City Council - Regular Meeting

with the City of Tulare Library for over 31 years now. And we have been in this facility for 16 of those 31 years.

So wonderful history for a library here in the City of Tulare. Our proclamation reads, whereas libraries have long been places where people discover new interests, expand their knowledge and experience the simple joy of exploring books, ideas and resources that enrich their lives. And whereas today's libraries are dynamic centers of learning and connection, offering welcoming environments where residents can engage with technology, attend educational programs, participate in community events and access trusted information. And whereas libraries ensure free and equitable access to a wide range of materials and services, print, digital and beyond, so that individuals of every age, background and ability have the opportunity to learn, grow and succeed. And whereas libraries and library staff dedicate themselves to creating inclusive, inspiring spaces where people can connect, discover new passions and find the sense of belonging. And whereas this year, libraries nationwide celebrate National Library Week with the theme, Find Your Joy, highlighting the many ways libraries can help individuals uncover the stories, activities, and experiences that spark happiness and curiosity. Now, therefore, we, the City Council of the City of Tulare, do hereby proclaim the week of April 19th through the 25th, 2026, as National Library Week. and with that as well heidi to you and your staff we give our utmost appreciation and thank you for all that you do for the city of toledo and if you'd like to give a speech talk about your library yeah

Thank you. I mean, as many of you know, I have been doing this a really long time and it is a passion and it is a joy. And to do it here in the city of Tulare has been really good for me and it's been really an amazing journey. We have a lot of really amazing stuff that happens at the library for those of you who don't come very often. So you should check it out. One of the things that we're doing right now is called One Book, One Coast. It's a program that was put out by the County of Los Angeles Public Library. And they have this dream of creating a book club for the entire coast. So California, Washington, and Oregon. And over the next two months, so April 1st to May 31st, The libraries in that area who are participating, everybody is going to read the same book and offer programming on the same theme, which is George Takei's book, They Called Us Enemy, which is his experiences in the incarceration camps during World War II. And as many of you may know, there was a distribution center here at Tulare at the fairgrounds. There were many centers across California and the West Coast. But one of the things that's really exciting is that on May 31st, which is the final day of the program, there is going to be a live stream with Mr. Takai. And we are planning to present that live streaming in here with snack. So if you are interested, we have a display going on out there. We have done one art project already and we have a book club coming up, but there are a lot of activities and events that are not related to that program that are going on that all of you are welcome to attend. So I hope to see you sometime soon.

Thank you. All right, moving forward on our agenda is item number four, public comment. Members of the public wishing to comment on any item not appearing on the agenda may address the city council at this time. State law prevents council from acting on any matter not on the agenda. However, your comments may be referred to staff for follow-up. This is also the time for the public to comment on items listed under the consent calendar or to request an item from the consent calendar be pulled for discussion purposes. Comments related to public hearing and general business items will be heard at the time those items are discussed. In fairness, to all who wish to speak, public comment is limited to a total of 15 minutes with each speaker allowed three minutes, unless otherwise extended by the City Council. Please begin your comments by stating your name and providing just your city of residence. for those who wish to provide public comment while viewing the meeting online you may call 559-366-1849 and when you call in the clerk will assist you with your call i do have a few yellow cards, but the yellow cards have specifically noted for item 9.3. So when 9.3 comes up on the agenda, I will go back to the yellow cards and I'll surely call each of you for public comment at that period. So for items that are not in the general or public hearings, if there's anyone in chambers who'd like to make public comment. Yes. Go ahead. Good evening, gentlemen.

Hello, my name is Lacey. Good evening. On behalf of the Del Lago neighborhood, we just want to give a heartfelt thank you for your help with the group home. The only noise we hear these days are the kids playing in the neighborhood, and that's a wonderful thing. Music to our ears. And we'd like to extend an extra thank you to our police department. Knowing you guys were a phone call away gave us a huge sense of relief and safety. We'll keep it short and sweet, but thank you all again for taking us seriously and looking out for us. We'll never be able to say enough from all of us in the Arciero and Del Lago neighborhood. Thank you very, very much.

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you.

Good evening. Welcome.

Hi, thank you. My name is Courtney Nolan and I'm here representing our business, Soul Good Downtown Tulare. I am just in awe and thank you for the opportunity that does grow here. The grant that we were approved for for the Downtown Tulare Taste Program. And I know that our application was a little bit different than everybody else's. So we want to thank you guys. for taking that into consideration and approving our loan. Our kitchen is up and running. It is beautiful. Thank you. And I also do want to, like they stated with the police, just the area downtown that any problems that we have, they are just a phone call away and they come and they handle the business and it's just been clean. It's been better. It's just been so much, so much goodness downtown. So I just want to thank you guys. specifically for the taste program, just come enjoy. And if you guys let us know that you're with the city council, we got you on your food. So we just appreciate that. And hopefully next time for the downtown, whoever's coming through that you guys will take in consideration kind of like our application was, I'm not sure if you guys are aware, but if you guys go back that we did a PO, a purchase order, instead of just having the money up front. We just want to thank you for small business. It was very hard to have that much money in us to be able to get the equipment before. So I want to thank you guys for allowing that to happen for us. Thank you so much.

Can you share a little bit about your business, like who you are?

Oh, yeah.

I don't know what business you have.

Oh, yeah. So we're Soul Good Downtown, my husband and myself and my daughter. And we are a soul food restaurant. We are in the alley behind used treasure or in front of used treasures. and off in between Kern and Inyo off of K Street. And we also do other events that are safe for the youth to come down. We do open mics, we do worship open mics, and we just try to keep it a safe place for a lot of youth to come because there isn't a lot of places for them to go to just to have a good Friday night or Saturday afternoon. So yeah, we're a soul food restaurant, but we also are community driven, so.

Thank you. And a question for staff. Were they part of the smaller grant, smaller loan program?

Yes, that's correct.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in chambers who'd like to make public comment? Good evening and welcome.

My name is Ariani. And my name is Makayla. I'm Veronica Torres.

Ruben Torres.

Regina Perez.

Marcos Garcia.

We are Inquisitive Bike Club. This last Saturday, we had our first annual autism awareness show. We were able to use the Zumwalt Park. We wanted to come and say thank you. We had a very good turnout with the community coming out. We had informational, we had KC24 come out, two radio stations that came out and covered it. We just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity. We wanted to make this an annual event. We had a lot of the community come out and was able to get information. We had police officers come out. They came and did raffles and got food. And it was, you know, it felt really committed with the community coming out. You know, we had people come out asking different questions. We had churches. And we just wanted to come out and say thank you. We appreciated the opportunity and we hope to work more with the community. community and with the city to be able to keep this going as as an annual thing for for Tulare thank you thank you for your comments is anyone else in Chambers who'd like to make public comment okay madam clerk do we have anyone on the phone

Jacqueline?

Yes.

You may proceed with your comments.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Jacqueline Bedient. I was born and raised in the great state of California, but calling in from Tennessee this evening. What I'm about to say is truly disheartening to me as my grandfather was a respected California Highway Patrol officer for many years, a missing persons advocate representing Judy Alvarez, the mother of Michael Hernandez. What's been a missing from Tulare since February 14th, 2026. I'm calling to put this council on notice regarding the gross negligence and dangerous failure of duty within the Tulare police department, despite credible evidence of a potential kidnapping with proof of life photos and a ransom demand that were sent to Michael's mother and brother. Officer Robert Vasquez has insisted on classifying Michael's case as voluntarily missing. The misclassification violates California penal code 14211, which mandates that at-risk cases receive immediate priority. Because of this, the department bypassed the mandatory two-hour state reporting window. Even more alarming when Michael's mother provided the names of other potential persons of interest that were less known to be with the missing person at the time of disappearance. Officer Vasquez explicitly told her today over the phone there was no need to interview them. As there isn't any reason to believe they're connected, even though they are people that were last seen with Michael Hernandez. This is a direct refusal to follow the law and a blatant sabotage of a search for a missing citizen. We are demanding that the council intervene to ensure Michael's case is reclassified as at risk slash kidnapping and transferred immediately to the appropriate investigations division. We are also calling for an internal affairs investigation into officer Vasquez's refusal. to interview persons of interest and it's failure to preserve or secure evidence with urgency. The public needs to know that right now, if your child or somebody you love goes missing in Tulare, the police may simply choose not to look for them. Michael Hernandez is a human being, not a secondary priority. We are not going away until there's accountability and until Michael is brought home. We ask the council to act before another family suffers the same neglect. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you for your comments, Jacqueline. Clerk, do you have the contact information for the caller?

Council, this is the first I've heard of this item, so I'll have a conversation with our police chief and make sure I report back to you.

Okay. Do we have any other callers?

Okay.

Anyone else in chambers who wishes to speak? Public comment? All right. I'm going to move forward on our agenda to item five, which is presentations. Tulare Chamber of Commerce update on the Tulare Business Innovation Zone. Good evening, Donette.

If I figured this out on the first go around.

Good evening, Mayor Isherwood, members of council. Thank you for the opportunity to bring an update on the Tulare Business Innovation Zone, coined T-Biz. So we first did our grand opening July 31st. There was still a good bit of punch list that we had to work our way through over the next period of time. And so we're excited that we've been fairly operational for about six months now. and we've had a lot of interest in the facility and brought a lot of people through us as well as our partners. So we're gonna provide a bit of an overview here. Of course, the T-Biz is business workshops. We know that we're providing, we are here to help our local emerging entrepreneurs and also existing entrepreneurs to be able to either launch, grow, flourish the whole bit from the very beginning of that concept that they come up with. We have the opportunity for our emerging entrepreneurs to meet with our onsite partners that we brought in with Small Business Development Center. And in a minute here, I think it's the next. slide i just want to call your attention to for sbdc our assistance level is 103 businesses that number is much higher at the tbiz than what we had at the tulare chamber of commerce office we've always been a partner for many years with sbdc but we're excited that the number has increased and there's a lot of activity happening our business counselors that we utilize at sbdc are both Spanish speaking, which is key in our community. And one of them has been with SBDC for quite some time. Another one is newer for, I think, the last three, four years. And the other one has over 10 years experience in business assistance. So just a little bit of an overview. We have been able to offer 26 training workshops in that period of time. And that does include a variety of different types of offerings. And we also have our cohorts that we offer, which is an opportunity through our partnerships with those speakers we bring in. We have groups of folks who can come in together and create a cohort. So they also can learn from each other. They're all in the same situation with being a business startup. And we think that it's so important for them to have that opportunity to learn from each other along the way. or to also just have that support network that you need when you're going through the same kind of situation. Maybe it's not the best day with your business that you're planning, but you need to roll something off somebody else or just talk to somebody who feels the same as you do, that there are frustrations. Because as we know, business frustrations happen not just at the startup, but pretty much, I think, all the way through, even with our most successful businesses. So a lot of workshops and trainings that we have been offering And we have had a lot of outside partner meetings. Those are to bring other people into the facility so they can see what's happening with the TBIZ here in our community. It's really a nice showcase for the city of Tulare. And we have other groups that we are courting to come in. We're looking at doing a Cal Ed workshop here, as well as others. We did also have county planners that came in from all over California. So an opportunity to really share the information on what's happening within T-Biz. Mixers and trade shows. We have been doing these since the very beginning. So we have had six of those where we're trying to build those business to business networking opportunities and also the trade shows. So bringing in all the CDFIs, that's the access to capital opportunities. that our emerging entrepreneurs need, as well as our other businesses. So I do want to note that while we are focusing on our smallest emerging entrepreneurs, we do have a lot of existing businesses who are also taking advantage of the opportunities to come to these trainings. Everyone wants to have that opportunity at some point in time to refine what they're doing with their business plan, or maybe they need additional access to capital, they need to refresh their marketing plan. So we offer all of those services at the T-Biz. The chamber has held various different meetings there as well in order to bring in people from throughout Tulare County. That's part of the goal too, because we are happy to have people start their businesses in Tulare if they can get into the T-Biz and learn about it. City meetings, okay. The city is a high user of the facility, as you can see. And in addition to this, we also have the police department that uses it on a regular basis. So a lot of activity in the last six months. I wanted to show you some of the workshops that we offer there. And I want to make sure I call your attention to the fact that Deanna Saldana is here with me. Deanna is our T-Biz facility manager. She has done a great job of navigating the facility and also helping us during the extensive planning portion. So marketing fundamentals, we're looking at just the basics. That was probably one of our first workshops. networking with a purpose we've actually done two of these teach people how to network, I think some people just assume everybody knows how to go into. A room and shake hands and that is not the truth, there are people who are terrified and they may be successful business folks and so they need a little helping hands. Ready, set, launch. We have done a couple of cohorts already at the facility. We also did this a year ago in anticipation of TBIS coming. We did the first program at the chamber office. We are a Google partner the Chamber has been for gosh probably at least 15 years, if not longer, and so we have Google trained presenters that come in, and this is one of the sessions that we did on Google my business. Business owners and taxes probably everything you didn't want to need to have to know, but you need to know in order to operate your business. And AI, of course. Business Boot Camp, which is moving your business forward. This was a one day session that we did. You can see there's some of the different kinds of courses that were offered. All essential elements to successful business management. And we also have found that our nonprofits in the area have a lot of questions on nonprofit operation. What kind of nonprofit should we be? How do we set everything up? So we provided an opportunity to bring our nonprofits together and we'll be doing more of this as well. E-commerce workshops. Business foundations at the very basics. What do I need to do? Just a workshop on with a focus on your business plan. A money map because we know that money is necessary. And we also have TV is you know it's nice to have the police department, they have our back and it's nice to know that if we need a partner. Because we have some questions that may a business may have that we can pick up the phone we can call the police department, we can call the fire department, we can get answers, we have the city's economic development team sitting right there, and we also have very easy access to business licensing. Again, just kind of showing partnership, we ended up taking over the coordination of the Business Watch program and trying to grow that program. Still, of course, we have our police department and our police department staff team that are involved with it, but we were looking for opportunities to help them to grow the Business Watch program, so it's now housed at TBIS. And we want to let the general public who may be listening in today or some other day, I really want to push these sessions because a lot of times people say, hey, I have no access to ask my questions that I have. And this is a place to get access. Come to this meeting. We hold them on a regular basis. And you're going to have police and fire there and the opportunity to ask all the questions you want. You know, we encourage you at any given time, of course, to reach out to those agencies, but this is a great opportunity with focus on certain specific topics, but you have those folks available sitting right in front of you to answer questions. And we also have a new partnership. This is with CIVIC, which is the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative. And we are offering training series. So the cohort that you saw that we did for English speaking folks, we have that coming up this month. We are launching it for Spanish speaking as well as other workshops. So here's some information on these programs. And then of course, Avanza was there too with one of their meetings at T-Biz. So we know the goal for our EDA grant is expressed to be at 25% for immigrant population, Latino population. So we are at 75% right now. We do have a small population at this point in time, but we are at 75% as well as with all of our workshops and trainings. So I really think we have absolutely exceeded that goal of making sure that we're reaching out to a significant community within Tulare. And we also have one of our tenants that is in T-Biz as our hub member is also an immigrant from China and has been a partner with us in coming in there. So open to everybody and all types of opportunities for those who want to work within our community. And these are just just some pictures because pictures tell a story could see some of the workshops and meetings that we have had at t bus plus we always like to show off the building and we do have a lot of folks who pop in to get tours. So you can obviously some of the trade shows that we've had their. Trade shows workshops. Well, I'm trying really hard here, Melissa, what I'm doing. There you go. Thanks. So we have a lot of next steps that we're working on. We continue to refine what we're doing. We continue to expand our marketing in general, as well as targeted marketing for our targeted populations, outreach to new and existing city licensed businesses. So that's one of our next steps that we're going to be doing. Somebody pulls a license as a new business. We understand they probably have a lot of questions on business operations. So we're developing our outreach plan to do that. We are going to host multi-language business to business gatherings, both onsite and offsite. We've already reached out as part of TBIS and the chamber. We have already reached out to a couple of our members who are on the west side that we feel have the capacity at their businesses to host mixers on that side of the community. So we wanna put a focus point there. We're going to launch the accelerator program officially. All of the workshops, everything we've been doing has been the prelude to the accelerator program. They will be a part of it as we move forward with people actually being a part of that program. And we also will look forward to assisting the city in the opening and operating of the maker space. So that's really the next big thing for our community. And then we're going to continue to offer our multi language workshops, the training sessions that we're doing also that counseling end. Of course, I think at some point in time, we're probably going to look at how we expand with SBDC to bring in more counselors, because I think at times we feel like we're a little bit lean with two. We continue to build relationships and create that synergy that is needed for growth for the businesses in the center, the businesses who access the center, because not everybody is there as a tenant or as a coworker. We're going to share out a lot more information on coworking. That really seems to be something that has not caught on that well in our region, per se, that people just aren't familiar with what the benefits are. of taking maybe your home-based business to its next step entering a co-work environment and having all of the resources that are available especially through the t-biz and then going in maybe to rented space and then to space within the community itself so lot of services and opportunity for our small businesses as well as continuing to support those that are in business within our community so we as we were putting our original plans together and i was talking with our city manager we knew that it was going to be at least two years to really get the mojo going and get enough people into the center so We're about technically six months of operations into it. We're feeling good about where we are and looking forward to where the next steps are and the assistance that will partner with others within the community to get us where we want to be.

That's it.

Thank you. Council members, any questions for Donna?

Thank you again for entrusting this project with the Chamber. We appreciate your confidence and all that you have done to make this happen within our community. It definitely is a showpiece for the City of Tulare.

And I share with you, as you touched on, it's been nice because specifically very specific examples. Community members have contacted me and asked. I've heard about this business resource. I've sent them to Kurt Hardcastle. I've talked with him and others. So it's really wonderful. A lot of times when people ask a question, you can directly send them. There's a person, walked through, attended the workshop. So appreciate that, teams. Thank you. Yes.

