City Council - Regular Meeting

Some people have asked. Mayor, what's the greatest challenge? Getting your microphone to work. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, and welcome to the Tulare City Council meeting for Tuesday, March 3. As we start our meeting, we will start off with the pledge of allegiance, which will be led by our police chief, mister Fred England. And after the pledge pledge of allegiance, please remain standing for an invocation by Caleb Bryan from Tulare Community Church.

Please join me in the good bar of life.

Good evening, mister Bob.

Alright. Well, thank you for having me here. I just wanna share a quick word from Exodus chapter 18. Just read this with my students recently. Moses, the leader of Israel, got in trouble by his father-in-law, one of the few people that can get you in trouble if you're in charge. Moses was acting as a judge, over all of Israel, and this is what his father-in-law said to him. The thing that you are doing is not good. You will surely wear out both yourself and these people who are with you for the task is too heavy for you. You cannot do it alone. And just like Israel, we need help.

We can't do things on our own. I'm glad not one of us, especially me, is in charge of Teleri. I'm glad that we have so many people here represented who are working together to make Tulare a wonderful place. And let's talk to the person whose help we need the most tonight. Dear god, we thank you for each one of us here. God, we thank you for those, that are concerned about Tulare. God, we thank you for those who are helping to run Tulare and and just make it a wonderful place to be, Lord. We just pray that you'd give them all wisdom this evening, as they meet, Lord. Just give them clarity, and, we just thank you for all of the work and how much they love this town. Lord, we thank you for their love, for their sacrifice, God, and we thank you also for your love and for your sacrifice for us in your name. Amen.

Thank you, Caleb. Alright. Moving forward on our agenda is item three, proclamations and recognitions. And I'm going to read this proclamation from up here at the podium because we have our second part, which is recognition for International Women's Day. So with that, proclamation for Women's History Month, March.

Whereas March is nationally recognized as Women's History Month, honoring women's contributions to history, culture, and society, and whereas women of every race, class, and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of Tulare in countless recorded and unrecorded ways, and whereas women continue to play a critical economic, cultural, and social role in every sphere of life in Tulare and have long been at the forefront of movements that advance justice, equality, and progress. And whereas this year's theme, leading the change, women shaping a sustainable future, recognizes the vital leadership of women in addressing the challenges of today and building a future that is environmentally responsible, economically inclusive, and socially equitable. And whereas women have championed sustainability through innovation, advocacy, and action, working to protect natural resources, promote renewable energy, and create resilient communities for generations to come. Whereas the city of Tulare is proud to honor the stories, history, and leadership of women in our community and throughout our state and nation and reaffirm its commitment to gender equity representation and opportunity for all women and girls. Now, therefore, we, the city council of the city of Tulare, do hereby proclaim the month of March 2026 as Women's History Month.

And with that, as we move into 3.2, we have a special recognition this evening as we do each year, which is recognizing Women's History Month, but Teleri's recognized Women of the Year. And as we start this event, we will start with District 1 with councilman Jose Segala.

Thank you, mister mayor. Council, thank you to everyone who was here this evening. I'm very proud to be the first one up here this year, to, recognize a number of outstanding women throughout our city, in particular, obviously, my council district. I'm very honored that, this is the tenth year that we have been doing this. And over that time, we've had the opportunity to to highlight a number of women who have, provided, substantial contributions to our community in various ways through education, business, political world, and and a number of other things.

So I'm very, very glad to be here this evening to do so as well. So the first the person that I wanted to honor, and I'll ask her to come up here in a few minutes, but tonight, have the honor of recognizing Eloisa Segura Moraza for to be the district one woman of the year celebrated here during women's history month. She recently retired at the Tulare City School District where she served for over twenty five years and has for thirty five years of combined experience in the field of school psychology. Louisa was born in Corcoran and raised in Lindsay to a family of migrant farm workers. As the youngest of nine children, she became the first in her family to attend a university after receiving a full ride scholarship.

She graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BA in criminal justice and an MA in education counseling and counseling. She then attended CSU Long Beach to complete her credentials to become a school psychologist. In 1986, she married doctor Carlos Moraza and started a family here in Tulare. They have three daughters, all of whom are Tulare Western graduates. The oldest, Sokoro, is an immigrant immigration lawyer in Los Angeles.

The second, Cecilia, is dean of students at Accelerated Charter High School. And the youngest, Marissa, a Yale graduate, is a campaign director at Power California. Louisa is passionate about education and supporting the community. She has been active for many years and is the immediate past president of the Hispanic Alliance for Culture Education and Recognition. In other words, as as I said, as we all knew it, which is an organization organization that recognizes Tulare students and awards scholarships annually to graduating seniors.

She has held leadership positions as a member of the Saint Rita's Guadalupana Society. Miss Segura also served on board of the records of the Tulare Youth Services Bureau for over twenty years. In 2018, miss Segura was recognized by the county as administrator of the year by Tulare County Office of Education. And she's a proud grandmother and of two grandchildren but remains very active in the community. And just recently, she was appointed to serve, for in a vacancy at the Tulare City School District.

So soon, she will be a school board member and continue her passion to support children and support our youth by providing leadership on that school board. So I'm very honored this evening to recognize Eluisa, if she can come up, please. So one of the things that I wanted to do is, share the certificate of recognition that all of the council members and the mayor will be providing to our, designees tonight. So it reads, on behalf of the citizens of Tulare, we are pleased to present the certificate to Eluisa Segura Miraza for on International Women's Day celebrated around the world on March 8, honors the ongoing pursuit of gender equality in a collective effort to uplift women and girls through cultural, legal, economic, and social progress. In recognition of International Women's Day and Women's History Month, we saw we proudly celebrate you for your strength, your passion, your leadership, and your unwavering dedication to our community, empowered women, empowered communities presented on this day of March, signed by the mayor, vice mayor, and the rest of the council.

So congratulations on that. And we also have a pin that our one of our former clerks, Roxanne Yoder, had put together as part of the celebration. It's a pin that's not too many around Tulare, but the women that wear it definitely are a symbol of what it says on the pin. Strong women, know them, be them, and raise them. So this is a pin that goes with that.

And finally, thank you to councilmember Maderos and to the chief who helped us put together this challenge coin. It's it's a coin that has the logo of the city, and it's something that we share with other cities. Folks from all over the world actually write to us to see if if there we have some available. But this is just a symbol of our city. We, you know, we're very proud of what we do here in Tulare. There are not too many of these challenge coins available, so this is also something we'd like to share with you to have and if you wanna say a few words.

Oh, here's a little something you can add. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much to the city council for this honor, and I'm, you know, just humbled to be recognized. You know, I wanna thank my my husband, my family, and especially all my friends that are present today too because without them, like the reading earlier indicated, is that we can't do this alone. And with all their support, whenever they're called upon, they're they're along with me working just as hard. So this is for all of us. Thank you again.

And we have council member Terry Sehr for District 2.

So I had to be second because I'm District 2. Loisa, congratulations. We worked together for a long time at Tulare City Schools, and and I, applaud you for all of your efforts in many areas. I have the privilege this evening of recognizing a person who doesn't know they're being recognized. So I'm going to tell a little bit about that person, but, of course, she'll know as soon as I start talking who she is because it's about her, but you won't know till I get done.

So good evening. Tonight, it is my distinct honor to recognize a woman, and I have to warn you, I'm a crier, so I'll probably cry halfway through this. Recognize a woman whose life exemplifies leadership, steadfast commitment, and extraordinary compassion. A woman whose influence is woven into the very fabric of our community here in Tulare. Her story began in Santa Clara, but the Central Valley shaped her heart.

She was raised primarily in Visalia. Already knows who she is. She was deeply influenced by her grandfather in Woodlake, a man devoted to service. His example planted leadership is not about position, but about contribution, not about recognition, but about responsibility. She graduated from Mount Whitney High School we won't fault her for not being till Larry graduate and began her professional journey as a draftsman studying architecture at College of the Sequoias.

While that specific path shifted, her love for structure, design, and precision never left her. Instead, it evolved. She discovered a passion for maps, land, and quiet complexity of infrastructure while working for the Tulare County Assessor's Office, and later with county surveyor departments, what some might see as lines on paper she saw as possibility, the framework upon which communities are built. But her professional achievements tell only a part of her story. During those same years, she was raising two children, Riley and Reese, and in an act of profound generosity served as a surrogate not once, not twice, but three separate times.

She carried and delivered twins for multiple families, giving the incomparable gift of parenthood to those who longed for it. That level of compassion is not ordinary. It is extraordinary. It is sacrificial. It is love in its most tangible form.

In twenty fifth fourteen and fifteen, she joined QK as a surveyor department where her diligence and leadership capacity led into her project management, guiding complex initiatives with the same steady hand and thoughtful precision that became her hallmark. In 2018, she and her family made Tulare their home along with two wonderful bonus children, Alexandra and Olivia. She expanded not only her family, but her investment in this city. In 2021, she was actively involved in our downtown project, not simply observing progress, but shaping it. Her service extended to the planning commission where she brought insight, balance, and deep understanding of both infrastructure and people.

She understands that cities are not just streets and structures. They are families, futures, and shared dreams. Leadership, commitment, and compassion, these are the abstract words in her life. They are visible. She leads with quiet confidence and informed conviction.

She commits with consistency and integrity. She loves her family fiercely and serves her community selflessly. In a world often captivated by loud leadership, Jocelyn Lemas, you knew it, something more powerful, steady leadership, the kind that builds foundations, the kind that strengthens families, the kind that leaves a legacy. Tonight, we celebrate not just what she has done, but who she is, a devoted mother, a loving wife, a gifted professional, and a servant leader. Jocelyn, your life reflects the very best of Tulare.

We are beget better because of you. Our city is stronger because of you, and the families you have touched, including mine and your own, are forever blessed because of you. It is with great pride and heartfelt admiration that we honor you this evening as a woman who truly embodies leadership, commitment, and compassion, an empowered woman who empowers communities. Jocelyn. And I'm not gonna reread those proclamations.

You all heard, Jose read it, so it has your name on it. And then the pin that says, strong women, know them, be them, raise them, and a challenge coin. And then this is from me to you. And would you like to say a few words?

Ashley said this was a surprise, so I didn't get the chance to prepare anything. But thank you to the council, and thank you to my husband for without his support, I couldn't do any other things she just listed. Tricked you to get you. Well, Mario too. Mario Mario made sure I thought something was on the agenda. And when I asked him later, I was like, I don't see it. So I think they were in on it together. Thank you, everybody.

And we have vice mayor Steve Harrell for District 3.

Keep forgetting things. Tonight, it's a great honor to again have the opportunity to announce my selection for woman of the year. This individual has worked and lived in her entire life. Her parents had and still have a small business here in Tulare. She's always had a passion for self improvement and help others.

At an early age, she developed a real interest in physical education, fitness, nutrition, and things of that nature. So she was initially hired as a PE teacher at Tulare Christian School. Because of this, her passion for fitness became even stronger, and she became a certified personal trainer and group instructor. In 2005, she was hired as a personal trainer at Evolutions, and that's the first time that that I met her. She saw a need to help members with nutrition and lifestyle lifestyles.

She participated in fitness competitions. She then became an entrepreneur and started a meal prep business for clients, cafe style menu. In 2018, she opened EI Cafe in the Village Shopping Center. If you have ever watched the television program Yellowstone and noticed it was filmed in Montana and noticed how fit and good looking all the actors and everybody was, that was because she's the one that prepared the meals for the actors and the crew. She's a strong minded and determined businesswoman that uses her experience and knowledge to help the community.

My selection is Alyssa Cardenas. And like Terry said, I'm not gonna read this again since the story's been read by Jose who did an outstanding job. I will say that, unfortunately, misspelled your first name.

That's okay. I read it.

When I, when I sent everything to our outstanding deputy city clerk, I misspelled it. So that's

on the I had a senior moment.

So it will be corrected, and we will get you a new one. You do have the pin, which definitely describes you strong woman, know them, be them, race, and that's that's you. There's no doubt. So that's there. And the coin and and maybe you can take pictures and send them to Bobby since he's gone to school. And he doesn't get anything tonight.

He doesn't.

No. He does not get anything. It's just you.

Thank you, guys.

Say something?

I don't know what to say.

I I really appreciate you guys. Yeah. That's sorry.

That's fine.

Thank you.

We have a little break in protocol here. So I'm gonna go next for District 5. And, Darla, would you please join?

Waiting for you to sink this kidney. Good

evening, everybody. Up here with me is Darla Rambunga. Darla has served her community very richly over the years. Darla served four years in the United States Marine Corps, which included being one of the first 100 women to serve as military police. In being brief and really just putting the emphasis here, there are a few key areas with specific focus that I would like to mention that defines this recognition for Darda.

Darla has served with a personal intimacy as president for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Darla has served through personal intimacy for the Relay of Life and Cancer Society, not only volunteer work, but also leadership, mentoring, and being there for others. Currently, Darla Rambunga serves as commander for Tulare AMVETS post fifty six. She has had previous leadership roles within AMVETS Central Area District six. And through all of this, Darla is a mother, a wife, and compassionate human being.

That is community. That is empowered women empowering communities. And with that, as noted on the plaque, Darla, it says, you for your strength, your passion, your leadership. Please offer a warm appreciation to Dollar Rambunga as a Tulare woman of the year. We have the pin. We have Challengecoin.

Thank you.

There's no Monty Hall with other doors or anything to go with that. I'll let you have the microphone if you'd like to say something. I know you probably want to punch me for embarrassing you and bringing some you are a marine after all.

