City Council - Special Meeting

I'll call to order the u joint session of the Tory City Council, Tori Joint Union High School District Board and the College of Zoya's board. Uh I said this will be a joint session. As you can tell, uh, the mayor is not here tonight, so I'm going to be handling the the meeting as vice mayor. We'll start off with the, um, pledge of allegiance led by Councilman Sagala and our invocation by Councilwoman Seir. Please stand.

Everyone can join me, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Our father in heaven, we come before thee this uh evening with gratitude in our hearts for the many blessings that we share in the city of Toeri. We're grateful for the responsibilities and opportunities we have to serve our community. We're grateful especially this evening to join together with the educationals organizations that serve our city so well. We pray that we might come together in harmony, unity, and for the betterment of our of our citizens. We offer this prayer and our thanksgiving in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. First order of business I believe would be introductions by uh the other the two boards that we have here. We will start off with uh Tor joint union high school district board doctor whoever got push

is coming on. Okay. Good evening. I'm Laura Fana, clerk of the board. Our president and our vice president could not be here tonight. Tyler Rivera. Ali Maderas, Lucy Vanzag, superintendent for the district. And then I is it okay if I introduce uh we have a couple of uh members here from our district as well. So we have Gret Gretchen Venderike. She's going to be presenting with me and she's our executive director. She oversees special ed and special

support services. I should know her title. And then we have Vivian Hamilton who's sitting in the audience. She's our uh chief business uh officer. And then next to her we have Jason and Jason Bonds is our director of facilities. Thank you. The COS board.

Thank you uh Mr. Vice Mayor. Uh Brent Calvin, superintendent and president for the College of the Sequoas. And um let my board introduce uh themselves, but we're joined by the provost of our Taller campus, Dr. Loan Walner. and our vice president and assistant superintendent, Dr. Jesse Wiloxin. Um, and Lann will be presenting here momentarily. John Lane, uh, vice president of the board. Welcome. Uh, good evening everyone. Uh, Ken Nunes from, uh, uh, right down the street actually.

Raven Macareno. um have the honor of serving as the board president. Good evening everybody. Robert Aglar, newly appointed trustee. Good evening, Connie Diaz and I'm also a Terrier uh citizen. Thank you everyone. It's uh an honor to have everyone here tonight so we can kind of put our heads together and discuss some common issues that uh that could affect or might affect all of us. So at that we will um Mr. Vice Mayor. Yes, sir. Can we introduce ourselves? So, oh, we can't put the sign out there that says who we are. Okay. All right. They have signs, too. You know, Dennis Maderas, Taller, City Councilman.

Terry S, city council. Jose Sagala, city council. Steve Arrol, city council. And we have a And we got our city manager. Yes. Mark Mundo. And we have Trisha sitting out there. Public works and our city clerk.

Next item is public comment. Comments at a special meeting are limited items listed on the special meeting agenda. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes per item. For those who wish to provide public comment while not physically in attendance, you may call 559 3661849. Please note that there will be approximately a 20 second delay in broadcast for viewers. When calling in mute and when calling in, mute the device used for viewing the meeting. Do we have one anyone in chambers who would like to speak? Yes, sir.

There you go.

Hello. Um, first off, this is great to see all three uh the city council and the two boards all together at once and to see a few familiar faces. Um, my name is James Cardardoza. Uh, I manage a small electrical connector manufacturing company here in Taller and my brother um farms uh about 10 miles southwest of Tallery. And um I my comment is that uh I'd like to see um future funds that are allocated you know to the high school district and the college and the city um that related to education that some of those be earmarked for uh tech for um manufacturing education. So specifically things such as 3D design, uh CNC programming and CNC equipment operation, um electrical, you know, just general electrical knowledge as well as parts assembly. And the reason being is not just to help my own company, uh but also to retrain some of the workforce because I see Sigma Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is going to it's going to hurt our a economy. Um, and because of the multiplier, I think it's going to potentially have a real negative impact on employment. So, we need to think really far ahead in terms of retraining those agricultural employees who might lose their jobs into manufacturing, which I think is a good transition for them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cardos.

Anyone else in chambers have comment? Madam clerk, do we have anyone online? hearing none. Thank you. I guess really we don't have a real hard and fast agenda, so we're going to kind of wing it tonight, I think. So, we're going to start off with the high school district. Melissa, I think you have the presentation. Okay. While Melissa's bringing that up really quick, uh, in response to Mr. Cardoza's comment, um, be happy to talk with you sometime. The city is working with the chamber on the T-Biz, which we have a maker space that'll be open very soon that has CNC machines, 3D printers, laser engravers, so on so forth.

All right. So, good afternoon again. Um, thank you for allowing us to be here today and to share about our district and, uh, some of our, um, things that we are working on. So, um, we're going to go ahead and start and let me make sure my technology works here. Okay, here we go. So, starting off, I wanted to just share with everybody a little bit about our schools. I know that you're very familiar with our three comprehensive high schools, but Terry Joint Union High School District is more than just our three comprehensive high schools. We have eight schools. Our student population this school year is 5,652 students. Even though uh we see that there's lots of growth going on in our district, we did experience declining enrollment for the past three years. We are excited that this school year we did gain 54 students, which is great. And as we look forward for next school year, we are looking at a small growth as well, which we're very excited about. We have listed our schools here as well as the enrollment. Um some of you guys that are very familiar with Tiller at one point uh Tiller Union used to be in the 1800s. Um really we're kind of as our students have um are moving through town. Uh Terary Union is one of our smallest schools. So it's at 1625 right now which is great because its capacity really is right around a little less than 1,800. So that is actually a really good size for Terary Union. Tillary Western is right below 1900 students and Mishnook is growing. Uh Mishnook will eventually be one of our biggest high schools. It's at 1790 students right now. We also have Tech Prep High School. Tech Prep is really meant for students who struggle at the comprehensive site and need more support when it comes to their behavior. Um then we have Countryside. Countryside is meant uh for a maximum of 40 students and its curriculum really focuses on mental health. So it takes our students

who are struggling and embeds the mental health component within the school day and is very successful. Not haven't sure if you've met any of our countryside students, but they're absolutely amazing and they do extremely well at that school. Sierra Vista is our independent study school. And then about 10 years ago, actually they're celebrating their 10th year anniversary. Our board started Accelerated Charter High School. It's a dependent charter and it was meant for students who fall behind and need a way to catch up. Um extremely successful students who go to accelerated charter school um do extremely well and we have a partnership with CO and their electrician program. So I want to thank COS for all their support and our students who graduate from accelerated charter a lot of them go on to COS to pursue that electrician program as well which is great. And then we have our Tari adult school which we have a very um successful medical program at our adult school as well as a culinary program and a welding program. Those are probably the best well-known programs at our adult school. But we also serve our English learners and support our students who are adults who need to learn the English language to be successful. Um, so our goal in our district is to make sure that we empower all of our students to graduate college, career, and life skill readiness. It's not one or the other, it's all of them. We want our students to be able to make that choice for themselves. So our goal is to make sure that they're ready to pursue whichever avenue is best for them. For some it may be college and for others may be directly into the career. Our goal is to support them with that decision. We have an amazing board and a lot of our success has to do with our board and all that they do to support our students. Our board has six priorities that they've been focusing on for the last few years. Number one obviously is to make sure that our students are successful academically. Uh but to also

make sure that we have safe schools, that we manage our facilities and student growth appropriately, that we maintain fiscal integrity, that we staff our our schools with qualified personnel and maintain a positive work environment, and that we continue to strengthen both our internal and external communication systems, which today is great because we get to share uh some of that through this venue here today. our approach these last few years. This is my fifth year as superintendent and we really have been focusing on the whole child. How do we support the whole child, making sure that they're safe, that they're engaged, they're supported, but also challenged and that they're healthy in our school system. So, a few years ago, this is actually three years ago, right? We applied for the community schools grant and we're awarded that with that grant. Um, and we have here today Gretchen who's going to talk to you a little bit about a community schools and the impact that the community schools grant has had on our district.

