City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, residents of Tulare, staff and fellow council members. Welcome to the Tulare City Council meeting for Tuesday, July 7th. With our call to order, we start our meeting with our Pledge of Allegiance and Invocation. And if you would please stand as our Chief Police Chief Fred Inklin will lead us in our Pledge of Allegiance. And please remain standing for Invocation led by Council Member Terry Sayre.

Let us pray.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we come before thee this evening as members and citizens of Tulare. We're grateful for the camaraderie, the unity, and the spirit that Tulare residents hold one for another and for our city. We're grateful for the opportunity to come together this evening to conduct policy business and pray that that will be with us, that those things that we discuss and decide will be in accordance with thy will. We ask you to be with us throughout this meeting. In the name of thy son, Jesus Christ, amen.

So with that, item three on our agenda is proclamations and recognitions. 3.1 Proclamation for Parks and Recreation Month. All right. Mr. Beck, would you mind joining me on the front podium, please?

I'm actually going to have our staff here. We have Armando Guzman, who is our Parks Manager, Mike Capote, Recreation Supervisor, Caitlin Lesk, Recreation Supervisor, and Lindsay Bermontes, Recreation Supervisor, who will be accepting on our department's behalf.

Fantastic. Awesome. Good evening. Good evening.

Good evening.

Good evening. Mr. Beck, would you mind joining us at the front? Good job, Patrick. Yes, thank you. One for your service and commitment to the City of Tulare. And with that is the City Council has a proclamation for our Parks and Recreation Month. Whereas the Parks and Recreation is an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the City of Tulare, and whereas Parks and Recreation promotes health and wellness, improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks, And whereas parks and recreation encourages physical activities by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, swimming pools, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles. And whereas parks and recreation programming and education activities, such as out of school time programming, youth sports, and environmental education are critical to childhood development. And whereas parks and recreation increases a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism and attraction and retention of business along with crime reduction. And whereas the city of Tulare celebrates the power of connection, community and wellbeing as our parks and recreation spaces bring people together, strengthen shared community spirit and support the health and resilience of all Tulare residents. And whereas the City Council expresses its deep appreciation for the hard work and dedication of the Parks and Recreation Department, whose staff maintain approximately 363 acres of parks, city medians, landscaping and lighting districts, and who provide recreation programs across five community facilities. Now therefore we, the City Council of the City of Tulare, do hereby proclaim the month of July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month. The City of Tulare has a wonderful landscape of parks and beautiful green spaces, commoners, and with that, as this proclamation notes on behalf of myself and our Tulare City Council, Thank you to the staff and service. And thank you for all you do to make Tulare a beautiful and us to recognize parks and recreation month. If you'd please join me and give them a hand. Speech. Yes. All right. Good evening.

We want to say thank you. We appreciate it. We love what we do for the community between parks and recreation and all the programs that we host, special events. It is a huge team effort. So we thank the council for helping us provide all these awesome opportunities. So thank you very much.

That's it. We have a photo. I'll get the picture with you. Thank you. And in recognition as well with our Parks and Recreation Month, City Council also wants to provide our thanks and appreciation for our Parks and Recreation Board, that is community members that serve, that play a vital role in that directions, strategy, and development of our parks in our community. Moving forward, item four is public comment.

Before we start, Mr. Mayor, this is proclamation and recognitions. We had a performance on Saturday night of not only the symphony, but the Tulare Community Band. I'll let you recognize them verbally for the fantastic performance that they did.

Yes, I figured I'd do it. on mic under kind of council reports and items of interest. I think all five council members above and beyond would share our utmost appreciation to all the groups. Where should we start? I think this is now proclamations of exactly with... it's more of an order. You're catching me off guard of keeping in order. I think first is of our 250th anniversary event on Saturday evening where we had the Echoes of American History in our Tulare Zumwalt Park with the Ant Adventist Amphitheater. That event amongst the sponsorships is our gratitude to the Hillman family for sponsoring that event. We appreciate the Sequoia Symphony and Orchestra was there. We appreciate the Tulare Community Band and all the partners that helped to make that event a success. And especially as I think all of us would share, just such a fantastic evening. If you were there and participated with that, the sound, the song selection, having the symphony as Mr. Madero said at the event back at Zumwalt Park, that performance was absolutely brilliant. Just a brilliant evening. It was great to celebrate 250 years of our Declaration of Independence. And it was great to have the community come out and celebrate with that.

We want to, not completely, but the community participated almost with, as the music went on, the fireworks were complimentary, even though they were illegal.

It's great to have full community participation with that. Many people were involved. And I think as others will share, on Friday night, many partners were involved in the annual Kiwanis Fireworks Celebration, the 250 years. I know we see John Harmon here in the audience, who was Mr. M.C., to that event. As well, I don't know, Fire Chief, what the capacity is at the fairgrounds for those grandstands, but it seemed like that was met. The place was absolutely packed. But again, it was just such a wonderful community spirit to be there, celebrate our country, celebrate Tulare, be there that evening. And to all the partners, the Kwanians and their various sponsor groups that helped to make that happen, our hats off to them. That was a wonderful event too. We have a few other events that happened this weekend. I have some items that I'll share. And specifically, hopefully our fifth council member will be able to join us. I'll save that under council reports of a couple of other events. But at this time, if any other council members Wanted to share as well of your take of us giving the kind of proclamation and recognition to those events that took place this weekend for July 4th. All right. Great community spirit. It just felt alive in Tulare, and that's wonderful. That's what we want to do. I'll move on to item 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. If you, for those that wish to provide public comment while attending the meeting remotely, please press nine on your phone to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. The clerk will assist you with your comments and questions as well. So as I move to public comment, I'm going to go to the yellow card. And the first yellow card that I have is Mr. Alberto Aguilar. Good evening, Alberto. Welcome. Howdy, howdy.

My name is Alberto Aguilar and I want to thank the city council and specifically Armando Guzman. I brought before the city council a problem that was incurring in our alleys and some trees that were overgrown into people's residence. He contacted me and took care of the problem and I'm grateful that he did it in an expeditionist manner for the safety of the individuals that lived in that area. It wasn't my area because I take care of my own trees. So with that having said, Honorable Patrick Isherwood, Mayor of Tulare City Council, council members, city attorney, and members of the city staff. My name is Alberto Aguilar, and I'm here today to inform you all that on July 1st, 2026, a group of concerned citizens filed with the city clerk, Melissa Wilcock, a formal complaint against the city and the Cesar Chavez Advisory Committee. I am enclosing a copy of the formal complaint as a public document, along with subsections of the handbook on rules and procedures of the City Council of the City of Tulare that outlines the required components and guidelines established by the City Council for the purpose of complying with each respective section of the agenda for public meetings. The applicability of rules and procedures apply to all boards, commissions, and committees as established by the City Council. The agenda for the Cesar Chavez Review Committee meeting did not comply with the procedures set forth within the handbook of rules and procedures, and the committee failed to follow the required components during the meeting. Review of the other recording of the meeting clearly confirms their disregard for the required rules and procedures. Vice Mayor Steve Harrell should have chaired the meeting instead of director Chris Orr, a non-member of the committee. My time was up, I hear a click. Okay, sorry about that. Should have chaired the meeting instead of director Chris Orr, or non-member of the committee, along with a non-member assistant city manager, Thomas Gaffrey. It was pretty obvious that more than half of the committee members had their own agenda regarding the renaming of the park without any public input. Committee member Lupi Mendoza confirmed his observation of the committee's lack of notifying the public about the meeting and the fact that no member of the public attended the meeting and supported his contention. The committee tried to blame the lack of attendance because the city does not have a newspaper that serves it, but that's not true. The local newspapers include the Sun Gazette, the Valley Voice, Vaseya Times Delta, Fresno Bee, can I continue or not? Okay, thank you very much. the Fresno Bee, La Voz del Valle and others. There are also several radio and television stations that serve the area. I'm requesting that the actions taken by the Assessor Chavez Review Committee on June 4th, 2026 be null and void. And that the members of the committee receive proper training on conducting a public meeting or create a new committee of volunteer community residents. Thank you for your anticipated response. I'm gonna be submitting my statement along with all the other documents that I made reference to the clerk of the board.

Thank you very much. All right, thank you, Mr. Aguilar. Next, Linda Donovan.

Lydia.

Lydia, my apologies. Lydia, yes, good evening. Welcome.

I'm asking the City Council to void the survey that the committee is working on. It also, it's a fraud. The committee voted unanimously to take the Cesar Chavez name off the park. Yet they put on the survey Do you agree? Do you want to have the Cesar Chavez name taken off? The chairman came up with four names on his own to a simple survey saying, well, I made this simple survey and I have these four names. He did it without any public input, without any input. Councilman Sigala on June the 4th video, which is public record because the city clerk said the video was a public record, advised that he was only there at the meeting and accepted the appointment because he was going to vote no at the city council meeting to take off the Cesar Chavez name off. And he wanted a consensus. He wanted to know if anybody else wanted to say that. So they raised their hands. Yes, they all voted to take the Cesar Chavez part off. That video is very explosive. And if you haven't seen that video, it's June the 4th, from the beginning to the end, all the Brown Act violations on it. And what I'm asking right now, that the survey be stopped and to an adequate survey be done and conducted. Also, they predicated the that survey will not be final. I mean final, that it's not going to have, it's gonna fail. So why have any other meetings if it's gonna fail? So they failed to provide any other meetings and they failed to follow the city managed directive of developing a community outreach program. that community outreach program is not only the media, but the print, the bilingual stations, going out, can and see the people. We can do that outreach program. The grace jet, all of us here, even though with the motto, we told the president, we came up with these, the Cesar Chavez Park. We came up with these, the City of Tulare Police Department having a... being held responsible for police harassment. We came up with the school district selective code, addressing selective codes. We also promoted, now that we don't have suspensions and kids are being sent out of home without schooling, the suspensions now are still kept in school, the kids are still being taught. So we know how to do community outreach. And we're not on that committee. I am going to do, we're proposing an addendum to this committee because we received new information. Because the committee is made of a two joint elected official bodies, we're gonna also file a complaint against the school board, Tulare Elementary School Board. She is recorded on the recording that the board met and they discussed the meetings and they liked Lincoln Park. That means that they discussed this and this is possibly serial meaning because they advised that they wanted Linkin Park. You need to see that video. That video is terrible. What we're going to do We're going to be sending, seeing that, showing that video at the public library. We're going to the Cesar Chavez Park and showing that video to the different communities. And we're going to come up with our own survey and our own petition of people if they want to change the name or they don't want to change the name. This survey is flawed. They asked for the 93274 code. That encompasses the whole rural areas. They ask all to participate. That's universal. That means that everyone can participate. It's a flawed survey and that recommendation from the committee should be stopped and redone again. And I would like for them to change the advisory committee and include citizens. Okay, that's what I'm saying. And again, we're going to have an addendum to the file because of the joint committee consisting of legislative bodies from the city of Tulare, elected body and the school board, they are jointly viable. So we need to file also with the city board. So we're going to do the addendum and refile the complaint and we'll do it within the 30 days. Thank you. Again, I'll address that you look at that video. If you're really concerned about public input, about how your board acts, you take the ethical, you take the Brown Act, and then you have these members completely tear it apart. Completely. It's a shame. You need to see it. And again, the city manager reports to you, but you are the ones that make the final decision. And we got a response on email saying that he was sure the committee acted accordingly. I don't even think he saw the video. I don't even think he read our complaint. We didn't get a response from the legal attorney, but we would amend this complaint and we'll meet the 30-minute deadline.

Thank you, Lydia. We have our comments.

Mr. Harold, this is the sunset. It includes Farmersville, Ivan Hall, Limbaugh-Lindsay, Plainfield, Strathmore, Greenwood, Tulare, Vitellia, and Woodville. So we do have a newspaper. Thank you.

With that, as I saw a member in the public, do you have a yellow card, sir? Would you like to speak at the public comment? Good evening and welcome. Good evening. Good to see you.

Good to see you. I just want to address a problem that I've been experiencing and

Yeah, if you could put your name and your city.

My name is Jaden Roberts and I live here in Tulare. And I wanted to see if you guys can get me some help with the problem that I've been having here in town. Every Sunday, me and my family, we drive to church. We go to St. Aloysius. And on J Street, there's this massive billboard of like a half naked lady. And there's there's no way that that's legal. And, you know, the last thing that I want to be doing while I'm taking my family is to church is seeing a woman who's, I mean, she has no top on and she's wearing a thong and it's blown up on a huge billboard. So I kind of don't know really where to go from there. I just kind of wanted to present that with you guys to see if maybe we can take some kind of action, not only to kind of like remove it, but to see how we can prevent it and see what kind of screening we should go through with companies like the advertisement companies and as to what we can advertise when it comes to what we're displaying out in public. So that's what I wanted to address and see if I can get your guys' help on that.

Mr. Mayor, can I have clarification? Is that when you're heading southbound or northbound?

Like adjacent to the fairgrounds. So it's if you are going southbound, I believe.

Next to the fairgrounds?

Next to the fairgrounds.

And it's a billboard?

It's a billboard.

Do you know the company that's advertising?

