City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress

All right. Good evening, everyone. We're going to go ahead and call the meeting of the Tracy Public Financing Authority to order at 6.01 p.m. This time we have no disclosures pursuant to government code section 5495.3.8.3. Roll call on declarations of conflicts, please.

Director Bedoya.

Present. No conflicts.

Director Evans.

Present. No conflicts.

Director Nygaard.

Present and no conflicts.

Vice Chair Abercrombie?

Present, no conflicts.

Chair Arreola?

Present, no conflicts.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Members of the public can participate in tonight's meeting remotely via Zoom by using the information as provided on the screen. That will be meeting ID 864-6533-6212 and passcode 745122. This information is also available online on the City webpage as well as in paper here at City Hall. That takes us to items from the audience. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on an item that is not on tonight's agenda? Seeing none, chambers, do we have any online?

Mayor, I did receive a speaker card. I just wanted to confirm that Mr. Tanner, this is for this meeting. There are no hands on Zoom, Mayor. Mr. Tanner?

Mr. Tanner, did you want to speak at this meeting or next one? Mr. Tanner, I believe you put in the speech.

The 7 o'clock? Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you. No hands on Zoom air and no other speaker cards.

Thank you. All right. At this time, we'll go ahead and close out items from the audience. That brings us to item three for the regular items. Item 3A is related to the approval of our prior meeting minutes. Staff report.

Thank you, Mayor. This item is just the minutes from the last special meeting for the board to approve, and we'll do this sequentially when the next meeting of this body meets. We'll bring forth minutes as well. So the request is just to approve the minutes from the last meeting.

Thank you. Do we have any questions from council? Seeing none, do we have any public comment on this item? Seeing none, do we have any online?

No, Mayor, no hands on line.

With that, I'll go ahead and close out the public comment for item 3A, and I'll entertain a motion.

Make a motion to approve the minutes of the April 21st, 2026 special meeting. Second.

We have a first and second.

Roll call, please.

Vice Chair Abercrombie?

Yes.

Director Evans?

Yes.

Director Bedoya? Yes. Director Nygaard? Yes. Chair Areola?

Yes. Thank you. All right, that passes. That brings us to item 3B, related to the wastewater revenue refunding bonds. Staff report, please.

Good evening, Sarah Castro, Director of Finance. The item before you is to adopt a resolution repealing resolution TPFA 2026-001, which is authorizing the issuance and sale of the 2026 wastewater revenue refunding bonds and approving related documents and actions. On April 21st, 2026, this Board of Directors of the Authority adopted Resolution TPFA 2026-001, which authorized the issuance of the 2026 refunding bonds and approved related documents for the purpose of refinancing the 2004 installment payments and prepaying the certificates. During that April 21st item, there were a few things omitted related to certain financing parameters and information required by Government Code Section 5852.1. So staff is suggesting that Council, I apologize, the Board of Directors repeal resolution TPFA 2026001 to adopt the new resolution authorizing the issuance of the authority of the bonds, also approving the documents related to the bonds, including the installment sale agreement, the indenture of trust, and a preliminary official statement, as well as authorizing staff to take all necessary actions related to the issuance of bonds. And just as a reminder, this is related to the 2004 wastewater bonds. And over the remaining life of the bonds, it is expected that this refunding will save approximately $1 million. This concludes my staff report. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Castro. Do we have any preliminary questions from council? Seeing none. Do we have any members of the public who would like to speak on item 3B? Seeing none. Chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

OK, with that, we'll go and close out the public comment portion for item 3B. Return to council for discussion and or motion.

mayor i'll make a motion to adopt a resolution repealing resolution number tpfa 2026-001 to establish certain financing parameters and disclose good faith estimates authorizing the issuance and sale of wastewater revenue refunding bonds in the maximum principal amount of 17 million dollars to refinance an outstanding installment payment obligation of the city of tracy and the related certificates of participation 2004 wastewater treatment plant upgrade and approving related documents and official actions. Second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Vice Chair Abercrombie?

Yes.

Director Evans? Yes. Director Bedoya?

Yes.

Director Nygaard? Yes. Chair Ariella?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right. That item passes. Thank you so much. That brings us to item four, adjournment. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

I'll second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Vice Chair Abercrombie?

Yes.

Director Nygaard? Yes. Director Bedoya?

Yes.

Director Evans?

Yes.

Chair Arreola?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right. We are adjourned at 6.07 p.m. We'll be back for a special meeting at 6.15. Thank you.

Thanks for making the time. Oh, that's how long is that? OK, good. That's what I think is the proper pronunciation. I didn't confirm that, but there's nothing we're supposed to do. Thank you.

All right, good evening, everyone. We are going to call the special meeting to order at 6.15 p.m. This time, there are no disclosures pursuant to government code section 5495.3.8.3. We'll call on declarations of conflicts, please.

Council Member Villalba.

Present, no conflicts.

Council Member Evans.

Present, no conflicts.

Council Member Nygaard.

Present, no conflicts.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie.

Present, no conflicts.

Mayor Arreola.

Present, no conflicts.

Thank you, we have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Members of the public can participate in tonight's meeting remotely via Zoom by visiting cityoftracie-org.zoom.us slash join and using the information provided on the screen. This is meeting ID 864-6533-6212 and passcode 745122. This information is also available in writing here at City Hall as well as online on the City website. At this time, that brings us to item two. This is our workshop item to receive an information report on the city's pension liability. Staff report, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Sarah Castro, Director of Finance. Brief background on this item. As many of you may know, the city does participate in the California Public Employee Retirement System, otherwise known as CalPERS. So that is our pension system that's responsible for providing retirement benefits to all city employees. Our pension liabilities represent a long-term commitment financially for the city. And the funding status of these liabilities is always subject to different factors, such as our investment returns, our actuarial assumptions, and the timing of our contributions. Annually, the city makes payments based on the actuarially determined employer contribution rate set by PERS. And over time, the last four fiscal years this council has set aside funding through our fiscal sustainability strategies to help reduce that pers liability and so through part of that process staff has contracted with ridgeline municipal strategies to have a analysis completed on the city's pers liability And with us tonight, I have Dimitri Seminov from Ridgeline, and he is here to give us an overview of the city's pension liability system. Thank you, Dimitri.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Areola, members of the council. My name is Dimitri Seminov. I'm with Ridgeline Municipal Strategies. We help cities navigate all types of...

Excuse me. Yes, it's on. It's just... Yeah, perfect. Yeah, that should help.

Is this better? Is this better?

Maybe move a little closer to you?

You can move the entire thing up. Yes. Okay. How about this?

Better?

Yes.

All right. Okay.

Thank you.

So we help cities make better financial decisions, and one of the things we specialize is helping figure out culprits. It's a black box, but hopefully tonight it will be made a little bit more transparent. Some of the context for the material. THE MAJORITY OF CULPERS MEMBER AGENCIES FACE PRETTY SUBSTANTIAL UNFUNDED LIABILITIES. IN FISCAL YEARS 24 AND 25, CULPERS GENERATED VERY STRONG EXCESS INVESTMENT RETURNS AND WERE SUPPOSED TO REDUCE THOSE UNFUNDED LIABILITIES. THE 2024 EARNINGS BENEFIT WAS INSUFFICIENT TO OFFSET OTHER UAL ADJUSTMENTS THAT CULPERS MADE TO THE CITY. SO THE CULPERS MADE EXTRA MONEY BUT THEN THEY TOOK ALL THAT MONEY AND SOME EXTRA MONEY OFF THE TABLE FOR YOU CREATING ADDITIONAL UNFUNDED LIABILITY. THE MOST RECENT OFFICIAL CALPERS DATA COVERS ONLY FISCAL YEAR ENDING 2024. SO ANYTHING THAT WE'LL BE TALKING ABOUT TONIGHT THAT HAS 2025 NUMBERS ON IT ARE ESTIMATES AND THE FINAL RESULTS WILL ONLY BE KNOWN IN AUGUST OF THIS YEAR. And then any investment performance and any impacts on unfunded liability for the current fiscal year are hard to predict because there's been a lot of volatility in the market, and CalPERS has only reported their investment performance through December 31st. And they were doing okay. They were on track, but a lot of things have changed, and we haven't seen where CalPERS stands since the beginning of the calendar year. So let's talk about the city's pension plans. The city has two large pension plans. Once it's called safety and the other one is miscellaneous. Safety is anything that's public safety related and miscellaneous is everybody else. Under those plans there is classic employees. Those are people that were, that joined the system before 2012. and then the PEPPER employees that joined the system after 2012. So the way to understand this table is there is four columns with numbers in them. The first column is what's called a total accrued liability. Basically, what that means is the total amount of money that the city needs to have as of June 30, 2024, with culpers, TO BE ABLE TO MEET ALL THE RETIREMENT BENEFITS THAT HAVE BEEN EARNED BY THE CURRENT CITY'S EMPLOYEES AS WELL AS THE RETIREES. SO AS OF JUNE 30, 2024, THE CITY WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE $520 MILLION WITHIN CULPERS. THE SECOND COLUMN IS THE MARKET VALUE OF ASSETS. AND THAT'S ACTUALLY HOW MUCH THE CITY HAD WITH CULPERS AS OF JUNE 30, 2024. So between the safety and obsolescence plans, you had $382 million, almost $383 million. So the difference between the total accrued liability and the market value of assets is the third column. That's the unfunded accrued liability, also known as the UAL. That's the shortfall or the deficit, and that's about $138 million. And between the two plans, you were about 73.5% funded. And then looking at the overall funded landscape, of the cities in California, you're pretty much right there with everybody else. So unless people have been making additional steps and making additional contributions over the years, they're pretty much right in the same boat, about 73.5%. You're right along with your peers. And by the way, if you have any questions as we go through this, feel free to ask. Because some of this is a lot of numbers, a lot of concepts. We don't have a whole lot of time. So if I'm going too fast, please ask for clarifications. The best way to think of this unfunded liability is it truly is debt, because it does work like that. If you look at this total unfunded liability of $138 million, you owe it to CalPERS. There's absolutely no way around it. CalPERS has a repayment schedule that they calculate every year, and you have to make those payments. Reduced or delayed payments are not allowed. If you are in a cash flow crunch, they expect you to fund the money elsewhere. Cut the services, tap into your reserves, but you have to make the payments to CalPERS. It's a non-negotiable. CalPERS amortizes this unfunded liability over a term of 20 years, and it changes every year with new items that are added or subtracted, but there is a finite amortization term. And this unfunded liability actually accrues interest, just like a loan, at 6.8%. And if you stay with the current amortization schedule that CalPERS has you on, in addition to the $138 million that you owe them, you will also pay another $81 million to CalPERS over the next 20 years. So at 6.8%, it's the city's most expensive debt. No other obligations that you have carry that high level of interest rate. So the only saving grace of this debt arrangement, so to speak, is there are no prepayment penalties or restrictions if you ever want to make any additional contributions to culpers. So they will always take extra money, and they will not charge you any prepayment penalties off of that. But in general, the mindset to think about this unfunded liability, it is the debt of the city. This slide is the history of the last 10 years of the unfunded liabilities. Back in 2015, the total unfunded liability was about $57 million, and the plans were about 79% funded. 2024, the total unfunded liability is about $138 million, and you're about 73.5% funded. So after 10 years of making payments to culprits, and doing everything that CalPERS has asked you to do. Your unfunded liability, the debt that you have to them, is 81 million dollars higher and your funded level is 5.4 percent lower. So you've been making the payments, you've been following the rules, and you end up owing more and you're less funded. As far as the payments that you make to CalPERS go, there's two categories of payments. The first payment category is called the normal cost. The normal cost helps you keep up with the benefits that are being earned by the employees in the current fiscal year. So as people are getting paychecks and earning pension benefits, the city and the employees make contributions into the system to help fund the pension benefits that they're earning right now. So that's the normal cost. It's shared by the city and the employees, and it is a percentage of payroll. And for the safety classic employees, they're contributing about 9% of their payroll, and the city is putting in about 27.7% of their salaries. For the PEPPER members, they're contributing 15%, and the city is putting in about 13.8%. For the miscellaneous employees, they're contributing 7.9, the classic, and the city's putting in 11.4, and the PEPRA is pretty much equal. Employees are putting in 7.5, and the city's putting in 7.6. So that's the normal cost. It goes up and down the payroll, and it's a direct relationship with how much money the people are making. The second payment that the city has to make to culpers is called the UAL payment. THAT'S THE AMORTIZATION, THE PAYMENT OF THE DEBT OF THE UNFUNDED LIABILITY. SO AND EVEN THOUGH IN THIS CRAFT WE'RE SHOWING YOU AS THOSE PAYMENTS AS A PERCENTAGE OF YOUR PAYROLL, IN REALITY IT IS BUILT TO YOU AS A FIXED DOLLAR AMOUNT. SO EVERY YEAR YOU HAVE TO MAKE A PAYMENT THAT CALPERS TELLS YOU TO MAKE. AND EVEN IF THE CITY LAID OFF EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE AND THERE WAS NO MORE NORMAL COST, THE UAL PAYMENT WOULD STILL HAVE TO BE MADE. So as you can see, most of the unfunded liability payments right now are related to the classic members. And it's not just the employees that are currently with the city. That includes all the retirees that are in the system. And one of the reasons why the UAL payments for the PEPRA employees are still small is because it's a relatively young and very new subset of employees within the pension system. As time goes by, we expect the UAL payments to start getting lower on the classic side as more people are exiting the number of the retirees. And then as more and more people are getting closer to retirement and being retired their PEPRA, the PEPRA payments will start inching up. OK, SO THIS GRAPH SHOWS YOU THE TOTAL PAYMENTS THAT THE CITY HAS BEEN MAKING TO COLPERS BACK IN 2018 BETWEEN THE UAL AND THE NORMAL COST. THE CITY WAS CONTRIBUTING ALMOST $10 MILLION A YEAR. FOR THE UPCOMING FISCAL YEAR 2027, the combined payment will be almost $20 million, or actually slightly higher than $20 million. So in a 10-year period, your total payment to CalPERS has gone up by 112%, or by $11 million. So a little bit of history. How did we get here? So it's hard to believe right now, but back in 1999, CalPERS had plenty of money to fund the benefits. They were what was called superfunded. They had 128% of the money that they needed to cover all the pension benefits. So it was a great idea in Sacramento to take all this extra cash that they had and increase the benefits for the people within the system. So two bills were passed, SB 400, AB 616, that retroactively increased pension benefits. And what we've been able to find on the magnitude of the increase, a typical CHP officer was retiring at about $65,000 a year under the old rules. And after the increase, they were retiring at about $95,000 a year. So it was almost a 50% increase to the pension benefits. And a similar order of magnitude increases were given to all the other employees within the system as well. So right after those two bills were passed, some of you might remember the dot-com bubble burst. 2001, 2002, CalPERS had two years of losses, and they lost the superfunded status. By 2007, they were back up to 100% funded, but then the Great Recession hit, and really, they finished fiscal year 2009 only 61% funded. And they really have not recovered since then. So as of 2024, fiscal year, they were only 75% funded. So pretty much since the Great Recession, CalPERS has been treading water and there's not been a whole lot of progress made in the funded status. Some of the factors that impact the increase to the unfunded liabilities. First of all, the benefit increases that we talked about a couple of minutes ago, they're still not fully funded. Everybody's still paying for those because those people are still, you know, many of them still alive and collect the benefits. Then when CalPERS calculates how much money everybody needs to be putting in, they take into consideration a lot of factors. It's the actuarial science. It truly is a science with a lot of assumptions, a lot of things that go into the calculations. So they look at how many employees you have, what are their ages, how much money they're making. AT WHAT AGE WILL THEY RETIRE? HOW MUCH LONGER WILL THEY CONTINUE TO COLLECT BENEFITS AFTER THEY RETIRE? AND THEN ONE OF THE FACTORS THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT IN THE CALCULATION IS WHAT'S THE ASSUMED RATE OF INCREASES FOR SALARIES? AND CALPERS' FORMULAS RIGHT NOW ASSUME 2.85% A YEAR. SO THE NORMAL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE CALCULATED ASSUMING THE PAYROLL INCREASES TO 85% EVERY YEAR. TO THE EXTENT THAT THE EMPLOYERS ARE GRANTING INCREASES ABOVE THE 2.85%, THAT CREATES ADDITIONAL UNFUNDED LIABILITY. ALSO, WHEN THE SYSTEM WAS FIRST PUT IN PLACE, REALLY THE EXPECTATION WAS PEOPLE RETIRE, THEY'RE AROUND FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS, AND THEN THEY PASS AWAY. WE ALL KNOW THAT HAS CHANGED. NOW PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED TO EASILY LIVE INTO THE 90s AND EVEN UP TO 100. Only recently, CalPERS started making those adjustments to the formulas, and that led to additional payment requirements. And then as the CalPERS system is now mature, there's a lot of retirees. There's less and less active workers per retiree to kind of spread the pain. So as the number of retirees grows and the workforce stays relatively the same, IT'S HARDER TO AMORTIZE THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST OVER THE CURRENT PAYROLL. SO THOSE ARE THE BIG MACRO FACTORS THAT ARE IMPACTING THE UNFUNDED LIABILITIES AND THE PAYMENTS. ON THE CALPER SIDE ITSELF, WHAT WE'VE SEEN IS WEAKER THAN EXPECTED INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE. AND WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT IN A SECOND. And then also, CalPERS has been making changes to the assumptions in their formulas to try to catch up to reality. And usually every time they make an assumption that creates additional unfunded liability and additional payment burden. It's very rare that those adjustments are in the favor of the employers. And then finally, we'll also talk about it is negative amortization. IT'S BASICALLY SOME OF THE RULES ARE WORKING AGAINST EMPLOYERS THAT MAKES IT MORE EXPENSIVE THAN IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. SO WE'LL TALK ABOUT THE INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE AND THE NEGATIVE AMORTIZATION OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF MINUTES. SO THINKING ABOUT RISK AND RETURNS. RETURNS, INVESTMENT RETURNS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. IN 2024, FISCAL YEAR, 55 cents of every dollar in pension benefits that were paid out by CalPERS were actually funded by the investment returns, not by the contributions, not by the people, the money that the employers and the employees put in, but by the money that CalPERS made off of those contributions. So they fund now more than half of all the benefit payments. And the way you want to think about this, you, the employer, YOU HAVE THE EMPLOYEES AND YOU'VE PROMISED THEM A CERTAIN LEVEL OF PENSION BENEFITS. AND THEN YOU WENT OUT AND YOU HIRED CULPERS TO BE YOUR INVESTMENT MANAGER, SO THEY DO THIS ON YOUR BEHALF, AND THEY DO IT ON THE BEST EFFORT BASIS. THEIR GOAL IS TO GENERATE AS MUCH OF INVESTMENT RETURN AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT TAKING ON EXCESSIVE RISK, BUT THEY DON'T GUARANTEE ANY RESULTS. EVEN THOUGH THEY CALCULATE THE FORMULAS AND THEY MAKE THE ASSUMPTIONS FOR HOW MUCH MONEY THEY WILL BE MAKING, they don't guarantee the performance. They just try to make as much money as possible without, you know, taking on too much risk. So, whenever they fail to achieve the investment targets, that creates additional unfunded liability. And that's where the employers have to step in and make up the shortfall. So, essentially, your YOUR CASH, YOUR CASH FLOW BECOME THE ADDITIONAL FUNDING SOURCE FOR THE PENSION SYSTEM ABOVE AND BEYOND NORMAL COST CONTRIBUTIONS. SO THINKING ABOUT THE RETURNS AND THE HISTORY OF THE RETURNS, OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS, CALPERS AVERAGED 5% OR 8%, I'M SORRY, WHICH IS PRETTY GOOD. OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS, THEY'VE DONE 7.1. AND REALLY THE PROBLEM LIES IN THE 20-YEAR FIGURE. THEY'VE AVERAGED 6.7%. SO THROUGHOUT THIS WHOLE PERIOD, ONLY RECENTLY THEY ADJUSTED THEIR TARGET TO 6.8. SO THE 20-YEAR AVERAGE IS BELOW THEIR CURRENT TARGET, BUT MOST OF THIS PERIOD, THE TARGET THAT'S KNOWN AS THE DISCOUNT RATE HAS BEEN HIGHER THAN 6.8%. IT WAS 7%, IT WAS 7.25. BACK IN THE 90s, IT WAS ACTUALLY CLOSER TO 9%. IT WAS 875. SO IN THE LAST 30 YEARS, THEY AVERAGED 7.6. SO NOW THAT THEY'VE LOWERED THE DISCOUNT RATE TO 6.8%, WE'RE HOPING THAT THAT WILL HELP ALLEVIATE FUTURE MASSIVE UAL INCREASES. BUT AGAIN, NO ONE CAN PREDICT THE MARKET. OKAY. SO LET'S TAKE A LOOK QUICKLY AT WHAT HAPPENED IN 2024. SO CULPERS MADE A TOTAL INVESTMENT RETURN OF 9.3%. Their target, as I mentioned, is 6.8. So the access return was 2.5%. So the 2.5% was something that worked in your favor whenever they make more than the target. That's supposed to reduce your unfunded liability. And from that extra 2.5%, your unfunded liability was reduced by $9.5 million. That's the first column with the numbers. That's the credit that you got for the extra money that CalPERS made. But then CalPERS made other adjustments. Most of it is related to COLAs and the salary increases that they've seen with employers. And in your case, those adjustments were an increase to the unfunded liability of $12.6 million. So you got a credit of nine and a half, and then 12.6 was added to your unfunded liability. So when everything was said and done and the dust settled, your unfunded liability grew by almost $3.2 million in one year. This graph shows you what the amortization schedule looks like right now for the unfunded liability that you have, that $138 million. The green bars are the payments over the last, I believe, eight years. And then the blue bars are the payments through the final repayment period of the unfunded liability. So it's not a flat line. It's a curve. And whenever things change, they always change on the top of the curve. So if you graphed your unfunded liability payments 10 years ago, you would still see a curve. And just the top of the curve keeps shifting out. So those blue bars include not just the $138 million in payments, BUT THEY ALSO INCLUDE THE $81 MILLION IN THE INTEREST THAT WILL BE PAID TO CULPERS OVER THE NEXT TWO DECADES. SO IN THE UPCOMING YEAR, 2027, YOUR UAL PAYMENT WILL BE ABOUT $13 MILLION, AND THAT WILL INCREASE BY 2031 TO 15.1, AND THEN IT WILL START SLOWLY INCHING DOWN. THIS IS BASED ON INFORMATION AS OF 2024. THERE IS A TAIL AT THE BACK END BUT THAT WILL GO AWAY ONCE THE 2025 CREDIT IS APPLIED. SO WHAT HAPPENED IN 2025? 2025 WAS EVEN BETTER THAN 2024 IN TERMS OF INVESTMENT RETURNS. CALPERS MADE 12.1%, WHICH IS 5.3% HIGHER THAN THE TARGET OF 6.8. SO WE'RE EXPECTING TO SEE A $20.3 MILLION CREDIT TO THE CITY FROM THAT EXTRA INVESTMENT EARNINGS. WE HAVE NO VISIBILITY INTO HOW MUCH OF THOSE EARNINGS CULPERS WILL TAKE OFF YOUR TAKE OFF THE TABLE. SO WE WILL SEE THAT IN JULY OR AUGUST OF 2026 WHEN THEY PUBLISH THE 25 REPORT. BUT 25 WAS GENERALLY A VERY GOOD YEAR, STRONG YEAR, AND WE'RE HOPING CULPERS WILL ALLOW THE CITIES TO KEEP MOST OF WHAT HAS BEEN EARNED. This is the same graph as we saw before, and the red line shows how the payments will change if the entire credit of $20 million was retained by the city. So you will see that the top of the curve has been shaved off, and then the back end is also reduced, as well as the big tail in the end. And your total interest cost would go from $81 million to $56.5 million. So the 25 investment return was really good. OK. Let's talk about the negative amortization within unfunded liability. So the best way to think of it is this $138 million is not just one lump sum. It's a collection of loans that accumulated every year. Generally, you get two new loans, two new line items each year. ONE IS USUALLY RELATED TO THE INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE, WHETHER THEY OVERPERFORMED OR UNDERPERFORMED. YOU MIGHT GET A CREDIT OR YOU MIGHT GET ADDITIONAL UNFUNDED LIABILITY. AND THEN THERE'S NON-INVESTMENT GAIN OR LOSS, AND THAT'S THE ASSUMPTIONS THAT THEY'RE CHANGING OR RECONCILIATIONS THAT THEY'RE MAKING FOR THAT FISCAL YEAR. SO TO ILLUSTRATE SOMETHING THAT WE CALL NEGATIVE AMORTIZATION, And we have to go back to something that happened in 2022. In 2022, CalPERS lost 7.8%. And this is a snapshot of your safety pension plan. So kind of right in the middle of the page. This is the balance that says balance as of June 30, 2022. So because of that very large investment loss, 7.5%, CalPERS added $28.5 million to your unfunded liability for the safety plan. That's the first time that line item showed up on your statement. The next column is the expected payment for the following year. And you see that for that specific line item, they didn't ask you to make any payment. So they added the unfunded liability. and you didn't have to make any payment off of that. But they charged you 6.5% interest on that unfunded liability, and they added it to the unfunded liability balance. So if you look at the next column over, balances of June 30, 2023, what used to be $28.5 million is now $30.5 million. So it grew by $2 million. The following year, 24, once again, no payment was required. So the unfunded liability grew by another $2 million to $32 million. And then finally, the first payment that was due on that specific line item was in 2025 fiscal year. And that was only $700,000. If you do quick math, $700,000 is not enough to cover 6.8% interest on $32 million balance. So this is what's called a ramp up. WHERE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS, CALPERS DOES NOT ASK YOU TO MAKE ANY PAYMENTS. AND THEN FOR A FIVE-YEAR PERIOD, THEY'RE RAMPING UP TO THE FULL PAYMENT AMOUNT. SO IN THE FIRST YEAR, YOU'RE MAKING 20% OF THE REGULAR PAYMENT, THEN 40%, THEN 60%, 80%, AND FINALLY 100% IN YEAR FIVE. AND THEN YOU HAVE 15 MORE PAYMENTS ANNUAL PAYMENTS AT THE FULL AMOUNT. SO THIS IS THE MATH BEHIND THE RAMP UP. SO THE CALCULATION THERE SHOWS YOU THAT FOR THE FIRST FIVE YEARS SINCE THE UNFUNDED LIABILITY IS ADDED, YOUR PAYMENT IS EITHER ZERO OR IT'S BELOW EVEN IF THERE IS A PAYMENT THAT YOU'RE MAKING, IT'S STILL BELOW THE INTEREST THAT YOU'RE BEING CHARGED. SO FOR THE FIRST FIVE YEARS, THAT FUNDED LIABILITY CONTINUES TO GROW BECAUSE OF THE INTEREST THAT CALPERS IS CHARGING THE CITY. AND THEN ONLY IN YEAR SIX THAT YOUR PAYMENT IS BEGINNING TO BE SLIGHTLY HIGHER THAN THE INTEREST AMOUNT THAT YOU'RE BEING CHARGED. AND IN YEAR SEVEN, YOU'RE BEGINNING TO ACTUALLY AMORTIZE THE PAYMENT. SO BY THE TIME YOU START MAKING PAYMENTS, Your UAL balance has increased by 23%, and the total combined interest on non-funded liability over the 22-year period is 121% of the actual UAL balance that's added to you. So if you remember the housing market before the Great Recession, There was the liar loans or the negative amortization loans that were not keeping up with the interest that was being charged and the interest was being added to the mortgage balance. That's exactly what's happening within CalPERS. And if a mortgage lender or a credit card company was doing that to consumers, they would be in front of Congress testifying. CalPERS does this automatically to every employer within their system whenever there's new unfunded liability added. How important is the UAL for the city in general? If we look at the 2024 UAL balance, it makes up 45% of the city's total liabilities. So it's almost half of everything, all the liabilities that the city has is the pension liability. 24 for the city was actually a pretty good year based on the financial statements so we looked at how much the city made in the fiscal in fiscal surplus deduct deducted depreciation it's a very rough calculation don't quote me on this it's just to put things in perspective perspective so the ul balance was 1.6 times the amount of surplus that the city had in the fiscal year 24. The UAL payments have increased from 2018 to 25 by 2.6 times. And by the peak, they're projected to increase by 3.6 times. So the interest on the UAL is 92% of your estimated fiscal surplus for 24 or 11 months of your net cash flow. And the UL payments through 2047 are the two and a half years of your net cash flow. So out of the next two decades, two and a half percent, assuming you're making the same money that you made in 24, two and a half years of that will go to service the pension liabilities. So somebody much smarter than I am said that you can't solve the problem with the same thinking that got you into the problem. So basically what we're saying is there's a better way to manage this. And we've gone through a number of strategies with the staff to look at what can be done better. And some of them you're already using. You make annual prepayments. SO WHEN SARAH ASKS YOU TO MAKE A FULL PAYMENT IN JULY, SHE DOES IT BECAUSE WHEN SHE MAKES THAT PAYMENT, THE CITY SAVES 3.3% OF THE PAYMENT AMOUNT. SO IT USUALLY IS A GOOD PRACTICE TO MAKE THAT PAYMENT. AND ALSO YOU SET UP A PENSION TRUST, SECTION 115 TRUST, TO HELP FUND SOME OF YOUR FUTURE COSTS. WE'VE ALSO TALKED ABOUT SOME OF THE STRATEGIES THAT THE CITY CAN UTILIZE IS RATE INCREASES. WHENEVER YOU DO A RATE STUDY FOR WATER, WASTE WATER, OR ANY OTHER SERVICE, MAKE SURE YOU FULLY INCORPORATE THE CALPERS LABOR COSTS OR CALPERS UAL INCREASES INTO THE FUTURE CALCULATIONS. AND THEN ALSO WE'VE DISCUSSED WHENEVER YOU HAVE CASH-FUNDED CAPITAL PROJECTS, INSTEAD OF PAYING CASH FOR A PROJECT, YOU CAN ACTUALLY UTILIZE FINANCING AT TEXAS AND INTEREST RATES TO FINANCE THE PROJECT AND USE THE CASH TO PAY OFF THE 6.8% UNFUNDED LIABILITY WITH PERS, ESSENTIALLY DOING AN INDIRECT REFINANCING OF THAT UNFUNDED LIABILITY. SO THOSE ARE SOME OF THE STRATEGIES THAT WERE DISCUSSED. FINALLY, SARAH ASKED ME TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE 115 TRUST. um and you actually done pretty well uh your average rate of return over the last couple of years have has been 10.15 percent so kind of right there with what culpers has been earning um with their investment pool so it's not um you know we've seen trusts that are way worse than that you were doing okay but the trust does not help offset unfunded liability it's just It's like you have a mortgage in the form of the UAL and you have a savings account in the form of trust. There is really no crossover between them. But this money is available to fund future pension contributions if the city chooses to do so at some point. So finally, what are some of the things to keep in mind? So keep UAL as a part of your decision-making context. So it truly is debt. 45% of your total liabilities is the UAL that you're paying 6.8% interest on. Consider developing an adoption of pension liability management policy to incorporate some of the strategies. And then start implementing those strategies. And really UAL is something that you have to watch every year. review the actual reports every year because, unfortunately, there is no one-time fix. Even if you pay off the unfunded liability fully today, it can still come back next year. So while we cannot prevent future UAL increases, at least we can prepare for them and keep them in mind as we're making financial decisions. So with that, I can answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Semenov. Much appreciated. Counsel, do we have any preliminary questions? Seeing none, we'll go out to the public for any questions on item two for our special meeting. Seeing none, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay, with that, we'll go ahead and close out the public comment period for item two of our special meeting. And just want to, one, take a moment to thank Ridgeline Strategies for your efforts and thank staff. This is something that was brought to our attention several years ago. And for a number of years, we've been making the prepayments. And especially after that report, I'm very glad that we were taking those fiscally prudent steps. So I want to thank staff for their efforts to make sure that was highlighted for us. And with that, do we have any additional comments, discussions from Council?