I was. Do you have a

marine entourage that'd like to join you? They're welcome.

Everything that was said before is here, but I did kinda wanna punch him on Saturday when he brought this up at the Memorial Building, annual open house. And I looked at him, and I told him, you have the wrong name on there. Everything that I do is always something that is a group. Mothers Against Runt Driving is a group. Our AMVETS and our veterans support is a group.

Relay for Life is a group. None of it can be done as an individual, and nothing I do is ever as an individual. And nothing I do was for this, and this totally shocked me. And, usually, anybody that knows me knows that I'm never left speechless, but you did it.

You succeeded. We've we've known each other for a few years.

A few years. He was my boss at Telerick. I don't

have to go into that.

And didn't even fire me when

I broke the coffee machine. No. And

I'm not just a cheap mayor. I did we did have flowers, and I just wanted to say I saw her on Saturday, and so she could have those there. They're beautiful. Yes. Thank you. Darn it.

I get to go last tonight, but the purpose of woman's recognition month is fundamental. It's to recognize a woman, each one of us, who who who pick someone who has had a key impact on our community. And that's a a key impact either in our district or citywide that embodies social, economic, cultural, and political achievements, any one of those areas. So that when we look back many years from now, we can actually say that the woman that we've selected has made a difference. And I've tried to do that each time each year.

This is my eighth selection. I I've tried to pick someone that when I reflected, I said that individual has made this a better community and continues to make this community better as a result of what she does. As a result, my selection was born in Tacoma, Washington. She came to this community when with her family. She grew up along with her two brothers and her and a sister.

She moved to Visalia in her late teens and met her high school sweetheart, Dennis So to. She she was married, in reality, only about four or five months before my wife, Kathy, and I got married in 1979. They had a daughter and a son, Rachel, and Rachel is here, and her son was unable to be here. Sadly, she lost her husband about a year and a half to two years ago, but that hasn't stopped her. She has continued to contribute to this community.

She has $2 she has four grandchildren. Excuse me. She started her journey as far as business is concerned in 1975 working for State Farm and eventually got to the point to where she had her own agency here in Tulare itself where her and her husband lived lived and continues and she continues to live. She continued her education when she got a bachelor's of arts degree at Fresno Pacific and has become a chartered financial consultant, re retired income certified specialist, and a chartered life underwriter through the American College of Financial Services. Now that's business success.

The thing about Renee is that she continues to be involved and not involved in a minor way, but a significant way. Here in Tulare, we basically have two operations as far as how our government is run. We have the city council, and we have the board of public utilities, which which operates on the on the basis that they see to it that you get your water, you get your services as it relates to trash and garbage and sewer. They take care of all of that as a business operation. Several years ago, I believe I was the one I know I was the one that called Renee, but I think I was the one that made the selection.

I called Renee to see if she was interested in sitting on the board of public utilities because I felt like she would offer a perspective that that the board may not have because of her business background, and and she would have the woman's touch that the board needed. She gladly said yes. She didn't hesitate. And that was a further indication of just the type of individual that Renee is. She's a past president and a current member of the Tulare Rotary Club, past chair of the Tulare Chamber of Commerce.

And and what and on a very, very important role as it relates to the city of Tulare, she currently is a board member for the Tulare Lighthouse Rescue Mission, which is which she's taking the lead on to try to deal with compassionate and proper services as it relates to our homeless population. And and when I say she is actively involved, I can't stress that enough. The hours and the commitment that she's giving to make services for for those people who need it and and making our community a better place as a result of having the compassion to deal with this homeless problem cannot be understated. What she's doing in that regard is extremely, extremely important. As a result, it's absolutely my honor to be able to say that the woman that I chose to have special recognition in my District Number 4 is Renee So to.

Renee, could

you please stand by us?

And we told Renee that, there might be an issue in public comment and that she may need to be here tonight. And there could be and there could be something like that. So that's we weren't completely lying. So Thank congratulations. Thank you very much. And and we you also get one of these plaques that you could put in your office. I asked my wife to go pick pretty flowers for you, and she did that.

Where is she?

She's back here.

Back there.

She's right there, Heidi.

The woman's pen you get?

Yes. Thank you.

And you also get the challenge coin that you can put in your office to remember everything that we're doing tonight.

So Thank you. Thank you very much.

A few words.

This has been quite a year. I wanna say thank you to everybody. Totally shocked. I had no idea. But as she already mentioned, it's a team sport. Being a woman's a team sport. We're very involved in the community, and it takes an amazing group of women and men to make our community. But, I love it all. I love doing it all. I love being a part of the community, helping the community. I didn't get a chance to do this till I became an agent because I was always traveling around. So being an agent, being on the grassroots of things, and being in the dirt with everybody in real life has been just a wonderful joy for me. So thank you very much.

Yes,

Mike. Thank you. Good to see you guys. I saw you hiding back there, Rachel.

Thank you. Thank you, Ken. So we're going to take a recess, which will allow perhaps some might wanna take pictures, kind of a shuffling of seats. And please extend warm hugs, kisses, and congratulations to our winners. So we will take a recess for ten minutes.

Okay.

Just hang on.

Alright. We're going to get started here. Again, I know just allow for some last discussions and goodbyes and handshakes. It's good to see everybody. Alright.

So continuing on our agenda is item number four, public comment. Members of the public wishing to comment on any item not appearing on the agenda may address the city council at this time. State law prevents council from acting on any matter not on the agenda. However, your comments may be defer referred to staff for follow-up. This is also time for the public to comment on items listed under the consent calendar or to request an item from the consent calendar to be pulled for further discussion purposes.

If you are viewing at home and viewing the meeting online, you may call (559) 366-1849, and the clerk will assist you with your call. I do have yellow cards, which I will start with first, and I have a yellow card from Dolores Dolores Taylor, Building Industry Association. Good evening.

Right. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, mayor. Good evening, city council members. Well, what an honor to be here.

I didn't even know you guys were honoring women, so what a pleasure to be here tonight and watch that. I am here just to say hello. I am the CEO for the Tulare and Kings County Association of Builders. And I've been here a few times before, but just wanna come back again, say hello to everyone, and say thank you for everything that you've been doing in this city. We see the impact of all the long meetings that you have here and all the discreet decisions that you have to work through, all the improvements done with the city of Tulare.

Our members are, grateful and excited to be building new homes in Tulare. And with that said, I just wanna congratulation and say thank you and keep up the great work. And that's it. Oh, and one more thing. I wanna invite you all to our next networking event. It is gonna be in Visalia, but we'll do another one in Tulare soon. But you guys all invited. I'll leave some flyers here with your city clerk, and she can pass them around. Thank you.

Thank you, Dolores, and we appreciate the relationship with the building association. The next card I have is for is it Marla Silva? Maria? Thank you. I'm sorry. Maria Silva. Good evening, Maria. Welcome. Good

evening. My name is Maria Santos Silva, and I'm here tonight as a proud member representing Suroptimus International of Tulare. Suroptimus International is a global volunteer organization for women. Our international organization provides women and girls with access to the education and training they need to achieve common economic improvement. We were founded in 1921.

Suoptimist International has a consulting status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, which oversees UN activities and policies promoting human rights. Siroptimist International of Tulare has been an active contributing part of our community since 1947. Our club members have sponsored many projects and grants during this time that have helped women and girls of Tulare improve their economic situation and has enabled them to live their dreams. Earlier today, members of our club were in attendance at the Tulare Board of Supervisors meeting. Siroptimus International of Tulare was recognized as part of a proclamation recognizing March 2026 as Women's History Month in Tulare County.

One of our club's major fundraisers is coming up on April 11, a secret garden themed tea party. The cost of tickets are early bird 35 and $40 after March 28. The tea party will be held April 11 at 11AM at Community Church on Gem Street. The afternoon will include a fashion show, entertainment, and local artisan vendors. Proceeds are going to benefit scholarships and community service projects throughout the city of Tulare.

For more information, you can call (559) 731-0448. We also have flyers that are available if you would like more information. I believe you've all received one. If you would like more information on becoming a member of Seroptimus International of Tulare, we meet at Apple Annie's every first Tuesday at noon and every third Tuesday at 6PM. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, March 17 at 6PM at Ampeliani's. Thank you very much for allowing me this time to share with you some background information on Seroptimus International and the opportunity to invite you to our upcoming fundraiser. Thank you.

Can I ask a question? How many members do you have of serop seropdomist?

Off the top of my head, I don't know the exact number. If I were to do an educated estimate, I'd say we are between twenty five and fifty. Okay. We have many active we have many members, active ones that come to the meetings like with any other organization. We have planners, and we have workers.

Got it. Thank you. Alright.

Anything else? No. Thank and have a nice evening.

Do we have anyone else in chambers who'd like to make public comment? If madam clerk, do we have anyone on the phone? Okay. Just make sure if I didn't miss anybody. Alright. Moving forward on our agenda, item five, communications.

No communications.

Item six, council reports and items of interest. I will start with vice mayor, mister Harrell.

Thank you, mister mayor. On the February 25, I, participated in reviewing more taste applications for the downtown twenty sixth, attended the Valley Oak, ribbon cutting. That was an opportunity to see our fire chief in in action. We unfortunately had a lady that took a very hard fall in the parking lot, and it was fortunate the chief was there and provided aid to this lady. 28 attended the open house of the memorial building.

Councilman Seagal. K. Councilman Medeiros? Very briefly, because of time, I I did attend the screening of the event. Grip.

Grip. Our

fire chief previous fire chief Luis Navaras Navaraz. I always have trouble with his last name. It was it was extremely well done. Extremely well done. And it was well attended too. I think everyone that was there, all the first responders that were there enjoyed the screening at Galaxy Theater, and I wanna extend thank yous to Galaxy Theater for making making the event available to everyone. This morning, I had a citizens advisory committee of the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District that lasted an hour longer than it should have, which is made for a long day at this point. Other than that, let's move on.

I attended the, on the twentieth, the Be Ready COS program for the pathway juniors and seniors that are, going on into the career ready and college ready program. Had lunch with them. That was a lot of fun. Councilwoman Medeiros was there as well. On the twenty first, I went to the ribbon cutting and tenth anniversary of Grocery Outlet, which was really a a great display of of community service.

They they did they donated a huge pallet of food to the Salvation Army, and it was really a lovely event. And then on the twenty fourth, I went to the TBIS community forum. On the twenty eighth, I went to the open house for the Veterans Memorial Building. And then this morning, I was at the the supervisor's council in order to be a part of the proclamation for Heroptimus.

Alright. Yes. Many events over the last couple weeks attend as well the grocery outlet ribbon cutting and ten years celebration and was with the council members at the Veteran Memorial Building open house and as well giving their presentation for their historic building recognition. Also, a couple of quick notes. Attended the services for Jan Lazarus on on Saturday.

Stopped in to, of course, pay respects to the family and condolences. And then as well, I think sharing now compared to the end is our community lost Will Teshera with his passing, and I think with that is we will close our meeting in honor of Will Tushera this evening and also would like to work with the clerk, nothing for the family, to have a a resolution of remembrance for mister Tushera as well. Anything else to report? Okay. We have a a request and would like to adjust the agenda and bring forth a 9.3 funding for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary Independence Day event at Soomwall Park and move that in front of the consent calendar.

The request being is because with our business, we do have some in attendance in the audience relative and directly related to this item, and therefore, we could move that in front of the I can see a calendar address that item now. Is there any any

That's fine.

Problem with that from the council? No. K. Alright. So with that, on opening up of we'll move to 9.3 funding for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Independence Day, and we have opening up Chris Ort. And if, Chris, if there was someone you wanted to touch on,

to open Thank

mister mayor.

Thanks.

The February 17, city council meeting, the city council requested a breakdown for the city's estimated cost and potential revenues the Sequoia Symphony to perform at the Adventist Health Amphitheater on 07/04/2026. The estimated cost and potential revenues are as follow. Estimate production to be 22,500, Symphony cost, 15,000. Janitorial, 1,500, and security, 1,000 for a total of $40,000. Potential revenue, would be selling VIP boxes for 500 each.

There's 18 of those for a total of 9,000. And then VIP seats at $25 apiece, and there's 200 of those which could generate another 5,000. So that's a total of 14,000. Any of the bar revenue will be used to cover the cost assumed by Spade Entertainment, as such catering, hotels, etcetera. Spade Entertainment will not be charging a fee for this service, for the event.

Cost for marketing is estimated to be $2,500 and is already included in Spade Entertainment's budget. Any sponsorship obtained by Spade Entertainment will be split fifty fifty with the city, and any additional sponsor revenue goes into a fund to cover remaining expenses above VIP ticket sales revenue, if any. All remaining proceeds will be remitted by Spade Entertainment to the city.

Okay. Thank you, mister Orr. Anything to add, mister Mondale? Or

Only that Todd Spielman with Spade Entertainment is on the line if you have questions of him as well.

K. Councilman Maderos, you had some information on this and requested to speak, so I'll turn it over to you.

Yeah. From the last meeting, I had indicated that I was gonna contact John Thomas from from the symphony and have a discussion with him. He did follow through and got back to me, and that's I think that's in part why we're at the numbers that we now have. Instead of the 60,000, we're down at the 40,000. I've also been in discussion.

I met last week with mister Spielman on a couple of different topics. One was the symphony itself. And the the goal under the circumstances is to find a way to raise funds so that we're not use while we'll have to guarantee it for purposes of booking the ultimately through sponsorships and revenues, we wanna find a way not to have to use taxpayer dollars to put this account on. Specifically, in discussing the matter with with Todd, the the sponsorships that are obtained well, I'll go I'll take one step back. What we'd like to do is find a named sponsor.