Just wanted to add a couple of things. First of all, I just want a note of gratitude to the net in the Chamber for them taking on this project. You'll recall this is really a project that was driven by the city and city administration in particular. And so we asked the Chamber if they'd be interested in it. They weren't begging us to take this on. And so it's a pretty big lift for them, and they've done a great job. As Danette mentioned, they've been open for six months. They're not really obligated to come until after a year to give a report, but they're happy to be here. Council had asked that they come and give you an update. So again, thank you to Danette for that. The last thing I would say is, I think it's really only fair to the Chamber that once the makerspace is open, then they'll have all the tools available right and the great thing about the makerspace hopefully will be there are literally a bunch of tools in that space that people and businesses can use to make stuff and so beyond just business counseling um and networking and help with understanding you know the laws and how does permitting work and all those paper things now there'll be actual tools that people can use and i hope that that will also help the chamber and their recruitment of businesses and individuals into the into the center so for me it's kind of like once the once the makerspace is done okay for me that's when my personal time clock starts for the chamber this is all the prep work building up to getting the entire facility completed so thank you so much

Oh, you're very welcome. And I want to note, I did talk with a person the other day and who is an inventor. And she is so excited to get to go in to this space. She goes, I need to be in a space like this where creations happen. And so we're excited for that. And I think Jennifer will agree when we went to ICSC, we were able to talk about what we're doing for businesses within our community. And it really is a feather in the cap, you know, the hat, excuse me, for Tulare. Thank you.

Moving forward on our agenda is item 6, communications. And Mr. Mondale, any city communications?

No communications.

All right. Moving forward, item 7, council reports and items of interest. And I'll start with the fine gentleman to my left, Vice Mayor Harrell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This time I have nothing.

Mr. Council member Sarah.

On the 13th, I was able to attend the government affairs committee where the FFA issues team presented their. But they're the topic that they're doing this year, which was really interesting. I don't know how many of you have an opportunity to see that, but it's the FFA students from all 3 high schools and they develop a topic. and present that and they go to a regional a state and a national level with their with their it's kind of like a debate it's really interesting to watch i appreciated that on the 14th i attended the tbiz graduation for the ready set launch group which was really a pleasure to see those individuals that have gone through the program and are thriving in building their business. So that was really interesting. And then just on a personal note, Tulare now has an NFL cheerleader. My granddaughter is now a Seahawk girl.

All right. Official.

Official.

Official. Fantastic. um a couple things to touch on one so council monday i did attend the tiller county association of governments uh meeting kind of getting uh introduced to the materials and projects that are taking place of for many and those in the audience we have an incredible partnership with with which is formerly known as TCAG, but that's the partner agency that works with us on transportation funding of projects or overpasses, highway improvement, major arterial roadways. It's a key collaborative nucleus to funding that helps our major roadway projects. um the other part i think touch on which i really appreciate uh staff and the presentations is it's we're in our budget time we're drafting and building our budget for the next fiscal year 26 27 and thank you to staff for the april 6th which i did attend that uh budget presentation they had one on april 12th But I share, as many of us, we attend groups and we go out and we attend events and we talk to agencies and being out with neighbors and folks and to kind of share with council a bit is the feedback that I get around budget, get messages on Facebook and text messages, really is a focus on expansion of our police department. I know we all know this, to share of needs. of what we need what can we do to of course uh support our police uh traffic monitoring is an issue everything's out in the community and it's really i want to share that message up here of hey public safety is a top issue for us and of course um roads roads And roads is a topic I'm going to kind of start a video series called Fix My Street, which is detailing and going through road projects. And I've heard from a lot of neighbors and people in the community on that. And it really follows a theme of just community improvements overall from all corners, all around our city. Hey, that overall just community improvement from, you know, brighter, better streets, sidewalks. just general maintenance, which I know we are all aware of. So it's good to get that feedback. And I share with folks in the chamber tonight, we're going through that budget process. There are some surveys that are posted on the city website and check out the city's website and complete those surveys. We want to hear from you. moving forward item eight is consent calendar all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the council to be routine and will be enacted in one motion without discussion if discussion is desired that item may be removed and considered separately council members do we have anybody have actions for the consent council mr mayor council like to ask 8.6 and 8.9 to be removed from the consent calendar for further discussion

if there are no others then i'd make a motion to approve the consent calendar 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.7 and 8.8 second okay we have a motion for approval of the consent calendar withdrawing 8.9 and 8.6

All in favor?

Aye.

Any further discussion? Consent calendar approved. We'll go to 8.6. Mr. Segala.

Mr. Mayor, Council, this particular item deals with the issue of yard sales, citywide yard sales, I believe it's the topic, but it references a request that the Council had made at a previous council meeting to move forward an item that I had proposed to declare a weekend in May, May 16th in particular, to have a city-wide yard sale in the city of Tulare, whereas any requests or any requirements for a permit or a fee be waived for that particular weekend in order for the city to, or in order for residents who put together a citywide yard sale like they do in other cities around the region. And I guess the report came back in a more general discussion about whether in the future there would be a need to have that permit and fee waived And so one of the things that I wanted to find out was, I mean, there are folks that have been kind of organizing over the last week in anticipation that the council would be supportive of the item to go ahead and do it organically community driven. There was some discussion about having the Chamber of Commerce involved or other types of things but or if it was going to take staff time to do this and so my my My intent is not to have the Chamber of Commerce involved and that it would not take staff time. In other words, this would be something that community folks can organize and organically grow. There is the intent to put the word out that if someone wants to have a yard sale that weekend, that it would be put on a map. so that people could come to the city of Tulare and find out that on Blackstone, on Beachwood, on whatever street there's going to be a yard sale. And the idea was to have people make a little bit of money Get rid of some of this stuff that other people would want, of course, and also generate a little bit of economic development in regards to people coming to the city to maybe eat here while they're looking around at yard sales. Definitely get sticker shock at our local gas stations when they pump gas and all that kind of stuff. So I was hoping... that tonight's item would be related to that but it instead is sort of the general topic so i'm hoping that there's a way for us to direct staff as the agenda allows that on the weekend of may 16th there would be no enforcement in other words code enforcement not going to go out there and say you have a yard sale do you have your permit and your fee because the way the agenda item came back doesn't deal with it so i'm just trying to understand what what happened in between last council meeting and this council meeting where it's kind of a whole different discussion we can always have the discussion later on whether we want to get rid of that process which i'm for but i just want to find out if we can kind of spread what i requested at the last meeting sure let's let's go to staff so

have this one um so what staff would recommend in that case i didn't see them the may 16th date and the the initial request what i would recommend then is if we can get direction from the dais staff can bring back on consent on the 5th a reso to waive the permit and fee for that weekend of the 16th um and then you'd be good for that um community activity on the 16th

And maybe a question with that is, yeah, so I think the intent is, is it more of really about the permit costs? And I look towards the exemption. It would take, like you said, direction from the dais council that we would provide perhaps just a fee exemption compared to an exemption to the complete ordinance. Well, I think the part, the only, I get it, and I think the part I speak for myself is more of a $0, a $0 for the permit. The part I'm a little concerned, and we can do, is if we make an overall enforcement exemption, because then groups in the community can say, well, if you exempt this this day, Uh, can we have an exemption so we can wash our cars on certain days? Can we have some other things and so forth and so on? So, I'm just kind of curious if maybe your thought or council's thought or Thomas to that. Is it more. Is it or is it just our direction? Let's make it 0, but that the ordinance is in process is still intact or is it just an overall exemption for those 3 days?

staff can look into that are when you set the fee at zero that implies in the ordinance that you still need a permit so now the seven dollar fee doesn't cover processing cost to begin with now we're gonna have an even larger line of people coming in for permits and that kind of stuff but so staff can look through the sections of the ordinance and bring a recommendation for the fifth so the event could then happen on the 16th because i i understand your point mayor

And my question is, is this something that's going to happen one time, or are we looking to make this a bimonthly activity, have it more than once on a regular schedule?

Well, my understanding from the folks that I, it's sort of a, we came together where I had this idea, then I saw it on Facebook, and then we kind of came together on this idea. But I think the one The idea is once a year, so it'd be once a year next year, probably be in February and March where the weather, you know, there was concerns about having to pass me because it'd be too hot. So we're like, at least the organizers that are that I'm working with are looking at once a year, how they do it in other communities.

And if it works, maybe by annually.

That's that's definitely a possibility, but I think the 1st, 1 is May 16th. So I'm okay with with the assistant city managers proposing is that because people need time to put out a flyer flyer will be generated by the community. The idea is to not involve a staff as much as possible in regards of concern for their staff time. But if there is a flyer, I definitely would ask that if it's approved, that it be put on our social media. I mean, the city is a partner in the sense that we're kind of creating the space for this, but it would be community driven. In other words, there's already three or four, I don't know if anybody's heard from the audience, but there's already three or four people that are already planning this. They're getting the word out to Craigslist. They're going to be, you know, talking to Exeter. They're going to be talking to the communities along the coast that do this. Actually, my brother's father-in-law the other day when I was visiting told me, hey, I just, you know, we just went to the coast and we came back with a trailer full of stuff, you know, so we're hoping that happens here in Tulare as well, so.

the perhaps the quick summary and i think part of this which which i as well with this recommendation endorse this is i think the timing crunch because our next city council meeting wouldn't be until what the sixth the first week of may is it is there maybe direction from council if it's appropriate that if first we approved the dates being saturday the 16th and sunday the 17th and that it is an annual look at it's an annual exemption um of the fee. And I think the part, what you're wanting staff feedback is to come back on exemption completely a weekend. And I think staff, your caution is in case of any other issues you need to look at for ordinance clearance, is that what we would need to wait till the 6th

perhaps well i just there's no action on the agenda right now because this item was brought forward um as a count as a count request last one so it's not agendized for any action it was just for the discussion this one this gear if this is the direction we have that's enough certainty for setting the date and so on we just bring a resolution to codify it next meeting okay um and then uh saturday sunday or friday saturday sunday

my understanding i think they work friday saturday but the particular days would be saturday and sunday because i know i understand the permit because i i think i've taken out a few there for three days my understanding that they're good for three days so that's where the friday saturday sunday but the event would be saturday and sunday officially in regards to the you know tulare city yard sale whatever the name of that whatever the final name of the event is and then the only partnership that i see the city would be obviously creating the the space by doing the exemption and then helping maybe promote it once the flyers out through our social media so that would be the only city participation and and a bit of a city's review for that it's it's not just the fee but to thomas's point to where it's the processing it's in a weekend exemption is what it's for okay

right and i think from what thomas is looking at is more of a general discussion in general whether we should continue this for whatever reason staff has so i just kind of two separate discussions but similar tom yeah i think we're on the same page we can we can move on is but it's not completely open-ended we're talking about a date we're kind of the con there's a consensus of what we're looking at and then there's uh it's more grounded as we come back into maintenance and

The timelines, I know you're concerned about them just a little bit could counsel essentially give a consensus that we support this project and, uh. It's moving forward to give the people some idea that they can start. Maybe making flyers and things like that.

I think it's fair part of what he's saying, and I think legal staff are reading this as a consensus and the rest of the direction and codify the direction.

So, I think vice mayor, which you're saying, we're all, I think, yeah, I feel comfortable with that. I'm hoping the public, the organizers that are listening to feel comfortable with that. The weekend of May 16th and 17, the city artillery will have a city wide yard sale and then we will just made a 5th when our next meeting is. Just go through the formal formalities of that, but. I feel comfortable with my colleagues being supported that. So, thank you. Okay, item 8.9.

That's mine as well. Did you want to make emotional mistakes?

I don't do I don't think I need to do. I need to make a motion because you guys I got directions. Um, Mr mayor council well, then I'll move to approve 8.8. I guess if that's technically what we have to do, correct? 8.6 was an update. Excuse me. 8.6.

Do we technically have to no, we're not because that's really just a discussion and you've given us direction.

Okay. Well, the next one that I had requested, Mr. Mayor, Council was 8.9. This is just what I'd like to do is just have staff report what it is. And on my tenure on council, almost 10 years, I've never really seen something like this. So I'm just curious to see what this is about and how this works. Sure. So if there's a staff report on this.

Yeah. So I'll summarize the staff report. in when a developer is developing a project you know sometimes they're paying development impact fees other times they are constructing those improvements and um receiving fee credits and so In the case of this particular situation, one of the developers has fee credits available and our zoning ordinance allows the developer to assign those fee credits to another developer or project. since it's their asset, if you will, in a way. And so in the municipal code, it requires that the city is also a party to that agreement. So council approves the assignment of the impact fee credits from one developer to another. So that's this process. You're correct. It's not something that I understand has been seen before.

Um, I don't know. I don't know if it's the first time in the city's history. I know I've been involved in these types of things in every city I've worked in. I don't know, Michael, if you've been involved in any of the city of Tulare.

Yes, we, we have it's typically in the past been when there's an original developer that constructs the improvements and then they, they sell the project off to a home builder. And so they'll transfer the rights for the reimbursements they receive to the, to the home builder. So they can get fee credits on the building permits. This is the same on the same on the same project. This is the 1st, 1, where it's actually 2 separate projects.

Now, I'm just curious, because like I said, I've never seen that before. And if it's in our ordinance, of course, it's in our ordinance. So the alternative would be that the developer requesting the transfer in those credits, if they cashed them in, would that be cash? I mean, are those credits only for developing housing? Or like if I have $100,000 in credits, I can go to the city finance department and cash in $100,000. Are credits equal to money?

No, we basically have two ways of reimbursing developers for oversize improvements. One are issuing fee credits on building permits. The other is through oversize reimbursement payments, which would be issuing checks.

It's it's good for the city to be able to issue fee credits because. Right so if the developer builds this oversized. Water main, let's say, because it's now going to serve all these other properties, the city would be obligated to give them a check for that difference, right? The difference between what they were obligated to pay and what they installed that upgraded improvement. But if we offer developer fee credits instead, that's just a ledger, you know, it's on the books, right? And so we're not issuing any cash to the developer. And when the developer comes, whoever has those fee credits, when they come to pull a building permit, instead of them writing a check for that impact fee, they show us the fee credit. And so it wipes that out, right? It's a transaction on paper.

Right. Because I guess the one thing is maybe... I don't know if in the future, because I know we're going to be talking about our housing element and our lack of progress in terms of certain types of housing, that maybe those particular fees be looked at in a different way. In other words, so you'll get, let's say, for example, you know, you get $100,000 in fee credits, but if you kind of put them towards building some housing, we'll add another 20% or we'll add another 10% or something to incentivize housing being built versus just, hey, I got some kind of real cash, but it's not cash, but I'll give it to you over here so you don't have to pay for a particular project, right, in this case. So maybe in the future we can look at a different way to.

Yeah, we owe you guys a workshop on how do we implement our housing element. We first have to adopt our housing element, which happens to be on the agenda tonight.

and then we have in the near future here a workshop with you guys that we're going to be scheduling to talk about how do we implement the housing element and part of that discussion will be what are the tools that we could develop to help us right and i and i hope that this this particular kind of fee swap is maybe a conversation so um but thank you for the explanation and uh if there are no other questions then i'll move to approve uh 8.9 second

Okay, we have a motion and second for approval of 8.9. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. So moving forward on our agenda, I did have a request from a council member. If we would bring up on the agenda item 10.3, which is honoring Radio Louis Aguilar. The request for that we might have some attendees in the crowd on this item So I will move that up and next will be the 10.3 and this was And with that I will look to mr. Mondale and vice mayor Harrell on this item Well, I'll defer to the vice mayor if he would like to speak to it or I can certainly take it if he would prefer You have the microphone Steve Thank You mr. Mayor do we have any

of Louie's family here in attendance. I was approached probably a month ago, something like that, about honoring Louie. Anybody that's been in Florida for any length of time knows Louie. He was about a year ahead of me in high school. He was our ambassador to all the children here in Tulare. You could see him at Zumwalt Park. You could see him walking all over town with his radio, his transistor radio, over at Garden School, playing with the kids. Louie played a mean game of tag, and I've seen him many times in Zumwalt Park playing tag with the kids. The Historical Society has honored him there in their establishment. I thought it was no more than proper that we also maybe recognize him for his contributions to the kids of Tulare with either some kind of a plaque at Zumwalt Park, either on the bandstand or on the corner entrance, or I had one other place that I was thinking of, but now it's has slipped my mind completely. So, um, the zoo mall park, I think would probably be the best location. Um, I put together some different along with the family, things that possibly could go on a plaque, uh, for council's consideration. And, uh, I think I'd like to open it up to the family if they'd like to say something that's all right with you, Mr. Mayor.

If a member of the family would like to speak towards Mr. Harrell's suggestions, recommendations regarding Louis Aguilar. Good evening.

Good evening. My name's Lorraine Epperson, and I am Louie's great niece. And my grandmother, Mary Vasquez, is over there. She took care of him the last few years of his life. But when I talked to you, I just, you know, many of you knew him. So I just thought, gosh, that's awesome. And everything that you had written, and then we kind of, you know, got together with it. So however, you guys want to, you know, put it put whatever on on the plaque, and I would like it at Zumwalt Park if that's possible um just because he would go there walk downtown go there and kind of hang out um so yeah I just think it's really special that you guys are able to to do this for for him and our family so Miss Epperson she supplied me with some ideas of what the family would like and then I just sat down and started writing on my own

was several because I think Councilman Medeiros had asked if there were any ideas of what we could possibly put so that's why I came up with these and I think it'd be up to Council at this point this is a project they want to take on sure I heard some up discussion a bit of of kind of plaques and um

the uh i always called it the the john susa the pavilion john phillips susan susan pavilion but the pavilion of some plaques honoring to kind of on the outside perimeter like a plaque could go on that wall so if it was this one or some other community recognitions but that way it's kind of uh i heard this in chatter discussion that it's more of a central spot and then that way it's um recognized but with this one and then it also allows um this special recognition but there might be another special recognition that comes up and it's a good space like you said your desire for Zumwalt Park it kind of meets all of those elements was an idea that was mentioned

John Potter, yeah originally Louis spent a lot of time sitting on a bench, which was just a little bit North East of the pavilion, which is no longer there but that's where he spent a lot of his time and that's where he played play dang with the kids and things like that.