Mayor Pro Tem. Looking at the second bullet point, is that something that's on our radar to bring back the pension liability management policy?

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, it is. We are working with Bridgeline to develop a policy for council review and consideration.

Great. Do you have any timeframe on that? Just out of curiosity.

Once we get the budget adopted, it will probably be a July priority during the legislative break, so I would expect we bring it back in the fall.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else, council members?

I was just going to agree with that type of strategy. I would like to see us bring that back for more discussion on how to develop a good management policy.

Fantastic. With that, I'll entertain a motion.

I MAKE A MOTION THAT WE RECEIVE THE CITY'S PENSION LIABILITY REPORT. SECOND. WE HAVE A FIRST AND SECOND. ROLL CALL, PLEASE.

MAYOR PROTEM ABRAKAMBI?

YES.

COUNCILMEMBER EVANS?

YES.

COUNCILMEMBER BIDOYA?

YES.

COUNCILMEMBER NIGARD? YES. MAYOR ARIELA?

YES. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. WITH THAT, IT TAKES US TO ITEM THREE. I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO ADJOURN. MOTION TO ADJOURN. SECOND. WE HAVE A FIRST AND A SECOND. COUNCILMEMBER EVANS. ROLL CALL, PLEASE.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie.

Yes.

Council Member Evans.

Yes.

Council Member Villalba.

Yes.

Council Member Nygaard. Yes. Mayor Areola.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. We are adjourned from the special meeting at 6 p.m. But don't go too far because we'll start a regular meeting at 7 p.m. Thanks, everyone.

Yeah.

All right. Good evening, everyone. We are going to head and call the regular council meeting to order at 7 p.m. on May 19, 2026. At this time, we have no disclosure pursuant to government code section 5495.3.8.3. Roll call and declarations of conflicts, please.

Council Member Vidoya.

Present. No conflicts.

Council Member Evans.

Present. No conflicts.

Council Member Nygaard.

Present. No conflicts.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie.

Present. No conflicts.

Mayor Areola.

Present. No conflicts.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ready. Salute. 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.

Now please remain standing for our invocation. I'd like to invite Pastor Scott McFarland from Journey Christian Church.

Thank you. Heavenly Father, we just gather before you with gratitude in our hearts for this city and its leaders, for the people that you've brought to this town. and for the year that we've enjoyed. I want to pray for our grads right now, for the seniors that are graduating, that you'll bless their lives and prepare them for the next season ahead. Bless the rest of the students in our schools as they finish out the school year. Give them safety and protection as they enter summertime. Also thanking you for our service members that protect our country. Pray your protection over them as they serve around the world. and pray for our first responders as we enter this summer. Protect them from the city and state fires that they're currently dealing with and those that we'll be at risk for in the dry season. God, I'm asking for wisdom for this council tonight, knowing that you promised to give it when we ask. So bless this meeting, fill this room with your spirit, and may you be honored in your holy name. Amen.

All right. Thank you, Pastor. Everyone may be seated. members of the public can participate in tonight's meeting remotely via zoom by visiting city of tracy dash org dot zoom dot us slash join and using the information as provided on the screen that would be meeting id eight six four six five three three six two one two and passcode seven four five one two two this is also available online on the city website as well as on paper here at city hall Next up, that brings us to presentations, and I will turn it over to our transit manager, Ed Lovell. Oh, Anoush, please.

Yes, good evening, Mayor. I'm members of City Council, Anoush Najjar, Director of Public Works. It's my pleasure to introduce the employee of the month, Jane Ward, with our transit division. Jane. So I want to give a little bit of background about Jane. Jane is a first generation immigrant from a coastal town in Kannur in South India. Jane moved to Tracy in 1989 and called the city home until 2017. She and her husband, Thomas Ward, which is also a City of Tracy employee, now reside in Latrop. Together they have raised four children who are very successful young adults. They are also proud grandparents, if you believe that, to two grandchildren who bring endless joy to their lives. Jane lives by the motto, be positive and be helpful, carrying the spirit into everything she does at work, at home, and her community. She is dedicated and hardworking. who takes pride in giving her best and doing a great job. I have seen Jane at all of the public events for the community. She promotes our transit service and our mobility options. Outside of work, Jane finds joy in spending time with family, cooking, running, dancing, and painting. Her energy, kindness, and creativity shine through every part of her life. Congratulations, Jane. Good evening, everyone.

I really appreciate this recognition and thank you. I owe this to the entire Francis Division for their hard work

All right, congratulations to Jane. And tonight we have a number of presentations, so I will ask council to join me at the lectern. And as just a reminder to everybody, this entire thing comes up now. There's a little knob over here if you guys need some help later on. All right, first and foremost, we have Lyme Disease Awareness Month, and originally going to be presented to Samantha Miller, but I believe Cal Wetzig is here on her behalf. Lyme Disease Awareness Month, May 2026. Whereas Lyme disease, the fastest growing vector borne infectious disease caused by spirokectal bacteria called Borrelia carried by ticks. That's as close as we're going to get. Whereas these ticks are carried by mice, rabbits, squirrels, deers, birds, and other forms of wildlife and domestic animals into backyards and homes, as well as outlying fields and forests where people work and recreate. Whereas according to the Centers for Disease Control, Lyme disease infects 300,000 people a year, 10 times more Americans than previously reported. And whereas Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose because it imitates other conditions and no reliable laboratory tests can prove who is either infected or bacterial-free, which often leads to misdiagnosis. Early indications of infection like flu-like symptoms characterized by chills, headaches, fatigue, muscle, and joint aches and swollen lymph nodes. And whereas patients with untreated or undertreated Lyme disease can suffer from permanent and sometimes life-threatening damage to the brain, joints, hearts, eyes, liver, and other body organs, for this reason it is imperative that all who may be exposed to Lyme disease receive immediate treatment. And whereas the best solution to reduce the risk of contracting Lyme disease is awareness and education about the seriousness of this illness and the needs for our residents, especially children, to practice personal preventive techniques when engaging in outdoor activities such as frequent tick checks, use of tick repellent, and proper tick removal. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT I, DAN AREOLA, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF TRACY, ON BEHALF OF THE ENTIRE CITY COUNCIL, TO HEREBY PROCLAIM THE MONTH OF MAY AS LYME DISEASE AWARENESS MONTH IN TRACY, AND REMIND ALL RESIDENTS OF THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF CHECKING FOR TICKS, UNDERSTANDING THE SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT, AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES AGAINST LYME DISEASE. GO AHEAD AND GIVE YOUR WORD.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL. MY NAME IS TIM HEINRICH AND THIS DISEASE IS VERY PERSONAL FOR ME AND I'D LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS PROCLAMATION FOR LYME AWARENESS MONTH. YOUR RECOGNITION OF THIS ISSUE IS A VITAL STEP TOWARDS PROTECTING OUR COMMUNITY MEANS A GREAT DEAL TO MY FAMILY AND MANY OTHERS. I'D LIKE TO BE ABLE TO PUT A FACE FOR YOU ON THIS DISEASE. On May 8th of this month, our daughter Samantha turned 29 years old. More than half of her life has been defined by battle with Lyme disease, which she contracted over 15 years ago. Because Lyme is so profoundly misunderstood, it took an agonizing three years to have her properly diagnosed in more than 20 doctors. By then, the damage was severe. Samantha was unable to walk for seven years, unable to eat or drink for almost two years. She ended up on a ventilator for over a year and was entirely homebound for nearly five years and nearly died twice. Lyme disease stole her childhood. and a massive portion of her young adult life. And even after finally getting diagnosed, it took more than seven years of aggressive treatment and over $70,000 out-of-pocket expense to help her get better. Samantha wanted to be here tonight but could not make it because of a severe migraine, a lingering and painful reminder of the ongoing effects of this disease and its treatments. We often think of Lyme disease as an East Coast problem, but it's right here in our own backyard. The primary way people contract Lyme disease, as the mayor said, is from a tiny deer tick about the size of a period on a piece of paper. A recent Stanford University study found Lyme-carrying ticks in every single green space in San Francisco. It's here. Anywhere that's grassy or where dogs or deer are present can hold these ticks. Many call Lyme disease a silent epidemic because so many patients are misdiagnosed, just as our daughter was. The single most important defense of our community has is awareness. We need to know what to look for, and a comprehensive list of symptoms can be found at canlyme.com, the best one I have found. I don't stand here tonight to share only tragedy. I'm also here to share a miracle. Despite everything being stolen from her, Samantha has never stopped fighting. In 2025, she was able to walk down the aisle and get married. And just this past November, she and her husband welcomed a beautiful baby boy, my first grandson. I tell you her story tonight to sound an alarm for our community's sake. But also to leave you with this message, there is always hope, even when things seem entirely hopeless. The numbers that the mayor said, the CDC numbers are actually substantially larger than that now. The Centers for Lyme Disease estimate it could be as close to 3 million new cases a year. Thank you again. Thank you for bringing awareness to Tracy. If anybody is curious or says, hey, I've got a bunch of symptoms, I have the list with me or go to that canlime.com. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I thought he was one of Samantha's nurses.

