rack to a DSW to a yard house and others that are not in Stockton but are within a 25 to 30 mile radius and before I end my day I'm going to get a Texas Roadhouse because I was trying to get them in Brentwood and I was unsuccessful because they were in Tracy. But they are definitely looking closely at Stockton. All right, partnerships. So forging our partnerships with our various partners across this area. As I mentioned earlier, We don't have a bag of tricks. We're not like Felix the cat. Some of you may remember him. But what we're doing here is creating an environment where we can work with our partners. and we have several good partners. We have the San Joaquin Partnership, we have the county's WorkNet, we have Delta College, and several successful nonprofit agencies that we're partnering with to attract jobs and to train our folks. And a recent example of that was with Walmart. When they came in, I introduced them to the county's WorkNet program so they could recruit workers locally. Targeted services. I know we've been talking to a number of council members That want supermarkets and so forth in the areas one of the areas in is in South Stockton Working with the property owners working with the vice mayor to hopefully attract A full service supermarket as well as drug stores and home improvements and other uses. As well as on the north end of town along the eight mile road corridor to attract a full service supermarket. So there are opportunities to attract what I call niche businesses that are lacking from this area. And then there's, when you meet with developers and business prospects, they all want to know about incentives. I worked in a number of cities, and Stockton has quite a bit of incentives, as well as staff here to work with them on fulfilling them. And with that, our recommendations again, we're asking you to approve this three-year economic development action plan and authorize the city manager to take necessary and appropriate actions to carry out the purpose and intent of the motion. I stand before you to take any questions, comments. This is a living, breathing document. So over the course of the next year, I'll be, even though I'm using a pen, I'll be marking it up and we'll be making changes because the market changes, your views change, a number of things change. Thank you.

Okay. Council. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I'll say now I appreciate the work that all the staff has done with me over the last year and a half to prepare for the meeting we're having tomorrow with all the developers and the brokers and staff around the future development of District 6 and all the opportunities. And I love the presentation about all the unique and rich opportunities to develop in Stockton. You know, one thing that I will say is repeatedly I've said we need to find a partner to put Stockton someplace special at both sides of the freeway to start changing the narrative because this community, and I'll just use Western Ranch as the backdrop when I say this, has been promised so many things and let down so many times. It's almost like when I was in foster care, my mom used to come and say, I'm going to take you home, I'm going to take you home. It took her forever to do it. She did it eventually. But I started losing hope after a while because I'm like, you've been saying this for five years now. And for Western Ranch, it's been 20. And when I think about, and I'm sure the mayor knows, it's like showing that shiny object that people get excited about, and then we don't want to over-promise and under-deliver. When I think about And what we saw here, Councilman Ricas and I talk often about making the Miracle Mile an entertainment zone. How do we create an entertainment zone in downtown Stockton? How do we partner and utilize all of our unique relationships to make the entertainment hub of this community right here in Stockton? The reality is that, and I think the conversation needs to be had, is that this council has to continue to keep its act together because you can scare business away too. We actually had an amazing presentation from FIFA that came with a, they made a $200 million commitment. We sat down with the ports. We came up with this whole plan. Staff even drafted designs of what it could look like to bring a national soccer team here. And then, you know, they did some research and got scared. And then they backed out. And then We had a call with a billionaire about him and his friends bringing an opportunity here, and then they got scared because they Googled. And the reality is, is unless things really change, and just looking at the conversation tonight about the next meeting, we know chaos is coming. You can kind of see it down the path there. It scares business away. So while the public is watching, it's not just the shiny presentation and the decks and all the staff, because everything you said I agree with, you know. It's about how we can actually do business. Because as we talk about Texas Roadhouse, who right now is in the news for a lot of things they're trying to change. So this opportunity could be great in that effort. In order to attract that business, they have to feel safe that the millions of dollars they're going to invest and the image of their company is going to be able to land in this city and thrive and not be met with bullets, no pun intended. The other thing is that I think I've shared with the city manager, I'm extremely optimistic about what the future of Stockton looks like. And I do think that while I've read online a lot of conversation about the data centers, which I think is great, thank every young person in the room tonight that is coming down and using their voice for civic engagement. What I would say to everybody, staff, council, management, the community, is that when you look at the financial fragility of our city that is really dependent on special taxes just to make it, barely make it, and the fact that we just settled these contracts, we have to be very open-minded about innovation and ideas. That doesn't mean that we need to fold or we need to not think of, yeah, sell out our city or sell out each other. But I think we do sell each other out when we come into any conversation without an open mind. This past weekend, I spent some time in Mountain View with the founder of Dropbox and the founder of OpenAI and had lots of conversation about AI, the future of innovation and technology. and the unavoidable track that we see technology moving on. So when I think about Mary Elizabeth and all of our environmental heroes who are looking to think about the needs of our communities, some of which in my district have had lots of bad experiences with the city over the decades, when we think about innovation, I think it's more about how we align and how we work together, walk together, stay together in an interest-based approach to finding a solution that allows us to become less dependent on special taxes and thrives in a way where we continue to reinvest and build our community. Love the presentation. Want to yield to my colleagues. I know there's going to be lots of public comment, which I do want to hear. And I know there's lots of work to be done. But I do think, again, if we're thinking about this, it's less about shiny presentations and more about when the rubber meets the road, how we show up, how we make people feel safe to invest in our city, how we welcome them in, roll out the red carpet, hold their hands across the finish line, and make them feel a part of someplace special and not someplace in hell that they accidentally bumped into. Thank you.

Councilman Padilla.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank Ricardo because the presentation was very uplifting and energetic, which I appreciate, and super excited that we have you here. So thank you to CM Ford and that we have an economic director strictly focusing on economic development. And also, you have been extremely supportive and helpful in my district with the needs that my constituents want. So I want to thank you for that as well. You know, it was kind of funny in the beginning, you mentioned that we really need to promote our city and that's what I've said probably the last two years is that we need to change that narrative you know because we constantly hear all the negative and that negative gets out in the community and I saw some people shaking their heads like haha but you know it's again like you do things over and over again for 30 days and it becomes a habit So if we're out in the public talking negative about our city, how are we ever going to be changing that narrative? You know, we got to be talking about our waterways. We got to be talking about those four, you know, teams that we have and, you know, whatever's to come. And that is the way that we're going to do that. And so I appreciate you recognizing those things in your PowerPoint. So thank you again. Councilman Villaputua.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I as well as want to thank you for the presentation. I know about a few weeks ago we had a meeting downtown discussing. I think Jordan did a great job in highlighting and taking initiative of that meeting regarding downtown and what the community would like to have their inputs and sense to it. I know the last meeting that we did have it was a daytime and and it was very hard for a lot of people to Come to that meeting. So if we could have more of those means maybe have the one After hours five o'clock so other people could come in because I want the community to put their two cents Just my ideas and what they want So if we could add that on there and maybe talk about that on our next meeting down the road and just see this is what we came with, what the ideas are for our community, that would be a great idea for us. Thank you.

Councilman Enriquez.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Mr. Nguyen, I appreciate your presentation, and I agree with what my colleagues have shared so far and what they've said, especially the image enhancement and promotion of the community. There's a lot of great ideas, and I appreciate your energy because there's a wide array of things, initiatives, areas of the city you thought of with your team, and I appreciate that you touched on most parts of the city. I'm also thinking, and I have some questions, but I want to hold them off until after the public gives their comments, because I know there's a lot that's specifically focused on one of your slides on revenue enhancements and data centers. And I have some questions afterwards, but just in terms of all these great initiatives, eventually, I would say within a year, you might come back to us and say, of everything I presented to the council on September 1st, 2026, you know, eight of these really took a stronghold and we're moving forward. Right. I don't want to say that you or your staff are overwhelmed. This is a lot. And I love the initiative and the drive. But ultimately, things are going to start to narrow down once you get callbacks, interest from other companies that want to come to Stockton. So things will eventually narrow down. So I'm excited to see what that looks like because it seems like you're casting a wide net. Do you have a comment?

Many of these are already in the works. Many of them are already, like the hospital, Miracle Mile. A number of these are already in the implementation phase. So yeah, we have a large net, but we're using the very thin mesh. So we're going to catch a lot in that net.

and i appreciate that and and i think what to this presentation i guess that would be my follow-up if there are things in motion then i would like to see that i'm sure my colleagues would like to see what's currently in motion because this is a lot so you know if you're putting st joseph's hospital expansion medium obviously Some of us most of us maybe all of us know that that's happening But I think knowing what's in motion is very helpful and then also in terms of any updates Hey, you know council I met with this partner as you know, we've been connecting with them for four or five months hypothetically This is the outcome of that conversation, you know, and this is the ideas of what they want to do after that conversation I know you and I were doing a drive-through of district for later this week which I appreciate and I'll be sure to give my constituents an update on that and One thing that I know is missing is, and this is separate from what most of the public will share, is that also how are we currently helping our current businesses? That's something that I hear constantly from Yosemite Street Village, the second oldest neighborhood in the city, and Miracle Mile. When people think about empty buildings I know that's something that this council really worked on last year in terms of creating going after those that have vacant buildings and lots and how are we holding them accountable I think I can speak for all my colleagues none of us want to see vacant buildings just being out there we want something that that is intentional and well thought out I also don't just want to go down to the route of we're just going after low-hanging fruit just because we're settling or just because it's revenue I you know I I A lot of folks know how I felt about fast food restaurants. Just because it's a job doesn't mean it's a good job, and I'm going to stick to that. And with that, I feel something about our infrastructure, not just our water infrastructure, our electrical infrastructure, our physical infrastructure. If we're building all of this new investment, then I want Public Works to be working with you to say, this is also how we're going to couple and – level out all of the businesses coming in while we're ensuring that we have good infrastructure. I don't want to just build and then figure out how to do infrastructure afterwards, because then it's just going to create more congestion, harming our communities. So that also plays into effect that I think most people don't think about. So while I can see a lot of revenue, and this is all great and flashy, we also have to think about how the other departments are working with you to support this wide net that you're already casting. So I'll hold my questions after the public comment. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilman Blower.

Thank you, Ricardo. I appreciate your presentation. And it's exciting to hear about the potential for things to come. My thought, and Council Member Enriquez kind of hit on this, is just being in the loop of what's going on. I really would like to know, again, what's in the pipeline. But then as new things come, like when you do land that Texas project, Barbecue, you know, we want to know about that. Or Roadhouse, Texas Roadhouse. Ikea, you know, when you can get things like that, and I know there's some sensitivity that, you know, when you're in the negotiations, you can't tell us. But once something is solid and you've inked it, I'd sure love for us as a council to just be kind of updated on on a semi-regular basis. And I, too, am thrilled to have economic development being such a focus. I mean, that's really got to be a very, very important priority for us so that we have the revenue to do the things that we want to do. And I do think it's great that you're just focused on that. So, again, just my two cents would be if you can just kind of keep us in the loop as you have these wins, that would be great. Thank you.

So you weren't here in February when we had our meeting about council priorities. And I can't tell you when we've ever said economic development was a priority for the city of Stockton. But this council has said that. And you have delivered a plan that I hope we see flourish and grow and that it's smart and it is you know we're good neighbors that we are enhancing our community not hurting our community but what I will say is that you know that positive message that's something many of us up here have been saying the positive the positive because vice mayor is right people are scared the number of people that have come up to the fifth floor and said, man, you have such a beautiful city. Sacramento doesn't have this. Oakland doesn't have this. But people are, yeah, they're afraid. They're like, now, will you have the support of your council? That's an underlying question that we're asked. But what I'll say is, I was at the Chick-fil-A grand opening, but it's owned locally. April and Jeff, a husband and wife, this is their second. They own the one on March Lane, and that is, they said, is the number one Chick-fil-A in the state of California. I don't know if they said nation, but they said the number one. And I was floored by that. So they opened the second one here. They used to live in Discovery Bay. And they said, no, we're moving to Stockton. And they're happy living here in Stockton. I said, can you spread the word on that? Can you really let people know that? But along those lines, the question came about infrastructure. And I will tell you, Councilwoman Padilla and I were driving down Eight Mile Road. more than a year ago, and we said we were caught five, it was five light cycles before we could get through the intersection. That's how long it took. And we said, you know, this needs to be widened, it needs to be widened. But we had a meeting last year about Lower Sacramento Road and putting it back out to bid to Thomas Martin to redo the plan that has already been done to widen Lower Sacramento Road. But they said, oh, well, we gotta start the housing first. Well, what comes first, the house or the cart? If you don't have the infrastructure to support all those cars going by, everybody then is locked up in traffic. People drive faster. They're distracted. And then they get frustrated. And they're like, oh, I got to get here. I got to get here. So I agree with a lot of what was said up here. I don't think we're saying anything you haven't heard before. But what I will say is I believe you. I believe what you're saying, and I believe in you, and that we have great things that are gonna be coming to the city of Stockton, and that's large in part to the work that you are putting in. You are making the calls, you are setting up the meetings, you are showing people what we have to offer, And that hasn't happened in a decade. So I just want to thank you. Yes, we're going to get on to public comment. But somebody has to be driving this part of the ship. And this council has said that this is a priority. And you are delivering on it. And the one thing you didn't, you skipped over a couple of things. But that med school is going to be huge, along with the expansion. Because we're talking about a lot of different jobs. And we're talking about career jobs. We're talking about high-paying, career, livable-wage jobs that will help raise up this community. And once we know who those people are coming in, just make sure that they know that we will build their workforce. We have Delta College. We have a great relationship with them. We've got Stan State here right here in Stockton for health care. We have University of the Pacific. We have a... We just have a lot of opportunity right here. We have the building trades, for crying out loud, MC3. We all are familiar with the MC3 program. I wish we could expand that and actually have multiple or more people in that program, because they say if you build it, they will come. This council, we get it all together, they're going to come to the city of Stockton. So thank you. Oh, go ahead, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, first of all, I feel left out, because I don't know what the MC3. C3 program is, but I, oh, but then now I know it. Okay. No, she said a lot of things there. You know, when you talk about infrastructure, you know, one of the things we have to figure out, because I didn't, when I, once I got an office, I was like, we're going to South Stockton and we're building. They were like, not with them old pipes. You know, I didn't even think about infrastructure and how old the infrastructure in District 6 was. I'm like, what does that mean? So as I've learned and as we've talked about it, you know, is infrastructure taxed at some point of conversation the community needs to engage in? So we're talking about something that can actually show where their tangible tax dollars are going to building and developing our city, because we know there's lots to build here, right? The other thing, when we talk about the fast food place, what was it called? Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A. I want to open in Chick-fil-A. Obviously, I want to do it in Stockton, because I don't want to be reported. But I will say that we need to also think beyond fast food, because although we do have fast food families here and lots of thriving companies, and I'm glad that people are thriving you know, thinking about a healthier community, too. Like, what, you know, finding a juice bar. Like, I got to go to your district. Well, it's not even our city, right. So, like, you know, I would love, like, you know, healthier options, things that our families and our kids that are affordable but that people can go to. And the last thing, again, when we talk about technology and, you know, all the people that are here to talk, to speak out around concerns around technology. I do want to say there's a lot of people in our community that drive to the Bay Area to go to work. We need to think about Stockton in some way, because there's so much opportunity and there's so many young people here with fresh ideas and innovative aspirations. How do we make Stockton the cousin to the Silicon Valley? How do we partner in a way where we can open up our doors to create really great paying careers, not just jobs, but careers that allow for people people who may want to move on or evolve or to make more money and to stay here maybe have a 10 minute commute versus a two hour a day commute I want to think about how we can keep people here and people who live here not feel like they have to go to the Bay Area for a good job or a good time so that's kind of just my thoughts but again I echo what the mayor said and thank you for for your presentation. And one last thing, the medical school. You know, why can't we have a, what do you call it, like a satellite hub in District 6? You know, maybe next to McKinley Park. I don't know. I'm just dreaming now. But I do like the idea of tapping into our current partnerships where people are heavily invested in the city. But again, thank you.

Okay. Moving. Oh, go ahead.

I'm sorry if I can just add just a couple things part of the thing that we heard you back in February when we had your goal setting. I'll call it a retreat. So the top three things that you brought up that day was economic development, infrastructure, and public safety. And the one thing that I hope you begin to see is that we have been focusing in on those three things. even along with youth activities and keeping our young people busy. So we hear you. We go through that exercise for a reason and within the next 30 days, I didn't say 45 because I said that two weeks ago, within the next 30 days we will be coming back to begin to put things in front of you dealing with infrastructure. Because that does tie in and as you see new development, we're holding those developers in charge also of doing infrastructure so to vote infrastructure with developers Infrastructure with us as a city and so we are addressing those issues we did not take February lightly and This is the plan coming together. I

Moving on to public comment, Al-Azhar should be the first one to speak. He was who came up. Oh, press the button, please.

Good afternoon, Mayor and council members. I'm speaking today because I think the discussion about data centers deserves some perspective. Artificial intelligence is going to be part of our future, whether Stockton participates in that future or not. Data centers are the physical infrastructure that makes much of the technology possible. So I don't think the question should simply be, are data centers good or bad? The real question is, what does Stockton get in return? And what does Stockton have to give up? We should also look carefully at electricity, water, noise, land use, infrastructure, environmental effects, and ultimately who pays for those impacts. We should also consider economic development, construction, jobs, tax revenue, technological investment, and the possibility that Stockton could benefit from being part of the emerging industry rather than watching it develop somewhere else. I would encourage the council member, the council to, I would also encourage the council to approach with measurable standards that in motion, rather than motion, whether those standards evolve, water consumption, energy, infrastructure, noise, and environmental mitigation and community benefits or the project's contribution to Stockton. I don't think Stockton should automatically say yes to every data center, but I also don't think we should automatically say no to an entire technology because it creates legitimate concerns. Let's make developers prove that benefits outweigh the costs, and if they do, let Stockton benefit from this opportunity.

Thank you.

Lawrence.