Okay. So, yes, three years ago we were in the planning stage for the community schools grant and so now we are in year two of the community schools implementation grant. It is a five-year grant um with a focus of the four pillars of community schools. So, in writing this in writing the grant, we were looking at our needs as it relates to the four pillars. And for Tillery Joint Union High School District, our needs assessment really showed a need to enhance our integrated student supports. And so we did that by adding six school social workers because we know that there is a growing need for more mental health services, especially serving high school students. So we added the six staff to address that need. Um and then the other area that was um another opportunity for us to enhance was our family and community engagement. We did that by adding four community school coordinators. So these are staff who really focus on that linkage and that connection to our families and our community so that when needs come up, they're able to work with our community partners to address them. So I do have highlighted on here um really what some of those needs have been. We have a referral system where we say any referral that's needed, we will be that person to link them to the appropriate person. whether that's inside our existing school systems or in the community. Um so you can see this year we've had 266 referrals. Um a lot of the times those are for clothing, hygiene items, um food, even like very simple things that were able to immediately meet that need. But sometimes it's larger needs like housing agency linkage. And so those are a bit more complex when it comes to navigating, you know, and working with our community partners for those successful um access to something like housing. And so our

coordinators really work with our families um to help bridge maybe any gaps that might be existing without them there. I also have highlighted on here our community school center. And so again, as we look at how we are able to bridge um and looking at working with our family within the community, we have gone to the community. So we are a drop-in center um as well as support staff who are working there. So it's a place where families at any point if they don't know where to start, they can start with us and then we will help them. So that's just right over here on L Street. If you haven't had the opportunity to come by, I would encourage you to stop by. there's always someone there um who can show you around and talk about the different services and supports that we offer. Um so really just to go back to our integrated student supports that we are enhancing in our district with the grant funds but also what was already existing. Um so like with the high school district we have high mental health needs, behavioral health needs and we want to make sure that we're meeting those. It's not a one-sizefits-all need. So, we have school psychologists. We also have school social workers. We have one of the best counselor to student ratios in the state. Um, so one to every 222 students. We have rehabilitation specialists who really work as a mentor who serve our atrisisk population. And then, like I mentioned, our community school coordinators and then also our our RNs and our LVNs. So again, it's not a one-sizefits-all, but really what are the needs of our students and then we make sure to connect them to what who is best going to support those needs. It's actually hard to believe that uh you know five years ago we had three

psychologists and no social workers. So we really the last uh few years have really focused on how to best support our students so that they can be successful. career pathways. Um so we have I also wanted to mention this quickly uh we have six fivemmies um that are specific to a certain school. So at Taller Union um we have our arts media entertainment academy and we also have our academy of marketing. Our academy of marketing is in its uh second year of existence. That's why you see the ninth and tth grade there. And thesemmies uh they're cohorted classes that uh where in their students are in the academy of marketing but in algebra they are learning math that deals with marketing and really they're learning um real life applications within their math class within their English class within their history class. So all of their uh curriculum is cohorted and focused on marketing. Um it's been really successful not only at Tiller Union but at Tilly Western we have the premed Academy. The premed at premed Academy is in its 11th year. Um and we've had many graduates and lots of students who are have moved on to actually pursue a career in the medical field because of the premed Academy. And some also because of the pre-med academy have decided they don't want to go into a medical field which is also great because they don't have to decide that in college. They can know that before they leave to go to college. Mission oak has the engineering academy and they also have the protective services and law academy. But beyond thesemies when I was sharing earlier uh we want to make sure that our kids are college and career ready. So beyond thesemies we have 23 career technical education

pathways and those range from uh construction, auto, child care, uh child development, uh we have fashion, we have business, we have a huge array of classes and we actually had Deleno come and visit us not too long ago and they were so impressed that because of the number of career technical education pathways we're able to offer our students and That's districtwide. If there's a pathway at Tiller Union, kids from Tiller Western and Mission Oak can partake in that pathway and vice versa. So, our students really do have a lot of opportunities within our district. Speaking of that, um I we also wanted to talk to you guys about our facilities. We have a uh master plan that our board has been working on for the last few years. And up there you have our Mission Aquatics Complex, our 15 meter pool, which I know our city is well aware of. Uh we've had those discussions in the past and we are very proud to share that we've had numerous events take place at our aquatics complex. Uh just this past weekend, we had somebody from UCLA, a very well-known coach from UCLA there doing clinics for students. And I was uh it was just shared with me that we had students from not only our county but from outside the area that came to participate in this event which means that they're probably shopping and eating in Tallari which we love that. On top of that we also have our newest um CTE facility. Mission Oak is our newest high school, newest comprehensive high school. And even though there was lots of opportunities, we really didn't have a ton of career technical education programs at Mission Oak. So our uh we just added a auto and construction program at Mission Oak. This is they're in their second year of existence and we visited last week or a couple weeks ago and they're building many houses. It's really impressive. Um they're learning

again hands-on opportunities for our students that once they leave us they have a trade or they have a skill that they can take with them. So very exciting um opportunities for our students. I also wanted to kind of touch about we have this is probably the most projects we've had going on in our district for a really long time. Jason just shared that with me not too long ago. Uh if you attended any of our football games uh this fall, you probably saw some lights changing when there was a touchdown. Whether you were cheering for Taller Union, he was red and gold at Western it was red and blue and Mission Oak black and purple lights uh when he touched down. Yes.

Red, white, and blue. You said red and blue. Well, I think the lights are only red and blue, but yes, red, white, and blue. Um, so the the lights, we really needed lights, but the lights are fancy. So, they actually they it it's looks like they're going to go out, but they're not. They're what do you call it? They're like they blink, right? They flicker.

They flash off and on when there's a touchdown. So, which is really cool. And I think we're the only stadium in this area to have lights like this. So come and see one of our football games in the fall. We also have been working. We have our ad complex. And um it was dark especially in the winter when kids are going to take care of their projects. That's that's a year- round thing. So, we ended up this uh past summer also put in lighting and curbing so that we have a better access for our students and our family as as they go into our farming area. And then we are uh we started renovating our gyms. So, believe it or not, we still had two gyms in our district that did not have HVAC. So, this um past winter, we renovated our Tiller Western High School gym. That's what you're seeing a picture there. And now it does have HVAC which they're super excited about. We are now going to start remodeling the Tori Union Gym. Tiller Union Gym still does not have HVAC. So that's that's next up. We also renovated our Tiller Western pool. It is a uh 38 meter pool, but it is uh also now a Murtha pool just like Mission Oaks pool and it's an infinity pool which really does change the look of the pool at Tiller Western. So very excited um to have our Tari Western pool working and ready to go. And then right now if you drive by Tiller Union, the same thing that we just did to the Tallar Western Pool is happening to the Tallian Pool. We're renovating the Taran Union pool as we speak right now. And the goal would be to have it ready for hopefully water polo right season.

End of this year.

End of this year we'll have it ready to go. We have lots of other projects coming up. Um, as you know, we passed the bond. Um, but we did share with our voters that we would not tap into our bond until 2028. So, our board did get uh a cop and which we will use as gap funding so that we can continue on these projects. As I shared toler union um actually I did not share you about this but we are making sure that we have the CTE programs at all of our schools. Um we did have woodop at Union High School and woodshop is great but we wanted to make sure that our taller union students also had the opportunity to take a construction class and to leave with those skills. So we are renovating the Taller Union shop so that it can be a construction shop and so that those students also have the opportunities to build tiny homes and leave with those skills when they leave us. As I shared aquatics complex, we're in the progress of renovating that currently. Uh we are also going to be renovating the gym. We have not started on that yet. It's in DSA, but our goal is to start it ASAP. our Tari community auditorium. We're also uh making improvements to the auditorium this summer. Bob Matias uh stadium, the turf, we are going to be redoing the turf on the stadium this summer. And then our next big project will be the Union Baseball Soccer Complex. Our goal is to start on that project around fall of 2027. We do appreciate the city working with us. We currently uh utilize Live Oak Park for our to Union baseball. Uh but we would hope in the future to have our own baseball soccer complex for Tiller Union. Mission Oak Track is fall of 2028. We're also looking at livestock barns for our ad complex that will be summer of 2029. And then part of our bond, we did share

with our voters that we would like to add artificial turf uh for the Tallery Western football field. And then next would also be lights at the Tillary Western Baseball Complex summer of 2029. So as you can see, lots of projects. So we really appreciate the support of our board to be able to complete these projects. Celebrations. So there's lots of things we're very proud of. uh one of the things that I wanted to share in 200910 we were graduating about 71% of our students and now in 2024 25 we had 97.3% graduation rate. This is because of our focus on students and making sure that we are providing our students what they need to be successful. We have a lot of schools. Not every, it's not, like Gretchen was saying, it's not a one-sizefits-all. We are adjusting our supports to our students so that they can be successful. One thing that we're also very proud of, it goes back to the college career piece. We are providing our students lots of opportunities to explore the different career technical education programs that we offer, but also focusing on college. We want our students to have the ability to make that choice for themselves of what they want to do. We have the highest percent highest percentage of students who are college ready in Tallery County. 50% of our students graduated this past year ready to go directly into a four-year college. Um, and that means that they took algebra 2 and passed it with C or better. That means that they are taking chemistry and being successful in those classes. And then we have one of the highest attendance rates for a high school actually in California. 95% attendance rate is really unheard of for high schools in California. Uh we always get asked what's our secret and our secret is that we focus on our students

and we're providing them with the supports they need to be successful. And that's all we have for you today. week wanted to share with you a little bit about our facilities and how that's going to impact Taller as well as our successes. Thank you, doctor. Would anyone else on your board like to make any comments or bring up something? Very very well. It was uh I knew you had quite a few projects going on, but I had no idea it was this many. I thought we had a lot going on. We don't have that many, do we? uh we have some that we're going to be bringing forward to you in the near future. Okay.