In other words, in the community, I believe, working together, we can find somebody who will sponsor the symphony portion of this event so that it'll be x y z company features pops in the park with the with the Sequoia Symphony under the circumstances. So that would be our named sponsor. And if we could find one someone who some company that will donate $15,000, that gets us on the way to the $40,000. I also have lined up matching funds and what I would request consideration from each council member is to use some of our remaining funds for our what's what's it called? Our fund yeah.

If each council member would join in and provide a thousand dollars of their funds, we can match that. So that would be $10,000. So at that point, providing we get the 15, we're up to 25. Then that leaves only $14,000 or $16,000, if my math's am I correct? Or 15 left to get to the 40.

And what I've discussed with mister Spielman is that we do something different as it relates to sponsorships. If if he'll work with with me and whoever else wants to participate in getting the name sponsor, the $15,000 sponsorship. He does not share in that. He will any boxes that are provided at $500 through a sponsorship, he will not share with that. His the only sponsors that he would split $50.50 with the city are those sponsors that just want name recognition, not seating in return.

He'll manage all of the the sales of seats, the pros the free seats, basically. We were talking about maybe a dollar fee just for processing. In essence, the the fee the tickets are free, but a processing charge of either a dollar or $2.50 because it's the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of of the event, something along that line. But miss mister Spielman, Todd will come down and produce this whole event so that well, you you can explain, Mark, a little bit of what he's gonna go through in putting this event on and the effort on the fourth of July Independence Day weekend. So what I've been discussing with him is working out to where he has a minimum fee of somewhere in the vicinity of $4,000 and a maximum fee if he sells enough partner, sponsorships of $10,000.

No more than that. The question would be, why are you doing that? We want him to go out, be be in the community, get sponsors. That will help not only with this event. It'll

What?

Well, I I'm not gonna talk and explain to you what we're doing if you're talking with somebody else. We will also go forward to to try to put together a situation to where he makes contacts within the community that will help not only for this event, but it'll be contacts that can be used in the future for the other concerts that we'll have during the year. The essence is that this is an arrangement that will be in the best interest not only for the community and effectively except for the boxes and the VIP seats will be free to the community at large. So it's it's an effort to put on, for most people, a free concert, and that's that's the way that I think we can we can produce this thing under the circumstances. So I'm asking for council's help and ratification, And, I'll find the matching funds for what we put up, and we'll be on our way to, put this together as a council.

And I'm open to questions. I think, Todd is on the line. He's asking the questions, and our city manager is too. Council member, sir. Any question? Do you support it, or do Oh, yeah. Say so.

Oh, I support the efforts, and thank you, councilmember Menderes, for going to all that effort. And thank you, Todd, for your, generosity.

Thank you.

I concur. I support it completely and really appreciate everything you've done, Dennis.

Well, I'll be an odd man out and, have some questions about the the event. I definitely support the event. I think it's a great opportunity for us to do some stuff in the community to celebrate, our two hundred fiftieth anniversary as a as a country. And I did talk to City Manager, and I appreciate some of that feedback coming back in the form of some kind of, workout situation that occurred. You know, I did share with the city manager my concern about sponsorships and, overall, the cost of the event, which I'm glad it went down.

But think for me, I I just have a fundamental question in terms of what I mean, I understand that that we are in a contract that requires the city to give first dibs to the operator on any event, and that's what's happening now with this, fourth of July celebration. But I'm just concerned about the fact that we are gonna be challenged in terms of covering the cost of the event. And yet, you know, whatever sponsorship I think the community's gonna step up. I agree with the with mister Madero's that the community will step up and celebrate something, as patriotic as this event in our city. But I just have a fundamental concern with us doing sponsorships, splitting sponsorships with, the operator.

And so, I mean, it's I I just don't fundamentally feel that should make money off of America's birthday in that sense that we should go out and get sponsorships. If he's gonna charge a flat fee or a fee between 4 to $10,000, and that should be noticed in the expenses somewhere. I don't see that in the expenses unless it's put somewhere under production. I would like that line item to kinda be more more transparent that what is what what are we gonna pay the operator unless it's tucked into I don't think it's tucked into janitorial security. So is it in the is it in the production cost?

So as the item is presented this evening, as it's stated in the staff report, Chris read it, but I'll read it again. Spade Entertainment will not be charging a fee for their services for this event. So as it's presented to you, they don't receive any fee for their event. The only thing that they would receive under the presentation would be and 50% of any sponsorships they got, not sponsorship we got, or sponsorships that came from some other means. Only sponsorships that they were out there working to get, they would get 50%.

Under what council member Madero has talked about, that's different. He's presenting an alternative approach to you different than what's in your staff report this evening. So that's why you don't see the the number that council member Madero shared, the 4,010. That is a conversation that has occurred since this was published on Friday. That's why it's not in the staff report.

So he is sharing that with council or council's consideration as an alternative approach to the one that was presented in the staff report. And that's that's certainly, that's council's prerogative. If any of the council members feel like we like what council member Madero shared or we'd like to tweak that a little bit, Todd's on the phone for that purpose. If somebody said, you know, I don't like 50%, it should be 25% or any any of those variables, you have the ability this evening to negotiate, so to speak, and then ultimately make a decision on. But that's why it's not listed in this that's not hidden somewhere. It's it didn't exist prior to

So so what if what if hang on hang on. I got the fill right now. Let me finish. So what would I respond

to what you said. I can't answer multiple questions.

What's that? Let me finish

my thought here. Would then would that let's say it's between 4 to 10,000 as was stated. Would that create an additional need to pay off? In other words, it right now, it's at 40,000. But let's say we owe him he raises 10 and we give him 5. So would that now be a $45,000 event?

That's not what I understand him the council member Madero is to say, but perhaps he could address what he meant by that.

Okay? I got more questions, but go ahead and answer that one.

No. Okay. Fine. No. I the cost is gonna be $40,000.

He he he makes his money if he gets additional, sponsorships over and above the ones he he's gonna work in essence for the base ones for us, selling the boxes, working to help us get the the private sponsor to, pay for the symphony. He's working those without commission. So a certain aspect aspect of this, there's no compensation for those. What what's been negotiated is only those where it's a name recognition compensation. And as to your comment about making money on the on the, independence holiday, you've negotiated labor contracts.

There's people who get double time, triple time when they work on a holiday, and they're making money on a national holiday. We're asking Todd and Claudia to take their Independence Day, come down and put this event and produce us for for us. And, initially, all they're asking for is to cover their base cost, which in my discussion with him is in addition to the hotel rooms and, he's kinda I have a problem with that.

So my question is just I I just fundamentally don't believe he should get a cut of sponsorships. So we're gonna move on beyond that. I mean, there's already a four to one vote on that, so I'm not gonna belabor it. But I do I do clarify. I do have

You make that comment. I wanna clarify. So if he's out pounding the concrete, making contacts, getting together with people, bringing in sponsorships that we split fifty fifty, you fundamentally don't think he should be compensated for his efforts. Is that your

I don't think he should get any sponsorships. If he's if he's gonna support him, we can send them over to you, and we can work those out. And the and the last question I have on this item is how's the bar gonna work? Is he gonna get also percentage of the bar?

I'll ask mister Spielman to address that.

So the bar runs the same as the bar always does. TDES gets 20% of the bar, and then, of course, we have our cost. And I apologize. I'm in the car. We have our cost, but the bar is I've done symphonies before, and the bar is not a very large bar whatsoever. I'll be surprised if we make over $1,000 including our cost and everything on it.

But that bar can apply towards your $4,000 minimum. Is that correct, Todd?

You bet. Yeah. No problem.

Alright. Well, I just don't believe we should get any sponsorship.

K. So in summary, councilman Maderos, what I understand is you have confirmed a collaboration with John Thomas, the symphony. You've talked to mister Spielman and kind of what you're presenting here. There's a collaboration towards the sentiment, the process, and methodology for which you're

John Thomas reported back to me that it was his understanding something had been worked out, and then I got the details afterwards. And I don't know if that went through Chris or Todd or who it was, but it reflected in what we've indicated here. Mhmm. Bottom line is the Symphony is willing to perform, and their cost to appear is $15,000. We will we will we will endeavor to find a named sponsor for that purpose.

I have some names that I wanna contact to see if that will be done. I do think I can come up with matching funds if all five of us are willing to commit using our funds for that purpose to get us to that $10,000 area. So, I mean, you start doing the math. If if we can raise $14,000 on revenue, and we've got $10,000 through council's effort that puts us at 24. And then we have our named sponsor at 15.

We're just about at the 40. Okay. And then and then the last aspect is including the bar revenue, a a minimum guarantee to Todd of 14,000.

4,000.

4 excuse me. 4,000. And a maximum depending upon his sales sponsorships that are not boxes, but his own sponsorships he obtains that he splits 50 up to 10,000. Anything over above 10,000 comes 100% to the city.

Got it. And you're asked of also council members, just to make sure I

have that

right, is it is it 1,000, or is it 2,000 from 1,000. Just 1,000. I'll find the best then. Oh. And then you're okay. With that match. And then the last point, I think just to cover was there was discussion of the of a ticket cost, but a ticket cost that was really more processing from, like, $1 to $3, but still meets the objective and I think the goal of what we're okay.

It's important, I think, and Todd can clarify one thing about giving free tickets. You'll at least cover the the processing, but it also provides information for future concerts to be able to get it. Because as part of that, you know, you put in your email address, and it's for future concerts. And during the concert, the series is advantageous from a production aspect. So And and last thing, I would like to also, and I've discussed this with Todd, approach the Tulare community band about we provide them with a facility to practice in on a weekly basis to see if they would be interested in being the opening act before the symphony plays that.

K. So I think in in covering those points, unless there's other feedback to those points, would entertain if you're wanting to make a motion that covers the change. Before I make it, I

I'd like to know if all members of council are in agreement as far as utilization of our fund to get to that $5,000 amount.

I'm in agreement. I don't know how much I have left in that.

Melissa is pretty quick in answering those questions. She's looking up, I think, right now.

Counsel, we can certainly let you know on the weekly report if she's not able to find that information. I do believe you all have fund balance remaining. I don't know that it's exact amount, but I do believe it's over 1,000 each.

So, mister mayor, on that point, I definitely will support whatever motion to support the event. I will contribute a thousand dollars. And I know this isn't really reality, but symbolically, would not want want want 1p of my $1,000 to go to the operator.

K? I I I don't think your your direction for your contribution is out of order because what I understood is those funds would not play a role paying the the operator. So I

It's in power.

Got it.

So, mister Nolas, I myself, I'm on board with the thousand dollars and the the motions that you're asking for.

Yeah. I'll make a motion to to modify our arrangement so that we'll commit with the Sequoia Symphony to to have the the July 4 Independence Day event, and that based on the estimated cost of $40,000, the city council each council member will contribute $1,000 each of of their funds, we will I will endeavor to find the other $5,000 so that the starting amount will be $10,000. Specifically, mister mister Sagala's thousand dollars will go towards janitorial services. And and

Come on, Dennis.

Other items will be as indicated. Well, I've gotta be specific. Other item items as it relates to how we will break down the the sponsorships will be as previously indicated in our discussion.

I'll second.

K. We have a motion and a second for funding for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary Independence Day with motions and and suggestions taken in from councilman Madero says read. All those in favor? Aye. All the others opposed? Motion carries. Five o.

Thank you, counsel, for the direction. And, Todd, if you'd stay on the phone, I believe item 7.3 in a consent calendar is going to be pulled for discussion. Thank you.

Okay.

Alright. Coming back to items seven on our agenda, consent calendar. All matters listed in the consent calendar are considered by the council to be routine and will be enacted in one motion without discussion. Council, do you have, suggested actions for consent calendar?

So, mister mayor, I'd like to, remove 7.3. However, I do have my appointee for the planning commission here who needs to run off to another meeting a little bit. So if we can just hold off on that one and do the planning commission appointment, I would appreciate that. But 7.3 would be the one I would ask to be removed from consent calendar.

I I would move also that we move up the the nine nine point one at the request of mister Saddell.

K. So council members, though I have a removal and we're at seven, would you I'll move that 9.1 come forward, actually? Okay. So I just if you wanna withdraw the motion

Yeah. Then I I mean, I definitely would request 9.1 I mean, 9.1 to come forward first before consent calendar.

So members of the community, I'm going to adjust the agenda and go to general business. With general business, we are going to bring up nine point one planning commission appointment. And with that, we have a vacancy on our planning commission to appoint one member to the planning commission to the vacancy for term ending 12/31/2029. Our to our clerk if we if you wanna open this item.

Good evening, council. As you stated, there is a vacancy on the planning commission due to a recent resignation. We opened up recruitment around February 10 and received quite a bit of interest in filling this vacancy. This vacant seat is a council seat one appointment, which means council member Sagala will recommend an appointment which must be confirmed by the majority of the council. And I'm here to answer any questions if you need me.

Okay. Thank you. I think first off, councilman Sagal.

Sure. Thank you, mister mayor council. Thank you to the clerk for putting together the staff report. I wanted to, first of all, thank all of the individuals who have, filed, for the various vacancies that we have. There is a process for those who are interested in vacancies to have their applications on file, so I wanted to thank all of those individuals who put forward their names.