Good afternoon. It's been a long day. My name is Lawrence Calderon. I'm a longtime resident of Stockton, California. I'm concerned about the build of the data centers in Stockton in the next one to three years as described in the economic plan. I urge the city to provide more information not yet included in the plan. I feel like we glossed over it, didn't really talk about it. Why is the city going after the data center industry? What does it offer? How did the city determine those benefits? What type of data center is the city planning to build? Where is the city planning to build the data center? How is the city planning to inform the residents in proximity to the potential build out area? Members of the public, like myself, found out about this item over the weekend. The information in the accompanying documents doesn't provide enough information for the public to engage meaningfully on data center development projects in our community. Furthermore, the other projects listed in the economic plan should also have more detailed information for the public to provide a thoughtful comment. Data centers are widely known for nuisance impact to residential communities and many more impacts to nearby environment. Without enough information about the strategy to attract the development of data centers into Stockton, it is very easy for members of the public to feel uncertain about significant impacts to a city that already is highly polluted. Thank you for your attention.

Stephen. Stephen Morales.

All right, I was expecting five minutes, but anyways, we'll jam through this. Hello, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council and City Manager. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Steve Morales, and I hope you can hear me. So they're going to add another minute. I'm a longtime resident of Stockton and a business owner here. And like many of you, I believe that service is important. I've had the pleasure of being on the board of directors and community council, being asked to be there by the wonderful St. Joseph's Medical Center that you've mentioned already. That started out as a $600 million project. So this number even surprises me. Anyways, we've discussed it in many of our meetings. I've been on the board for the Stockton Food Bank, Hispanic Chamber, El Concilio, and many others. So I appreciate very much all of your sacrifices. I believe Johnny Ford here has done a masterful job at bringing a team together, and Ricardo is a good example of the enthusiasm that the team has from Christine, Audrey, Dante, Tina, Jamil, And Penny, who's a public works officer. Anyways, he said service is a blessing, and I believe that. So cutting my time short, I'm here to support the economic development plan put forth. I do think that there's a lot of people here that are going to be speaking. And sometimes in negotiations and things, you put red herrings in. things that you don't really need or want to go after. There's so much here. There's like 99% of this program or this plan is great, and I think he's going to be able to pull it off with his staff, Jordan, and the others. So I hope you'll support the plan. Thanks. Alexis? Alexis?

Hello, my name is Lexis Wilson. I was born and raised in Stockton and have been a resident of this beautiful city for 35 years. As a graduate of Venture Academy's CTECH program, I've always believed technology is a critical part of our society as it advances into the future. As AI data centers become a larger, seemingly inevitable part of our future, we have the chance to implement positive changes to current standards. It is imperative that we provide new ecological and environmentally safe ways to process and store data. Currently, data center cooling systems can use up to 5 million gallons of fresh water daily. Stockton only moved to stage one of mandatory water conservation in May of 2024. Where are we planning to acquire the mass amounts of water needed to maintain a data center? Data centers also use over a thousand megawatts of electricity. The Stockton Cogger generation facility installed capacity is only at 54 megawatts. Many Stocktonians rely on power for medical necessities. How will the city protect its citizens from life-threatening power outages caused by data centers on top of blackouts, heat waves, and other unforeseen circumstances that we already struggle with? Data centers also emit nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and diesel particulate matter into the air. Citizens living in cities with data centers have contracted respiratory and cardiovascular issues, leading to many unnecessary and premature deaths, and causing millions of dollars in annual health damages. Research suggests that data centers could result in 1,300 premature deaths by 2028. My question to the council is, can you ethically provide the resources and technology to run a data center? And if the answer is no, are the lives of your citizens worth it?

The speaker microphone's off. We're going to take a 10 minute break. We'll come back at 418. So we are coming back from our recess. I just want to remind everyone that council is here to hear everyone. There are 38 speakers that we will be hearing from. We've heard from four. Let's be respectful of everybody's time. When they come up to the mic, we're giving you our full attention, and you have your two minutes. So who is our next speaker?

Nate Knox. I'm going to press the button in front of you, sir, until it turns green. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry.

Very comfortable chairs, but I have to straighten up my back afterwards. I'm going to try to get through this with simple bullet points. Okay, things I'm in favor of, I thought were great. The 6 a.m. to 18 hour downtown development is excellent. We know that 9 to 5 developments leave ghost towns. Continued facade improvements, great. Kmart infills, a great idea. The Sears store in Phil is a great idea. And I also want to see the City Hall vacant land between the arena and stadium filled in and the Wells Fargo building. I'd also like to see the retail or what is intended, I think, to be retail space under the parking garage that your arena developed that's been there for 20 years now empty. And now I'm all for the medical improvements and the UOP plan for medical center and expansion. I do want to point out that the medical... Health of our medical facilities is going to be largely dependent down the road on federal and state and insurance availability for medical care. And if they keep cutting the stuff the way the feds and states may have to, I wouldn't count on that as a full guaranteed 100% win. You could see empty hospitals down the road. Okay, I'm not totally against developing anything north of 8 Mile Road That's just old-fashioned 40 year old urban sprawl, especially for a big-box store you and you're gonna stretch out infrastructure security and And those are the things that have bankrupted the city in the past is stretching out the infrastructure and security zones AI centers I'm not going to say I'm against them, and I know they're coming. I'd like us to be very cautious with them and worry about the power intensity, the water shortages and pollution, and other environmental factors that may not be fully understood yet. I'm also disappointed the revenue enhancements only show the big box stores and things. What's not been shown here is developing the waterfront, the Maritime Museum development, and activities for teens like roller skates and amusement-type activities that we used to have and we've lost. Thank you.

Ashley. Next is Ashley.

Hello, council members and mayor. My name is Ashley Castaneda, and I am a District 5 resident. I am commenting in opposition to agenda item 10.2, the motion to approve the three-year economic development action plan. While it is important for the City of Stockton to continue growing and expanding revenue-generating opportunities, it is deeply concerning to see the proposed implementation of data centers in this plan. Data centers carry a high energy demand that threatens both our local power grid and community utility rates. For example, surging electricity demand from these facilities risks driving up utility prices for everyday residents who are already struggling with high cost of living expenses. Data centers also currently consume 4.4% of all U.S. electricity, a figure projected to nearly triple to 12% by 2028. And because AI facilities require uninterrupted 24-7 power, they cannot reduce usage during peak demand intervals. This continuous high demand would then exert large amounts of pressure on transmission systems and severely jeopardize overall grid reliability. As a Stockton resident, I can attest that we already live with stress from local challenges such as public safety concerns, housing uncertainty, economic strain, and environmental health impacts. Adding data centers and putting further pressures on our local power grid is just another burden that the city would be placing on constituents they claim to care about. I strongly urge the council to oppose incorporating high-impact data centers into our city's economic plan until energy and cost impacts on Stockton residents are fully addressed. And please remember that it is an election year. Thank you for your time.

Spencer?

Good afternoon, Mayor Fugazi and City Council members. My name is Spencer Fern, and I am the Science Program Manager at Restore the Delta, and I am a current District 3 resident of Stockton, and I wanted to raise my concerns of the ecological impacts from the three-year Economic Development Action Plan and the inclusion of data centers. AI identity centers across the United States have understandably received the ire of local communities. As you see in this meeting today, I think that's pretty much also the same here. As someone who recreates and constantly measures water quality across the San Joaquin River and its route through Stockton, i.e. why I'm in such a drag today because I came from the field, I don't want to see AI or development of AI in the economic development sections in Stockton. Uh, adding AI data centers and seeding land for them in Stockton would likely lead to impacts and landscape changes. And with other large scale projects like the Delta tunnel project, providing extreme pressure on this Delta resource, uh, will further place burdens on disadvantaged communities in Stockton. Stockton already has a plethora of pollution problems in the city should focus on improving conditions for the constituents rather than moving harmful projects with little oversight or forward. The other major ecological impact that I want to highlight is that AI data centers also heat the water around them. You heard this from previous comments, but this is already noticed with the Nautilus data barge that is currently near the end of the deep water shipping channel, increasing water temperatures around the floating center by up to four degrees Celsius. The water conditions I monitor thrive in water or high warmer water temperatures, but aside from water conditions, the water that evaporates from cooling AI data centers end up evaporating into the atmosphere, which does not mean that they can always come back in the same form of precipitation. We continue to see this country put profits over people with these AI data centers, and I can only ask that the city council vote with that in mind, and thank you.

Next, we have Isabella. Isabella, she's coming.

Hi, good afternoon, Mayor Fugazi and council members. I'm speaking to you today as someone who was born and raised until the age of 18 in District 3, just walking distance from the Village West Marina, where my access to a relatively safe and unpolluted part of the Delta has been an anchor in my personal and career development. I wanted to highlight Restore the Delta's white paper on the environmental justice implications of artificial intelligence infrastructure in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which makes clear that the state is severely lacking on frameworks and regulations that could ensure protections to the land and communities specifically against AI industry. and therefore calls for proactive governance based on transparency, ecological stewardship, tribal sovereignty, and fair public involvement. I just wanted to highlight the last two, tribal sovereignty and fair public involvement, since I don't see those being prioritized if the council is to continue subtly including extremely dangerous and obviously controversial projects into its economic plans. So my questions are, how will you ensure fair public involvement is maintained if you are to continue pushing AI infrastructure? And how are you honoring your duty to uphold tribal sovereignty, especially in those decisions regarding economic development that has irreversible effects on the land? Thank you.

Christian? Christian?

Good afternoon. Am I able to show some images on my phone to you? Can you see that? This is an image of nighttime, but it's bright as day. Miles away, you can see the lights coming from the AI data centers. This will make it so that we can't see the stars. It'll keep people from being able to go to sleep properly. The sound they emit is 55 to 85 decibels at all times. That's noise pollution that will wreak havoc on both humans and animals. I'm not good at this. And finally, last year, the total amount of energy used by AI data centers was equal to the entire country of Germany. That's 1.5% of the entire planet's energy usage, which is a detriment to the entire country, honestly. To the world. And that's all I've got to say.

Natalie Wagner? Natalie Wagner? Casey?

Hello. I have earned my associate's degree in both business and in history from Delta College. And I am currently a senior at Stanislaus State Stockton campus in the business program as part of our coursework. We learn about SWOT analysis. This analysis forces business professionals to consider strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So we are analyzing projects as they truly are, the good, the bad, and the what if. This leaves me with questions about data centers. I think our representatives need to answer before they approve data centers for our community. In California, we have had water wars for over a century, and as recently as 2022, Stockton restricted water use. Data centers consume a tremendous amount of water to cool computers. When we have our next drought, will the city of Stockton reserve our water for our people to sustain life or give it to data centers? Data centers consume a tremendous amount of energy. We have had black and brownouts during heat waves. Will the data center be made a Zone 50? In a Zone 50, PG&E prioritizes service for critical infrastructure and services such as our hospital at St. Joseph's and does everything in its power to keep the electricity flowing, only cutting it to them as a last result. Do we care more about data centers than providing electricity for at-home medical devices and life-saving air conditioning for our elderly and at-risk population? As a business student, I know if demand increases and supply remains constant, prices will increase. New power plants take years to approve and build, but I do not hear us debating about the construction of a new power plant. If the city of Stockton approves data centers, our energy costs will increase. 15.5% of Stockton residents are already living at or below the poverty line. Is it the position of the city of Stockton that controlling costs of essential services is not important to their constituents? My mother told me that just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Stockton has the opportunity to critically analyze the costs and benefits before we get ourselves into a position where we are putting data before people. Thank you.

Next we have Casey. Following Casey is Sunny. We have Casey. Following Casey, we have Sunny. Do we have a Sunny? Then we have Jasmine. After Jasmine, we have Mary Elizabeth.

Good afternoon, Mayor, council members. Welcome, Director Noguera, to our city of Stockton, which most of the people in the room love and care for. My name is Jasmine Peterson. I'm a resident here of Stockton. I was born at St. Joseph's Medical Center more than 30 years ago. I won't say more than that. And beginning in 2017, and for the I joined and have served our city on the Climate Action Plan Advisory Committee in the year 2017. And for the last decade, I've worked alongside residents, community organizations and the city on climate planning, neighborhood investment, workforce development and community health efforts. While I understand many of the goals in your plan and the desire to put a plan into action, our community deserves deeper economic analysis of the opportunities before us and really an acknowledgement of our existing economic assets. For the last 10 years, we've invested significantly in shaping our future through the 2014 Climate Action Plan, the 2040 General Plan, the 2019 Sustainable Neighborhood Plan, which all build on one another and approach housing and transportation planning, workforce development, infrastructure investments in such a way that has led into our current climate action planning process. Those efforts have generated rich data about land use, infrastructure, housing, transportation, environmental conditions, neighborhood assets, and where significant public investment is already occurring to the tune of over $175 million. As we establish this new economic strategy, I think we have an opportunity to bring all that information together and do the math. If we're considering any new development, we must also consider the marginal cost of extending that infrastructure compared to directing investment towards area where the infrastructure already exists. If we are pursuing advance, thank you. I hope to talk with you soon.

After Mary Elizabeth, Yolanda Amen.

Thank you very much, and I did submit written comments at 7.57 this morning, a reminder about the pledge that was made at the time that the general plan was adopted. And there was a special area up there north on 8 Mile Road, you know, was supposed to be for enterprise and education and not a big box store. And it's a shame, you know, that planning has allowed the condition where there aren't grocery stores near every development. And that's something that we need to think about when making large swaths of residential. First of all, I'd like to ask that data centers and advanced manufacturing as a language be removed from the plant. Over 200 people signed this petition. All of you received a copy. It went to the city council. It went to the planning commission. And this was, you know, good planning practices. And one of the committees that, Mayor, I believe that you still sit on, came out with some recommendations. But none of that has been presented to us. No. So we have like fighting after it. And I'd like to bring up the point that the Board of Supervisors today considered a moratorium because they don't have planning requirements. The City of Stockton also does not have planning requirements. and that's something that we should be having in place before. The issue of infrastructure is real, and that's one of the things that the county is going to be looking at, you know, so that they can appropriately consider placing a data center someplace in the unincorporated areas. No advanced manufacturing, no data centers. Thank you.

First, I am for pretty much everything in your plan that you have for economic development. I'm also, you said you skipped over the data part really quickly and said why are we here talking about it? You put it in your slides, that's why we're here. We were once told to go paperless, to save trees and to help protect our planet. Soon you'll be asking us to accept massive AI data centers that can consume enormous amounts of electricity, water, potentially create serious environmental consequences. We have survived without data centers, but no one has ever survived without clean drinking water. We can't drink data. We are already dealing with climate changes and drought concerns, so why would we bring in monster centers that could place even greater demands on our unlimited resources? These monster centers affect water supplies, energy use, ecosystem, vanishing wildlife, migration patterns changing already, and even lowering home values. Instead of giving away our land and resources to these massive facilities, let's continue focusing on affordable housing, protecting farmland, supporting small businesses, and creating jobs that will truly benefit our community. As Judge Judy's dad used to tell her, please don't pee on my leg and tell me that it's raining. You put this in your plan, and you haven't brought anything to us, I don't trust this because a lot of times what happens, this happens and then the next thing you know, two meetings from now, you'll be voting to bring in data centers. That's why I don't trust this. Please take it off of this plan. I agree with everything else that is on there except for this. Please take it off.

Next up is Julie. After Julie is Anika. Following Julie will be Anika.

Well, I want to start off on a positive note in saying that was one of the most exciting presentations that I've ever heard made, and I could buy into it 99%. But like everybody else here, quality of life is essential to the vitality of Stockton. This document creates a great gateway for data centers to be created in the city of Stockton prior to any public discussion or disclosure of impacts. Stockton already suffers from air and water quality issues. So a full analysis and disclosure of impacts is imperative before any further steps are taken. In addition to air and water quality impacts, there is a large amount of information available that documents the noise and heat packs of these centers. They run 24-7, 365. not to mention the drain on our power grid. Our residents have a right to know and fully understand all impacts prior to any type of approval for a speculative or real project. After these impacts are known, appropriate strategies must be developed and implemented to reduce energy consumption, water usage, and carbon emissions. This is not a short to medium term process. This is a longer term process. If you truly care about our city's future and care about our children, our younger people that are here, then I respectfully request that you remove the data center from the plan, put it out to something future after discussions have been held, and I will become your number one cheerleader for the plan as presented. Thank you.

After Nico B. Sahira.

My name is Annika. I'm a longtime resident of District 4. I firmly oppose the plan to build data centers. There's been repeated evidence across the nation of the impact of these data centers on communities and cities. We see, even recently this month in Gary, Indiana, strained power grid and increased electrical costs, extended outages, endangering people's lives. We've seen in Newton County and Morgan County, Georgia, where 30 million gallons of water was drained without being paid for, where drinking water was tainted beyond potability. You speak of being interested in enhancing our image. Do you want to be another cautionary tale? Do you care? I think those in this room care about your electrical bills, our electrical bills. Do you care about access to clean water? I hope so. These AI tech corporations do not. They do not care about land or water or power or future. They've demonstrated that again and again. They care only about their own pockets and the myth of the capitalist growth imperative. So I ask you, council, who is this proposed revenue really for? And who bears the cost? What cost are we willing to pay for revenue in this city? And I ask that if you care about land or water or power, the future of this city or the image of this city, put a moratorium on data centers now. Thank you.

After Sahir, we have Joanna.