I think it's a clothing company and they seem fairly new because I know they have some more billboards farther down, down the street. And you know what? Now that I'm saying that, I don't think that's the only one that has that same image, but for sure down on J Street. So if you're kind of, you're headed towards downtown Tulare?

South, northbound.

Let me try to think. Yes, northbound, northbound.

Mr. Mr. Roberts, if you would, it's just if at least we have your contact information on the yellow card and then staff to your inquiries, we can follow up with you.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you guys.

Is there anyone else in chambers who wish to make a public comment at this time? Madam clerk, do we have anyone on the webinar or phone? Okay. With that, I'll move forward on our agenda. We have item five, presentations. We're going to go with 5.2, update on the Urban Strategic Plan, USP, by the Mid-Korea Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

No, we're not doing that one. So a couple of things. Council, as the mayor mentioned, we're going to skip 5.1 until the next meeting. We weren't able to get all the employees here, so we'll bring up the next one. I'm particularly interested and excited about this presentation. You know, we've talked a lot about and have done a lot over the years in terms of preserving groundwater resources. As you know, we do a lot as it relates to conservation and above ground water storage. So we've made a lot of progress in the last number of years, but we have to do more. And we've been working with Aaron and his team and his consultants over the last couple of years He'll get into specifically the challenge and the opportunities, but. We're excited to have them here tonight. You know, we're not looking for you to adopt anything. But we want to update you on where we're at and what we're thinking. For example, at the sales tax initiative, 1 of the things we talked about, and 1 of the things that's important to the voters is the protection of groundwater resources. And so, you know, to do more than we have been doing. Ultimately does cost money and, um. And so there's some things we can do that can be pretty quick and effective. And there's other things that will take a little bit of time. So Aaron's going to share that with you. Certainly ask questions. We're going to give you a lot of time to consider this and consume it. And then at some point, you know, you'll probably see these things coming back to you, whether it's you or the BPU, otherwise for implementation, you know, over the next year or two.

Yeah, thanks for the introduction, Mr. Mondale, and thank you, Mayor and Council members, for the opportunity. It's been a while since I've been back, and it's not like I've been... It's been a little busy, so I wanted to start out with what I have been doing and give you an update on our probation status. And if you weren't aware, as a partner of the Midquia GSA, our initial plan was deemed incomplete and inadequate, so... We were positioned to be taken over by the state and from the State Water Resources Control Board. It was a major potential impact to this region. When the State Board comes in, they're likely going to implement a groundwater restriction and then fees on top of that. None of that benefits our local community, but they would pull our groundwater into sustainability overnight is essentially what would happen. Under the guidance of the Mid-Kaweah Board of Directors, our advisory committee, and the community as a whole, I was directed, get us out of probation as fast as possible. Well, that was almost a two-and-a-half, three-year process. And so I'm happy to report that on December 2, 2025, the State Water Resources Control Board did remove us from probation. So we are back within the confines of the Department of Water Resources now. uh they are not intending to come in and take over our sub basin or charge us any fees most notable i think out of that was really the comments that came from the state board and that was largely due to the leadership and the tough decisions that our board and our our communities had to make um The chair said straight up front, the Cahuilla Subbasin really sets the bar when it comes to our groundwater sustainability plan across the state. Member Firestone, this is just really a masterclass in how to tackle difficult issues in a collaborative and meaningful way. And in our subbasin, we had struggles and arguments, but I like to tell people we checked our egos at the door and we came to the table to do what was right for our communities. Chairman McGuire's, we didn't get here without a sub-basin finding the strength to internally and externally coordinate, and we did that. And then, interestingly, there was such a unanimous vote by all the members, Chairman McGuire thirded the motion, I guess, if it's a thing. And at the end, it was interesting, because I was talking with the chairman afterwards, and he came down and he said, I recognize there might have been a problem when we put you back in DWR and the audience applauded that move. We had the entire state with us trying to get us out of the probation, and they were there to support us. We had a lot of people from throughout the state there to champion our movement back to DWR. That came, like they pointed out, with a lot of difficult decisions and a tough road ahead of us. And so where do we stand? First, I want to thank, we didn't get there without a team of people, and it took a large team of consultants, staff members. And while we understand that these people were getting paid to get us out of probation, I personally know that most of our communications weren't during the work hours. They were on the nights, over the weekends, for two and a half to three years. So there were sacrifices that were made. And I just want to thank these people. If you ever run across them for some strange reason, just understand they're part of our community, whether they live here or not. So where do we stand? We're currently back within Department of Water Resources. They are now reviewing our groundwater sustainability plan again. And they will decide if we're approved or sent back to DWR, State Water Resource Control Board. A lot of coordination was under, taking during that time period to make sure that we don't end up back in the state board just because our plan is inadequate. So they've indicated us they're reviewing our plan. No red flags yet. We think this process may last a year, year and a half, and we're about a half a year in. So we're still waiting. And in the meantime, we have to implement, right? So we have to do all these actions like fill data gaps. Evaluating our subsidence is going to be tremendous, and I'll go into that in a little bit, and then monitor our levels and where we're at. Now, while we were implementing and revising our plan, a lot of our actions were focused on the agricultural community, not only the state, but the regulatory agencies were wanting the agricultural community to address this issue immediately. So most of our actions and attention were spent in the agricultural sector. As we got through our process, we recognized that what we were doing in the agricultural sector, which is basically what we call demand management or allocations, was not gonna work in a city. We can't tell the city to turn the wells off. That doesn't work. We can't say live within this constrained framework because you only have a little bit to live with. You have growing communities in need, so it doesn't work. So we identified some critical issues that we needed to address. And the urban strategic plan was born out of a need to not look at your traditional agricultural projects and management actions to solve the groundwater overjack. What we identified was for the city of Tulare, most of the groundwater extraction taking place under Tulare is from the lower aquifer, and I'll show you that. The groundwater overdraft or depression under the city of Tulare was pretty significant in both aquifers, meaning we have when the city installs a well, that well comes on and does not shut off for all practical purposes. So you have a permanent what we call cone of depression or lowering of groundwater levels underneath the city. That then is reflected at the treatment plant. That water comes out, gets treated, and you have a mound underneath the treatment plant. And we identified that, and we have ways to deal with it. The groundwater levels are continually declining. Even in wetter periods, you see declines in these levels because the wells don't shut off. And then subsidence. That was the most recent factor. We knew we had to address it in SGMA. We didn't realize how large of an issue it was. We're losing several, about a foot a year in certain areas, and it's a little less or a little bit more in different areas. Just to give you context of the city of Tulare's wells, we completed this analysis to look at most of the wells within the city footprint. You can see the distribution of wells largely below the Corcoran clay, which is where we get a subsidence issue. It's pumping from the lower aquifer that collapses the clay levels. And they're equally pumping greater than 100 acre feet per well per year to make up the total pumping for the city of Tulare. How that reflects is in... Could you...

The Corcoran clay, for those of us who are aware of it, we understand. But for some people, by definition, maybe you could clarify what you're talking about.

Yeah, I apologize. I'm going to get really groundwater wonky and use some terms. Stop me like that if something doesn't make sense to you. We should clarify it right up front. The Corcoran clay is a thick, impervious clay layer like Play-Doh. And it is laid down across the valley floor about 200 feet to 300 feet deep. That brown line generally through the middle there. Does this kind of work? That brown line indicates the cork and clay layer. That impedes water from going down below it. So you have a confined aquifer below it and an unconfined aquifer above it. The unconfined aquifer is just open to atmospheric pressure and the lower aquifer is pressurized. So it has pressure pushing down on it that pushes the water up. And when you pump from the lower aquifer, there are more clays below it. As that water seeps out of the clays, those clays shrink and they don't rebound back. They can't bounce back up. So you get permanent deflection and our ground sinks. We're doing a project with Caltrans right at the Page Avenue. project. And since 2021, they have a benchmark there from 2021 to 2025 that benchmark sunk three feet in elevation. So that site is three feet lower than 2021. segwaying into what that looks like underground, these are groundwater hydrographs that show you what the groundwater is doing and the blue line on the bottom is the groundwater elevations fluctuating they're generally moving in a downward trend. The red line is what we call the minimum threshold that's defined in our GSP that says, if we hit that level, we have undesirable results or impacts to our community that cannot be fixed. So we cannot go below that minimum threshold. And in this well, you can tell we had some rebound in 2023. But the 2024, 2025, and 2026, we're back on that decline back towards the minimum threshold. And there's not a lot of space there between the minimum threshold and where we're at today. You're talking about only about, what, 50 feet or so in... groundwater elevation there and we're losing you can tell each year there it could be vastly anywhere between 50 feet and maybe 10 to 12 feet in that area. Up top is your subsidence minimum threshold, how much the ground can sink in that area. And as you can tell in that location, we're getting very dangerously close to the minimum threshold there. We only have about, what is that, five, six feet left of subsidence. And if in a handful of years we're sinking three in certain areas, we might be in trouble very quickly. So a lot of the actions we're talking about, as you'll see in our urban strategic plan identified, there are short-term, medium-term, and long-term solutions. We also looked at historic groundwater pumping and what the future looks like for the city of Tulare. And the city of Tulare has done a good job, and Mr. Mondale pointed that out, largely conservation measures have stabilized groundwater pumping, if not declined in certain areas. In certain years. And so you're looking at about an average of 17,300 acre feet pumped per year and the anticipated future looks like in 2040 about 23,000 acre feet. So not a large increase, but we are projecting in our analysis increases in groundwater pumping. Subsidence in the future, as you can see on the left here, this is the cumulative subsidence up to date. And so you can see a large section of Tulare has seen greater than four feet of, between three and four feet of subsidence. That's the green, blue, kind of dark blue. And on the right-hand side is the green and blue area was what's left. So you have about 50% of that subsidence left to cover over the next several years. And we're chewing it up faster than is afforded on that glide path there. So we had to put some actions in place quickly. So what is happening conceptually being done? A lot of conservation measures are lowering the demand. So you just pump less out of the lower aquifer, your low flow toilet programs, industrial reuse, those sort of things are reducing your demand. We do have a recharge program with the city of Tulare that was implemented back around 2010 era. And that puts surface water into the ground for the city of Tulare. We've now met with the city of Tulare, a BPU, and we have an operations committee with the city of Tulare. TID and the city operations committee recognize that that program isn't as effective as we need it to be. So we've actually put that on pause right now. And the contributions the city of Tulare makes to TID to do that recharge are on hold because we think that money can be better used for immediate actions. So what can we do? Well, we can pump less out of the lower aquifer, but we can also increase how much we put in the lower aquifer. We can inject, and I'll explain a little bit about that. And we can also enhance a lot of that recharge, but do it in a way that is more strategic and meets the immediacy that we need today. We also do believe that while conservation measures are good, they're expensive, and they're being mandated by the state anyway. So those have to continue. We've added potential of working with our neighboring agricultural community to fallow lands around the city to reduce their pumping on the edges of the city of Tulare. So what does that look like? on the ground is we would look at surface water recharge programs that bring it closer to the city boundaries. Right now we're doing it several miles outside of town. Let's get it closer right on the city limits. Let's look at a recycled water program where there is a mound of groundwater underneath the wastewater treatment plant. And the city can work with, we're working with Tricia and her team to look at opportunities where we swap that water out for more recharge water upgrading on the northeast end of the city, and all water flows in a southwest direction, both surface water and groundwater. So if we put it on the northeast side, it'll flow into that hole that's underneath the city. We're looking at projects to capture stormwater before it leaves the city. Right now, TID takes most 80% of the city's stormwater and moves it through our system and out so it doesn't become a nuisance in the city. Let's capture some of that and put it back in the ground. Working with our industrial plants and recycling their water might be an opportunity because they have their own independent wells to put it back in the groundwater system. And then targeting fallowing around the edges of the city so their lower aquifer pumping stops. So we're not having lower aquifer on top of lower aquifer pumping. So what we found out of the urban strategic plan, which is working with your staff and our consultants to look at what the issues are and what the potential strategies for addressing those issues were, the outcomes, key findings were further water reuse or efficiency improvements weren't really gonna meet the, you can't conserve your way out of this problem. We needed to increase how much upper aquifer recharge we do and then move that pumping up, but that comes with a water quality issue that's harder to deal with. Injection in a lower aquifer is probably the most viable option for lower aquifer and to secure long-term water supplies, but that also comes with a water quality potential impact is what's the quality of the water you're putting into the ground. Now, what we identified is maybe we don't do it directly under the city, but we go right out to the edge. And again, it operates, it's complicated, but operates under pressure gradient. And maybe if we push over here, it'll come up underneath the city. And that's what we'll be testing. The leasing and temporary fouling of agricultural land can help raise nearby groundwater levels. And we can do that tomorrow. The intent is to move quickly on a program like this. And then long-term land use planning has to be in the portfolio of options we look at because we need to strategically align our wastewater recycling injection and agricultural land retirement so that we have benefits for the city of Tulare.

If you could go back to the last slide. you have to be strategic as to where as it relates to leasing and following agricultural land. Obviously in the southwest part of town, leasing there isn't near as effective as doing it in the northeast of town because of the water flows. Is that correct?