John Potter, Council members.

i particularly like this one dedication that ends up tag you're it that just kind of brings in the fun that he brought uh you know to the community all of my children really appreciated him so is there a consensus of a um usually like a a metal plaque something like uh like we do for on something that we constructed it's got the council members something like that

Yeah, so counsel, if that's your direction, I just have a little bit more to clarify. So. Our thinking, I think would be, we can certainly work to develop a plaque and identify locations. Uh. The vice mayor already provided a couple, I think it might make sense if you're agreeable to it, that we would take that to the commission so that the parks commission can weigh in on it and think through some of the other variables and come back with a recommendation. Is that acceptable to counsel that we go that route with it?

Okay. Yeah. All right. So got anything to add? Yeah.

Yeah. I think the mayor, vice mayor, you know, quote, yes, I think there's consensus with that.

So it'd be the, the first one dedicated.

That was fun. And it kind of takes in his, just his whole demeanor.

Yeah. Cause that's, that's the longest one of all of them that didn't know.

Right. Little letters.

And it's the city I know throughout its history has done such recognitions and plaques of individuals and it did go through the parks and recreation mark, which is good at past present past precedent was the arbors actually that the Elk Bayou Park. went through Parks and Recreation are dedicated in the honor of Darnie Jensen. And so those actions were taken. So I think a plaque here, and just kind of summarizing now, there's a consensus. You have one picked out.

Number one.

Number one. And then Mark, you'll take this to the Parks and Recreation Board for other suggestions, thoughts, or kind of the placement with that.

And we'll come back ultimately to council.

Okay. All right.

And I'll keep you advised.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you.

All right. Returning back to our agenda for public hearings. Comments related to public hearing items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of 30 minutes per item, unless otherwise extended by council. For those that wish to provide public comment while viewing on the meeting online, just as before our meeting, you can call in at 559-366-1849 and the clerk will assist you with your call. So we have 9.1, which is general plan amendment number 2026-01 and zone amendment number 771, Mr. Steve Saab.

Good evening, Mayor Isherwood, members of the council. The request tonight is a request from Summit Home Developer to change the general plan land use designation and zoning designation on an approximately 7.2 acre area in order to accommodate the establishment of 209 single family residential lots and 19 multiple family residential lots. on a total parcel size of 59.3 acres. The development is proposed to be located on the northeast corner of Enterprise Street and Bardsley Avenue. The existing general plan land use designation for the site is low density residential within the city of Tulare's adopted 2035 general plan. And the applicant is proposing to change the land use designation from low density residential to medium density residential for approximately 7.2 acres of this project site. Existing zoning designation for the project site is R14, which is a low density residential zone district, which provides a minimum lot size of 4,000 square feet. And the applicant is proposing to change the existing zoning to RM, which is a medium density residential zone district for, again, approximately 7.2 acres of the project site. If approved, the proposed general plan land use designation and the proposed zoning would be consistent with one another. The applicant is proposing to develop 209 single family residential lots and 19 multiple family residential lots. The applicant is proposing to establish two duplexes on each of the multiple family residential lots for a total of four units on each parcel, which would result in the construction of 76 total units within those multifamily parcels when you add up all of the duplexes. Entry access to the development would be provided through a new point of access from Enterprise Street and as well as off of Bardsley Avenue. Access will also be extended to the subdivision through existing development from the north and east from Alpine Avenue, Gemini Street and Justice Avenue. The developer is proposing to establish a 2.76 acre park space on the east side of the development. Stormwater collection would be provided on the west side of the development with the establishment of a new basin. The proposed development would be required to provide connections to city water sewer and would provide improvements related to streets, curb gutter, sidewalk, block walls, landscaping, etc. An initial study was prepared for the project consistent with the California Environmental Quality Act, and the initial study proposed a mitigated negative declaration and evaluated the potential environmental impacts associated with the project's implementation. It was found that the project would not result in significant results to the environment with the incorporation of mitigation measures. And those mitigation measures have been included within the agenda materials provided to you within a mitigation monitoring and reporting program and are proposed as conditions of approval of the project. A 30-day public notice was published on January 13th, 2026 for the proposed discretionary approvals. Comment letters were received during the 30-day public review from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the California Department of Conservation Division of Land Resource Protection, the California Department of Conservation Geologic Energy Management Division, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The applicant's consultant along with city staff worked to prepare responses to each of the comment letters that were received. And those comments have been provided for your review within the agenda materials provided as well as within the final draft of the initial study mitigating negative declaration that was attached. Planning Commission reviewed the subdivision and associated amendments on March 10th and recommended to the city council that the council approve the proposed amendments three to zero with two members that were absent. So in conclusion, staff is recommending approval of general plan amendment number 202,601 and zone amendment number 771. as well as adoption of the mitigated negative declaration that was prepared for the Sherwood South Tune of subdivision map. That concludes my presentation. Be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Making some notes here. So. Thank you, staff, for the presentation. I'm going to open the public hearing for 9.1, general plan amendment number 202601 and zone amendment number 771. Do we have anyone in chambers who'd like to speak on this general plan amendment? Do we have anyone on the phone? All right, with that, I will close the public hearing. John Potter, For 9.1. John Potter, Staff any additional. John Potter, follow up a presentation or i'll go to Council members for questions. John Potter, Okay, Mr Harold.

I don't know if the developers here are representative of the developer, but first of all, I wanted to appreciate the commitment. I don't know if you can go back, Steven, to the map that kind of shows the general area and how it fits in with the other developments that are being built. So, east of there, where we said the little park is that there's a whole lot of development. I think it's about almost 400 homes that are being built as well. So it's a big, big chunk of that area being developed. I did attend the planning commission when this came up for the planning commission, and I brought up two items that. was hoping the commission would have some discussion on but they kind of moved forward just to prove the project one of them was an idea of what some of that um multi-family housing was going to be like i mean i think that's something that we definitely need and and more developments but just curious to see if there was going to be any partnership with um um With nonprofits, or it was going to be totally market driven apartments, or they were going to be some set asides for farm worker housing type of thing. So I'm just curious to see what the developer had in mind in terms of those particular units. um on the on the west north part of the development the ones that are kind of like lined up i don't know if you have your little pointer steven but for the public to see those that'll be on the uh

the way i don't know how to that point exactly yeah those that will be there all those housing there all that yeah sure uh good evening um city council mayor members of council staff uh tracy myers representing four creeks we represent the uh applicant in this project um according in talking with the the applicant those are going to be market rate driven at this current time as far as i know the developer doesn't have any current plans to partner with any type of a nonprofit organization at the time.

So they'll be totally market-driven, so whatever, okay. Yes. So, you know, these are kind of the, Council is kind of the example of how you know sometimes when these things come to council they're already pretty much done in regards to the project is done and it's you know there's timelines with construction with financing a number of things that need to happen for this development to be built so oftentimes whatever we provide It's kind of too late. I mean, I try to attend the even going to the planning commission. It's already down the road in terms of the development, but I'm trying to figure out, you know, we're having a big discussion as a city manager talked about our housing element, our affordable housing goals and things like that that may be. through the planning process, there may be some checkoffs that could be asked of developers when they come with these types of projects or incentives, maybe some fee credits or some other types of things to try to incentivize the housing that we're trying to do some mixed use. I know from my experience working in the LA City Council years ago, there were a lot of different incentives and bonuses, density bonuses, other types of things that were offered to developers, in other words, to build more affordable housing, in this case, apartments, right? Because those houses are going to be market rated, you know, just east of their homes are 500,000. So I would imagine these homes are going to be 500,000 as well, 400, 500,000. So that's what drives the sales of those homes. But I just want to make sure that I don't want to put pressure on a developer once they come to council when they're like 95% plus of the way home. And to ask them to go think about making these affordable units and all that is a big task. So I just wanted to get that answer. Preferably, I'd love for them to be affordable units and not market-driven, but that's the case. So I'll switch over to the park. I did also bring up the park. I'm glad to see there's a dedicated land. I'm not a big... supporter of basin parks but that's what we have a lot throughout the city so i'm glad to see the the dedication of the 2.6 2.76 acres of parkland now this particular part is not going to hold soccer fields baseball fields it's just going to be some nice green space for the community to to enjoy one of the things that that i've been advocating for um uh is Is there a plan to put like a top, you know, small kids playground and things like that on there?

Yes, I did go back to the developer after the Planning Commission meeting and spoke with him a little bit about the exercise equipment or some type of interactive equipment. And he is amenable to looking at that equipment.

Right. And I would hope maybe with the staff. So what I did, another thing I brought up in the Planning Commission Council was to see if the developer would be open to putting in exercise equipment, you know, for for the community, not like gyms, but not like gyms. gyms that sustain your own weight and they're sort of maintenance free. You can pull up your own body weight and start exercising. So the idea was for the developer to be open to that. There's plenty of vendors who supply those that you and I have been to different conferences where that's the case. So I really appreciate the developer looking into that because the idea is to have some sort of exercise equipment next to where your kid's playing. So where your kid's playing on the playground, you can talk to your comadre or your friend and do a little bit of exercise, right? So I'm hoping that that's the case, and I'm hoping that if there's any grants that are available if the city needs to apply that our staff is open to that so so those were the um two main oh and then the final thing which i didn't bring up in planning commission but um i hope that there's some some idea maybe someday through the um What is it the city manager, the thing that we're dealing with bicycle lanes? What is that process? The ATP to see if 1 day we can connect this particular development to the Santa Fe trail. You know, it would run along enterprise or somewhere to connect to the Santa Fe trail for there to be an option for people to be able to. you know, bike to work or whatever. If you look at the bigger map, it's not too far from the Santa Fe Trail at the end point of the Santa Fe Trail. So, but that's nothing to do with the developer. That's something we would look at down the road. But I do appreciate the investment and once appropriate, Mr. Mayor, I'll make the motion to adopt item, what was it, 9.1 or? Okay.

That's correct.

So thank you very much, Ms. Meyer.

Thank you. Councilmember Sarah?

Do you want me to second it?

No, if you had any comments. The only couple of questions that I had with this was one just understanding coming to us for a general plan amendment. This is the this went through planning commission. This is the first time Council seeing the actual site map. So the actions are the general plan amendment, the approval of the site map, and by those actions are all coming bundled together. Not that that happens often, but I'm just confirming this project hasn't been in front of us before.

Correct, it has not been in front of your council before. The way that approvals generally happen with subdivisions is that the council through the zoning ordinance has deferred to planning commission the authority to approve a subdivision map. And so technically right now you're only being asked to approve the general plan amendment and the zone amendment. The map itself has technically already been approved by planning commission subject to your approval of the general plan amendment and zone amendment. So technically you're not being asked to approve that map. We're just providing it for informational purposes in your decision making.

Thank you, Steve, because that's kind of the clarification that I wanted. It went through the process. I know Councilman Segala touched on that. It goes to Planning Commission. They approved the map. The other question, this is, I think, a good time to touch on is, I think the items that Councilman Segala had mentioned, and I looked to staff, it's our development standards. Is that correct? So if, for example, this map comes in front of us, that development standards of... Aesthetics to the corner lot. So if we didn't want just sidewalk and a cinder block, there's overlapping standards that says X amount of side, the sidewalk needs to be X amount of feet wide. We'd like planter boxes, something along those lines, aesthetics for the corners. Those are in development standards. Is that right?

Yeah, so that would be tech handled within our engineering standards, out in our subdivision ordinance, and within our zoning ordinance. Those are kind of the places where those kinds of things are found. And because you are going for an approval of a subdivision map, the planning commission would have authority to add conditions of approval to a map. But in general, staff is looking at those codified conditions standards when we are asking a developer to make changes to the map or to plan for improvements it becomes somewhat difficult to ask a developer to do things that we haven't codified and we haven't asked anyone else to do okay and and with that i think city manager we've talked about development standards that's an important issue because i i think it comes in front of community concern there's this development

Why wasn't this built at the corner or why wasn't a walkway? Why weren't those considered? And it comes to development standards, as Mr. Sopter said, that that's on our agenda of addressing development standards in the future.

Yeah, it is. I don't have the exact timeline for that yet, but we've been talking about it. You know, we have a city engineer that is choosing to abandon us at some point here. And so, sorry, Michael. if i talk that way it could be sooner than later um and so you know he has a long history of understanding all our standards and so we are talking about bringing on a consultant to help us in that process um and we've brought in some new staff as well hopefully that will be able to help and you know whether michael can play a role in any of that going future after he retires i don't know i recently had a conversation with him about that but that's coming sometime this year that will be on the docket for you guys to to vote on

Okay. And the last part I have with this is in some of our learning curve that we went with development that the city is expanding subdivision maps, these types of projects in front of us at all four corners of the community. One of the things that has come up is speeding down straightaways. So when I look at this map, Lincoln Avenue, and I look at long corridor straightaways, neighborhoods always vent about their concerns of people coming off main streets like enterprise and potentially speeding down and and for the lack of a better way to say it rip roaring through residential streets and and with that is we don't have speed bumps or speed humps or others but we've as council had presentations about striping some other uh calming measures which this is off the main road but these are still public streets would that be in development standards as well that since we don't have those currently on the books and as you had said it's really the best to get it in the books to get it published developers know those standards At what point would be best for that to happen or should that happen in the process we already talked about for development standards?

I'm unfortunately going to defer this to Michael. Engineering typically is who reviews these things as part of a subdivision map.

Yes, and we have for a couple of years now, we've included engineering conditions of approval that any street that exceeds 1000. Linear feet and length of uninterrupted. So, in other words, no stops has to incorporate some form of traffic calming measures.

Just to know, Mr. Mayor, I would believe that that comes out of discussion we've had in the past years where we've brought up those issues and how to amend the development standards and staff has, because when I looked through the, what, 400 pages of this particular item, I did find the checkoff box traffic common requirements. So that's a perfect example of how we've been Well, at least the council has brought something up and staff has kind of reacted to that and put that in there and and thank you.

And that's this gives a chance to walk through that process and I think especially so the public hears this. I didn't catch that. I knew we had had the discussion on the past. I didn't catch in this that there was the box checked of the 1000 foot with that would the developers to come back with those items for which I just said of the traffic calming. So the box is checked, but as they're doing the development project, they present to staff. what those items are? Did this packet specifically mention what it was?

So at this point, They haven't been identified at this point. When the next step, assuming approval, the applicant would be filing final maps and improvement plans. And as part of the improvement plan process, we would expect the applicant to show those improvements on the improvement plans of how they intend to address those traffic calming measures for staff to review and approve.

Okay.

Thank you.

So this is following all the process for which we have crossed the Ts, dot our Is. And I just want to use this moment to reinforce our timeline of how important those development standards coming in front of us. We have subdivisions in southeast Tulare, southwest, these issues and consistency. I know our neighbors want consistency of neighborhood standards from east, west, north, south, but those are the type of improvements we, as you said, and I appreciate you walking through that, Steve, you need to have those on the books so developers know the rules and it's fair rules for all ahead of time.

um that's my my further comments thank you for walking through that mr segales you said you would be open to making the motion yes mr mayor appreciate the conversation uh that we just had about the development standards and i think that's uh a place where the council can kind of weigh in more on as you explain what some of the concerns from the public are with that in mind then i'll move to approve item point uh nine point as As presented in staff report, general plan amendments. And I don't know if I need to read off the whole thing.

I'll second it.