Good afternoon, council. I agree with our presenter that Stockton has an image problem. Our image problem is homelessness, drugs, crime, general poverty. If you've gone to the downtown area, you see what I'm talking about. I live off Miracle Mile. I see it every day. However, like Vice President mentioned about shiny objects, Stockton's image problem cannot be fixed with shiny objects like sports events, Tesla centers, yet another Amazon fulfillment center, yet another Walmart that will outcompete local supermercados. Our image problem is the product of human suffering that must be dealt with at the source. The solution is stronger social services, accessible health care, getting roofs over people's heads, getting food on their table, keeping their children out of gangs so that they can reach excellence. We want Stockton citizens to aspire to excellence. Does working at a Walmart or being an Amazon associate sound like career excellence or the type of jobs that people want to come to Stockton for? To me, it sounds like service. It was said in talks with Gary Tan and Naval Ravikant, who are two venture capital investors with AI companies, that in the ideal future, there will be two jobs left in the world, anthropic employee and sex worker for anthropic employee. Is this the future that we want, where a few Silicon Valley tech barons rule over the whole world? The San Joaquin County is built on the back of agricultural laborers feeding the entire nation, and we are so often the first ones to be exploited. Everyone should have a say in our future, not just billionaires. Thank you.

After Joanna, we have Matthew Amen.

Hi again. So I wanted to actually direct this at, what's his name? Ricardo. Ricardo, I love your ambition, and I'm actually going to do you a favor and not mention data centers, if I can avoid it. But I do want to say that the reason it'll fail is because you're not thinking about the soul of Stockton. You're not thinking about the citizens here. You're not thinking about the people who live here. These investments that you're making, yes, they're going to be great. They would be great. But they're not including the community. How are we supposed to have something that we want to promote and be proud of if we're not a part of it? If we're not the people who are running those businesses. I mean, people are already in business. They're already doing great. But you're not giving a handout to the people who actually live here and need it. And I want that to be directed at all of you guys, too. What I was saying earlier about yes, hoo-hoo, ha-ha, there's nothing wrong with that if you're allocating it directly. You're allocating it to, quite frankly, people who do not need it. And if you want this city to be something that you're proud of, you would realize that and actually invest in the people who live here and voted you here.

Thank you.

After Matthew, we have Eliza E.

Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the council. My name is Mattie Amen, and I'm the founder and CEO of Huddle AI, and co-owner of Huddle Co-Work in downtown Stockton. I won't try to sound like I'm mansplaining, because everyone's talked about all the negative effects of AI, but this is exactly why we need a fundamentally different approach. The local tech ecosystem being built here by us at HuddleOS and Hatch Workshop and Distinguished is designed to fight against that very corporate exploitation. We are deploying decentralized node-based local AI infrastructure right here in downtown Stockton that offers real sustainable solutions, which are zero aquifer strain, which means our decentralized edge computing completely eliminates the need for massive water-cooled mega warehouses. This directly protects our critical agricultural community and the fragile Delta ecosystem. No noise pollution. Because our architecture relies on distributed local servers rather than heavy industrial data center campuses, there are zero massive cooling fans disrupting local neighborhoods. Lastly, protecting local intellectual property. Instead of a system where tech giants scrape and steal local data, Huddle OS uses a privacy-first independent cloud. This ensures local small businesses, creators, and nonprofits retain 100% ownership of their knowledge and intellectual property. I urge this council and economic development to invest in the intelligence of our people, protect our natural resources, and back local innovators who build independent infrastructure rather than corporate data pipelines that leave Stockton in the dark. Our team is happy to meet individually and share what Huddle OS has been working on, and other folks in the community that have been working on this for the past three or four years, this is something that we foresaw four or five years ago, and now we're having this conversation. And hopefully I'm coming up here with solutions rather than bringing a gavel on the problem. Thank you.

After Eliza, we have Kenny.

I love Stockton, and I think a lot of people in here do too. And that's why I get excited when I hear people talk about increasing education opportunities and job opportunities. But the job opportunities I envision in my head are not back-breaking labor. because I come from a family where generations of my family members have been forced into back-breaking labor. And I don't know about y'all in this room, but the working class people deserve better. We deserve job opportunities with upward mobility, with corporations that don't exploit them, I don't know if y'all know how many infractions Walmart has from their employees, but they have consistently exploited their employees. And they're going through several lawsuits at this moment. Dana Centers, I don't think I need to say anything that hasn't been said. Y'all know the impacts. I really encourage you to read Parable of the Sower. It's fiction, but it doesn't sound like it. If you read it in 2026, it's actually... really scary how much of this stuff is happening and like currently it was written in the 90s. I also want to say that the reason why people have such a bad view of Stockton is systemic racism because every city council has always prioritized profit over people and we need to do better and the only way to do better is to listen to create spaces and not have people that aren't from here decide what happens here. We don't want billionaires deciding what is good for us. And I want to see people actually not fund industries that actually increase the mortality rate of the people working those jobs. Because ask anyone that works at the port, ask anyone that works in the industrial parts of Stockton, and ask them about their lung health. Thank you.

After Cami, we have Jose. Jose, first up is Kenny. You're after me. Oh, my bad.

Okay, I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. On August 31st of this year, the Washington Post released a scathing article. A federal appeals court judge ruled Tuesday the First Amendment protects an individual's right to privately possess images or videos of child sexual assault created using artificial intelligence if the material does not depict a real person and remains in the home. The decision came in a case that tested the scope of laws implemented before advances in AI made it easy to create realistic-looking fake images of children. Judge John Lee, in his ruling for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh District, urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue of virtual abuse material of children in the age of AI, suggesting that technological advances complicate existing legal precedent. The Justice Department in 2024 brought charges against Stephen Anderegg of Holman, Wisconsin, alleging that he used a popular AI image generator to create thousands of explicit images of children. He was accused of breaking federal obscenity laws by producing, distributing, and possessing obscene visual depictions of minors engaged in explicit conduct. To briefly explain, AI image models utilize massive amounts of images to train their generated models. Data centers host trillions of images across millions of servers each and every day. This is because in order to train AI image models, you need to feed it thousands or even millions of images to get the result you're looking for. For example, if you want a picture of a dog, you feed it millions of pictures of dogs. If you want to train an AI model to create images of sexual abuse material involving children, what do you think you need to feed it? Data center firms have shown little to no issue hosting this type of material and have proven they are willing to protect those who seek to build these AI models while claiming it falls under the First Amendment right to free speech. Data centers only contribute to this infrastructure, and I hope you would agree that we should not be contributing to this growing problem. Does a contract with a data center firm matter to you so much that you're willing to look the other way when these companies actively defend pedophiles?

After Jose, we have Jasmine.

Good afternoon, city council members. I am currently a resident in District 6 from the 18 out of 22 years that I've been living here in Stockton, California. As many people have here made comments about, I am here to speak about the data centers and particularly where they're going to be located. because particularly within the south side of the city we have been essentially the scapegoat of businesses and just um exploit uh exploited in our um in our resources and i'm assuming that the data centers that you are going to give or the you're going to give these um these businesses the land to are going to be particularly residing in the south side where we're already facing various problems of our own most light are most seen in the um financial area and in the water area I had a firsthand account of a glimpse into the possibility of an effect. Fugazi, you yourself are an educator, as I work in an after-school program myself. I had a kid the other day come to me and say, do you have any clean drinking water? That right there made me a bit emotional because these kids already don't have any access to clean water already, but yet you are likely going to give these AI data centers an unknown, possibly huge amount of water in order to cool these RAM chips, these things in order for the components to go. And they're just going to keep coming up to us, educators are up to us, and they're going to keep asking us if we have any accessibility to the resources that they need in order to continue to learn. So I ask of the city council members right now that you look towards more of these data centers and that you please think, secondly, before you go ahead and please put not only the people here, but the future generation of Stockton ahead of these corporations. Thank you very much.

After Jasmine, we have Isaiah.

Good afternoon, city council members. Good afternoon to you as well.

And happy election year in advance. I want to first start off by saying to you that Stockton is more than just fast food chains, big box chains, and industrialization. Your points, although glittery and hopeful, were great and exemplary of your UC Berkeley education, however, shows that you as a Bay Area transplant are ignoring the community here in favor of the lobbying of all these big name industries you are promoting. The proposition of industrial development for economic welfare, although hopeful for an 18-hour city, is ignorant of the community's well-being. The statistics have always been abundantly clear. Stockton is a struggling low-income pollution hub. Bringing in warehouses will bring in even more air, noise, light, and traffic pollution to what has already been labeled as the 41st asthma capital in the US and a top 5% sufferer for overall pollution burden, as cited by the CalEnviroScreen. The data centers will bring inevitable environmental impacts to the already struggling water supplies of Stockton in addition to a higher cost of living. Reports show that household electricity bills jump up at least 7.1% in regions, and Stockton residents do not deserve this. The industrialization will most likely be developed in areas of South Stockton labeled as low-density residentials of low-income families are still experiencing consequences of redlining. There are schools, churches, and homes in these areas that will bear the weight of your ignorance, city council members, if you continue to favor these lobbyings of companies and developments such as PG&E, Amazon, AI data centers, and medical distributors. Do not do what other elected officials have failed to do in the past because the community always remembers the people who represent us and what they failed to do. Thank you.

After Isaiah, we have Stephanie. Turn it on to where it's green. Press it again.

Sorry, I turned it off accidentally. Hello, members of city council. I come to you to talk about the three-year economic development action plan, including the image and revenue enhancement plan. Data centers was listed as one of the revenue enhancements, and I'm here to speak against such a proposal. as to question how exactly such revenue will positively and directly impact the citizens of Stockton, as well as the environment and infrastructure of Stockton and its surrounding areas. Environmentally speaking, of the two data centers that currently reside in Stockton, the Nautilus Floating Data Center, according to Restore the Delta, has risen the temperature of its immediate surroundings and the Delta as a whole by four degrees and affects the river's ecosystem downstream by causing water stress and decreasing ecological resilience. We are already being affected by data centers and I must ask, what do they provide to the immediate community? Adding more data centers will disrupt the delicate balance of flora and fauna of the Delta and in turn disrupts the people living here. As for infrastructure, the location of proposed centers would directly and negatively impact the city of Stockton, as depending on the location could draw in more power from surrounding areas, as well as cause a strain on nearby neighborhoods. I question who exactly this data is being stored for. Will the citizens of Stockton hypothetically have access to said data and who is generating this data? I would like for the council to think less commercially and more locally. Thank you.

After Stephanie, we have Ramey. If there's no Stephanie, Raymond, come on up.

Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you guys all are well. My name is Stephanie Vasquez, and I live on Madison and Acacia. Today I wanted to inform you all of a couple reasons why we should not proceed with data centers. Scientific research shows that data centers create heat islands wherever the data centers are located. The surrounding land temperatures are increased by 16 degrees Fahrenheit. These data centers not only emit heat, the data centers also emit noise, a constant humming, as well as light. Let me see. Reports by the Environmental Health Project are already coming out that these communities in the surrounding areas are reporting tinnitus, which is hearing loss, insomnia, disrupted human circadian rhythms, which are sleep cycles, since there's light running 24-7. Like it literally, there's no night practically. Well, no night at all. Let's see what else. These data centers also disrupt our melatonin production because we're having disrupted circadian rhythm cycles. Let's see. By 2030, there will be an estimated 600,000 asthma cases as well as 1,300 premature deaths, and that's not even including wildlife. Can we think about that for a second? Like, I know Mayor Fugazi, your daughter is an author, right? She's trying to write her book. What is she going to write about? What about, like, all of us? I'm 25. I plan to live here. What am I going to have left? Thank you, guys.

After Raymond, we have Christian.

Are there secrets we need to know?

You say the name again?

Raymond. And then after Raymond will be Christian.

Good afternoon, mayor and counselors. My name is Raymond Estrada. I'm a citizen born and raised in Stockton, California. And my position on the implementation of data centers in the three-year economic plan and data center development is I'm against its development. AI data centers are an environmental terror and a culmination of resources that are being taken away from regular people trying to contribute to society and are being used to weaponize our established environment as its own citizens from harmful emissions that are caused by these data centers. Data centers affect climate, amplifies noise pollution 24-7, and remove space that would otherwise be used for recreational citizen use. I am against the production of AI data centers, and I implore you to deeply reconsider your decision with the implementation of adding data centers in the city of Stockton, California, from the three-year economic plan. Data centers are notoriously known for its massive water usage. One data center alone on the largest dale takes a consumption. of up to 5 million gallons of water a single day just to stay up. That's the equivalent of a town up to 50,000 people. And not only does the additions of data centers affect water consumption without unregulated restrictions, this will lead to water insecurity and a return to droughts and possibly shortages of water for mass communities to use. This mass consumption of water that can be used for our communities not only met with the obvious threat of water scarcity, but the scale of these data centers met with high demand of mass lengths of land that can be used for citizens as well. These added problems add on to the blue reality of nature, such as homes for wildlife being destroyed for these data centers. And I would like you to reconsider to think about the people of Stockton and not profit. Thank you so much.

After Christian, we have Gary.

There it is. Hi. It's been a long day. We're all really tired here, so I'm going to try to stay brief. I think that the priorities of this plan could use a little bit of work, because let's talk about it. We're worried about Stockton being economically stagnant. That we're worried about. Oh, businesses, they don't like to agree to come here. Small businesses, they keep closing down. People, they don't want to buy houses here. Why are people not giving us money? Let's talk about some of the realities and let's talk about how this plan doesn't meet those realities. The reality is, I think it comes from the image point of the plan. We've been talking a lot about staying positive, right?

Talk positive, talk positive, there's a lot of cool Stockton stuff, guys, have some pride.

But actions speak louder than words, and the reality is we'll talk positive when there are positive things to talk about, okay? I don't know about you, but if I was setting up a business somewhere, the first place I would look is not an impoverished community characterized by neglect, full of nothing but Amazon warehouse workers, full of crime caused by people who've been dehoused because of medical conditions, because of things that are failing in our city, I personally wouldn't want to invest either. I would not start a business here. I would say, this city's doomed. Why would you ask me to put my money into this? This is a mess. So when you're considering these big retailers and these industries, think, if I build a new automotive facility here, a dealership, who the hell's going to buy it? Who's going to buy the car? Who's going to afford it? How can we get them to afford it? That's all.

After Gary, we have Cynthia. Is there a Gary? Cynthia? Brian? Who's the difference going to be here?

Hello Stockton City Council. My name is Brian. I'm a local musician and educator, and I have called Stockton home for nearly two decades now. Many Stocktonians here are concerned about climate change, and the AutoMalls.com warehouses, aerospace, and defense contracts in the economic plan directly contribute to the climate crisis through the intensive manufacturing of weapons and the heavy daily use of fossil fuels which release greenhouse gases that affect our health and warm our atmosphere, bringing about severe flooding, hotter heat waves, and longer droughts. Secondly, I oppose the construction of more data centers in our city. It is no secret that the AI boom is a bubble, and data centers really a secure investment? What happens when the bubble bursts and we're left with another vacant warehouse? Stockton is inseparable from the Delta. Data centers use water to cool down their servers. One here by the port warms water by four degrees, as stated before. Higher water temperatures means more harmful algal blooms, which suck oxygen from the water and fouling our waterways with a stench of decaying fish. Noise pollution from cooling fans and generators are also a concern. Neighbors of existing data centers report chronic insomnia, severe headaches, vertigo, and chest pressure. Few here on this council will welcome such a facility in their own district. I implore Stockton City Council to reconsider these items of the economic plan before approving. Will this plan usher in economic prosperity for all of Stockton or line the pockets of a select few? Thank you.

Ahmad. After Ahmad, we have Davis.

Good afternoon, members of the council. Cynthia? Okay. My name is Cynthia Cortes. I am the policy program manager with Restore the Delta and a lifelong resident of South Stockton. It is no surprise that Stockton is being targeted for data centers. Stockton is surrounded by a resource data centers need most, water. Stockton is conveniently located east of the confluence of the San Joaquin River and Sacramento River, the heart of California water. Despite the appearance of abundance of water, that cannot be further from reality. California water is not infinite. On the contrary, it is already a strained resource with more water allocated than is available to meet current demands. The plan also proposes promoting downtown waterfront activities. That beautiful waterfront picture in the presentation earlier is going to be covered in green toxic algae if we allow data centers. That's not a place that I would want to visit. Communities of color in South Stockton already endure some of the worst environmental conditions in California and are among the most disadvantaged communities in the country. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income communities of color. That was not fate. It was intentional racist policy that alienated the Stockton community from local waterways. Do we want to invest in, when we're thinking about data centers, we must think, do we want to invest in the future that further alienates the community from its local waterways, exacerbates environmental degradation, devastates local delta economy, threatens public health, and overall worsens quality of life for Stockton residents? So when we talk about data centers, we must ask ourselves, economic development for who? Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.

After a month we have Davis.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is in my district 5 resident and agriculture natural resources organization leader and a new small business owner new business development and analysis. I'm asking the city to consider requiring a community data center impact assessment before approving new large-scale data center projects or expansions. The Delta already faces multiple interacting stressors, including drought, climate change, water quality concerns, infrastructure demands, word of the day this afternoon, and pressure on wildlife habitat. At minimum, a community data center impact assessment should examine six areas. water electricity air noise wildlife and infrastructure these issue issues are connected data centers can require significant amounts of water and electricity during drought what happens when industrial water and cooling needs compete with agricultural household and ecosystem needs electricity demand can also affect costs we also should ask whether data center growth could increase system costs that are ultimately carried by ordinary residents resident customers and small businesses we also need to examine air quality backup generators traffic and construction impacts wildlife habitat disruption and the long-term demands placed on roads utilities water systems and other public infrastructure Noise deserves particular attention. Continuous industrial noise can affect sleep and overall well-being for people already living with anxiety, cardiovascular conditions, PTSD, migraines, sensory sensitivities, including some neurodivergent residents. Additional noise can create a burden. Stockton has recognized that protecting delta water quality and affordability is essential to the future. Shouldn't new industrial projects that depend on delta water or delta adjacent infrastructure be evaluated under a similar system?

After David, we have Denise.