Correct. Unless there's opportunities to move the surface water that would have been applied to that ground in the southwest to the northeast, which is what we're looking at right now too. not as beneficial, but beneficial, right? So we would look at tiered programs and opportunities, right? We may not be able to solve all of our problems just by doing Northeast. We might need to go into the Southwest and do some strategic land following there also.

So, Aaron, along those lines, obviously with their Sigma, Visalia, I mean, the city of Visalia is a part of it as well, the TID, the fact that we're very close in terms of developments, right, getting closer and closer to Visalia. What decision would their council need to make for their southern part of their city, their influence, as that chart you said, to fallow and lease land that would affect this? As the council member said, it flows from the southeast of Visalia Through us down to, you know, the West Southwest. So what I mean, what, how do, how do you guys kind of work all that together? Is there a separate city? They may not want to help to Larry in that regard, but is that part of the bigger plan?

That is a great question. Council members to go. The urban strategic plan just does not apply to the city of Larry. The city of is. Also, in this program together, and when the report gets finalized, you'll see it's an urban urban strategic plan. So I'm giving the presentation on behalf of the information at the city of Tulare, but the city of I say it's being analyzed as 1 urban. Setting in relation to your question about how their South. and is your north end uh there's been discussions about uh potential green belt uh opportunities the land following is that green belt opportunity um and we're also looking at projects we're currently implementing one project that is a collaborative project between city of tulare city by celia and tulare irrigation district because all three benefit it we're turning cameron creek into a linear recharge project and Cameron Creek skirts on the south end of South end of Visalia, north of Tulare, north of Tulare ID. So the benefits accrue to all of us. So the future that I see coming through this strategic plan is we analyze both cities as an urban setting to understand how they're going to influence each other. And then projects that benefit all of us together, we're going to collaboratively work on in that middle ground.

And I'll take it at 1 step further. So, Leslie reached out to me probably. I don't know, maybe 6 months, 8 months ago to want to have discussions about the green belt concept. We actually prepared a map. Conceptual map, it's not really intended for public consumption. It's a work product to said, hey, you know, is this what you mean by that? And so we have a meeting schedule sometime in the near future to just talk through that. I tell you all that to say, in addition to what Aaron said, as we get ready in January to start working on our general plan update, this will be a topic that will come into play in that discussion, the urban growth boundary and the impacts of our urban areas getting closer. And so there's going to be a number of different mechanisms and discussions involving this issue.

Follow up recently at LAFCO. sphere of influence with the city of Visalia and the city of Tulare come together, I think, at Avenue 264, right at where Liberty School used to be. And there was a discussion about possible development out in that area by Visalia. There was expansion taking place with the Tulare County Office of Education. And I raised this Greenbelt concept at that time And there was just kind of stuttering and stammering about the whole thing. But Cameron Creek used to be the boundary. The understanding, not written but understood, was that Visalia wasn't coming any further south towards Tulare than Cameron Creek. Well, guess what we have now? We have Costco. We have, I mean, you can name all of that. They're almost at Mooney Boulevard now, and they've leapfrogged Mooney Boulevard. And we have gone north somewhat, but we haven't gone near north as our neighbors have. And so the goal is to not necessarily have Fresno Clovis with Tulare, you know, have a gap between the two of us and I think that's along the lines of what you have had tentative discussions with.

And the importance of that green belt and the non-connection is what we're discovering is that while agricultural consumes the largest amount of water, that's not debated, it's almost fact, You need that interaction of the agricultural footprint because they bring the surface water in that replenishes the groundwater system. Their excess flow that comes in needs to flow through that area. If we pave over it, it's going to be a blank dead zone, right? And all it will have is a pumping. I also want to compliment your staff, Mr. Mondale, Tricia. Our consultants were thoroughly in awe of the this isn't a problem. This is an opportunity for us to provide for the future. So let's get going now. If we, you know, so many other people in Sigma world, I want to just say in ag and everywhere, it's all about how far can we get before we have to make a decision. And I say nine times out of 10, if you have to make a decision, you're too late. And so some of the things that we heard from your staff about the, What can we do? We're just, you know, they are so forward thinking that even our consultants didn't even think about stuff like that. So, for instance, one of the examples that was brought up is if the city of Tulare is going to do development and if the treatment plant is at capacity, then most cities develop their treatment plants on a downstream basis. platform. Let's gravity to the bottom end and that's what happens every time you have a hole under the city and a mound down at your treatment plant. We will be looking at potential opportunities where future treatment plants will be located on the upstream side of the city. So you're going to pump, utilize, pump back up to the treatment plant and it'll be a circular system and that is forward thinking that I just don't know is happening in the state of California right now. And so we feel that there's a good chance that the strategies that we put together are gonna start just tackling these problems. We're not gonna have one golden egg that takes it all away. We're just gonna keep working one by one. So the plan is to work on short-term, medium-term and long-term options. Were these items that are in these buckets were identified by your staff and the consultants as the likely candidates for their implementation? The urban strategic plan is not completed. When we deliver you phase one of the report, the idea isn't that we're done. Phase one just identifies what we're going to do in phase two. Phase two is where we really test these items out in our model to see which ones are going to be effective. So you put these in our groundwater model and we say, okay, if we put the urban conservation programs in and we save a thousand acre feet per year by doing these programs, How much of an impact will it make? What's the schedule? What's the budget? Following nearby agricultural lands, you know, if we say we'd use the model and we say we follow 1,000 acres and we see the groundwater levels pop up so much, but we say, okay, what if we do 2,000 acres, right? And we see tremendous return. The council can then look at that phase two analysis and make a decision on what package of programs do we implement on what schedule on what budget. So that's the goal of this first phase is to identify for you what we're going to put into the modeling, what we're putting in under short term actions, medium term and long term. And you can tell like those long term actions is something like that wastewater treatment plant on the upgrading side. You don't do that overnight. What you do is you say, as we grow, as we make other decisions, let's keep that in mind, and we'll put those in the long-term bucket and see 20 years from now, if the city goes to this limit, we're going to put in a new treatment plant, and we're going to put it over here. What does that do for us?

Following, this is the obvious, but following sounds like an easy resolution to a problem that we have. But there are, what I keep saying, there are in this case, What results is intended consequences. I mean, when you fallow land, that means people don't have jobs to farm that land. There isn't fertilizer used. There isn't equipment bought. You know, it has a rippling effect that applies to our constituency here in the city. So it solves that problem, but it creates it.

To create another one. And just as a sobering fact that we just... uh finished is uh we we did an economic impact analysis on achieving sustainability for the kuya sub basis so not just rgsa the greater korea and the the east korea and um the calculated impact to our community will be just shy of a billion dollars annually if we achieve sustainability right so if we stabilize groundwater levels That means we will have to sacrifice approximately a billion dollars out of our local economy. And that is largely ag. But the analysis goes deeper. It says, how much is it going to impact your schools? How much is it going to impact your fire safety? Because those tax dollars won't be trading around your area. That study was just completed. That was done by UC Merced and a group of economists.

Can you define the Quia sub-basin?

Quia sub-basin, it's... I don't have a picture of it. Shoot. It's 440,000 acres. Generally, you're going to the county line, King's Tulare line, all the way up to the foothills on the east-west. And on the north-south, you're kind of going to Cross Creek or the St. Johns River, south to about the Kraft Cheese Plant down there. So... So that's generally the city of Tulare and Visalia's service area for its constituents. So we have to solve these problems. I'm excited because I think we had the right time. We had the right people and we had the right information to make decisions. And so my goal is to get phase two, phase one will be completed here in the next couple of weeks. We were pretty much there. We're touching up the final text in the report. then we will be moving to phase two, which was put these in the model and have it tell us what is the best strategy there. And so we would be back in front of you. I don't know the schedule on that yet, but you will see a host of projects and actions that you can invest in that would help that groundwater level underneath the city because we're trending in the wrong direction right now under the city. And that's my presentation. Tried to keep it fairly high level. And you want me to go in the weeds? I can. Dennis hears it regularly. So I should have just had, yeah, they could have given the presentation. But truly, I should have had my consultants give the presentation, but I felt more it was my responsibility. But they were behind the scenes saying, calling me going, you know, typically in these issues, they look like tremendous issues. So there's a tendency to say, look the other direction or, you know, oh, we got other important things to do.

Another thing for council, so they're aware of the restructure of mid-Kaweah. I think this council should be aware of what's taken place and how that's affected you and others on staff.

Yeah, that's a really good point. For the longest period of time, the... upon the exit of Paul Hendricks, the previous general manager, I was asked to step in and run it. And I was interim for several years. And it was a joke, ongoing joke about how, when is this, is the interim permitted or not? Right. Um, even had business cards put with interim on it, but, um, uh, About a year ago, we recognized the need for a separation between Tulare Irrigation District and the Midquia GSA. And so the Midquia board and Tulare Irrigation District agreed to a format where Midquia now stands on its own. And we went to an executive structure where I'm now the CEO of Tulare Irrigation District and Midquia. the Mid-Cuya GSA, and my goal is to spend 50% of my time in both worlds. And we have permanent staff now staffing the Mid-Cuya GSA, not doing Tulare Irrigation District business, only doing GSA business. And so we've successfully staffed the folks up. We were hoping to have a chief operating officer over the Mid-Kaweah GSA. Unfortunately, that didn't work out, but we did end up with a TID COO. And what I ended up with was, I think, a more flexible structure at the Mid-Kaweah GSA with bringing on a more junior staff member and then elevating my staff member that's been with the GSA for about three years now. And she's stepping up to take on a bigger role. So if there's any questions or work needed in the GSA world, now we have a dedicated staff. Before we were kind of borrowing from TID. And so we have our own payroll now, our own staff. We will have our own facilities here in a couple months. We're remodeling our office to accommodate the Mid-Kaweah GSA. And so we're really excited to have the agencies now up and running 100% full bore attacking these issues. Again, forward thinking by this group of people is tremendously beneficial to the, I think the citizens of Tulare, Visalia and the TID growers.

And the only other housekeeping item is the joint power agreement between the three entities is being slightly revised and it's going back to each one for review. And it should hit us shortly.

We had a change in fiscal year request by our auditors to make things simpler. And then we realized that a name change, our original JPA had a, a weird, we don't even know where it came from. And so we've been called the Mid-Kaweah GSA since day one, but our JPA said Mid-Kaweah Sub-Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency or something like that. So a quick name correction and fiscal year change are coming our way. Are there any other questions in regards to the urban strategic plan, where we're headed, what's ahead? I do. Okay.

And I think this is the time to have, I think, these questions with your presentation. Aaron, Mr. Fukuda, coming here, your expertise is known and you are the top professional in running this as presented with that. The part... I think I would ask, and what maybe I'm not seeing in your presentation, is I'm not seeing an element, if you will, of the x and y axes crossing each other. If one is supply and one is use, I'm not seeing them. Rather, it seems that they are running as best as possible parallel compared to crossing. With that, the other part is I think the elements and respect towards perhaps people listening to this presentation and constituent concerns might be a lot of the elements that were mentioned, if you would, or perhaps your thought on this are really about mitigation. You use the word solve. And I perhaps would say if there was somebody that were to say using the word solve might be strong. and your approach of solve versus mitigate, because I'm not seeing anything in the presentation for which the supply ever overcomes the use as demonstrated in the charts and the information it just keeps growing with that what would perhaps in those comments or thoughts of your viewpoints with that that's that's what we've identified as one of the most difficult things we face in sigma there's a tremendous amount of uh focus on agriculture and what we've found is that

the urban sector can't that intersection doesn't happen because the demand is so consistent and and this there's nothing coming back in to support it my answer to that is is if I were to put that goal in front of me, I would get focused on that. And right now we have to start slowing that trend down and then work on that supply. I would say that activities that the GSA has given me freedom to participate in beyond just my footprint here in the Mid-Queer GSA is intended to help that supply side scenario. Let me give you one example. The State of California passed SB 72, which is to modify the California Water Plan, which is our state kind of guidebook for water supply. Traditionally, it was just kind of a catalog of what we have and what we do. The new plan will say we have to identify nine million feet of new water supply. So that's how you're going to start intersecting that. Does that mean City of Tulare gets its fair share? Don't know yet. However, we have to start. And that water plan is our first start. So that I was appointed to the advisory committee on that. And I will make sure to carry our message that you can't forget about water. this region who has these daunting issues. So we start building our projects. We start building our actions. We start moving in the right direction. And then we start to figure out how to make those intersect. But you're right. The supply does not exceed the demand in any of this analysis. They start maybe demand we can level out. The supply we can start to bring in. But you're right. They're kind of trending. And so we're trying to hold it right now and then work on the supply side later on.