We have a motion and a second for the general plan amendment number 20261-01 and zone amendment number 771. Madam Clerk? Remind me if these items, can it be just, do we need a roll call vote for these? Just a call to motion. All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? It's carried 4-0. Okay. Moving forward to item 9.2, the 2025 housing element and general plan annual progress reports. Mr. Saab, good evening.

so this item is regarding the 2025 housing element and general plan annual progress reports tonight staff is requesting that council accept the clarity housing element and general plan annual progress reports for the 2025 calendar year and authorize staff to submit the reports to the governor's office of planning research and the department of housing and community development Government code requires that the APRs be prepared each year and that they be considered at a public meeting and that public comment be allowed for what is presented. So the Housing Element Annual Progress Report consists of several spreadsheets that are provided by the California Department of Housing and Community Development and required for cities and jurisdictions to complete. They have lots of rows and columns and it is difficult to read. Those rows and columns for most of those spreadsheets are reporting every individual building permit for a residential unit that was issued within the City of Tulare. giving information to the state, such as the building permit number, the address, the APN number, all of the information relating to that building permit, and they use that to track it for their purposes. But ultimately, it boils down to some information that's provided within a summary table within the tables provided. and they show that in 2025 the city approved entitlement applications to allow the future construction of 1,289 single-family residential units so that would be subdivisions that were taken in 2025 and approved by the planning commission or many ultimately that came to the city council needing some form of entitlement for a general plan amendment as we just heard or an annexation into the city limits The city also approved building permits for the construction of 468 residential units, of which 362 were single-family residential detached units. 31 were multifamily units that consisted of two to four units within a building, so a duplex to a fourplex. 40 were multifamily units that consisted of buildings that had five or more units in them. and 31 were accessory dwelling units. The city also issued certificates of occupancy or finals where a resident, the unit is considered complete and a resident is able to move in. For 421 residential units, 407 of these were single family detached units. Only two units were considered multifamily consisting of a single duplex. and then 12 were accessory dwelling units. So the state is most interested in kind of converting this to our tracking of our implementation of the regional housing needs allocation. So again, the state is equating affordability to density and also, of course, affordability to affordability, but we're taking units that were We'll say our single family residential subdivisions, those would equate to above moderate income units on this table for tracking purposes, an apartment complex that is built at a significant density such as 20 units per acre or more. would equate to more of your low income category. And so you can see on this table that when equating it to those housing needs in 2025, the city can count 71 units towards its moderate income need and 397 units towards its above moderate income need. 2025 was the second full year of the reporting period for the six cycle housing element. And the RHNA allocation, the planning period for the sixth cycle, it goes through 2031. And the city has a remaining RHNA allocation or need of for very low income for 1,435 units or low income, 884 units, moderate income, 568 units and above moderate of 748 units. So essentially the city is required to have vacant land that is zoned appropriately to where if a developer wanted to build at a density that corresponds to each of those units that they would be able to come and do so. So the there are several other tables that are provided within the housing element and real progress report. Many of those the city did not have any actions to report for those tables, however, table D provides a status update on the city's progress on implementation activities of the six cycle housing element, this is a little bit. awkward because the city hasn't adopted it six cycle housing element yet it's on your agenda next. But the we have put the implementation programs that are proposed within that housing element and we've provided an update on any activities that have occurred so far that would implement those programs. Table L within the report provides sites that were added to a national, state, or local registry of historical places within the reporting year of 2025. So in 2025, six sites were added to the city's local registry and are reported within that table. And then lastly, there's a table that provides information on the city's LEAP grant. There were no updates to report in the 2025. The city used its LEAP grant funds to prepare its comprehensive zoning ordinance update. I'm not quite sure why they continue to have us report that as the funds were required to be and were exhausted in 2024. So the remainder of the report gets into the general plan annual progress report. This is kind of two segments. Most of the tables are your housing element annual progress report, and then the rest is the general plan annual progress report. Within the general plan annual progress report, it provides all of the general plan amendments that have occurred since the adoption of the general plan. In 2025, there was one general plan amendment that was adopted. And that was associated with the FNC farming development that was an annexation project that is now under construction of a single family residential development with San Joaquin Valley Homes. The report also provides just updates on significant projects that broke ground or continued to be constructed in 2025. The projects include the grand opening of the T-Biz that you heard about today, the continued construction and progress of the homeless shelter, the beginning of construction of commercial development on Cartmill in 99, including the construction of a Chick-fil-A restaurant that they called for a final today and it should be opening very soon. And then lastly, the beginning of construction of the Sequoia Marketplace Shopping Center with the announcement of a Save Mart grocery store and construction of Chipotle and a car wash and a service station there. It also provides updates regarding housing developments and several of the home developments throughout the city that are provided. And then lastly, the General Plan Annual Progress Report also provides a similar update to the housing element update where it goes through all of the implementation programs of the general plan and what occurred in 2025 in order to implement the general plan each implementation program of the general plan. In bold is any new action that was taken in 2025. Our general plan is nearing the end of its expected life. And so I think it's staff's intent to bring a proposal to start the update of a general plan in the near future. But these implementation programs, staff continues to work to implement and provide updates as they are available. This action tonight is not subject to CEQAs. It is not considered a project. And so tonight staff is asking that the council authorize staff to submit the annual progress reports to, again, OPR and HCD, as well as open, provide an opportunity for public comment on what has been provided. And that concludes my report. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Saab for the presentation. With that, I will open the public hearing regarding the city of Tulare's housing element general plan annual progress reports for the 2025 calendar year. Is there anyone in council chambers who wishes to speak on this item for the housing element progress report? Okay, do we have anyone on the phone?

Okay.

I will close the public hearing and look to comments or questions from council members, and I'll start with Vice Mayor Harrell. Council Member Segalo?

Yes, I had a couple of questions. So we have two big items before us tonight. If you combine, there are almost a thousand pages. documentation and reports and tables and maps and a number of things. I guess the question is, I know we have to submit these, but do we have to submit them at the same time? Is there in the future where we, well, obviously these are every six years, aren't they? Or is that the period that we have to submit them?

Good evening, Council. We did not do this on purpose. I promise. So the annual progress reports that Stephen presented are due every year. They're due by April 1st, so we're overdue. Unfortunately, the state keeps adding new requirements every year and makes it longer to update these. The housing element, which is next on the agenda, is every eight years, and that has taken a number of years to update. We only received kind of a go ahead from the state to finish going through the process in the fall. I'll talk about that during that presentation, but they're typically not submitted together intentionally.

I just want to add to that. The assumption based on those statement might be, well, what's city staff doing? They're taking a long time doing this. Why can't you do it faster? I'm not saying anyone's saying that just could be the assumption. The reality is how many rounds did we have going back and forth with the state on these things? Right. And I'm not trying to say it's the state fault. I'm saying these documents, especially the next one. We work on them for months and we submit the state takes months. Then they come back and say change all these things. Then we take months. We submitted that to the state says takes months, says come back and change. So this process has been grueling. We would have loved to have brought this to you last March.

No, I understand. And I appreciate the work. It's just that I think for me, what the clarification is, is this particular agenda item is an annual report to the governor's office in the Department of Housing and Community Development. The next agenda item is more of a long term plan that kind of stimulates this for years to come. Right. So, as you mentioned, we're trying to adopt this before we drop the other one, because I think one of the things that You know, I looked at a lot of pages, I read a lot of and I have a lot of questions for the next agenda item. But I think for me, it's just like. You know, this gives progress to the governor and the public in regards to where we're at on our housing goals. Correct. And in that particular of that particular spreadsheet, you know, since I've been on the council, we just haven't been able to make a dent on the lowest type of housing that the city could provide. We incentivize, we designate land where things can be built. I do appreciate this council spreading the love so that all the affordable low income housing isn't built on the west side. It's just as pretty on the other side of Mooney so we can build some nice housing over there. so i do appreciate that we spread it around but what do we do to incentivize you know to try to that's always been the thing we can you guys can make the the the most investment in months and maybe even years putting these documents together but if we don't have an incentivized plan how can we move forward because one of the questions i have is is it worth the time to analyze all the gpas that we've approved to see what the outcomes have been, right? So I see them listed from 2016 to now, you know, GPA here, GPA there, and all that. There's housing being built. but what about the other ones we approved? Whatever happened to them? Did they go anywhere? And where can we incentivize that kind of affordable housing? So I don't know, I mean, not to add more stuff to the plate of the city staff, Mr. City Manager, but that would be something like, hey, we did approve this GPA in 2018 and 2020, 2022, what came out of it? Did it help us towards our arena goals? Did it help us towards that? I mean, I think that to me is something that that moving forward, if someone comes with a GPA, I like to ask those questions. Hey, how can we, where can you develop in your development some affordable housing? So that's just something that I just wanted to bring up. But I know that once I was reading the documents, they started blurring into each other in terms of the tables and all the data. But I think the more pressing questions I'll have for the second item, but just wanted to ask that to see if there's been any analysis of those have worked at all.

I would say there hasn't been any analysis of the general plan amendments as you're discussing. The whole purpose of the preparation of the housing element is to identify impediments to housing and then create actions in order to remove those impediments. And I will get into the next item here in a minute where that is the whole purpose of preparing a housing element is to remove those impediments and encourage more housing to be built.

Council members say the, uh. Councilman service and comments, but I just don't want people think I cut you off. You said you don't you don't have comments. Steve, I appreciate your report and I can kind of extract a few things that you had said is. One of the things you'd said early in your presentation was the state is most interested, and I think is what our city manager had said is this process goes through a rigorous review from the State of California. With that is council as well can have ideas elements of direction. We go into our general plan. but again this housing element which this is the progress report and then we get into is the state is most interested because it involves the regional housing needs assessment as you touched on it's looking at how we're doing implementation of such elements of 20 units per acre and goals with that so i think part of that is As you said, it's really an overview as well to vacant land. And as you said, is that vacant land zoned appropriately? And so with that is we're working through that. And a lot of it is compliance and being compliant. Because if I'm correct, we're not one of the jurisdictions being sued by the governor's office. Is that correct? Not yet.

Not on this item. The attorney general's office on a different matter, but not on this related matter. No.

because I walked through that because we are seeing where the governor's office and other jurisdictions are being very engaged and very involved in watching housing elements, watching those reports, how you're doing with those housing elements. And you walk through that process because this is a progress report. But yes, our next item is the meat and potatoes behind those dynamics, how we have vacant land, how we zone that. how that's being reviewed, what goals and measures that we are being oversight to by the state of calendar to do. Now there's mission behind it and there's objectives and there's populations to be served, but that process is very rigorous and also very much mandated and has that series of review. One of, another question that I have, and I think this comes up for the public a lot, is we talked about entitlements. So the city's entitled, the city entitled 1,289 single family residential units. Is it a true understanding that that's entitled, but that doesn't mean A, they were built, And two, that's just entitlement also doesn't guarantee water. That needs to be delivered through a will serve through our enterprise water district. So if you get entitled, doesn't guarantee you water. Is that a fair statement or not true?

I say that's somewhat fair. However, when an applicant is coming in, they are submitting a site plan to us for review and going through our site plan review committee. And part of that committee does include our engineering and our public works divisions. And they're looking at this from the point of view of can we serve this in the future. And so we're at least taking an initial look of before we approve this entitlement, is this something that we're not going to be able to serve in the future? If that makes sense.

yeah and in our our meetings uh Thomas does an awesome job and Thomas as I often do my apologies I didn't put some of these questions in front of you when we met to have staff be prepared for it but walking I think through that process is the point I'm just trying to kind of walk through is we had 1289 single-family residents but that doesn't mean they were built you had said we had about 485 permits

That is accurate. So through this, you're showing the steps of development. The 1st step to development from the city's standpoint is the entitlement process. The entitlement process is getting a subdivision map approved or getting some sort of other action that requires a discretionary action from planning commission or city council to occur in order to move the. process forward. And then as you're reporting in these documents, the next step of course is getting a building permit to be issued. So if you have an entitlement, you've gotten that discretionary action from council approved in order to build something, but you have not yet necessarily applied for a building permit, gone through building permit plan check or recorded a map or submitted improvement plans or gotten all those kinds of things approved. You've just simply applied for that subdivision map or or general planning or whatever that was needed to get approved from city council. You've taken that first step.

And you can get those approvals, all of them. It's still not build a project, right? I mean, a developer might not have the capital to build a project or they might go, you know, they might go bankrupt or so there's all kinds of things outside the city's control that can happen.

Club division maps expire somewhat regularly.

For just maybe layman's way of saying it's just it's an on paper process.

Yes. Essentially, you now have a a paper approval, and you're working towards then a paper law and then an actual construction of something.

And with that, and perhaps at that step it's Trish or others, is the city does have an established amount of will serves that can be issued. So it's not open-ended, right? The city comes and says, we have capacity for 1,712 or something along those lines. It's not open-ended, right?

It was that way, gosh, probably. 8 to 10 years ago, we were applicants would go to the board of public utilities. They would ask for a will serve. We'd have Corolla run it through the model. We have since made quite a bit of improvements to our water system. So that was when our water system we couldn't provide like our max hourly pressures. And so we have gotten away from that. So, really, as long as they're within city limits, we really don't have a limit on will serves.

I mean, we do, of course. you know, think about whether or not we have the infrastructure in place to serve them or whether as a condition of their approval, they have to extend the infrastructure. And, you know, we do consider whether or not our facilities like our wastewater treatment plant or our water system has the capacity. But it's not as formalized as you say, we don't have like the set number that we're like checking off and ticking down with each permit we issue. We're not in that state right now.

Which is why we do our master plans, right? Which project our needs for the next 30 years and we design and build towards it. The other thing I would just comment on this topic is. Many times, especially when we're talking about subdivisions, you're talking about taking land that was previously used for our most recently used for agricultural purposes. When land converts from agricultural purposes and goes to a subdivision, most of the time is using less water. right it used more water when it was an agriculture use than it is when it goes to a single family subdivision now yes they're coming on the city's water system versus probably their own well system when they're in agricultural use right but most time people assume the opposite but it's not the opposite

We're also, during site plan review, when a subdivision comes in, we're discussing with the developer whether or not it's envisioned that a well site is going to need to be established on the property or purchased from the property owner, or whether or not tanks would be needed to be established in order to serve the overall developer, ensure that there's sufficient water and sufficient pressure. And so those things are being communicated to the developer developer the property owner that the city will be engaging with them if there's a need and engaging with them to try to do a test well if needed and those kinds of things to to make sure that the system continues to provide the capacity that's needed okay so walking through that as you said you do the you come in you have the vacant land we start with zoning you get entitlements but entitlements

When that process, there's entitlements, which is there's a proposed project. But zoning doesn't need a project. It doesn't mean building permits have been issued or anything's been submitted or, as I was saying, there's not entitlements issued at that point. So they're not having water, sewer, and access. The reason why I want to walk through that is we have actions where we're going to have vacant land in front of us. And as we take vacant land in those steps and you look at zoning doesn't mean that there's a project to be built on that site yet. It doesn't mean entitlements have been provided to that site yet. It's just one of it's one of those steps for which this is a summary of of how we're zoning that land to be compliant, general plant housing elements and so forth.

That is accurate.

And with that is we entitled 1,289 single family units to which just over 400 which were built. And then other entitlements, we're in 2026 now. We don't have an issue, at least at this stage. It's been analyzed and confirmed. There's not an issue of water supply for all the entitlements for which we have issued.

No, we don't believe so.

Okay. All right. So I hope that information is helpful. As a lot of, I know, residents will ask questions about water supply. How does that process work? When does it happen? And how does it happen? I hope, Steve, thank you for walking through that. And it's helpful for folks to know that process. Council members, I've taken up enough mic time. Any other questions, comments, or actions?

Okay, well, Mr. Mayor, I'll move that we receive and accept the City of Tulare's Housing Element and General Plan annual progress reports for the 2025 calendar year and authorize staff to submit to the Governor's Office of Planning and Research and the Department of Housing and Community Development our report.

We have a motion. I'll second. We have a motion and a second to receive and accept the City of Tulare's Housing Element and General Plan Annual Progress Reports for the 2025 calendar year. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Carries 4-0. Thank you, Mr. Saw. Okay, moving forward. Item 9.3, the 2024-2032 Sixth Cycle Housing Element. Mr. Anaya. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council.