I had an opportunity to look at them. And so I wanted to present to you this evening, mister Ralph Cantu, who's in the audience, who's here if anybody had any particular questions. Current currently serves as a commission on the agent committee, but has been, pretty involved in the community. It has some experience that I think would be helpful to the buying commission. He's very, interested in in working to, to help, you know, see what we can do on the West Side to help bring some more developments, some more opportunities.

And so I would like to request that, the council consider mister Cantu for appointment as my appointment for the planning commission. Well, I would move to appoint Ralph Cantu to serve on the planning commission. I'll second that motion.

K. So for general business planning commission appointment, we have a motion and a second for the appointment of Ralph Cantu, as presented by councilman Sagala. Any further discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Appointment carries five o.

This will leave a vacancy in the committee on aging, so I will be opening a recruitment for that.

Recruitment for the committee of aging. Okay? Mister Cantu, congratulations on your appointment, and look forward to your service for the city of Tulare.

Thank you. Moving

back on our agenda. For those keeping the baseball box score, we're back to item seven, consent calendar. I just for the public, all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the council to be routine and will be enacted in one motion without discussion. If discussion is desired, that item may be removed and considered separately. So, council, do you have a desired action for a consent calendar?

So, mister mayor, as I guess we previous conversation, I will ask to remove 7.3 for some further discussion and questions. And if there are no other requests, I'll move that we'll approve seven point one and seven point two.

Second. K.

We have a motion and a second. Hearing no other objection. All in favor? Aye. Seven point one and two is approved. Councilman Sigalis, 7.3.

Well, I'm not sure we want a staff report, but it's, this is an item that, at the last one of the last council meetings, I had asked, for a little more, information on what the fees would be from the operator for those individuals who, submitted a request to use Zoom wall park or to have an event that, I think, required a live performance. I think that's the language in the policy or some kind of production, what they would then be in connection or connected to the operator to see if he was interested in working with them on their event, and then there would be a number of fees that would be charged as part of that process. So I ask that, there'd be a little more transparency on what those fees would look like. So I appreciate that they're brought forward. And so I think for me, what I wanted just so that people understood that if they made the choice to have an event, let's say, you know, mister Isherwood and I wanted to plan a nice little rock event at the, at the park.

And we submitted our date to have to see if it was available. You know, we had our bands lined up, and, we submitted our, application to mister Orr and his staff. And we were able to move forward that if mister Isherwood and I, you know, we had this thing down pat, we didn't need anything from anybody that we were allowed to go ahead and do our our rock concert. But if there was some kind of need for us to maybe use a light or a microphone or some kind of big speaker or something, then we would work with the operator by choice and then come up with a budget as to what would be charged for different aspects of the production. So that's what we have before us tonight.

I still think, they're a little vague, but they're at least a first step in transparency and what people can expect. So my question was to the city manager was if there is a way to I know this is an information item, but if there was a way to sort of codify these in some policies so that the public understood whether you have an event in May or have an event in December, you're gonna get charged the same. And so I don't know if that's something that the council would be willing to do outside of I mean, for example, you know, real production has a relationship with the operator and does all the concerts. But I don't know if there's, like, a bidding process that needs to go out for bid, if it's a city type of event or city type of thing. But those are the two questions I had was, can this be codified so that we everybody understands that's what the fee is or or is gonna be and whether there's a need to kinda go out for bid on some of these services?

Well, let me let me provide a little bit of clarification. Hopefully, this will help. So, again, what we're talking about is if somebody wants to do a live performance, an event, let's say, a concert event, and that's in the time frame of the city's concert series. Right? And that's that May to September time frame because come up in May, all the production equipment goes up, hangs in the rafters, and it stays there until the end of the production.

And so that policy says that, you know, if somebody's just renting the park and they're not doing live performance, they don't need to use Spade entertainment at all. Now we always encourage people to talk to Spade because there may be an opportunity to partnership. Right? So not only is the agreement say that Spade has the right to put on these shows, they have the first right of refusal, etcetera, it's not that Spade wants to run every show. They really don't, frankly. But there's sometimes really great opportunities when parties partner together. Somebody might be doing a fundraising event, they say, hey, Todd. Can we have access to all of your, you know, years of knowledge and network and media sources and everything you use? And he says, yeah. Let's work together on that and make that happen.

Right? So there's op we've seen that happen where a group was was maybe thinking smaller, and by working with Todd, the event became bigger for them. We've also seen groups go in the other direction where they talk to Todd, and and there is no partnership to be made in the event. It's maybe a very small event, or they have their own ideas of how they wanna do things. We just want it but and then they've turned to the city. I think we've already approved nine events or so like that. We've had three that have gone on. It had had this year so far, it's had nothing to do with spade entertainment. But there may be opportunities. Like I said, when you when you encourage that discussion, there sometimes could be really beautiful, partnership opportunities that that can occur from those discussions.

Right? The other thing is we need to make sure we protect our concert series. We've invested a lot of money in it, and we don't wanna make somebody we don't wanna have two things happen. Somebody put on a show and they do they don't this is the first time they've ever done a show. They don't know anything about marketing, production, any of those things. And all of a sudden, we have people coming to that show, and they're like, boy, the city's shows are terrible. This concert series is really bad. Right? We're trying to brand our concert series. It's very important. Right? And so that's why we wanna make sure that it's very clear if it's part of the city's concert series that has a certain standard of production to it. Right? If it's not part of the Cities concert series, that's when they can do their own thing. And and, you know, they don't work it out with Todd.

They work it out with us, and they do their show. That exists. That's happening now. So there is no problem with that issue. We've not I've not heard I've heard people have opinions and people suspect that there could be a problem. I've not heard of any problems actually that exist so far to date on that kind of situation. Now in terms of their fees here, those fees apply when we're in the concert series. So if somebody comes in and they say, well, we don't wanna use Rio Productions. Remember when we did the contract, we had a big open bid process. We hired Spade Entertainment. They were the ones who were the successful candidate in that process to get the contract with the city. They're responsible for all of it, marketing, production, all of it. They went through their own process to find somebody to do production. Rio Productions was the one. They won that process with Spade Entertainment.

They're the ones who own all the equipment. They put it up. Right? So they had to have we had to have engineers look at all their speakers to make sure this the structure could sustain and support all those speakers. Right? That's why we can't have somebody just coming up there and sticking anything they want up there. But what happens is is if somebody comes in and they say, we don't wanna use Rio Productions, that's fine. But what we don't wanna have happen is them come up there and start hanging things in the ceiling. Right? Or they start pushing away Rio Productions equipment. Or all of a sudden, they damage Rio Productions with their own equipment, and everyone's pointing Who who's gonna pay for that? Right? So their options are to either use Rio Productions, and there you see the costs, 17 to 26,000. It depends on the type of event. Right?

One of the things that happens with artists is they have riders, and artists will say, hey. If you hire us, these are all the extra things we need. Right? And so that's why the cost varies. That varies per show. But if you don't wanna reuse Rio, that's fine. You could pay Rio to take all their equipment down. You put up your equipment, and then you pay them as part of that 5,000 fee to put all their equipment back up. Right? So that's what those that's what that fee covers. Now Todd, I believe, is still on the phone. When it comes to amphitheater, I he kinda itemizes it there. He lists in parentheses below it in italics kind of what does it what does Spade Entertainment event coordination for thirty five hundred dollars mean? Well, that includes the cost of liability insurance, right, event management, and permits. There's a lot that goes into these productions.

He has spayed entertainment full event packages for 5,600 to 68 hundreds. Again, it kinda depends on what the full event means. Is it a 3,000 person event or a 6,000 person event? It can change. The costs may change. Todd, if you're on, can you talk a little bit about just amphitheater management? Event provides own production. What is that $1,500

fee? Yeah. Exactly what you just said. On average, our insurance can be anywhere from 2,000 to $3,000 per show depending on, you know, what what kind of show it is, who the artist is, and how many people are there and everything. But just being on-site, if you bring in somebody that has never ran the production at that venue, they're not gonna know where anything is.

Where where are the proper electrical, you know, boxes? What do we need to plug in here? What do we need to do here? And it's it's all day for for two days. I mean, you you guys see us do it.

And to go back to your point, Jose, when we went back and we looked for somebody in the local area because that was really pressed upon us, we already we already had someone lined up, but it was really impressed on us to look for someone local. We didn't really like what we were finding, and that was in Bakersfield in Fresno. There was really nobody in to look very necessarily. And luckily, Paul came in kinda last minute, and he was a godsend. And he came in way less than any of those other guys and owns about 85% of of his equipment.

So and that's one of the reasons why he came in a little bit less. But I think we also mark in if I'm not mistaken on that spreadsheet, and again, apologize. I'm driving, is a backstage manager. So somebody whether it's from the city or whoever managing things back is backstage. So everyone knows where everything is because things do get damaged.

Things go missing, not necessarily on purpose. There's a lot of stuff in that green room. A lot of it we have locked up. But then we also have our big walk in cooler with tons of drinks and everything, and it's hard to track inventory if people are using that refrigerator. So there's a lot to it.

So thank thank you, Todd. I don't wanna cut you off if you're done.

You bet. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. So in summary of the the question, I think responses, which I heard was, is this fee schedule, if you will, published? It it stays as part of our our handouts policy. My under my understanding of that is yes, that once we approve this, much like if you were to rent the the lights at Live Oak Park or others, there's a fee schedule, and this is sustained for for the public. The other question that I heard was out for bid for services.

So I think with that is the possibility that council could make a decision that if we wanted to open up an a whole new bid for services. Is that what I understand the question that if council could put out a bid for services? Is that

Well, no. I just I was just trying to get to that to that issue. Yeah. So what I was asking the city attorney, mister mayor, was I do I do appreciate what you said about us taking an action, but does this item allow us to take an action given its information? I was asking the city attorney about that because I would be supportive in us saying, you know, okay. These are the fees. These are the fees. You know? And so that way, there's some uniformity. There are the fees to everyone.

You know? However, whenever it comes back for council and they and to council, hey. We have to up our fees and whatever. So I definitely would support that if that if we could do that tonight. But, but but I think one of the questions is is, I understand us trying to protect the integrity of our concert series, but I'm assuming that this is gonna this applies to paid events, not necessarily nonprofit events, but paid events.

So if a promoter who has a track record of providing excellent concerts wants to do one in Tulare at the amphitheater, they can go through this process and then figure out if they wanna work with the operator or not, or is another operator prohibited from doing concerts at all?

No. I mean, I I can tell you we have a local operator, named Euler. And I've suggested Euler, if you wanna do a concert, for some reason, Euler and Todd don't seem to get along. I don't understand that exactly. But Todd's reached out a number of times, and I'm not sure what's going on there. But I said to Euler, if you wanna do a concert, come see me. Submit an application. We'll take a look at it, and we'll talk about that. So that's just one promoter. Absolutely. But at the same time, remember, our concert series, we have an operator, and and we have our first dedication to our concert series. We built the venue, and we picked this operator. So if somebody comes in and says, hey. I wanna do an event on July 3, and Todd already has a concert on July 3, Todd's gonna get preference for

July 3. Oh, I know that. But if someone wants to come in and say, I wanted you on July 8, then there's no date. There there is it depend I mean

It depends. Yeah. So we'll we'll definitely we'll work with them, and we'll give them to Todd, but it kinda depends. Let's say let I'll give you let's go in reverse. Let's say Todd has a concert on July 8, and let's say it's a a Latin concert. And somebody else comes in and says, well, I wanna have a Latin concert on July 3. Well, that may be difficult. Right? We may have competing concerts, and they may be cannibalizing each other, so we'd have to have that conversation.

So I understand. I mean, I I just I just get I just get questions from operators or other vent or other promoters who are interested, but feel that they are being pushed out. So I just wanna

They should reach out to me. They I'll give you my business card. They can call me anytime I

want get ahold of you. But, I mean, that's just the environment out there. So I just wanna make sure that folks I mean, yeah, I understand you want people have good quality concerts, but quite frankly, they might be they might put on a better concert.

100%. So 100%.

So that's I just wanna make sure

That's why I wanna put on the record here tonight, public. Anyone that's listening at home or anybody in the audience, if you wanna put on a concert, come see me.

When I I think with that is in our vote is this establishes, which was a fee schedule that as we've walked through the scenarios that you come in, and if you're going to engage with Spade Entertainment fee schedule, you have that in front of you. If you don't, you have a fee of what production equipment removal would be. Everybody gets the same schedule, the same fee, the same approach, which was, my understanding, the nexus of of what what we have in front of us.

Yeah. Our intent was we provided this to you this evening. We've answered your questions. We're gonna attach it to the policy that we have. So anybody that comes in, they'll know exactly what these fees are. That's exactly what our intentions are.

Okay. So, counsel, I'd like do you have action on 07/2003?

If it's information only, then we don't take action.

Are are

are we taking action?

The the agenda item is to accept, to receive the fee schedule. The what I believe is what's stated in the agenda is for information only is the is related to the pricing, not to the agenda item.

Which means?

You should take action to receive the fee schedule.

Okay. Then I'll make a motion that we receive the fee schedule.

Second. I second.

K. We have a motion and a second to receive the fee schedule. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Five o. K. Moving forward on our agenda for item eight. And also, Todd, thank you for attending. And for anybody else listening on that item, appreciate your attendance. Item eight, public hearing. Comments related to public hearing items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of thirty minutes per item unless otherwise extended by counsel. Again, for those that wish to make public comment while viewing the meeting online, you may call (559) 366-1849.

The item we have for 8.1 is a master fee schedule amendment. Adopt a resolution amending the city's master fee schedule related to parks and recreation fees associated with the use of Zumwalt Park. And so I will start first staff presentation, mister Orr.