The part of, as well, the concern of discussion with that is we mentioned about, you talked about injection into the lower aquifer, following agricultural land, and I think that raises flags. I mean, all council members and I think yourself and everybody, what does that mean? What does that look like? You know, in land use planning, I think it's kind of that component that residents in the public look at and what concerns me in hitting those topics of what you had just said, SB 72, we have to find 9 million acre feet. A bit of perhaps the viewpoint is we cannot control the policy of obtaining 9 million acre feet, 9 million feet acre of water. So what it's left to do is we're left to find it and not using it. You're able to add to that by a reduction of use of 9 million acre feet of water. So for tying, I think those conversation points concern me is as the city is looking at growth, we're looking at urban growth with that. We have many people look at, if that's the equation, then what are we doing in that equation of why we're building more homes? Why we're looking towards more business? How do we keep the businesses of processing plants? Because certain elements we can't go and say, you have to use less. We're not getting more. Visalia is growing. And for me, and being asked of supporting growth, is construction is the best option resolved to unemployment. Construction provides the most jobs. It puts the most element diversity of people to work. And that's what keeps a community growing and employed for people to feed themselves. No other element provides the diversity of jobs of construction, homes, and so forth. I say that is because I'm concerned that as this mitigating chart goes, it leads to people potentially being elected that says, stop that, stop. If we need to find the 9 million acre feet, we need to do land planning, then stop all growth because that helps in that equation of usage of less water, helps the equation of mitigating it. And then there's another side that would then say too, well, because the conflicting part Yeah. The conflicting part then too is it goes to ag following. Comes back to that. It impacts the processing plants of what we have. So again, where I kind of say those cross references and hearing this message in this report, what would say if either patients or how you mitigate that, what are those thoughts to those people listening with that?

So again, our goal in the state regulatory program, we don't have to, the goal would be to increase the supply and bring it up. But in all reality, as long as we stabilize it, right? So if we match the inputs with the outputs, we can achieve sustainability and you can continue to grow. So the idea would be is as we grow, if the demand is, you know, per subdivision is 100 acre feet, then what we need to do is offset that with 100 acre feet. And the city manager and I have talked about this a lot. And if you look into the future, I think that is, those things are achievable. And I probably now understand where you were headed with that. Our goal is we don't have to bring the water levels, you know, Up over time, we just can't hit that minimum threshold. So as long as we stabilize, so we need to stabilize and then we can. Add more in reality, you need that interaction between ag you're right in the urban center because of the fact that the return flows from the. Agriculture when they flood irrigate that ends up in groundwater that ends up sliding Southwest. underneath the city. So there's a win-win situation there. So what we're trying to do is feather that relationship between the two out. And we believe that on those feathered edges, there's a partnership between ag and the city to allow that growth, even in the interim. And that's what that fallow program is about. If you have a parcel that's right on the edge of the city, that's looking to become a subdivision or a shopping center, let's incentivize them to stop pumping from the lower aquifer now and preserve that water supply so that when the subdivision is up and running, it's there and ready to support it, right? So there's just... And in this whole... I've been in this industry for 20 years. If we focus... Every day is a battle. So you have to take the short, you have to just wake up in the morning and go at it and start solving the problem. That is the ultimate problem. I wish I had a recipe for that answer. I don't. Other than you've got a team that is actively and proactively after these issues.

And quick summary, and thank you. What you had said, I had brought up the issue of solve earlier. But really, the issue which you had came back was it's sustainable solutions. We don't have to stop ag. We don't have to stop building. It's taking these actions, which means where I said the X and Y, you can have sustainable solutions. to use your water. There's a certain part we can't get to, but we can work through to make it sustainable.

You can get to a point where both of them live in a state where you're not increasing, but you're not decreasing.

Okay. And thank you. And I appreciate that part. And I hope to the residents of Tulare to understand that's where this is going, is sustainable solutions. And we have a team here dedicated towards those sustainable solutions.

Yes.

And can I have one Follow up to that along the lines of what you indicated. And I was first educated on this when it occurred for our estates right behind the water slides. When that was first being discussed and what that development was going to how that was going to impact because basically that was an alfalfa field before. So when we talk about further development and how that will impact the use of water and whether we should stop development, what we found there was that develop of homes used less water. than was being used when it was being farmed as alfalfa. Isn't that correct? Correct. So to a substantial degree, when these developments occur and they occupy what was farmland, they're reducing the amount of water being used in our communities. They're not increasing.

We identified the volume of water is less, how the water is used. causes the issue because that that demand never shuts off so that subdivision uses less water consistently and so what happens is you get a hole and we have to fill that hole back in and i think our best shot at doing that is stopping actually adjacent pumping immediately because what will happen is we're not adding to the problem we're again stabilizing it so So I think, you know, I think the model is where we're going to be able to tell you these five elements will work. These five will not. These five will cost you X and we can implement it in Y schedule. And that way you as council members that have to make these difficult decisions on investment in the BPU will have. information to make decisions rather than i hope this works let's go do it and that was our goal with the urban strategic plan is to lay something out for folks who have to make hard decisions thank you i know there's other comments functions all right uh thank you mr procruto thank you and anytime you need me back uh just let me know and i'll come back we'll take you up that you said without taking any more time you didn't mention the whole law was

was planned, excuse me, I just put something in my mouth, for 2040. That was the target. We've been at it for 10 years, but we're still not to 2040.

We've got time, then we're going to use that time, but we're going to use it strategically. And again, if we address these issues today, it's cheaper. And the results are quicker. So that's the way we're looking at them. Let's get these on the table today, right? And the previous council should be commended for the investments. Because if you even imagine some of the things we did do, if we didn't have those in place, we would be in really dire straits right now. But those have helped. It's just they're not helping fast enough. So we're going to kind of jumpstart and get things closer to the edge of the city. So thank you.

Moving forward on our agenda, item six, communications.

Council received several emails from Alberto Aguilar regarding the Cesar Chavez committee, which he articulated tonight, so no reason to belabor that. And we received a letter from Mr. Drew Phelps regarding the fiscal impact analysis, which I'll speak to when we get to 10.2.

Okay. Item seven, council reports and items of interest. I'll start with Vice Mayor Harrell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On June 22nd, with the help of Armando and Peter and the facility maintenance people, we got Bain installed at the dog park. Then on the 23rd, we did the dedication of Bain, which I thought went very well. 29th, I attended the Beach Boys concert. On the 3rd, I did a ride-along with the fire department for fireworks control. Fourth, the Symphony, and then on the fifth, Councilman Sagala's Sister City Program, and also on the sixth, which were just an outstanding program, both nights and the whole, and I wish to compliment Councilman Sagala on the job that he did on the Sister City Program. It took a lot of work, and I think it was well worth it.

I'm going to skip around just for a little bit, Councilman.

Mr. Medeiros?

I got to vacation with my grandchildren for a period of time, which was great. But in between all of that, I went to the Beach Boys. I want to compliment the Kiwanis Club. for the fireworks that were put on on July 3rd. And during the course of that fireworks, they had an excellent, uh, watermelon eating contest that many participated. Uh, a lot of the kids and even some adults participated in the, uh, watermelon eating without going any further council members there, but, uh, the also attended the symphony and, uh, the sister city program that Mr. Segala participated in. And I want to compliment him and Hosser for what they did. And it was an excellent opportunity. And I've long been a proponent for adding an additional sister city from the country of Mexico. And I'm very happy that we have done that while I'm on council.

Council Member Serra.

So mainly the same thing as everyone's talked about, the dedication of the statue of Officer Bain. If you haven't had a chance to go and look at that memorial, it's amazing. I just want to compliment Councilman, Vice Mayor Harrell on the work that he did to provide us with an outstanding replication of Officer Bain. The Beach Boys were amazing, my era. So I was jumping around the whole night. It was a great concert, really well attended. On the 31st and the 1st of July, I went to Washington, D.C. and spoke before a committee to hurry up getting the land under the women's clubhouse and the skate park revoked from the federal land grant and that was a wonderful experience as well Kiwanis firework show was the 59th annual firework show for the city of Tulare so next year we'll be having a big celebration the 60th year providing that for our city. The symphony was amazing. And the sister city dinner on the 6th was a delight. The only thing is, Councilman Sagala, you speak Spanish in a way I can understand it. So I appreciate that. I don't know if you go slowly or what, but your enunciation makes me think I can become more fluent in Espanol. So thank you.

And Councilman Sagala, because you got a few things you can tell us about.

Well, first of all, I wanted to thank, well, I did participate at the symphony concert. It was a great event. And, you know, obviously thank you to Kiwanis as well for the fireworks show. It's an opportunity for my family to get together with a number of folks and just enjoy a nice evening of music. of fireworks. And I do appreciate the joint effort between the fire department and Tulare PD coming out and just trying to make sure that our community is safe. So thank you for that. Also wanted to, well, first of all, the focus that I've had for the last couple of weeks has been to move forward our sister city relationship with the town of Jalostotitlan, which is in the state of Jalisco, which is known as Los Altos, which is a region. So basically saying, hey, I'm from the Midwest, or I'm from the South, or I'm from the Northeast. But Los Altos is a big part up in the mountains in the state of Jalisco. And the council a couple years ago, it seems like a couple years ago, supported the effort to establish a sister city, as Mr. Madero said, in Mexico. And, you know, we've been trying to work hard through the process. Mexican government and it hasn't been as fast and as quick as we would like it. So we ended up working with the Sister City Association, a nonprofit that brings folks together. I'd like to thank folks in the city of Livingston who were very helpful in putting that process forward. So a small story short, we did get the delegation finally from Jalos. Their mayor or Presidenta Municipal, Judith Macias Ramirez, was down in Carson for a tournament. Every year they bring young people to have a sports tournament. So she was able to put in her schedule to come up here. And so she was here Sunday night and I appreciate the council and the ACER board, and the sister city committee members to join us for dinner. And everybody was focused on the Mexico England game and unfortunately didn't go well for Mexico, but it was exciting evening nonetheless. And then the next day, you know, when our sister city in Australia came, their mayor came, I was very fortunate to be the mayor at that time. So I had the experience of putting together an all-day tour with the rest of the council. I know Mr. Medeiros helped me go out to Derry. We went to Land O'Lakes and so forth. So I had that opportunity. So we did have a day, some 7.30 in the morning until 9 p.m. We were out and about. So I wanted to thank, we started off with Alturas. I wanted to thank Graciela Soto Perez and her staff. We ended up going to a dairy, a hamster dairy. We want to thank Mr. Olivares for the tour. And then I also wanted to thank our city staff. In particular, I wanted to thank A number of folks who helped out, starting with Mark and his staff and Thomas, who joined us at various events. Jennifer Gomez helped us with one of the tours. Manny Correa and Gladys Gonzalez, who helped us with some of the tours. And so it was a great day. Land O'Lakes with Erica Spinoza, who helped us. So we gave them a little sense of what Tulare is about. They were very, very impressed about Land O' Lakes and the fact that they make 75% of all Land O' Lake butter there in this particular plant. I guess they measure it in pounds. For every 10 pounds of butter used in the country, the entire country, one pound comes out of Tulare, just out of Land O' Lakes itself. We're very glad to do that. I wanted to also thank the Tulare Museum staff with Patty Ochoa, Eva Souza, who put together a nice dinner and helped out, and in particular, the ESSER board, and Eloisa Segura Moraza, Carlos Moraza, Victor Gonzalez, a number of other folks who were part of the smaller committee, Connie Diaz, who also participated as a committee member for putting together all of the details needed for that event. It was a great turnout. They were very pleased and the highlight of Monday was the fact that our Mayor Isherwood and Mayor Macias Ramirez signed formal letters in terms of beginning that process of sister city, which is required. So I wanted to thank the Mayor for his remarks and being gracious and all the council members that were there participating with the dinner. And we're hoping that this is the beginning of the process of establishing the sister city relations. A little bit about Jalos Totitlan. They're up in Los Altos of Jalisco. They are also a community based on agriculture, dairies, and a lot of cultural values that we share with them. A lot of people from Jalos live here in Tulare and in the area. They work in the dairy industry. They're very good at dairy and they work in a lot of our dairy industry, agriculture, actually at Land O'Lakes. We ran into two people that were from Jalos. I'm not sure how they got, we found them, but they were there. And so, and then at the dairy, there was about 10 of them that were from the same city. So they're very, very involved here for many years, many decades, raising their family, just like all of us. And so very glad. And now we begin the process of doing that. They, We're going to be working with the staff here, with city clerk and city manager. They would like to invite a delegation to Halos by the end of the year to offer the keys of the city and to finalize the final paperwork for the sister city. We will, as those dates come out, we'll figure out what the delegation is who want to visit Halos in the state of Jalisco. But thank you all. Thank you everybody for their support and could have been done with the help of city staff and the ACER board and the sister city committee. Thank you.

Yeah, I think in sharing that too of the events for which everyone touched on, as we started the meeting and we touched on our recognition of the Kiwanis and the fireworks show and the Tulare's 250th celebration with the symphony and orchestra in the park, brilliant events, many other functions of attending over the last couple of weeks. And I think just in closing is the sister city delegation With that, having Mayor Judith Ramirez here in the city of Tulare, and I got to where, if I was telling Councilmember Segala, if I just go slow, I can read stuff in Spanish, but I can't be nervous or pressured with it, from Alos Totetlan, if I understand the location, If some of you caught, I was a bit nervous that night trying to read stuff and getting my pronunciation. But with that, also thank you to the Tulare Historical Museum, who was the host with that. And amongst all the thank yous that you did, as all council members give their recognition to anybody that was at these events, it was a brilliant and fantastic event. It was just exceptional with that. The community that came, we had folks that drove four hours to attend this event. A person from Self-Help Enterprise lives in Livingston, drove three and a half hours just to attend this event and was driving three and a half hours back. But with all of that. The community card that we have, Councilman Sagala, on behalf of all of us and the council members and others, we just extend the handshake and the applaud to you. Great job in the collaboration of putting this event together. And if you would, too, and Maya, why did you go to last? If everybody, if you'd join me in just applauding Councilman Sagala, fantastic international collaboration. Okay, anything else to touch on? I will move forward. Oh yes, I brought that too. So here was some, they had great centerpieces, the flags from both our nation. There was gifts that came of books, a ton of gifts that they had brought. This one tells you about the history and the city of Halos. There was a wonderful picture book. I took that to my office and then left that there because everybody was looking at it. with that map and look forward to completing this formal paperwork for that. Right.