All right, one more round of applause. All right, next up, we have a proclamation for the National Day of Prayer. And I'd like to invite Pastor James Young to receive. National Day of Prayer, May 7, 2026. The 75th observance of the National Day of Prayer will be held on Thursday, May 7, 2026. This year's theme is Glorify God Among the Nations, Seeking Him in All Generations, and is based on 1 Chronicles 16.24. Prayer is key to renewing our nation. And whereas the National Day of Prayer has been part of our national heritage since it was declared by the First Continental Congress in 1775 and the United States Congress in 1952, approved as a joint resolution, that the President shall set aside and proclaim a suitable day each year other than a Sunday as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and in meditation in churches, in groups, and as individuals. And whereas the United States Congress in 1988, by Public Law 100-307, as amended, establishes an act to provide for setting aside the first Thursday in May as the day on which the National Day of Prayer is celebrated. And whereas leaders and citizens of our communities, cities, states, and nation are afforded the privilege of prayer with the joy of seeking divine guidance, strength, protection, and comfort from Almighty God. AND WHEREAS RECOGNIZING THE LOVE OF GOD, WE CITIZENS OF TRACY TREASURE THE FREEDOM TO GATHER IN PRAYER, EXERCISING RELIANCE ON GOD'S POWER IN THE FACE OF PRESENT CHALLENGES AND THREATS, ASKING FOR HIS BLESSING ON EVERY INDIVIDUAL FOR OUR CITY. NOW THEREFORE BE RESOLVED THAT I, DAN AREOLA, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF TRACY, ON BEHALF OF THE CITY COUNCIL, DO HEREBY PROCLAIM MAY 7, 2026 AS NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER, AND INVITE THE CITIZENS OF TRACY TO GIVE THANKS IN ACCORDANCE WITH OUR OWN FAITHS AND CONSCIENCES FOR OUR MANY FREEDOMS AND BLESSINGS. Eric, the pass is yours.

Well, thank you, Mayor. Normally, I would say thank you and sit down. But Nancy made me promise that I would say something. And so, but if she had known that there was going to be 500, okay, graduates here tonight, she would have probably told me to sit down. But I'm just going to read this, just one little part. I want to thank you all for coming out. For those who missed the National Day of Prayer, that was during the time that our city had had, I think it was Employee Appreciation Week. And for those that missed it, you missed out on a whole lot of good food. I mean, they had food all over the place and I saw people taking trays home with them, multiple trays. Amen. Well, on that note, let me just go ahead and head and read this little portion here. Mayor Dan have read most of it. It said the National Day of Prayer exists to mobilize unified public prayer for America. In this historic year, we are honoring both the 75th observance of the National Day of Prayer and the 250th year since the founding of the United States. We are thankful for the joined believers across America on Thursday, May 7th of each year and making this declaration a personal rededication on the National Day of Prayer. And the portion that I'm going to read now is to basically let us know that we do fall short many times. It says, Almighty God, King of glory, we confess our sins and repent of our pride. That's our own glory and comfort. Allow an evil to take root instead of your fruit in our hearts, our home, our culture, and our country. Please forgive us. Now with the dedication of rededicating, we humble ourselves and we pray and seek your face, turning from our wicked ways that you would heal our lives and our land. Please purify and renew our hearts with holy attributes, affections, attitudes, actions to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We give you glory as we repent and rededicate our lives to our nation and to you. For 250 years, you have guarded and guided America in wisdom, grace, mercy, and love. We praise and thank you for our founding fathers, for all who sought you in fervent prayer throughout history and answer your call to defend justice, freedom, to protect and to serve, to preach, to teach, to innovate, to communicate, learn, work, worship, and establish our laws. May your kingdom come and your will be done in our lives, our families, and the lives of our church, education, business, military, government, art, entertainment, and media as it is in heaven. We prayerfully commit to glorify God amongst the nation, seeking him in all generations. And it's right here at the bottom. For those religious folks, church folks, there are some people that might not like this part, but in Jesus' name, amen. There are some people out here, because prayer is not just about me, it's about everybody. But there are some people here that was there for the National Day of Prayer. And of those who would like to come and stand with us, they're going to put us in the papers. They're going to put us in the movies. Would you come?

Can you squish it a little bit?

On the count of three, two, one. Thank you.

all right next up we have the national public works week and to accept we have lauren gonzalez from engineering john newman from operations josh celestine from utilities and jane ward from transit come on up All right, National Public Works Week, May 17th to the 23rd, 2026. Whereas the many services provided by the Public Works Department to our community are an integral part of our citizens' everyday lives, and whereas the support of an informed citizenry is vital to the efficient operation of public work systems and programs, such as water distribution and treatment, sewers, streets and highways, public buildings, solid waste, recycling, parks and landscaping, maintenance and operations, and whereas the health, safety, economic vitality, and comfort of this community greatly depends on these facilities and services, and whereas the quality and effectiveness of the services as well as their planning, design, and construction of public facilities and utilities is vitally dependent upon the efforts and skills of Public Works representatives, and whereas the efficiency of the qualified and dedicated personnel who staff the Public Works Department is material influenced by the public's attitude and understanding of the work they perform. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT I, DAN AREOLA, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF TRACY, AND ON BEHALF OF THE CITY COUNCIL, DO HEREBY PROCLAIM THE WEEK OF MAY 17, 2023, 2026, AS NATIONAL PUBLIC WORKS WEEK IN THE CITY OF TRACY. AND I CALL UPON ALL CITIZENS AND CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS to acquaint themselves with the issues involved in providing quality public work services and to recognize the contributions the public works representatives make every day to our health, safety, comfort, and quality of life, not only this week, but throughout the year. Thank you so much. You all are what makes the city run, and so thank you for everything you do.

Well, thank you so much.

Our team is wide-ranging, and we focus every day to make sure that everything works for you out there in the Tracy world. So we appreciate your patience with what we do, and we appreciate everything that you offer for us and the smiles you give us when we're out there fixing things. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, next up we have a time where we're celebrating our military enlistments. So I'm going to go ahead and invite each of them up individually, offer them an opportunity to speak. You don't have to if you don't want to. And then we'll grab a photo. We'll go ahead and shake everyone's hands and we'll give a group photo at the end. So first up we have Berenice Valencia. We have a certificate of recognition presented to Bernice. All right, folks, just a second. All right, we have a certificate of recognition presented to Bernice Valencia on the occasion of your enlistment in the United States Air Force.

First, I would like to thank everybody for being here. It is an honor to be here speaking in front of all of you. I would like to thank the recruiters especially because it's because of their support that we are able to do these things. And being able to be part of the Air Force is something that means a lot to me and I'm sure to also all of the people around me as well. So just thank you so much for all of the support. It means the world to us. Thank you so much.

All right, next up we have Carlos Delgado. Presenting a certificate of recognition presented to Carlos Delgado on the occasion of your enlistment in the United States Air Force. Congratulations.

Okay, all right.

Next up, we have Thomas France. We have a certificate of recognition presented to Thomas France on the occasion of your enlistment in the United States Army. Next up, Jose Gonzalez. We have a certificate of recognition presented to Jose Gonzalez on the occasion of your enlistment in the United States Marine Corps. Next up, Justin Phan. We have a certificate of recognition presented to Justin Phan on the occasion of your enlistment in the United States Marine Corps. All right, next up we have Ian St. James Masanke. We have a certificate of recognition presented to Ian St. James Masanke on the occasion of your enlistment in the United States Navy. All right, let's squish together for a photo everybody. All right, another round of applause for our listees. All right, and we actually have one more certificate. This is actually going to be a certificate of reassignment. So I'd like to go ahead and invite Staff Sergeant Reyes to come join me. We have a certificate of appreciation presented to Sergeant First Class Rodelio Reyes in recognition of your services to the Tracy community. And Staff Sergeant Reyes has done so much for our community. Just have a couple highlights I want to talk about. This is a summary of service for Sergeant First Class Reyes. He's our station commander at the Tracy Recruiting Center. He's proudly mentored and facilitated the enlistment of over 200 young men and women from the Tracy area, ensuring a 100% success rate for all local candidates. He has led the Tracy Station to 100% mission success for the first time in 12 years, moving the station from 126 to number 34 nationwide. His team, absolutely clap for that. His team has built a strong bridge between the military and City Hall, working closely with the mayor's office on initiatives like the high school sash ceremony to honor Tracy graduates and enlistment appreciation. And he is consistently ranked as the number one station commander in the region, recognized by the USA Rec commanding general for technical expertise and community impact. Congratulations. We wish you all the best. Would you like to come say a few words?

All right. Good evening, everyone, Mayor, City Council, and the wonderful people of Tracy. For the past three years, we enlisted over 200 applicants that we helped. Of course, we didn't do this alone. Of course, with the help of mayors, the people of Tracy, The teachers, local teachers, counselors, and the district office. We could have done this without you guys. Well, I appreciate it. I'm going to miss Tracy. Tracy is my second home. When I retire, I'll probably go back over here. All right. Thank you.

Do we have all you guys at home here?

So this is from the battalion from the Northern California Recruiting Battalion and for all the support the time that I have been here I've seen you two years in a row supporting my team here in Tracy whatever they needed they were able to just walk in here so for your support to the San Joaquin Army Recruiting Company

All right, council, come join us over here.

Take a few steps that way. Yeah.

All right. One, two, three. One, two, three. Hey, don't smile. Smile. Take a leg up. All right. Thanks, everybody.

All right, and next up, last but not least, we have certificates of recognition. We see a bunch of them here. Our local Tracy Dare students who are receiving recognition for all the work that they've done in our community during their Dare program. So I'm gonna bring them up by school. They have certificates in hand because there's a whole bunch of them. I'm just gonna go ahead and say their names. We're gonna go ahead and shake the council members' hands just like we did on Dare Day. And I'm gonna ask you to line up over here and then we'll do a big group photo at the end. All right, we're going to go ahead and start off with Coral Hollow School, and I apologize in advance if I mess up names. All right, we have Anyash Yalala. Sarah Srivannastava. Vivan Bailu Seyme. Vrishank Mittapia. Shrutika Adem. Rishit Bhatula. Than Virkachil Venro. Kudana Ginka. Vineva Regi. Rithenia Ricimolia. Oviya Shankar. Aradna Sundaram. Anika Venram. Sami Medanini. Naya Sreenath. Emira Rathi. Venba Balakumar. Dia Shilele. Ukshara Thakur. Next up, from Anthony Trena School, we have Abigail Lewis, Rafael Gomez, Alma Pia, Matthew Thomas, Eden Syndergaard, Wyatt Bolton, Karina Rai, From North School, we have Julian Reyes. From Art Freeler School, we have Mason Ray. Fatoma Amini. Uy Jai. Bibi Azizi. Adam Amiri. Merab Dhillon. Malaya Abreu. Mia Moat. Gracie Aranda. Hassanat Jhula. Muneza Kohistani. Gulsoom Saboor. Jagraj Singh. From Villalova School, we have Aiden Robinson. Angelita Arroyo. Emric Barrera. And from West Valley Christian School, we have Elijah Baldridge. Phillip Gutierrez. Castle Johnson. Travis McCarthy. Ryder Nicholson. Malkit Sandhu. Ethan Tan. Lucy Tafetiller. Nathaniel Williams. And from Bella Vista School, we have Sadie Seifert. all right that's a lot of students give one big round of applause for our dare students

Keep going, keep going. Let's see.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

All right, that's it for our presentations today. We'll go ahead and give everybody a few minutes to go on and get out of here if they'd like to.

Oh! Oh! Sit twice this year. One more. Thank you.

. . . . Well, I got two people. My son lives here in the house. Me and his wife have been taking care of him. He can help me out. I've got some of the time to talk to him. I do wonder who I should push here.

I'm having to use this for the last month.

All right.

All right, thank you everyone for sticking with us. It's just a sign of how amazing our city is that we have so many incredible presentations to give. Next up we have the consent calendar. Are there any members of the council who would like to pull items for consent? Seeing none. Staff, are there any items that you would like pulled for consent?

Yes, Mayor. We do have one item, item 3B. That is actually was added in error. It's very similar to item 3E, which is the correct item that we want to present. The second reading of an ordinance that we introduced at the last council meeting. So we would like to remove 3B from consent completely and have 3E in its place. And then I just wanted to note we did get a speaker card from Wes Huffman on 3B, so I don't know if you'd like to speak on 3E instead, but that item is going to be removed from the calendar 3B.

Well, I wouldn't mind making a comment on it. We'll go ahead and allow the comment. Okay. Are there any other items from the audience that would like pulled other than 3B? 3L. 3L. That was B, F, and L. Okay, and do we have any on line?

No hands on line, Mayor.

Okay, I will entertain a motion.

Make a motion to approve the consent calendar minus three, B, F, and L. Second. We have a first and a second.

Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie?

Yes.

Council Member Evans?

Yes.

Council Member Villalba?

Yes.

Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Mayor Arriola?

Yes. All right, consent is passed. We'll go ahead and go to item 3B, but because it's been pulled, we'll only do public comment on the item, but we'll allow Mr. Huffman his comment. All right, and that'll be four minutes. Mr. Huffman, can you push the button, I believe?

Oh, the green's on, so thank you very much. Obviously, this is something that I've been interested in for like 25 years. And so I'm so happy to see it's coming for council for discussion. And one of the things, if possible, that I would love to include in the new rules for donations is for local elections, if you donate money, You have to be a citizen of our community. You can't have PAC money come in. You have to be an individual only to donate. Because all of the elections we've had since I've been in this town have had some portion of the election supported by PAC money. Unidentified funds, usually the preponderance of the money that was spent on any of the elections comes from this source. And I think it's unhealthy for our community. And so I would love for you to consider that as one of the options.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Huffman. Were there any additional comments on item 3B? Seeing none, chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay, with that, and the item was pulled, so we'll be taking no additional action. Next. Oh, sorry. Can we just get the staff report on that?

It's actually 3E is the replacement.

Okay, so we get a... 3E has just been replaced. Okay, and we're not pulling 3E. Okay, that's fine.

Okay. Next up, we have item 3F. Take a brief staff report.

Good evening, Mayor, members of Council.

And your microphone's not on.

Okay. There we go. Good evening, Mayor, members of Council. My name is Ravelides. I am a management analyst in the Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department. Staff is recommending that City Council begin the annual process requiring under the California Landscape and Lighting Act of 1972 for the Tracy Consolidated Landscaping Maintenance District for fiscal year 26-27. THE RECOMMENDED ACTIONS INCLUDE APPROVING THE PRELIMINARY ENGINEERS REPORT, INITIATING PROCEEDINGS FOR THE ANNUAL LEVY AND COLLECTION OF ASSESSMENTS, AND ADOPTING THE RESOLUTION OF INTENTION TO SCHEDULE A PUBLIC HEARING ON JUNE 16, 2026. THE ANNUAL ASSESSMENT PROCESS ALLOWS THE CITY TO FUND THE MAINTENANCE OF LANDSCAPING, IRRIGATION SYSTEMS, LIGHTING, AND RELATED IMPROVEMENTS THROUGHOUT THE DISTRICT'S 41 ZONES. During the public hearing, the Council will consider public comments, review the final engineer's report, and determine whether to approve the levy and collection of assessments for the upcoming fiscal year. The Tracy Consolidated Landscaping Maintenance District was formed in fiscal year 2003-2004 through the consolidation of three separate landscaping maintenance districts to improve administrative efficiency and better align assessments with the benefits received by the properties. Since that time, annexations have expanded the district from 30 to 41 zones, Assessments are proportioned using the equivalent dwelling unit, EDU methodology, which equitably distributes cost of properties based on land use development type and parcel characteristics.

All right. Thank you. We have any preliminary questions from council? Seeing none, with that, can I see hands raised for public comment? Okay, without public comment, that's four minutes. Thank you.

Probably the most egregious decision I ever made when I was on the City Council had to do with the landscape districts, in which we heard the presentation from staff, and it all seems wonderful. The difficulty was, of course, that the water became much more expensive the following year and every one of them, those landscape districts went in the red. Eventually, most of them, except for those that people voted to chip in more money, pretty much all the vegetation disappeared and it was just a terrible, worked out to be a terrible decision. And I regretted that ever since. So I bring this up because the council, it would be really helpful to you if each of these districts had a per unit cost as far as the number of citizens affected. It would give you an opportunity to kind of weigh how much each of these things cost relatively. I know the main component doesn't have necessarily a funding district as the original city. All of the new building has their own maintenance district to cover the cost. But I think it would be helpful for you to see exactly what that comparison would be. I don't think it matters what unit they use particularly, but just just so you can see the big picture, but see all the little components that go with it. So, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Huffman. Do we have any additional speakers on this item? Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

With that, we will close the public comment portion for item 3F. We'll return to council for discussion and or entertain a motion.

Motion to approve 3F. Second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie?

Yes.

Council Member Evans?

Yes.

Council Member Zoya? Yes. Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Mayor Arreola? Yes. Thank you.

All right, that item passes. That brings us next to item 3L, which is related to CDBG funds. Staff Court, please.

Hello. Okay. Good evening, council and mayor. The City of Tracy receives an annual Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, and Home Investment Partnership Program home funding to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a pass-through from the County of San Joaquin. Funding allocations for fiscal year 26-27 were adopted by the City Council on March 17th with Resolution 2026-073. Subsequently, the County received its funding allocations affecting the award amounts of multiple subrecipients that were awarded by the City Council. Adoption of this resolution will amend the estimated award amounts to reflect HUD's final allocations and recommendations from staff. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any preliminary questions from counsel? Seeing none, can I see hands raised for public comment? All right. We'll go ahead and allow four minutes. Time is yours. Thank you.