Good afternoon, Mayor Ferrazzi and council members. My name is Davis Harper Zapata. I'm here as both a Stockton resident and with Restore the Delta as well. I strongly recommend the council take a hard look at the impacts of AI data centers before rubber stamping or approving them in an economic development strategy. There are more than 500 US counties or municipalities that are now actively restricting or blocking data centers across the country. Due to a lot of the issues people have brought up already, drinking water supply is being impacted, energy use driving up nearby electricity costs, noise, light, air pollution, laundry list. I also want to point out that the job opportunities surrounding data centers and some of the services and products that they enable are really not super compelling. These are really automated facilities that are creating lots of temporary construction jobs and then pretty few operational jobs thereafter. And I would really want to see, you know, I think they compete for land use with other potential industries that the city might benefit more from, such as housing, which might not be as resource extractive and could also create more jumps. A big part of this issue around AI technologies and data centers is there's been very little guidance from the federal and state level on a lot of different kinds of governance issues. No clear standards for resource use, for emissions, for community and workforce protections, distribution of different costs and benefits. So this industry's grown really wildly unchecked over the last several years, and a lot of developers behind these projects and AI companies have broken promises to host communities, and I don't want to see that happen to Stockton. And so I urge you to enact a moratorium, at least to temporarily allow you to determine whether this is an industry that's in the best interest of the city.

Thank you for your time. After Denise, we have Tiana. Is there Denise? After Denise Feotiana?

Hello, City Council. My name is Denise Aguilar. I am a lifelong resident here, and I'm here obviously for the data center issue. One of the things I think has frustrated us a lot was just the opening to this meeting. I don't know why you're here for a data center when it's clearly in the documents. It feels a little like gaslighting to me. This morning I went to the Board of Supervisors meeting where they put a moratorium on these centers and I hope and feel that you are noticing the concern. 40 people signed up to speak at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. I think that deserves and warrants a town hall meeting that has more in-depth conversations around this. Right after I left the Board of Supervisors meeting, I received a message from someone who actually builds AI centers. He's built 70 centers across the nation, building one right now in Oklahoma. And he said that the biggest concern that he has is the electricity. These centers have large generators that surround the building. Those generators are the size of trailers. They hold about 3,000 gallons of diesel. Now, what happens when, just like Indiana, they lose power and these centers continue to generate electricity? Now we have people in Stockton, San Joaquin County, whose food is going to go out because the refrigerator went out. Is there an infrastructure that's going to help families feed their families should the food go out because we live in a very impoverished community? In all of the plans that I've heard today, there's not one plan that talks about addressing how we can help our youth because our youth is actually going to help our economic failures that have happened throughout the years. Nothing is addressing our children. Nothing is addressing our families. IKEA is not going to want to come here when there are a bunch of dogs that are running around, abused, neglected, and homeless, and people who are suffering from mental health issues. So I hope that you do have a town hall meeting because this cannot be voted on today. Thank you.

After Tiana, we have Alex. Tiana. After Tiana, we have an Alex Lima. Oh, the Dougs.

Hi, my name is Tenaya Ledoux, and I've been a Stockton resident for the past 17 years. Please excuse my appearance. I just had a mastectomy yesterday, so I'm not presenting at my best right now, but I felt it very important to be here today. I'm concerned about the environmental impact data centers have, especially around energy and freshwater consumption. but also in the way of noise pollution and development of natural lands. I'm also very concerned about the physical health of those who may have to live in close proximity to these data centers. I have many questions for this government, such as what measures will be taken to protect our environment and people from these negative impacts. Will energy consumption limits be placed, will energy and water consumption limits be placed on the data center? And how will that be measured and enforced? Will there be an associated environmental and human healthcare funds set aside to address possible fallout associated with these developments? The Vice Mayor mentioned good paying jobs in relation to the proposed data center, but I'd like to point out that jobs created by these data centers are not significant beyond the initial construction period. In fact, most of these data centers only produce about 20 to 100 jobs for regular operation after construction. I only learned of this agenda item this morning, and I want to thank Restore the Delta for that. My understanding is that the earliest people heard about this was this weekend. Three to four days is not enough time for people to prepare to be here and comment, especially in the middle of the day on a weekday.

After Alex, we have Benito. Alex Lima, and then we have Benito.

Ricardo, welcome to the city. I don't want to bash your work too much. I actually work for a park developer, so I hope we can work together. But I am here as a private citizen because I also live in District 1 and I'm an educator. I teach forestry and natural resources at a community college here in the 209. And I just think that as a citizen, this plan just looks kind of uninspired. It looks like staff has been told make us appealing to federal programs and incentives immediately, make us eligible immediately, and make sure that we can get these deals with these investors. But I've been lucky enough to learn a lot of the dynamics and the land decisions, uses that shaped our city, and if we wanna talk about revenue, let's talk about the fact that the city doesn't get any revenue from the three richest neighborhoods in this area, Brookside, Country Club, and Lincoln Village. And that is because these communities administratively separated themselves. We worry about revenues. We had the opportunity to end SESP last year, the developer fees that got waived, but those are still coming through for the next five years. We have plenty of polluters out here that are ripe for a parcel tax based on their emissions, but we aren't talking about those. We are preparing for another mobilization of development. That's not spurred by the desires and the needs of the cities, but the strategies and the backroom deals of bureaucrats and politicians. What you have slated is not meant to benefit Stockton. It will enrich big businesses and developers, and anyone who pays attention out there knows that the developers and their cronies are really who runs things around here. Just look at the City Council recommended housing project that was thrown out for a preferred project a few months ago. South Stockton isn't mentioned in this report until page 24 of the 28-page report, and the extent of it is to bring a big box store in. The industries, aerospace, drones, and advanced manufacturing, these jobs are not going to be for us. They're going to be for transplants. Anyone want to put a Costco on what was supposed to be our CSU Stockton?

After Benito, we have David.

Hello, I'm Benito Adriano.

AI data centers are bad. Data centers take 5 million gallons of water every day. Data centers consume more energy than 10,000 to even 25,000 households. Meta's Hyperion data center in Louisiana takes twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans. AI data centers will take and take and take. They already started destroying our books, and all they give us is scams, less jobs, and pollution. And don't even get me started on AI food posters. How are you going to sell me food that doesn't exist? And people with asthma and breathing problems will suffer. My mom's literally in the hospital for lung problems. Are we going to pretend like her life doesn't matter? It's already 100 degrees outside in the summer. We don't need it to be hotter because of these centers producing heat islands that increase the temperature by a whole 10 degrees. Minimum. This is an objective evil if I've ever seen it. We all lose. AI isn't worth it. We could give 5 million children clean drinkable water. We could give all the poor in this city electricity for free. Do you have any idea how many people that would help with their debt? All this we could have if these tech companies weren't greedy. All I ever hear is, we can't afford this. We can't afford that when it comes to social services that could help the lower class. well i can't afford a data center that pollutes my city and takes my water people say technology is always involving and things change and that's fine but we never put technology over people last time we did that we got the atomic bomb we already have 4 000 ai centers is that not enough say no to ai data centers after david we have mary elizabeth

It's evening time now. How are you guys doing? Welcome to Stockton. That's kind of a loaded thing. I hear it all the time, but that's one thing that we say. It's kind of like when you see something crazy going on, you say, welcome to Stockton. So welcome to Stockton. I don't know if anybody else walked We walked from the parking lot across the street down farther downtown, and as we were coming by, we saw a lot of welcome stock moments just on the sidewalk. People really struggling with their shopping carts or arguing or yelling about a plastic bag or who knows what. But those aren't exactly uplifting moments where I'm like, hey, I want to invite people to spend their money here in Stockton. We talked about some big box stores and stuff like that and about the image of like we should really be positive about Stockton. But I don't feel positive about Stockton when I go into Target and I've got to wait 20 minutes for my deodorant that's standing behind a plastic bulletproof glass or something like that. Or when I go to Walmart and I need to get some pet food for my cat, and same thing. I've got to wait 30 minutes for someone to come by with the key that sometimes doesn't even work. That's not like, you know, I want to shop here in Stockton. Guess where I go? I go to Lodi. There's no glass about the Lodi shopping area. I can go and I just pick things up off the cart. So, like, my parents, when they came here, they came from Romania. And it was communist time in Romania at that time. And if you wanted to go shopping, you weren't allowed in the store. You had to... stand behind you know when you were allowed in there was counters and everything was behind the glass and you had to ask for permission just to look at something let alone to see and that's kind of how it's starting to feel in a lot of these stores in Stockton you don't really get a chance to even touch the goods or anything when when I go to Stockton in the stores I feel like I'm the criminal like I'm the one who has to be watched and I don't really you know feel like it's it's you know the most uplifting and the experience that I see my kids are having to worry about you know uh uh soft lockdowns or warm lockdowns or hot lockdowns because there's some kind of craziness that's going on in the school and sometimes i don't even get a call it's like so normal it's just no alert at all and that's not something that i'm really inspired about thank you our last two public comments are on the phone first is david sing thing

Hi, everyone. This is David Sengtire, president of Stockton Democrats Together. First of all, just shouting out each and every one of you guys in person at this meeting. And I am on vacation right now. And yes, people are correct. This agenda item became noticed to people. on Friday and so I was already booking my ticket but I think it's an important issue and I understand the city's interest in diversifying revenue but people have gone over many of the consumers large-scale data centers I'm not going to reiterate those look at the recording city council members take your notes but I want to ask council a more basic question why does the city need this level of new revenue in the first place What expenses or fiscal pressures have made the city's budget fragile enough that data center recruitment is being prioritized as a solution? Whether personnel turnover, legal costs, deferred infrastructure, or other pressures, we deserve to understand that picture before we're asked to accept the trade-offs that come with inviting data centers into our backyard. I know that this plan doesn't improve any specific project and no data center is currently proposed. But once we are naming them as a formal city recruitment priority, that policy direction tends to move forward on its own. And it becomes much harder to ask hard questions once an actual project shows up. Council. Before approving this plan tonight, consider adding language committing to environmental review, water and electricity impact studies, and meaningful public hearings with the city before we engage with any specific proposal in the future. Also, coordinate with San Joaquin County and their moratorium. Finally, just know that Stockton Democrats Together is taking a resolution to oppose data centers. I will personally monitor how folks vote on them on this issue for endorsements and financial contributions going forward. As most of you guys, I've been in my inbox and text messages requesting interviews and endorsements. Vote correctly or else the city of Stockton will vote you out. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Next, we have Hilda on the line.

Hello, this is Hilda. Glad to be here. talking again you know going back to my essay so to better understand the context behind why this is so essential we need to focus on the rapid expansion and lack of reporting and oversight that is happening with these data centers they are growing large and fast and single data center can use between 300 000 and 5 million gallons of water a day which is nearly the same usage as a mid-sized town moreover california is expecting to add like 24 more data centers by the end of 2030 which is more pressure on a community that's already struggling with resources because of yearly droughts. And then going back to 2019 in South Carolina after Google lost a lawsuit because of their use of groundwater, which was affecting local groups who suddenly saw that their aquifers were suddenly being depleted. And so Google lost that lawsuit because we're seeing that our infrastructures are not ready for data centers and they're taking so much away from our community. Why don't we actually focus on supporting our community, not investing into areas that are unnecessary like data centers or more warehouses, but actually invest into improving our community, supporting youth development, and giving community members time to actually speak. Thank you.

This concludes public comment for this item.

Okay, so bringing it back to council, are there any questions or comments from council?

Did you register? Did you register? Good. Good. Come on over. What was your name?

Yeah. Come up and speak. But people, please remember, she got to register. Come up and speak.

Go ahead. Come on up.

So I just push this button, right? Yeah. Oh, it's already on. Okay. It seems like from the earlier discussion that you guys already made your decision, so I don't know what this is going to do, but I just need to let off steam. You know, it's only getting progressively harder to maintain all the jobs with all the automation we have right now. So the idea that data centers will bring jobs and make life better is highly deceptive. Life sucks now for regular people. No matter what economic level you guys reside in, you guys know that the intrinsic quality of everything has plummeted for everyone. And more quote unquote revenue or money, which by the way isn't even real, will not insulate any of us against this. This economic development plan will only accelerate the drop in quality of life by overcrowding this area and giving the high paying jobs to people who aren't even from here. who aren't even from this continent for that matter, while native Stocktonians continue to get sidelined and ignored. You guys are not thinking about the future implications and how much grim it will get when this AI economic bubble pops. And it absolutely will, as every bubble does. And the people of San Joaquin County will have to deal with the brunt of the environmental and economic fallout from that. We don't need artificial intelligence. What we need to do is cultivate human intelligence to its fullest divine potential. AI can only produce an algorithmic formula of what was done before. The things that make life meaningful and worth living, like good food and clean water and profound music and innovation, can never come from a data center. It doesn't come from crappy IKEA furniture. It doesn't come from Chick-fil-A, big box Walmart stores, car dealerships, and delusions of endless growth with no meaning. It can only come from the human soul. It comes from the unique flavor and essence of a city. This economic plan will suck the soul of this city and spit its people out. How can we reach our fullest human... Oop, I'm done.

Okay, so now I'll bring it back to council for any comments. Go ahead, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, first I want to start by saying that I heard everybody that spoke, and I listened intently to everybody, including the young man from my district, and I really appreciate your civic participation. Um, I'm a little bothered by the idea that none of us are listening. The decision was already made as you read your phone, ma'am, because we actually came in here very open-minded and very eyes wide open to hear everything. And so it's a little offensive when we are paying attention, uh, and have done lots of meetings to understand how we got here. Uh, uh, this is not an agreement from my understanding. I see this as a presentation that actually, instead of hiding it behind the wall, came to you to show you what, what staff is thinking about the future. innovation, opportunity, and ideas that they have for the city. So I think that's what transparency looks like, and this is what transparency feels like when the community does not like what it hears, and this is why this process is important. Mary Elizabeth created a document, I think, and gave it to council a few councils ago, a couple councils ago, that outlined a lot of people in this county that signed on to it that has concerns about data centers, and it was very thorough. in its assessment of what data centers could mean, challenges it could bring, opportunities. But she provided that document. At least I looked at it as an invitation to a conversation. Obviously, this is a very serious topic, and we have 326,000 people in this city, and 40 people represent lots of families in those 326,000 people. They all couldn't make it today, but you all did. And so, again, I thank you for that. A couple of things. I didn't say that data centers bring lots of jobs. If you're listening, what I said was Stockton should become the cousin or sister to the Silicon Valley, and we should be figuring out a way to innovate and bring technology here that can create jobs for the upward mobility that I heard earlier, not necessarily just data centers but anything. I also heard the comment about ending the CESPA agreement. This council did end. agreement that was recommended to continue to waive 94 million dollars in fees five years earlier than it was recommended by staff because we understood the importance of starting the process of bringing money back into the city so we can invest in our parks in our communities at the same time councilman Padilla has lots of development her district there's lots of development happening throughout the city so to end an agreement abruptly would have caused disruption of future development that all of you come to council every other week and talk about needing in the city with respect to housing Um, so given everything that I heard, here's, here's where I'm at first. I would, I would want to say that again, this is a presentation to me. I'm not hearing this and staff can confirm. I didn't hear this as an agreement or us voting on giving them authority to go out and build data centers. Uh, what I heard from the public and what I heard from our city manager and staff is that we need to have real public hearings, real public discussions, not just post a flyer on a wall. and hope people see it, and then take five people that show up as a way of checking that box. I think there needs to be real engaged discussions. I would ask staff, if you can, at the back of the room, take all your phone numbers, emails, like let's include you in that process, and you take on the responsibility of working with us to let more people know about it. But I do think that having real engaged discussions has to be a central part of this process. I think it needs to be widely promoted. I think the city needs to invite the press to promote it. I think it needs to get out as broadly as possible. And this is a news desert community, so we should work collectively to do that. I would also say this council should be very clear that there should be no data centers developed or approved by staff without public discussion and without a minimum of this council voting on it. And this council will be tasked to consider whether a vote of the council is what approves it or a vote of the constituents or the public. Either way, that's a future decision, not one to be decided tonight. But staff need to be very clear that we are not approving the development of data centers. And specifically, we've had conversations internally about making sure that there are no data centers that go up, even if they can go up because sites have already been cleared or approved by CEQA or any other process to provide a pathway to that. Again, I think my previous statement about there needed to be an inclusive discussion that includes significant public hearings and public opportunity to weigh in. And then I think when staff come back, what I'd like to see is a map identifying where we see some of these data centers potentially going in proximity to homes and other things, resources that folks are talking about and doing their own research that would be used to build those in any plan to replenish or address any significant impacts to our environment. And then also, because this did come onto the agenda today, at the same time the Board of Supervisors did a moratorium, I think staff need to understand, the city needs to understand what that moratorium is, any impacts to our plans or whatever. And that's all I have for now. Thanks.

Councilman Villaputua.

Thank you, Mayor. As a council member, you know, every day you learn something. Even though you're always prepared for what the agenda comes, but the community can always teach you something that you're not aware of. And I'm glad everyone spoke today. Things that we may not have been aware of, but today was a teaching. So I want to thank everyone for coming and speaking their mind today. Just the other day, I went to Niagara Water to get a tour and a cherry factory. And a lot of jobs have been taken away because of AI. And I see how it affected the families. And they're saying, oh, the jobs, they're going to be creating jobs. But, you know, you've got to learn how to do those jobs. You've got to go to school learning how to do these, learn to be working on robots and all that. A lot of people don't have the time. They don't have the money to go to school for all these things. So my question is, Cardo, are any of these things right now on the way coming up, or we're still in discussion regarding any of these projects?