And just one last point on that. So thank you to Patty Ochoa from Toledo Museum. We are going to be doing an exhibit there for Latino Heritage Month. And there was conversation about doing. If you have visited the museum, as soon as you walk in and turn to the right, right there on the wall, there's a display from Agra in terms of what they've done. So they want to do something similar at the museum. So they provided us some wooden carvings, some plaques, some buttons, a number of little gifts that we will be setting up a display in September for folks to come by and visit and hopefully develop some more permanent type of display at the museum. But it was a great, great event. We ended up with about 110 people there, so it was a nice event.

And you had the formal toast.

We had the formal toast. It was a fine beverage. With that, as everybody smiles, it was a wonderful evening. Okay, moving forward to item eight, consent calendar. All matters listed on the consent calendar are considered by the council to be routine and will be enacted in one motion without discussion. I think council, one item I would put forth is if we could pull item 8.3, start off with. And is there any other actions by council?

Actually, 8.3 we'll take. We won't discuss that one this evening.

Sure, I wasn't sure if we needed to pull it and then table it for the action.

Oh, I see. With that, I would like 8.9 to be pulled. And if there aren't any others, then I would move to adopt the same calendar, 8.1 through 8.8. 8.1, 8.2, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, and 8.8. Second.

We have a motion and a second for approval of the consent calendar minus 8.3 and 8.9. All in favor? Aye.

Do I need a motion just to table 8.3?

Yeah, I'll make a motion to table 8.3. Second. Second. With that, we have a motion and a second to table 8.3. All in favor? And we're tabling it to the next meeting, I believe. Is that correct? We have just a protocol. So we have a motion and a second. Go to the vote. Is there any other discussion? With that, all in favor? Aye. Can you oppose? No. With that, which I was wanting to go and do, Mr. Mondale, did you want to give context to that?

Yeah, sure. The intention behind it is fine. We just have to modify some of the language and clarify it. I think it's not as clear it needs to be. So we're going to sit down with the attorney, make sure that he's comfortable with the language, and we'll bring it back. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to update you as part of the weekly report or otherwise.

In regards to that, in the future, I'd like to see us advise beforehand why it's being tabled. Had I known that.

It didn't come up until after my meeting with you. I mean, it could have been. It came up today at about 3.30, 4 o'clock.

and just a little bit for the group, which, and I said protocols, I pulled it because I did want Mr. Mondale to start the item. We had a motion, we had a second, and instead of saying, oh, that's void, when I said the, I was hoping for discussion of, hey, more element, but I wanted Mr. Mondale to frame that of what took place with the legal review. Okay, with that eight point,

Mr. Mayor, in reference to that, I would like to say, wish our clerk happy birthday tomorrow.

Why don't we let you lead the happy birthday song since you brought that up? I'll give that to him. You cannot sing. Okay. Happy birthday. You can rap it, Stephen. You can rap it. Okay. 8.9, Mr. Segala. Uh,

I'm not sure if we want a staff report. It's item that's before us to award an authorized city manager to negotiate and execute a professional service agreement with Barry Dunn, McNeil, and Parker in the amount of 99,751 to prepare the Tulare Public Library strategic plan and efficiency study and authorize the city manager or designee to approve the contract. Changes orders not to exceed 10%. So what we have before us is this item and I just wanted to just ask a couple of questions. I think it's a great opportunity for us to kind of take a look at the library, how it operates and what the future of it is. And I was trying to determine in the scope of work. If that would include looking at smaller libraries around town. I've been talking to Heidi Clark, our city librarian, about the idea of the city of Tulare having a bookmobile. in terms of having a traveling library that, you know, probably a lot cheaper than building something or whatever. So I wanted to see if that kind of, that kind of idea would be incorporated into what they're looking to do. So that, that's one of the things that I wanted to find out.

Yes. Brian and I are going to tag team this with Chris out. Yeah. Yeah. In their proposal, one of the phases of their scope of work includes the service delivery and evaluation of future service offerings, both services as well as facilities. Those are some of the questions when we were interviewing consultants that we were asking about helping understand in terms of utilization and population, those types of things. What that will look like for us. So that'll be something that we'll get out of that as is sets of recommendations, whether that is. you know, a plan for a bookmobile or adding, you know, mini branches or reading rooms at existing city facilities or those types of things will be within the portfolio of recommendations we end up with from the consultant. And obviously there'll be community engagement, council engagement, and so on throughout the process.

Right. And I think in terms of the other question I had, it might be too premature, but has this particular item gone through the library board commission? Has that happened?

No, it hasn't. They'll be part of the process. This was something that we've talked about before in the past. I've included this in, I think, the strategic planning discussion, as well as in probably several weekly reports. Um, as Thomas just mentioned, there'll be a lot of stakeholder involvement, including the board and the process. And I think whatever recommendations come out of the consultants work, that'll go to the board 1st. And then that recommendation would come forward to the city council.

Right. I just like for them to not feel left out.

I just want to offer with that, and I think the clerk can confirm this, but I specifically read the minutes for the March library board meeting, and this strategic plan coming up was discussed amongst the group. Now, to what level, but it is included in the meeting minutes, and this topic was at the board, just to share with you.

And again, at this point, we're just selecting the consultants so that we can get them on board to do the work.

Yeah, and I think for me, I just wanted to bring up those points because for me, it's important for the scope of work to be able to be broad enough to kind of look at those things at both Mobile or smaller offerings throughout the community. Because once you kind of get locked into a contract, it's hard to kind of do that. But at the same time, I hope and I'm confident that their outreach will allow for further ideas from the public in terms of what they feel the library need is. And so I appreciate this coming to council and ready to vote for it once we're ready.

And I'll add to that. One of the reasons that we were, we had, I believe, Brian, like eight proposals and we talked to four of them. And the one that really stood out with us This project team was, some of the other consultants were primarily management consultants that had experience in libraries. This one has two librarians on it who have experience actually delivering library services, interacting with patrons and that kind of thing.

Okay. Mr. Segala, are you ready to take action?

Sure, Mr. Mayor, Council. I'd like to move that item 8.9 from the consent calendar to be adopted.

Second. Motion and second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Carries 5-0. Moving forward on our agenda, item nine, public hearing. 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. Again, for those that wish to provide public comment while attending the meeting remotely, please press nine on your phone to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. Number 9.1, parking and business improvement area report and annual assessments.

Council, Mark Roberts is not with us this evening, so the next two items are going to be handled by Jacob Dilson, our budget manager.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. This is an annual item that is brought forward following the approval of the Tulare Downtown Association annual report and a resolution to levy an annual assessment. We don't have a presentation prepared for this item, but we are here to answer any questions you may have regarding the item.

Council, from the information that was in our packet and review, do we have any other additional questions for staff? Does Mr. Harmon have anything to say about this? Yeah, I'm just opening that up before presentation and council items, and then I will open the public hearing.

I do have a couple of questions. Probably Mr. Harmon will answer when he's come up. I know that we do this every year, and this is, I think, probably my 10th year, 9th, 10th year that this comes before us. I think the one thing that stands out for me is this time around, there's a list of folks who aren't paying. It's public. I'm trying to find the exact language, but non-compliant folks that don't have business licenses, that are not paying the assessment. And I guess it's interesting because the format has never come to us this way. But I do know that over the years since Darlene Thompson was here back in the day, There was always a discussion about how do we enforce those? There's been the thought from some city managers that it's hands off and others that, hey, maybe we're not sure how to do it. But it is a responsibility, I believe, from those people that are in, I guess, Section A and B, how it's broken down to in Section A and B. to do so because there is a budget, there is a plan, there is an effort by the board to try to revitalize and make sure downtown is clean. But my concern is always the lack of the budget in terms of having that availability and figuring out how the city staff can play a role in getting those funds. But today, I mean, to be honest, I'm shocked that you guys are just calling people out, which, hey, it's a fact. So I'm curious to see what strategic thing we can do, if anything. I mean, I hope the city can see. I know the city managers heavily and the council is heavily invested in downtown. And I see the work that the Downtown Association does as one of those spokes in the wheel that will help us have a safe, clean and prosperous downtown. So I'm just curious to see what plans there are to collect those monies.

Yep, so Council, we've talked about this every year I've been here. We have done the same thing every year. The first year I got here, we had a conversation with the city attorney's offices about what we can legally do and what we can't legally do in terms of the city. And so there's not a ton that we can legally do. What we do is we send a letter out on behalf of the Downtown Association, encouraging the folks to pay. So we send that out and That does usually help. They'll get some more response payments from that. But if you recall, the big move for us was to try to move forward with a PBID downtown. Because ultimately the PBID would be the ultimate mechanism that would have teeth that the city could enforce. And that effort unfortunately failed at this time. And so I really don't have any other recommendations or suggestions in terms of what we can or should be doing other than what has been the status quo every year, and that is to send a letter.

I was going to say, I think we can keep that conversation in front of us, though. The part, if I remember right, too, is I think council, as we talked about this in the past, had asked for that breakdown or we would, you know, we wanted to see that information, I think, in future reports. So, Sagala, I think you're saying like, oh, we've got this information. I think in the past, because this topic's been in front of us, we probably asked for it. With that, I know this is not a review of the Downtown Association, but I would say, as council members had mentioned, Mr. Harmon, is there anything you, I just want to give the floor if there's anything you wanted to add or touch on with this. You don't have to speak. I'm just giving you the opportunity if you wanted to.

John Harmon, director of the Tulare Downtown Association, Tulare resident. I'll just answer any questions if you have questions about it. To address your issue, Councilman, for years, we've had kind of a generic report that we submitted, you know, year after year. And in the last couple of years, what I've tried to do is drill down into the data a little bit more succinctly and just say, look, here's what we're, you know, here's the things we're up against. Here's what we're doing. So that's why you see more graphs now that are directly related to what it is we're doing. And in this case, we included appendices because we track all the addresses. We know which ones are occupied, which ones are vacant. And then we correlated that to the data that we got from the city so we could see what was going on.

OK. Thank you, Mr. Powell.

As an aside, with the new activity that's going on downtown, have you seen an increase in many different ways as it relates to the businesses downtown? I mean, their attitude, their...

I think the attitude is good overall. This year has been kind of weird in the respect that fundraising has been down overall for everybody. There's been a lot of reluctance. We saw that with the PBID. But I think overall people's attitude is fairly good. But what we're seeing is that there's a certain level of attrition. People do not understand what the assessment is. And we've done lots of education outreach trying to educate people about what this assessment is and what it does. And some people get it and some people don't. And in a downtown, you always have a certain level of churn as far as businesses moving in and moving out one thing or another. And what we're seeing is those businesses that were familiar with the assessment, many of them are retiring or they've vacated the downtown. And we have other businesses coming in, and we try to explain to them, this is how the assessment works. We really need you to pay this, et cetera, et cetera. As Mark alluded to, the city sends out a letter encouraging them to pay it. And we see some participation. But if you look at the report, you can see that the participation is not at the level we'd like to see it, obviously. I think, you know, when we talk about the renovation of the downtown, I think the park is significantly added to. It's interesting. I think the park has done two things. One, I think it's done a good job of bringing people downtown, raising awareness of the downtown. And actually now I think people are having a much more positive attitude than maybe they had about it in the past. On the other hand, we see it impacting the fundraising that we do with our foundation, because now we're competing in that same space for funding with the people that Todd's reaching out to. So it's one of those things where there's a balancing act going on.

So thank you.

So before you go to a public comment, you want to wait till after the next round? Yeah, I think what I wanted was just question some information and then rather than assessment of it is then I want to open to the public if the public.

I have some questions on this budget, but if you want me to wait, that's fine.

Sure. If you don't mind.

Well, just right now on your budget.

Oh, no. Oh, wait.

You don't mind. Okay. No, no. All right. I just. We'll wait on that then. All right. You want to wait? Not bad questions on the budget, but some sure issues on your budget.

So what I'm going to do is I want to open the public hearing for parking and business improvement error report and annual assessments. Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to make comment on this? Do we have anyone on the webinar or the phone? All right. With that, I will close the public hearing. Mr. Segali, you had additional review.

So, John, on your budget that you provided in your report, I'm just curious to see what the difference is between the City of Tulare and the district assessments, because the district assessments themselves are what a big issue is that you guys are dealing with, right? So, I'm just curious, when you say the City of Tulare is $76,000 of of income were versus $235, $36 of assessments. So the assessments that are coming in through the City of Tulare category? Or why are they different? Because, for example, if your district assessments are only $236, that's a huge problem. But are they incorporated in the City of Tulare?