I can't believe that you guys didn't have any comments. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmember. At your last meeting on the Community Development Block Grant Awards, the public was told very clearly that the Council could change the funding amounts when the items returned. Now it's been placed on the consent calendar where it will pass without discussion. That is not transparency and that's not where the public was led to believe. IT LOOKS LIKE AN ATTEMPT TO AVOID ADDRESSING THE CONCERNS THAT WERE RAISED BY SOME COUNCIL MEMBERS. LET'S TALK HONESTLY ABOUT THESE ALLOCATIONS. THE SHADE STRUCTURE AT THE HOMELESS SHELTER WAS ALREADY CONFIRMED BY STAFF TO BE HAPPENING WITH OR WITHOUT THE CBD BG GRANT. And if this is true, using limited federal dollars here is not responsible. These funds are supposed to be addressed to unmet needs, not subsidized projects that are already guaranteed. And this is especially concerning because the Home Investment Partnership Program awards ARE ALREADY OVERWHELMINGLY DIRECTED TOWARDS THE HOMELESS-RELATED PROGRAMS. THIS MEANS A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF THE FEDERAL HOUSING DOLLARS COMING INTO TRACY IS ALREADY GOING TO THIS SECTOR, ADDING EVEN MORE CDBG. I CAN'T SAY THAT. MONEY TO COVER A SHELTER PROJECT, ONE THAT'S GOING TO BE BUILT ANYWAY, CREATES AN INBALANCE AND IS UNFAIR TO THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY THAT ALSO RELIES ON THESE FEDERAL FUNDS. THEN THERE IS THE TRACY LEARNING CENTER SYNTHETIC TURF FIELD. THIS IS A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR PROJECT. THE GRANT AMOUNT IS A DROP IN THE BUCKET THE TIMELINE IS UNLOANED. THE PUBLIC ASSECTS TO THE SCHOOL GROUNDS IN TRACY IS VERY LIMITED. WE ALL KNOW THAT. SO LET'S STOP PRETENDING THAT THIS HAS A MEANINGFUL PUBLIC BENEFIT. IT ISN'T. IF THE COUNCIL TRULY HAS THE AUTHORITY TO REDIRECT THESE FUNDS AS IT WAS STATED ON THE RECORD, THEN IT'S TIME TO ACTUALLY USE THAT AUTHORITY INSTEAD OF RUBBER-STAMPING STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS. 88 APPROVEMENTS ACROSS THE CITY ARE OVERDUE. THEY BENEFIT EVERYONE AND THEY ARE EXACTLY THE KIND OF PROJECTS THESE FUNDS SHOULD SUPPORT. ACCESSIBLE SIDEWALKS, COMPLIANT CURBS, SAFE CROSSING, AND AN ADA-READY PARK FACILITIES ARE NOT AN OPTION. THEY ARE THE BASIC RESPONSIBILITY OF CITY GOVERNMENTS. I'M ASKING YOU TO PULL THIS ITEM OFF THE CONSENT CALENDAR, WHICH WE'VE ALREADY DONE, OPEN DISCUSSION, AND DIRECT THESE FUNDS TOWARDS PROJECTS THAT GENERALLY SERVE THE ENTIRE TRACY COMMUNITY. THE PUBLIC WAS TOLD THAT YOU HAD THE POWER TO DO THIS. NOW LET'S SEE IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO IT. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. DO YOU HAVE AN ADDITIONAL PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM?

DAN, YOU'RE ONE OF THE PEOPLE THAT QUESTIONED THE SURF, THE TURF FIELD. YOU QUESTIONED THE SHELTER THING, AND NOW YOU'RE JUST LETTING THE CITY.

SIR, YOUR TIME'S UP. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, SIR. DO YOU HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS? Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

No, Mayor, not online.

Thank you. I just want a clarification regarding 3L. We've had a previous item in which we discussed allocations for CDBG and home funds, but this particular item is related to the amendments, and I wanted to confirm the amendments as I read them was an increase to CDBG funds of approximately $1,000 and a decrease of home funds of approximately $500. Can we confirm that?

That is correct.

Okay. Thank you. Counsel, do you have any additional discussion, comments, questions, or I'll entertain a motion.

Make a motion to approve 3-0.

Before I second that, I just want to say I'm open to rehearing these. You know, at the time we took public comments and felt like we were doing what the public was asking us to do. There were options. But, you know, if I have support from council, I'm happy to rehear it again and take another look. But I feel like we did our due diligence on this, so. I AGREE. SOUNDS LIKE WE'RE NOT THERE'S NO SUPPORT TO REOPEN THIS SO I WILL SECOND THE MOTION. WE HAVE A FIRST AND A SECOND. ROLL CALL, PLEASE.

MAYOR PRO TEM APERCROMBIE.

YES.

COUNCILMEMBER EVANS. YES. COUNCILMEMBER RUZOYA. YES. COUNCILMEMBER NIGARD. YES. MAYOR ARRIOLA. YES. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THAT COMPLETES OUR CONSENT CALENDAR. NEXT UP WE HAVE ITEMS FROM THE AUDIENCE. ITEMS IN THE AUDIENCE FOR ANY COMMENTS THAT ARE NOT ON TONIGHT'S AGENDA. AS A REMINDER, THE COUNCIL IS PROHIBITED UNDER THE GOVERNMENT CODE FROM RESPONDING TO ITEMS THAT ARE NOT AGENDIZED AND WE HAVE NEW PUBLIC COMMENT GUIDELINES WHICH PRESENTS THE AMOUNT OF TIME BASED ON HOW MANY SPEAKERS WE HAVE. CAN I PLEASE SEE HANDS RAISED FOR HOW MANY SPEAKERS WE WOULD HAVE FOR ITEMS NOT ON TONIGHT'S AGENDA. Okay. Three. That would be four minutes each. And if anyone, I believe, do we have any speaker cards?

Yes, Mayor.

Okay. And if there are any additional speakers after the three, that would be 90 seconds pursuant to our guidelines. Let's go ahead and start with our speaker cards, please.

Yes. First speaker is Robert Tanner.

I'm back. Welcome back. One of the times I approved of increasing the fire fees for illegals. But also, if you remember, I told the story about some man who, a neighbor, who spent over $1,000 on Safe and Sane. And he split it up, did it on July 4th, and then did it on New Year's. He also had a little bit of illegal thrown out, but If I remember right, and correct me if I'm wrong, the safe and sane will be illegal on the night of the fifth or the day of. Any time after the fourth, it's illegal. And yet this neighbor told me that it can't be illegal because the city council approved it for sale. And you need to just continue that. I've said that before. This guy went from several stands to make his $1,000 purchase in total. So he did 200 here, 200 there, and moved around. I suspect that with this year being the 250th, we're going to have it even worse. We're going to have a lot more illegals, fireworks, as well as safe and sane, and the people spending the money that they really can't afford. BUT THEY'RE GOING TO SPEND IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT'S $250. I WISH THE CITY COUNCIL FOR NEXT YEAR WOULD TRY AND GET THIS SAFE AND SAFE STOP SOLD IN THE CITY OF TRACY. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU MR. TANNER AND PERHAPS SOME OF THE STAFF CAN PROVIDE CLARIFICATION ON HIS QUESTION. NEXT SPEAKER PLEASE. DO WE HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL SPEAKER CARDS?

NEW SPEAKER YES.

NEW SPEAKER MY APOLOGIES.

Council, I was so excited at a previous meeting where there was a discussion of the interest on the Measure B money actually going into Measure B fund. Of course, it all got spent in that same motion, so there was no net gain there. However, I would recommend that you revise the accounting of the Measure B fund. to include the interest earned each year so that it reported correctly. I think that's something that staff could easily take care of. Also, I made a point about how much of the, what percent of Measure B money is currently being spent on items that are not new, which of course was what was advertised to the community is We can't afford any new amenities unless we have this money. You give it to us, we'll buy new amenities. I believe it's, I don't know, almost 50 percent of the money currently spent is actually regular just maintenance money. And I cautioned you, it won't affect you personally. You could do nothing and get away with this. It will kill 10 years out, the council that's there today, there is no revenue from Measure V. If it was put in the fund for use it was designated for and not spent to pay for regular expenses, which really should be in the regular budget, you're going to face a huge shortfall in funding. in that year. So you're 10 years out of spending money out of that fund to pay general fund expenses. And in 10 years, it's just it's going to go away. I don't think it was ever intended to do that. I know it's legal. I have no question. The problem is, is it just? You're here, you get to make that decision. If you change how it's presented so you can see every time it shows up here what the percent is that's going for actual budgeted expenses, that's going to be your shortfall. And I probably won't be here to see it, but and you probably won't be either. You won't be on these seats. But it will be a disaster for the council that inherits this.

NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER, THANK YOU.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. I'm here also on the behalf of quite a few people in Tracy. There's two of them. One of them couldn't make it here because of a car accident, but that's besides the point. What she wants to say is this mailer that went out on the water rates was purposely a deception mailer that did not include an official City of Tracy branding or name. You see, the bare minimum of what was legally legally required to send out rather than fully informing the residents of Tracy of an impending proposed rate increase. Everyone who does marketing or mailing, shame on you, knows that a generic mailing that looks like junk mail will be discarded. And then you did purposely, out there people are saying that was done purposely. So the people maybe did not respond in a timely manner. No return envelope or postage. It was our taxpayers money that paid this consultant and staff to craft this letter and deceive the residents of Tracy. And that is very bad. And counsel, if you go along with this, you lost the trust of the residents of Tracy. Why would an attorney, or our city manager approved this. Every mailer, water, it doesn't matter, says City of Tracy, all caps and all the mailers that we get. And it says 333 Civic Center Plaza. Plaza. What people got was a plain envelope. City of Tracy Utilities. Where's our logo? People will open up if they saw a logo. Where is the font? It's all even. I enlarged it so you could see this. This is very deceptive. This is not right. Your agenda, City of Tracy in big letters with our logo. Our city trucks, City of Tracy. If a truck comes to my house, And it's a white plain truck and says they're a city of Tracy. Am I going to open the door? Probably not. But if a truck pulls up to my house that says city of Tracy, I might be opening that door. And not only that, a lot of the people that we've been talking at the churches and downtown did not receive it. They went home because they had junk mail. Nowhere. Nowhere. And there's another 6,000 plus residents in Tracy that does not have a voice in this. because they rent, that cost would be passed to them. $6,000. If that property manager or that owner does not send in, those people are going to be holding that cost. If this direction came from council and mayor to send this type of mailer, that's not good for you. It really isn't. Who gave them the okay to deceive the residents of Tracy on a plain envelope? It's not right. Just because it's legal, so it's legal to deceive people in this country. Because we have that now when people call you, use fake names similar to their bank accounts. They get mailers for their mortgage similar to theirs. So that makes it okay for people to deceive people and take money from them. No, it's not. This has to be corrected. It's on you guys. You need to do better. You need to do something better than this and correct this. And those numbers are still off. You need the community to trust you again. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. English. Do we have any additional speakers? We would allow 90 seconds. Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

Not online, Mayor.

Okay. With that, we'll go ahead and close out items from the audience.

Mayor? If I may, I would like to address Mr. Tanner's concerns. My name is Essie Lopez, your deputy city clerk. And I am one of the folks here in the City of Tracy that deals with the fireworks applications, processing applications, and working with nonprofits and vendors. And I just wanted to clarify that The city of Tracy, specifically the clerk's office in conjunction with Tracy PD and the Tracy Fire, we provide extensive outreach and we provide flyers to all of the vendor spots so that they can hand out to the public in regards to what are or did states as far as discharge for the fireworks. They do sell fireworks from On June 28th fireworks sales start at noon and then after that it's between the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. June 29th through July 3rd it's 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and again on July 4th. Now as far as discharge goes they can only discharge or they should be discharging per our ordinance No later than midnight on the 4th of July. So once that happens and that becomes an illegal action that that president is taking.

Thank you, Ms. Lopez. All right. Next up, we will go to our public hearings. All right. We have item 5A. as related to the mixed use zoning for our housing element. Take a staff report, please.

This is on. Hello, good evening. My name is Brianna Alamia, and I'm here tonight with the Planning Division and Community and Economic Development Department. I'm here tonight to talk about housing element implementation phase five, the mixed use zone. HE5 consists of zoning code amendments mandated by the adopted 2023 to 2031 housing element. The adopted housing element directs staff to establish development standards for a mixed-use zone. Tonight I am proposing the establishment of a new article 18.5 mixed-use zone or MU1 and an update to the existing article 35 signs. The housing element requires the establishment of the mixed use zone to provide suitable sites to accommodate a range of housing developments. This zone will allow properties to be developed with a mix of commercial and residential uses. The zone will allow for both vertical and horizontal development and will require a density of 20 to 35 units per gross acre. Staff is proposing amendments to Article 35 signs to establish consistency and allow for development in the new MU1 zone. In the mixed-use zone, staff is proposing to allow standard monument signs, freestanding monument signs, and wall signs. Staff is also proposing an additional cleanup item to allow standard monument signs in the CBD zone. These zoning ordinance amendments are exempt from CEQA pursuant to Section 15061 . In conclusion, staff and the Planning Commission recommend that City Council adopt the ordinance amending Title 10, Planning and Zoning of the Tracy Municipal Code and adopt the resolution determining the project is exempt from CEQA. This concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing at 8.09 p.m. Council, do we have any clarifying questions?

Okay.

With that, we'll go out for public comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item? Can I see hands raised? Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

None online.

Okay. With that, we'll go ahead and close public comment period and close the public hearing at 810 p.m. Return to council for additional discussion and or entertain a motion.

Mayor make a motion to adopt a resolution determining that the ordinance adopting a new article article 18.5 mixed use zone MU-1 and revising an existing article 35 signs of chapter 10.08 zoning regulations of title 10 planning and zoning of the Tracy Municipal Code is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act pursuant to CEQA guidelines sections 15061, subsection B, subsection 3, because it can be seen with certainty to have no possibility of a significant effect on the environment. I'll second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie?

Yes.

Council Member Evans?

Yes.

Council Member Redoya?

Yes.

Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Mayor Areola?

Yes.

Thank you. madam clerk will you please read the title of the proposed ordinance yes an ordinance adopting a new article article 1 8.5 mixed use zone mu-1 and revising an existing article article 35 signs of chapter 10.08 zoning regulations of title 10 planning and zoning of the tracy municipal code exempt from the california environmental quality act sequa pursuant to sequel guidelines section 15061b3

Motion to waive the first reading by substitution of title and introduce the ordinance. Second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie?

Yes.

Council Member Evans?

Yes.

Council Member Vidoya? Yes. Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Mayor Areola?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right. Item 5A passes. That brings us to item 5B, which was related to the citywide master fee schedule. Staff report, please.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL, AND TRACY COMMUNITY. MY NAME IS NEIL VELASQUEZ, FINANCIAL ANALYST WITH THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT. TONIGHT I'LL BE PRESENTING THE ANNUAL UPDATE TO THE CITYWIDE MASTER FEE SCHEDULE. I'LL PROVIDE A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF WHAT THE SCHEDULE INCLUDES, HIGHLIGHT KEY UPDATES FOR THE UPCOMING YEAR, AND CONCLUDE WITH STAFF'S RECOMMENDATION. AND WE HAVE DEPARTMENT STAFF AVAILABLE SHOULD THERE BE ANY PROGRAM SPECIFIC QUESTIONS. The citywide master fee schedule is a consolidated document that brings together fees across from all city departments. It was it was established to improve transparency and make it easy for the community to access information all in one place. It also ensures that fees are updated and reviewed regularly on a regular basis to reflect the cost of providing the services. The citywide master fee schedule may be found on the city's web page within the finance department. The schedule includes a wide range of fees across multiple service areas. These include the city manager's office, communication services, city clerk, cultural arts, community facilities, recreation and community and economic development, public safety and public works. Together, these fees represent the majority of the city's user and regulatory fees. There are also several categories of fees that are not included in the master fee schedule because they are governed by separate legal or procedure requirements. These include development impact fees, mitigation fees, business license taxes, enterprise funds such as sewer and water, franchise fees, special district assessments, fines, leases, and rates established through separate legal agreements. And those are adopted independently in accordance with those applicable laws. As part of the annual update, certain fees are adjusted to reflect inflation. And this year's recommended adjustment is 3% based on the consumer price index for the San Francisco, Oakland and Hayward region. And we utilize December as our benchmark month. This is consistent with the city standard practice of applying an annual adjustment to help align fees with the cost of providing those goods and services. This year's update also includes new fees across several departments, including planning, development, engineering, recreation and community facilities, including the Tracy Recreation Activity Center, or known as the track. uh these additions reflect new programs and services where fees had not previously been established some examples of new fees include planning the mobile food vendor permit development engineering adding a new fee for non-residential final subdivision review and both recreation and community community facilities establishing fees associated with the track In addition to the new fees, we are recommending a variety of updates to improve the schedule. These include administrative updates such as naming conventions, formatting, and appendix revisions, as well as fee corrections, removals, and discontinued programs and adjustments to reflect inflation. Some fees have also been reorganized across departments to help with clarity. And a summary of those changes are included in attachment A of the staff report. So currently the City recovers approximately 70% of the total cost associated with providing fees. And with the proposed updates, including the 3% CPI, the City is expected to maintain that cost recovery level. As in prior years, certain fees are excluded from the CPI where affordability and external factors are a consideration. Overall, the goal is to balance the cost recovery with maintaining accessible and affordable programs for the community. Today, staff is recommending that the City Council conduct a public hearing TO RECEIVE AND CONSIDER COMMENTS ON THE PROPOSED MASTER FEE SCHEDULE AND ADOPT A RESOLUTION WITH THE UPDATED SCHEDULE, WHICH INCLUDES THE CORRECTED PALM STREET BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION FEE, WHICH WOULD BE TAKEN EFFECT IMMEDIATELY, A NEW BINGO LICENSE FEES EFFECTIVE JUNE 4TH, AND THE 3% INFLATIONARY ADJUSTMENT TO THOSE APPLICABLE FEES, WHICH WOULD TAKE EFFECT AT THE START OF THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1ST. AND THEN RESCINDING THE PRIOR YEAR'S RESOLUTION ACCORDING WITH THE CURRENT SCHEDULE. And this concludes my presentation. Staff's available for questions.

Thank you. Then we'll go ahead and open the public hearing at 8.17 p.m. Council, do we have any preliminary questions? Council Member Evans.

Thank you, Mayor. Just have a couple of minor ones here. I did review the Attachment A, and I have a question on that, and then also on the slide deck, slide three, can you give the public just a kind of a brief overview, the top items, city manager's office, communication service fees, what does that entail just to make public aware?

Let me go to that real quick. Okay. So for the city manager's office, there's three divisions. It's the city clerks, which are administrative type of fees for appeals to city council, for public records, photocopying of paper, and then communications division. And then also the bulk of the fees are in the cultural arts division, the grand theater.

Okay. Thank you for that. On attachment A, I was just curious, I think it might have been on the second or third page, parks, rec and community services under that heading. It makes some reference to aquatics. I'm just curious when we get to finally having our aquatic center, God willing, this verbiage in the attachment A doesn't seem to apply to future aquatic center. If I'm not incorrect, will there be any confusion there? because it references like a 10-visit pass and different things. Just want to be sure it's clear once we do have an actual aquatic center. I think this is in reference to our existing pools in the city, not to be confused with the aquatic center. Just want to make sure there's some clarification there and there's no legalese issues later down the road.

Thank you for the question. Brian McDonald, Parks, Recreation and Community Services Director. So to answer your question, the fees in the Master Fee Schedule do apply to Joe Wilson. With regards to the future Tracy Aquatic Center, we will come back to you and have that conversation at a later date on what those fees will look like. THEY'LL BE PRETTY SIMILAR AS FAR AS PROGRAMS GO, BUT ENTRANCE FEES WILL DEFINITELY BE SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT YOU'RE SEEING IN THIS SCHEDULE.