I think uh probably the best best way to deal with this now is that we'll open it up for discussion and questions from COS board and the council here that interact and share information. So I will I'll open up first COS board if you have anything that you'd like to discuss or mention. Uh Lucy, you mentioned uh when you were talking about the gyms that they lacked a track I I kind of missed what you what HVAC air conditioning. Oh, HVAC. Got it. Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense.

So, like for example, the Tiller Western gym, you know, when they're having uh Tiller Western does not have an auditorium like Tiller Union. So, when they're having like their senior activities, they're occurring in the gym. And when you're having a senior activity at the end of May, it is really hot in there. So, they're super excited that this year they're going to be able to have those activities in an air conditioned gym. Perfect. Thank you. I would like to say that as um Oh, can you hear me? Bring it in

there. Can Can you hear me now? Um I would like to say as as a parent of uh two high school students who attend um uh to Larry Western and um Mission Oak. Um I'm extremely happy as a parent um with not just the programs but um with the environment itself. Um my my kids enjoy attending attending the the schools. My daughter uh is actually uh part of the she's participating in the concurrent program with along with COS and she will actually be um graduating early as a junior this year. Um and my son is part of the um the engineering academy. And so, um, there's I mean, I can't say enough how how proud I I am as a parent that my student my my kids attend, um, your schools and, um, just continue what you're doing. I really enjoy seeing, uh, the numbers in terms of growth and how you've integrated the community schools. um what would you call that the uh just a program in itself and and seeing how how positively it's impacted our community. So thank you so much for all you do.

Thank you very much. I was going to share real quick um you know I do appreciate all the support from U COS and uh I know that Sprint and I sent on a committee together focused on making sure that we provide dual enrollment opportunities for our kids. So, I really appreciate all that support and making sure that we have opportunities for our students so that they can participate in those classes. Feel like it's super important and um having those opportunities in the high school, it provides a safe option for our kids so that when they take those classes and they see that they can be successful, it just fuels their ability to say, you know what, I can do this. I can go to COS and be successful. I really appreciate the opportunity uh that you provide for our students. That partnership is extremely important.

Council comments, questions.

Yeah, I had a couple. Mr. Vice Mayor, thank you very much for the presentation. I um I really appreciate us coming together and I thank the council and the mayor and city manager for putting this together. This is a perfect opportunity for all of us to come together and see how we can continue to collaborate. I know we have things on the agenda we want to talk about, but there are a number of other things that I know we could always work on. I think the last time we had a joint meeting was maybe I think I was the mayor, maybe about five, six, seven years ago. We had a joint meeting. It's been a while. So, I'm glad that we're we're coming together to share this information. Um get to see how we can collaborate. Uh obviously we've collaborated with both entities in the past and hope to continue to do so in the future. In terms of your projects, um I noticed obviously there was a lot a big commitment that's going to be happening over the years because of the p excuse me the passage of the bond uh opening up funding opportunities. But I was curious I I had heard that you guys were also looking to do something with your softball is but I didn't see any projects listed. So, I wanted to to find out because that's a big thing that I through our efforts, I'm going to try uh through our we we had a uh a master plan that was put together for parks and recreation that talked about a number of components, a regional sports park and softball park and so forth. So, that's something that for me has been very personal that I've been bringing up over the last couple of years, how we can collaborate. But, I I thought that you guys were doing some investment. So, there's nothing. No, we actually all schools have a softball facilities. So, our uh softball facilities right now for TL Union is adjacent to our Tech Prep countryside site.

Right. Right. On Parley, right? The one on

Right. And that's where right now that's where the board is considering for our baseball complex. So, that they're adjacent right by each other. But we do have enough softball facilities. What we're lacking right now is baseball for Union. And then Union is landlocked. So when it comes to soccer, um it it's also difficult. So we do use uh Elk Bayou, which again is a partnership with the city, which we appreciate. So we do transport our students out to Elk Bayou during especially during our winter season when uh football and soccer is overlapping because there's not enough facilities at Terion to accommodate everybody. So the goal would be to build a baseball complex adjacent to our softball complex. And and I think that's a perfect example maybe of something that in the future we might be able to talk about because we will be having a pretty thorough discussion in the future on the original sports park and that would have some of the same elements. Maybe a little expansion of this or that could help with both entities. You know, obviously we are going to be talking about where to site it. Um, funding is always a big issue as to where to how to pay for it. But I think that might be something um hopefully that we can at least have a conversation obviously with the staff level and then maybe the council and the board as to if there's a way to kind of like get a bang for our buck. if we invest, you invest, it comes out a little bit bigger, that there's mutual use because I know that one of the things that I'm very proud of, not only here in Talleria, but you know, in all the different jurisdictions that I've worked in, is always the joint use between the school district and the city that allows us to have parks, allows us to have green space for our kids to play and have fun. and and I do appreciate that many of our parks are part of well not only uh the high school but the city school district are part of a joint use collaboration. So I hope that that continues but but I thank you for your presentation. You know I had

the question about the softball and uh hopefully we'll be able to talk a little bit more how we can continue to collaborate on on a broader number of issues. Thank you. The good doctor did too good of a job. I have no questions. Outstanding job. First time at this point.

And I too would I just like to commend you. Um Lucy and my children went to school together. I taught some of you out there. So, it's been a long partnership for me to work with school districts and I've always been proud to be a part of Tiller City School uh community and continue to be. I've had multiple children, grandchildren, now great-grandchildren involved in our schools district. So, um always proud of what we do in our elementary schools, our high schools, and CO as well. So, it's uh we appreciate you being here and sharing all of these projects and future things that we can look forward to for our kids.

Right. We'll turn it over to College of Sequoas.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh Dr. Waldner will make her way up to the uh podium. She'll be presenting on our Tallery campus sort of in general and then specifically on our new technology and trades complex. So, uh Mr. Cardardoza, you picked the right night to come uh listen to us present because we've invested heavily in the trades. Uh both full-time faculty as well as a $40 million uh complex to support our our trades. And um I see we already have that up. It's worth noting though that our other two campuses are growing as well. Um a $95 million um project to bring university degrees to Tallery County. Our university center will be at the corner of Tallery and Mooney. Just breaking ground on that um this spring. Uh open for business for the fall of 2028. Excited about that project. We've also got about a $35 million uh student union project on the Vicelia campus to support four restaurants, centralized kitchen, a market, um other things that modern campuses have these days. Uh and then out in Hanford, uh we've just gotten approval uh through the state for a uh 65 to 70 million science building. So um we're as busy as ever, but maybe none more so than our Tiller campus. So with that, I'll introduce Dr. Lan Waldner.

Turn it on. Oh, okay. It's on. Um well, thanks Dr. Calvin for allowing me the opportunity to talk a little bit tonight and brag on the Toary campus and just brag on COS in general. I'm going to start out. You're going to see several videos. Uh our marketing part department does a fantastic job and I don't think it's just about I'm not trying to market anything to you today, but just I think those videos, these short little clips give you an idea of just the the immense number of activities and things going on for your students in this community. uh for our students across the district. So, I'm going to start out if it works with just COS. There are great things happening. I think that just shows you the lots of things happening on our campuses. Um, as you might know or not know if you're in the audience, we're a three campus district. That means we have Vicelia campus 100 years old this year. uh Hanford campus and then Taller campus which opened in 2013 and not everyone uh understands that but um we were very careful about how we answer phones and telling folks when I first started students would call and say we'd answer the phone COS our Tallery College center students would go no I'm looking for COS and I'm going oh that is we are COOS so we started answering our phones COOS tary college of the sequoas to campus

and So, we're proud to have a campus on this south district and serve the students there. And some of the ways we do that, the couple of points I want to make uh clear, we certainly have anchor CTE programs, which I'll address here in just a moment about our industrial trades, architecture, agg programs, and those are anchored on our campus. If you're going to nursing, that's anchored on the Vicelia campus. If you're public health, public safety, fire, police, you're on the Hanford campus of what we call it anchored there. But I want to be very clear, you can get comprehensive student services on all three campuses. We have a student that may be in the police academy. They do their student services and their counseling on our campus with 650 gas. Right? That's important that you can get the same services on all three campuses, whether it be library or EOPS or student success center. those are on all three campuses. So, comprehensive student services, support services on all three campuses on our even though we're anchored in in the areas of agg and industrial trades, uh we have a STEM pathway. So, I have a full-time chemistry to biology, calculus, and all those full-time as well as adjunct. In total, we have about a 30 uh full-time faculty members on the Tallery campus, probably another 45 or so depending on the semester that are adjunct on our campus. We worked with uh our dean of nursing and allied health and many other things. Dr. Janna Shingle worked with uh the taller joint union high school and creating a nur nursing pathway follow 24. I think that particular grant finishes up, but that was an example of getting students directly and a lot of those students are taking their other general ed courses, which is my point at the bottom. You can get your complete set of general ed courses just on our campus. Now, you may not depending on whatever else you want,