That number should actually be incorporated in the assessment number. I believe, if I remember correctly, that is actually somebody who sent a check directly to us. And then it was made out to us, but then we reported back to City Hall, hey, this business paid us directly. And so we recorded it there in our books as an additional assessment.

Because right now, the responsibility of those people that are under this assessment is to go to City Hall when they pay their business license to also pay their assessment. And then the city tracks that and then returns the money to the foundation. Exactly.

They return it to the association.

The foundation is our- Oh, sorry, the association. And I think one of the things, council, that I'd like to see and ask the city manager how we would do this, I don't know if we would have the time now, but in the future, is I really appreciate the recommendations that you guys are making to council. And I would hate for them just to be voted on and put aside, but I'd like for them to be looked at at some future meeting in terms of the recommendations you guys are making in city council. So I would like to see what would be the best way, Mr. Mayor, to either bring it back as a study session or some kind of agenda item so that the hard work that they put together is just not a report we file. Okay. Thank you.

I have that noted. Anything else?

No, thank you.

Council, do we have an action on 9.1?

Well, Mr. Mayor, then I'll move that we adopt item 9.1 regarding the parking and business improvement area report and annual assessments and the recommended action as provided in the staff report.

I will second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Moving forward, 9.2, placing public works improvement loans on tax roll. Well, back back to you, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. This item recommends adopting a resolution placing costs associated with connection of existing improved properties to the city's water and or wastewater systems and or the construction of sidewalks, gutters, pavements, driveways and curves on existing improved properties within the city on property tax rolls and installments. This action is in accordance with section 5870, adopted by the Board of Public Utility Commissioners and the City Council in 1997, and provides for the financing and repayment of certain public works related costs to be assessed to property owners via property tax rolls. The city has entered into agreements with nine property owners to construct and finance connections primarily to city sewer services and to place those costs on property tax rolls and annual installments. Public hearing is required prior to sending the assessment to Larry County to allow anyone objecting and or wanting to address the City Council on the assessments to do so.

Okay. With that, thank you for the update from staff, I will go to open the public hearing. Is there anyone in chambers? I'll open the public hearing for 9.2, placing public work improvement loans on tax rolls. Is there anyone in chambers who wishes to speak on this item? Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone or webinar? All right. With that, I will close the public hearing. Councilmembers, any questions or comments for staff?

Mr. Mayor, I had a question for staff. This comes before us often throughout the year, and I think it's a great program for folks that may not be able to have the means to do some important work in their homes. A couple of questions. How is outreach put out there for folks to know that this is available? And is there a sort of like a menu of things that they can can, can purchase and, and, or do this for projects for, because, you know, one of the things that, that I know in my district, and I'm, I'm sure it's another district, there's just a lot of sort of puzzle type of areas where my neighbor has a sidewalk, I don't have a sidewalk, they have a sidewalk, and so forth, patchwork, that I think over the years we've talked about whether someone could be eligible for the city staff to come in and put in the curb and gutter and sidewalk and then put this on their tax lien roll. So I'm curious to see the outreach and then if there's a menu of options that folks may have.

Councilman, I can address partly for engineering. A lot of times these come through the engineering department, the connections for water and sewer. And I know that we always discuss the option for property owners if they see and express concern about the amount of the cost of making the improvements. We tell them about the public improvement loan process. And make them aware that it's available. I believe a lot of the curb, gutter, sidewalk issues come through notifications from Public Works of deficiencies that are noticed by staff. And maybe Tricia can speak to whether that outreach is made to them regarding the improvement loan process. I'm sure it is because they do end up in the system.

Yeah, so typically we respond to like the sidewalk or curb and gutter issues on a complaint basis. So once we mark it and we notify the resident of their duty to fix that, then those loans are made known to them to help resolve it. A lot of them actually just don't call us back. And we have to continue to send letters. But when they do reach out to us, we do let them know that that's available.

So, but are the gutter, I mean, well, there is curb and gutter throughout, but the sidewalk itself, is that an option that could be under this program? I believe so.

So is there sort of sometimes there's issues with the curb and gutter. So if they get complaints about, like, drainage issues in the curb or the gutter, that's sometimes part of that sidewalk issue, because I'm just curious because I mean, I know of homes in my district that maybe approaching them about the program.

would be interested. I mean, is there a limit in terms of how many dollars the city does?

Yeah, I'm not sure about that.

Yeah, I'm not sure if we have a cap on it either. Generally, when when faced with the realization or the information that they're responsible for the cost ultimately of installing the sidewalk, interest usually goes away on the part of property owners. So I haven't experienced anybody wanting to move forward with voluntarily putting sidewalk in and funding it through that program.

but do we have an idea of what, like it would cost per like square foot type of thing? So they know that it's like, you know, it's outrageous. It's $20,000 or is it $3,000? I mean, is there, have you guys ever gone that far or just by case by case?

Yeah, we certainly would. If a property owner inquired of us, we could assist with giving them an idea of what the cost associated would be based on what we pay for sidewalk through our capital improvement projects.

Yeah, I'm just saying, I mean, it's a great program. I mean, this year is only about $6,200 in terms of the liens that will be put on their homes. But I just want to make sure if someone has a question, I'll refer to your department to see if they... Like I said, I have no idea what it would cost. Thank you. Quick question.

Is there... How do you determine eligibility from the standpoint of affordability? In other words, you know, when we look at the names of people here, if someone... if we recognize someone's name and they're obviously able to pay one of the amounts that are indicated here, they're still eligible under, I mean, Have they been approached about just paying it as opposed to going through this process? Or do they initiate the process? I'm trying to figure out how some of these names ended up on this list as opposed to just paying it.

Yeah, we direct them to the finance department who works with them through the process of establishing the loan. I do think there are affordability constraints, not just anybody. They have to be like a hardship person. demonstrated for them to qualify for that program. I'm not certain offhand. I could look into it and provide information maybe through Mark's Friday updates.

If there's no further questions what we have in front of us is to adopt a resolution placing costs associated with connection of existing improved properties to the city's water and wastewater systems and or the construction of sidewalks gutters pavement and driveways and curves Council, do you have an action.

I'll make a motion to adopt 9.2 as recommended by staff.

I'll second. OK, we have a vote of approval for 9.2. And we have a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries, 5-0. Moving forward on item 10, general business. Comments related to general business items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of 30 minutes per item. As well, I just want to touch on, even for general business items, if you would like to make a comment remotely, you may press 9 on your phone or click Raise Hand in the webinar. Item 10.1, Appointment to the Library Board. Would you like to open this item, Clerk Wilcox?

Good evening, council. This item comes before you due to a recent vacancy due to a term expiration on the library advisory board. There are seven applications that were provided to you. So this would be a term from July 1 of 2026 through June 30 of 2029. The most previous board member that held this seat is Bonnie Thiel. She is one of the applicants interested in being reappointed. And then the library board is appointed by the mayor. Members of the library board are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the full council. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer.

Thank you. With that, and I'm sorry, as I was going through items these last couple days, as I know we discussed about this appointment process, and I was like, did we finalize that kind of with the form?

We did, but I think as she... We did, but I think as... our chief deputy city clerk made clear this was not applicable at the time that we did that. Is that correct?

That's correct. We just, when you adopted the consent calendar, you adopted the official revisions to the handbook.

Yeah, it's all right. I just want to acknowledge that. I was kind of trying to layer that up and I didn't have time to kind of connect with you. However, council, that doesn't take away, which I want to share is doing the homework with this issue. So with the applicants that we have, Bonnie Teal, who's currently on the board, Renee Jimenez, Chloe Cushing, William Cushing, Patricia Cortez, David Lascano, the group, thank you for your applications and your submission. With that, as I felt also the experience was diverse and the reasons were diverse, the applicants wanting to be on the library board, we have a great pool of applicants. I think Bonnie Thiel, as it's shown in our objectives, and I think past meetings, of working well with fellow board members, Lisa Hollingshead, Peggy DeMuth, Tony Rodriguez, Jose Andres Enriquez. I think it shows that Bonnie has served in that position well. Her attendance is present at the meetings, and it's a good collaboration going into library strategic plan. And with that, I do recommend that we appoint and continue Bonnie Thiel on the library board.

Is that a motion?

Yeah, I think being presented by the mayor, I would make that motion.

I'll second the motion.

We have a motion and a second for an extended term of current member Bonnie Teal. Is there any further discussion?

Yes, I had a couple of questions. Were all of these applicants made aware that tonight we were voting on a possible appointment?

Yes, I did contact them.

And so at this point, none have shown up.

That's correct.

Including the incumbent.

That's correct.

Is that correct? Okay. So I think, you know, for me, I mean, obviously it's the mayor's appointment, but I just hope that... Folks, I know we adopted on the new process, but I would hope, you know, I would at least hope that the incumbent would be here to share why she wants to continue. So I'm hoping that, you know, they do come in the future and just trying to understand, you know, I had my questions and reservations about the recommendations for the change, but, you know, I just think it would have been a good call for Ms. Thiel to show up.

Okay. that there's no further questions or conversation. We'll go to the vote. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, appointment carries 5-0. Next is item 10.2, presentation of the citywide fiscal impact analysis of future development. Mr. Mondale.

Council, I'm excited to present this to you this evening. We've been talking about this for a couple of years. Fiscal impact analysis is essentially when you look at the costs of development compared to the cost of serving development. And so we hired a firm that specializes in this work, NBS. We've worked with them before. to come in and look at the undeveloped land in the city limits and within the urban growth boundary to look at as that land develops in the future, will it be able to cover its development costs or not? And I will share with you that land doesn't always cover, development doesn't always cover all of its costs. Those are usually decisions that political bodies will make because it wants to encourage growth and development. There's other benefits that come from that, right? And 1 of the outputs of this analysis. Would be the consideration of whether the city wants to look at creating a city wide CFD community facilities district. Think of it as a special taxing district or a per project based. CFD think of that like our lighting and landscape districts as new subdivisions come in. And so tonight we have Amanda Welker. I'm not sure if we have anyone else with her from MBS who will walk you through this presentation with their recommendations and then I'll kind of follow them behind them with my thoughts about their recommendation. And before we turn it over to Amanda, I'm just going to mention, as I mentioned earlier, we did receive a letter from Mr. Drew Phelps, generally in support of this exercise. One of the things, points that he wanted to make is with good development, with smart growth, you know, when you extended water, sewer, road infrastructure, You also, to the extent that you're able to densify the development, right? If you have large lots with single family homes, that's not as efficient usage of that infrastructure. It's more expensive in terms of the cost of maintenance than if you have, let's say, multifamily homes in that area. So if you have more concentration. So just wanted to point that out to you. You have that letter. And at this point, Amanda, I will turn it over to you. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mark. Good evening, Mayor, council members and city staff. As Mark introduced me, my name is Amanda Walker and I am a consultant with this evening. I'm here to present the fiscal impact analysis. We've prepared for the city. And the purpose of this study is to provide the city and council a very clear data-driven picture of how projected future development within Tulare may impact the general fund over time. The analysis examines both the revenues that new development will generate and the ongoing service costs those future residents and businesses will create. And the full written report is available for council reference and documents all of the methodology, data sources, and the detailed table supporting the findings that will be shared this evening. Next slide, please. And tonight's presentation is organized to build understanding of the analysis. So we will start with some general context and then move to projected growth and then discuss the methodology of the analysis, the fiscal findings under projected development conditions, the potential effects of the proposed sales tax increase, and finally policy options for council's consideration. So when we think about a fiscal impact, we first need to define it, of course. The fiscal impact analysis is a tool that helps the city evaluate whether growth pays for itself. Specifically, it compares the revenues that future development will generate against the ongoing costs of city services that that growth requires. As new development occurs, the city receives additional revenues, which on this slide you'll see represented by the green box. And they'll receive those sources through things such as property taxes, sales taxes, fees, and other revenue sources. At the same time, growth increases the demand for services such as police, fire protection, parks and recreation, public works, and community development. and other general governmental services increase as well. The demand for those services, of course, comes at a cost, which is represented by that taller blue box there. And the space in between would be the negative fiscal impact, the difference between the cost and the revenue. If the revenues were anticipated to be greater than the cost of service, meaning the green box would be taller than that blue one, then we would have a positive fiscal impact. In the case of Tulare, which I'll share in a few slides later, some of the development will yield positive fiscal impacts while other types will potentially yield negative fiscal impacts. And overall, the purpose of this fiscal impact analysis is to determine whether revenues generated by growth are sufficient to cover these ongoing service costs. And if not, we need to identify policy tools that can help close those potential gaps. And I also just want to make an important note that this analysis focuses exclusively on the general fund. So it won't account for special things like one-time development fees, infrastructure funds, or special fund expenditures. Next slide, please. So in this study, we looked at the citywide full build-out projection of both residential and non-residential development. And this slide captures the two-sided nature of growth. Every household and every new business creates both revenue and service demand for the city. From this perspective of revenue generation, new development benefits the city's general fund by producing additional property taxes, which in the case of Tulare are approximately 18.6% of the 1% ad valorem property tax collected. additional sales tax from more people buying more goods, documentary transfer taxes on property sales, and various other fees and charges. And then from a cost perspective, every new resident and employee creates demand for services, as I mentioned earlier, such as police, fire, emergency medical response, parks and recs, streets, and storm drain maintenance, and other governmental services. So we are looking at both those projected revenues and projected service costs at full build-out to understand whether we would have an overall positive or negative fiscal impact. So in order to determine our fiscal impact, we need to identify some key sources of data that are very pertinent to the analysis. And those key data sources that we used to understand the current position of the city and the future impacts of planned development include things such as the city's audited financial statements, the adopted budget, demographic data from the California Department of Finance and the US Census Bureau. We also utilized local information such as the city's general plan, housing element, plan subdivision maps, and then some more broad information from sources such as Zillow and CoStar that have a lot of financial information related to real estate. And then the methodologies that were used include the case study approach, which when demographic or development specific data is available, we can use that approach. And then we also use the multiplier approach, which would produce costs and revenue estimates on a per capita basis based on existing or proposed costs at specific service levels. Next slide, please. Thank you. And so a yield analysis based on the city's general plan and housing element projected the following growth. So an increase overall of 12,000 new housing units that build out. That represents about a 53% growth in households from 23,125 currently to 35,312 in the future. And in our analysis, we've broken down the residential housing types into single family and multifamily. About 7,500 of those new homes we anticipate being single family and 4,700 multifamily. And then of those residential units, about 1,500 are projected to be affordable units that are typically exempted from ad valorem taxation. So those... those particular units would not have the ad valorem or property tax revenue contribution. Analysis of the city's general planned land use map identified over 2,700 gross acres of vacant non-residential land and applying standard development factors yielded about 16 million square foot of new non-residential building space, which would generate approximately 23,000 new jobs And that would be broken down into 17,000 commercial jobs and about 6,000 industrial jobs.