While the PowerPoint is pulled up, there we go. So this item before you is indeed the sixth cycle housing element. You have showed the years there of the planning period. So just a quick refresher, what is the housing element? It's one of the eight mandatory elements that's required in a city's general plan. It's governed by the government code shown on the screen there. It's required to be updated every 8 years in accordance with arena or arena. You'll hear that term used a lot. It's regional housing needs allocation. And I'll explain what that is. It's essentially the fair share. Of housing that each jurisdictions assigned. for each eight-year housing cycle that needs to be produced in the region to meet the housing needs. So housing needs at various income levels for each community. And that is reviewed and approved by HCD, another acronym, which is the State Department of Housing and Community Development. So this is for the sixth cycle, the regional housing needs allocation for Tulare County. You'll see the various cities noted there. the total number of units and then broken down by what they equate as a different income levels and you'll see another acronym planning is filled with acronym soup but i'll do my best to define those and welcome questions so ami is area median income and so the very low is is for households that make less than 50 percent of that area median income figure for the region You have low, which is 50 to 80% of that amount, moderates 80 to 120%. And generally above moderate means any household that makes over 120% of that area median income for the region. So, actually participated in a multi jurisdictional housing element update. So it was the city of as well as all the other cities in to Larry county. Except for, they're much larger, a lot of resources and they started early. They finished before us to Larry county was a part of this and dropped out and did their own approval as well. But you'll see there we participated with. Extra farmers will Lindsay Porterville. So, if Larry and would like. And so the way the housing element was put together when it's multi-jurisdictional is we have a regional analysis that looks at the housing needs and a housing plan for the region as a whole. And then every city has its own local analysis in each appendix where Appendix F as it pertains to Tulare specifically. And these are the components that are found in the housing element. is there's housing needs housing constraints resources and inventory there's a fire housing assessment that's conducted and ultimately a housing plan which is how are you going to address the aforementioned identified housing needs in the community and throughout this process there's workshops surveys stakeholder interviews that are held to inform this information as well as a lot of census data and other sources of data that are compiled Chris Wanner, And so the timeline for this project it's gone a long time started way back winter 2022 and I had a lot less gray hair and was just a city planner. Chris Wanner, And that's when we kicked off the project and each year that they see bad more requirements and the six cycle, if you ask any planner in California it's worked on it was really a gauntlet it took a lot of effort, a lot of years to put together. In hindsight, we would have started earlier, right? Because here we are kind of behind the, so we should have had the new one adopted in 2024, around this time, 2024. So we're about two years late. But essentially what occurred during that time, we kicked off the project 2022, 2023. In 2023, we spent a lot of time gathering information and data, having those community engagement workshops, stakeholder interviews with different developers, uh different community groups in the summer of 2024 we actually had our first public review and draft of the housing element released and reviewed by um hcd as july 2024. um there were a number of uh back and forth uh where they provide comments we'd have to make revisions so that all occurred fall 2024 through winter 2025 just this past November to December is when we finally received notification from the state HCD that okay your housing element is finally we don't have any more substantive comments now you need to adopt it take it through the adoption process including the rezoning adoption of the CEQA document and so that brings us to where we are today which is in the spring So the public participation that I mentioned, these are some of the engagement methods that were used. There was a project website set up. We had a number of community workshops, stakeholder interviews with different stakeholders. Like I said, from different developers, even market rate developers, affordable housing developers, nonprofits in our region. Um, we've had online surveys conducted and then the public review period. So there was an initial 30 day public review when we had the 1st draft released. Received 1 comment email during that time submitted to the state. And so you'll see subsequent rounds of review. Every time we submit to the state, we have a shortened kind of public review period as well. And highlighting just the changes that occurred from the last iteration. So housing needs. So housing needs is at the very beginning, right? What are the housing needs for the community? And so this came out of the surveys, the stakeholder interviews, the data that was gathered. These are the general themes that came to the forefront. So there seems to be a need for more housing options for both renters and buyers at all income levels. That was an identified need as part of this process. There's also identified need for financial assistance for low-income families that rent and own. And need for housing close to services and jobs. Needs for housing for large families, too, was identified. And these are just priorities that were identified. We talk about affordability. I have this table here that kind of talks about how those things are determined. So you mentioned, you heard me mention area median income earlier. Um, and it depends on the household I said, so there's different household sizes depending on the household size. There's different threshold of limits. Of what's considered, um, affordable monthly housing costs, rent costs. Home prices as well, and so really kind of the baseline to keep in mind with all this. is 30% of your income. If you're spending over 30% of your income on housing, you're considered rent burdened or housing burdened in general, whether you own or you rent your home. And that's kind of the threshold we use nationally to evaluate housing cost burden. And so you'll see here, uh, the tables and for the different income categories, right? So low income, as you go up the income scales, median moderate, you see that what what's the threshold to be considered affordable for rental prices for home prices. Um, and so, you know, in a region like ours where our area median income is, is lower, um, but we see the cost of housing continue to increase, um, that gap continues to widen between. what the needs are in our community and what is being supplied, even just by the market. We also evaluate our housing stock. What does the housing stock in Tulare look like? And so again, this is a very large document, as Councilmember Segala mentioned. These are providing kind of the highlights and some of the tables that discuss this. All the information, of course, has been included in your staff report, but this includes total housing units in Tulare by type. Um, and so we have a comparison, you'll see the city it's Larry's the top and the percentage of that of our total housing stock that we have to Larry county has a reference. How it compares to the county and how we compare to the state of California as a whole. And so generally speaking. We tend to produce a lot of 3 bedroom, uh, units, um, or I'm sorry, single family. Detached single family homes, right? So we have a lot of a large percentage. You'll see 77.4% of the city's housing stock is single family detached homes. And as you look at multifamily, I mean, we only have 3.4 attached. So that's your town homes, condos, single family attached would be considered that duplexes 2.8% of our housing stock. Uh, 3 or 4 units 5%, right? So you kind of see, and if you compare the county or the state. We're over producing single family detached for sure. But it's really stark when you kind of see some of it makes sense, right? You go to bigger cities. They do have more apartments, especially more smaller apartments, like studios or. Or even larger apartments, so you see, it goes 20 to 49 units, 50 or more units. Those are big apartment complexes. We don't have a ton of those until Larry about 2.6% of our housing stock statewide. That's over 7%. So this is just kind of it's a survey of what the housing stock looks like in the state generally compared to the county and then compare the city to Larry. And then the, uh, the size of the unit. So this is what I was talking about. Three bedrooms, uh, 52.7% of the housing units in the city of Tulare are three bedroom units. And that's not, it's, it's higher. Certainly it's, it's right there on the county, um, substantially higher than the state. four-bedroom units, we're kind of right in line with kind of what the state average is for those. One-bedroom units, we're way under. So somebody, you know, if someone just needs a studio apartment or a one-bedroom apartment, one-bedroom house, we just don't have a lot of that in the city. And interestingly enough, you saw in the previous slide, folks identified a need for housing for large families, for larger families. Five or more bedrooms were actually underproducing by about half of what the state average is even for larger houses. And so you'll see that kind of shown in the data. And so kind of the overall takeaway, and you'll see me mention this theme as we move forward, is we don't have a great variety in our housing stock. We kind of produce a lot of the same type, and the needs in our households have changed over the decades. And so we're kind of seeing that bear out a little bit with the data. Maybe some parts of the state have produced, but I'm not gonna put too much stock in this. This is kind of a snapshot in time, kind of where we are today. Uh population trends. This is also a really good information to share. We're three times higher than what the if you look at the census data from 2010, 2020, the city of Tulare's housing growth. Compared to the state compared to the county even so we're a rapidly growing community. I don't think anyone surprised anyone that grew up here. I mean, can see just how much the city has grown over the years. Um, but especially in that decade, and especially again snapshot in time. But you look at that decade, 2010, 2020. Consider we're also coming out of the recession during that time, but we still grew at a much faster clip. And there's a variety of reasons for that than the state, for sure, but even at the county. And remember, the county includes a lot of our unincorporated communities, our rural communities. We're the second largest city in the county, so some of this kind of bears out. Housing constraints. So these are the things we have to look at in the housing element as well. You heard Steven mentioned in the previous presentation. Are there any constraints we can identify that are unique to Tulare? Why we're not producing more affordable housing or more housing responsive to the needs in the community? And so these are the types of things that we look for. What are governmental constraints? Those are things that the government has some handle on or can control to some extent. So like your zoning, your permitting processes, You know, does the city adopt any specific building codes that go beyond kind of what state building codes require? CEQA, you know, I would say that's more of a statewide constraint. Market constraints are your impact fees, construction costs, the complexity of financing for projects. Um, land labor materials, right? Some of those. Are are what they are, but they, they have an effect on the production of housing and an environmental, which fortunately we don't have too much of in into Larry. We don't have. I mean, California has fault zones, but thankfully we're not right on the San Andreas or some of these other places in the state where it's much more of an issue. We do have drought and we had a conversation around water. I would say that and probably the extreme heat or or the closest things we have here. Fortunately. As we saw in 2023 with the floods, we're just out of the worst parts of the flood zones in our region. We're not on the ocean, so we don't have a lot of cliff erosion or sea level rise considerations. Wildfires, of course, is the big one. So here's a summary of the local constraints that were identified that are kind of specific to Tulare. And these were found. The cost of developing housing, including land costs, construction costs, is rising rapidly. There's a lack of federal, state, and local funding. And the funding that is available is increasingly competitive. The time and effort needed to identify, compete for, and layer affordable housing funds can be considered a major constraint to development of affordable housing specifically, which is more reliant on these different funding sources. uh Tulare generally has a higher loan approval rates in the county however there were found to be disparities between racial and ethnic groups in terms of loan applications and the approval percentages we all know discrimination and mortgage lending has been illegal by the under the federal fair housing act for a number of years, decades really, but there could be other factors that contribute to this, right? Some of it, a lack of financial education, accessibility, maybe language barriers, credit history, savings issues. These are things that we would look into that are included kind of in the housing plan of things we can do to kind of help with those numbers or those disparities. And then there's also found that although Tulare's development regulations allow for a variety of densities throughout the city, the development standards may not be sufficiently flexible that maybe it does pose a constraint on development. So again, lack of variety in the housing that we produce. So that's something to look into as well. One thing that was identified by the state, our emergency shelter requirements previously in our zoning code were frankly illegal. Um, we're not conforming with state law. Uh, there's a number of other special housing types that the state state law does not allow us to constrain. So we had to make revisions for zoning code to allow those. And then, um, sites inventory and Rena. So the arena is the amount of housing that we have to produce during that 8 year cycle. And how do we accomplish that is through what's considered the site's inventory. So we have to identify sites that will provide land to develop the housing responsive to ARENA. ADUs is something, accessory dwelling units, that the state's invested heavily in and trying to loosen regulations to allow people to build second units on their properties much more easily. Historically in Tulare, ever since the state loosened those rules, we probably produced about only 10 units a year to 10 ADUs. That's gone up considerably in the last couple of years as the states continue to loosen restrictions. We also have pre-approved ADU plans at the city. We've worked with designers that have, if you want to build a second unit, there are plans that if they fit on your lot, you can utilize and that cuts a little bit of the upfront cost and time. Um, the biggest barrier is still, you know, you still have to fund the construction of these units. And so, um, without kind of dedicated sources of funding that does. That the, you know, um, limits how many can be built, obviously. And so the other way we can meet ARENA is what are considered opportunity sites or rezone sites. So opportunity sites are places that are already zoned at the appropriate densities to meet the various types of lower income units, moderate, above moderate, so on and so on. So rezone sites are sites that have been identified by the state that the city has proposed and the state has to accept. uh to meet the um wherever we have a lack right of well we don't have enough sites that are already zoned to meet all of our need we have to find other sites to rezone to meet that that that requirement and so you'll see the only place we had to do that is uh for lower income units you heard steven mentioned earlier the state equates density with affordability um that is just the way it is um it It pans out in kind of the larger metro areas in the state where real estate land costs are so high that you must build up. You know, frankly, they're built out. here land costs are much much less but nonetheless we do have these mandates from the state i would argue some of the denser housing we have sometimes is luxury apartments which i would not consider to be affordable but nonetheless that is the requirement is we just have to have land at appropriate densities and we don't have much of a leg to stand on target with the state when almost 80 percent of our housing stock is only single family And so really what the state is saying to Larry, you don't have enough land zoned for multifamily development, especially at the higher density limits. Fortunately, this go around, we only had to find There's a total, I think, ended up being about 10 acres. Prior housing cycles were much less, and I'll get into that in a little bit, why that was. But we've caught up a little bit. And that's not enough. So even if you have enough land zone, the state wants you to have a surplus. And so you'll see the surpluses at the bottom. So it's a bit of a gauntlet to get through this approval process with the state. Why? Well, there's a lot of criteria involved. I mentioned some, but the state wants infill development that meets HCD's requirements. So a lot of times they're not going to accept the site if it's less than half an acre. And they start questioning you when it's more than 10 acres in size to count towards the lower income obligations. Vacant or underutilized sites are typically what are preferred over kind of redevelopment sites. But a lot of this ends up being a negotiation, right? With the state and trying to get them to understand kind of the local context, because remember they're reviewing these plans for cities all over the state. So this is our site inventory map. So this is an inventory of all the sites that we are counting on that are available for development in the city, in the city limits and just outside the city limits, but within the city's urban development boundary, sphere of influence. And it's the different colors are different zoning designations. But really, what the state is looking at, they're looking at a couple of things. One, they want to see these sites spread out. They don't want all the sites like council members mentioned to all be, whether it's the West side or all on the East side, or all in one part of town. They want to see that every that they're spread out throughout the community. that there's different densities in different locations. So yes, even though a community may be primarily low density residential, the state is essentially forcing cities to say those are the places we want you to put higher density residential and they're going to places that have a lot of higher density residential and say we want to see low density here to provide a mix of different income types of or housing that supports different income levels um because we I mean historically some of its historic some of its cities blatantly doing this and now you know it's One or two cities got in trouble for this and now it applies to all cities where cities were purposely putting all their low high density housing in 1 neighborhood. You end up building all these affordable housing complexes on 1 neighborhood. And then everyone complains and blames the affordable housing or high density for crime and all these things. Well, it might not be the density. It might not be that their apartments. It's that they're all located in this one area. And guess what? They're probably not close to a lot of the resources that folks need to get to. Right? So that's these are the types of things the state is really pushing on cities to make sure that they this is one thing that they did. Commend us on to see that. Wow. Okay. The city is growing in all directions in terms of single family, and you're providing opportunities for multifamily throughout the city. You'll see we have 1 rezone site that is located in Northeast to Larry. Affirmatively further furthering fair housing. This is a. I'll try to keep this brief, but this is something the state really is hammering home, especially with the sixth cycle. They're really looking at kind of what I mentioned earlier. Are the actions of the city creating patterns of segregation or integration? Or are they worsening segregation if it's already there? And so they have us look at those patterns in our existing housing stock and then see how that previous slide I showed with the different housing opportunity sites, how do they play into this? And so there's an analysis of contributing factors that can contribute to this. So, for example. Exclusionary government policy that restricts certain type of housing only to 1 part of town discriminatory lending practices historically as a nation. We've had a, we've had a history of that. Those are illegal. Now, the concentrations of poverty or racial and ethnic segregation. Those are all things. uh you know historically i've been there but with all the laws on the books now they are making sure cities are not finding loopholes or ways to kind of get around federal laws and state laws to kind of continue to produce those results so really the charge to cities is you have a duty to affirmatively further fair housing and that extends to the city's site inventory and our ultimately our housing plan AB 686, this was a new requirement this cycle, which really kind of emphasized these core principles of making sure that you're affirmatively furthering fair housing through outreach and how we're conducting outreach for this process, that our site inventory analysis is fair, balanced, that we're identifying and prioritizing the contributing factors that could create these patterns of segregation or integration, and that we're focusing on integration rather than segregation. and that we have a list of actions where we do find these places of segregation. And so these were the findings as part of the regional analysis and then the one specific to Tulare. So regionally, if we're talking about Tulare County. In Tulare County, there are differences in population and demographics between urban and rural parts of the county. Some of this is not surprising. Rural parts of Tulare County were found to have a wider population than the urban areas in the county. There did tend to be a higher incidence of older residents as well as folks with disabilities in the rural areas. And then racially concentrated areas of affluence, which is a mouthful, but pockets of high-income earners that were found to be in the cities of Tulare, Visalia, and northwest of Woodlake. One thing that was common that binds all of Tulare County together, and those of us that are grew up here from here. We know it's already county is one of the poor counties in the state and so whether you're in the rural parts of the county, or in the cities, we do have higher rates of poverty, whether you're a rural or urban. Um. We also breathe the same dirty air, unfortunately, in Western Tulare County, Eastern Tulare counties, the mountains where you're above kind of the the small layer, and then the fog later in the winter. Um. But yeah, no matter where you live, that that affects everyone. Pollution, exposure, air quality, and other hazards, environmental hazards. And then specific to the city of Tulare, there were differences found in educational outcomes, health outcomes, and economic opportunities between eastern Tulare and western Tulare. Higher poverty and segregation patterns were found in historic west Tulare and portions of southwest Tulare. However, Tulare in general is predominantly Hispanic Latino, no matter what side of town you're on. And it has a higher percentage of non-white residents as well as higher percentage of low-income residents when you compare it to the state average. Um, large portions of the city on all sides have a rate of low and moderate income residents. Specifically, those folks that are at or below 50 to 80% of the area being income. So, generally speaking, we have a, you know, a population that has those needs. We have large portions of city on all sides that have high rates of households considered cost burden, where the households are spending over 30% of their income on housing and overcrowded households. Though renters are affected at a higher rate than owner-occupied households. All right, so I just went over a lot of data, a lot of different needs that were found through this process. So the end result in this is the city's housing plan. What's the city going to do to address some of these needs that were identified? So we have 7 goals, which you see on the screen there to address these. and i'll i'll briefly go over those so that we have different programs so you have the housing plan has different programs to address these needs and these also have to be reviewed and approved by the state so we have a program that emphasizes regional collaboration to further the city's housing goals we do a fantastic job you heard the mayor mentioned earlier a great partnership with tk tk is our metropolitan planning organization that funds a lot of the transportation funding measure our funding and so we already are doing quite a bit of coordination at the regional level around transit funding around transportation funding around homelessness we have the homelessness task force at the regional level one of the things that was identified as a separate is hey could we be doing something more as a region bringing the cities together in the region around housing and meeting the region's housing needs Um, housing development. So we have programs that say we have to maintain adequate sites at various types of densities throughout the city to meet our Reno obligation. We have to have by right approval, um, on how this is also a new requirement to state added this, this go around. If we, if we use the vacant site last cycle and nothing got built in those eight years, we want to use it again. We have to extra justify and prove to the state that, Hey, if somebody comes to us and actually wants to build on this site, It's by right. We're not going to require any other discretionary approvals. And so they made us codify that. Even though we have that already, that's the way we process it. We're adding a section to the code that specifies that. And also removing constraints. So we have programs that remove constraints, zoning code amendments that we have to make to comply with state law, transparency in government, making sure that our fee processes, our development processes, our development standards, as we talked about earlier, are predictable and they're transparent. and then affordable housing programs. So continuing to focus. How do we get folks that want to build a second unit the ability to do so? How do we facilitate more affordable housing development? It's been the theme of the night so far. That is the big challenge, not just in Tulare, throughout the state. Almost no city is meeting the arena. So it's a major issue. It's something we're going to continue to tackle as we move, hopefully, from housing element adoption to when we move into housing plan implementation. And then identifying lower income and special needs housing programs and how we can continue to provide those because we have a very high need in our community. And then how do we preserve what we have? Whether it's replacement housing, preservation of what we consider at-risk housing. So there's a term in the housing space called naturally occurring affordable housing. What does that mean? So a lot of our older housing stock is naturally affordable. It may not have a deed restriction on it, but because it's older housing stock, um it probably commands less it does command less rent than you know newer apartments or homes that were built and so continuing to invest we do have programs owner occupied rehab programs first-time home buyer programs as well that help folks get in but also to preserve with owner-occupied rehab and folks to stay in their homes, right? And to make repairs, like if they have a failing roof and it's a senior on a fixed income, we have programs through the funding that we receive from the state and the federal government to help folks stay in their homes and upkeep the condition of those homes. Housing for persons with special needs. So we have several zoning code amendments that we've had to make to make sure we're not discriminated against residential care facilities, emergency shelters, low barrier navigation centers, farm worker housing, that we're providing the ability for folks, no matter the need they have, a place for them to live in our community. And so we have programs around that. And then what are we doing around resource conservation and sustainable development, making sure We provide incentives for energy conservation and efficiency and residential development, although we're in California. So a lot of that's mandated already by code, Greek code, solar, mandatory solar. We have a lot of things on the books as well. And then a whole slew of things. I'm not going to read these one by one, but to affirmatively further fair housing, right? To address things like making sure we're maximizing fair housing enforcement and outreach, housing mobility. We're providing new housing opportunities for high opportunity areas. And then place-based strategies for neighborhood revitalization, tenant protection, and anti-displacement. And actually just real quick on this. So we actually only have one high opportunity area. What is the high opportunity area? Almost all affordable housing that's developed relies on something called tax credits. And so we have TCAC, which is the Tax Credit Allocation Committee that issues those tax credits, which are a source of financing, major source of financing. Well, there's a whole other several capital stacks to have an affordable housing project come to fruition. and you get rewarded extra points if you're building housing in what are considered these high resource areas, which are areas that have the better schools, that have access to retail, that have access to services. Again, the state is really trying to make sure you're not putting all of the affordable housing or special needs housing in the most inconvenient parts of the city or in the places that don't have access to these other resources that maybe the other parts of town do. And so that's something that we're mandated to provide. Um, under sequel. So the general plan that was prepared, you heard me say the housing element is one of the mandated elements. So it was an er prepared for the entire general plan, including the housing element. And every time we update the housing element, we have to look and see if the findings in that general planning are still hold, or do we need to prepare a new sequel document? In this case, we prepared what's called an addendum to the er that just looked at. Hey, what did we assume in the housing element before what's changed? And you look at the delta. Generally speaking, you saw the high growth rates of our city over between 2010 and 2020. So we had very high projections for growth. And so we're within the confines of that growth still, even with the changes we're making. So this evening, in summary, what staff is recommending is that the City Council adopt an amendment to city zoning ordinance to add Chapter 10.83. That's the by-right approvals were required to explicitly adopt by state law. And then we have only one rezone site, which is a request to rezone from medium density residential to high density residential. This is the former winery property that we have included. And this go-around, that's the only property we have to rezone. So when I started working here in 2,018, the city was in a real bind, because we didn't have the fifth cycle housing element adopted. We had a conditional approval from the State, because we were 95 acres short, where we did not have enough land zone at the appropriate density for the State to certify our housing element. We had lost access to State funds at that time. So one of the first things that we worked on is finding 95 acres of land to rezone to gain compliance. And the state was, I mean, we were about to get sued by the state at that point. We were able to find, we were barely able to find 95 acres. We tried to build it a cushion, but the previous council didn't approve several sites. Several of the sites, frankly, we didn't have a willing landowner that was interested in rezoning their site. and so we just cruised through where this go around we only have one because we caught up last cycle but if we still have to find so it's uh 10 acres of a 28 acre parcel that was already zoned medium density is being increased to high density to meet the arena allocation as identified this go around we have a willing property owner that is interested in pursuing that We don't have a project on the books, but essentially we just have to show that we have the land zoned at that density to meet our arena requirement to gain approval by the state. The other adoption is an addendum to the certified environmental impact report prepared for the city's 2014 general plan. And finally, the adoption of the 2024-2032 six-cycle housing element and the actions proposed in the housing plan. I will say Before I conclude, there will be a public hearing. I'll be available to answer any questions or discussions. But just as a point of disclosure, the city did receive comments on the draft, which was available for review this last couple of months. So we received six comments, unique comment letters, mostly from residents near or adjacent to the proposed rezone site with concerns about what that would mean to their neighborhood, understandably, in terms of is this going to increase traffic, you know, or would it increase crime, those types of things. I'm able to address those questions or concerns as needed. I kind of mentioned the justification for why we picked the sites and what the state requires. We also received a letter from Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability stating that the city is not complying with its SB 244 requirement, which is a state law that requires that the city complete an analysis of the disadvantage of incorporated communities that are outside the city limits, but within the city's sphere of influence. And so that's a requirement. It's not required to be included in the housing element. and the only requirement is that we updated upon the approval of our housing element since we haven't adopted our housing element we haven't conducted the analysis but staff's intent is to conduct that analysis should we achieve adoption of the housing element over the next year in fact in response to that comment we have an action that's been added that says by the end of the year should we adopt the housing element staff will work with the consultant to complete the analysis but i will mention In regard to those disadvantaged communities, the whole purpose of the analysis is to identify infrastructure deficiencies in those communities and how the city is going to work with its partners to identify those. The city is well aware of those deficiencies. The city actually provides city water to most of those, which are Matheny, Lono, Consultstract, These story villas is on Cal water, but the city is a backup water source. We also are currently working with Hillary county as well as with leadership council on a state grant funded project to provide sewer service to these disadvantaged communities. So, even though we haven't conducted that analysis, we're actively working to provide those for those infrastructure needs. Nonetheless, the analysis will be completed. We have to update our municipal services review. So 1 thing just in conclusion, just. adoption of the housing elements kind of the start it's going to trigger a bunch of other work that we have to do in terms of long-range planning that the city's prepared to do but it's taken us these past gosh four years to get to this point and so um in conclusion uh available for any questions of course after the public hearing that concludes my presentation thank you