NEW SPEAKER Okay. SO THAT ANSWERS THE FIRST PART. THE SECOND PART IS, DO WE NEED TO ENSURE THAT THIS IS CLARIFIED TO DISTINGUISH THE TWO? I don't see a reference to Joe Wilson unless I'm missing it.

Mayor.

So this is aquatics.

Arturo Sanchez, assistant city manager through the chair to council member. There is no current existing aquatic center, so there would be no practical need to make a distinction when the time comes that there is in existence an aquatic center. the the existence of the aquatic center will cause us to need to adopt a fee at that time we would make the distinction at that time by separating out that aquatic center through the adoption of those fees identifying the very specific aquatic center whatever that aquatic sounder be named and calling it out i think at that point in time we would begin to separate out the two fees joe wilson versus aquatic center dba right whatever that THAT SPECIFIC NAME IS AT THIS TIME WE DO NOT FEEL IT'S NECESSARY BECAUSE WE ONLY HAVE ONE FACILITY THAT WE OPERATE AND THAT'S THE JOE WILSON POOL. OKAY.

FAIR ENOUGH. THANKS. ANY ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FROM COUNCIL? I HAVE ONE, MAYOR.

I just had a clarifying question. So with the track fees, and this was, you know, in our exhibit that was included in our packet, a lot of detail on, you know, what we are looking at assigning fees to various, you know, either Events or or build rooms that you can rent out or whatever I'm and then there was also, you know kind of a structure on you know entrance in and So if I'm gonna give you a scenario and you can tell me whether this would raise a fee if i were to bring my grandson there we just want to have a picnic and we want to use you know picnic table um inside would that raise a fee

Correct. So there's going to be an entrance fee, base entrance fee to get in. We're going to offer that through daily fees, monthly passes. And the reason why we do that is because it's going to be hard for us to separate other uses like the climbing wall, some of the other amenities that are under the track, the basketball court. But we are talking about opportunities to have days and times for free use. We've talked about that. Also, we've talked about some of the amenities on the outside of the facility will be free use as well. So there's different options we can take. We're gonna have scholarship opportunities as well for entrance fees. We have that also that we use for other facilities. But yes, to answer your question, the answer is yes, there'll be a fee.

So you bring up the identifying areas of free use. So will that be something that will be for us also to review at a later time? Because, you know, this is a public park. I do hope that we can make sure we're allowing all of our community access, even if it is just to, you know, walk in and see it without a fee. So, yeah, I hope that we can come up with, you know, a good plan to allow those free passes or whatever. Certainly. And what about if I brought my grandson to have a picnic outdoors on campus? So would that also incur a fee?

No, so the outdoor space would be free. use the same concept we do at their other parks, first come, first serve. But you also have the opportunity for the outdoor spaces to rent those specifically for certain events, parties, birthday parties, things like that. But yes, that will be first come, first serve. It'll be free use for the outside.

For the outside, okay.

Yeah. so coming back at a later time you'll be able to um want you to um identify where your free uses you will you will make that public yes and then we like i mentioned earlier we would do a lot of promotional um promotional things like you know perhaps after school you know free from certain times for you know for teenagers or you know maybe you know sundays are We'll do a lot of promotional things like that to get more people on some of our lower demand times. But we would definitely get creative on how we can approach giving, making sure more of the community has access to this facility.

Right, cuz I'm thinking you're in one of the more underserved areas of town. And what if a group of kids wanted to just go do their homework and use one of the rooms or just sit at a picnic table and do homework?

Yeah.

Would that incur a fee?

So we can look into that for sure about, you know, certain times of the day. We can do, you know, all kinds of different, you know, opportunities for certain rooms to be open to the public as well. But like I said, it's going to be a challenge for us to limit certain only access to certain areas because it is an open space. So for example, the track, the gym, it might be a little more difficult for us to keep folks separated. But we certainly will look into it, and we'll go ahead and take note of what you mentioned this evening, and we can always come back to you at a later date on some other options.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Any additional questions from Council? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and open for public comment. Can I see a hand raised for a number of folks who'd like to speak on Item 5B? Seeing none. Oh, is that one? Okay. We'll allow four minutes.

I'm here to question the renewal fees for Bengal. It was at $13. Now it's moved up to $50. Bengal licenses renewals are done every six months. There are only two nonprofits that I know of. One is the St. Bernard's Church and the other one's the Moose Lodge. And they are under obligation to give any winnings, not only to the short term players, but any excess has to go to other nonprofits and they write checks every six months. This takes away from a nonprofit, a future nonprofit of $74. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's another item that would be added. So they do McHenry House almost every six months. along with various other nonprofits. And that's the rules under Moose in order to do Bengal. So you're taking away and I don't see a difference in the changes of the initial license and the renewal. It should just remain back at 13. Now there are some nonprofits such as bars that are offering bingo from time to time, but they claim they don't need a license because they give out all the fees to the players. If they collect $2,000, they give out $2,000, which seems kind of odd to me that even though they're doing it that way, they don't need a license. But that's their thought process. So the city never really hears of that. unless someone makes a comment about it, which I'm doing today. But I would like to see, for the nonprofits, the renewal, because it's every six months, to remain at 13. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tanner. Go ahead and I'll ask, we'll ask staff to respond at the end of public comment. Do you have any additional speakers for this item? Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay. With that, we will go ahead and close the public public comment on Item 5B and close the public hearing at 828 p.m. Staff, could you please provide some clarification regarding the renewal fees for bingo?

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Captain Miguel Contreras, Acting Chief for Chief Millington. Regarding the fees for bingo, we actually have a large variety of bingo permits that we have to process through the Police Department. IT'S DEFINITELY MORE THAN TWO. WE PROBABLY AVERAGE AT LEAST TEN, TEN PROBABLY A MONTH. THERE'S A VARIETY OF NONPROFITS. I THINK WITH THE TIME, THE EFFORT, THE TRACKING, THAT PROCESS IS NOW UNDER THE BUREAU OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS. So, I think the original $13 fee, I think there's a justification of increasing it only because of the amount of work involved with tracking these bingo permits. Not only from the smaller nonprofits, but to the commercial type establishments that are occurring. So, that's part of the justification for that.

Thank you. Do we have any additional council discussion? Otherwise, I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to adopt a resolution a approving the and adopting effective immediately the corrected palmistry background investigation fee and b approving and adopting effective june 4th 2026 they do bingo license fee and the bingo license renewal fee and c approving and adopting effective july 1st 2026 a three percent inflationary Adjustment to applicable fees within the Citywide Master Fee Schedule and D, rescinding effective as of July 1st, 2026, Resolution 2025-290. Excuse me.

Second. We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie.

Yes.

Councilmember Evans. Yes. Councilmember Zoya.

Yes.

Councilmember Nygaard. Yes. Mayor Areola. Yes.

Thank you. All right item 5B passes. That takes us to item 5C which is an update to the Municipal Code's temporary use permits. Staff report please.

Just need one extra moment, Mayor. The computer froze.

Sure.

Okay. Channel 26, it's up whenever you're ready.

Oh, hold on. There we go.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. Christina Delgadillo, Assistant Planner with the Planning Division. Today, I will be providing a report on the staff-initiated zoning tax amendment to the temporary use permit ordinance. Temporary use permits are issued for any outdoor temporary use event on private property. The original ordinance was adopted in 1967, which amended the existing Article 34 to include the issuance of temporary use permits. In 1975, City Council adopted an ordinance that amended Tracy Municipal Code section 1008-4240 to the current TUP regulations. This amendment will repeal and replace Tracy Municipal Code section 1008-4240. The modifications include establishment of new maximum days and maximum number of permits per 12-month period, creates a new minor permit, creates a revocation process, and add updates to the purpose and intent, formatting, and application requirements. Currently temporary use permits can be approved for a maximum of 30 days. The proposed ordinance proposes to increase the maximum to 60 days. Currently the current section is not specific on how many temporary use permits can be issued per parcel per year. The proposed amendment will allow three permits per parcel within a 12-month period. The 12-month period begins at the time of the first permit and this will ensure that there is still time in between those three permits. The proposed amendment also adds a new minor temporary use permit or an MTUB. This event would be for minor temporary uses that meet the requirements of it must be on developed property and it cannot exceed 400 square foot in size. The maximum duration would be three consecutive days per permit and the maximum total of six permits can be issued per parcel within a 12-month period. These new permits are intended to streamline the process for smaller events to benefit both applications and staff and to be more business friendly. Since these are intended to be short-term with a quick review turnaround, these would have a lower fee and a new application form. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the TUP and MTUP. The differences in time, amount per 12-month period, scale, and review time have been tailored for each permit. This amendment also adds a new revocation process section. Both TUPs and MTUPs can be revoked if one of the findings can be made. Misrepresentation or fraud, conditions have not been met, circumstances have changed, or a violation has occurred. The text amendment also includes other changes such as updates to the application requirements, removes outdated language, changes to the formatting, and adds a purpose and intent section. And new application forms for both the TUPs and TNPs have also been drafted in anticipation of the adoption of this ordinance. This concludes the presentation. Staff recommends City of Townsville adopt the ordinance and is available for any questions.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item at 8.35 p.m. Council, do we have any preliminary questions? Councilmember Evans.

Just kind of a minor one. I like what we're doing here. I like the minor temporary use permit idea. That's creative. And I like where it's going. I'm curious. I may not understand the slide eight cannot exceed 400 square feet in size. Can you explain the theory behind that and why 400 square feet?

The idea behind minimizing the size is to ensure that it stays minor. The idea is it's not taking up so much space that it's going to require holding off any aisles from a parking lot or causing any type of issues in neighboring properties.

Okay.

Usually we expect these type of events to be like flower stands or pop-ups with just a couple of pop-up tents. We're not expecting these to be elaborate.

Okay, okay. I'm trying to wrap my head around the THE SIZE, BUT I ASSUME STAFF HAS DONE THEIR DUE DILIGENCE IN COMING UP WITH THAT NUMBER. I'M TRYING TO VISUALIZE THAT. OKAY. CAN YOU GUYS GIVE ME A LITTLE BIT OF, LIKE, HOW DID WE COME UP WITH THAT NUMBER, I GUESS?

What we were attempting to do is to go under something that's not going to require extensive review from the building division and fire division. So this wasn't just a planning involved decision, this was something we researched to ensure we wanted it to be minor and streamlined as possible. So we went with the limit that would best fit the scenarios. sure okay again i really like it are other cities doing it this way is this kind of a yes actually there are quite of many cities within the central valley that have a minor tup and a major tup okay and they're and they're set up pretty much the same way as we're proposing Correct. We did a lot of research to see what would be best with the city, so we did look at other cities such as Modesto, Manteca, Merced, and further within the Central Valley to see how they operate their minor temporary use permits, and we kind of pick and choose to what would be best for the City of Tracy.

Sure. Okay. Great. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Any additional questions from council? Seeing none, we'll go out for public comment on item 5C. Can I please see hands raised for items seeing 2? That'll be four minutes each. Do we have any speaker cards?

No, Mayor, not for this item.

All right. Time is yours.

The way I read this is now at the mall, we can have only three carnivals or circuses or whatever a year. Is that correct? and what I'm reading into this. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. And I'll ask staff to respond at the end.

Tim Silva, Tracy, California. I'm just trying to get clarity on this TUP, TEP thing. Is this regard private property, public property? And I would say, like, for example, Does this apply, like, say, to the picnic areas that you can rent, like at the park? Can that picnic area only be rented three times a year? Or are we just regarding this on private property? To me, that's kind of vague and could be misconstrued, and there's some gray areas. So I think we should have clarity on what a TUP should be is if, you know, are we only going to allow three times out of the year that you can rent, say, the picnic area at Dr. Powers? And then if a person comes in and wants to do it a fourth time, we're going to say no because we already rented it out for three. So I'm trying to get clarity. Is this private or public or both? I'm kind of confused on that. So that's all. I just want clarity on that because I know our parks get rented out a lot. AND THEY GET USED A LOT. I KNOW WE GOT THE FIRST TIME BUT I ALSO KNOW WE RENT THEM OUT TOO. AND I WOULD HATE TO SEE THAT RESTRICTED BECAUSE WE SPEND SO MUCH MONEY ON OUR PUBLIC PARKS AND PUBLIC FACILITIES THAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THAT CONTINUE. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. ANY ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS? WE WOULD ALLOW 90 SECONDS. SEEING NONE IN CHAMBERS, DO WE HAVE ANY ONLINE?

NEW SPEAKER NO, MAYOR. NO HANDS ONLINE.

Okay. With that, we'll go ahead and close public comment on item 5C and close out the public hearing at 8.40 p.m. Can staff please provide some clarification related to specifics about events in the mall, specifically the mall parking lots, as well as differences regarding private versus public property and public park permits?

Yes. For the public versus private, temporary use permits are only for events or uses outdoors on private property. There are different types of permits that are for the public spaces. Regarding the three, right now our temporary use permit ordinance is ambiguous of if they could even apply for another temporary use permit. So this would allow increasing the number to three, which You could apply for those back-to-back or you could spread them out through the 12-month period. We chose three because if you put all those three together, it equals six months. And at that point is when the building code and fire code consider a building permanent. So in that case, then they'd have to go get additional permits through them.

All right. Thank you. And then a clarification about the carnivals at the mall?

Currently they do get a temporary use permit. Usually it's only one a year that they do, but this would actually increase it to where they would be able to do three.

Okay, thank you. Council, do we have any additional discussion, questions? Otherwise I would entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to adopt a resolution determining that the ordinance approving an amendment that repeals and replaces section 10.08.4240 of the Tracy Municipal Code regarding temporary use permits is exempt from California Environmental Quality Act pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15061, subsection B, section 3, because it can be seen with certainty to have no possibility of a significant effect on the environment. I will second.

We have a first and a second.

Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie? Yes. Council Member Evans? Yes. Council Member Redoya? Yes. Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Mayor Areola?

Yes.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, will you please read the title of the proposed ordinance?

Yes, Mayor. An ordinance repealing and replacing section 10.08.4240 of the Tracy Municipal Code regarding temporary use permits exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15061B3.

Motion to waive the first reading by substitution of title and introduce the ordinance.

Second. We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie.

Yes.

Councilor Evans.

Yes.

Councilor Medoya. Yes. Councilor Nygaard. Yes. Mayor Areola. Yes. Thank you.

All right item 5C passes. That will bring us to item 5D which is related to the city's vacancy recruitment and retention efforts. Staff report please.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNSEL. KIMBERLY MURNAUER, YOUR HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR. THIS PUBLIC HEARING IS AN INFORMATIONAL REPORT ON OUR VACANCIES AND RECRUITMENT EFFORTS IN COMPLIANCE WITH AB 2561 CODIFIED IN GOVERNMENT CODE 3502.3. In 2024, AB 2561, codified again in the government code, requires public agencies to hold a public hearing prior to adopting the annual budget each fiscal year to review the status of job vacancies, to assess recruitment and retention efforts, and identify any necessary adjustments to policies, procedures, or strategies to address challenges in hiring and retaining personnel. I realize I need the I need the clicker.

Thank you.

REVIEW OF OUR WORKFORCE. WE HAVE A TOTAL BUDGETED NUMBER OF POSITIONS, AGAIN, AS OF JANUARY 1, 2025, 521 POSITIONS. THAT GREW IN THE CALENDAR YEAR TO 536 POSITIONS AND CURRENTLY WE HAVE 537 FULL-TIME POSITIONS IN THE LISTED DEPARTMENTS THAT ALL SERVE THIS ORGANIZATION AND THE COMMUNITY. A REVIEW OF OUR CITYWIDE VACANCY INFORMATION. SO THIS CHART SHOWS FOR EACH MONTH OF THE CALENDAR YEAR 2025, THE NUMBER OF VACANCIES AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH MONTH, THE SEPARATIONS THAT OCCURRED IN EACH MONTH, THE NUMBER OF NEW HIRES AND PROMOTIONS IN EACH MONTH, and along with the total number of budgeted FTEs or full-time employees in each of those months and the corresponding vacancy percentage for that month. Obviously, our vacancy percentage will vary based upon when new hires occur, when separations occur, promotions, etc. THE FOLLOWING SLIDE REVIEWS THE BARGAINING UNITS, THE TOP FIVE ARE THE REPRESENTED BARGAINING UNITS, THE BOTTOM TWO ARE THE UNREPRESENTED LABOR GROUPS, THE NUMBER OF ALLOCATED POSITIONS PER UNIT, THE NUMBER OF VACANT POSITIONS IN EACH UNIT AND THE VACANCY PERCENTAGE IN 2025 PER BARGAIN UNIT. The recruitment process, just an overview of what the recruitment and hiring process looks like. I first want to give a huge shout out to my amazing HR team who works very, very hard to conduct a fair and equitable process to ensure we're hiring the best men and women to serve this community. They begin with meeting with departments. We clarify roles and expectations of the position once it becomes vacated. WE CONDUCT AN OPEN OR PROMOTIONAL RECRUITMENT PROCESS DEPENDING UPON THE NEEDS OF THE DEPARTMENT. WE SCREEN APPLICATIONS, OF COURSE, WE GO THROUGH A TESTING AND REVIEW PROCESS AND THEN WE WORK THROUGH THE DEPARTMENTS ON THE SELECTION PROCESS AND JUST AN OVERVIEW OF KIND OF WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE. In calendar year 2025, we evaluated over 6,000 job applications for the positions that we had open and recruited for. So the men or the women in our HR department are doing a fantastic job in moving folks through and attracting wide pools of job applicants. In 2025 we had a total of 91 vacancies. We had an average of 61 days from requests to fill for our positions. That's about 40% faster than our peer agencies who averaged about 100 days to fill a position. Obviously there's some variances there depending upon the positions, but overall we're doing fairly well comparatively. THERE WERE 19 ELIGIBLE LISTS CREATED, 55 NEW RECRUITMENTS OPEN IN 2025, AND NINE OF THOSE ARE PROMOTIONAL ONLY RECRUITMENTS. Part of compliance with AB 2561 is to identify any hiring issues that we have or obstacles and then providing solutions in terms of our practices or policies. Obviously, we want to make sure we maintain consistent application with engagement with our candidates to ensure that we keep them involved in the hiring process. It's a very competitive employment pool right now. So, candidates who aren't getting timely notifications tend to fall out of the process. So, using our applicant tracking system and our recruitment analysts to ensure that we provide timely and efficient updates to those candidates to keep them engaged is an opportunity that we've pursued. IN ADDITION TO, WE HAVE SOME HARD TO FILL POSITIONS. RIGHT NOW WE DO HAVE A COUPLE POLICE OFFICER VACANCIES AND THOSE TEND TO BE, WE'RE IN A CHALLENGING TIME IN TERMS OF TRYING TO ATTRACT LATERALS. WE HAD DONE A GREAT JOB IN 2025 WE HIRED EIGHT POLICE OFFICER LATERAL CANDIDATES, BUT RIGHT NOW THE LATERAL POOL TENDS TO BE A LITTLE SPARSE. SO WE'RE FOCUSING OUR EFFORTS ON POLICE OFFICER TRAINEES IN ORDER TO CONTINUE TO PUT THOSE FOLKS THROUGH THE ACADEMY AND GROW OUR OWN CANDIDATES. Solutions that we are working to help address some of our challenging obstacles. We're collaborating with the hiring departments regarding the selection process, like I said, to expedite that process, to increase the frequency of candidate communication to keep those folks engaged. Using our employer branding to reach out through our various websites for each subject area. IN ADDITION TO OUR SOCIAL MEDIA AND USING REFERRAL PROGRAMS WHERE WE CAN IN TERMS OF ENCOURAGING CANDIDATES TO COME TO THE CITY OF TRACY. RETENTION INFORMATION, IN 2025 WE HAD 65 VACANCIES, WHICH IS ABOUT 12% OF OUR BUDGETED POSITIONS, BUT WE DID PROMOTE 26 INTERNAL PROMOTIONS IN THE CALENDAR YEAR. WE HAD 12 SEPARATIONS DUE TO RETIREMENT. WE HAD NINE INVOLUNTARILY SEPARATIONS OR PROBATIONARY RELEASES AND 18 VOLUNTARY SEPARATIONS IN CALENDAR YEAR 2025. AND THAT CONCLUDES MY REPORT. I'LL BE AVAILABLE IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. WE'LL GO AHEAD AND OPEN THE PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD AT 8 TO 49 P.M. COUNSEL, DO WE HAVE ANY PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS?