Amanda, if you can wait one second, would you be able to remind council or remind us what is the time horizon for those new units?

This is full build out. So there's really no necessarily timeframe. We're just saying once we develop all of the residential units, plan development. And once we develop all of the commercial and industrial plan development, this is what we would potentially have. So the time horizon definitely just depends on the pace at which the city moves forward with that development.

Is this just within the city limits or the sphere of influence of the city?

This extends to the sphere of influence as well.

Okay, so it's beyond just, okay, thank you. Yes.

Any other questions before I continue?

I think the only part I kind of want to put that in context, if it's about 400 permits a year, we're looking at 30 years with this analysis to be a full build out.

So things shift. If we looked at current development standard or patterns, I would say if we're successful with economic development and start bringing in larger employers, this will accelerate.

Yeah, I think to Mr. Medeiros, appreciate the question. I think to those listening, just kind of framing that is the volume of this isn't 12,000, you know, instantly. This is a full build out. What does that look like?

Yeah. And I would also say to counsel a couple of things. Amanda, I apologize for the interruption, but it's important for us. You know, right now we've got about 6,000 new homes that are sort of going through entitlement, right? Not all those homes will land, right? They may entitle property and it may take 10 years for that subdivision to develop or it may never develop, right? But when we also say households, keep in mind our new homes, you know, Amanda, are we, I think our general plan, we use 3.1 persons per home. Is that correct? Something like that, something like that. So that's, you know, another 110 that's that's another 37,000 people added to our 73,200 now. So you're about 110,000 at full build out.

Yeah, thank you. Please continue.

I think we can go to the next slide. So really the key findings are that under the current conditions, future development at full build-out would essentially be revenue neutral for the general fund, but slightly negative at approximate deficit annually of $28,000 per year. This nearly balanced income should not overshadow a very important distinction in that, and I'll show this on the next slide, residential development, both single family and multifamily, generate a fairly significant negative fiscal impact, while commercial and industrial development are strong positive contributors, and they significantly make up for the negative fiscal impacts of the residential development.

And next slide, please.

So if you would like to take a look here, I'll give you just a moment to kind of digest what you're seeing. But really, that combined net impact is negative 28,000, which is essentially a break even. However, it's important to understand the underlying dynamics that residential growth creates a service cost that is not fully covered by the revenues it generates. In this table, you'll see that difference for residential development is a negative impact of about $5 million annually. So again, as you can see, that is made up by the potential development of commercial and industrial revenue exceeding the cost of service. But that is a consideration that should be made.

And Council, if I could add a comment. You know, we've talked about this before. City development is always a balancing act, right? You know, if you're a city that is all residential, like a bedroom community, like the community I came from before I came here, that deficit's much bigger, right? Because, again, the cost of providing services to residential exceeds commercial. And so you might have a really nice, quiet community, but you can't pay for it. Or if you have a community that's all commercial industrial, you probably are doing pretty well financially. But who wants to live in your community? Right. It's that balancing act, not only in terms of the quality of life, but balancing the finances. So this number is actually a pretty good number compared to, I think, what a lot of cities face. I don't know if that was a conscious decision that we made to get here, but it's a fortuitous reality of where we are today and the future.

Thanks, Mark, for that context. And you'll see on this slide, we wanted to take into consideration the impacts of your proposed sales tax measure that will be on the ballot in November, as we understand that that would potentially increase the city's local sales tax rate by 1%. And that overall fiscal impact improves that deficit to a positive $3.5 million annually in that scenario. So that would be a very meaningful impact to the fiscal impact, but doesn't fully resolve the negative fiscal impacts of residential development. As you'll see, there's still about a $2 million annual deficit there, even with that sales tax increase. So just note that. And NBS recommends community facilities district remaining an important long-term tool to pay for service demands that are created by residential development. which Mark alluded to, and I'll talk about a little bit more on the next slide. So some policy considerations. Really what we found in this fiscal impact is that there's a few key factors to consider. Residential development alone does not fully fund the services it requires, even with your proposed sales tax measure. This is a structural characteristic of residential development in California, and it's not a unique So keep that in mind. As Mark mentioned, it seems your plans have been fairly well balanced as far as your overall impact, but really just wanting to make sure that residential pays for the services that is required of it is important. And the analysis provided assumes full build out, which we talked about, and that's an undetermined amount of time. Should commercial and industrial development move more slowly than residential development, then the negative fiscal impacts could be greater earlier on due to the slower pace of the offsetting positive fiscal impact from non-residential development. So again, that would depend on kind of the pace of development in those two different land categories. And then additional revenue tools may be necessary as the city grows. The recommended option, like I mentioned, is formation of a community facilities district. As Mark also mentioned, that could be project specific for new residential developments as they occur. The benefit to that would be that the residents would pay for the cost of service that were directly related to their development rather than kind of the wider range. And it could be more specific to things, you know, if, for example, a development is going to have an HOA, then maybe their cost of service might be a little bit less for landscape maintenance or something like that. So you would have the flexibility to charge rates that were commensurate with the amount of service demand and cost there. Another option is a citywide CFD that you could have different tax zones based on different criteria. So there's definitely different options, but we would recommend consideration of a CFD or multiple CFDs to make sure that those residential service costs are covered. And it's not, CFDs are not a blanket solution. Special tax revenues can only fund authorized public services under the 1982 Act. However, it's really one of the most effective and legally sound tools available to the city that would directly address the funding gap that the residential development may cost. And on the final slide, I am Happy to answer any additional questions on the presentation or the analysis if any are out there.

With that, I want to also offer offer surely that we take public input. Open to public comments. With the post-presentation, is there anyone in chambers who'd like to make a public comment? Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone or webinar? OK. All right. With that, council members, thoughts, feedbacks, constructive comments? All right.

I think for me, Amanda, Councilman Sagala, is what... The two choices that are there for me to consider, I mean, obviously great information, great analysis, is just whether to support a citywide one or a smaller project. I don't know if it would be project per project or area per area. Because for me, I think for me is that I think this is good information and good way to kind of, you know, continue to build economic development that for me, I think I'm leaning towards a citywide one so that the west side, the district that I represent is always having the challenges is not kind of like left out of those opportunities. So that's kind of where I'm leaning towards versus a project or neighborhood or however else is the option.

So, I'll share with you what my recommendation is, and it's not tonight. We're not asking you to do anything. This is just a presentation. The next steps for us are to allow you time to absorb and think about you may have questions over the next month. We're going to meet with the we've talked about this with them before. So they know it's coming. Most of the developers or builders who build in other communities are familiar with CFDs. Rockland adopted CFDs 25 years ago. So that's where I came from before here. So this is throughout the state. It's nothing new. My recommendation based on these numbers is probably not to look at a citywide one, especially because we're looking at the sales tax measure. I do think, however, the perfect application for this is to replace our lighting and landscape districts with CFDs going forward. And the reason for that is lighting and landscape districts are limited to lighting and landscaping. Like that's when you when you live in Del Lago, you pay your base property tax and you pay an additional tax. It's for those things. It doesn't pay for streets. And that's one of the major challenges we have in the city. Had we had CFDs 25 years ago, you could use some of those dollars to help maintain the streets in that neighborhood. So in my mind, this is the tool going forward. All our new subdivisions, as they come in, they annex into a CFD. We'll have additional dollars that those citizens are paying to maintain their streets. I'm not saying solely their streets, right, because there'll be general tax dollars going into that as well. But those dollars will help to cover those streets that leaves us with the existing streets is the major challenge that we have. And that's a big part of what we use sales tax dollars to pay for. So we're not asking you to vote on anything tonight. When we come back with a recommendation, I'm just previewing that for you. That will be our recommendation, assuming we don't get any. Uh, feedback from that changes our recommendation, but that is the next step. And, uh, you know, I want you to be aware of that. I'm not saying you couldn't do a citywide, but I, I feel like the citywide is not necessary. There are other tools council members that we use with the economic development strategy presentation. We talk about that's a different mechanism that we could deploy in special areas, like the entertainment district, the business park, right? That's a tax increment finance tool where the taxes that are generated in that district must stay solely in that district. And you may be able to use some of the taxes from other special taxing districts in that area. That's a little bit different animal than a CFD. But anyways, that is our recommendation. Just let it sit on you and we'll answer questions and bring it back in the future.

Yeah. And I just want to share too is I look forward to this continued conversation. I mean, I myself look for, Mark, I look forward to the future, you know, presentations, future analysis, CFDs, as we've talked about for new development, CFD, you know, of the whole city, I think to the various points and views. And you said this was something 25 years ago that was, whatever, there was a difficult decision back then, looking forward to that. I just share Mr. Seagal's sentiment and I think the rest of the council. I look forward to keeping this in front of us and the analysis and the Q&A as we move forward. Okay. This is not a vote. This is just a presentation. Correct. With that. Okay. We'll move to 10.3, economic development strategic plan.

Amanda, thank you so much. Sorry, I didn't mean to rush too much. No worries. Thank you for our presenter. No worries. We're going to turn this one over to Jennifer.

Thank you, everyone. So as you probably recall, the draft of the economic development strategic plan was presented to you at the last council meeting by our consultant Cosmont. And this plan does identify citywide opportunities, economic development strategies, and an action plan. One of the focuses within that plan is on the downtown, since that is the historic core for all of our residents and is a destination for eating, shopping, and entertainment. So that is a specific focus within the plan. Following any comments or questions that you presented to the city manager in the last couple of weeks, we did have the consultant make one revision to the draft. which pertains to the Inyo corridor. As you know, the city has already begun efforts with the Inyo corridor streetscape, placemaking, and revitalization project, which will identify strategies to redevelop that area. And the deliverables from that separate project will be reviewed once it's finalized, and any approved action plan can be incorporated into the overall priorities of this EDSP. And so the final version is before you tonight for adoption. And then once that is completed, staff can then proceed with prioritizing the identified strategies and implementing the proposed actions for short-term and long-term to meet your economic development objectives and to streamline development. And we do have Cosmont on the line. So if you do have specific questions for them, they can answer those as well.

With that, I also want to give a chance as well. We've had this on the item before, economic development strategic plan. Just is there anyone in chambers who'd like to make public comment on this? Madam Clerk, is there anyone on our webinar phone? Okay. Council, do you have comments, questions, or action?

I had just a couple of questions on the, I guess on the part you talked about, Jennifer, regarding obviously the study moving forward and recommendations coming forth over the time period. What caught my attention was about where do we start in terms of that. And I'm just curious to see if there's any criteria has been developed in terms of like, and I'm assuming when you talk about when do we start is like, what area of the city we would begin to kind of maybe create some economic development incentives and so forth. I don't know if that's what you mean by that.

Yeah, there's various strategies and action items that have been identified. Certainly with any incentive programs, those will require budget approvals by council, and so those are things that would need to be brought to you in the future to see if that's funds that you have available that you would want to spend towards new programs or anything like that. But otherwise, other things that I'm going to be looking at are just ways to make things more efficient, to do the business retention and attraction, continue to utilize different tools that could be available to our staff to provide more information to new businesses to grab their attention and And help them decide to be here.