Thank you, mayor.

On May 17, the city council adopted res resolution two zero two two dash 18, establishing the city's master fee schedule. Fees were based on analysis of city services and the reasonable costs incurred in providing those services. Since that time, Zumo has undergone significant revitalization, including the addition of new amenities and improvements that have enhanced its value as a premier event menu. The existing rental fees for Zumo no longer reflect those improvements and the associated cost of maintenance and operations. On 02/10/2026, Parks and Recreation Commission reviewed and unanimous unanimously recommended approval of the revisions of the facility use schedule for Xumo.

These revisions were developed to ensure fees are equitable, cost recovering, and consistent with the enhanced amenities provided. Proposed amendment to the faster master fee schedule includes the following updates for Zoom. Zoom all park special events, private full day rental, 1,000, and then Zoom all park special events, nonprofit groups, full day, seven fifty. Half day rentals for Zoom all park have been eliminated due to the complexity and scale of events typically hosted at the venue. These changes align with the city's policy to establish fees that reflect the cost of services provided and ensure that the fees do not exceed the cost of providing these services.

So I'm asking the council tonight to adopt a resolution amending the city's master fee schedule. K.

Yeah. I think if it's maybe, you know, an informational question or to clarify these items, go go ahead. If it's more of a

I mean, there's nothing in this about the issue of conflict with other events. I mean, if we get into the series of concerts, I mean, how is that dealt with? Or does part does your department make a determination as to whether there could be a conflict itself, and that's not built into this is only fees then.

This is only fees. It has nothing to do with the application process.

Okay. I understand. Question and answer. Okay.

I just have a question. Oh, I'm sorry.

Well, if it's yeah.

Clarifying question. Clarifying question. So the parks that are listed here on the fee schedule, there are parks that aren't there. Does that mean they're a different schedule, or is this just we're talking just about some Walt Park tonight?

This is just a fee increase resumables. The other parks will remain the same.

Thank you.

So with that, I'm going to open the public hearing for 8.1 master fee schedule amendment. Is there anyone in in chambers who'd like to speak on this public hearing for this item? K. Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone? Alright. Seeing that there's no one in in chambers that wishes to speak and we have no one on the phone, I will close the public hearing. And I will then go to comp additional questions from council members, and I'll start with our vice mayor, mister Harrell.

There are no questions, mister mayor.

Mister Segala? Yeah. I had

a quick question, mister Orr. Zumar Park is public park. Right? And it has certain hours of operation. I think it closed at ten or something like that. So I got asked a question the other day. If if someone wanted to just go into the park, pop up a tent, and have a party, is that allowed?

That's covered in the park special event application process. I don't have it in front of me, but that defines what a group event would be.

Well but that doesn't happen in other parks. Right? I mean, I can go to a mall cave park, pop up a tent, get some chairs, chill out. They would be bring a TV. Yes. Watch a dodger game or something.

And it's or a certain amount.

I can do that. Yeah. Right? But not at Zoom Wall.

And I wouldn't say you can't do it

at I was just asking, can can that happen? So when I mean have a party, I mean have, like, a little birthday party celebration. There's no there's no need to file a permit to do that at the park? No. No? So I so anybody can just

pop up and If it's under a certain amount of people. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. The event policy the event policy identifies a number of people.

And it was at 50, I think?

I think that was my recollection was 50.

Don't because

someone asked me if can I just go and like, if I go to Pleasant or Bouquet and just whatever?

We can in a weekly report, clarify that for you, but I believe it's a it's when it's over 50 people, I think. But we'll get that number. I put it in a weekly report. You yes. Yeah. I think

I remember. I just wanted to cover it because I got asked by a few folks, can they

do that? Chris, you'll send that to me. I'll put it in Friday in a Friday weekly report.

And and then in terms of the the the policy, I'm trying to recall if if someone rented the park and, did an event, we were just talking about live concert, did an event, ticket sales, and all that kind of stuff, would use or did not use the operator. There's the only the only fee we would collect would be the thousand dollars. Correct. So if they had

a you know?

Well If they did a $100,000 concert and made a $150,000, we'd only get a thousand dollars.

Depending on the scale of the event, it's close to the public, we would have to I mean, there's other fees that are gonna come in there. If they're gonna have alcohol, that's another that's another fee schedule that's addressed in the rental policy. If there's so many people, if there's live band, they're probably gonna need security. So the $1,000 is just a base rental fee to rent the park. But there is but there

is no policy if they go beyond that in terms of, like, if they did a live performance and, you know, as a as a private money making venture that we just charge a thousand dollars and then whatever, as you said, security or whatever. To my knowledge, correct.

Yeah. We we we I mean

I I mean, I wanted to point that out in case Yeah. Somebody comes in and takes you up on your offer.

Oh, 100%. I love them too. But I would suggest, counsel member Segala, is if you have questions like this, like, what about this size or what about that? Just send me an email with all those, and I will give you a written response on each one that says, okay. In this case because that would help you a lot when people ask you questions. Well, what if I have what if I have, you know, a live band versus what if I have, you know, a bounce house? Can I have a bounce house? Like, if you send me all those things, we'll give you now not only will I give you another copy of the policy document, but I'll lay out in each of those scenarios, this is what would apply.

No. I appreciate it, but I like to ask my questions in public. So thank you.

K. Do we have oh, I'm sorry. Mister Medeiros? Council member, sir. K. Council, if we have no further questions, do we does council have an action? Or is this just present this is a presentation and adopt a Make sure I'm reading the right thing.

I'll make a motion to adopt the resolution amend amending the city's master fee schedule as indicated in the staff report.

I'll second the motion.

We have a motion and a second to adopt the resolution amending the city's master fee schedule related to parks and recreation fees associated with the use of Zumel Park. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Five o. Moving forward on our agenda, 9.2, domestic wastewater treatment plant facility plan draft report. Tricia Winfield.

Good evening, counsel. We're gonna change gears a little bit for you. This isn't something that you typically see, but, we felt that it was important enough to bring this item to you, so you can see what we've been working on and where we're headed. So in October 2024, the board of public utilities approved a task amendment with Corollo engineers to complete a wastewater treatment plant facilities plan, a certification of fiscal sustainability, and a reuse feasibility plan. The scope of the facilities plan was to evaluate the existing treatment plant facilities and make recommendations for future projects to increase the efficiency of the treatment process and to provide additional domestic plant capacity via an expansion project.

So we've been talking for many years that once we reach 80% of our plant capacity, the state basically requires us to start planning our expansion. So we are at the 80% for the domestic treatment plant. Staff has been, meeting with Corolla over the past year. Our last meeting included the city manager, city engineer, and other city staff. So this presentation has gotten, pared down a little bit as we continue, to move it forward.

So the board of public utilities, received the draft report and the presentation at their meeting on February 19. The council has received a copy of the draft report in your packet, and Corollo is here tonight to give a presentation as an informational item only. We are not asking for any action tonight. The BPU will adopt the study at a later meeting in March, and they will also be asked to give staff direction to move forward with the design engineer. Per the city charter, the BPU has the authority to pledge to our revenues to fund the expansion project.

You'll see why we're having this conversation and request the city council action for the bond issuance. So, tonight, we have from Corollo engineers, Ryan Selman and John Witter. Behind them is our wastewater treatment plant staff. I think they're out way past their bedtime because they get to work at 6AM. So if you have any questions, we do have Corollo and our staff present to answer any questions. And with that, I'm gonna let Ryan start the presentation.

Sounds good. Thank you, Tricia. Thank you, mayor, city council members for letting us be here today. So like Tricia said, we're gonna go over your guys' domestic wastewater treatment plant facility plan and what's come out of that, work over the last year. So quick agenda for our presentation. I'll be going through items one and two. I guess, no. I'm Ryan with Corollo, and I'm the principal in charge for the project. And then items three and four, I'll turn it over to John Witter, who's the project manager from Corolla. So historical and future flows and loads.

So you can see there's a bunch of dots here and then a few dash lines. The upper line is your guys' max daily flow. So that's kinda your peak flow coming into the facility. The dots are actual measured flows, with with the dash line being future, projected flows. The orange, diamonds there, that's your average day max month flow, and that's usually what treatment plants are designed around.

So you guys can see you're, just under five MGD and propose to go out 7.1 MGD. Based on the sewer collections master plan, 7.1 MGD, is the flow that would be with full build out of the city currently under your general plan. If you follow the general plan at 2.7% growth rate, that gets you out to twenty forty one. At that point, you know, we're not really sure what would happen with your guys' flows based on the current general plan. So a couple things to note.

2004 design criteria is there on the left side. So you can see the max month flow was six MGD. That was the design of the treatment facility. And then if you look at the loads there on the right, the £9,000 for BOD, 8,900 for TSS, and so on, you can see where we're at today. So the proposed design criteria is 7.1 MGD. So it's not a huge flow increase, only one MGD. But if you look at the loadings, it's over double. And so this is what we've seen in most valley towns in in general across California with conservation. Flows drop. You guys get more water efficient, except those loads are continuing to rise.

So the concentration of what's in that water continues to rise. So a lot of, communities used to really look at flow, in the in the past of, hey. Where are we at versus where we're gonna be? But now we really have to look at the actual loads. So first thing we did as part of the facility plan is look at the evaluation of your guys' existing domestic wastewater plant. We have some pictures here. The picture there on your left, is the primary clarifiers. You can see some, the coating failing, concrete starting to, spall and have issues, and a lot of the mechanical equipment starting to fail. They having, city staff really struggling trying to keep things up and running. Center photo is the secondary clarifier.

Similar issues as primaries, coating failures, some concrete concerns, and a lot of mechanical issues. Picture on the right is really the workhorse of the treatment plant. Those are your blowers. You can see mechanical equipment just starting to age and reach the end of its useful life. Here on the left is the digester, so that handles your guys' solids. You can see a lot of concrete spalling, lot of issues there, the coating failing, mechanical issues. Middle picture is a picture of an MCC. So that's the power for the facility. Over twenty years old, definitely past its useful life, have a hard time finding parts for them, not as reliable. The right are the secondary effluent pumps.

So this is the discharge pumps that pump the flow out of the plant. You can see just very old aging out, into their useful life. We like putting this figure together. So this is a aerial view of the treatment plan. Everything in red was built in the original facility in 1974. So you're over 50 years old in a lot of these facilities. For general, we we look at, you know, structural work being having a fifty year useful life. So you're pushing the end of that. Mechanical equipment closer to, fifteen to twenty years. You can see there was a expansion done in 1996, so, thirty years ago.

So, again, all that mechanical equipment's in the useful life. Concrete's getting closer. And, really, since then, you guys haven't done any expansion. So in the last thirty years, there hasn't been any, work at the plant to actually expand the flow. And just to confirm, this is just the domestic, not the industrial plant that you guys did, do some upgrades at.

But, in 2004, you can see that small green box. That was to meet permit requirements, to remove nitrates. And then, in 2012, you guys did upgrade the Influent pump station and headworks, and all of that is still in good shape. It's sized appropriately, so none of that would need to be, repaired as part of the future project. So one interesting thing, we went through and did the modeling.

Like we talked about, the original plant was designed around six MGD. However, once we looked at the new loadings you guys are seeing, we actually found out that four MGD is about the capacity of the treatment plant, not six with the current increased loadings, and that's really temperature dependent. So in the winter, the bugs slow down. You lose treatment capacity, so it actually drops a little lower than that. Also, several process, deficiencies were observed when we did this modeling work.

Influence hydraulics, there's some issues with flow split and how to get all the flow into the domestic plant. The recert wet well sizing, the city really has to manually adjust these based on the flow. And depending, you know, if you guys have get a high peak flow, you can have problems with your process. Anoxic basin redundancy, that was what was built in 2004. Again, there's no redundancy to that anoxic zone, so there's no way for the city staff to take it offline and do maintenance.

Mixed liquor flow split. So after the aeration basins, this is the flow split between the clarifiers. A couple of the clarifiers are deeper. You can see that in the last bullet, but really just balancing flow between the clarifiers. If you overload clarifiers, you wash out all of your biology. And so they really struggle with those flow, fluctuations to try to maintain a good balance throughout the plan. And with that, I'll turn it over to John to go over the expansion and alternatives.

Thank you. So, Ryan presented on the the historical flows and concentrations and loads and identified what those capacity demands are for the future based on the build out, and then we evaluated your existing plant. So we've identified a gap between what your current plant can do and what the future plant needs to be designed around. So what I'm gonna talk about is what we looked at next of how do we bridge that gap with a plant expansion and some of the alternatives that we looked at. So we focused kind of stepping back at the bigger picture, what are the options for the range of alternatives that we consider for expanding the treatment plant?

So there's a couple different options. We could expand the existing plant, but there are some concerns with that that makes it more difficult to address the existing process and hydraulic deficiencies that we identified that Ryan talked about. There's some space constraints. There's quite a bit of land at the plant, but the way that the basins are configured, it's not set up very well to expand those in parallel to have, even flow splits and have that set up for the future. And some feasibility of construction sequencing, I think this is one of the largest concerns.

You know, we're we're tying into 50 year old equipment. There's a lot of risk construction risk associated with that when you modify concrete risk of whether it's even feasible or not. So you go through the design, and then you step into construction, and there's a lot of risks about the practicality of being able to sequence that work. So another option would be to convert convert the existing plant. So rather than expanding it in kind, how can we modify within the existing process to intensify or to squeeze more capacity out of your existing infrastructure?