but I think that's a point. I I love being a campus. I'm an agg background kid. That was my background growing up. uh dairy cattle, but um you can get other things on our campus as well, depending on what your major is. You can get all your general ed. Just to give you an example, we opened in 2013, but this gives you an example of the historical perspective of the enrollment specifically on our campus. So, you can see we've grown. We're serving over and this is called full-time equivalent students. So that may be more than you know one student might take just one credit hour and that's one uh one unit of C or three units of course and that is one FTS and if you take multiple so we we serve more students but we serve you can see at the growth of our FTS over the years just in the Teriy campus and this gives you an idea uh we present this to our board every year you can see the number of students only taking in the blue only taking classes in Terary so they're getting their full load or their full major in Tallery. And then you have students, we try to work with them. For instance, if they live in Tallery, we have a lot of students, grandparents, parents dropping them off. So maybe on a Tuesday and th and then maybe dropping off multiple kids. So we we try to work with them Monday, Wednesday, take a class uh on on our campus, Tuesday and Thursday, let us help you find those other courses. If your major courses aren't here, let us help you find that. So we'll work with them in that way. That's why they're on potentially on all three campuses or probably two campuses for us, Talleria and Vicelia. This is just a picture of our campus in Taller um from the south. If you're south and looking forward, when you look forward um we just got a drone shot. This shows pastures. Uh in front of that is the livestock units. So we're totally uh and we're kind of standing where our

almonds would be when we're when they're taking that photo uh from the drone. So we are five acre 500 acre campus that we're we're taking care of. Uh building A is mostly admin, student services, giant marketplace, the services for students. Building B is mostly classrooms and faculty offices, computer labs, those types of things. uh as well as science labs, science prep labs, those types of things. The rest of that is 360 acres of actual land that we farm and that helps support our instructional program and agriculture. And then the a instructional facilities, you see some of those O uh equin barns and those types of things are right there in front of us as well as the pastures. And the thing we're really here to talk about is the newest buildings that we have. And I'm just going to start with a little video. A

warm welcome. Thank this event holds great significance for the students, faculty, administration, staff of the college. This is just a huge accomplishment for our community and is going to make us prosper for years to come. So behind me, you're going to see this skill trade complex. We call it applied technology and trades

and this building is going to make a big difference to improve the future of students and their families. So tech and trades is this for short applied technology and trades. We opened spring of 25. Most of you were in the room were probably at that groundbreaking or not the ground at the groundbreaking as well as the the ribbon cutting. Um you invested with measure J funds to get that building when we when we that bond went long before 2013 right when the first phase of and first and third phase and this is the second phase that we skipped over but a $42 million investment in that complex both with measure J as well as with the district. Do I have that right, Bren?

Um, about half and half. Um,

and I I just think it was an important project to get off the ground and there were lots of building going on in Vicelia. So, just the timing is great. So, that included the welding shop which already was there and existed. Um and so three new instructional buildings that you see and then it includes our dean of um CTE or industrial and technology and CTE conference room and that whole area that you see in the middle you probably can't see much of it but if you saw the overhead that's also a work area as well in the middle. So here's a another shot the work area in the middle of those three buildings the welding shop uh and then the uh the other three shops. So a total of about 71,000 um square feet of work. And then on top of that, so that's under roof or even outside is under roof. So you can go outside and work. As well as you see the dirt area, there's a grass area for events, but there's a dirt area that our electrician training and our construction will set footings or they'll be pulling wire, that sort of thing. So it was scheduled. There's a wall there for our electrician program to do some advanced work in there as well as the welding to go outside and do forging and those kinds of things.

The when Yep. If if you look at that picture on top and you notice everybody looking a certain direction uh and they're all looking at me. It's all about you. And so what happened there? Somebody made might have been Mr. Calvin made the comment that no one wanted to sit by me. I guess. And so everybody stares at me and I'm kind of shocked as to what the We won't use that photo again. I'm sorry.

In in total, eight shops and eight programs and um that are the total of that particular building. So the programs that we have in there are automotive, the industrial maintenance, industrial automation is one of the newer programs within the last seven, eight years. it was out at what we called the annex. And so, um, it has to, you have to go through the industrial maintenance before you can get into industrial automation. And you could proceed from industrial automation to a industrial automation, uh, 4-year program at uh, Bakersfield College. So, we have that pathway there. Um, so students with that electrical, they'll get a little bit of electrical background in there. Most of those are going into some form of food manufacturing locally or other types of manufacturing. Uh equipment technician. I'm going to show you a video about that. That's a part of our a program, but it's within that complex. And I'm proud of that particular facility because we saw and had industry telling us, you know, all of our students are going to Reedley College to their equipment technician program. And that's fine, right? Um but it's not fine. Uh but so so we didn't have the the pl I mean it's a good program. I'm not trying to put it down but it's not good for a student to travel from Toeri or Corkran or any part of the valley and have to drive to Reley. So now we have an equivalent equipment technician. So diesel heavy equipment um not doing big trucks but you get the foundational pieces that you need and I'll have a video that shows a little bit about that. the construction program, the electrician training, I'll talk a little bit about that and where we're going with that. HVAC and welding. So, those are the eight programs and the again the welding already existed. So, why applied technology and trades? You kind of did made that point, right? Um not all jobs require a four-year

degree. And I think not, you know, and I've got kids, I got my own children that went through four-year degree programs and I've got one that's an auto mechanic, right? Not all jobs require a four-year degree. And my son told me that. He said, "You you and dad are overdegreed. I don't need to do that." He says, "This is what I want to do." And he's passionate about it. And also, not every person has four years to give to that, right? So, uh, affordability is a is an issue. Often you can leave with our programs here in the community college. And I agree, uh, with Dr. Van Saiak that it's not either or, right? So sometimes students start in that program because that's what they feel confident in. That's what they did in high school and felt confident in. They did like traditional traditional education as some many students tell us. But what we find is that many are also see that once they see they can be successful then they'll go and try some of our general ed courses as well whether it's on our campus or one of the other two campuses. But I think affordability um within a reasonable time frame is what a lot of people are looking at. Uh many trains trade students will earn as much or more than careers requiring a four-year degree. In about five or six years, I'll test that theory with my own kids. We'll see if that works. They argue amongst themselves. Um and it's just essential jobs. It's essential jobs for our valley, which is what I think your comment was. So uh for us applied technology and trades at COS you know one academic year two semesters you can complete a certificate and oftentimes and that's a pathway to the middle class. It's workforce demand that people are telling us that they need. Um a lot of it is also with industrial credentiing. So in addition to COS credentials and certification and a possibility to get an AS program there's a lot of

industrybased certifications. So an example is the K Cabota Tech program I'm going to tell you about working with Linder and they are not K C Kabota but CH so Case New Holland but we've had um we do a program where if you're hired at Linder as an example just a local example they go through a a training for lender um and it's a case new Holland type training well our students will leave with that Case New Holland training so that they can jump right in and that saves the equipment company that time and that time as well. So, that's just an example. Um, another pilot opportunity we're trying is the 8week semester scheduling thanks to Dr. Will Coxson who is is is working with us on that is just really thinking about in fact Jonah Shingle is out visiting another community college right now because we continue to try to think about different ways of doing things particularly within CTE. So, an eight-week scheduling semester for electrician training because students could start in the fall, but they can't get through and they can't get if they didn't get in the fall, then they've got to wait a whole year. So, now we're doing eight weeks so that a student could start in the fall or they can start again in the spring. And that's really how some of the trade schools work. So, we're a community college with trade programs and you got to think creatively and that's what we're trying to do with there. So, thanks Jesse for allowing us to pilot that even though it may create problems in other ways.