All right, thank you, Mario. Thank you for the very detailed explanation. It goes in hand with what Councilman Segala said of 500 pages of review, charts, stats, and compliance elements to read through. With that, this is a public hearing, and I will open the public hearing for the 2024-2032 sixth cycle housing element. I do have some yellow cards regarding 9.3, and I will start with that for the public comment. Devin Tucker, good evening. If you have comments for public comment, you're welcome to come forward. Yes.

Good evening. My name is Devin Tucker. I live in that neighborhood. All I'm asking is to maintain it the way it is, regardless of what Sacramento is trying to push on us. Sacramento will be changing soon because we have an election coming up. So the policies that are in place now may not be in place in the future. The low, the medium density is perfect. High density means more traffic. When we move I moved my family there. We liked it because it was a quiet neighborhood. The only thing, we still had the winery there. The winery was quiet. It didn't throw loud parties. It didn't cause problems. And now nine years later, they're talking about building multi-level apartments and adding a lot more population to a neighborhood. And that's just not something we're interested in. I don't think that's a good move. But I'm just asking that we leave it as is and find somewhere else. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Mr. Tucker.

I have another yellow card from Trisha Dean. Good evening, Tricia. Welcome.

I'm not the public speaker, so please.

Don't hate me for that.

I don't have a 500 page book of stuff, but I do have some opposition that's about 10 pages long. If anybody would like to read that, I'll give that to Melissa. Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Trisha Dean and I live directly behind the property being considered for rezoning. I want to begin by saying this clearly and respectfully. I am not against housing and I'm not against affordable housing. I came from that neighborhood. a long time ago and I'm not here tonight to make this personal even though my voice is shaking I'm here because I believe that the decision matters deeply for the families who already live here and because once this rezoning is approved the neighborhood may never get another chance to come before you because of the bite right clause The city has said there is no specific project proposed at this time. But that is exactly why this matters so much. Residents are being asked to approve the intensity now before we ever see a real project. if the rezoning goes through a future project that fits the zoning can move forward by right without any other public hearing so tonight may be the only meaningful opportunity families get to speak before something that much much larger and more intense is placed directly behind our homes this is a big ask of us my family moved to delago because we wanted a safe and stable neighborhood for our child we worked hard to leave behind an area that no longer felt the right fit for our family and we invested in this neighborhood that we currently live in because we felt it was quiet already established and very family oriented This is not just a parcel switch in zoning. This is our lives and this is where our children sleep. This is where we sleep. This is where we walk. We ride our bikes. This is where we feel safe and we're settled. We've been there for nine years. There's an elementary school that's right nearby, and families choose this area because it's residential in character, close to schools and parks, we love Del Lago Park, and designated for family life. Those things matter to us. My concerns are practical and specific. There have been no site-specific traffic study for the neighborhood streets, no clear project level review of emergency services. I'm in UT for 20 years. I know that multi-level housing brings kind of a slew of other issues. And no meaningful analysis of privacy impacts our families whose homes back right up to that site, which ours is one of those. I loved it when the winery was there. I used to project things on that winery silo, and now I don't get to because they're torn down, but we loved it because it was quiet. I believe careful site-specific environmental review matters before dense residential development is ever allowed there. What makes this especially hard to understand is that Tulare already has other spaces seemed better suited for this kind of growth. The city itself talks about smart growth and infrastructure, community health, and community engagement. If high density housing is needed, then it should be placed where infrastructure and planning have already supported it. not imposing directly behind an already established neighborhood without full review. I support housing, but support for housing does not mean every location is the right one. And it does not mean that the public should lose its voice before a real project is ever shown. So I respectfully ask that you deny the rezoning, But if you choose to, then at the very least, remove the by right path and require full site-specific environmental review and discretionary public review before any further project can move forward. My question to council is that we've already had the number of units needed, specifically 217, but we do have, like you said, an extra few units It's hard for me to swallow that there's no projected plans for this land. And I have 24 unanswered questions at a particular parcel, which is the one behind us. All the neighborhood asks is for transparency and input on a life-changing zone change. Please do vote away our neighbor's voice before the public has even seen a real project. Thank you.

Thank you, Tricia. The next yellow card that I have is Daisy Zawaski. Did I say that right, Daisy? Good evening. Welcome.

So, I'm just basically going to read my note that I wrote to you guys. So, my name is Daisy. I am too concerned about the rezoning of the 10 acres behind our property because that is the, that's actually our backyard. So, I understand support wife to Larry city wants to address California housing shortage. But we believe the rezoning is the wrong approach for the neighborhood that has already been established. When we purchased our home, we chose to live in a neighborhood in which there were no plans for high density, multi family housing. The high density multifamily housing should be planned in new developments from the start and not impose on established neighborhoods like ours. From my understanding, Tulare has other options. They're already zoned, approved and ready for development. These sites can meet state housing requirements without imposing these changes to our established community. Rezoning the 10 acre parcel behind our home will not only continue to impact the volume of traffic in our neighborhood, but it will affect the safety of our kids playing outside. The traffic in our area is already a significant concern and by rezoning the property behind our home would only aggravate the congestion and the chaos we are already experiencing. Additionally, I'm concerned that the high volume housing would play strain on our local school Mission Valley, both in terms of capacity and resources. It could negatively affect the quality of education. Respectfully, I would like you, the council, to reconsider the rezoning proposal as it could significantly alter the increased traffic density and activity of our community that we deeply value. We hope you will take this into account in your decision.

Thank you, Daisy. Thank you. All right. So with that, with the public hearing, is there anyone in chambers who didn't have to submit a yellow card who would like to speak on this item? Okay. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone? All right. Yes. Welcome.

Good evening, Council. My name is Krista Cunningham. I also live in the community that Daisy, Tricia, and the first gentleman were referring to. I don't have anything new to add. I think they covered it very well, so I don't want to take up too much of everyone's time. But I would like to reiterate exactly what they said. We purchased a home in that neighborhood for the neighborhood itself, for the quiet environment, the family-oriented environment. So we would like to respectfully ask that you reconsider the rezoning.

and keep it as it is currently thank you all right anyone else in chambers wish to speak good evening

My name's Luis and my neighbors, we also live on that same street right behind where we're tending to rezone and. We're just reiterate the same concerns that they brought and 1 of the biggest ones I think is traffic since the new businesses right down the street from us open, which is like the Dutch coffee, the circle K, gas station, McDonald's. Um, at least I personally have seen an increase in the amount of traffic through our streets. Um. it's a little congested sometimes a lot of speeding we are a lot of families there are kids who play on the street um it's become kind of a norm at least for me i see um a police officer usually parked there kind of monitoring the streets especially because cars speed through when they're turning um sharp turns there's been instances where i've had to veer off closer to the sidewalk as cars turn and they go into where the stop signs are but it's just increase in traffic so i think um if we were to rezone it and increase the amount of population the i don't think there's the infrastructure to support that amount of traffic there which i think is one of our biggest concerns but that's i would just hope that you would all reconsider thank you thank you for your comments okay just checking back in if there's anyone else on phone

All right. You have a go. Welcome.

Yes. My name is Sean Dean.

I live in the Delabo area. Actually, the backyard where you guys are trying to rezone is, that's our backyard. I've worked in four or five story apartment complexes. Our employer doesn't let us go in there at night for certain reasons. We can't do internet installs. We can't do repairs for certain reasons. It's going to bring more issues traffic wise, especially. I like to let my kid ride around like I used to do when I was a kid. But I have to go with them all the time because there's cars. going crazy already. You add something like that, you're going to have a lot more cars going all over the place. You're going to have a lot more people going back and forth to that store. The store is open 24-7. Places that are open 24-7 have issues. Transit, crime, it all makes a difference on those kind of apartments. So I'd just prefer if you guys had your other places that you can build and just use those instead of putting it in our backyard.

Thank you for your comments. With that, I'm going to close the public hearing. We have one more. You're welcome to come up.

Hello. I'm Gabriela. I'm 16 years old. And I didn't think I was going to do this, but me and my family have recently moved to Tulare from the LA County. And we chose this specific neighborhood because we liked that it was a quiet residence. And honestly, me personally, I love looking through my window out into that field. I just think it would be inconvenient to put condos on there. I see if you guys would like to put single house, like single family homes, but I've heard you guys and that we have too many of those already. But I think it would be an invasion of privacy, especially for those of us who live right behind it because they would be seeping into our lives. And an environmental aspect too. I just think making places more high density and allowing more innovation will lead to more pollution. And I know that Tulare already like struggles with it since they're in the middle of California. I would just ask that you guys don't reconsider, and that's it.

All right. Thank you for your comments. All right. Seeing nobody else approach the microphone, with that, I will close the public hearing for item 9.3. um and with that and i think some of the comments are perhaps staff uh we did receive um couple of letters, inquires if there was also anything of which staff or legal counsel wanted to touch on with this project. And maybe Mark, I know you're aware of some of the outstanding questions, kind of what we received from the public. If maybe you'd walk through that or if staff has responses to some of those.

Yeah, definitely. I have a few comments. I think Thomas probably has some, but before Either of us speak Mario, are there any other additional comments or things that you'd like to address either? That was spoken here this evening or in the letters that you have received.

Yeah, the, the letters received other than the 1 I mentioned from leadership council were from residents, I think, in that neighborhood generally speaking. And they're all fairly commenting on the same concerns. the increase in traffic, perceptions of increased crime or maybe safety. Some mentioned noise. There are things in our development code or even the lack of privacy, right? If it's going to be multiple stories, I can understand logically if you have a backyard up against the property, why that would be a concern. But there's things, one thing the public should know and that was addressed earlier So there's no specific project now. And even though there's not a discretionary process in the future, if this rezoning is approved, projects still have to go through site plan review. And site plan review, while not discretionary, is essentially when anyone submits a project city staff from various departments review it to make sure it meets all the city's development requirements and there are things in there like screening and like if you have a big air condition air handling units those have to be screened to block noise from adjacent land uses things like that that's a very kind of in the weeds example but there's also design considerations we look at access and circulation to make sure i mean this property is right on mooney boulevard So you would imagine when we come through site plan review with a project, if someone were to propose one that we'd be looking to maximize access there and not putting those types of trips all through that neighborhood to the south. You could also design a building so it's not hovering over the backyard so that you could have windows or balconies facing a different way and not towards the single family residences. There's a lot of things in the code. that would require, if a project were to move forward, to address those concerns. I think that's where staff felt those are not necessarily hindrances because those are handled through the development review process and the plan review process. And some of it too, so this is all part of the Delago specific plan. When the Delago specific plan was developed, it's been changed a number of times. Um, other than the winery property, everything around it was was well planned out. It started out as a golf course, you know, that was changed to a school site. Um, but there were a number of apartments proposed. It's ironic. I'm not please don't hate me for this, but this is just the truth. The resident, the neighborhood where the residents live now, that was all proposed to be apartments. multifamily or condos um that was down zoned it was changed that also happened for further to the north in the north uh i would say northeast corner of delago where a lot of that was going to be multi-family it was changed to large single family so we actually have the capacity through the city's general plan where we've looked at hey we already analyzed infrastructure if the logo would have built out the way it was originally envisioned But since then it's been down zone, so we kind of find ourselves in this bind because and it's not just a logo other parts of the city where we had. Higher density zoning in years prior the city allowed it to be down zoned to lower density zoning so we lost that capacity and now we're playing catch up and that's kind of kind of how we ended up where we are but i'll pause there and I can address specific questions or comments.

I'll add a couple additional comments. You know, these are always challenging issues. You know, I've worked in three cities and these issues show up in every city. You know, there's always the question of where does affordable housing go and where does density, you know, multifamily housing go? And you just heard our community development director say that The community has struggled with that issue for a number of years, and the council is in a passive down zone in certain cases in certain locations and relocated. And you also heard a community development director talk earlier about we have a deficit of multifamily in the city. I came here four and a half years ago. That's one of the first things I noticed just driving through the city that we need more multifamily for the city to be healthy. We need more multifamily housing. One of the things I wanted to mention is people always assume or often assume when you talk about multifamily, especially if you're talking about affordable multifamily, is they think Naturally, people may think we're talking about homeless individuals. And the reality is no. When you look at the income levels that Mario showed previously, often not necessarily at the lowest level of affordability, like 30% AMI, but when you're at the 50 to 80% AMI levels, you're talking about entry-level firefighters, police officers, teachers. Like those are the salaries that you're talking about are the people who can afford to live in those facilities. And so I just don't want people to assume, you know, these are gonna be criminals or, I mean, I'm not saying that when you have multifamily and you have density that there can't be parties and there can't be, you know, disruptions and there's, you know, there could be, you know, cause you have height, right? Sound can travel and you can have lighting, which is why Mario talked about design standards, right? We have regulations that try to address those issues. But one of the other comments I'd like people to think about is, you know, I get it. You have behind your wall or your fence on your property, you have this big field. But this was never going to be a big field forever, right? It was always going to be developed. The only way it could stay a big field is if somebody buys it and turns it into a big field, right? But that's not going to happen. And I don't think anyone here is saying, well, we don't want any development. I get that, and I appreciate that. But it could be worse. It could be all commercial development. And why commercial development would be worse is because the sound. I mean, think about that five in the morning, all the garbage trucks that are coming through there and making clam, you know, big noise. Right. And and the activity that goes on late at night in a commercial development. And so I'm just trying to provide a different perspective for you guys to think about. And that comes from years of experience. I was in a community before I came here where the citizens like we don't want multifamily there and they got commercial development and every one of those citizens. Wishes it was now multifamily in that community. So that's one of the things I want people to think about the other thing is It is, and I'm not trying to scare anyone here, but I want Council to understand, and no one's not talking about adopting a housing element, I don't think. But I do want everyone to understand the consequences that are potentially involved here, right? So as a community, if you don't adopt your housing element, it doesn't happen tomorrow, but soon. If you don't adopt your housing element, what happens at the state level is, and it doesn't even matter if there's a change, let's say in the governor's seat, because we're talking about long standing state law. You don't get state grants. So a lot of the grants we require, that we rely on for a lot of the things we do, you don't get state funding. Like that's the first pressure valve they push on you, right? The next one that's even worse than that, and it takes probably a couple of years before you get to this point, they will issue an order that says you don't get to issue any building permits. So when people show up to the city and say, hey, I want to replace my water heater, I need to replace my roof. We can't issue a building permit for that. So we're not at that point. I'm just saying there are consequences to decisions and hopefully we're not talking about that. We do need to make some adoptions and make some changes, but there are ultimately consequences that cities face. So I just wanted to share some of those thoughts. And then I know our assistant city manager also had a few comments.

yeah i i just wanted to expand on the objective design standards for multi-family and kind of characterize that um for folks who don't work in that field so one of the implementation steps after a housing element adopted is moving forward with other ordinance updates including objective design standards and what that means is It's a yes or no type thing. And so things that we've seen successful in other jurisdictions when regulating multifamily are things such as you have to have landscape buffering between single family and multifamily on the multifamily parcel. You have to have a block wall. Some have required single story buildings at a certain distance. distance from those single family homes are required that it's just a travel lane there. And as Mario said, orientation of windows, orientation of patios, there's a lot of things that if they can be created in an objective way of yes, no, then it's something the city still does have the ability to regulate. And I will add, you know, One of the other things about multifamily is this idea of, you know, this motto of opportunity grows here and being able to create an entire community. And that means folks that are living here and working here and that kind of thing. And we've talked to new employees who have relocated outside of the area. And in the conversation, it's where are you living? Oh, well, Visalia. Visalia. Well, yeah, that's all I could find. So. Again, that is happening here where folks that are relocating the area have a hard time finding housing initially.