So you're referring to data centers? So many of the projects that I shared are like the hospital is already under construction. The developments that are proposed downtown, we're trying to get some market rate housing because 90% of the housing in the downtown may be about 90% is affordable and folks want supermarkets and we don't have disposable incomes to support supermarkets in the downtown. So we have to balance the demographics and attract more market rate. In terms of industrial, you have a number of industrial companies that have expanded. We have one of the largest industrial bases in Northern California. So Walmart.com has been in the works for the past two years, long before I got here. and is going to, regardless of how folks feel about the wages, the average wage I think will be about $45,000 to $50,000. Sure, that's below the median income of Stockton. That's $75,000. But you also have companies like Kevin's Food, which is expanding. And over the next four years, and it's not listed in this plan because this is very general, But Kevin's Food, International Foods, they have three facilities here in Stockton. Their average wage salaries are 70,000. All right, that's pretty close. And many of the folks that are getting these jobs do not have college degrees. You have people less than 20% of the residents in Stockton that do not have college degrees. So what we're trying to do create a mix of opportunities I know I'm answering your question long long-winded but there there are some projects that are in the works and there are some projects that are still in the planning stages the industrial district is very robust you have developers that have acquired properties, that have annexed properties east of Highway 99 and southwest of French Camp. So there are a number of things in the works scattered throughout the city. And let me be frank with you. I've been doing this work more than half my life, 37 years, okay? And I've worked in communities across the Bay Area, Washington State, LA, Visalia, as well as South Florida. When you start using the word gentrification or bringing in higher industries like in East Palo Alto and bringing in Amazon or bringing in higher-end businesses, folks start to get concerned. Whoa, I don't have a college degree. How am I going to fill those jobs? It's a balancing act. It's a balancing act wherever you are in the United States, especially when you are in an economically challenged community like Stockton. You're trying to lift the community up And at the same time, trying to create opportunities for those folks who don't have the education. And by the way, that's why you partner with the colleges and the job training agencies so that people who... who are 35 years old and do not have a college degree, they can get those types of jobs. So I'm looking for a balance. And believe me, it's not a science. But you're looking to do a balance of creating and attracting industry. Believe me, I'll go down to Silicon Valley and try and attract some of those firms like Adobe up here. And then folks here will complain that we're gentrifying. So we're trying to do a balance here. And this plan, although some may say, oh, it's all about data centers or it's far-fetched, it's looking at the fabric of the city and creating an environment where you can do a mix. You can support the Miracle Mile. You can support retail. You can support industry. And you can support a downtown. That's how a city that is going through an evolutionary process needs to move forward.

Thank you, Ricardo. The only thing that I would add to it is that when I was mentioning earlier, we had, there was an event at the Bella Vista. It was an open house for downtown Stockton. We had the community get involved and add in their ideas on what they like to see. And that was just only for downtown. I looked that we can do that again for all of our districts, getting our community involved to see what they like and don't like. So the data center things, community doesn't want it. So I will not be supporting anything that has to do with that. But going on, I think the rest is. But I think this is not an item. I don't know if it's sensitive. We have to vote soon or when that's going to happen. But if we had to vote today, I would not be voting. And I just like hopefully we can get more house meetings so the community can get involved and help us make decisions because it's not mine. It's the whole community that lives here. So thank you.

Councilwoman Fonseca.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say thank you, Ricardo, for the presentation, for your positive energy. I'm very excited about the economic plan coming up. And I also want to acknowledge everyone who spoke. Your feedback is very important. And I have some questions that some of my constituents that couldn't be here today. They are concerned about the impacts to power, water, noise, and the quality of life that a data center can bring. And they're concerned about if, would the data center affect residential water availability or rates? And will the residents' electricity rates increase because of the additional demands? So, yeah. Do you know if?

So if I can say. We are working, and I know folks saw the data center as a potential revenue enhancer. We are working over the next few months to put together some community listening sessions where we will be going out to the community and listening. We may share a fact sheet, but we'll be listening. We've heard a lot. And believe me, I've been... spending a lot of my time watching YouTube, maybe check out Loudoun County. And let me just say this about California versus Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, and some of those other eastern states. California is doing things a lot better. We're not giving any financial incentives to concerns about noise, light, Power and water are being carefully analyzed in Santa Clara County, where most of the data centers are located, as well as LA. But as the city manager can attest to, we will be doing some listening sessions over the next few months.

I would like to also support what Council Member Brando mentioned, if we can have it in our district and get the community's input.

Yes, Councilwoman, just to go back and address the full council. Once again, this economic development plan was looking at a total plan and having many different components in that plan. And so even if you decided today, which we're not asking you to decide on data centers, You're talking about a long process of 12, 14 months, 18 months before anything is done. And yes, we are going to have community meetings to hear feedback. But if you don't allow us as a staff to come forward with recommendation, what we think is helpful for this city. And today, nothing has been talked about location. You know, we hear a lot of people talking about noise, water, power. No question about where are these going to be located? How are they going to be built? No questions about that. And that's the stage where we're going to get to beginning in mid-November to begin to go on a listening session throughout this community. Now, we hear you folks. Some folks don't want to do them. That's fine and A-OK. We may have a whole lot of folks out there that do want to do them. But this is not the public forum that we were expecting today. We're going to go out to every district and hear from every part of the city to get feedback. And that's what the plan is. And that's what we're shooting to do. And we want you to know that we're not going to make a decision in a vacuum.

Thank you City Manager.

Councilwoman Padilla.

Thank you Mayor and thank you Vice Mayor and City Manager Ford for clarifying that tonight's presentation is about providing information and just exploring the possibilities that our city can have. It's not about a commitment to bring data centers to Stockton. So I see this as the first step, as providing information. We hear the concerns, and we want to have the questions from our community. So we're going to have town halls. We're going to have listening sessions. But again, this is not about a vote to bring data centers here. I also heard a comment about that there were no youth activities in the plan and I just what I can tell you is that my colleagues up here make that a priority and Ricardo can tell you I've asked him about family activities. Our priority is youth activities so. I'm saying just because it wasn't in there. That is a priority of this Council so. you know, it's not something that we're neglecting. It is one of our priorities. So thank you.

Councilman Enriquez.

Thank you, Mayor. And Mr. Noguera, I just want to say, you know, again, just thank you for everything you laid out and just the most recent comment. Before I get to what the public has shared, can you just give some context? So this economic plan, obviously I know this is an initial step to give the council, the public, the big vision, the wide net that we talked about earlier. Can you give an example of in the past, how often do city councils get economic development plans? Obviously we have your fresh new leadership taking over, so this is being presented now, but how often just, or city manager or maybe even my colleagues who may know, how often do these plans get first presented to council?

So I recall when I went to Tacoma, Washington in September 2012, And the council had not approved a plan for almost a year. They sat on it. I sat with the city manager and the mayor, and we basically said, all right, how are we going to get this plan through the council? Well, I sat down with every council member to make sure their key issues were addressed. And then by, so that was September, by Thanksgiving we were able to get the plan approved. approved by council so this is a draft document and i heard councilman padilla make comments about youth i don't want to get into csd's um area all right or public works area because this economic development action plan is really about economic development and economic development can easily be expanded to cover police, fire, and other disciplines. So I'm trying to keep it as narrow as possible. Otherwise, it'll become a book. So what I would like to get from you all, I know there are a lot of concerns about data centers. You can share through the city manager. You can share any written comments you have, certain things you feel. Like, I'm sorry about leaving out UOP. I can only cover so much, right? But it is in the plan itself. But there are areas you think we missed or you disagree with or you want to see added? put it in writing and we will address them and and this is a living breathing document so hopefully I addressed it correctly because we want to come back before you next year with an update and over the next few weeks hopefully no more than a few weeks well we will address your concerns and your interest and then

And I appreciate that. And, you know, to what my colleagues have shared about youth, I mean, I saw youth all throughout these slides. I mean, we talk about our sports. We talk about our partnerships with our higher education institutions, our community college. I mean, all that leaves opportunity to be creative and do things with our young people. So I saw it in your presentation, and I'm sure my colleagues did too. So the one thing, you know, so I was taking some notes as you were speaking with what my colleagues have shared about how there's some things in the works, there's some things in the planning phase, and it's about balance. And I hear that, and I understand that, and I know the listening sessions would be helpful. I think the challenge was, and again, this isn't blaming anybody, but when you put that word in a document to say that this is the economic development plan for the city, it is going to activate people. Whether some person might think of it or not, it's still going to create some type of concern of what do you plan to do. Are you going to build a data center between 2026 and 2028? That's what it looks like if someone didn't read through all the documents or go through all the slides. If they see that on one slide, they're already going to think that. I appreciate when you said it earlier and you said it again just now that this is a living document that's going to obviously adjust and change. I think what I would have preferred is that in the beginning you even shared that. You know, we don't know what's in motion, what's the timeline, you know, what meetings you have lined up. And again, I'm not saying that as anything negative towards you or your staff, but I almost feel like it should have been the other way around. Let's do listening sessions first. We know this is a priority from the council in February. I know I obviously wasn't there because I was in the hospital, but it should have been the other way around. So you know that from the council in February, these are the three top priorities from February to now. you could have had three four listening sessions to help develop each of those three focus areas from the public input then we have an update to say this is a feedback we got we heard loud and clear from the council this is a community feedback we're now getting this is gonna now drive the key things within each of the three areas that we want to work on as a council and now you can say we did it with the community input that would have I think been more I don't wanna say beneficial but I think it would have definitely lessened a lot of the animosity that your presentation is getting from the public. Because I hear the public loud and clear. I agree 110% on the concerns regarding data centers. Because again, no one here is an expert on data centers. Everyone's going to have an opinion about the negatives and the pros. I understand that. But we don't know what a data center, how that will impact physically being in the city of Stockton in our region. Nobody can predict that. And that is also the scary part as well because we know since you have such a wide net of all the things you've listed out, there is a lot of good exciting things happening in this presentation. I would feel a lot more better knowing where you're at with each of these things. coupled with the community input, then we can come back and say this is an updated economic development plan. But as my colleague said, we're not voting on anything tonight. My suggestion, and I think Councilman Ponce and Councilman Villalpudo mentioned as well, and I agree with them, that we should just, for the sake of now, just edit and take off the word data centers. And then as we get more input, then we can see what's going on. Because right now, if you're telling me right now that that's one of the things in motion, then that's going to be concerning. Because then that way, you're going to tell me, Mario, actually, we can't take that off because that's actually in motion. Yeah, it's not in motion, correct? I hope not.

Well, we could take off anything that you want. OK, well, you didn't answer my question, but OK. No, no. Councilman, I will try to explain and answer your question. Thank you. We can take off anything that you want. We will continue to have people coming to talk with us. We can make you aware of every last one of those discussion. We have put together an economic development plan that the council has asked for. And so if you want to even delay it, feel free to do that. We have no problem and we will continue down the road of looking at every option to increase our tax base.

Well, I don't think it's delaying. I think there's a lot of good things already happening here. So I didn't say that. But I would say that in terms of what's already happening, if you're able to come to the next council meeting or let's say a couple meetings from now, I'm not going to give you a date, but give us an update on where you are with the current projects, what's happening. I think that will be helpful for this council. And then have the community town halls lined up. So if you already have some in November, I think as the city manager told me, great. Give us those dates now, because I don't want it to be where people heard about this on a Friday, and then now they have to show up on a Tuesday to get public comment. I'm not saying that staff's going to do that for these town halls, but I want to make sure that we are giving a full update as much as we can about when the listening sessions are happening. And, I mean, if we can do them in each district, let's do that. But I think let's couple it and do it the right way, and I look forward to these listening sessions. Thank you.

Okay, so a couple of things. Wake me up before you go-go. Anybody remember that song, Wham? I want to know what love is, foreigner. Like a virgin. I have a point here. $3.35. I'd love to go back to 1985. That's my point. 1985, $3.35 an hour. I did not have a cell phone. We didn't have call waiting. We didn't have an answering machine at my house. We didn't even lock the front door. I didn't have a key to my parents' house until I was 33 years old. We didn't, everything, all the city clerk did, everything was done by hand. Everything was done by hand. And now you have technology. I remember the first MP3 thing I got at Circuit City, it was 128 megabytes and it held 12 songs. Now, these cell phones are 512 gigabytes, and you can hold 100,000 pictures, videos. But are you really holding 100,000 pictures and videos on there? You're not. It's somewhere. It's somewhere. Everybody talks about the cloud, the cloud. But if we got rid of technology, we would be We would be talking to each other more. Kids wouldn't be in the house just playing video games, even though they had Atari out and Commodore 64 and that kind of thing. But this is where we're at. And whether we have it here or it's up the road, down the road, to the west, to the east, It's still there, and I watched people come up again and again and you know using their phones And you know we use them to get information. I had encyclopedia Encyclopedia Britannica we had three different sets at my house I actually brought them to the high school and donated them and the kids were like what the heck is this You know we gotta look through this. What is it and I was like it's encyclopedia who doesn't have a But they don't. And I know Councilman Enriquez, I don't know if you were born in 1985. Yeah, so he has no clue what I'm talking about. But that is a concern. I think that technology has created bigger spaces between people, even though you could FaceTime somebody on another continent. without any issue. I also have a box of handwritten letters, notes, that we would pass in between periods. I'd walk down the hall, hey, Ponce, I give her the note. I have a box of them. Those times are gone, unfortunately. But if we could go back to the simpler time, we had less, I believe we had less problems. I knew people who made maybe $6 an hour that owned a home. We're able to save up and buy a home. Now who can save up to buy a home? We've said this. So going back to the economic plan that we have, why do we need more revenue? So we're able to fix more roads. So we're able to have more activities for kids so that we can have a contract for our different units. How we get more money, that's a part of the bigger discussion. But the city isn't going backwards. It's going forward. We had $983 million last year in the budget. This year, we have $1.5 billion in our budget. If it goes back, that means we're in bankruptcy. That's the only way that's going to happen. So I hear, I took notes of every single speaker that came up today, and we've heard from you. We've heard from the 40, which looking at the numbers is 10, 1.2 to 10 to the negative fourth power, but nonetheless, it is still a representation of people and how they feel in this city. So as we move forward, the listening sessions must happen. And actually, I said, when I saw it, I saw it on Friday, just like most of the people in this room, I saw it on Friday, and I went, ooh, data centers is on here. And I think I said to the city manager, and I might have said it to Ricardo, like, People are going to show up. People are going to show up, and they are going to speak about this because they've spoken to me about it. I knew they were going to speak to all of us. So I will just leave it at that. This council, if somebody wants to make a motion, remove, take, postpone, it's up to this council to make that decision, and I will stop there.

Are we having to vote on something tonight then?

Well, if you don't, you have to.

Okay. Well, just for the sake, since we're doing community sessions, I make a motion that we take off data centers while we do community listening sessions and then vote on the rest. And then we look forward to an update on Mr. Noguera's update on just the plan and all the ongoing partnerships moving forward.

I support that.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second. Roll call.

Council Member Padilla.

Yes.

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Yes.

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Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. My name is Tony Manor, Public Information Officer for the City Manager's Office in the City of Stockton. In June, the Council asked the City Manager's Office for an assessment of the OPTIC team and a plan. Tonight is the first of three reports to deliver that. Before I get into it, I just want to explain what the report is. Under Charter Section 1201, the city manager is responsible for city communications functions. The optic team is his communications team, and he assigned this assessment to me as the city's public information officer. So what you'll see tonight is the standard the city manager will hold the team to, and how he will, and how he and the public will know whether it's being met. The standards come from outside this organization, and the results were checked by outside sources. I will name both as we go. Tonight sets the baseline, what we found and what has already been corrected. And the plan we run from here, I will come back in phase two and phase three to give additional information. The request from council was to assess the Office of Public Transparency and bring back a plan. OPTIC stands for the Office of Public Transparency, Information, and Communication, and its charge is to fulfill the city's obligation to the public's right to know. That charge is critical to governance and to our department. It carries a compliance responsibility under the law, and I want to walk through them because they are the foundation of everything that we build upon. The first is the Ralph Brown Act. That's the open meetings. It is the broadcast that lets residents watch a meeting that they cannot attend in person. The second is the Americans with Disabilities Act, along with California's web accessibility requirements. Every Stockton resident who depends on a screen reader has the same rights to city information as anyone else that's able to attend a meeting in person. The California Public Records Act, records retention and language access on public records. This office supports the city clerk under city policy while the clerk leads the fulfillment of that process. And finally, emergency public information. When the city activates its emergency operations center, the public information officer is required to serve in that capacity. Every communications channel gets used to push information, alerts, and warnings to the public, and the joint information system keeps the city, the county, and our partner agencies speaking with one voice under the CEMS and NIMS systems. Those obligations exist no matter how the city is organized. The question this report answers is how well they are being met and how that will be measured moving forward. So to do that, I measured the office against two recognized standards. First is the Baldrige Excellence Framework. That is a federal standard for organizational performance administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The second is 3CMA communications audit, which is the established method in the municipal communications profession. Neither standard was written by this office, and it cannot be adjusted by this office. This is the point of using them. The review covered 100% of the city's web pages and 12 months of analytics. All six functions of this office were evaluated along with every communications channel. What came out of that was 13 findings and each one carries a recommendation and a target. There we go. The central finding was that the city has never had a way to measure whether its communications delivered value. Not this office, not the function in any form that came before it, and not because anyone declined to build one. It was just simply never part of what the city asked its communication function to produce. Now the office does carry compliance responsibilities, open meetings, accessibility records, emergency information. Those were being met and they are measured by law. And the next two slides will show you how that communications work itself was being done at volume and the platforms were measuring it. What did not exist was a performance instrument sitting on top of that. No baseline, no indicators by department, and no public dashboard. A report an office writes about itself is not the same thing as an independent accountability. That is exactly why this central piece of this plan is public performance dashboard. Once it's posted, the council and the public read the same numbers this office does at the same time. Most cities do not publish one. Stockton will. Council asked for that in June. It's being built. So from here forward, everything I show you is either a result that has already been delivered or a piece of the system that's being built. On top of the office's daily responsibilities, here's what was delivered during the first 30 days of this preliminary assessment period. July 2nd through August 3rd, and I want to note up front that every number on this slide can be checked and verified. The city's website accessibility score moved from 41 out of 100 to 95 out of 100. That score is an audit result. It's not an opinion. It's getting The team addressing that issue addressed an ADA Title II exposure that the city was carrying. July 7th was... Can I ask a question? I'm sorry.

Absolutely. Could you elaborate? I have no idea what... city website ADA score is?