Well, it is great. They've our school. We've gotten some great pieces of equipment from them. We get hands-on learning. It really just jump starts us to the end of their career that we're going to go to. Wow. Getting students connected to real industry partners who are going to hire them is super important not only for the student experience but for industry partners ensuring that they have access to the the right workforce that they need to be successful. So that's just a new program as a result that we couldn't do. We just didn't have the facilities. We didn't have the ability without some of our strong grant workforce grant dollars. Without this building and working the the equipment tech in there, we wouldn't have been able to do that. So, um, that's another thing. Um, just a couple of things I'll I'll show you there. I, in my opinion, I've spent my career kind of in career development with students prior to being here in California. And so, uh, this job fair and career services is something the district has worked well on, has worked hard on over the last 10 years, and the district's been very supportive. But that specifically for our A and trades on our campus, we have a this is the third year. You're going to see a video. It shows says the second year, but that was when the video was made. But a connect, recruit, hire event. And we make sure we have things throughout the year that connect students with employers. And we have no business of recruiting them if we don't get them connected with employers. Now, we're not going to guarantee employment. That's

not what we are. You guarantee your own employment by working hard. But we guarantee we're going to put you in front of employers and we've been working hard to do that. So that's our connect connect, recruit, and hire. And I'll show a video there. We have over 60 employers here. We have 120 actually representatives and we have over I think 250 students that are registered that are going all behind us basically with employers about internships fulltime jobs. It's just really exciting for the second year. We know that employers. And I'm just going to show this one because I like I like the seed branch. Shake everybody's hand. So, um, those are just a couple our career services. That's a spring event. We'll do a couple of fall events to connect them with employers. This spring we tried to develop a new partnership. We called it built for a with the international a center. So when students came in to the gate 12 if you if most of

you have been to that the international a center um we were there with our trades program trying to educate students about just measurements and and the different programs that we had and just introduce them to the concept that we have that locally whether it be at the high school and that all of those folks out at the the international a show were also employers of these types of students. Um, so a lot of our jobs depend on that agriculture and in the trades as well. So those are just a few of the things that we're doing um to try to be connected and have partnerships, develop skills. Those students did the work. So not only did we it wasn't about really recruiting students, but it was about our students articulating what they were doing and they did that very well. Some of our students don't love doing that. So we said get out there, communicate, talk because they're going to expect you to do that in the workplace as well. So it was a good balance for student our students as well as the the people that were coming to the international a center um a show. So just in summary, good news for me to cabin campus numbers are strong. South district students are being served in all areas of study and other students from other areas of the our district come because of our anchor programs. the a tech and trade programs are thriving in our new facilities from my perspective. Um we're continuing to try to do things trying to listen to our community. We know uh all of these things support agriculture and there's a lot of things beyond farming including irrigation some of the things that you mentioned you mentioned and we have uh very thorough partnerships with our advisories to help guide us and continue to guide us in the right direction. So, strong partnerships. The only thing I'll say is um I'll just say this out loud. Opportunities.

It's busy on Barsley. I'll just leave it with that. It's a little busy on Barsley. When Mission O gets out, everybody tries to find another direction to go if they've got a meeting in Vicelia. So, I'll just mention that as a starting point for discussion. Thank you. any what's on your board? Uh have any comments or anything you like to say? Bargley has gotten a little bit better in the last few weeks.

Okay, we'll now open it up for discussion between the the three three bodies here. Who'd like to start first? Anybody? I'd like to jump in and congratulate you all for that tillerary campus. Um a little upset that it was built while I was at Lynwood um at that campus. Um I had the opportunity to walk around the Taller campus uh with my kids and my kids, the oldest is 13 and we were at a we were early for a meeting. We just happened to be walking around snooping a little bit. It was night. It was beautiful. The lights were on and my junior higher, we're talking about what's the next steps, you know, we're going into high school, what happens after high school. And we started looking in windows and he looked in the auto automotive shop and he saw cars in there. And then we we looked in and he saw the the welding shop and he saw people in there starting to work on projects and he goes, "This isn't a school." said, "Yeah, no, this is a school." He goes, "You mean I can do this at school?" I said, 'Yeah, you can you can learn how to do this at school. And it just it fired him up to be on the campus and it fired up his younger brother to be have that excitement for education. So when he went back to school, all be it, you know, fifth, sixth grade at the time. Uh it it helped him understand what education can be and what's out there for him. Um, also congratulations on the CNH training. I know Cat has a program up in Reedley that's always been talked about and on the high school level um having some conversations on the farm. Uh, we've talked about um around the the coffee shop talk, I guess. What what does a diesel program

look like for Tiller High School? Um, is that something that we help with some prerexs going into CAT because that's what we knew. That's what we knew was out there. Or is there another opportunity uh for some collaboration and maybe some opportunities to set kids up uh in a better way as they enter COS? I think a lot of those credentials that I tal could you come to the microphone. So

we definitely I mean Mike Maderas is on my computer to say that I need to talk to him. Um, but we we I know there but the high school agriculture program in particular, right? there's it's got to be however the state has it and I don't know how that necessarily works but so I knew there there's probably some obstacles or things that have to happen there but we're ready to talk some of those credentiings credentiing and some of the strong workforce grant dollars and things we could probably work together to try to get um equipment the right types of equipment and stuff that could be happening and maybe you know take two of our courses before you ever get to us that sort of thing would be the hope, but we'll see, right? It just I I know our instructor Charlie Ay has talked with um your instructors and we're but we need to move on that at some point. So,

thank you. Yeah, I just want to say I had a grandson that went through Mission Oak Engineering Pathway. Um, was accepted at Calpali and San Diego State, but chose to stay at COS to get his uh basics out of the way and save a little bit of money and he's loving it there. Um, since I've been on this board, we've watched you come, Brent, and give presentations and just the growth that we've seen with COS and the exciting things. Just keep it going.

Council, any questions, comments?

Uh, I'd just like to make a comment. you know, as someone who was, I said this too many times, born and raised in this community and uh went to the high school. I I mentioned red, white, and blue because I went to Red, White, and Blue. And when I graduated, I then went to COS. I was on the uh uh uh found COS foundation. So, I was actively involved in that. Uh and now I find myself sitting on the city council. Um I'm just pleased and astounded um at the leadership we have at all levels including you know I'm saying that before I have a presentation from our city manager but uh uh Dr. Van Saiak does a fantastic job. Uh I have a certain amount of insight because I have direct contact with one of the board members. Um but I also know the job that uh Brent you do and uh you've made great strides over there and what you've done here in Taller uh uh is fantastic. what you're bringing to this community is appreciated and the community itself uh uh sees the vision that's going on with you and your board and uh thank you and uh I sit on the the international agric center board with Luan she's a jewel I use that word a couple of times I think I've used it in the past describing cos we've we were lucky enough to incorporate u your campus into our city and that has been huge for our city itself uh from a from an economic development standpoint to be able to say to those out there that we have a community college in our city that's big and uh specifically it's just my way as

as one council member to say thank you to COS thank you to you Brent thank you to our city manager who has had foresight to do a lot of the things that are going on and of First, thank you to de Dr. Fan Sio and the board itself. Thank you.

And I concur with everything that uh Dennis has said as well as when I'm talking to people about moving to Tiller, I'm always out there, yay. Yeah, come to Tiller. Um I always talk about our education system, the value, the quality that we have here in Tiller. We don't have our elementary school district represented here tonight, but we also have an outstanding elementary school district as well. I only worked for them for 40 years so I can say that. But it's I think it's one of the great things about Teraryi is our education system and the quality uh the integrity, the devotion to our young people is apparent in every student that goes through our system. And so again, a thank you to all of you. But since uh Councilwoman Maderas mentioned the other high school in town, I would have to say that I attended the original high school along with COS. U I also wanted to thank uh the pre for the presentation. It's great unlike Mr. Maderos. I get to see from afar and hear from afar what's happening over at COS. Um but uh I I appreciate all the work that's being done uh in artillery campus and the opportunities are being created for um our students. you know, when I was in college and a student activist and, you know, trying to encourage young people to go to college, I was always always had the mentality to go to college, you know, go to CSU, UC, start off as a at a community college like I did at Santa Monica College and moved on, graduated, luckily to graduate from Berkeley. But over the years, I have come to know how important trades and other types of opportunities are important. Yes, I finally got to the point where I realized not everybody can go to college, you know, and having a good trades job, having a hopefully good union job would help you, you know, uh move up the the ladder and provide for

your family and for yourself. So, I appreciate the opportunities that are being provided by the by COS and the Tiller campus in general. Um, I had two items that I wanted to ask um if it bean or Dr. Calvin, but the first one I know that in the expansion of your Teriy campus, you did have that annex on Cross and I believe I Street where you provided some kind of trades uh type of uh training. I do you know is that building still under the COS sort of umbrella or what's happened to that building? I think it was H Street or Yeah, thank you Councilman Sagala. Um it was the Makamoy complex there and um for

for several years we leased all three of those buildings um and and ran several of the projects that we just heard about, right?

Um from from that complex. That was kind of phase one um to getting them um in in the city of Taller and then uh eventually out to the the Tallery campus and um opening opening this this tech and trades complex last January um made most of that unnecessary. So, we we pulled back and and we currently just lease um uh one of the facilities and that is to support um our partnership with with the Tary um high school school district. Um trying to do some adult ed there. Um um it's been a little slower I think for for both of us than than than we had initially anticipated, but um that's why we held on to one of those buildings to support that that partnership.