All right. Thank you, staff, for the further details. Go around to our council members. Vice Mayor Harrell, I'll start with you. Okay. Council Member Sagatlan.

yes um thank you uh first of all i want to thank all of you for coming i know that uh you know i can hear the passion i can hear the concern that you have over the what's before us today um you know it's it's some decisions that we as council need to make to have our city move forward as city manager said there are a lot of external factors that require us as as our city planner talked about or or city planning department talked about certain responsibilities we have for to me for housing you know someone references the election you know we have a candidate who says if he gets elected he wants to build a million homes right okay great how do we do that and who's going to be asked to do that who's going to be tasked to do that um i have a lot of my constituents you know i represent the west side I have a lot of my constituents that say, hey, why don't we build these types of houses over off of Mooney? Why is it always on the west side? Why is it always apartments over there or low income? That place is just as pretty as it is on the west side. So I have a lot of my constituents who are just as passionate as the speakers today saying, hey, build it over there because there aren't that many of those types of projects on that side of town. So I know these are some tough, tough decisions we need to make. You know, actually, as before we started the discussion, I had a couple of things, questions I wanted to ask now. regarding the housing element, which I definitely plan to support for us to adopt this evening. We talked a little bit about the different types of housing, I guess bedrooms that were needed, that type of housing. And I know that one of them was for large, some of it was for large families, five bedrooms, we don't have that many. But I think we have basically in the past couple of years, have gone in the direction of rezoning parcels to be small, right? In other words, we eliminated some like 6,000-foot square parcels. And, you know, earlier today we had the 4,000 minimum, but the developer's building a little bit bigger. But so we reduced some parcels. Does that force development to go up? In other words, if you want to build a five-bedroom apartment in a smaller parcel, you're going to go up. And I sympathize with the young lady. If you come to my house and go to my backyard, they just built the house that can see my backyard. The bedroom windows are facing to my backyard. So I'm in that situation where I can hang out in my backyard, but now I got literally from here to that wall a new house that's two stories and is looking into my house. It's down at the Liberty Hill, 400 homes being built. So I understand that, but that's progress, right? But the question is, on parcels like the one that we've just been talking about that are multifamily, is there an expectation that they'd be multi-story?

Yeah, that's a great question to get to the density so that the state requires a minimum density of 20 units an acre. Generally you're talking three stories, but to your point you brought up a very good point about where the market has evolved, I guess, or gone to, where we're seeing single-family residential now. Almost all the new single-family homes built are two stories. Some are even three, a few of them. And in fact, we had neighbors complaining about that very same thing, but the development on the other opposite side of Del Lago, where there's two-story homes being built up against a single-family backyard. and there's i hadn't thought of that but there is a lot in our current development standards there's much less buffering in other words if somebody were to build single-family homes not high density they can go up to two stories and those have tiny yards nowadays. And so they're right up against the other properties. Whereas with apartments, we have these development standards that push and require more buffering and you have to include parking that's single level and things like that. So, but that is where the market has headed.

So, I mean, for example, I mean, I would invite any of the people here today to go to West in the Lima and see an affordable housing project that's three stories tall. and how it was built on the west side with partnership through self-help enterprises, and it's a great development. So I would have community center to clean. The only problem I got is a bunch of tractor trailers parked right on west, but that's something we'll try to fix down the road. But I would invite you to go see a development like that just to check it out. But with that, Mario, in regards to that, does a particular... Recommendation by the by right or by the by right ordinance. Does that allow for multi story by right?

So, it's, it's based on development standards, so we have high restrictions. It's more the density that dictates that. Right? And so I think to get to 20 units an acre, just practically speaking. By default, you're at multi-story. The buy-write ordinance, though, just to clarify, it doesn't relate to this rezoning. The buy-write ordinance is for any property that we're reusing in our site's inventory this cycle, that was included last cycle, that those sites are now by default buy-write.

Right. So I guess for me, it's in general, because I remember... I don't know it was six, I don't know who was around, but six, eight years ago, we had some other property east of the 99, that one particular street that we wanted to rezone led to the city manager's argument about what we decided not to and we fell back in regards to having to have that acreage. I don't want us to kind of fall back either if something needed to happen, but because I think I think there might be a time where multi-story is starting to come in. We'll need to come in for us as a tool to kind of reach some of those numbers, right? But again, it depends on the parcel. So those were some questions I had regarding this particular conversation. But I wanted to, I don't know if you can go back to that map. The one thing that really, kind of took me by surprise was the maps that are in the report, starting like at page 520 through 550 or whatever. It's just a bunch of maps. I'm curious to understand how we created a new part of the city called Northwest Tulare. Because by all means, West Tulare has always been J Street. or pretty much the railroad track. But now we have a new part of the city called Northwest Tulare that goes all the way to Blackstone. And so I'm curious in the sense of how that was developed, who created it, because it throws off a lot of the figures. it throws off a lot of the stats in my mind as to the stats you talked about poverty, housing, and so forth. So I'm curious to see how that map or who decided to create a new neighborhood in Tulare called Northwest Tulare. That's pretty much between J Street and Blackstone, north of downtown.

I think it was the image that showed all the different. Yeah, the zoning, the zoning area. Multifamily units, I think it was.

No, if you go back, it's yeah. Oh yeah, in terms of what's available. 570? Yeah, it was in your PowerPoint. Yeah, no, yeah, it's in a PowerPoint. There's one map, but there's like 30 of them in the report that, by the way, the report has amazing data. If anybody wants to, yeah, that one. So you see that little section that's called Northwest Tulare, which basically includes West Tulare, which I said, J Street, the railroad track. And then now we have northwest Tulareola going up. I believe that black line on east is part of it is Blackstone. So it just threw me off in regards to like, does that impact the data or who came up with that sort of map?

Excellent question council member. You can blame me. These are informal desert neighborhood designations that we were required to create to designate the different parts of the city. They don't follow council boundaries. They don't follow. It's essentially. A way to capture the differences in the housing stock. And in the development patterns in the city and. Northwest to Larry includes is largely single family residential. It includes kind of the area north of Prosperity up there, up towards Cartmill, but it includes some of the housing built in like the 90s, west of, what is that, East Street there. Versus if you compare it to historic West Tulare, or Southwest Tulare for that matter, the demographics and the data that's collected is substantially different. The housing stock is much older. There's more multifamily. There's more mixed single family and multifamily. quick planning nerdism tidbit is that before essentially World War II, we didn't really have single family zoning, multifamily zoning. It was kind of mixed in together. So the older parts of town naturally have a different makeup of housing, the demographics, right? You heard me mention where the older housing stock tends to be lower rents, lower property values. um and so south and then if you look on the other side of town we have northeast hilarity which encompasses by large the lago it encompasses kind of going up towards 99 And then we have Southeast Larry, so they're different development patterns, different demographic data is collected in each in each 1. this was something that working with the consultant who were asked to split the city up this way into a variety. Now, I chose the names, so you can blame me for those, but essentially it was to show kind of the differences. In the city.

So that was really the intent is just the reason I bring it up is because my concern, if you look at Northwest Larry, and you consider the J street boundary, the. The expanded zone. kind of, in my mind, dilutes what's really happening on the west side. You see a lot of little brown, a lot of little more density, as people are talking about housing and things like that, that it kind of just basically dilutes it by expanding the area to say, well, we have this amount, when in reality, if you really use the west side boundary, that part of the northwest Tulare really has a lot of that type of housing that, you know, You know, people object to or want to object to. So, I mean, I so that was just kind of what really hit me was that, you know, instead of it saying it's it's tucked here, now it's tucked here in regards to expanding that zone. So, but like I said, I was just curious to see how that came about. and uh so mr mayor i had a couple other questions i don't know if you wanted just to go around to see if anybody else and then i'll come back or leave it up to how you want to proceed on that sure i think coming and i don't well before i go generally go last council member sir sure

I do want to thank all of you for being here. I hear what you're saying. You've been heard tonight. I think there is some misconception about whether you still have opportunity to make changes, that this isn't set in stone, that there's ways to create change. answers to your questions about traffic, about noise, about some of the issues that have been brought up. I also represent the West Side, so I'm aware of some of the feelings that are traditional in Tulare. about the difference between west and east side. I don't think the tracks actually delineate people's worthiness or people, you know, it's a mindset, right, that's been in Tulare for a long time. So I think that after listening to both the city manager and Mario, and I think Thomas as well, There will be opportunities to address those issues that you've brought up tonight. If a project comes forth and that project is a three story building or a two story building, that there will be opportunities to look at buffers, to look at ways to keep people from looking in your backyard. Just so it's not over. It's not over tonight. Even if we were to approve that, it's not over. that you still have a voice, you still have an opportunity to bring forth your concerns, and that those are concerns that we all have as well. So I just, again, I appreciate you being here. It's the only way we ever know anything is when people come forth and talk about it. And so we really appreciate you coming and sharing your thoughts, your concerns for your families and for your quality of life. So thank you for coming.

yes is i think to piggyback on that quickly was in the public hearing of neighbors when that process comes out and i think there's a comment that tricia dean had noted that was that in that public process in the public hearing to get the neighborhood that's a time to do that in that public process to voice those concerns and to walk through that in that process and we you know it helps to have letters and neighbors and it helps to be here and absolutely of coming and speaking and taking part in the public comment yes very much so and endorse i've been there too but being in the in the public participating in public comments wanting to run for city council getting elected and here i am through the issues throughout the years similar with this and many others um hearing that and i think the breakdown which i'm taking notes tonight as the speakers happen my evaluation of reading the materials there was a lot of materials this is the packet we get you heard staff walk through that knowing where our maps are as the council members said and going through this issue one of the things that i looked in evaluating this is one of the things that i think mario touched on was also the history of del lago care very much for the sanctity of your home and the creed of your neighborhood um i myself at one time lived in del lago officially back when it very first started um in 2000 um i lived there, moved, Del Lago was part of my district when I initially was elected, and the part of taking neighbors' concerns forward of the importance of what that creed and community is of Del Lago is very important. With that is, I looked at the history of Del Lago and its master development back from those time periods and crossed-examined to some of the points for which staff touched on some of the concerns and what we have in our packet. And Del Lago does have, Del Lago currently does have apartments. It has apartment complexes along Paseo Del Lago that were part of, is it built out. Del Lago does currently have two-story units. I'm not aware of three-story, but of two units. Del Lago is also a bit of a cornucopia that has many commercial lots. It does have a 24-hour gas station and a spot for a grocery store and other commercial sites to be built. But one of the items that we have, which is a master developer, and staff touched on this too, was it's a willing property owner. So the current property owner, which is census forth, did not oppose this or provide the opposition with that it's a willing property owner. And with that and the overall, Del Lago master development. Just amongst Tesori, amongst the first houses that were built on Chardonnay that came in off Paseo, my point that I looked at is a bit of the puzzle pieces for which Del Lago encompasses. The other part, some of the concerns by all means, careful environmental review. And so with that, as the development standards and development projects, even by right that was touched on, still have an environmental review process that has to go into the development of a project. The other part, which was traffic, absolutely. And I think the part that I look at is that we have an exit that goes out to Mooney Boulevard, ingress, egress issues that will come into this, You know, large 10 acres. What does that look like in the future going out towards the commercial development to the south? Does it penetrate specifically into neighborhoods, the ingress and ingress? But at the end, I think it matches the fabric that has been developed in Del Lago. The market is still the driver and willing property owner and taking the zone. And this isn't absolute. And I think coming back is one of the comments is our voice being taken away. And there's two elements, which is there's the by-right provision, which the state has. We mentioned a couple of assembly bills, Senate bills. What does that mean for our development? But at the same time, the state does not dominate. I wanna be a bit rebellious and speak of what does that mean for Tulare? Coming back to that is you have this by right provision of specific developments, but not all developments. There are a few by right, but that doesn't mean everything coming in by right. That's just one of the options for some specific developments. We still have development standards. I touched on this earlier before. is that when we have bank at lot we do a zoning overlay and the process to go through is those other steps still all have to be executed with it and i think as council member sarah of i've engaged and what do those steps look like i'm conscientious uh is taleri gonna have five story or six story or what does that look like i as don lebaron pardon Don as I quote you on this I don't have a crystal ball I'm not the only one to steal that quote granted I don't have a crystal ball but it's taking these puzzle pieces to what it does that mean to the Del Lago and the city of Tulare as a whole by right is only specific part we still have our development standards and um as the staff touched on just so I don't repeat myself we'll walk through that process I'm just looking over my notes of some of the concerns and what I had with this as well. I absolutely respect, I think, the overall view of leaving this out or leaving portions of it out. As we heard in putting these overlays, a lot of it is compliance with the housing element, compliance towards this cycle and compliance with the state. How do we fabric that in compared to a sledgehammer? I was concerned, is this a sledgehammer? And I think it brings me back to its bits and pieces with that on Hillman. To these, we have market apartments as well, different development standards. I think one of the things that we need to and i say this and push as we heard the city manager say come back with development standards and get that updated that that plays such a huge role of future development this isn't in front of us today this is zoning there's a future part what does that look like we need to have those development standards on our agenda in our schedule so um John Potter, tried to have a wide view with this and incorporate the residents concern, what does the state want what did our staff do and all things considered with that and surely absorb other comments from Council members. John Potter, So, Mr Harold come back to you if you had anything at this time.

You just mentioned my one big concern, development standards. What I've heard is we could require this to be done. We could require that to be done, or this could be done, or that could be done. I would be more comfortable with something that was concrete, that we're going to protect these people's privacy, do something about traffic control, traffic calming measures, and things like that. I'll be perfectly honest at this point, I cannot support this.

Council, what I will be happy to do, by the way, is we have development standards. We have a lot of them, and we have a number of them that address this specific issue that is being discussed tonight. Mario, in general, talked about some of them. One of the things we will do is I will put in a weekly report. I don't know if we can get it done for you for this Friday, but we'll put in a weekly report, an example of a variety of development standards simplified for you so you can see how they apply to existing or proposed potential projects like this. And then, of course, you know, we will start moving forward with the process of hiring the engineer to help us come back and revisit our development standards, because there may be other ones you want to add. And so we'll get that process going.

So, Mr. Mayor, I had a couple other questions. But on that particular issue, we're kind of in a pickle, right, where we keep saying we don't want to put too much hindrance on developers with a bunch of things they got to do. But then we also got to balance what we think are important community needs. So that's going to be definitely something we have to deal with. You know, we have the Building Industry Association that wants to build, build, build. and they want to do, they don't want regulations, they want to build, and then we have community folks that have situations as explained tonight. But Mario, I had a question for you. In terms of the AFFH, is there any reason why the council couldn't take that as a standalone conversation? I know it's part of the housing element we have to adopt tonight or want to adopt tonight, But is there any way to pull that out and deal with it in the future, you know, like a study session or really tackle that? Or it just has to be in the element process? No, it's a mandated requirement. No, no, I'm saying I know it's mandated, but can we as a council take it? and even further discuss it more as sort of a topic to see what can we do through legislative you know recommendations or policy ordinance changes uh so i think to to mark that similar be the question there's nothing precluding us from making that a standalone conversation In the future.

Oh, 100%. So everything in the housing plan. All the actions in the programs, including those around the age. This you've heard me mentioned as much work and as exhausting as it is to get to this point. This is just the policy document that would be getting adopted. There's a whole slew of implementation measures, right? That now the state's like, great, you have it adopted. Now, what are you doing to address these things? So we would have a whole conversation around different city policies. You heard Mark mentioned we have. In the coming months here, before too long, we're going to have a workshop around housing implementation. How do we increase affordable housing? How do we increase housing of different types or senior housing? There's going to be policy tools that we'll be working with council on. What are the right tools for Tulare? Because something that might work in the Bay or in LA may not be right for Tulare. What are the things that can help us meet those goals? with a local context. And so absolutely it'll be.