So that may help with some of the process concerns. We can upgrade the biological process to a a more modern or a diff a different technology, but that doesn't necessarily go all the way to addressing some of those hydraulic and process issues that we touched on. And, again, the viability of doing that. Can is it practical to take these basins that are not uniform, they have different depths, and try to fit in a new process with it? And then the last thing we looked at is abandoning the existing plant and building a new plant in parallel.

So that would provide improved performance. You can start off on a greenfield site and build that with the future in mind so you have that future expansion laid out logically for symmetrical facilities. It gives you more flexibility. It has a larger footprint because you would have to build that off to the side and then determine what to do with that existing plant, and it allows you to increase your capacity and, again, set you up for the future. And then the last thing I'm showing here is there's a way that you could also phase that.

So the potential to build part of the capacity now while keeping your existing plant operation, if that's a desire, as you phase in the the infrastructure to meet those capacity demands for or the capacity for the future demands. So here's a summary of those alternatives that I mentioned. So expanding the existing, converting the existing to MBR, a membrane biological reactor. I'll touch on some of these technologies a little bit. And then greenfield, which is the new parallel plant to match existing.

There's multiple iterations of that and then four different iterations of the greenfield with a secondary only process. So I'll get into that a little bit more. So so we looked at so I'm gonna go back. So we we eliminated from consideration expanding the existing and converting the existing process because we determined it does not do enough to address the process and hydraulic issues that the plant currently has. So now we're left with the greenfield alternatives and then getting a touch more into wastewater process.

So the top figure is the solids handling. So what you guys do with the solids. So wastewater treatment, you're separating solids from liquids. You're treating the liquids and dealing with the solid stream. So on so on the solids, you have primary sludge and waste activated sludge. Both of those are sent to an anaerobic digester. That's the icon in the figure. That anaerobic digester breaks down the solids, it creates methane gas that can be beneficially reused, but you also have to have a waste gas flare so you're not venting methane. So you also need boilers. You need heat exchangers.

You need hot water pumps because you have to maintain, those digesters at, like, a 100 degrees. So there's a lot of equipment, a lot of mechanical equipment, and a lot of that equipment on the current digesters have failed and are, you know, very costly to repair. And there's also coordination with the air board, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, because they dictate their regulations around biogas production and and waste gas flares. So from there, you have the digested ga or sorry, the digested sludge that goes to your sludge drying beds that are then hauled off-site. So the other option that we looked at is eliminating primary sludge and only dealing with the secondary sludge, waste activated sludge.

And so you don't have an anaerobic digester. You're only sending the sludge directly to the sludge drying beds. You may need a little bit more volume or area for the sledge drying beds because you're not getting that breakdown in the digester, but you don't have to maintain all of that mechanical equipment. You don't have to coordinate with the airboard on the biogas production. So going through that evaluation and discussions with plant staff, we recommend to eliminate primary treatment and moving forward without primary treatment to just have a waste activated sludge.

So going back to our alternatives, those are the three alternatives that we looked at. So a greenfield alternative for three different treatment technologies for a waste activated sludge or a secondary only process. So those are the three alternatives that we carried forward into detailed evaluation, and I'll touch on those a little bit after I go into the common improvements. So regardless of the treatment technology that we evaluate, there are certain improvements that the plant needs regardless of the treatment techno regardless of the treatment technology. So one of those things is in working with plant staff and public works is identification for a new admin building.

So we understand there may be that may be incorporated into a larger project with a corp yard, but we have a placeholder here for abandoning the existing admin building and moving a lot of that electrical equipment into a new electrical building. We will need a electrical building with new switch gears and motor control centers to power all of the equipment for the new treatment process. And then we have the new solids handling for so that's the thickening area and then retrofitting the digesters to serve the new treatment process and upgrades to the secondary effluent pump station. So a lot of upgrades regardless of treatment technology. And then getting into the three treatment alternatives.

So, I'll try to spare you all from detailed wastewater process, but we looked at, three technologies. The first one is called a modified LUDZAC Attinger. This is actually the process that the plant currently runs. And so the photos on the left are just examples of a reference facility. So concrete basins, walkways, anoxic zones, aerobic zones.

The photo on the bottom are disc diffusers. So these are rubber discs that you have a blower on the end of that pipe, and that forces air into your process that sir feeds the microbes that perform the treatment. And so and then from your basin, your MLE basin, your bioreactor, then that goes to a a circular secondary clarifier where you're settling out the solids so you can separate the solids from the liquids. So on the right is an example of what that would look like for Tulare for the full 7,100,000 gallons per day flow capacity, assuming that you would abandon the existing plant. So there's four parallel trains there, going to the clarifiers, and then going back into your existing effluent pump station.

So the effluent discharge would be the same combining with your industrial effluent and then still going to the, percolation ponds and, fields for irrigation to the south of the treatment plant. The next alternative is membrane bioreactor. So this is a intensified process, so you can put more biomass into your basins by having these membranes. So you it's a physical separation. So you have a pump where you're pumping the water through the membranes, so it allows you to build much smaller tanks, but there's a lot more equipment that's associated with it.

You have to have chemical pumps and additional blowers, additional pumps. You have to have a bridge crane to be able to maintain the membrane cassettes. So the the site plan on the right is a comparison of what that sizing would look like for the city. And then the last alternative we looked at is an oxidation ditch. So this is kind of on the other end of the spectrum compared to membrane bioreactor.

So much larger basin, which with a lot less equipment. So there's less moving parts. Again, representative photos on the left. So you have a a gate that controls the flow around rather than a pump station. And instead of having blowers and diffusers, you have this impeller mixer that spins to force air into the into the water, and then you have larger concrete basins to maintain a larger inventory.

And then the site the site plan on the right that shows two oxidation ditches and two clarifiers to serve the needs for the future capacity. So then getting into the financial evaluation. So first, we have the common improvements. So these are project cost factors. This is construction cost plus your engineering and permitting, construction management costs.

So the biggest portion of this is the admin building. So understanding that that may or may not be part of the treatment plant upgrade, but we wanted to include a con a conservative number here in the project cost as an example of what would be included for that. And then, again, all the other components for the solids handling electrical building, so that's about $43,000,000 estimated. And then the secondary treatment alternatives, the project costs are in the range of a $120,000,000. This is, again, for the full build out, and we've broken that out.

So the blue bars are your bioreactor, the mostly your concrete basins, secondary clarifiers, your mechanical equipment, electrical upgrades, and programming for the controls, blower building. So those are your total project costs for the secondary treatment components. And the other thing to note is these are all, you know, preliminary planning level estimates. And so the difference between 115,000,000 and 123,000,000 is within the level of contingency for the for the estimate at this stage of accuracy for the facility plan. So we would consider these to not have a significant difference between the three alternatives.

The other thing we looked at is not just capital cost, but what are the long term o and m operations and maintenance that the plant would have to look at for these upgrades. So we broke that down for power, chemicals, polymer is needed for the solids handling, labor maintenance, and biosolids hauling. So actually hauling off-site the solids after it goes through the drying beds. And so the MLE process has the lowest o and m cost followed shortly by oxidation ditch. And then the MBR has a much higher cost because it has a lot more equipment.

There's a lot more controls. There's a lot more maintenance associated with all of the equipment. The membrane replacement, those membranes have a warranty, and they need to be replaced every ten years or so, and that has a pretty relatively high recurring cost as well. So that adds to the annual O and M. So then we put the capital and the O and M together to come up with a twenty year life cycle cost, and so that's what we're showing here ranging from a 163,000,000 for the MLE up to 184,000,000 for MBR.

And, again, these are less than 10% difference with any difference of less than 10% across the three alternatives. And so based on this, we did not see a a clear financial driver to make a selection between these three alternatives. The other thing that we look at are nonfinancial considerations. And so we look at what are the process considerations, ease of operations and maintenance, the footprint, how well does it set you up for the future, how are the solids handling dealt with, are there differences there? So the main takeaway here is that the oxidation ditch process is a lot more it's a lot simpler.

There's a lot less mechanical equipment. There's less maintenance. There's less controls and programming. It's more you know, there's two or three main pieces of equipment for the process. You really kind of set it and forget it, and you have a lot much larger concrete basin to attenuate any variability in your influence conditions. So it's just a lot more robust. And the trade off is it has a much larger footprint, so you're trading off that simplicity for volume of concrete to pour for

those structures. Stop one second there. When you talked about it, I think I didn't I don't remember you said it exactly this way, but I'll describe it this way. Less impact or impact from effluent. That's not what you said. Right now, our treatment plan has an issue when we have really wet, rainy conditions. And you were trying, I think, to just speak to that the Oxidation Ditch is less impacted by that. Can you describe that a little bit more?

Yeah. So because you have a much larger volume, your basin is much larger, you are able to attenuate. You're able to dampen any variability in your influence because it acts you know, there's some equalization that occurs within the volume of that basin. So you have you're building up an inventory of biomass to handle any fluctuations in flow or concentrations much better than the processes that have smaller tanks. They're gonna be more susceptible to washout and issues that the current plant the plant is currently experiencing when there are large rain events.

Like Ryan mentioned, you have differences in the levels in your clarifiers, and a lot of the solids wash out with the effluent because it doesn't have the time to settle out in your clarifiers, and it doesn't have the time to be treated. And so the the plant actually needs to get reseeded where biomass from the industrial plant has to get shipped over to the domestic plant to start that process back up. So the oxidation ditch inherently would be less susceptible to some of those issues. So, yeah, putting the financial analysis together with the nonfinancial comparison, we also went to we went with plant staff to look at representative facilities. So we're kinda fortunate in this area.

Hanford, they have an oxidation ditch. Visalia, they have a membrane bioreactor process. City of Fresno, they have bioreactors similar to the MLE process. And so it's a great opportunity to talk to other cities to hear from their plant staff, you know, how do they like running this these different processes. So putting that all together, the recommendation and workshops with city manager and city engineer and public works, it was a consensus to move forward with the oxidation ditch process, again, due to site visits and discussing with peer agencies, the workshops.

Again, similar costs, but much simpler operations and maintenance, less equipment, larger basins, more stable process, less susceptible to upsets. So that was the recommendation for the treatment technology. And then now that we've identified the treatment technology, how do we actually implement that into the next steps for the domestic plant? So the next steps are to recommend constructing the full treatment capacity. But like I mentioned earlier on, there is the ability to split flow with the existing and phase construction if there is a a need to reduce the initial construction cost based on funding.

So there's some complications with that just because now plant staff have to maintain two different plants, and there's two different processes. And you have an oxidation ditch process plus their existing process, and they have to maintain that existing equipment, but potential benefit on a initial reduction in capital cost. And then what that might look like so here's the site plan that I showed for the oxidation ditch. So two oxidation ditches, two clarifiers, and then the red boxes indicate abandoning or demolishing the domestic plant and the admin building. So potential phasing could look like one oxidation ditch and two smaller clarifiers and keeping in service the the existing plant.

So this is just kind of a rough idea of what that footprint indication would be. The other thing we looked at are what are our first thoughts of ways to reduce the initial project cost. So I think the first one is just figuring out what the approach is for the admin building, whether that would be, you know, encumbered as part of this project or if that would be a separate project. I think we were showing, you know, maybe $15,000,000 of that 160,000,000 dedicated to the admin building, so figuring out what the approach is for that. There's also a couple options on the solids handling.

I think there's some assets at the existing plant that could be investigated a little bit further as far as the condition of a roof, if it could be rehabbed, if it makes sense to do some rehabilitation on that versus constructing a separate simpler facility with the cost saving opportunities would be there, eliminating a shade canopy, looking at a sludge lagoon versus rehabbing the digester. So some of these things could be fleshed out during a preliminary design to further evaluate these, looking at the true need for rehabilitating the drying beds with some of the process or mechanical equipment, gates, and pumps there, and then also the capacity, rightsizing the capacity. How big does the new oxidation ditch need to be to serve kind of the immediate needs and balancing that with the available funding? So just a rough ballpark on a wag of what that might look like. So the full build out, abandoning you the existing plant with everything that we included just over a $160,000,000.

If you phase that, you can reduce an oxidation ditch. You can build smaller clarifiers, but then you have to maintain both plants in service. That would save you about $3,030,000,000 dollars or so. And then maybe some of these other options that we've just initially started to evaluate the ability to salvage some of the existing assets at the plant could be another 20 or so million. So big picture recommending a a plant upgrade somewhere between 100 and $160,000,000 for an oxidation ditch clarifier expansion.

And then the next steps from here, so we submitted the draft facility plan, and that's been submitted to staff. And we're available to respond to any comments, and we'll be submitting the final facility plan. And then in parallel, I understand that the city has engaged a rate consultant to look at how the sewer rates maybe support or would be impacted by this project. So determining what the available funding is and then looking at further investigating some of those on-site assets to determine if that could be included in in the future plant upgrade or if we should be constructing new, for example, sludge thickeners, and then moving forward with the predesign for the plant expansion to make sure that the basis of design for the project is established before moving into detailed design and then issuing that project out for construction. And I believe that is all I had.

So if you guys have any questions, happy to take them.

K. Thank you for the the presentation and information. I think first, I think with that is amongst the presentation we have, if we have any comments from chambers. So I'm gonna ask for public comment real quick. Just line that if there's anyone from the public in hearing this presentation. We don't have samples of sludge with us tonight. That would have been nice.

But Not yet.

But with that,

if there's any comments. Correct? Do we have anyone on the phone? Okay. We'll open up. Council members, can I open up if any questions or comments?