Right. And the reason I ask is I I know that's that that you guys use that and I think for me, you know, trying to one of my priorities on the council is trying to help youth, trying to get them off the streets, make sure they're not become gang members or trouble in our neighborhoods. And you know, we have a tax that's going to be talked about for us to ask our voters to add a tax. So, I'm going to push for some youth programming or youth funding. But I thought that would be like a place if you guys were still had the lease, that'd be a nice youth teen center that that could be in our city. So, that's why I was asking what the status was of that because it'd be a nice nice place to have kids in a safe place, maybe learn some things, maybe get encouraged to go to college. But, so that was one thing. Um, the other thing is transportation. Um, I'm not sure how many of our Toaryi students um, make it to the Hanford campus. You know, it's a specialty for law enforcement. I do know that our Tiller Police Department does sponsor and recruit students that become police officers and come to work in our city. But I'm, excuse me, I'm not sure how many students make that trek. You know, I've brought to council in the past the idea of trying to do some collaboration with Kings County, city of Corkran because I mean for a for a young student from Corkran to go to Artillery campus, if they had a car, it' be a straight 40minut drive, but if they have to take a bus, it's a five and a half hour track, believe it or not, to go from Corkran to Hanford to Vicelia down to Taller. And so I'm not sure how many students, you know, from Tiller end up going to Hanford because that for me I I served as a chair of the transportation agency uh in the county for a number of years and those were things we try to do to try to fix you know uh access to transportation and I know uh uh council member Ser now serves on that board but one of the questions I wanted to ask I do know that students as part of their fees pay somewhat to catch the bus right to be able to ride the bus free

throughout the county but does that also go into the microtransit because you know we do have a great microtransit program in the county where for $5 you can get your app and it takes you door to door takes you from Taller to to Dauba to Vicelia and so I wanted to see if that was something that COS board would have a conversation about incorporating that access with TC. I know you have a I know you guys have a relationship with TAG that provides that student service, but maybe having a discussion with TAG to expand that to microransit. Maybe uh you know as as a part of the fee they get a discount where instead of paying $5 they pay $2 or something because that is a big sometimes a big barrier for people to go to school is the transportation. and we have fixed routes that in the summertime drop you 10 12 blocks away from your location, but this microtransit is pretty much doortodoor. So, uh I was hoping that maybe in your at a future board meeting you guys would have that kind of discussion to see if you can expand uh your student access to microtransit. Vicelia has their own and then the county has through TCRTA their own. So that that that's just a suggestion because I know I hear from my constituents from the west side of Tallaria figuring how to try to get to school.

Thank you again uh council. We could certainly look at that talk with TKG. They've been a fabulous partner since 2017 or excuse me 2007 or 2008 is when we partnered with um TKG. Ted Ted Smallley has has um been a fabulous supporter of uh COOS and community college students in in general. In fact, um we stopped counting how many awards uh TKEG and COOS um were awarded because of that program. Uh we copied Calpaly and UC Santa Barbara's um arrangement that that they have. Essentially, it's $10 um uh uh per semester and unlimited rides. Imagine what that I mean, if you're if you're using the bus system and that's uh city of Taller, city of Iselia, uh the county of Tallery, the county of well, not County of Kings, uh maybe it is CART, yeah, Kings Area Rapid Transit, uh they've all they've all worked together to to make this happen for our students. We subsidize it and our students can can go anywhere in the county and and even to Fresno if they use the cart route to to Fresno for $10 per semester. I mean, it's amazing. It's it's a it's a game changer. Students come in from from Woodlake Love it because it drops them off um about a half a block from from campus and they pick it up right in front of campus. So, so we've had community colleges up and down our our system come to the college and and meet with us and TKG to figure out how to do it in their own communities. They haven't had a lot of luck. Um but but they they recognize that it is a a fantastic program. We'd be interested in the micro transit um and and we could certainly look at that.

It may be something that that works for everyone or it it may be something that we just encourage students to do. I mean, our our full financial aid qualifiers um get a PEL grant every year of $5,000 for exactly those kinds of things. So for $5 a month, is it is that No, it's $5 a ride. So basically, if you if you took it one if you took a round trip, it'd be $10. So the idea would be as you stated to talk to Ted and TK to see if that microtransit could be incorporated into your for your students and maybe a discounted or reduced maybe even for $2.50 to get from West to Larry to Vicelia. That's a great deal.

So that the idea is just expanding.

Yeah, we can certainly look at that. But I mean $10 a day versus $10 for six months, there's a big gap there. But um but if anybody can make it happen, Ted Smallley can. So, I'll make a note and and and and talk to him about that because I think we've done as good as anybody in our 115 community college system at bringing transportation um to the masses. I mean, we've got students coming in from Cutler, Rosie, Woodlake, uh Lindsay on on these and and uh it's amazing how how full these busels are when when when they arrive at campus at 8 or nine in the morning. But thank you for thinking of of that for us.

Um there seemed to be a lot of interest when Barsley was mentioned and uh I think our city manager could probably deal with that. I don't know if it would be to the satisfaction of everybody, but at least partially satisfied maybe.

Sure. Well, obviously the city is well aware of traffic concerns related to Barsley and the southeast quadrant of the city. You know, on the one hand, it's great to have growth. Uh we've got about 6,000 homes being permitted all around the city right now. Uh but on the other hand, it results sometimes in traffic delays and and uh traffic related issues. And so you're probably aware that this city, like many cities, um approach largely uh road uh new road development or road expansion projects on a project basis. As development comes in, developers will pay fees and those projects, you know, the rightway will be uh obligated to the city and the developer will make improvements associated with their subdivision or their project. And so it's sort of a patchwork of getting a roadway completed. That's not the ideal setting, but that's largely driven by dollars, right? It's very expensive, as you know, now to do roadway projects. I often will tell people, think of in the neighborhood you live in. I don't know how large that neighborhood is, but my guess it's probably 6 to8 million to redo just the streets in that neighborhood. Now expand that to a large collector or um even larger roadway. And uh and so that's kind of what the situation is with Barsley. We we made a presentation to council last fall sort of the southeast quadrant transportation um I don't want to say master plan but it's approaching a master plan where we looked at all of the roadways and talked about you know what are sort of the priorities what might it cost how do we go about approaching those projects you're probably aware um that the city of Tary of all the cities in Teriy county has the lowest sales tax rate of any of the cities. Um this council has talked about the possibility of a sales tax measure um this November.

They'll have a vote coming up here in June um or before then uh to make a final decision if they're going to pursue that. Uh one of the things that they have said is that if that sales tax measure were to pass, there would be a large commitment of those dollars to road improvement projects. Some of that will be deferred maintenance. We have a lot of deferred maintenance on the roads around this city. Uh but some of that would be for expanding existing roadways. And so one of the things staff will be presenting to council is the concept that rather than waiting for development to come in and developers to pay their fair share, the city take that project on as a city initiative, assuming a sales tax measure were to pass. That's a hint. And then we would use those dollars to do an important roadway that I think we all want. If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to get with you maybe afterwards or send you an email with more specific details.

I have a couple of questions for for the high school in in regards to the the enrollment um specifically um for the dual and current enrollments. I think I mentioned my you know my children have been you know um take have taken advantage of of those programs and so I just wanted to know what the um what the current status is what you project the the future enroll the enrollment come for fall or for for summer. I know that for us um we we um I think that we're always trying to make sure that we we meet those needs. We're I I can't say that we're at capacity, but we're always um you know Yeah. You want you want to say a little talk a little bit more about those?

Sure. Thank you. This is something that Lucy and I talk about all the time. Um when when uh prior to the state really um encouraging dual enrollment, COS was providing dual enrollment like we were dual enrollment before dual enrollment was dual enrollment. We love the concept of it, this long, safe, um, non-threatening on-ramp into higher ed for all reasons that Lucy talked about earlier. We love it. Um, in the fall alone, I think we served 3,000 or over 3,000 unduplicated high school students in our district. Here's a caveat, though. We didn't get paid for them. We did not get paid for them. There are community colleges that are trimming back substantially their college offerings. Um, and you guys that have lived there in this community long enough know that at one time C West was criticized because you couldn't get in and out in two years, right? Oh, I got stuck there for three years. Some of that was just an excuse for maybe not getting it done, but but some of that there was some truth there. So, we've worked really hard over at least the last decade um to shore that up. Students come up, come in, um maybe they do get accepted at UCLA or UC San Diego or UC Berkeley, they they they come to our place, they saved 100 grand, and we want to make sure and get them out in two years. And that happens now. And then we with the with the popularity of dual enrollment um uh so many of our community college partners were hit hard through COVID and and now they're frankly satisfied just to pick the lowhanging fruit which is high school dual enrollment um and and they're not doing much to get their college students in and out or even getting back to their precoid