Sure. So federal regulations require that ADA accessibility also extends to any digital communications put forth by any government agency. So that could be social media, it could be a website. In this particular measurement, when we opened up the website and started looking at how the information was presented, The industry tools that we used to make that to get that score rated at a 41 minimum allowed To and I don't want to get too much into the legal stuff with our city attorney here But the minimum is usually around 85 to avoid people trying to take advantage of that oversight So the team came in, they made that assessment, they made the appropriate modifications to the city website to bring that up to a 95. So we are in a very good position there to avoid any sort of action against the city on that particular issue. Did I say that correctly?

That was pretty good.

Thank you.

Does the numbers mean people, or is it a score?

It's a score out of 100. So basically we got an A, whereas before we had an F. And it's a variety of technical things that you do to a website, from tagging images to make sure that you're able to tab through using a screen reader. People that are visually impaired, they're able to use those tools. Now they're able to.

I get it. Thank you.

My pleasure. So July 7th was the first council meeting held at New City Hall. After that meeting, the city manager assigned me responsibility for the broadcast and for making sure the next meeting aired without failure. On July 21st, it did. The meeting aired on scheduled, PEG compliant across three independent channels and the city website. On media, the standard this office holds is to acknowledge 90% of inquiries within one business day. Those are media inquiries to the office from people like reporters. Every inquiry was logged against a standard that was acknowledged within one business day. That's 100% compliance, and each one is time stamped. Every position reporting to this office now has an individual work plan with smart goals and key performance indicators. Video views are up 662.9% year over year. That means this year we're up over 600% compared to this time last year. That's 536,000 views of city information that's reaching the public. Director-level meetings were held, booked, or covered by city manager designation in 10 of 13 departments as of today's date, or as of the date the report was filed. The number has moved since, and I'll give you a current count in just a moment. So these are the city's social media numbers. This is January 1st through August 26th of this year, measured against the same days last year. The figures come from Sprout Social, the city's analytic platform, and those numbers were confirmed against Meta's own platform data. I'll come back to that in a moment. Impressions, 3.4 million, up 44.1%. Engagements are up, it's 163,777, up 36.2%. Video views, 536,492. It's up 662.9%. Published posts were up at 1,599, up 183%. Net audience growth, 3,493, up 123.8%. And post link clicks, 1,624, up 55.9%. That last one matters because it's residents acting on what we're publishing. So they're seeing something, they're understanding it, and then they're moving forward with that information. All of this reach was earned with staff time. The city does not or had not purchased any paid promotion during that period, so that was organic reach. One more thing about these numbers, as a council member's suggestion, we took them to META directly. META's partner manager for government politics, advocacy, and compliance sat down with us and reviewed the city's accounts against META's own data. Their numbers matched ours. And looking at the city's Instagram following, she said that 41% increase over the year is a really good sign and told us that we were doing great. The city manager, deputy city manager, vice mayor were all present with that conversation. And as such, I'd like to thank the vice mayor for introducing META. It's the reason I can tell you that these numbers hold up. It's what produced them in volume, consistency, and quality of work from the people on the optic team. And it's also providing us with an opportunity to share that connection with the individual departments so we can build a larger strategy across the different needs for the different departments. During the assessment period, this office formalized a communication coordinator network across the organization. Director meetings are not new. This is what they are now documented against City Policy 13.02. Each department has a named coordinator and results are tracked, and this is how that was built. Fifteen city departments and offices were reviewed. Two were set aside. On the record, the City Attorney's Office is a separate charter office that does not communicate with the public. the police department that maintains its own public information team and its own spokespeople that leaves 13 other departments and offices in that network this slide shows the count as of the date of this report that was filed with the city clerk Here is the count as of tonight. Nine director meetings have been held, community development, fire, community services, the city clerk's office, ecological sustainability, information technology, municipal utilities, and the office of violence prevention, and as of today, public works. One is booked, human resources. We will be meeting tomorrow. City manager's office is covered by city manager's designation of his communications authority. And two remain in progress, administrative services and economic development. So that is 11 of the 13. Named coordinators are confirmed in 10 departments and the rest are being finalized. When that is done, every department will have a point of contact responsible for coordinating its communications with the public information office under city's policies 13.02. 13.01.01 and 13.01.40. Now the website. Here's what the data showed us. The fifth most visited page on the city's website is an error page. 72,871 views in 12 months. That's roughly one in every 40 page views landing on a page that tells the resident what they came for is not there. That condition came with the site and it has never been measured before this assessment. 72% of all site views land on the homepage, which tells you that residents arrive with a specific task in mind. And the data shows that those tasks are animal services, 142,000 views, jobs, 114,000, paying a bill, 101,000, and police services, 86,000. That is the blueprint for the website redesign that was requested by council. It's built from what residents are actually doing on the site and how they're utilizing the information that we're providing. Which brings me to recommendations. There are 13, every one of them is a measurement instrument. The first is a performance framework that with three to five key performance indicators for every department reporting to council in phase two. And a public performance dashboard. The second is a media protocol that acknowledges 90% of inquiries within one business day. That is also a Phase 2 item. The third is the website, a task-based redesign built from the analytics with a measurable drop in error page traffic. I will be bringing back a plan in Phase 3, and then we will have discussions on additional items that you guys would like to have considered at that time. And then the measured standards hold an accessibility score at 95 or higher with quarterly audits. Citywide brand and presentation standards and crisis communication frameworks, those are ongoing. All of this operates as one strategy with six working parts, which are listed on the right of the slide. The communication program, the media relations plan, the social media strategy, this public outreach framework, crisis communications, and branding and marketing, most of them are drafted or are in motion now. So this is report one of three, and the full set of 13 is on the slide with each of its targets to date. Tonight is the evaluation and the plan. The baseline is established. The measurement system is built, and the standards are adopted. In phase two, the system, the dashboard specifically, will be live. The first department indicators are reported to this council. The media and accessibility standards are holding, and the coordinator network is operating. In phase three, you'll start to see results. The public performance dashboard will be live with updated information that any resident can open. The website redesign will be underway with air page traffic down. Council will judge those results against the numbers set tonight in public before the work was done. What is what? what was asked for in June, and it is what the city's manager's office is delivering. My recommendation is that council receive and file this report with OPTIC returning in another month for the Phase 2 report.

Councilwoman Padilla. Thank you, Mayor. I have seen an uptick in your postings, so I do appreciate that.

Thank you.

Could you explain what role you play in the Brown Act meetings?

Language access and records retention sure I'll start with the last one records retention. So California and The federal government required that even social media posts are retained So the same rules that apply to say like our emails and things like that also apply to social media posts So there's that component. And it's things that fall under sort of that space. As far as the Brown Act goes, this public meeting falls under that guideline. So my responsibilities as it is to make sure that we are broadcasting, that we're meeting those obligations that we're recording and posting to the website. I am the mechanism, and I do work with the clerk's office, obviously. But there's a lot of cooperation there. But it does fall under my responsibilities as well. Language access. Oh, language access. Our rule is that I believe if 5% or more of the population speaks a language, we have to be posting critical information in both languages or that language. Right now that is English and Spanish with, I believe, Vietnamese coming in pretty close. But we're not quite there yet.

So that references your postings?

Correct. Okay. So when we're posting critical information, that has to be in English and Spanish.

Okay. And I also noticed that we still don't have our government channel. Yes. And I've been asked a lot because several people have Xfinity and they like to view it on Channel 97. So what's the status on that?

I do too. That's how I grew up watching it. Good news is I got word from Comcast today. Comcast outsourced the delivery of their fiber optic line, and that's what we've been waiting for. And they did let us know that it was going to be several months to get that all finished in and locked up. I got a notification at the beginning of this week that they would be on site this week for the final parts of that. I still have to work with IT, and I don't want to get ahead of them because there will still be connection things that we've got to do. But, you know, fingers crossed, we will be broadcasting the next council meeting on Channel 97.

And I am happy to see that you have website on here because it's extremely cumbersome. So I'm looking forward to that.

Once again, we heard your message on both the website and Ask Stockton. So both Ask Stockton, hopefully we will be bringing that back for a presentation to the full council on the 15th. If not the 15th, definitely the 29th, but we're shooting for the 15th.

Yeah, and I did, someone did mention to me, we need to elevate that a lot more, Ask Stockton.

And we have actually, this is not part of this plan, but we have expanded that, so we're working on that as well.

Okay, thank you. Yes, and on that Ask Stockton, the Veterans Post asked for a tutorial on it, and I'm sure there's a lot of different places, even the Senior Center, or just different places around town where we could maybe go out and give them a

And one of the things that we want to do is a videotape on the website, and we would be more than happy also to go out to the public to do exactly that. You need to go out to the public. So if anybody has any requests, we'll be taking them to do exactly that.

I would like to see more live videos. A lot of people seem to enjoy that.

So that was at the direction of the city manager. He really pushed for that and got us the equipment we needed to perform that. So what we're doing right now is we're being judicious with the live streams so that we're not overwhelming people for every event. But things like ribbon cuttings that were not previously live streamed and we'd have to wait, we're now going to start live streaming those. other special events, we would be doing live streams as well. So we have two devices specifically for that purpose. And I think you saw we did the 4th of July parade was live streamed and then also the party afterwards. Things like that. The response has been great. People love it. That's why I don't want to wear them out with doing everything that the team's out doing.

Wear them out. Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Tony, thank you. I will say this has been a very bumpy experience. And I'm going to say that in part, probably in large part, it was a lack of leadership. And I think that I'm one that's big on accountability, even when it feels like people are feeling attacked. That's what accountability sometimes feels like. I feel it sometimes. But I want to say that your staff has been nothing but professional throughout this whole experience. They're very kind in the hallway. They're kind to the public. Your improvement in terms of how you deal with the public, I just want to publicly acknowledge that, because I think that when you first got here, there was an accepted tone for how we engage, not only the public, but each other. And I want to acknowledge that I've observed a very different experience. Also, the call with Meta, I do appreciate you being a part of that conversation. I think having a direct relationship with Meta so we understand our Meta analytics. I think you asked Johnny the other day about a follow-up meeting. We should do another one. And they want to help. Definitely the uptick in the numbers is because we're doing more video. Your team is putting out more video content. you know, consistent with what they recommended. It was great. Councilman Padilla asked a lot of the questions I had with respect to the first page, so that was helpful. I do want to go down to the last page the recommendations but before i get there i just want to um uh also say that i think within the 30 days or whatever i would suggest i know council member enriquez is really good with social media uh custom video we've talked no you're horrible with social media but we have ideas about what it should look like you just don't execute it um if there's some small work group that can just happen to give ideas on some type of innovative engaging content because the content Because this presentation is great. It's given us the analytics. It's given us a kind of at a glance of where we are, what's working, what's not working. We're hearing from you what the needs are. There's a plan. It's thought out. There's a timeline. So I'm comfortable with this. I think the thing that we're looking for is the next phase of what does content look like? How are we telling the Stockton story? What community partners, like Hood App is a great resource when we need extra help. And I know we've used them. And I also appreciate that you all don't overuse AI. AI is a tool. I know people out here don't like AI, but AI is a tool to use. But you all don't overuse it. I think with the action plan, the 60 to 90 days thing, just if you can walk us through. So today there's the evaluation plan, 60 days, the system will go live. What system are we talking about?

So right now we have a couple different measurement tools that we're developing. The tool for measuring when we're receiving contact from media comes in, it gets time scanned, it gets organized, and the clock starts ticking. There's that system. Then we are developing, as we're meeting with the different department heads and directors, we're developing a dashboard based on the KPIs that we're establishing with them. So each department obviously has different heads. It's collaborative. We're talking about, I'll give Public Works an example. Public Works has so many different units. So what might be their parks and system might be different than what they're doing out on the roads or fleet services, things of that nature. So we're talking with them. It's like, how do we come to you and show you the respect and the support that you need? How do we give you what you're looking for? And can it be measurable? And so those are the conversations that we're having. And each one has been different. Some of them have been, you know, they want certain types of campaigns created for them on issues that directly impact theirs. For example, mud. We're working on a campaign of informational content based on weather preparedness, letting people understand why we got to rake the leaves up and put them in bags and make sure that we're not flooding out the streets, things of that nature. There's a variety of things, and what we will be doing in Phase 2 is developing the dashboard so that at a glance, council can look at that and say, okay, they're still at 95 out of 100 on the web store. All the departments are coming back in that they're getting 100% what they're expecting. Media responses are still at 100%, those types of things. So at a glance, you'll be able to see in real time the performance of that department.

So, okay, no, that's great. And again, I think the content piece for me is the piece that's missing, but is a piece that I think with a smaller group can kind of give some ideas on because when my team complains about, because just looking at this, you know, maybe we're thinking about social media, but we're not thinking about website. We're not thinking about broadcasting this. We're not thinking about all the things, right? I think understanding like my my team gets frustrated It's like there's filler content that we can come up with like what is an ass stocked in? Five pieces of content that can just be put up throughout things that keeps content going So I think that smaller group would be helpful the other part about the 88 stuff for folks who are May not speak English does our website translate another? Languages? Yes. Okay. And then as far as ADA for somebody that may be hearing impaired, is there audio capability?

They use screen readers that give them audio. And it is all readable because we keep it all in HTML content.

Okay. And then where are we with, I don't know if this is an optic thing, but where are we with AskDoc and that? Is that an optic project or is that?

It's a... Optic, IT, and Public Works issue, even though there's a department that has input with it, those are the three departments that has greater influence in working with it on a consistent basis.

So we won't give that responsibility to Optic, but we need to figure that out, too, at some point.

Right. Optic would be the point person but so much of it is IT support and so for instance one of the things that you asked as a Council was you wanted those things divided by district now it is divided by district and That was led by Tony, but it was Jamil's people putting a lot of those things in place.

I appreciate that. Okay, no, but in terms of just overall, I mean, this is a great presentation. I just, again, want to commend you and your team for working with the City Manager's Department in response to Council's request and actually working towards that plan. That makes sense. I think, again, a follow-up with Meta. And then also, how are you engaging the public on social channels? Are we communicating with them on social media or no?

So we do to an extent. When people are reaching out for questions like, where do I go to do this, then we would provide them with a link. We're trying not to engage conversationally, and we're just trying to provide information that they're requesting.

Does your department or your division have established policies yet for how you all are kind of conducting business? Are you still developing that?

I can go through and provide you with the specific policies that govern that. It's one of those things where there's been an established practice, and so we've been maintaining with that. But I can absolutely get that together for you.

Again, thank you for the presentation. I look forward to the follow-up. Thank you.

And I just had a point of clarification because when I open Ask Stockton, it says GoGov, powered by GoGov. And I know when I've went and visited other cities and they're like, man, we just can't keep up because there's a person actually answering the phone to take in all this. And I said, oh, let me show you what we've got. And, you know, I know it's not perfect by any means, but I think that it has been a very useful tool. We just need to tweak it. And so I don't know what part GoGov has in it. If we can develop our own, I don't know. I'm not trying to, again, we're not trying to get you to do more work than you already do. But we all know that there are weaknesses in it. And we've talked about when it says closed, And we need to be letting people know that it is being worked on. Because it does send a number on it. It says job number or whatnot on there. But even still, it's kind of like in Never Never Land, which I know it's not, like I said, on you. But that's where I think we've got to kind of think outside of the box. And if GoGov doesn't work the way we want it, then we have to find something that does. because we can't keep encouraging people to use it, and then they feel like it's not worth it. So I will just leave it at that. And I don't have any more lights up. So thank you. This isn't an action item, is it? Or is it? Oh, action. Well, you already said you're going to come back to council.

Mayor, we do have one public comment.

Oh, OK. Jasmine, is that who it is? Yes. Because I see you're up.

Good afternoon or good evening. I just wanted to come up here to share that I'm very encouraged by the efforts that the OPTIC team has taken to improve transparency, information sharing, just engagement with the public and some of the projects that the city has taken and taken on it's great to see the engagement I think it also contributes to what was shared earlier around just public perception and reputation I think a digital strategy around getting the word out about all the great things that are happening really only serves everyone. I did want to just acknowledge the pieces in the inventory around the capacity building that you're doing with your team and just thank you for that as well as expanding language access. I know that work is challenging and I think there could be some, I understand where you're starting from like department level coordination And I think at some point engaging with organizations that are trusted messengers to help support expanded language access around public information that is relevant to the city but also to the community organizations that we work with. I think that would be great. The main point I wanted to share was around crisis communications. I think this is something that I think about a lot and with respect to the existing chronic emergencies that we have public health emergencies that we have but also the potential emergencies that our communities are vulnerable to and so would just encourage you to as you go forward coordinate around the action 84 in the climate action plan around establishing a multilingual climate hazards alert system

we need to work on that as soon as possible thank you okay like I said it's not an action item thank you so much and we will move on to item 11 city managers update on behalf of the city managers office I'd like to present the city managers report

Hi, my name is Mary Gastic. I'm the city county librarian for the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library. So Maya Angelou Library closed March 23rd for the Refresh Project and reopened Monday, August 10th. They put new flooring in the community room and new carpet throughout the library and the staff spaces, new furniture, so it'll be a refreshed location. Maya Angelou Library is one of our Measure M funded libraries. Part of the programming funds, the project funds, material funds, all of that is partially funded by Measure M. They know they have a display there with memorabilia that Maya Angelou did send to the library. She was there when they opened it as the library named after her. The Cesar Chavez Library, currently the library is closed to the public and staff is busy working on packing collections deciding what we're going to keep what we're going to send out to other libraries we're hoping to be able to provide some public service at some point we're trying to evaluate too what we would like to to keep to be able to offer people if we're able to do pop-up service identifying furniture that we'd like to keep that the architects have identified as possibilities for refurbishment as you can imagine we've been here a long time so there's lots to pack up and go through, especially in our special collections and government documents. We are working with the branches to see if we can send out materials they may need to refresh their collections. The staff, most of them will be sent to other libraries to work. So we will have a few staff members that for now are planning on staying with the administration team. So that's where we're at currently with the project here at the Central Library. We encourage our regular users to explore other branches. Fair Oaks Branch is our closest branch library to the Central Library. Troche is not too far away. And, of course, we have the micro libraries in all of our community centers.