Mister B for Tricia and yourself, is the concept that we go out for a bond and then service the bond with rates? Is that is that what you're saying?

Yeah. More than likely. We have a meeting, I think, in two weeks with, the financial consultant. As John stated, we are in the middle of a water and sewer rate study, so we're compiling all the data. And so they've already kinda made some preliminary recommendations because we're looking at this project and then the corporation yard. So we will more than likely need to bond both wastewater and probably water.

And is it your anticipation that the commissioners, the BPU commissioners would make site visits at I know indicated Hanford and where else? You

So we we conducted those site visits with plant staff to evaluate the the treatment technologies. And based on those site visits, we recommend the oxidation ditch process. So I think, you know, if there's an interest to look at a functioning oxidation ditch, I think that could be something that could

be explored further. That's a decision they would have to make and

make their determination. Yeah. So like I said, we brought this report to him, at the last meeting in February. It's a lot to digest, between the report and this presentation. No pun intended. No no pun intended. Our bodies work like the treatment plant. They like that temperature too. So we are gonna bring this back to him because it's a lot. It's a big project.

We under and that's why we're bringing this to the council because, you know, this affects every resident in Tulare. What I told the board that I really think is kind of the big thing to remember is that map of the age of the facility is probably my favorite slide in this because it really shows us what we're dealing with. I mean and I say that as I get ready to turn 50 this year. That plant is over fifty years old. The expansion in 2012 where we updated the head works, that was when we gave us the ability to flow from the domestic plant to the industrial.

So that's kind of what is helping us right now. So, you know, when John talked about our true plant capacity or Ryan, our true plant capacity at about 4,000,000 gallons, it's because we have the ability to flow anything additional to the industrial plant. Because the domestic plant, we bring it up to that 4.5, it has a hard time treating it. So we're at the point where that plant you know, we're we're really looking this is the future of Tulare. The proposal for the new plant is really that will get us fifty, seventy, you know, maybe eighty years, and they can expand upon it from there.

But with our current footprint footprint and the current process, it's just it's it's not working. And we do monthly dashboards to the board of public utilities. You'll see in the winter months when we get a lot of rain or it's very cold, we sometimes can't meet our waste discharge permit requirements. You know? Our our nitrates might not miss or our VOD may be high because the plant washes out or it's too cold and the bugs just don't wanna work like they're supposed to. So

Well, I I know there were comments made about ways to to cut the cost and to save money. And, you know, when you're doing something, I I think any major project, I see it at, the school district level. I see it with the city, other projects. You find ways to save money, but in the long run, you're costing yourself money. I for instance, I always talk about the library and the city council chambers in 2010, I think it was.

Mike Michael, you you probably know better than anybody what it cost to build this facility. And when we look back now, which is fifteen years later, sixteen years later, boy, did we save a lot of money doing that. And yet there were those at that time that were opposed to this project because it cost too much money. We have this beautiful chambers. We have this beautiful library. It's because they a majority council at that time had the wisdom to go ahead with the project. And I would certainly encourage our our board to take a look and make the steps that are necessary to move this community forward.

Yes. And when you're talking about a treatment plan expansion, you gotta remember, you saw that map. There were four expansions over the last fifty years. So what happened before that? So all the piping and the old infrastructure that's still there. So when you start to dig at the treatment plant, you don't know what you're gonna come across because you don't know what may have been abandoned in, you know, 1950 or 1920. So, it it's a lot harder than building on a new site. So as we if we were to move over and do the proposal of the oxidation ditch, we're kinda starting fresh. Abandon the existing. Do a good job abandoning the existing, and then we have, you know, that room for, you know, future plants and however we're gonna grow from there.

Couple couple comments. One is, you know, the the BPU, obviously, there are some big decisions to make. One will be what is the method of technology. You've heard that the consultant and staff are recommending the oxidation ditch. They also have to make a decision.

Are they gonna build it in phases or, you know, all of it at one time? And so that's a big decision. I will tell you that you'll remember in the March 2025 strategic planning session, NHA advisors gave you an analysis of the city's financials and what we could afford on some of the things. And if you remember back at that time, based on the the then current rate structure, not the new proposed rate structure, they were talking about the capacity of about a $120,000,000 of bonding capacity. Know, that's without the new rate study.

That's not without really layering in developer impact fees. And another thing that we're considering, just so you know, is we are talking about one of the methods we might be able to use in terms of saving some money, not necessarily building less capacity, because I would tell you where my head is at currently is probably build full capacity. But we still have some talking and thinking to do, and we have to meet with the the financial consultants. But we are looking at the possibility of refinancing some of our bonds. And when you refinance existing bonds and you do that at a lower interest rate, you can use those dollars either to put towards, you know, a cash payment towards reducing your overall debt payment on the new facility.

You can use those potentially to lower or smooth out new rates. Right? So as you do a new rate study, you could extend you can you can wait for the rates to hit, or you can extend them out over a period of time. You can smooth it. So there's a lot at play. You're gonna hear all of that when we come back to you in the future.

K. Mhmm. Thank you for your

Thank you.

Thank you to Carillo and your team. Okay. We have received the domestic wastewater treatment plant facility planning draft report. Have have we considered that received? K. Alright. Gonna move forward then to item 9.4.

You you can take a motion to receive it.

You need to take a motion?

Just like the previous one.

Okay. Counsel, I'll look to action on receiving the domestic wastewater treatment plant facility planning draft report. So moved. Second. Motion and second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Five o. Moving forward 9.4. Thank you, gentlemen.

K.

Fiscal year twenty twenty six general fund midyear budget review. Alright. Received a presentation and adopt a resolution approving 2026 budget supplemental appropriation request. Mister Roberts, good evening.

Good evening. Thank you. I've got it here, I think. Let me make sure it works.

There we go. Alright. Okay. K. Thank you, mayor, vice mayor, council members, members of the public. Oh, sorry. Doing two things at once here. I'll be delivering the midyear review presentation with the city's budget manager, Jacob Del Sid. I'd like to thank Jacob for his work in preparing the staff report and related information for this review. Before I begin, just wanna say that throughout our presentation, you'll see numbers in red in the difference and variance columns of the slides.

This is intended to indicate when a difference or variance has a negative impact upon fund balance. So for revenues, this will be when they are lower than their prior year or budgeted totals. And for expenditures, it will be when they are higher than their prior year or budgeted. And we are, we are just reviewing the the general fund this evening. The general fund's primary sources of revenue are the sales and use tax, district transactions and use tax, property taxes, utility users tax, and property tax in lieu of vehicle license fees or VLF.

During the first six months of the current fiscal year, these revenues were approximately $22,400,000 combined, $1,300,000 higher than fiscal year twenty twenty five's total at the same point, while general fund revenues totaled 20 I'm sorry, while general while overall general fund revenues totaled 29.7 approximately 1,300,000.0 more than last year. I think I repeated myself there. I apologize for that. As you can see, the most significant positive driver of major and overall revenues is the transactions and use tax, which is ahead of last year's pace by $668,000 Property tax and property tax in lieu of VLF revenues are higher due to the continued increase in assessed valuations with VLF revenues growing in direct proportion to assessed valuations and property taxes restrained by the provisions of Proposition 13, the constitutional amendment limiting property tax to 1% of assessed value and annual assessment increases to the lesser of 2% or the increase in the local consumer price index. In other revenues, the category comprising all other general fund revenues not specifically identified in the table, the largest drivers in the year to year increase is a $680,000 federal investment tax credit received in the current fiscal year for the city's installation of solar panels.

As of 12/31/2025 expenditure I'm sorry. Fiscal year twenty twenty I'm sorry. As of December 31, fiscal year twenty twenty six expenditures totaled $35,400,000, an increase of $5,200,000 compared to the previous fiscal year.

The salary and benefits variance of $720,000 is largely driven by personnel costs due to previously negotiated compensation increases. However, these increases were partially offset due to the reclassification of roughly $1,800,000 on workers' compensation charges and general liability charges that are now classified underneath the internal service charge and allocated cost section, which I'll jump to now just to discuss it since we're on the same topic. So as you'll see, the internal service charges and allocated cost variance of 2,800,000.0 is also largely attributed to the $1,800,000 in the reclassification workers' comp and general liability charges. In fiscal year twenty five, they were classified underneath salaries and benefits category. So that's why you're seeing that big jump in fiscal year twenty six because now they're internal service charges.

Aside from that 1.8 in class reclassified workers' comp and general liability charges, there's also an increase in about $679,000 in building service charges and about 300,000 increase in vehicle service charges as well. Jumping back to maintenance and operations, the 1,400,000 increase in that section at midyear is primarily due to an increase of about $661,000 and increase in Zumar Park operations, $356,000 in homeless service encampment costs, and about $270,000 for the TACE program that council approved as well. The $333,000 variance in capital outlay is primarily due to a 152,000 in firefighting equipment and about a $128,000 in mechanical office equipment within economic development, which is for the T Biz Makerspace. Yeah. I'm just I'm just going over the detail on

the Yes. He's just talking about the detail that that are driving these numbers. Yeah. Sorry. Here we have updated estimates of just I'm sorry. Is there a question?

Yeah. Before we go we go too far Okay. Well, this well, no. This is a slide, I guess, that helps because in the previous slide, when you were talking about transaction the first slide, when you were talking about the right there.

Yes.

When you had Measure I, I was like, wait a minute. Don't we bring in, like, about 8 to 9,000,000 a year with Measure I? And there, it threw me off because it's only 2.7 at midyear.

Yes.

But then the next slide, it bumps up to 8.3.

Well, that's that's the projection. Keep, keep in mind, and I apologize. I we typically say this in advance. We receive sales tax. Sales tax are allocated by the state two months in arrears. So so although we've we've received at December 31, we've received revenues through December 31. Those revenues only represent the revenues from July through October.

Okay. Yeah. Because Yes. It just threw me off. Wait a

minute. And we are are And we are as you can see, we are on pace for what you would expect. Yes. And I got it. I apologize.

Thank you. Well, that that answered well, the third slide answered kind of the question.

Okay. Here we have updated estimates of fiscal year twenty twenty six general fund revenues and comparisons to their adjusted budgets. Adjusted budget, as you may recall, is the adopted budget plus amendments approved by council and related revenues when applicable, and in the case of expenditures, unspent appropriations carried forward from the previous year. To remind you, variances negatively impacting fund balance appear in red. As you can see, general fund revenues overall are expected to fall short of the budget by approximately $599,000 or point 8%.

The projected actuals and adjusted budgets you see for the first four categories of revenues, the city works with consultants to provide estimates for during the budget process. For sales and use tax, transactions and use tax, property tax revenues were they are expected to exceed their adjusted budgets by $1,000,000, $50,000, and $480,000 respectively, thanks to updated projections from our consultants. Utility users tax for which the projections also provided by consultant is expected to fall short of its budgeted amount by about $1,450,000. Property tax in lieu of VLF and transient occupancy tax revenues are on pace to meet their initially budgeted totals. However, cannabis tax or measure y and franchise taxes are expected to fall short of their initially budgeted totals due to actual trend analysis over the previous three fiscal years and also taking into account where we stand to meet your point.

Other revenues, the category comprising of all other general fund revenues not specifically identified in the table are expected to fall short of their budget total by about $388,000 or 2.5%, which is attributed to attributable to a combination of projected positive and negative variances within various accounts. The city anticipated a $1,500,000 investment tax credit. However, we were told that we would be receiving only roughly 680,000 in this fiscal year and the remainder in fiscal '27.

And just for a couple clarifying comments, we had we had anticipated initially about $1,500,000 in the investment tax credit. This is these are the funds that the city manager referenced a a few a meetings back, which could be considered since their onetime revenues that had previously been unanticipated could be considered to be used to offset some some of those some of those expenses. It it did turn out we it was $1,200,000, and that is split between two year. We received $680,000 this year, and at the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1, we can apply for the remainder. I also wanna go back and speak to utility users As Jacob said, that's one of the revenues that we that we receive estimates from from our consultants.

And they when when we went back to them, we we had noted that probably about six or eight months ago, actually, probably nine or ten months ago at this point, their revenue estimates seem low, and they didn't seem to be accounting for the cap that was listed on UUT for for commercial for commercial biz for businesses. When they did that, obviously, they overshot, and that and that was the result to that. I actually I I personally looked at that number. They I can't remember what it was, but I actually dialed the number back from what they had said, but it was still it still had been overshot. So but the the upside is is we're bringing in about approximately 2,000,000 more in revenue than we had in previous years. So that is definitely the the upside of that.

Quick question. Is the utility users tax affected by the trend of eliminating cable to go to streaming services?

That that is something that falls into that. That's a whole city attorney would be better. No, that that's a complicated question. The answer is yes, but the extent to which it it does and or will is somewhat complicated.

I'll add to that. So it's yes as people leave cable, right, and they go to streaming services. However, you'll recall there's a court case that was recently settled that cities that charge a UT can now assess a UT against streaming services. We're projecting that once we do that, there will be an additional million dollars of revenue coming in from streaming. We're just waiting for the right time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah.

Thank you, mister Malta. I knew I knew somebody could explain it better than I could, so thank you. Okay. Where are we here? Good. And, general fund expenditures are expected to be 69,000,000 overall, approximately $2,200,000 or 3.1% less than the adjusted budget.