So that was kind of my last point I wanted to talk about on this topic was, you know, I perused, can't say I read every single word, but I went through all 500 pages of that document in terms of finding things that I've worked out of interest. But the one thing that really stood out to me were the tables of the different goals And the different deadlines and the different comments as to where we were as a city on those. And there were yes, a lot of not yet. They're not done yet or in progress. So, for me, I just, it doesn't have to be the answer tonight, but when we do have a session, we come back on this topic. I would like to get an idea of where you guys are at, because I know preparing it took a long time, as you noted in your timeline. I would imagine implementation is also going to take some time. And I would hope that we would have a conversation or at least council can suggest of those goals what might be some priority. Because, for example, the one that really pops out at me is farm worker housing. A need for farm worker housing, we have a couple of projects in the city that provide farm worker housing and from what I read in the report, you know we're not quite there yet in terms of even thinking about. What steps need to be implemented, but I would hope that as part of that process when the city manager brings this item back. that we can kind of help maybe guide as a council, hey, well, we wanna make farm worker housing a priority, or we wanna make multi-story affordable housing a priority or whatever the case may be. So that's just my suggestion that that's a conversation we can have. But other than that, whatever motion needs to be taken, I'm ready to provide that Mr. Mayor.

sure one of the things which i was talking to the city manager about and asking which was talked about is and i think to what councilman harrell had brought up i touched on those development standards we have development centers but there's other concerns and elements perhaps with this project like others in the community that we want to address so i said if if we have a vote can we also take that vote and then also have the incentive of bringing forth those development standards in front of us Can we do that in with this vote as well? And he was saying that that, yes, you can.

I would, I would just make them separate votes to be able to find, sort of to keep the record pristine in terms of the items that are before you. And then you're giving us additional direction to come back with those standards.

And part of that is, I think one of the things we are mindful of as council members is unintended consequences. So as we look this and evaluated that unintended consequences for what staff touched on is, Um, the state will take step number, step one, step two, step three, and their overlay with that. Um, and there's consequences that comes from that. They state is very forceful and very integrated into this process as we heard. So part of looking at it is, okay, how, how do we mix that? How do we work with that? And part of, I think it comes back to those concerns too, is well, I think as a community, there's views of we'd want or would that change if we needed senior housing or we needed veterans housing. Those type of elements also fit in as well, as well as two and three bedroom and four bedrooms. you had said as the staff did we can use those development housing that a project comes in with this it's a mix 10 acres can have a mix as we're seeing in developments a lot of developments aren't solely one thing they are a mixture of it okay And I think for me it pushes, if it comes back to traffic and we're going to do traffic calming measures when a site plan is presented, we might speak for myself, but how can we button that up? How can we address those concerns so that when a project comes in front of us, we have these additional items, you know, further addressed. And that, so what I understand is, as Mark said, you can, we can do that. We can work through that. Council, I look to you if we have additional comments or concerns or if you have an action on this item. So, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, Council, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I do need to make a correction to the recommended action that's in your staff report. Just to make sure that you're taking the appropriate action, it does need to state that's a pass to print on the ordinance to amend the city zoning ordinance to add Chapter 10.83 by-right approvals. You're adopting a resolution for the amendment of the general plan land use designation. And then you're also passing to print an ordinance for the rezone for 10 acres of APN 149-070-008. And then you're adopting a resolution for the addendum to the certified environmental impact report. I just wanted to make sure that the appropriate action is being taken. It just wasn't reflected correctly on the staff report.

Madam Clerk, can you add, I mean, let me know what, on number two, an amendment. So that would be adopting a resolution?

So one and three are passed to print ordinances, and two and four are adopting resolutions.

I think I got it. All right. So I'll make the motion. Mr. Mayor, Council, I move that we adopt the resolution approving a pass to print an amendment to the city zoning ordinance to add chapter 10.83 by right approvals and adopting the resolution to amend for an amendment to the general general plan land use designation for medium density residential to high density residential for 10 acres of assessor parcel number 149-070-008. to meet the housing element adequate sites requirement for the city's regional housing needs allocation, three paths to print to rezone from RM2 to RM4 for 10 acres of assessor parcel APN 14907008 to meet the housing element site for the regional plan. I don't know if that's a duplicate one, but RNA. And then number four, adopt the resolution for an addendum to the certified environmental impact report prepared for the city's 2014 general plan and the 2024-2032 sixth cycle housing element and actions proposed in the housing plan. So I think I got most of it or all of it. So that'd be my motion.

We have a motion.

I will second the motion.

We have a motion and a second for the recommended action. I don't have to repeat all that, do I? I know I'm going to get tongue-tied. I'll move to a vote. With that, again, this does not require a roll call vote, or does it require a roll call vote? Okay. So council members, all in favor? Aye. Council members opposed?

Nay.

OK, this passes 3-1. And with that, thank you everybody for being here. And as well, I also want to encourage if you have additional questions, especially what we had talked about tonight or actions, feel free to submit those communications. The other action that we have with this was then when we talked about the development plans. So, development standards, does that need a formal vote or is that a consensus, which is the discussion of our development standards for these areas?

No, I think the consensus is enough for us. I think what we'll do is we will give you, I guess, in a weekly report what we currently have. So you can chew on that and be thinking about that. And then we will schedule something for city councils review of those same items as well as the discussion about what is the timeline for moving forward with a modification store development standards. and that will also give council a chance at that meeting if there are any specific ones they want us to make sure we're reviewing not that that would be your only chance but that'll be your first chance to also say make sure as we're hiring this consultant we're looking at these other items okay thank you sorry lots of notes let me get back to my agenda

We are in 10.1 general business economic development quarterly and September late September told you I get tongue tied economic development and quarterly and September updates.

And I apologize as a typo it's supposed to be March, not September.

I didn't catch that when I read it yeah.

I didn't notice it until tonight. And so, with your agenda packet was the economic development bulletin for the month of March, and this is also the time where I have the presentation for your quarterly update that covers the months of January February and March. And so first i'm going to just go over a couple of highlights of some development that's been occurring. Just specifically regarding commercial projects as part of the downtown revitalization efforts, we did have the 26 hour that opened in this last quarter. And I also wanted to let you know that Ross is opening a 2nd location here in Tulare, and it's going to be located at the shopping complex at cross and J street. They're just in the permit stages right now to they're going to be doing some tenant improvements. And so I don't have a timeframe yet as to when they actually plan to open, but it is going to be a 2nd location. Um, just a few projects that came through site plan in this last quarter that I wanted to highlight on cherry Avenue. There's going to be a mixed use development. That's going to include 2 apartment buildings and 1 retail building. And then there's also going to be a 2 retail buildings that are being proposed over at the East end of prosperity and that's malaria. And then the last item I wanted to just point out is the Family Health Care Network is hoping to construct a new building for a dental clinic at Cherry and Merritt Avenue. And then for just various projects and programs that your staff has been working on, I'm going to give an update on those things. The downtown PBID, the petitions were mailed out to the property owners back in March. The deadline was last week for those to be received by the city, so I should be able to provide you an update on that shortly. Our economic development strategic plan has been going on and moving forward. And so at this point, they're just finalizing the plan and that we intend to bring to you on June 2nd. For our entertainment district, uh, we did receive 3 statement of qualifications for a master developer and interviews were held earlier this month and, um, recommendation for that master developer will be coming to council at the May 5th council meeting. And something new that the state has implemented as part of their California Jobs First is a business ready sites program. This is something that is featuring ready to go sites and parcels throughout California. that are entitled, zoned properly for various industrial uses. So it'll make it a lot easier for site selectors to go directly to the state's website and look for potential locations for their businesses. And so this is something that I submitted a few months back, and right now We do have 13 economic regions throughout California. And so last I had checked from a couple of weeks ago, only 33 sites have been identified throughout the state of California and our particular region, which is the central San Joaquin Valley region. Of those 33 sites, nine of them are in our region. And of those nine sites, we have three qualifying sites here within city limits that I had submitted. And for the little update for the downtown taste program, we currently have 4 loans that have been approved 5 grants that have been approved. And we currently have 2 additional applications that are under review. And just with the regional sports plugs, we are currently having a feasibility study that's begun by our consultant victims advisors. And the maker space, the facility that was brought up at the very beginning of the meeting. So I just wanted to let you know that a lot, a lot of equipment has been ordered and delivered for the maker space. Um, there does need to still be some construction, um, done in that area. And so we are expecting that to take place this summer, get everything installed. And then, so hopefully sometime in the fall timeframe, we will have that grand opening. Back in February, we did have a booth at the World Ag Expo in the International Business Center. And in the International Business Center, there were a total of 52 representatives from different countries that came through that building. So it was a great opportunity for us to meet and network and talk to potential folks that are interested in locating here in Tulare. And again, like many previous years, there were over 100,000 attendees to the Ag Expo. And then last month, we did attend the ICSC at Monterey Convention. We partnered with the Chamber of Commerce for a booth there, and there were over 1,000 attendees at this particular two-day convention. There were over 75 exhibitors that included multiple retailers, site selectors, developers. We were just busy the entire time. There were a total of four of us there. Myself, Donette, Gladys, and Councilmember Segala. It was a great turnout, a lot of follow up that we're going to be having with various folks that certainly have a lot of interest here in Tulare. And that is it.

thank you i was thinking if i had any questions uh but that's good to hear thank you for the report and thank you for the update yeah so on our agenda we do have a little suggestion sorry um in the future would it be possible to add the to in your corridor project

I know that even if it's a bullet point that we're seeking a consultant or whatever.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, I didn't think about that one. To kind of see where we're at on that.

Absolutely.

Thank you. I know it's starting to get late, so see if we can get through these next two items we have left. 10.2, city attorney review process. Um, yeah, I put this on, on the agenda and consents from council. Uh, so Mr. Mondale, if you have an update to add on this.

Yeah. Just seeking council direction. Uh, you know, essentially the thought was that if you decided you wanted to move forward with the city review, it'd be similar to how you reviewed a city manager, our HR department. Your direction would look at other communities and how they do it with develop a form for you and a process, bring that back to you to future meeting for your adoption. And you would start the process.

Dave Kuntz, yeah I think this isn't something that needs to reinvent the wheel, so the HR process has that with our city manager, and I think if there's a consensus do some research of what other communities do for that for turning review.

Dave Kuntz, yeah okay. Dave Kuntz, Just for quick, what was the last time we did this, I know we've had the.

I'm trying to think how many city managers, I mean, city attorneys we've had since- I can step out if this, if it was just the direction I was going to stay, but if you guys want to discuss, I can excuse myself.

I don't think we're going to get into that detail. I think he's just asking more like a point of order, like when was the last time- More like historical, like, you know, I mean, obviously I know the role we play in- Maybe better, sorry.

I know the role we play in, and obviously, just for the general public, the city council has- we want to get oversight but on two individuals the city manager the city attorney in terms of directly hiring and firing whatever you know that's what we have but i was just trying to remember historically i mean i've been in i've been in meetings where we've done both on on the city attorney but we've never had a process my my could be wrong my understanding is since this city attorney's office has been under contract they've not been reviewed formally by the city council

Okay. I think that direction makes sense and appreciate staff's research.

Thank you.

Thank you. Item 10.4, Achieve L Strategic Plan Review. Mr. Thomas.

Thank you. Melissa is going to get the screen up real quick. So there we go. As you'd seen the PDF version of kind of that tree view of the strategic plan previously that kind of has all the layers of detail. We then worked with the consulting because they have a number of different ways that that can be visualized on a public-facing web page. And so on the other tab here, Melissa has started to build out how this will look now that it becomes kind of deployed and actionable. you can see here this first category kind of drops down with economic development and it's all of those items that you saw in the tree view previously and then it's the task this aligns to, which is what thing it's related to. Right now we haven't put status updates in, so that's why the status field is not started and the last update field is not populated. So the unique thing here and what's really going to be the useful part for the public is this blank field here that says last updates comment. That's actually the staff member that is assigned that. particular task, when they provide their quarterly or monthly update, what they've put in the Achieve It system will then automatically publish here on the web page and show the date that that information was added. and show the status of it. Is it on track? Is it behind that type of thing? So we've just started to build out this initial framework with Achieve It's system. And Melissa, actually on economic development, if you want to scroll down on that one, And it's kind of hard to see in this version because we are still building out the page. But that one that you see is the INYO Corridor Plan, and it has a green showing that it's on track. I punched in an edit on the 7th that said the RFP was released and what day it was released. So eventually every single one of these items will have that level of public facing detail of these types of priorities. If you like, I can provide a detailed presentation line by line on every single one of these. Thank you.

Council, for me, the most important thing is, and we don't have to do this tonight, but sometime soon, if you want to reflect back on this, you have it in your packet. I sent it to you in a weekly report. The top categories, the strategic priorities, they really are the same that you saw last time, although we modified the language a little bit in some of them and simplified some of them. But that's, to me, the most important thing that I need from you. Those are our priorities. And then all the projects, the goals and the projects and the performance measures, I mean, we want your input on those too, of course. But those we can kind of buff out and make sure all the things we're working on are fitting in the right categories. The one other comment I'll share with you is, You know, I've been involved in this a couple of times. This is probably of any city that I've seen the most comprehensive, most complex. I mean, we got a ton of stuff that we're doing, which partly is a reflection, in my opinion, of how far behind we were. And I'm almost tempted to like simplify this. And pull some of this off. I don't know yet. I'm not saying I'm going to do it. I'm probably going to let staff continue to build it out as they see fit. And then maybe over time we simplify it. Maybe it's better in the beginning to show everybody everything we're doing and then simplify it later. But that's a thought that I have going through my mind because I think some people are going to get lost in all of this. But if you have any comments tonight, please share them. If not, we intend to just keep proceeding down this path. Thomas, did I interrupt you? Do you have other things you wanted to say?

No, no, no, that's perfect.

Mayor?

I'll just be quick, and I shared this with Thomas. If you're seeing this on the board up there, this might seem, the presentation of it might seem odd or walkthrough. However, I absolutely love what this does, and I shared that with him, because what I can follow through at the top is the strategic priorities, then I go down to goals, I go down to performance measures, I go down to initiatives. Involved in agencies, I sit on boards, involved from my own position at my company. Having a strategic dashboard that you can walk through and pull through these measures, I really endorsed it and I like it. Now, what you're saying, we might clean some of this up and merge some items, but the other part with the software is you can click and go into these items. Nine times out of 10, there's one thing that strategic plans always miss, and it's strategy. They call it a strategy plan, but it doesn't have the strategy. And you work through this. So working through this, you're leading teams. You're leading a large division and others. To get all those divisions in here, which we have multiple divisions, I just want to say is, like I said, we're trying to get done here. But enjoyed it and look forward to how you just improve on it.

If I could just add one last comment. I'm sorry about this. um what's really important about this as well is not just because of transparency and people understand how one thing how where something sits in the context of the goal or the priority yeah i often share this with staff there's an old story um i wasn't there so i don't know if it's true but i heard that when john f kennedy was walking through the space center And of course, at that time was the goal was to put a man on the moon. He saw a man mopping the floor and he went up to the young man. He said, excuse me, young man. He's like, what is your job here? And he said, my job is to put a man on the moon. And what I like about that is every single person in our organization plays an important role, and they don't always get to see what their role is in the big picture, but this helps them understand, because if they're working on a project that's maybe way down at the bottom of this tree somewhere, and they're playing an important part in that, making that happen, or they're the person inputting the data, for example, they can understand how that rolls up into the big picture and moves the dial. And that's how you ultimately get organizational buy-in community buy-in when everybody starts rowing in the same director direction the things you can get done are are amazing and so we're just kind of starting this and so i'm hopeful that that will pan out that way thank you all right anything else council members okay moving forward um i think is

I'll go to future agenda items. Do we have any submitted staff updates? The rare and only time I'm going to is, is there any anybody of the staff member that has a pressing announcement you'd like to make?

I have one. Staff would like to continue closed session items 13.1 and 13.2 unless there's an objection from council. I think we already lost our attorney.

The other attorney the special attorney we're bringing I think they had to check out at this point, so.

I tried.

Would we would we continue those items to May 5th? No, we would just.

I'll just add those to the next agenda.

Okay, 13, one and two, so we would still do three. Okay.

Well, that frees up some time for staff updates. Is there any other reports any staff would like to make? Chief, I see you're reaching for the microphone. Chief and Chief. Okay. All right.

I do have one.

Okay.

It's just, I think, a good habit of us to get into. I just want to mention a couple of things in the last two weekly reports so the citizens can hear them. We have issued our RFQ to hire a firm to help us with our Corporation Yard update. We are working on the Cesar Chavez Park Renaming Committee. We'll be bringing that to council, I think, on May 5th. Where we have 2 council members 2 parks commissioners who already been identified. We went back into the research and determined that that it is park is owned by the school district. But the original planning of the renaming was involved to involve the school district in that decision. So we invited the school district. They've identified 2 members. They'd like to have on a committee. And then we're working on the sort of the time frame and how the committee will work out. I'll come back to you on the May 5th. Our pavement management study, that's a big project. And I saw on social media somebody was complaining that we went out and bought a truck. And no, we didn't buy a truck. We hired a consultant who has a truck, and their truck goes out and tests all the roads throughout the entire city. So you see them driving out there. It's important. We didn't buy it. That's just part of their contract. They own it. But we are hoping to have it done in the summer. It's going to get pushed into September. It'll still be done in time for us to be able to use that information this year, but it's just super important that we do that study. Splash pad, we've had a lot of folks asking us to open it up sooner. We normally don't open it up until Memorial Day, which is May 25th this year, but the Parks Department has figured out a way to open it up the first weekend in May. Is that correct? And we'll be open every weekend in May and then we'll go after Memorial Day to every day. Yep. And we were able to do that without incurring any additional cost, which was our concern. One other thing I wanted to mention was we saw some chatter on social media. I don't know why, but all of a sudden everyone was concerned about why did the city change from allowing three days for watering down to two? And we hadn't changed it. That was the case since 2021, I believe it was. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Yeah. So I just wanted to clarify that for the record. We're doing the same thing we've been doing since 2021, folks. That's all. Thank you.

Okay. So with that, we will move to recess to closed session for a conference with legal counsel regarding government code 54956.9 . Is there anything else, counsel, I need to add to that? All right. We'll recess to closed session. Steve and Ken, thank you for staying through. with us and stand for the meeting, Jason. we'll reconvene from closed session there is nothing to report for closed session and with that we'll adjourn our tulare city council meeting at 9 48 p.m