I just what type of advertising do we do for recruitment purposes?

for employment, you said? So it depends. So, for instance, if we have an operations supervisor in our public works department, we would reach out to the American Public Works Association and place advertisements on their websites and those agencies that have the industry-specific email distribution sites or websites, you know, the National Parks and Recreation Association. So we use targeted outreach with those industries PORAC, CAL CHIEFS FOR OUR POLICE OFFICER POSITIONS, AND IN ADDITION TO OUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES AND OTHER GENERALIZED WEBSITES SUCH AS THE MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, GOVERNMENT JOBS, WHICH IS A BROAD OUTREACH FOR GOVERNMENT-RELATED POSITIONS. SO IT'S PRIMARILY web-based or social media-based. We do attend career fairs and then we use our resources such as LinkedIn and other sites to try and attract candidates to our website to review our positions and apply.

Okay, so nothing necessarily local like our own Tracy Press or whatever. I'm just curious if we ever get to capture any commuters who may be looking for local employment.

We haven't typically used the Tracy Press printed paper, but it's something certainly we can look into.

Just curious. Yeah, we'd love to get more of our own residents employed so they don't have to commute over the hill.

Sure. We do also use our own social media sites for City of Tracy to push out employment opportunities as much as the communications division will allow us to do so. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. Any additional preliminary questions from council? Seeing none, We'll go out for public comment on this item. Could I please see hands raised for this? Two. That'll be four minutes each. Do we have any speaker items in this item?

No cards on this item, Mayor. Okay.

Whoever would like to come up first, the time is yours.

I can only imagine how complicated that job is that you do. So congratulations. I take this opportunity to tell you I thought there was something that could be done, not necessarily for you, but we have lots of commissions where people are appointed. And I know for a fact they do not do an exit interview at all. And it might be useful to consider doing that in future, might identify some areas for improvement and how you do that particular activity. And you did not mention that in yours, whether it's possible or feasible or useful to find an exit interview for people that leave. Sometimes they're just going for a better job, but sometimes there's difficulty in the workplace you can't find without that. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Huffman.

Tim Silva, Tracy, California. This is something I've talked about for a long time and it goes back years. And this is great that we put all this money into these recruitment efforts and getting people here. But the problem is we can't keep them here. And I really just don't understand. We pay a competitive wage. We have competitive benefits and we have a competitive pension. But like in our engineering department, it seems like it's just a revolving door. Our public works department, same thing. We get a good department head, and boom, they're gone six months later. Just like our airport, we just lost our airport manager. She left. And I don't know why we have a hard time keeping people here, but we need to look out and find out. what we're doing wrong, why people want to leave. A lot of times they go to Mountain House, like some of our engineers went to Mountain House, some went to Modesto. And to be honest, I asked them why, and they just said the workload was huge. It was humongous workload as an engineer. And they go, well, I can go to Modesto or Mountain House, do half the work and get paid the same. I don't know why that is. I'm just giving you feedback. I'm not that person. But I know it hurts us when our engineering department is down because then the workload gets heavy and then processing that takes a lot longer and it kind of stalls us. The same thing in our public works department. I mean, at one time you had an arborist running the public works department. You know, now we've got Anuj, which is great, and he seems very well qualified. I just question how long he's going to be here. I hope he stays for a while and stays on. He's very knowledgeable. But that's our problem is keeping people. We can spend all the money we want and we can advertise all we want to get these people and get them in the door. But how do we keep them in the house? Because I know you get a lot of quality people, but we need to keep them in the house. And what can we do? You know, nobody's perfect. We all have our, you know, plus and minuses. But that's something I've complained about for a long time. is we get all these quality people and then for whatever, just like our police chiefs, how many police chiefs have we gone through? How many different city managers have we gone through? We get them and then they wanna leave. So I don't know exactly what's going on. I mean, I might have a good idea, but until we fix that, all this recruitment and bringing everybody in, especially at your higher level, now your people that say work at their lower levels, your blue collar workers, not your professionals. Yeah, they seem to stay on for a long time. But our higher level, our professional levels, have a hard time with that. And I just think we need to look at that. It's great that we're doing this and we're doing this today, but we need to figure out how we can keep these people and keep our government running effectively. And this is great that this opportunity came up today.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Silva. Do we have any additional speakers on this item? We will allow 90 seconds. Seeing none, chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay. With that, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing for this item at 8.56 p.m. And then staff, could you provide us a little more information on our retention percentages and numbers compared to other cities?

Go back to the slide with the turnover numbers, and actually we did a recent survey of Northern California agencies, and we hover right around 6 percent. Let me go back to THIS SLIDE HERE. SO AT THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR, WE WERE CLOSER TO 7% AND THEN WE GOT IT DOWN TO ABOUT 5% AND BACK UP TO ABOUT 6% AND WE'RE CURRENTLY JUST UNDER 6%. COMPARATIVELY, MANY OTHER AGENCIES ARE RIGHT AROUND THAT SAME PERCENTAGE, 6, 7, 8%. BUT THEN THERE'S SOME OF OUR neighbors that are closer to 10 and 12, 15 percent. So it depends on which size agency and the number of vacancies that they have. There are a number of reasons why folks may not stay with the organization. We have people, you know, 12% from retirement. We want people to come and stay and we want them to ride off into the sunset on their retirement horse and enjoy the rest of their lives, right? So I don't consider that to be a negative. In terms of involuntary separation or probationary lease, sometimes the probationary period is an extension of the recruitment and selection process. So when we identify that somebody is not performing the essential functions of the position or not meeting expectations, the best thing we can do is to release them, following our typical procedure, release them and allow us to replace them with somebody who's probably going to be a better fit for the position. And then we do have, in total, out of... 530 positions, we did have 18 people voluntarily separate. Sometimes they're moving on to a different position, a higher-level position. They're getting a promotion in another agency. Sometimes they're not necessarily happy. And I will say that we actually do conduct exit interviews. It's a great idea, for instance, the commissions, though. That might be something that we can look into in the future. But we do conduct exit interviews. And when our department hears about somebody who's voluntarily separating, it's myself or our HR manager who's reaching out personally to make sure that we get that feedback from those folks. So we have had a lot of turnover. I've been here for almost nine years. I'm proud to say that. And so there is some longevity in the organization. But there has been some turnover. And you are absolutely correct in that. But I think that Midori is working very, very hard to create a culture that's focused on service and customer service and support and accountability and building trust and making sure that we are bringing the right folks in to serve this community and giving them professional development opportunities and building up their skill set so we have the best qualified people that want to stay here. So I think that's been an opportunity that we've been able to pursue, especially recently with, you know, Ms. Lightberth's been here for a while, and we want her to stay here forevermore. So...

Forever, that's what I heard.

Forevermore. But I will say that comparatively, I recently did a survey a few weeks ago because I was curious how we compared, and we are at the lower end of that scale in terms of the pretension percentage vacancy rate, I should say, comparatively.

Thank you, Ms. Murdoch. And to Mr. Huffman's point, for several years also when we've had exits at the director level and above, I've also done exit interviews and any of those concerns, I think Ms. Lightfoot's done an excellent job of addressing concerns. Council, do we have any additional discussion, questions, or otherwise I'll entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion that we accept the report on the City of Tracy's vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts pursuant to Government Code Section 3502.3.

I'll second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie? Yes. Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Council Member Bezzola?

Yes.

Council Member Evans?

Yes.

Mayor Areola?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right. Item 5D passes. And that brings us finally to regular agenda items. Item 6A is related to the adoption of a DISRUPTION, POLICIES RELATED TO DISRUPTION OF TELEPHONIC AND INTERNET SERVICES DURING MEETINGS. STAFF REPORT, PLEASE.

YES, THANK YOU, MAYOR. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. MY NAME IS APRIL KETHENY. I'M THE CITY CLERK. THE ITEM BEFORE YOU RELATES TO SENATE BILL 707, WHICH WE GAVE A PRESENTATION EARLIER THIS YEAR ABOUT, WHICH IS BASICALLY A BROWN ACT UPDATES. AND THIS ITEM IS PRESENTED TO FACILITATE COMPLIANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE BILL AS CAUTIFIED IN GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION 54953.4. so the senate bill 707 requires the city council to adopt a policy regarding disruption of telephonic or internet service occurring during meetings on or before july 1st 2026 in open session not on the consent calendar so that's what this item is here for us today as you may are aware we will have the requirement to have hybrid meetings which we have continued to do but it will actually be a requirement effective july 1. so this is going in conjunction with that requirement Staff has prepared a draft policy as outlined in Exhibit 1 to the resolution included in the agenda packet for the City Council's review. For the purpose of Senate Bill 707, the City of Tracy's eligible legislative body is the City Council. As required by the bill, the City of Tracy utilizes Zoom teleconferencing software to provide two-way telephonic service and a two-way audiovisual platform for members of the public to participate in City Council meetings. As I noted, the bill requires the City Council to approve a policy regarding disruption of the telephonic or internet service, so that would be our Zoom service, occurring during City Council meetings, and the proposed policy must include procedures for one, recessing and reconvening a meeting in the event of a disruption, And two, the efforts of the city council shall make to restore the service. And so that would, of course, be through your staff to rectify the issue should Zoom go down, for instance, during a meeting after July 1. The proposed policy we drafted does include the provisions for recessing and reconvening a city council meeting. There are steps outlined there of what we would do should that happen, specifically regarding the attempts to restore the service. So it would be a joint effort with myself and Channel 26 and IT, and then we would document those efforts as well. So accordingly, the staff recommends that the City Council adopt the proposed resolution adopting the City of Tracy disruption of telephonic or internet service during public meetings policy pursuit to Senate Bill 707 so that we are in compliance with the requirements of the bill. And just for additional reference, the proposed policy IF ADOPTED AS PRESENTED WOULD APPLY ONLY TO CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS BUT THE CITY COUNCIL COULD APPLY THE POLICY TO OTHER HYBRID MEETINGS AT A LATER DATE IF SO DESIRED. SO I KNOW WE HAVE SOME OTHER COMMITTEES THAT USE HYBRID BUT THIS POLICY IS JUST FOCUSING ON THE COUNCIL'S HYBRID MEETINGS. THAT CONCLUDES MY STAFF REPORT SUMMARY. I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, MADAM CLERK. DO WE HAVE ANY PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS FROM COUNCIL? SEEING NONE, WE'LL OFFER PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM. PLEASE SEE HANDS RAISED FOR ANY SPEAKERS ON THIS ITEM. Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

With that, I'll go ahead and close the public comment portion for item 6A and return to council for discussion, questions, or entertain a motion.

Mayor, I make a motion to adopt a resolution adopting the City of Tracy disruption of telephonic or internet service during public meetings policy pursuant to Senate Bill 707.

Second. We have a first and second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem, Arbor Combee.

Yes.

Council Member Evans.

Yes.

Council Member Bedoya.

Yes.

Council Member Nygaard. Yes. Mayor Areola.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right, item 6A passes. That brings us to item 6B, which is the funding appropriation for monuments and dedications. Staff report, please.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the City Council, Arturo Sanchez, Assistant City Manager, The item before you is an item recommending that we take remaining funds in the City Council's travel budget in order to fund the monuments and signs commemorating certain individuals that the City Council has recognized in this legislative calendar year. So as a reminder, during this last, during this current calendar year, legislative year, the city council has renamed several facilities owned by the city in honor of individuals who have led and exemplary lives in the city of Tracy. As a part of that, we will need to INSTALL NEW MONUMENTS, NEW SIGNS WITH THEIR NAMES, HONORING THEM. THAT WILL INCLUDE LOBBY SIGNAGE FOR THE FORMER MAYOR, SIGNS IN SEVERAL PARKS, MONUMENT SIGNS IN SEVERAL PARKS, ALL OF WHICH WE BELIEVE WE CAN FUND A GOOD MAJORITY OF THROUGH THE REMAINING FUNDS IN THE CITY COUNCIL'S TRAVEL BUDGET ALONG WITH SOME FUNDS THAT WE HAVE REMAINING IN THE CITY MANAGER'S ACCOUNT. The funds in the city manager's office are available to us without any action by the council. However, the funds remaining in the city council's travel budget requires an action of the council to appropriate them for this use. For the purposes of clarity, the report identifies the current anticipated cost of the monuments and signs. These are only anticipated costs. They can be significantly more. They're just the estimates we've received at the moment for the signs that we know of that we intend to replace. And we do believe that the council will have, including all remaining all remaining travel that remains in the year approximately in all accounts $70,357 remaining in your funds that we can utilize for this purpose. And so staff recommends that you redirect those funds and appropriate it for this intended purpose.

Thank you, Mr. Sanchez. Council, do we have any preliminary questions? Seeing none, we'll go out for public comment on this item. Would any members of the public speak on this item? Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay. With that, we'll go ahead and close out the public comment period for Item 6B. I just want to take a moment to thank Council for staying within your travel budgets. And I would encourage Council to be willing to use those budgets for these purposes. I think they're an honorable service to those individuals. Do we have any additional questions, comments? Otherwise, I will entertain. Quick question.

Yes. Thank you. Do we have the figures that shows, like, the travel budgets for Council members? Like, I understand, you know, how much we're being requested to appropriate, but

In the staff report, through the chair to council member Adhoya's question, in the staff report, it actually identifies the remaining amount by council member.

Okay, perfect. But no slide that we can display for the public.

I'm sorry.

No slide that we can display for the public.

I did not prepare a PowerPoint for this item. It is available in the public staff report. Thank you.

Any additional council discussion? Otherwise, I'll entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to adopt a resolution reallocating and appropriating $70,357 from the City Council's 2526 travel budget to project accounts in order to fund monuments and signs for naming dedications made by the City Council in the fiscal year 2526. I'll second. We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie? Yes. Councilor Evans? Yes. Councilor Villanueva?

No.

Council Member Nygaard.

Yes.

Mayor Arreola.

Yes. Thank you. Item 6B passes. Goes to item 6C which is related to an ordinance regarding campaign contribution limits. Staff report please.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm April Quintanilla, the City Clerk. This item is presented in follow-up to the City Council's direction to staff of the April 21st Council meeting to return to the Council with the discussion item regarding camping contribution limits in the City of Tracy. Staff is seeking direction on how to proceed with formally establishing campaign contribution limits in the City of Tracy. If you recall, this was the item where we bifurcated campaign contributions from the elections related ordinance. So as previously discussed at the April 21st meeting, recent election records indicate that the city's current practice is to utilize campaign contribution limits established by the Fair Political Practices Commission or FPPC. And we had ordinance number 41, which is no longer valid.

Oh, I was going to use the keyboard.

Yeah. Which is no longer valid as it likely expired and was repealed this evening within consent calendar, not on April 21st. As noted in the staff report, that was an error. So resulting in the application of the default FPPC limits. So as I mentioned at the meeting, prior meeting, we presented a proposed ordinance to codify our current practice and staff requested that we return with more information about the options available for camping contribution limits, which is the presentation before you. So this is a summary of local campaign law. And a general overview here is that federal law and Supreme Court decisions substantially restrict the extent to which state and local jurisdictions can regulate political activity. California law generally governs many of the campaign finance requirements that apply to state and local elections. However, cities have some discretion, including the ability to impose lower campaign contribution limits on city candidates lower than those imposed by state law. Similarly, cities can restrict contributions from city contractors or lobbyists to city candidates, but any such restrictions must be narrowly tailored to fit an anti-corruption purpose and not impede legitimate First Amendment political activity. The Supreme Court has generally found that restrictions on political spending must serve an anti-corruption purpose and, for this reason, has allowed limits on direct contributions to candidates. However, the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on independent political advocacy, treating such spending as free speech, for example, super PACs. ACCORDINGLY LOCAL AGENCIES SUCH AS OUR CITY CANNOT LIMIT CONTRIBUTIONS TO OR EXPENDITURES BY SUCH INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE COMMITTEES So this slide outlines what local agencies can do to limit campaign contributions. So the city can establish a per election dollar limit on direct contributions to candidates and their controlled committees. They can establish voluntary contribution or spending limits. In essence, a candidate agrees not to accept contributions or spend funds beyond certain predetermined limits in exchange for various incentives. The city can prohibit contributions from contractors or other applicants with pending matters before the agency or require an elected official to recuse him or herself from a decision if they have not received more than a certain amount in campaign contributions from the applicant. So there's a note here that state law already imposes such a rule on officials who have received more than $500 from an applicant within the prior 12 months. Similarly, a local agency can restrict or prohibit contributions from lobbyists who are registered to lobby the local agency in question. Cities can also impose additional reporting deadlines or requirements on local candidates on committees beyond those required by state law, and they can impose additional disclaimer requirements for political advertisements. As a practical matter, most larger cities and specifically large charter cities have established their own bodies of local campaign disclosure law. However, most small to medium sized agencies simply rely on the existing state regulatory scheme. So this slide outlines what local agencies not do to limit contributions. They cannot restrict independent expenditures or contributions to committees that make independent expenditures. They cannot establish a mandatory total contribution or expenditure cap for candidates. They can't establish a total contribution limit for donors. So, for example, how much one donor may give to all candidates for office during a particular election. They can't limit contributions to or expenditures by ballot measure committees. The Supreme Court has said that such limits do not serve a legitimate anti-corruption purpose. and they can't limit contributions or expenditures of a candidate's personal funds or establish local campaign disclosure rules that conflict with the state law or FPPC regulations. That's the Fair Political Practices Commission. Excuse me. Here's some of the potential risks when establishing campaign contribution limits. Overly restrictive campaign contribution limits may carry a risk of litigation, so they could be challenged. In general, contribution limits can't be too low. They must have the purpose of preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. They cannot differentiate between types of donors, such as corporations and unions. And restrictions or prohibitions on contributions from contractors, lobbyists, and other such categories of donors must be narrowly tailored to meet an anti-corruption purpose. So these are some examples of contribution limits. The state limit there is that's the default for local agencies unless the local agency implements its own limit. That is the $5,900 per election limit that we discussed previously as the FPPC default. Some other cities that have limits here are listed, such as Coronado, Dixon, Stockton, and Manteca. You'll see that the last two cities there, Stockton and Manteca, follow the state limit. And that is all for the presentation, and we're available for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, staff. I just want to start with a question. So just to confirm, If the city of Tracy were to implement a restriction on campaign contributions in local elections, nothing about that would change the amount that corporations and special interests can fund independent expenditures because of Citizens United.

That is correct, Mayor.

So by de facto limiting local contributions for our everyday folks, would that not just grant corporations and special interests more power because they have unlimited ability to do so?

I can't speak to that, Mayor, but it would, you know, PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, CANDIDATES WOULD BE UNABLE TO NECESSARILY RAISE AS MUCH, ARGUABLY, AS OPPOSED TO AN INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE BECAUSE THEY WOULD BE UNLIMITED. SO IT'S A MATTER OF LIMITED VERSUS UNLIMITED THERE.