Hello. My name is Lonnie Gutierrez. I'm a division chief with the fire department, and I oversee the OES operation coordination for the City of Stockton Fire Department. So last week, We deployed our state OES Type 1 fire engine to the Gann incident, which was located in Calaveras County for a wildfire. Approximately about 10,000 acres threatened several hundred homes. Along with that OES fire engine, we deployed two fire line EMTs, and their duties were to provide EMS assistance to personnel assigned to that incident. After that incident, they all returned home, and shortly after that, we received another OES order request for an interstate mutual aid. assistance with the state of Oregon. So we sent our state OES fire engine with a fresh crew to the state of Oregon to combat the Roe incident. It's about 370,000 acre wildland fire with several structures threatened and they're also assigned structure protection out there as well. The OES crew that's in Oregon is going to be deployed for approximately two weeks. And upon closure of that incident, they'll be returned back to the city of Stockton. So the state OES engine is actually a fire apparatus that is owned by the state of California, and it's activated by the governor's office. The state OES engines are distributed to cities that are willing to staff them when they're required to be sent to an incident. We've had a state OES engine for the last 30 plus years. Part of the value that we get from the city of Stockton in participating in these OES deployments These large-scale incidents help prepare our crews with that real-world experience to where they can bring that back to the city of Stockton and have that available in Stockton and San Joaquin County. I'm the EMS Division Chief, and my responsibility is CENCAL as the Executive Director. CENCAL is a JPA organization put together by the cities of Stockton, Tracy, and Lodi where we offer the 911 ambulance transport. through SenCal, and our transport provider is AMR. They were the incumbent transport provider before, so we've partnered with them and provide emergency ambulance transport to the rest of the county, primarily Zone X and Zone Y, which encompasses those three cities that I mentioned, and that's what SenCal is.

Hi, I'm Imani Lewis, and I am the Marketing and Social Media Analyst for Community Services Department. Recently, we kicked off Stockton Ignite. Our effort is to help everyone understand the importance of Measure M. We brought in three professional consultants with expertise in recreation and libraries to work alongside our team, explain our upcoming community needs assessment we'll be launching soon, and begin engaging community ambassadors to make sure that Stockton residents have a real voice in shaping the future of these services. We also presented this work to the Strong Communities Advisory Committee to share our direction and build alignment around what comes next. Ultimately, this is all about making sure Measure M is more than an investment in programs and facilities. It's an investment residents can see, access, and help shape. That's the heart of Stockton Starts With Us.

Okay, thank you. Okay, now we will move on to council comments. Seeing none, we will go then on to, oh, darn it. Go ahead, Councilman Blower.

On this past Saturday, we had a park beautification event at Anderson Park. I want to thank Supervisor Paul Canepa for joining me on that effort. And I was just blown away by the amount of people. I've done quite a few of these over the years. And we had almost 100 people there. I mean, it was a great, great turnout. There was, like, a team from Amazon, just a lot of people, a lot of youth that turned out. We did things such as there was painting, planting trees, picking up garbage, a lot of time and effort put into cleaning it. But with that many people, gosh, we got it all done. I think everybody got there at 8. We were done about 10, 30, or 11. So, again, big thank you to everybody that showed up for that. That evening I participated in the Crime Stoppers bowling tournament. I did not bowl particularly well, but I had a good time. So it was a good event. The Crime Stoppers did. Chief McFadden was there. District Attorney Ron Freitas was there. Anyway, that was a good event. So thank you to Crime Stoppers for all that they do. I think they raised a little bit of money at that so Looking forward just a reminder to all of you that on the 10th so a week from Thursday will be the Central Valley division of the California League of Cities We're gonna have our general membership meeting dinner and that will also have the election of officers That's on Thursday September 10th, and that will be at the Riverbank Community Center Reception starts at 6 and the dinner will start at 630 and Nominations are still open for the elections going through tomorrow. No, the third. The positions open are president, first vice president, second vice president, and state director. So if any of you have any interest in that or any questions, let me know. And I'm going to keep it, like I said, short and sweet. And that is my report.

Councilwoman Padilla.

Thank you, Mayor. First, thank you to all the city departments who gave out information and participated in my community event. It was a huge success and very well received. I appreciate those that are using Ask Stockton in my district. I have had some positive comments with regards to how easy it is to use and how things are getting done quickly. So I did receive comments, positive comments. Yes, Chick-fil-A opened last week, and now one of the biggest questions is when is In-N-Out opening? So that will be coming soon, and we'll notify the public once we have that grand opening date. Another major development coming to District 1 is the Hilton Hotel. And some may wonder, why do we need another hotel, or why in District 1? But this development will offer more than just rooms it will include a restaurant a bar convention space where businesses or organizations community groups can hold meetings and events so when we have other people come into our city we receive the tax benefit to that as well so that is a very positive thing coming There was a comment made regarding that there was once a plan on 8 Mile Road for a CSU college. However, the developer tried to earn money or tried to raise money, went to the state, and just really couldn't bring it to Stockton. I mean, that was, that area was, really was their main goal, was to bring CSU to Stockton. That was their vision. However, just through government, they weren't able to get that going. So with continued growth also comes concerns, particularly the traffic along 8 Mile Road. And so I've already asked the city manager and public works We're going to be holding city town halls or a town hall meeting specifically for eight mile road looking at whatever Plans may be in the future to widen or what future development is going on so I will provide that date and location When we get that set up, but we are going to have a meeting specifically on a eight-mile road traffic I'm gonna be short too so today before I came I had a conversation with my sister and she ended the conversation with two simple words and it was just be kind and I think we could all use that reminder sometimes whether it be a in the city hall out at the grocery store in line when you're waiting for some type of service and the line is long so i know there's a lot going on a lot going on in social media a lot going on in our community inside city hall but sometimes we forget that the things being said or done don't just affect our city but they affect real people and their families as well so i just want everyone to you know sometimes slow down you know i find myself just going going going and you know that probably escalates your stress and so just think about that when we're out in public I do want to thank city staff. They come to work every day. They keep this city moving. And they do a lot of work that we don't see out front. And I just want you to know that I do see it and I appreciate it. So I just hope that we can all remember to give a little more grace and kindness. That is it for me. Thank you.

Councilman Enriquez.

Thank you, Mayor. So I'll start off really quick just to, again, just thank everyone that came out today. I know I personally appreciated everyone's comments and thoughts on several issues, but especially seeing our young people rally together on something, just feeling the passion and and just having the courage to come up to the podium. I know there was some that said it was their first time here, so I just want to say thank you to all of you that showed up today. In terms of events, the last two weeks, I want to just give a shout out to University of the Pacific. We did a day of service where we went all throughout parts of Stockton. I know I myself went with about 20 students to St. Mary's Community Services. We spent about five hours there doing a wide range of tasks for the organization. And then on the 21st, I know myself and a few colleagues attended the MC3 graduation. And then that night, one of my favorite events, Tiger's Prowling the Mile, the entire mile was just filled with activities, jump houses, bungee jumping, rock climbing, and all the stores were activated. And I make it an intentional effort every year to go to each business and always ask them how are they feeling, how are they doing, and they always say, It is the most busiest, most productive night of the year. And they love the partnership they have with UOP. So I know my nephew and I, we always have a good time. So I was thankful to just the great setup. And I want to thank the Miracle Mile Board and specifically Kaylani, who's the executive director. I know she put in a lot of hard work to continue the work, also add some new exciting rides for the kids. And that's always a plus. And let's see. And then the very next day, August 22nd, I did my Mornings with Mario at Bennett's Coffee, formerly Terra Coffee on Yosemite Street Village. And we had 15-plus people who showed up. And there was at least six different topics that everyone wanted to talk about and were able to get it addressed. And also one person was able to use Ask Stockton right then and there, which is great. I also want to thank Sensei, him and his wife from across the street. She came to Bennett's. And I always love when I can give updates to constituents on something they first flagged and then you can give them an update later on. I love – obviously you guys know I love my before-after, but – I told Sensei that he, in terms of his tree trimming, he was able to get it addressed, and now it's in the system. And I know he said, oh, I heard your comments last time, and I'm sure he's maybe listening right now, but those are the things I really appreciate, that when I get to see someone and tell them, hey, we resolved your issue, that's something that I personally enjoy in terms of being a council member. And again, 15 people showed up, which is great. It's always a range. I think this is my forget how many months 18th 19th month of doing mornings with Mario and it's always a range from two people to 20 people and this one fell in in the top in terms of what I've done but again everyone's always welcome I always invite my colleagues to them if you all would like to come and participate and hear from constituents I know councilman Blauer has been to a couple I know we did well when we first introduced city manager Ford we've had a public works director and there's a couple other folks that I want to bring in. But if there's any suggestions, comments you all would like, please bring them my way, and I'm always happy to adjust, and also where we do it as well. That evening, I want to thank our Public Works Director, Penny. He emceed a really great, successful event. It was a Focus on Pacific Islander celebration we had at the county fairgrounds. I was able to be there for the, I think, three, four hours of the entire presentation of just different performances, A lot of our young people performed, and I just want to thank them, and thank Penny, just to see him in action in a different hat leading and organizing the event. And I was able to give a certificate on behalf of my colleagues. Sunday, August 23rd, I dropped by Oak Park. Little League asked me to come by and drop by their annual fundraiser, the Port City team. And then Thursday, the 27th, I attended the United Way's Nonprofit Capacity Building Program. There was about, I think, 20, 30 plus graduates of that program and it was held at University of the Pacific. In terms of upcoming, there's quite a couple of things. I know we have another meeting in two weeks, but there's a combined night market in Lodi for Labor Day weekend, and I was asked to be a judge for their meat stick contest, so I never said no to that. So I will be a judge joining four other folks for that. So we'll see how it goes, and I'll give you all an update. And then my September mornings with Mario, except for the last Saturday of the month, September 26 I'm gone most of the month but I wanted to make sure that I still had a mornings with Mario for September and then I'll share more about what that entails at the next meeting in terms of infrastructure five major potholes were fixed on lomita avenue if you know you know it's between west walnut and bedford road and then four more were reported over the weekend on what i have been calling pothole patrol and then sidewalks so i appreciate people that comment online i know my social media was very active with a one uneven sidewalk in particular on elizabeth avenue But I appreciated the comments, whether they were good or bad, because at the end of the day, one of our major focus this year is infrastructure. So I love that people want to start talking more about infrastructure, and it's becoming more of a common day-to-day thing that I think we all care about. We all care about our roads. We all want to talk about our sidewalks and just other pieces that tie in with infrastructure. But I posted that because, and I've said this before, every before-after photo that I post, I want people to really understand that the neighbor that lives in that house across the street To them, that was the biggest thing, the biggest relief that they have seen in their entire week, their entire month, maybe their entire year when it comes to how active government can help them. So I don't want to take away from when someone asks something of any of us to fix or to utilize Ask Stockton. When we tell them we fixed it, for them, we know it could be a permanent fix. We know it could be a temporary fix. But at the end of the day, it does make their livelihood just that much better. And I want to just acknowledge that because I don't want to take it away from the negative online chatter that people may have, because at the end of the day, you don't live on that road. But to the person that walks out, maybe they won't trip, maybe not as bad, maybe they won't get as hurt, but it was a fix that I think this city saw and addressed it, assessed it, and fixed it. So, you know, there was a lot of chatter. I know this council had about uneven sidewalks, I think maybe about five, six months ago, and Since then, then I became very paranoid and became even more aware of those in my district. And for those that follow me on social media, when I do Pothole Patrol, I always say in those videos, I reported four uneven sidewalks today, seven more the following week. So if you look at my Ask Stockton, I think there's at least 15 uneven sidewalks that are in the system for District 4. And when those are fixed, whether it's a temporary repair, I'm going to post it. If it's not up to your standard, come to my coffee meeting. You can call me at 209-645-2711. If you want to give your opinion or a suggestion or a solution, I'm all ears. But that is the day-to-day work of what local government is, at least how I view it. There was a tree removed, and that also gained a lot of chatter. I also want to focus on not blocking sidewalks, and we removed a huge tree on the corner of King Avenue and West Fremont. And someone was saying, oh, I think he just moved it and moved it back. First of all, I'm not that strong, so thank you for thinking I can move a tree that big and put it back just for the sake of a photo. But at the end of the day, it goes back to that neighbor. For them, they say, thank you for removing this tree. Is a sidewalk perfect? No, but it's now, there's no longer an obstruction where they can't even go through the sidewalk for those that are able to. And that goes a long way. And that uneven sidewalk is in the system. So again, when it eventually is fixed, you know, to the best of our ability, then we can have that conversation of no more trees blocking and the sidewalk has been repaired. So things move slowly, but it's in the system. which is why Ask Stockton is so important. Some other things, street lights, there's some Ask Stockton requests that some local business owners are sending my way, I told them the other day. I am following up, I had a good productive meeting with our city manager about the lighting of Maple Street between El Dorado and Center Street, something that I think on my first month in office to now I've been really trying to follow up on so i appreciate the staff for that and then also trash cleanup there was major trash that was cleaned up along pacific avenue on the corner of pacific and bianchi If you were going north before March Land, the right side, that whole side was filled with trash. And I want to thank staff for getting it cleaned up. And I know I posted on that on my council member Facebook page, which is my official page on everything related to the work that I do and my constituents. And let's see what else. Graffiti. Quick action within 24 hours. If you all didn't notice, there was major red graffiti on what will be a new church on Regent and Pacific Avenue, that was cleaned up this morning. I saw it yesterday, this morning, and it's already gone. It was almost as tall as a door and as wide as that TV screen to my left, and that was cleaned up right away. Again, people brought it to our attention and for using Asstockton. And then also leftover furniture was picked up on Pershing Avenue. I know it was there for about five or six days, and yesterday I noticed it was gone, so I want to thank our staff for getting that cleaned out Also Oak Park Senior Center. It was on consent, but I'm happy that we approved the renovation of the restroom for Oak Park Senior Center. So I want to thank my colleagues for their support on that with a completion of winter 2027 weather permitting. And then also there was some really good conversations about security regarding the area, especially the back corner, the north side of Oak Park Senior Center. There's a little nook where there's always fires being started, trash, broken glass. And I know I sat with our city manager and we met with our security team. They did an assessment and then they were able to give a thorough plan of what they can do to improve that area. And I'll be sharing that security plan later this week. But particularly, I want to thank the staff who work in that building because they were the ones that addressed. And I remember that we did a walkthrough and they showed me specifically the day-to-day issues they have at the senior center. So I want to thank them for letting me know and we got that addressed. Legislation, we are having our second housing town hall in early mid-October. More details to come. Our next legislation committee meeting is set for Monday, September 21st. And then in two weeks exactly, I think I said this a couple months ago, but just so the public is aware, I will be in Washington, D.C. for our next council meeting, but I've already been, I think, back in late May, early June. I told staff right away I will be not here, but I will be logging in online via telephone in terms of where I'll be at. And I have three hours ahead, so we start at 1. It's 4 p.m. for me, so... If we end at 10 p.m., it's going to be 1 a.m. for me, so we'll see how the agenda goes. But I will be awake, and you all will see me because I will be on the screen somewhere. But, no, I will be going there for my 10-year reunion. Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute is a fellowship I did, nine months in Capitol Hill, five months working for the House, five months working on the Senate. And it's our 10-year reunion, so all 20 of us that were selected from throughout the country will reconvene and see how life has been the last decade. But I will be there for that, and then I know the week before that I will be camping. I don't know how I'm going to survive, but I will be camping through my participation in the American Leadership Forum. It's a requirement of that program. There's about 25 of us from three different counties that were selected. And it's called Wilderness Week. So six days, I will be out doing outdoorsy stuff, whatever that entails. But six days, tell my mom I love her. And then six days, I land back. That same day, I do a red-eye to D.C. I'm in D.C. for five days. I come back the next day for my mornings with Mario. It's Oktoberfest. which is at the Miracle Mile. Fun event. Please come out. And in the following week, my colleagues and I are in Anaheim for four days. So it's going to be a nonstop September. But I'm very excited to just give updates along the way. Just follow me on social media. But my goal is to work on all my graphics so that way people can see all the infrastructure updates, all the policy updates, the town hall graphic that I'm working on using Canva. And then other than that, wow, I have two minutes. I don't know what else to do, but I'm kidding. I'll spare you the two minutes. But please call me if you need me, 209-645-2711 or DIST4 at StocktonCA.gov. Thank you all and have a good night.