offerings. That hasn't been our case. Our our enrollment is is through the roof. it has been. When you look at those videos, you see why. I mean, there's there's multiple events on all of our campuses every single day. It's just a fun place uh to go to to go to college. Um but that makes our budget pretty impacted. And so, in the last several years, we've been over our funding cap by about the same amount as as what we would have or should have got paid for dual enrollment. Now, we could trim we could trim back all of our college offerings and just call it a day like some colleges do. We haven't chosen to do that. We've we've actually funded dual enrollment over and above what we're getting paid for because we think that's the right thing uh to do. But when we say we're under capacity or at capacity, we're actually substantially over capacity as a result of of dual and concurrent enrollment. So, what have we done? We've partnered with the Tallarian Kings um career collaborative out of TCOE. Lucy and I both sit on the board there and and we're also joined by Porterville College, Reedley College, and West Hills College. And so while we get first dibs at the theater districts in our in our region, um if we can't provide staffing for a given college, we let the other three um uh offer their services as well. And that's taken the pressure off a little bit. There's there's a few more regional colleges that have have have have historically been underenrolled and they've said that they'll join that as well. So, we're hoping that that that provides a bit of a a a safety net to continue expanding high school um involvement in dual enrollment without it all falling on on on on our shoulders because unlike the the high school districts, the K12 districts, we don't

get paid for every student that comes in our doors. I wish we did. You know that I I use the example a hurricane could happen in Texas tomorrow and by Monday uh uh Tallery High School District could have a thousand more students. Well, they'd get paid for them all, but for their older siblings that came to COS, we wouldn't get paid for them because we're at our funding cap. That's the difference in our system. So, we're doing our best, again, 3,000 unduplicated students uh this past fall. We're doing our best to meet that need. And for what we can't meet meet, we're we're we're happy to let West Hills Reedley or Porto College take up the the slack. No other questions or comments and it'll be time to turn it over to our city manager for uh our part of the program. Melissa, could you start the timer?

This will be pretty quick. So, you know, uh pretty exciting time to be in the city of Toaryi. Um a lot of great things going on has already been talked about. Very proud to be here. This uh September will be my fifth year. So, very fortunate, grateful to have such a great city council staff and community, everybody rowing or trying to row in the same direction, which I don't think has always been the case. And that excitement, I think, is furthering uh more excitement for more things to come. You know, we've been, as I just mentioned, fortunate in the last five years, we've received about $50 million in special one-time either federal or state earmark funds or grant funds that are had to be used specifically for certain things. And in that same time period, we've completed about $50 million of projects. Uh we are almost near completion on the T-Biz, the Terary Business Innovation Zone next door. That was the refurbishment of the old courthouse building as a business incubator and maker space. Uh the award-winning Zwalt Park, which is now entering our second concert season. Uh the K9 Bane Dog Park, our city's first dog park. Um, we did about $13 million in energy efficiency projects, sports field lighting, uh, AC systems and lighting in our buildings and our homeless shelter, which will be open here in June. But, uh, and we did about $64 million in road projects in that same time period. But, we got a lot more to do. Um, right now we're working, we did, let's see, we finished five master plans in five years. We're working on the Elks Bayou uh nature preserve or nature park master plan right now. Uh you heard this evening talk about a potential regional sports plex. We also are working out of that parks master plan a call for an indoor wreck facility. A new fire station is on on the table for

discussion. Um we're working on a number of downtown redevelopment projects and a potential entertainment district uh just north of the international agra center. Uh we're also very fortunate CALR is spending about $500 million right in the city limits and the widening of Highway 99 and the new uh page interchange. Um but we got a lot more to go. Uh as I mentioned the sales tax measure council will make that decision. We have tons of street work to do as you know. Uh we have that more investments. We've made a lot of investments in public safety. We need more investments in public safety, including more firefighters and more police officers, in particular police officers. Um, we've got some really big projects here that we have to do. We have to build a new wastewater treatment plant. That's, you know, we're still working through that right now, but that's probably the one that's on tap the soonest. That's about $165 million project that we have to move forward with, uh, the expansion of that facility. But the one I want to talk to you about today and I think you're controlling right Melissa if you go is our corporate yard. So this is probably a project that's been long time in the coming. Um folks don't see it right because it sits down there off of K Street behind a fence, but all our city employees that go into that facility every day know it all too well. Um it is a facility that is very old by and large. We have a fleet building which I'll show you in a minute, but that's more new and and really functions well, but everything else doesn't. Um, you've got actually go back to that if you would one second. So, you can see there um the road that connects perpendicular to K Street. That is the new International Aggro Center Way. So, that road will be the new interchange and it'll sort of butt right into the middle of our property. It's about 15 acres currently. We're going to be

bringing to council next Tuesday night um an RFQ to hire an engineering firm, design firm to help us think about where a new corporate yard could go. They'll look at the existing site. I mean, we've got about 15 acres. I think probably in the next 50 years, we have we'd have to at least double that site, that footprint. Probably closer to 45 acres. Uh especially with electrification of vehicles. You know, for example, with our dump trucks right now, we have to buy two electric dump trucks for every one dump truck because they don't last the whole route, right? So that not only a bigger capital cost, but we have to have more space to be able to store all these vehicles and to repair them and to just charge them. Um, and then of course we will look at this site. Could we could we just expand this site? And I think that's a possibility. But when you look sort of to the south and north, you see all those other existing businesses and in some cases homes that would have to be purchased and relocated. And so that could be a real challenge for us. But we will look at that. We will look at other sites as well. Um east side, west side. We'll look at the cities. Uh we own a bunch of land as you know uh almost 1,000 acres well 500 for sure but we're looking at other land around our treatment plant for future acquisition on the west side of town. So next slide. So these pictures look better than it really is. Um we didn't want to show you the the other pictures in public but um you can sort of tell if you look at the top three pictures and the bottom left picture. These are old facilities. These are old buildings. Many of them are frankly functionally obsolete. These are old metal warehouse type structures that were purchased some time ago. Uh if you look at that bottom one on the right, that's the only building we have that looks like some of the pictures you guys were showing right in your presentations. That's our fleet building. And so that one's pretty that

one works well. That's one of our newer buildings. Next slide. But when you look at when you look at that site for example in the aerial there is pavement out there but the pavement is quickly becoming dirt. Um it hasn't been repaved in years and we're not ready to make an investment out there until council decides you know if we're going to invest there somewhere else and we need a study to kind of figure that out here over the next year. This is our tenative schedule for that project. So, as I mentioned, next week on the 7th, we'll present council the draft RFQ. If council approves that, we'll go out and advertise it and pick a firm and then get the preliminary design. And that preliminary design, what they'll do is they'll sit down with us and figure out, okay, what are all our space needs? They'll sit down with every department over the next, you know, few decades, what do we need? What does the law require us to do? And then, okay, how many acres does that equate to? And then they'll start looking at they'll develop um some preliminary cost estimates and start looking at sites all around town. Once that once council ultimately design decides where it wants to put it, if we're going to do the project, then we need to ultimately design final plans and specs and cost estimates and then request for bids for a corporate yard contractor and then go into construction. So, this is probably I think this is a conservative timeline. We like to move it up a little quicker if we can, but as construction goes, sometimes things get extended or often get extended. Next slide. This is what I had mentioned, the cities uh land around the water treatment plan. So, sort of right in the middle or the upper blue uh not the top blue area, but the blue box or rectangle below it, that's where our treatment plan is currently. Yep. And then we own every all the land that's shaded in different colors all around it. And you know over time we'll look at probably trying to acquire additional land create a buffer around around our treatment plant. We are as I mentioned going to explan expand a treatment plant but we can do that all within the

footprint of the blue area that it sits in currently and that'll get us out another 50 years. So we've talked about you know could it be a potential site for the new corporation yard. One of the nice benefits of putting it on a different site whether it's this site or others is we can be in construction. We can finish the project. staff can close up shop on a Friday afternoon and start working at the new facility on a Monday morning. Yeah, this is sort of on the west side of town. You can you can see at the very top it says West Barsley Avenue and West Street. So that gives you a good sense of where the land is that we're talking about. The reason we wanted and let me go to the next slide real quick. Yeah, let's go back to that last one. So, like I said, short and sweet, but the reason we wanted to introduce this to you is, you know, I I think we need to do this project regardless, but we wanted to just tell you about something we're we're working towards and see if you have any interest in partnering with us on it. I know each of the organizations and we I've talked a little bit to the city schools who's not here tonight. They have similar challenges, right? You have got to find land to be able to store all of your buses and all of your heavy equipment. you're going to have to you're dealing with electrification over time and and so you know we're not saying we need you to participate with us but we want to open up the door for the possibility of partnering with us. If for example we put it at somewhere out on this property, we own a lot of land. We don't have to buy the land. We would certainly have enough land to be able to not only put our facility at about 30 to 45 acres, but if we had additional land for you to store your vehicles, we could have a conversation about do we build a facility where we could repair your vehicles, certainly charge your vehicles, or just store your vehicles. Um I know you have to look for those same things all the time. So we just wanted to open the door. Not looking for any commitment tonight obviously, but we wanted to share this thought with all of you and I will probably reach out separately to Dr.