UNDERSTOOD. THANK YOU. COUNCIL, DO WE HAVE ANY PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS? SEEING NONE, GO OUT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM. ANY MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC LIKE TO SPEAK ON THIS ITEM? CAN I SEE HANDS RAISED? IS THAT TWO? OKAY. I WILL ALLOW FOUR MINUTES.

What a conundrum that you have a federal government that restricts the people that live in our community, which I thought the First Amendment was all about the citizens. All of those rights that prohibit that are to protect not citizens, but companies, PAC included. Here's an opportunity. It was me and I had enough money I would just say, no, let's have the Supreme Court say for sure they knew what the First Amendment was, something for the benefit of the citizens of our community. How unfortunate to put you in that spot. I think there might be some other creative alternative to say that we don't allow, we provide for you all of the advertisement you'll need to share your position for elected office for free. You don't need any money. I don't know. I think that might be a possibility. It won't get much traction here. I'll just stop.

Thank you, Mr. Heffman. Next speaker, please.

I would like to see buried in this ordinance a contributions not coming from out of state unless it's a family member. We had a mayor one time recently that took business money from another state and council members are for the city. If you have a relative in Northern California, maybe Arizona, Nevada, and that family member wants to give you some donation, that should be allowed. But not a business that is in another state altogether should not be donating to your campaigns. I would like to see that as part of the ordinance. The dollar amount, you could do state limit. State limit's $5,900. I have no problem with that. You're not getting it from me. But I have no problem with that. It's businesses that are in another state dealing with nothing, dealing with Tracy, yet they're donating to make you happy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tanner. Do we have additional speakers on this item? Seeing none, chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay, thank you. With that, we'll go ahead and close out the public comment portion for item 6C. And staff, could you please provide some clarification regarding regulations or any proposed regulations regarding out-of-state donations?

Yes, Mayor and Council. And so I think we went over what types of contributions you could do based on the dollar amounts, but the law is explicitly clear that you can't do contributions CONTRIBUTION LIMITS DIFFERENT BETWEEN THE TYPES OF DONORS, SO SETTING IN-STATE VERSUS OUT-OF-STATE OR ANYTHING ELSE WOULD LIKELY NOT BE UPHELD. I UNDERSTAND THE RATIONALE BEHIND THAT, BUT IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT FOR US TO RECOMMEND THAT IT WOULD SURVIVE SCRUTINY.

THANK YOU, MR. NAFUSI. I THINK I MADE MYSELF CLEAR BEFORE, I'M VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH THE RULING IN CITIZENS UNITED, BUT I DO BELIEVE THAT AT THIS TIME, I WOULD BE SUPPORTING KEEPING THE CONTRIBUTION LIMITS PER STATE LIMITS, JUST LIKE THE CITIES OF STOCKTON AND CITIES OF MANTECA. COUNCIL, DO WE HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION, QUESTIONS? COUNCILMEMBER EVANS.

NEW SPEAKER. THANK YOU, MAYOR. MY COMMENTS WILL JUST BE PRETTY BRIEF. I looked into this. Theoretically, I think there's all kinds of great things we can do. And I love the idea of somehow tailoring laws that would, you know, in an idealistic world, we'd all just be taking contributions from residents in our city, just regular people that want you to go in there and do the bidding of the community. That would be perfect. And if there was some way of making that happen, I would completely support it. I ran my campaign almost exclusively on just small contributions from Tracy residents. But when you do that, you do it aggressively, you got a chance at getting in. A small chance, but you got a chance. I kind of lucked out because there are big businesses, there are big special interests that have a big money interest in our community. It's not just Tracy, it's like this everywhere. UNIONS, ET CETERA, THEY GOT A LOT OF SWAY AND A LOT OF MONEY. AND, YOU KNOW, YOU'RE GOING TO BE UP AGAINST THAT. AND THERE'S NO WAY, AS WAS OUTLINED IN THE STAFF REPORT, THANK YOU FOR THE STAFF REPORT, WE CAN'T TAMP DOWN ON THAT. IT'S NOT LEGAL. SO IF THERE IS A WAY TO HOLISTICALLY do this in a way that made it fair i'd be 100 in support of it but i don't see it unfortunately i don't see an avenue to make that happen so i'll be in support of keeping keeping the rules as as they stand thank you any additional comments i may pretend yeah my my biggest issue was the fact that people were allowed to put my picture on flyers without my permission i mean that's

that's the most offensive thing is because on one side it was attacking people on the other side, my picture, it made it almost seem because the, the little disclaimer, nobody sees the little disclaimer on there that it was not, you know, in conjunction with anything. Um, but there's no way to regulate that. But that to me was more offensive than anything because I, the people that I tried to reach out to, if you know, nobody of course would admit they did it, but you know, I AGREE WITH COUNCILMAN RABBIT I WISH WE COULD MAKE IT A LITTLE MORE JUST KEEP IT TO THE PEOPLE HERE AND LET THEM DO IT OR OR AS MR. HUFFMAN HAS SUGGESTED IN THE PAST NOT TAKING ANYTHING BUT THAT'S I DON'T THINK THOSE ARE FEASIBLE EITHER BUT I'LL BE IN SUPPORT OF JUST KEEPING IT THE WAY IT IS THANK YOU THANK YOU COUNCILMAN BUDOIA THANK YOU I JUST WANT THE RECORD TO REFLECT SOMETHING IN 2022 I BROUGHT UP A VERY SIMILAR PROPOSAL TO WHAT'S COULD BE CONSIDERED TODAY

I propose that anyone with business pending before the city of Tracy should not be able to write checks to people deciding their fate. Absolutely nothing happened. In the years that followed, residents watched decisions get made on the aquatic center, on housing without infrastructure and amenities by officials who had taken maximum contributions from the very developers who were appearing before them with city business. That's not a coincidence, that's a system. State law did force eventually recusals. I think it was late November for the following election, where if it was a $200 contribution, you had to recuse yourself from that type of a matter. But that was, well, that happened post. It wasn't conscience, it was law that forced that to happen. And when that happened, the money stopped flowing directly. It moved to independent expenditure committees instead. I know that because, like Mr. Westhoffman noted, six figures were spent trying to remove me from this council. I'm still here, and tonight's report does give us some tools. It does spell out what we could possibly do. We could restrict contributions from contractors and applicants with pending matters before the city. We could restrict registered lobbyists, and we could even strengthen disclosure requirements. It's not the dollar amount that's the issue. It's the issue of who's writing the check and what they expect in return. If it were my prerogative and some support were to be garnered, I would be direct staff and the city attorney to return with the draft ordinance that Tracy residents have been waiting for since 2022, and so have I.

For clarification, what is the ordinance?

We could at least prevent contractors and- Let me be specific. So contractors and applicants with pending matters before the city, that could be, that is one way to, that is an anti-corruption measure. We could explicitly restrict registered lobbyists, though that hasn't necessarily been, I know it's, from my experience, it has happened, but not where someone officially registers to be a lobbyist. And there could be tighter disclosure requirements. But, you know, it is counsel's prerogative.

I don't know if this is within the purview for us to have this conversation or not, but can we get legal opinion on that?

Yeah, we can. So there are, you all can, for instance, prohibit to the individual candidates contributions from city contractors entirely, as opposed to right now, you know, it's the Levine Act. If it's $500 or more, then you have that 12-month cooling off period from the date. of that um i do think again remember that your findings as to this would be to make sure that you're keeping it specifically to fight corruption um and so i would just need we would need to make sure that anything that we craft would do that for support so that we could survive a legal challenge but that is something for instance the city of alhambra prohibits contributions from city contractors to city candidates entirely as opposed to just what they do in the levine act

I would support looking into this and having a conversation, seeing what the draft looks like. And I mean, theoretically, again, this isn't something I've looked into. Whenever I dive into these things, it kind of falls apart. But this does sound viable it sounds like something that might work so i'd entertain looking at it for sure i'll give you your third vote on that all right so and to be clear uh mayor and council so in addition to looking at some type of limits to contributions from city contractors to city candidates um as well are you all asking i guess when we say city contractors that that's anybody obviously contracted to the city but i guess this couldn't include local developers or um I'd want to look into more with that. For instance, they do business with the city to kind of see what we can craft.

The other thing we could do as well is that we could look into a prohibition from contributions from lobbyists registered with the city to city candidates as well. I would support all of the above.

So my understanding, that's essentially a lowering of the threshold of the Levine Act from 500 to zero.

Basically, yeah, it would prohibit contributions from city contractors and or potentially anyone having city business or gone forward to the city. I'd like to do some more research into that. That's council's direction and come back.

And then is staff aware? I'm not aware of any registered lobbyists regarding the city. I believe it's probably- They're generally federal and state.

Yeah, that's in larger counties, for instance, yeah.

SO TWO-PART ANSWER FOR THE QUESTION. WE HAVE NOT RECEIVED ANY RENEWALS OR NEW REGISTRATION REQUESTS FOR 2026. USUALLY THAT'S AN ANNUAL PROCESS. WE ALSO HAVE DISCOVERED THAT THE ORDINANCE THAT WE HAVE ON THE BOOKS TO require registration and you know the subsequent fees sunset a few years ago so we actually have it on books to bring it back to get some council direction on what we want to do with that ordinance but nobody has registered for this year that i'm aware of should we include this anyways as in the future we could have registered lobbyists in the city yeah i would say yes

So just so I have clear direction from council, it sounds as if you'd like for us to bring back kind of further discussion and look into some possibility to certain prohibitions from city contractors and or developers to directly to city candidates, and then including with that a lot registered lobbyist to city candidates as well. Yes. Okay. I got it.

Okay, I believe that's direction. So if we have no further discussion, I'll entertain a motion.

And to receive the report.

So I'll make a motion that we direct staff to follow up on the directions we provided and bring back a report to the council.

Second.

We have first and second.

Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie?

Yes.

Councillor Evans?

Yes.

Councillor Ridley? Yes. Councillor Nygaard? Yes. Mayor Ariel?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right. Item 6C passes. That takes us to item 6D which is related to the creation of an alternate commissioner for the planning commission. Staff report please.

Oh channel 26 can we get our PowerPoint presentation up please. Thank you. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL, DAVID NAFUSI, CITY ATTORNEY, ALONG WITH OUR CITY CLERK, APRIL QUINTONIA. WE'RE COMING BACK BASED ON YOUR DIRECTION FROM APRIL 7TH, WHICH WAS MAJORITY CONSENSUS, TO LOOK INTO THE POSSIBILITY OF ADDING AN ALTERNATE COMMISSIONER POSITION TO THE CITY'S PLANNING COMMISSION. AND SO THAT'S WHY WE'RE HERE THIS EVENING, JUST TO KIND OF GO OVER WHAT THAT WOULD LOOK LIKE WITH YOU AND HOW THAT COULD BE ACCOMPLISHED. SO PRESENTLY THE MUNICIPAL CODE CONTROLS THE CREATION OF THE PRANNING COMMISSION AND THE NUMBER OF COMMISSIONERS AS SET OUT IN THE ORDINANCE IT'S JUST FIVE COMMISSIONERS THUS TO THE EXTENT YOU ALL WOULD LIKE TO ADD AN ALTERNATE PLANNING COMMISSIONER WE WOULD NEED TO DO AN AMENDMENT TO THE TRACY MUNICIPAL CODE WHICH WOULD REQUIRE A FIRST AND SECOND READING So the rationale for this, again, and this is not to take away from our other boards and commissions, but the planning commission does serve a very crucial role. It has a symbiotic relationship with the council as mandated by state and local laws. Staff has noted that over the past few years, there's been some sporadic attendance issues at the commission. And oftentimes, there's uncertainty about whether or not a quorum will be present. Other thing to note is that even if a quorum is present, in order for the planning commission to take action on an item, whether it's approval or denial or making a recommendation one way or the other, it needs three or more votes. Even with three commissioners there, you would need a 3-0, a 2-1 doesn't cut it, a 2-2 doesn't cut it. And so the alternate member does provide a little bit more flexibility to deal with absences. Just to provide some perspective, we put up some statistics for calendar year 25. OF THE 16 PLANNING COMMISSIONS MEETINGS THAT HELD THAT YEAR, ONLY THREE OF THE 16 HAD FULL IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS. THERE HAS BEEN AN EXPANSION OF REMOTE PARTICIPATION, AS YOU ALL KNOW, UNDER SB 707. HOWEVER, IF A PLANNING COMMISSIONER LOSES CONNECTIVITY OR HAS TO LEAVE EARLY FOR SOME REASON, AGAIN, HAVING AN ALTERNATE THERE WOULD BE ABLE TO FILL THAT SHOULD A DISRUPTION OCCUR. OTHER THINGS AS WELL THAT YOU OFTEN COULD SEE AN ALTERNATE PLANNING COMMISSIONER FOR WOULD BE IF A PLANNING COMMISSIONER NEEDS TO RECUSE HER OR HIMSELF DUE TO DISTANCE REQUIREMENTS TO A PROJECT OR OTHER TYPE OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST. AT THAT POINT, THE ALTERNATE COMMISSIONER CAN COME IN ASSUMING THAT THEY ARE NOT ALSO CONFLICTED AS WELL. SOME POTENTIAL ROLES FOR THIS ALTERNATE PLANNING COMMISSIONER COULD BE ATTENDING ALL THE MEETINGS, AGAIN, ONLY VOTE IN ABSENCE OF A REGULAR COMMISSION MEMBER WHO LEAVES, IS NOT THERE, GETS DISCONNECTED OR MISRECUSES HER OR HIMSELF. THE OTHER THING, TOO, IS THIS IS OFTEN USED AS A GOOD TRAINING GROUND FOR A FUTURE PLANNING COMMISSIONER IN TERMS OF LOOKING FOR SOME SUCCESSION PLANNING. AND SO ULTIMATELY FOR US IS WE'RE SEEKING DIRECTION FROM YOU ALL THIS EVENING AS TO WHETHER OR NOT YOU WOULD LIKE US TO BRING BACK AN ORDINANCE AMENDMENT AT A LATER DATE TO ADD AN ALTERNATE COMMISSIONER POSITION TO CHAPTER 10.04.020, AND WE ARE HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, MR. NAFUSI.

DO WE HAVE ANY PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS FROM COUNCIL? Councilor Evans. I'm just a real basic one, only because I can't see any downside. The staff see any potential risks or downsides? Not at all.

This I mean, this is a very common practice. It's a it's a great thing to have. And I've seen it in my experience, especially if you get a project where it's close to several commissioners and you get a couple that have to recuse themselves. I think it's like you said, it's it's only pros, but that's just my personal opinion. But legally, no concerns.

Okay. No others from staff. I didn't anticipate it. If so, perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional comments from council? All right. We'll go out for public comment on this item. Would any members of the public like to speak on this item? I see hands raised. I see two. Four minutes each.

Sort of disagree with having the alternate. It's like an understudy at a play. He's got to be there every day anyway. Now, if someone has to get up and leave, such as two council members get up and walk out, do we have an alternate? Because you can't really do much business. That's just not going to be. Does he get paid for it or does he get paid only when he has to show up and sit down and vote? If he's going to be in the audience waiting for someone to leave or be disconnected on a phone, for example, I think, Mateo, you were at a hotel in Mexico, if I'm not mistaken, or somewhere. And if you got disconnected in the call, do we have to throw someone into your seat? It doesn't make sense. The person would have to sit out there anyway. just as an on call. So I see no need for an alternate to be used. I spent four years on the planning commission myself, and the lowest we ever got was four. Four people, because one was in a reserve and he got called every two weeks, every year to do his reserve duty. And we never had a problem. Sure, we had 2-2, but sometimes that 2-2 became a 3-1 after more discussion. So I don't see the need for it at all. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tanner. Next speaker, please.

They get paid.

Good evening. So there's two sides to this, actually. It's how you look at it. He had a lot of valid points, but at the same time, having an alternate for Pawnee Commission, the way they explained it, the 3-2 vote or 2-2 vote, because some of the decisions that are made, even though it fails, it still comes to council. Because not all the projects, but some of them do come to you. having an alternate would that be has to be physically there or would it be on zoom or how would that be because if you still need to jump in because they're listening right if somebody decides to leave they're there maybe not physically but on a webex and also would that be the Alternate, would that be the one that's on the eligibility list now? Because they got, I think there's an eligibility person that's there for a year. Would that person be qualified for it? Or will you have to interview for an alternate for that position? It's a double-edged sword. It would benefit because we have been in those situations where we walk in there and there's only two of us. Now, with that third person still, I know it's a quorum and the decisions, is that going to make a difference? So it's, you know what I'm saying? It could go both ways because that has happened where I've been there and then one other person is there and the other three are gone. But if we have an alternate, that's still the same, right? It's still three people. And if it's a 2-1 vote or 2-0, whatever, the vote will be abstained. So it's actually something that we have to give it some more thought. It would benefit for alternate when Joseph was on there because he was on military leave a lot and we were shorthanded. That was one of the biggest problems we had because he was on reserves. Now he's retired. So I think that situation did occur a lot because he was out of town, out of the country, and another commissioner didn't show up. So it was three. But he's no longer on there. So unless when you guys do the interviews and you have somebody that's in reserves, I don't know. That's something that you really have to think about. So that's, thank you.

Thank you, Ms. English. Do we have any additional speakers in this item? Seeing none. Chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Okay. Could staff provide some clarification on what the potential is for the presence of online versus in-person for attendance and questions relating to the eligibility list?

Yeah. So, Mayor and Council, the ANTICIPATION WOULD BE THAT THE ALTERNATE WOULD BE COMPENSATED THE SAME AS THE PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS AS WELL. LIKE ANYTHING ELSE, THE RECOMMENDATION WOULD BE FOR THE ALTERNATE TO BE HERE IN PERSON LIKE WE WOULD FOR OUR OTHER COMMISSIONERS. SHOULD THE SITUATION ARISE THAT THEY NEED TO PARTICIPATE REMOTELY, THEY'D HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE REMOTE PARTICIPATION PROCESS WITH CLERK'S OFFICE AND OR LEGAL DEPENDING ON THE SITUATION TO DETERMINE IF THEY CAN PARTICIPATE remotely. But the hope, of course, would be that they would be here in person, as we hope that all of you and all of our commissioners can be. Of course, that option is now available under state law. And then, you know, I think, you know, Ms. English brought up some other, you know, good points as well, too, just about, you know, the voting and, you know, the fact that, you know, yeah, if there's only two people here, the meeting can't go forward at all. And so having the, you know, the alternate there, they could come in and make sure that there is a quorum.

Thank you, Mr. Nafusi. As for my points, I'll be supporting an alternate position specifically to the Planning Commission. I think we are here to get the business of the city done. And it sounds like there may have been some problems with regarding attendance and getting business done. So let's reduce those barriers and make sure we're getting the work done.

sorry the second part of your question would be we'd probably come back if the direction is to move forward to do this to bring an amended policy to talk about how an alternate appointment would work to to council so that way it would be covered under that it's a little bit different than having someone on the list so Yeah.

All right. Thank you. And then to answer my last point, I will say that I'm technically the alternate on LAFCO, but I have voted in almost every meeting because there's almost always someone missing. So something that I'll be supporting, but happy to hear from Council. Anyone like to start?

I just agree with Councilmember Evans. I don't see a downside to this, and I would like to see staff bring something back. And then we can fine tune it at that point if necessary, but I think that you I WOULD SUPPORT MOVING FORWARD WITH THAT PROCESS.