Vice Mayor.

thank you mayor okay no well first of all I appreciate tonight's meeting was a lot of stuff to talk about and lots of public comment and I just want to thank the mayor for allowing us to have all that debate and taking a break when we needed it because the Lord Lord knows I needed it and thank you to everybody that came out I want to address one of the public comments somebody said that there was there was a comment made that the meetings in the corridor aren't being organized we broke down our district in district six in three parts and have regularly monthly meetings of the constituents in those areas because each area has different needs, the corridor, Western Ranch, and then Southeast Stockton, Sierra Vista. And so if people want those meetings to continue, you have to show up. There's no reason to go to a meeting if nobody shows up. But there are other meetings that people within District 6 can go to if they want to go outside the corridor. So I just wanted to address that. This past week I went and spoke at the Stockton Democrats together. I want to thank David Sainz and the group there. Councilwoman Padilla was there. It was a great discussion. I've posted it on my Facebook. And I want to thank everybody there who came out. There was a woman who was 74 years old. She told me she's been watching me and she loves what I'm doing, but she doesn't like me posting videos in my bathrobe, so I committed to her. that I will no longer do videos or talking about business in the city in my bathroom, although it was something I was used to. But for her, I'm going to give it up. So I didn't ask the mayor if I can share this. I won't go too deep because we did agree to privacy. But I want to thank the mayor and I want to thank Johnny for helping the mayor and I get into a process. I don't know if we call it mediation or marriage therapy or counseling or whatever it is. But I thank the city manager for creating a pathway to us working together. There was one question asked of both of us, and it was, what can't you do if you both work together? And we just kind of looked at each other because we really can do everything. And I think we both – I just want to acknowledge that it took a lot for us both to get there because we acknowledged the important work that we have to do. And, you know, obviously it requires a lot of change on both of our parts. And, you know, like an addict, you don't change overnight. It takes time. But, you know, we're committed to the process. And I just want to thank her for the – open safe space for us to be honest with one another and i think we have been so far and i look forward to continuing those those meetings in that process but when i think about that process and i think about even optic today presenting i've held the mayor accountable for a lot of things this council should have been held accountable for seven of us up here and it takes a vote of four and whether it's four three four three four three the mayor doesn't have four votes on her own there are other people up here elected to think for themselves, and if they believe the direction that we've been in in the past is the direction we should have gone in, thank God this is an election season. Now, when I think about the work that the mayor and I are doing, it's a very fragile process. And I understand how people who want to have their time in the sun will try to hijack a person's platform because they didn't have the ability to run and win a seat or at least keep it from going to jail. and want to work through certain individuals. There are seven people here that have been given the trust of the city to lead, and I am one of those people, as is she. But seven of us have to govern together, and this relationship is very fragile. So when Councilman Padilla says, be kind, and then your friends are online attacking people, making crazy claims, editing text messages, creating a narrative that somehow I was poor, moved away, got rich, came back to be a criminal, I'm not your friends. And my sister, who's running for office, who spent 23 years in law enforcement, who doesn't even have a speeding ticket, all of a sudden she's a conspiracy theorist who's committing a crime in order to get a seat up here to get $33,000 a year. It's nonsense. And when that individual, the former mayor, Anthony Silva, who's played strip poker with kids, who got investigation for sexually assaulting minors, who's done all types of nefarious things, who... is a deplorable human being. For him to be online doxing me, putting my home address, my car, my license plates and all that, I think about when the mayor's house got shot up. I actually called her, even in the midst of all her turmoil, to make sure she was safe, because we can have political disagreements, but when you cross the line of putting people's family online and their houses and their cars and all that, and you encourage people to go to their homes, that crosses the line. And for me, when you talk about be kind, start with that message to your friends because you all will pay the price for their behavior because I know what this is. And nobody wants to talk about behind the veil, but that's why I've been posting text messages, just little signs that that veil can slip and will slip if we continue to play reindeer games. Now, I do want to thank staff, our city manager for the District 6 development meeting. My commissioners have spent the last year and a half putting together a 10-year development plan on what the future of District 6 in Western Ranch, Southeast Stockton can look like. When the mayor and I first got elected, the four of us, when we came in, she said, we've got to start in the south and move forward to the north because she understands the inequities that have existed for decades in the district that created me. And so we've been working diligently to put together a plan. And I'm really excited that tomorrow developers from all over the city, the county, the mayor, myself, my commissioners, city staff, brokers from different companies, investors, Tiffany Hatter, she wants to go to a grocery store in the district. We'll all be here in the district for a very healthy discussion. Councilman Ricas, I think you're coming tomorrow. to look at that, and I think that's the work that we were talking about earlier, that each district needs to invest in what the future of its district looks like. And my district continues to be, right now, statistically the safest district in the city. September 16th, Cardi B is hosting a fundraiser for Hollywood Cares to raise a half a million dollars for the youth here in the city. So earlier when I heard folks saying that we need to do more for kids, that's why I spend a lot of time with my friends who care about Stockton as much as I do, as much as the public does, Um, and that, that, that those resources will be coming to district six. Um, and I'm really excited. About that event. Um, tickets are $5,000 each. If anybody wants to come, hit me up. I'll let you know how that can happen. Uh, all right. Um, the audit committee. So we had an update of a couple months ago. I was given an information that, um, that, um, uh, individual that used to be elected here was issued a pool contract for a company started two weeks before, or that his sister. created two weeks before the contract was awarded, $114,000 pool contracts. We got another community complaint that the individual was at the swimming pools around children. That individual was Mayor Silva. So we started to inquire into that, into the audit committee, and discovered that not only was there a relationship and he's on the paperwork, but that individuals may not have been fingerprinted. Obviously, that brought concerns to our committee. That is posted online for folks who want to go and get caught up on that. I want to thank Audrey and the City Attorney's Office for evaluating potential breaches of the contract and evaluating where we could have done better. I did forward that to the State Comptroller to look at as part of the audit, given that there are procurement concerns from other contracts, and this is not a job where we give money out to our friends. Now, I don't know that that happened, although there was an attempt to give them pool contracts back in February. But staff raised a big flag saying, hey, there's serious concerns here. We shouldn't. We didn't. And eventually did. So that will be looked into. And when we talk about election integrity, again, you know, Stockton is a news desert. And when I got into office, you know, obviously I used my 10 million followers to get elected. But what I've seen is that people will put out anything on the internet that's not true. They make up things or whatever. And so I've been working with meta leadership and I'm going to put on the record for the public to be able to get from our city clerk's office a letter that I sent to meta. It's six pages long, outlining a request that the leadership establish a team that focuses on our county as we move through the election and starts to disband pages, remove content, or ban individuals from the use of meta platform should they decide to wake up one day and use it for misinformation. There's lots of stuff out there right now where you see elections that are compromised all over the country. And there's just lots of folks who watched the doxing and all the craziness online from all over the country, congressmen and congresswomen calling and saying, hey, what's going on in your city? And I had to explain to them that this seems to be business as usual. And the mayor has described this as a bloodsport. This is a bloodsport. But the blood sport we should be fighting for is for the people, for kids, for a better community and all the things that we promise people along the way. And the people have to always be over the preservation of political power. In talking about that, my colleague saying be kind, I think about our resignation of our city clerk. Good old little city clerk, the one that I did the program in here with the kids and came in here and taught them civic engagement and did all the mock. councils and all that. So when we talk about being kind, when you all have gunned for firing our highest appointed officers who maintain the integrity of this establishment is a total contradiction. To staff who are working here for 11 years, I spent 11 years working in a labor union. I have never seen the treatment of our staff and then be the one blamed for how staff are treated. It's insanity. To watch how this person in her department who sit here and serve this council every meeting were treated in the midst of wild accusations that are going to cost the city millions of dollars if we get sued. And we all know that that lawsuit is coming. We should be ashamed of ourselves with the double speaking and the admonishments of being kind, especially when you're planning a hearing, a 406 hearing, a 407 hearing, to create another circus court that you know is going to end badly for you. But what I do want to say to our city attorney, I do want that letter that was brought to us in closed session disclosed. I want to bring the matter to closed session, and I want us to take a vote to weigh privilege on that document because there were things in that document that are extremely alarming. And the fact that the public is going to have to pay in a lawsuit should those matters go to a judge and should all of us have to go in and raise our right hand, which some of us may be found in perjury if we go in there, is very, very concerning to me. The other thing is there's been claims online by Michelle Sherman, who we gave an award to tonight, and Anthony Silva that somehow talk about decisions made in closed session. There's literally screenshots I have of them saying Brando walked out of closed session, the vice mayor did this, this did that. There's seven of us that took an oath to follow the rules, and yet we leave and we go tell people what's allegedly happened in closed session, which is a violation and breach of public trust and trust of us. And I have no problem saying what we talked about in closed session, but we have to stop playing and calling our friends that hang in the shadows and telling them what's happening in a meeting they have no access to. But the fact that they actually printed online that council members told them what happened, the fact that I talked to Michelle Sherman and she told me the conversations that she had with council members here, you should be ashamed of yourself, those of you who did it. And I will say the mayor was not one of those people that they named. um and the fact that you those of you who are aligned with a criminal who's pending federal indictment and sentencing to put out information about the integrity of our government is also very embarrassing i want to state our city manager directly to his face i've never told anybody that you should be fired that you and the chief need to be fired and i know you and i have had a conversation about the things that we've seen online in fact all of us have said how much we value and appreciate you And I'm embarrassed that I even have to address that as a black man to another black man. But nonetheless, that's where we are because that's the political climate that we're in. But I thank you for your leadership and the team that you've built and brought here to the city and for all the amazing work that they're doing. Now, speaking of the chief, I did raise ADA. I mean, I did raise PRA concerns related to a recent inquiry. There were two council members, Councilman Padilla and Brenda Villalpudo, who were accused of kidnapping a consultant. It's been promoted online. We've seen it in the news reports. Now, whether it happened or not, I don't know because I asked for a copy of the police report and it was denied. But then I think about when I ran for office and I asked for all the body cam footage, the home addresses, police reports of Kim Wormsley, I got it all from the same department. So I've been addressing that with PD wanting to understand the double standard or concealment of information that we don't have access to. And I've learned a lot from our chief and our team. And I do want to bring up that that will be at a future audit committee to allow PD to explain that. And while I'm talking about PD, I won't lie and say that I've said this to my family, and I'll say it here. It feels very unsafe governing in this city, given all of what I've been able to accomplish over the year from a city that tried to take my life. To come back and govern this city and not have the police department put out a press release about me being doxxed or my family being attacked or other things happening, yet our department put out a press release about election fraud and that's not something that we investigate as a department. I would have wanted somebody to put out something about me and my family and my safety and that didn't happen. So I do want to put that out there. Which brings me to another issue. I received an anonymous, well not anonymous, I received a letter regarding the flock cameras and one of our officers using the flock camera system to stalk his girlfriend. I know the department took a necessary action, but I didn't see a press release about that either. I've seen lots of people from the community come here and be very, very, very concerned about the flock cameras. And I've been very supportive of our department publicly and privately. And everybody that knows me knows that I value all of our officers and the work that they're doing. But the containment of that information at a time when we're transparent about everything else, especially things outside our jurisdiction, does concern me. And I do have concerns. around a city that I'm governing where I don't feel safe like some of our public. The other thing is, oh, so by the way, I would like us to agendize or have that public safety discussion that we agreed to have with the public and include this flock camera piece of it. Do we have a date when that's being scheduled? Because I know we had asked about it last week. We said within 90 days. You said it. Okay, so we can put it in that. Okay, and then the last thing is my understanding is that there's been lots of work around tent cities and a plan to bring tent cities or a homeless encampment or homeless thing to District 1. I'd like to agendize at the next council meeting a discussion update from staff around what the plans are with tent cities or any housing. Can I get a second on that? Thank you. And thank you.

So while I was No problem digging there Also want to thank you everyone for coming here tonight First want to start with thinking our city manager Johnny Ford for everything. He does our community. I want to thank our our chief of police and our chief of fire as well and everyone they're doing every day and as well as i know we don't recognize them but also just want to thank the security guards they're here every day watching us they're very respectful and they take care of us take care of our city hall so i just want to say thank you guys every day for what you do um So some new updates that I'm planning up. Columbus Park, I'm having our neighborhood watch there starting next month. I'm very excited. It's a neighborhood that's been wanting for a long time. you know we be getting some cameras to monitoring that beautiful park so I will give you more information regarding that I'm very excited that's another neighborhood watch that I have in my in my district next week we have in my neighborhood watch the strip of the park which I have every month second Wednesday from 3 to 4 o'clock come out here listen to the good, the bad, and just talk to me what, you know, things are going in our neighborhood. It's always good to see you. I'm always bringing good donuts for everyone, so come enjoy one. But I just want to also, I was talking to Penny. We're having a town hall meeting in a few weeks to discuss the planning of Van Burskery. community conway of phase one what we're going to be doing discussing with the community on the updates so look out for that and i just want to thank uh mr crew stephanie casio for everything that you guys doing helping me when uh answering emails and just helping not just myself but well as my colleagues and I want to thank all the great wins with my colleagues as well did tonight and just want to close it out with you know personal attacks of false information are unprofessional unacceptable and it shouldn't be coming from us council members from either the dice or on social media. It was a great night. A lot of great things happened today. And I just want to thank the community for coming. And have a great week and great weekend. And I wish you all safe.

Okay. So I was notified that a member of our community passed away today. Yes. Bruce Giudici, that's how you pronounce it in Italian. He was the one who started Earth Day. He had connections, which was a newspaper and he was part of the peace and justice nonprofit organization, but he devoted countless hours to The city of Stockton the people of Stockton and if I want to close in a moment of silence for him I also want to say, Don and Johnny, don't forget that the grand jury response, I think it's September 23rd. Just please put it on your calendar. And then I found out, too, that Senator McNerney was instrumental in getting a $2 million donation to Pacific's Med School. So we're just getting closer and closer to that final number so the doors can open in 2030. Past events, if you want to say Barrio Fiesta, if you missed it, you missed out. Barrio Fiesta, they said, oh, we're just going to have it small. They calculated, or they counted, almost 10,000 people went to that event. And the people that went and the people who missed it, they were just like, this is what we need at Weber Point. We need more of these cultural community events. where we can come together and really learn and celebrate customs and traditions. And so speaking of that, this weekend we have the powwow that'll be Saturday and Sunday at University of the Pacific. We have Black Family Day that will be Sunday and Monday. as well. And then next weekend on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we have the Greek Festival as well as the 75th year anniversary of Kingdon Drag Races that is on DeVries Road just north of 8 Mile. And then the weekend after that, We have Family Day in the Park, which people show up. It will be at Weber Point. And usually the third Saturday of September is Coastal Cleanup. It is around the world. It happens everywhere on the third Saturday. And we usually have a number of sites that go out and do cleanups. There's always one at Yosemite Lake. And, you know, Duck Creek and along the Delta and along the Calaveras, they're everywhere. So if you're looking for something to do on the weekends, don't worry. There is stuff happening here in Stockton. I do also want to bring up Hunter House. We did a groundbreaking. I know that a city manager was there, Supervisor Canepa and Supervisor Gardea. was there 120 units, and it was brought up, oh, you know, since 2019. Well, I will tell you, there are many projects that take even nine to 10 years. I know that Grandview Terrace took almost 10 years before it was done. We have La Pasillera that was many years, and I can see it growing and going up fast. And then we'll have hopefully the Mayfair, because we need to have housing for people. We talk about, oh, the shelters, more shelter beds. We have more shelter beds, and if you didn't know, if you looked at the point in time count put out by the continuum of care, in the city of Stockton, homelessness has been reduced by 38.3%. Are there still homeless people out there? Yes. But we have people working on all cylinders to provide housing for individuals. But then in order to leave the shelter, we have to have housing for them to go into. And so there are a number of projects that I am looking forward to getting done. And I like nothing more than the Mayfair that caught fire almost 10 years ago to be filled. It had people that were on fixed incomes in there that then were displaced, but we don't need any more vacant buildings, and that one is, and there was actually work that has been done in that building that they will not have to do, so I'm looking forward to that getting done. I also want to bring up Restoration for Life as we talk about the unsheltered. Madison, I mean, excuse me, between, on Anderson, between Pilgrim, Airport and the slew, there were dogs. A man got bit. There are a number of individuals. They leave, they come back. They leave, they come back. But Restoration for Life, they sent me a message. I think Chief had somebody get back to them just asking for assistance. Housing versus pools. We had 10 pools open this summer. We've never had 10 pools open during the summer unless you count pools in people's backyards. But to have 10 pools through the city of Stockton and our MOUs is really something to be happy about. And to put that housing versus pools... It's not fair. And I will say with Holiday Park Pool, that is part of an HOA, and they haven't contributed any more in the last 30 years than they did in 1996. Do we want to have it open? Sure. Of course we want to have it open, but we also have to weigh the cost, which if we had more revenue in this city, we wouldn't have to worry so much about funding that. During public comments, Vision Zero Task Force, I would like to look at that. And I would like to add that somebody said that the oldest part of Stockton is South Stockton. I didn't bring the map down. I forgot. Actually, the oldest part of Stockton is where we're at right now. The old buildings that used to be here, there's a reason why there aren't buildings here. on either side of this area where there's dirt it's because of brownfields or across the way because of brownfields because what was here contaminated the soil but this actually this is where people came in and out they didn't go over the altamont they took a boat took a boat from the bay area over here also um i talked about the more shelters oh hunter house edison edison project is is going we have four different projects that are hopefully will be in the pipeline and open while I'm still here, as well as the rest of council, whether they're here or not, but it's something to be celebrated. Priorities, we've said over and over again, the priorities are public safety, economic development, and infrastructure, and we are working towards that. Somebody talked about somebody stealing my saying. I don't know where that came from. I think I might have said that like a year or two ago. I haven't said anything recently about that. And again, going back to profit over people, the city doesn't make a profit. We balance a budget. We're not in the profit-making business, and we do care about people. And if people in this city don't feel like we care about them, then we need to do a better job of making sure that that information gets out there all the things that are happening in this city our staff works so hard and to say that we're we're not doing anything maybe you want to say that about us up here but we have 1,400 employees that show up to work and do their best to make our city a great place for people to live people to own businesses and And I know Michelle Sherman was brought up. I will let you know that I received a number of emails asking to recognize her, and the information came from those people that reached out to me via email. And I agree, too. I think that we need to be careful what we say when we're up here. I agree, we do need more kindness. And I try to model that as best as possible. I do want to thank the Vice Mayor. I think we've had a great meeting. I hope we have more to come. But I also believe that we set the table. And we set the example for others in our community. And we did pretty good tonight. We had some wins, as Council Member Villapurdua likes to talk about. But we still have a ways to go. Obviously, we have a ways to go. So with that, I don't know why we have a closed session.

We really don't need one. We will be bringing contract information to you on the 15th.

Because I thought we settled all our contracts.

We still got one more group. Okay. But we really don't need to have a closed session.

Okay. Well, with that, before we go to closed session, but I will announce it.

And it will be very, very, very, very quick.

Okay. 14.1, Conference with Labor Negotiator. This closed session is authorized pursuant to Section 54957.6A of the Government Code. We will be recessing to that. If there's something to report out, we will come back. I doubt there is, but anyway, if I can have a moment of silence in memory of Bruce Giudice. Okay. We will recess to closed session.