Vonak and Dr. Calvin when he gets the opportunity to see if there's any any shared interest there. And that really completes what we wanted to talk about tonight as far as this project. Were open to any questions. Thank you, Mark. Any questions for the city manager? I had one piece of curiosity. If you were to move the corporate yard to one of those other spaces, what is the plan for the current yard? Can you go back to that first slide?

Well, this is a project we're talking about. So, if you look at that roadway where it kind of tees right into the middle of our property, on the south side of our property, we have that fleet building. So we think we could parcel out this site and probably sell that site for a commercial use. Right? So now it goes from not being on the tax roles to being on the tax roles, creating jobs in the private sector. The north part of that site, we'd probably clear out all the buildings and sell it as a piece of undeveloped land. What I have recommended to council we do is we take that road and we push it right through the middle of the site and we build a bridge over the railroad on the west side. And you can't see it, it's offsite, but on the west side of the railroad tracks is 3,000 acres of undeveloped land. It's currently being farmed. That would make a great business park for this community. I was very fortunate to be involved in a couple business parks in my career. We did one that was 600 acres that created 6,000 jobs in six years. I think we could do the same thing here. We'd have rail access so you could have a spur. It'd have quick, close, easy access and proximity to Highway 99, which is being expanded. We're in the phase now of just doing the preliminary engineering to see what that would cost to push that road through and up and over the railroad. We've talked to Union Pacific about it. They're supportive as long as it's a bridge over, not under. Um that'd be about a $50 million project. But that council has we've talked about it. Council has taken no specific action to say we're going to do that. Uh what we normally do with council is we take things in phases. Hey, can we explore this? Yes. Okay, this makes sense. Do you want to move to the next phase? And that's what we're doing here.

To expand to expand, why don't you explain what we've done on International Agra Center Way, which is listed here is Commercial Avenue, I think, which takes us from Laspina all the way to Turner Drive. Yep. And this more or less would complete that concept. And the earmark we got from our congressman, how that all fits in.

Yeah. So, so I apologize. We don't have this on the map, but if you extend that roadway, as council member Maderos was just talking about and go over Highway 99, that new interchange will be done here in the next couple months. Um, that road when it tease into Laspinia at the A Center. We were very fortunate to receive a $4 million earmark to continue that roadway up to Turner Drive. So, it'll it'll butt the north side of the a center and that becomes the new main entrance to the A Center. and their ma they have a master plan expansion that they're going through right now kind of doubled the footprint of their facility. But what's nice about that roadway besides having access providing new access to the inter international agric center it opens 300 acres of undeveloped land to the north of it that's where we're talking about for our inter potential entertainment district and then when it when it tags into Turner Drive as we start as I mentioned remember that southeast quadrant transportation master plan project we're looking at that road Turner drive kind of being sort of the orientation of it uh changing as it connects to Mooney and clearing up and fixing up that interconnection there. So that would become sort of the east beltway around the not around the city but you know sort of as another access point 299 through and around the city.

I'm sorry I don't have the visuals for that

also frees up traffic for uh to get to Barsley uh the Mission Oak COS corridor. Yep. Everything starts the puzzle starts fitting with all of that in the future. Well, it's also about Morrison eventually. Yeah. You know, coming all Morrison will come all the way down and book in the Mooney. Yep. Which is another great project.

Yep. Yeah. We do we we are in the process right now of doing a pavement management study. Uh that's pretty standard operation for a city. They should do them every 5 years. I think the last one we did was 10 years ago. So, that one should be done hopefully in the summertime or just after the summer. Um, that'll talk that that's just I think you may have saw a social media post where we have a vehicle driving every road in the city right now grading every single road to determine where they rank in terms of what needs to be replaced, patched, repaired, etc. first. Um, but in when we come to make that presentation to council, we'll also share some more information with council about that southeast quadrant master plan and some of this roadway and, you know, how much of if if a sales tax measure were to pass, how much of that would we obligate every year to road maintenance versus how much would we want to use towards road, you know, large arterial road completion like Barsley, for example? That's coming in the next few months. Any other questions or comments?

Just a a quick comment as as someone who has uh driven from uh down uh M Street past city hall to my place of employment for uh I hate to say how long, but it's uh uh close to 50 years. I've seen various iterations of the Zomalt Park through the years and I have to tell you how how great it's been to drive by there over the last several years and to see what's it been what it's been transformed to and and the vision that you and the and the council had in putting that together. uh in addition to the reconfiguration of the old uh courthouse building and the uh parking lot uh for the police department and those uh uh my place of employment is just south of that and uh it's amazing the transformation that's taken place and so just want to tell you how much I appreciate that from my point of view.

Thank you. If I could add, uh, the Beach Boys on June 26th and Howie Mont Mandelle on August 8th. Mark your calendar. I'll be there.

I know on the agenda it says closing comments by myself, but I'd like to ask the high school district if they have any closing comments and then cos Since I haven't spoke yet, I thought I'd just make one comment. We don't have a huge public audience here this evening, but Lucy mentioned our major uh E, I believe it was for our bond that passed. You had your major J years and years ago for the COS campus, and the Tary city council is now looking at possibly putting a measure on for a sales tax increase. And I just like to say that I want to thank the public who obviously isn't here for their support in those measures because what it has done is it has allowed us to do great things for our students so that they can be successful. And you know Lucy gave a great presentation. You gave a great presentation Lynn about the facilities. We wouldn't be able to do that without without the money that we receive from those bonds. So I just wanted to say thank you and good luck with whatever you decide to do. And thank you uh city of Tallery for hosting this this evening. Appreciate it very much.

Anything colleases? Any closing comments? I would also like to say thank you so much Mark and the rest of the council for hosting us. Um you know for me it's personally as as a board member it's very important that we have the this type of collaboration um you know to make sure that we have the best communication to work together um because all of the you know all of the uh the high schools are are in my district and so for me education has always been uh a priority not just in my household but you know for for our communities and when if our communities thrive our families thrive. So, thank you so much.

I just wanted to thank you for the the comment about bringing a young student onto the campus. I think it's uh wonderful. We we look for opportunities, of course, to bring the public, those that are not students, onto our campus, and most will be surprised to see that this is available to them in their own community. some would expect to see it in larger larger communities and it's uh something that we're very proud to have uh here in in Tallery County. And um yeah, I just it's uh it's nice. I love to see how surprised people are and uh we want to continue to grow each one of our campuses, but it's very exciting that we've invested into uh into our community college to be able to have these services for our students and create opportunities and jobs. And so thank you for bringing uh your young student to um to our campus and we hope there's more opportunities for us to have uh students visit uh get a tour or if it's one of our fall festivals or to purchase plants from our horiculture. There's just so many exciting things. We have horses there. Uh, one of my favorite things is is a uh is a small um five acres of land that is done uh that is um that is kept by students. And it it's it's interesting because when I started they it was year one and all they did was plant and then year two, year three and then you could go there in year five and see a fiveyear mature tree and then a first year tree. And I loved how they can how students can see everything they need to know to to grow, you know, fields of fruit. And so it's really exciting to have those opportunities for our students to get hands-on training. So just want to thank you for um again this meeting and then for bringing young students into our campus.

something.

Um, I also wanted to thank uh uh council and city manager for putting this together. I know it's it's difficult to put everybody's schedules together, so I appreciate everybody making the time and um I do hope that we um do this on a yearly basis. I know it's been some years since we did it, but there's a lot of things that are happening as the city manager laid out in terms of projects and what we heard from the school district and the exciting things that are happening at the Vicelia campus and Talleria campus that um I would hope that maybe every spring we try to shoot for having this type of meeting to be able to check in and see what else we can collaborate on. I mean there's a lot of topics. We talked about transportation, we talked about land use, we talked about joint ventures and a number of things. So there's always something happening uh among our jurisdictions that um it's great to have this uh opportunity to hear from each other and I do hope it happens uh yearly moving forward. Thank you.

Okay. Uh the only thing that Councilman Sagala didn't mention that I'd like to thank him for was this was his idea to have this joint meeting and I think it's been very successful. It's unfortunate that we didn't have members of the public here to hear what was going on between colleges and the high school district and the city of Tallery. Uh I think they would be amazed to hear everything that's taking place in town. I don't think they have any idea what's maybe they have high school students, they go to school, they come home, but they don't know the inner workings and everything that's taking place. And I really appreciate you giving your time tonight to be here with us. We discussed this. Um I I always felt that sharing of information equals success and we are we were already heading in that direction. I think it's even more so now that we're showing what these three bodies can do together. And I look for it to just continue on and with more and more exciting things taking place.