The projected actual versus budgeted variance in the salaries and benefits is due to a significant number of vacant positions and resulting in cost savings. At the midyear point, I confirmed with our our chief of police and our our fire chief that we had ten ten police positions that were vacant and six firefighter positions vacant for most of the first half of that fiscal year. The approximate total cost save between these six positions alone is about $1,900,000. For the maintenance and operation variance, just did a straight line cost analysis that projects through the end of the year, and and we will also be under budget of what was initially expected. Lastly, internal service allocated to cost, capital outlay, debt service expenditures are all expected to hit their initially budgeted total, so there's no variance there.

Adding planned transfers in and out of the general fund to current revenue and expenditure projections, the anticipated use of general fund balance for fiscal year twenty six reflects a substantial improvement over the adjusted budget, decreasing from approximately $2,900,000 to $1,200,000, a reduction of $1,600,000. Jacob's gonna take us to the finish line, reviewing requested and recommended supplemental appropriations and related budget adjustments.

So like Mark mentioned, we will now be going over staff's recommended budget adjustments. With so much information, I believe it would be better for for us to just bring up each slide and let the council absorb all the information that's on each slide. Each slide has about four adjustments with the account number, the the description of what the request is for, and the amount. And, staff from each department are ready to answer any questions you may have regarding any adjustments requested. And as we go through it, I will also touch on certain adjustments and give some clarification and talking points on each on certain ones.

The first four slides we'll be reviewing are adjustments in the general fund. Slides five through six will be the facilities maintenance fund, and the seventh slide will be the fleet replacement fund. We also included, the board of public utilities enterprise utility funds approved adjustments. These were approved at the 02/19/2026 BPU meeting, and they're there for your information as well. So first, we'll begin with the general fund.

And as you'll see on the slides, pretty much what you need to know, is is on the slide itself, so we're just saving the the time of reading it. We'll just give you a few moments to reabsorb each one and ask any questions you may have before we move on to the next slide. Any questions on this one? K. Okay.

Here's the second set. You can ask any questions after you're done with your review.

I don't have a problem with this. Let me start right now. I had a question on the seasonal staff one. Is that is that for the concerts?

Which one?

The one that's the 22,800. The next slide.

Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you.

To increase the appropriation for digital Zoom while part of seasonal staffing. Is that is that for the concerts?

Good.

It's to assist with the concerts, but it's also to take care of Zoom all. We got the new planners out there. Once, the weather gets warmer, we're gonna need hand watering at least every other day. And it's really just to start, detail cleaning Zumoa Park after the concerts to make sure it's ready for the public.

It's also for all the other events that are occurring at Zumoa Park. Yep.

Right. So even though someone may come in and have an event, let's take it to market that's going on. We are gonna have to go through there routinely, check the restrooms and that sort of thing. If we don't, what's gonna happen is the perception's gonna be that the city of Tulare doesn't take care of their restrooms. Sometimes people don't separate that as a private event for a public event. So for these smaller events, we will go through and kinda service the event. It also includes, as you'll remember, part of the, rental policy was a load in and load out so that we are, renting vehicles from going in the park.

So so this will be that one? Yeah. So, so this this will be, sort of for a general maintenance of the park? Because I know that in the concerts, there is a charge for janitorial and other types of things. So this would be for year round, other yeah.

Year round. The thought is they'll run May through September. Concert weekends, they'll help set up. They'll help work the concert, and then they'll be there on Mondays to help clean up

the park, get it ready for the public.

But that's you're just talking about the concerts now. K? What about all the other like, we have nine, for example. Right now, have nine other shows. Right? So it's all of those shows. Plus, forget about the events, It's regular maintenance of the part time.

Say take out the concerts. It's just two part time staff members to take care of Zoom all, frees up full time staff to go elsewhere. No.

I mean, because on one hand, it it it sounds good, but I don't know if that mean that if that's their full time job to take care of the park, I don't know if that's enough.

So three days a week.

And if you forgive me for a moment, I am going to back up. And I apologize because I I did review this, and we would normally put the actual names of the departments, not the account numbers. So I just wanna say that the first three items on the first slide are the police department. The next one, obviously, is fire, continuing, fire again, and then the last two there are, are parks. K. Moving on to the next one. Again, we have we have parks. The first two are parks. Jacob, do you help me out on the on the third item? Yeah. General services. General services. And the last one? Could be general services as well. Okay.

And so give you an opportunity to look at those. As you can see, the the amounts aren't terribly big.

So on on the weed abatement, we get that money back, don't we? Is that the money we front up to clear someone's lot and then we eventually get that money back or no?

Yes. That, yeah, that is what that is. Well, I mean, there can be other, but, yes, there is we debate that a lot clearing that we that we do get. It's it's basically built to

the property owners. We we we we would it would be nice to think we get it all back, and maybe in time we get it all back. We will be bringing forward to you. I don't know when yet because it's on the list of all the gazillion things we have to do. At some point, we really want to if somebody doesn't pay their fine to us, we can go through a debt collection process. At some point, I'd like to be able to assess it against their property tax, file the lien on the property. But we've been talking about that. Something we'll work on because we'll have a much better chance of getting all of our money back if we go that route versus the debt collector route.

Yeah. I thought we were already doing that.

Weren't Not for everything. We certainly should. Well, I agree a 100%. We're not doing it for all of the diff like, for example, when code enforcement files a lien versus when fire department files a lien, we haven't gotten all those dialed in yet.

One?

K. And,

Jacob, you you share with counsel the the next well, the last two are nondepartmental, and the first one is

First one is citywide. So the this is the last set of adjustments for the general fund. I do have some comments to make about these last three. So the building service charges, recommended budget adjustment is to help offset the facility's maintenance fund appropriation request that we'll be going over shortly. I don't wanna jump too far ahead yet, but this is necessary because the council does end up approving the facility's maintenance fund appropriation increase.

Since the facility's maintenance fund is an internal service fund, revenues need to offset expenses in the facility's maintenance fund. So these building service charges will be those revenues coming from the general fund to offset the expenses within the facility's maintenance fund. Number two, the Zumar Park Amphitheater operations adjustment for 550,000 is included in this list to ensure that it's properly accounted for. However, this contract was already approved at the 12/16/2025 council meeting. So we just wanna make sure that it's in there and it's properly accounted for and approved so we can, take it into account. And then the last one is the, the Zumar Park Amphitheater operations adjustment to account for the July 4 event that was approved today.

It was approved tonight. Yeah. And and let me explain something to you guys. So when we do budget amendments, right, there's some cities like, when we brought you, for example, this somewhat one back on December 16, there's some cities that when they bring these items like this, they actually bring a budget amendment at the same time. And you might have, you know, 50 budget amendments throughout the year, you know, on a variety of council agendas.

There are some cities that don't do it that way. Instead, what they do is you adopt the budget in, you know, June, and then you at midyear, you bring back a number of budget amendments at one time in one budget resolution, which is what we're doing. And then maybe at the end of the year when the ACPER comes in, you might do one final close-up budget amendment. More cities have moved in that direction where end of the year, we bring you an item, you approve it, like, December 16, so we can actually move forward and make contracts. But we actually don't do the budget amendment resolution until midyear, which we have to do because the auditors need to see that resolution that was approved.

Can I get clarification on how you're gonna handle this? We're we're you're recommending that we adjust the budget on this last item to have available 40,000 for this event.

Correct.

Correct.

But we've also discussed ways that we're gonna offset that 40,000. If we're successful, like I hope we are, we won't need to expend this $40,000. How will you

adjust Well, it would be it would be

I can finish.

I'm sorry.

How will you adjust to make up for the fact that we have acquired the funds and we haven't had to expend the money that we're budgeting for right now?

If we confirm that we would actually get an entirely offsetting amount, then we would adjust the revenue accordingly. But if the money is going to be spent despite the fact that it's offset, it is an appropriation. It would increase the overall appropriation of the fund, which requires council approval.

And we are dealing in a situation to where more than likely, because of the timing of the event, we may have expenditures in this budget fiscal year, but the money we're talking about to offset it in next fiscal year, How will you adjust for that?

There there can be there's a a few different accounting ways. There there's there's things that can accrue to the prior fiscal year, and, but there it wouldn't necessarily be problematic to if there if a if an expense is incurred before June 30, we accrue expenses for the to the prior fiscal year for at least forty five days. Forty five days is a standard. Sometimes you go to sixty, but there that is the normal accounting process. If for the for the expenses incurred on, July 1 and beyond, then that would be a fiscal year 2027 expense.

What matters is in the accrue on the accrual basis or in the with the accrual basis of accounting, what matters is when the good or services was received. That's what it's attributable to.

Let me say it a more simple way perhaps, Mark. You tell me if I'm wrong.

I'm sure it could be more simple.

Whether we're talking about the city's budget that's adopted by, you know, effective July 1 or we're talking about the midyear budget or the end of the year budget, it doesn't matter. At any of those times, especially at the end of the year, whatever money hasn't been spent goes back into fund balance.

Correct. Yes. Any yes. Correct. Anything that is not spent does go does go into fund balance.

And I assume all these

Or at

least doesn't hit fund balance.

These funds that we receive in on this particular concert or or symphony performance is gonna flow through Spade Entertainment. And I imagine those that wanna donate as can go through what what I've seen done before is the Telaria Downtown Foundation donation to them, and then they pay

We can work we can work those details out. Yeah. I think it's gonna kinda depend a little bit. I mean, we have we'll we will sit down. And when we're talking through those things, what I would encourage you to do is if you have that question, reach out to Mark and I, and we'll make sure that we clarify with our account in which way is the best. Because some people might wanna make sure they get a tax deduction. Other people might not care. So we'll need to work through that.

When I talk to people, that I want clarification.

100%. We'll we'll get you that.

So Yeah. I had a question from, from Mark's staff. What what what is the process? How do you guys create new line items? Like, you know, I see that, you know, that one has, you know, one hundred one hundred fifty two seventeen. So that's a general item for the park?

That's the that's the lie

the account. What is, yeah, what is the process for creating line items? I mean, who he needs to approve that, or how does that work? I mean

That that go that goes through finance. And as part of, to be blunt, it was what something we needed to do anyway. But as part of the the migration to the new enterprise resource planning or financial system, we created we really revamped the entire chart of accounts. And in some cases, contracted, in other cases, expanded. We got rid of redundancy, but we added accounts to allow for as many things that address specific expenses instead of throwing in things into, like, general things, like professional services. Right. Right. So whenever so if if an account does not exist but is needed, it's just requested of finance, and we can create the account if it's warranted.

I mean, for me, I I think what what and I don't whoever makes this final decision, I would like to see a line item for us to, put in that 550,000 along with other funds that may be needed to bail out the concert series so that there is a specific line item that says council has approved these funds to bail out the, concert series in the city of Clari. So Well, I I like to see that happen.

I would say that we wouldn't name an account that way, but that effectively I mean, that's the account. The account and that's up there ending with 5217. You wanna look to see what, what has been spent out of that account. It's there. And we would have a No. No. But it's have a we have a corresponding revenue.

Yeah. It is in a general fund, so I'm just trying to see if someone were to look at the budget, and it would be $52.18. That $52.18 would be the amount of money the city of Teleria city council has approved to help the concert series move forward. So that that's all I'm saying is whoever does those decisions, I I like to see something like that in the budget.

Okay. Well, we could I mean, we're

we can certainly look

at that.

Yeah. K. Right.

I believe we concluded everything. Yeah. So Oh, yes. And I'm sorry. And as you'll see in a moment, in the next slide or two, when we know we have an offsetting revenue that's directly related to an expense, we would we would typically show that and add it. At the time that the that we were putting together the the staff report presentation, we did not know whether or not we were gonna going to have revenue to offset that via July 4 event, but we can certainly we can certainly add add that revenue. We can amend the resolution to say any you know, the corresponding revenue to the July 4 event, which would be fine.

Awesome. So now we're gonna talk about the facilities maintenance fund. And so, again, I'll give you time to look at this and review it, this first slide. And on the next slide, I'll I'll talk about what's going on and what the activity you're seeing on the next slide.

And this is an internal service fund Correct. Which is, which is funded, by compensation or, charges to the departments that are served by the by the fund and department. K. If there's no question there, I'll move forward.

So while you're reviewing this, I'd like to make some comments. You'll see that there are seven line items, but five.

For sure.

What's what's the conflict, or what what's the issue? Oh, so you wanna read it first before you me. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

So if you total up the five appropriation, increase requests, it total about $200,000 for the facilities maintenance fund. However, you you're you're gonna see that there's seven lines within this fund, and I'm going to explain why. So we're asking for $200,000 in appropriation request. However, as if you if you recall in the general fund, we're requesting a 137 a $138,000 in general fund service charge increases to help offset this 200,000. The 138 is not enough to cover the 200,000.

So finance and city manager have have looked at multiple accounts within the general fund where we've identified we can make adjustments within the general fund to help offset that additional $62,000 so we don't have to ask for the full $200,000 request. So that's why you'll see the general fund department adjustments is 62,341. Those are adjustments that we've identified that we can make, within departments to help completely offset the $200,000 facility maintenance fund appropriation request. So that's why you'll see that there is no net impact to the facility maintenance fund, fund balance.

Any questions on the facilities maintenance fund?

No. You can

look forward. Alright.

Last fund that we'll talk about is gonna be the fleet replacement fund. This one's simple. This is just going to be an automotive equipment appropriation increase. This is just to purchase the trailer for police department operations. They have sufficient fund balance within the fleet replacement fund to to cover this cost.

Like I mentioned, we also did include the enterprise utility funds adjustments for your review as well. They were already approved on 02/19/2026 by the BPU, so these are just here for your information. And this is for the solid waste and street sweeping fund, the wastewater fund, and the water fund.