I'M FINE WITH THE REPOSAL. I WOULD JUST ASK FOR EITHER I GUESS STAFF'S OPINION THEN COUNCIL TO KIND OF WEIGH IN. AT LEAST FOR OUR EXTERNAL BODIES USUALLY A STIPEND IS ONLY PROVIDED IF YOU ARE THE ACTING VOTING MEMBER. AND ALTERNATES USUALLY STAY UP ON THE ISSUES TO BE PREPARED. WHAT WOULD STAFF LIKE WHAT ARE STAFF'S THOUGHTS ON THAT? And I guess Council, ultimately.

Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, I think it's a, you know, in contrast to an elected position, this is a pointed one, if the requirement is, which from what we've seen, that you need to be there at the meetings, because on a moment's notice, you might need to go up in there. We believe that they would be, it's like almost like being on call during that time, and we would compensate for that. I know that we do that for our employees, kind of when we have them on call. And so I think here it'd be the same thing. The other thing as well is that, you know, if we're requiring someone to be here in person and or actively participate online, if they have an excuse and can do remote participation, that they are being engaged, they are learning, they're doing that. There's that succession kind of planning and training as well. And so that I believe that most instances from what I'm aware, the alternates in those matters would receive the similar stipend and compensation, not just if they're voting or not.

Anything else, Councilmember? Councilmember Nygard?

I'm just going to say I do support this because I do feel that, yes, it's really crucial that we have full attendance to allow all of our meetings to be conducted and work being done. So thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'll entertain a motion.

Does the mayor make a motion that staff take the direction from council and come back with a report and possible update to the ordinance?

I'll second.

We have a first and a second. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie? Yes. Councillor Nygaard? Yes. Councillor Vidalia? Yes. Councillor Evans? Yes. Mayor Ariella?

Yes. Thank you. All right we look forward to having further discussion on that but that passes. That brings us to our last regular item, item 6e regarding changing the start time of regular council meetings.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Once again, you're stuck with me, David Nafusi, City Attorney, and with me this evening, of course, is our City Clerk, April Quintanilla. So this, once again, is following direction from your April 7th, 2026 City Council meeting in which you provided majority consensus to staff to look to move to the meeting start time for the City of Tracy regular City Council meetings to an earlier start time. AND SO WE WENT OUT AND DID SOME RESEARCH ON THAT AND SEE HOW WE COULD ACCOMPLISH THAT. SIMILAR TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION ALTERNATE MEMBER, THE MEETING START TIMES ARE SET BY MUNICIPAL CODE. THAT'S SECTION 2.04020. AND PER THE ORDINANCE, CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING SHALL TAKE PLACE AT 7 P.M. SO TO THE EXTENT YOU ALL WISH TO ADJUST THAT TIME TO AN EARLIER TIME, IT WOULD REQUIRE AN ORDINANCE AMENDMENT TO DO SO. I know I apologize for the small print on this but we wanted to fit this in on one slide so if you have to squint I again my apologies in advance and but you can see the other sorry the other cities in the area we did a survey there is one correction to note on there as I'm sure some of you are aware the city of Stockton recently changed their meeting start times to 1 pm But otherwise, we figured we would provide you guys with a quick survey so you guys can see where the start times are. So again, locally, they go anywhere from 1 p.m. to 5.30 to 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., depending on the location. Uh, we put forward some, some possible pro arguments in support of an earlier meeting start time, um, out there that you all can see. We talked about the fact that there is, you know, mandated two-way participation now. Um, there's, uh, as you all saw this evening, um, as we've, we've seen here in the city, the first few minutes are generally, um, PROCLAMATION SO THE ACTUAL CITY BUSINESS ITSELF DOES NOT START A LITTLE BIT LATER. WE ALSO WOULD NOTE THAT THIS WOULD LIKELY LEAD TO A COST SAVINGS AS I CHECKED WITH OUR HR DIRECTOR EARLIER FOR OUR non-exempt employees who stay around for council meetings um there is generally some time where they've got you know if they're required to be here again being on call or waiting for the meeting anything else that we're paying them in some capacity um and that is from what i understand from the hr director that that is a possibility um you can still submit public comments before 12 p.m on the day of the meeting um And of course, the other possible pro argument would be there'd be less likely to have city business being done after 10 p.m., which most residents are not watching and or in attendance. One other thing we talked about today that wasn't on here but we thought was a good point is our clerk's going to be bringing back another SB 707. ITEM RELATED TO THE COUNCIL IS NOW GOING TO BE MANDATED TO TRY TO REACH OUT TO GROUPS THAT NORMALLY DON'T PARTICIPATE IN CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS. WE THINK THAT HAVING AN EARLIER START TIME WOULD ALLOW GROUPS THAT MIGHT SAY, OH, THE MEETINGS START TOO LATE AT 7 O'CLOCK. THAT'S JUST SOMETHING ELSE IF YOU ALL WISH TO MAKE THIS MOVE THAT WOULD BE ANOTHER ARGUMENT IN THE PRO. OH, DID I JUST TURN THAT? THERE WE GO. POSSIBLE CON ARGUMENTS LEAD TO LESS INDIVIDUALS ATTENDING IN PERSON AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MEETING DURING THE FIRST FEW MINUTES IF THEY GET OFF WORK AT 6. AND CITY AND STAFF, OF COURSE, WE WILL NEED TO INFORM THE PUBLIC OF THE NEW START TIME WELL IN ADVANCE OF ANY CHANGE. IF THIS WERE COUNCIL'S DIRECTION TO BRING SOMETHING BACK, WE PROBABLY WOULD LIKE TO DO THIS SOONER RATHER THAN LATER SO THAT WE COULD GET THIS DONE AND IT WOULD NOT AFFECT ANY OF THE MEETINGS prior to the legislative recess but would give us sufficient time to go out if you all choose to do that that is to let the public know that the start times have changed so um so as our similar our as the last item we're seeking direction to see if this is something you all wish for us to do it would require an ordinance amendment and we are once again happy to answer any questions thank you thank you mr nifusi um and just obviously

JUST FOR THE PUBLIC, IF THERE WAS ANY CHANGE IN START TIMES, THERE WOULD STILL BE PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AVAILABLE THROUGH ZOOM. YES, THAT'S CORRECT. YES. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. DO WE HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL COUNCIL PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS? SEEING NONE ON THIS SIDE, COUNCILMEMBER NEGGARD.

DID WE LOOK AT WHAT OTHER CITIES IN OUR REGION ARE ACTUALLY STARTING AT 6 OR EARLIER THAN 7?

Yes, so that was the slide if I go back a few sorry, that was the one in very very small You did put it in.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

I'll leave that out for a second Any additional questions from council Seeing none and with that we'll go for public comment I see hands raised for folks who like to speak on this item. I I'm seeing four, so that'll be four minutes each. Time is yours.

You're making an assumption that everyone works in Tracy and they're getting off at 6 o'clock. A few minutes later, they're going to be here if they have something to say. It's not the case. The highways are jammed with people commuting from Tracy over the hill and back. I used to get off at 6 o'clock on a normal day, and it would take me an hour to come from Santa Clara to Tracy. So I was never here at those meetings while I was working. Now I'm your proverbial pain in the rump being here. But the thing is, Leave it at seven. Otherwise, you're going to have a low head count of visitors coming to make comments. And that is not what you want to have. You want to hear from the citizens. Now, you could be like Stockton. They really didn't give a damn about what was happening when the people were complaining in mass. about leaving at 5.30. Now it's at 2 or 3, whatever. Oh, 1 o'clock. That's even worse. They just gave the finger, one finger, to the people. Don't do that to the citizens of Tracy. They need to be heard. Most of us that are here are retired, so we can come and be here. But the thing is, if you're starting way earlier, what are you going to do with the DARE program? The parents are still commuting. And you're going to have the kids come without the parents? I don't think so. What are you going to do with all the other stuff? If you want to, if the excuse is your 20, 30 minutes in proclamations, reduce them. You don't need it. Or reduce the agenda. Sometimes you have a very political item, if you will, on the agenda and the place is full, overfilled sometimes for that particular agenda. So even if you started at six, you're still going to go to 10 o'clock. That's happened a number of times. You have special meetings, workshops that are an hour before that. And not everyone shows up at the workshops. The head count, if you will, for visitors is very low during those workshops at 6 o'clock. You have closed meetings at 5.30. That's a different issue. But sometimes people do show up for that, make a comment before you go into your meeting. Let's not move it. Leave it at 7 and do your workshops at five or six whatever it's got to be as it is right now thank you thank you mr tanner next speaker please i just wanted to ask when your special meetings were going to be at 3 30 or

for and are you guys going to be able to be here by then or are you guys going to have to work an extra day sometime? So every Tuesday we have meetings. Personally, I don't care what time it is, I'll be here. But just and none of you asked that question. So I just wanted to come up and ask it for you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

You need to leave it at 7 o'clock. I mean, if you look, I think Mountain House, Lathrop, they're 7 o'clock. They're commuters. One accident, they're done, people are running. We have some nice proclamations. What's going to happen with DARE? A lot of parents struggle to get here on time. I'm out there sometimes just seeing they're running in or the kids are getting anxious and it's not fair. You're here to serve the residents of Tracy. If you want to do maybe transportation, Maybe some of the commissions, if you want to move that to 6 o'clock because of staff issues, give that a try. Give it for six months. Parks is kind of hard for me, but if you're going to move it to 6 o'clock, it's okay. But Southside has the same meanings as parks. We're running sometimes, and Mayor Pro Tem, you saw this before, we would rush in and try to make some comments. But we are a commuter. You know, you have to be here to listen to the residents. And there's some items that are going to run. And I want to disagree whoever said 10 o'clock. There's people right now watching the city council because they didn't make it here on time or they had other commitments to make. But if they didn't make here on time, you know, so look at the audience now. You're losing the trust of the residents of Tracy. Just trying to see less and less people here. You see the bulk of the people here when you do have proclamations, when you do have recognitions. You know, so now doing this, it's going to even make it worse. It really will. There's so much mistrust right now that's going on in the city of Tracy. We don't need to do that. So this is what you guys signed up for, you know. This is a commitment that you made when you became an elected official. You knew that times that you have to be here at 5 o'clock for special meetings. You all knew that you had to be here at 7 o'clock for council meetings. You know, put it out there with the commissioners. And like I said, try with parks, transportation, even if you have to with planning. I'm sure the applicants would like that because, you know, a lot of times they come from out of town and they're waiting. to be heard. So, you know, try that option. But if you do this for the residents of Tracy, it's going to create more of an issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hi. Well, I'm adamantly opposed to bumping it up to earlier times. We are a bedroom community, unfortunately, you know, back in the good old days, good old boys days when we were a small community, it was different. But the bulk of of our residents are commuters now and they commute over the hill and for to expect them to get here by six o'clock to attend a meeting or even like county supervisor meetings are at 9 a.m., which I just think is bizarre. Who goes to a 9 a.m. meeting in our county? But getting back to this. And I just don't think it's fair to our citizens of Tracy to bump it up to six because they will not be able to participate in the process. And that's the beauty of our government. It's a democracy where everybody has that opportunity. Now, whether they take advantage of it or not, that's up to them. But you're taking that opportunity away from them. and they will not be able to explore that opportunity. It's already tough enough for a lot of people to get here at 7 o'clock, 7 p.m. Now, don't get me wrong, me personally, I'd much rather have it earlier, and I wouldn't have to be here at 10 o'clock. I mean, I've been here at times where we're here at midnight. Same thing with commission meetings. I'd like to see those bumped up, too. But I don't think we're being fair to our residents by doing that. I know these things go on long. You guys have done a wonderful job on the flow and making it go a little faster. But I don't think it's fair to us. And to look at other cities and compare us to other cities is not really fair either because we've got to look at Tracy. I don't care what goes on in those other cities. I'm concerned about what goes on in Tracy. And we've got to look at our voter base and where they're at. what time they get back to our towns. And like it was mentioned before, we have like the thing for DARE. We had that, you know, so we do that at six. So that's going to be bumped up to five now. Well, obviously, a lot of people even that live here wouldn't be able to attend that because then it's at five o'clock. And then if we got a special meeting ahead of that, now we're like at four o'clock. YOU KNOW, FOR OUR SPECIAL MEETING. AND I JUST THINK WE'RE RESTRICTING ACCESS TO OUR COUNCIL MEETINGS. AND IT'S VERY IMPORTANT THAT WE ALL HAVE A SAY, ESPECIALLY OUR RESIDENTS. THEY'RE WHO GUIDES US. THEY'RE WHO GUIDE YOU GUYS. THIS IS WHERE YOU GUYS GO. SO I DEFINITELY OPPOSE bumping. I understand why. And on a personal level, I would love to. Otherwise, I wouldn't have council members like Abercrombie falling asleep on me at these meetings. They go late on them. And I understand that. I get it. But like I said earlier, this is what we signed up for. This is what you signed up for. And it's important that we keep the democratic process accessible to everybody, and I think this would just limit that. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Silva. Do we have any additional speakers? I would allow 90 seconds. Seeing none in chambers, do we have any online?

No hands online, Mayor.

Thank you. With that, we'll go ahead and close out the public comment for item 6E. I'll just start really quickly. I believe that I'm the only member of this council who works a full-time day job outside of city limits. I would say that Anything before 6 p.m. Would be incredibly prohibitive. So I would not support anything before 6 p.m. I think I'd prefer to keep it at 7 p.m. I'm open to 6 p.m. If that's the if that's the decision the council would like to make But again, I would not support anything before 6 p.m and I would just want to note that I In six months, we're going to have an election. Upwards of three members of this council could change. And if that does happen, then I would ask that we re-look at this item when we seated a new council, because there may be new members of council who have problems attending at that time and I would not want to provide a barrier for folks who had just been elected to serve their constituents from being able to attend. So that'd be my position. I'd ask either have it stay or no earlier than six and have this if it if there is a change to revisit it upon a new council.

Would anyone else like to go? Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, so first off I apologize sir. I don't know your last name. Can we get a he asked the question so would we then be looking at? special meetings being at 5 4 30

what would is that what i mean because it depends on the content of the special special meeting i mean i think certain times we do special meetings on you know days where there's just no council meeting at all if it's a closed session we can agendize that to take place at you know the end of meetings as well um i think it would depend on the actual you know substance of the special meeting and its duration um and you know obviously we We need to make sure that you all need to be here for that. So we can't schedule a special meeting if we know in advance that more than likely we won't have a quorum. So again, it really would depend. The other thing too is that agendas can always be adjusted as well. The clerk was just commenting to me that, for instance, if we hear that certain people can't be here by 6 for proclamations, we could move proclamations to after the public comment. There's options to do that to accommodate people. So, you know, again, there's that as well. The other thing, too, is that, you know, you see that Modesto does it at 5.30, so I don't think it necessarily has to be at 6 or 7 or 5 or 4. It can be, if you want to throw in a 30 in there, that is something else just to contemplate as well. But, you know, I think to answer your question, Mr. Duby's question, Mayor Pro Tem, it will really depend on the matter, but we can get innovative with our agenda to make sure that we're trying to accommodate as many people as possible. And we would do that now, even now, if that were to come up, too, to do that.

Okay. And as the DARE expert in the whole room, the 6 o'clock is not an issue because their DARE ceremonies start at 6 o'clock and we get packed houses. So that wouldn't affect their ability because they go to their dare ceremonies they'll be here at six o'clock because their kids getting recognized they'll make it but um i not i can go either way me i don't mind maybe even exploring maybe 6 30. my biggest concern is one we were looking at it because of expense of staff but also the fact that when we go later staff has to go home and be back the next day i you know that's not always a fair to them and um so i'm just trying i was just trying to look at what are some different things that we could improve and also the fact that you know oh yeah i've never fallen asleep on you yet tim because you although you do bore me but i haven't fallen asleep on you yet but um i do i do uh think that as we go later It is difficult. We're now making important decisions. And the later it goes, we may not be thinking as clearly. So that was my other concern also. But this isn't I'm like not gung ho about it, but I'm willing to maybe explore maybe 630. But anyways, my thoughts. Thank you. Councilor Bedoya, did you have anything?

Councilor Evans. I'll just say, first of all, I'm glad we're having this conversation. I think it's worth having. Maybe we should have it every so often, every couple of years. This is a pretty efficient council. Had you asked me the same question two years ago, I might have different feelings about, you know, I think I'd still end up in the same place I'm going to end up, but I could see the, you know, the reasoning for having the conversation for sure. I think my primary concerns are, you know, they've already been stated. You know, my biggest is just residents being able to get here. Some pretty good arguments were given for potentially bringing it in a little bit, but we just seem to have so many special meetings and workshops and closed sessions. I don't see those decreasing. If anything, they stay the same or, you know, we've seen periods where they've really been, it's been a lot. and we haven't been able to do it in one night you know get all the special meetings in and then a regular session and so uh i'm a little concerned there i guess if we i'm not hearing that we're going to pull it into six if we're going to look at 6 30 i guess i would just say that may be a compromise but i think it should how would you do maybe we could do it Would it be possible in rare circumstances to start the regular session at 7? We would need 48 hours or 72 hours, whatever it is, advance notice on that.

So that's set by the ordinance. So unless we specifically put it in there, we'd have to go back each time and amend that. Of course, special meetings, you can do it at any time with 24 hours notice. But generally speaking, you all approve the calendar for the year on the dates and that time would be approved.

Does staff see concerns with 630 as far as special meetings and, you know, sometimes we have a special meeting and a closed session. So I don't know, you know, I think most of us, we need to start at like no earlier than like 5.30, something like that. So, or those of us that, you know, have full-time jobs. So I think, does that give us enough time? That's just an hour. If we start at 5.30 on special sessions, then we've got an hour until regular session.

I think to Mr. Nafusi's point, typically when we're having a special meeting, we do poll the council, whether that's going to be a separate day or if it's going to be an hour or two before the regular council meeting. So I think we would just continue that. And again, based on the subject matter and the anticipated length of time to do the presentation, whether it's a workshop or not, we would either poll for a separate day or try to get it within that time period. Yeah.

So if we add separate days, then we're here an extra night and staff is here an extra night. So my preference, I think, is to keep as is, but I'm willing to entertain 630. But I think to me, I think 630 still allows the public to get here. It's an hour and a half, you know, between hopefully most people getting off work and coming over the hill. I do think it IT MAY PRECLUDE SOME, BUT MY PREFERENCE IS TO KEEP IT AT 7, BUT I'M PLIABLE ON 630, I GUESS, IF IT'S COUNCIL AS WELL.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU.

Thank you, Mayor. I have no problem with, you know, the discussion going up here. I'm flexible. But I am going to say I do want to make sure I'm available for our residents, I think seven. I think 7 accommodates our commuter town. I liked your idea of maybe revisiting this after November. If there's new seats up here, what would be the consensus? Like I said, I'm flexible, but I am tending to lean more towards 7. I would consider 630, but that's still kind of stretching it. But, yeah, I think I would like to see, you know, actually putting this on hold until after the election.

Councilmember Doyle.

I'm fine with I would second Councilmember Nygaard's position and also kind of support keeping it at seven.

Okay. So I think we're hearing quite a bit of consensus for seven or 630.

But I think we might be all in agreement to wait until after November since, like you pointed out. Okay. That would be my motion that we revisit it after November.

Okay.

Do we have a second on that?

Second.

Okay. We have a first and a second to reconsider after the new council is seated. Roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Abercrombie? Yes. Council Member Nygaard? Yes. Council Member Vidoya?

No.

Council Member Evans?

Yes.

Mayor Arreola?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right. The motion to reconsider after the next election passes. And that takes care of our regular items. Next up we have items from the audience. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak on a non-agendized item? Seeing three, that'll be four minutes each.