Yeah, I'll give you an example. 1 of the recommendations is to develop. They don't call it this, but I refer to it as business retention expansion program. That is a good idea. But we haven't spent really much time talking about. Is that a priority for council? Is it something to city leads? is it something that a different agency leads i've done business retention expansion programs in the past and typically it's a chamber-led function where the city participates and other organizations participate in it but we haven't had any discussions with the chamber so even though it's a recommendation by the consultant that's just one small example of one where we have to get in the weeds and start talking about it and thinking about it what makes sense and it's hilarious to implement it so that we can come back to you and say if this is a priority for you here's the options. Here's what we recommend and how you do it. Here's the money that would take to do it. And then you guys would let us know, you know, is that a, based on that, is that the way you want to do it? Is it a priority? Did this chamber take lead and have they accepted that responsibility? That's stuff we have to work through.

Right. And I think that's a good example, Mark, of I would like to have you and the consultant and staff consider where at one point, the council may have that kind of conversation before the final report, because what I'm interested in is what criteria will be used to sort of say, hey, we're going to start here versus there, or we're going to start on that kind of program versus other types of economic development programs. So I'm just curious to see how that criteria develops, you know, I could argue I could argue, hey, the West Side is a great place to start because we've already got a lot of things built on the other side of town. Right. That would be my sort of two cents. Or, for example, I know that in the Draft report, they had a slide about the economic, who was it, the federal economic zone or whatever. Opportunity zone. Yeah, opportunity zone. And the council made the decision about what zones would be our priority. So I'm just curious to see as the report moves forward, what the criteria is used to say this is our starting point, whether it's sort of a land type of approach or like you mentioned, the Bayer approach. So I'm just curious to see when that would come, if it could come to council before the final report. Just for any input.

My recommendation, counsel, and certainly you're not under any pressure. My recommendation would be if you're comfortable adopting the report, adopt the report. Because one of the things that the report does is it can it part of what the report does, it consolidates a lot of different things that we're doing or we have been doing or we're working on doing. It puts it in one place and it tells the private sector, the people who are investing money. This is the culmination of the things that we're working on or will be working on and working towards that gives them continued confidence to invest in our community. I'm not saying they won't invest without it, but in my experience, when you haven't adopted economic development strategy that we can show developers and say, here's the things we have been doing, here's what's done, here's things we're working on. What we could do if you were willing to adopt this tonight is we would then develop sort of the appendix or the addendum to this document, which is here is the implementation strategy. And we would bring it up back to you at a future meeting and probably bring it back within a couple, two, three months and say, here's kind of the timeframe. Here's the things we're thinking about. And then you would. Look at it and say, no, we don't like that move this that take us another month or 2 to play around with it. So, within about a period of 5 or 6 months, I think we would have the timeframe and the strategy.

Then you would have to decide in the budget how much you want to and I'm glad you brought up because I wasn't talking about delaying the adoption report, but more he did it more. Better than I did in terms of the implementation process. That's what I'm curious about. Like, once you begin that implementation process, what is the criteria? What are the recommendations? And I would counsel would have that conversation. So sure. Thank you for clarifying that. So I definitely support the work that's being done now.

Council members, any other feedback? Okay. So with this one, we are looking for a recommended action to adopt the except the economic development strategic plan. I'll look to council if there's a recommended action. I'll make a motion to adopt the economic development strategy plan as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, passes 5-0. Council members, if you don't mind, as we move to 10.4, I need to use the restroom again. I apologize. My blood sugar level is just in fluctuation real bad this afternoon. That's why I've had to get up various times, but I surely would, I want to be here to kick off number 10.4, so I'll be right back.

Council, this was an item that you discussed previously and decided to bring back forth for discussion this evening. I don't have a ton to offer or a recommendation to you. It's really whatever Council's desires are. The only thing I do want to point out to you, because we kind of talked about this briefly at the end of the last discussion, which was, you know, has this issue been discussed in the past? How has it been handled at the City in the past? And I just wanted to bring out to your attention that this was discussed at a previous council, not this council, but a previous city council in Tulare discussed this matter. And they decided at that time, I think that was back in 2009, they adopted a resolution to in that resolution to place the plaque that's sitting back on the back wall there with the words engraved in God we trust. And that's how they decided to handle the matter at that time. perhaps different circumstances, obviously a different council. I just want you to be aware that those words are in the council chambers. They are not as being requested by Councilmember Harrell above your heads at the dais here. But I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware that that's where that's the decision was that was made back in 2009 and staff stands ready to answer questions and take direction.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mondale. I think with Mr. Mondale's opening and with that information, I'd look to public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to comment on this item before us? Good evening. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. Mr. Rendell, lately on the news, if you've noticed, you've been watching the news, city of Fresno, they have in God we trust behind all of their city council. So do the other cities. Besides that, the only one that sees us in God we trust are the people that come here. And as you noticed, not a whole lot of our citizens come here. So I don't know where the big discussion is about not having it because of the conflict or whatever it is. But as far as I go, as far as me and some of my neighbors, my older neighbors have been asking me, hey, did they bring it up? And I said, yes, they did. So I don't know where the big discussion is. I think we should do it, but it's up to you guys. But like I said, the only one that's gonna see it is people that actually come into this chambers. So, and have a whole lot of people have been coming to this chambers lately. So yeah, so that's all I have to say.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in chambers who wishes to speak on this? Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the webinar or the phone? Okay. So with that, going forward, council members, I'll start with Mr. Harrell. Do you have any further comments? It is with presenting the assignment.

Mr. Segala. Yes, and I do believe during my tenure, we did have a vote. after 2009 to not display it. I will continue to vote no on it. I think as Mr. Medeiros was very eloquently at the last meeting talked about some issues and concerns. I think we're doing fine without having it on the back of council chambers or in back of the days. So thank you. Mr. Medeiros.

I stated my reasons. My wife said to remind everyone, make sure everyone knew I was baptized a Catholic. I believe I was confirmed. I was married in the Catholic Church. I believe in God. But I just indicated before that I felt we needed to have what I considered, and that was my opinion, and it opposes to a certain degree what others believe, an inclusive chambers, as I read that others have felt. And I see what council did in 2009, those people At that time, I read before who was, and I'm violating what I told council member Sarah I wouldn't do, but at that time, the councilman, the mayor was Craig Davida, Phil Vandegrift, David Macedo, Richard Ortega, and Wayne Ross. I'm open to what council agrees to, what the consensus indicates, but I am satisfied with what those gentlemen did at that time.

council member said in regards to what's on that wall you know it's what about eight foot up the wall dark engraving yeah dark engraving that you can hardly see i still don't just i still disagree about it being councilman madero says it is we should be inclusive that is inclusive if an American Indian comes in and they, some tribes pray their God is the wind. Some is mother nature. They would see that as they could say in mother nature, I trust it doesn't have to be, it's not a Christian God. And this is not a religious issue. This is a national model issue. There's a difference between them. They just happen to be the same words. Um, and last time Mr. Medeiros was concerned that it would have some effect possibly on the upcoming election or the upcoming tax increase. I find that very hard to believe. I've had numerous people that either watched the last council meeting or listened to it have approached me and said that they didn't understand why there was any opposition to it because it was not religious in nature. It was the national motto, which we see on our money. I believe it's in the Supreme Court. It's all over Washington, DC. It's in other cities. And what's happened in those cities in the past in regards to it, that shouldn't concern us. That happened to them. We don't know that that would happen here. I doubt that we would have any people out front with torches and pitchforks because we decided to put it on the back wall. Also, the thing I didn't mention the last time was that many of these people said, we'll pay for it. The city didn't have to put out a dime. We'll pay for the whole thing. So I don't know what else to say about it. It's the national motto. This is the 250th year of our country. I don't think there's any excluding anyone. This is the people's chamber, and I think the people would like to see it on the wall behind us.

In the last time they've shared comments and getting this on the agenda and in front of us. One of the, I think a few items that were presented last time and confirmed is this, this isn't a debate actually of whether we included or not, because it's already included. But then I know one of the comments was it's really a debate then of where it's placed. And that's kind of the action, what we have in front of us. As well with that is the council reviewed this issue, approved it, that threshold was met of putting it in the chambers. And we have a plaque that recognizes that. I think with that and the plaque being overbid We have the declaration, we have the constitution, the constitution document that's over there. So if I'm understanding this request, which is really in front of us, is moving, are we looking, and I think the intent of moving that plaque from that location to behind us, or is the discussion of just the first part, we're looking to have a whole new plaque placed behind us? so okay the wording would be placed directly on the wall behind us okay that pardon me yeah so so i'm just saying it's okay so just to clarify though it's it's if you will this font this dynamic this is what we are looking to vote on to have behind us okay uh i think that now if you wanted to take the plaque

the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and half a dozen others and push them back here, we might be okay.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I'm not trying to be facetious. No, I'm not. I'm trying to put, you know. Okay. I disagree with, off subject a little bit, but when Michael designed this building and he put our seal up there, I thought it should have been down here, but it's been done. This would be for the people to say, this is the people's chamber. This is not our chambers. We're only here occupying the seats to do the people's business. That would be for them to see.

So would you be okay if the seal were moved down and God we trust would be up in that circle?

the circle yeah just replace it well if you've ever looked at porterville's their city seal with their oranges on it and i think it says city of portability is in mosaic so And above it is mosaic in God we trust. You can't read it.

Well, what I'm saying, I mean, you could be reading it up there. So we move the seal behind us and put it, because there's only, what, four words?

Yeah. Four words.

I'm sure someone, I'm sure those guys back there could be able to read in God we trust in that little step in that space. Yeah. I mean, if that's the case, I would support that.

I think it's certainly a possibility.

So, I mean, I think if we move the seal behind us and move In God We Trust up there, whatever design, you know, like it is in the dollar or whatever.

Take the ring off of that and just get the seal. Yeah, put another one. And In God We Trust could be up there.

Yeah.

I'm sure the guys back there could lead it.

If we did it big enough, that would be our task itself. Council, if you ultimately, that would be something that I would propose.

If you ultimately decided that you do want to move in this direction, our recommendation would be allow staff to work with some professionals to come up with several different design options so that you can look at all of those. We'll get stuff real different.

A local vendor, instead of going to somebody outside the area, this is somebody that's done work here in the city for 45, 50 years.

They can be trusted.

council member harrell we need to have multiple quotes to meet our purchasing so we would do that we get multiple local quotes but i think with that or i think completing my comments is that i don't see this necessarily this debate of habit or not which i think kind of led the first discussion this discussion is placement i i i am endorsing that and then i think the part then next is the review of the design or so forth which you have have presented um with that and then look to council then if That's the consensus. What vote is actually in front of us? Is it the vote yes that we're moving forward with this? Or is the vote yes we're moving forward with this and this is exactly what we're doing?

I would not recommend you vote on that specific design because that wasn't advertised. What I would recommend you vote on is the concept and then allow us to come back with several options and they're advertised. The public can weigh in on those and then you pick the one that you want. That would be my recommendation. That would be the right way to do it. in terms of meeting our requirements. Whose requirements? The city's requirements. Purchasing requirements. If this is going to be paid for by individuals in the public? I would still recommend in terms of what you're picking for it to be there, you would still make that decision publicly. I mean, I... Not just pick a vendor and make that decision tonight without anybody...

I understand, Mr. Harrell, about that idea, but I would hate to open up that door because maybe someday there's a different council here. And if someone wants to pay, hey, let's put Marquette's Brothers up on the day. We'll pay for it. I don't want to go down that road. I think the city manager is talking about there is a purchasing policy that we have to do. I'm open supporting the idea of options. I'd love that to be one of the options to look at. So you're getting me from going from a no to maybe, but that's my option. That's the option that I'm going up for. That would be my recommendation.

Well, I'm leaving it up to the others, but of what I've seen there, not to be contradictory, but I like that where it's at. And if you're going to put it, the less expense is just put it right there.

I'll give you concession on that one.

But obviously what's before us is... directing staff to do those four things so that a determination can be made to go from there. And basically, it's not even another resolution because it's an expansion of the 2009 resolution that's already been adopted.

Do you have what the 2009 says? Yes, I got it.

In fact, what I can do... I don't need to read it. I can send it to Mr. Harrell.

Yes, it is to me.

Right now.

So I think with that issue, which I'm clarifying with that motion, is I myself have said I endorse what the element in front of us is bringing it up forward. And then the next part is exactly how and what that looks like seems to be some further discussion. But Also, I think with that, Mr. Harold, I'll look towards you. You presented this item. There's a consensus in some different ways and look to you of if you're wanting to make a motion, how you see that motion being made.

I'll make a motion that we display the national motto in God we trust. on the walls in the on the chamber walls directly above council and move the city seal down to the lower to a lower location.

I respect your motion. Is that your motion? Yes. We have a motion.

No discussion. Can you expand it? You don't want to expand it to the possibility of either way? Yeah. Okay. I'll admit it to include either way.

Yeah. which would be directly behind council.

We bring you those options so that you can see it. And we do have, council, I don't know if you're willing to take any, but we do have a public online comment now.

Okay. All right. We're in the middle of a motion. I just wanted to make you aware. We're a motion of a presented with that. So I just want to say that's where we're at. So Mr. Harrell, as I understand your motion, is your motion is to move the In God We Trust and have it placed behind council, potential options being directly behind in the center at the high point. Is that your motion?

And move the city seal down.

And or move the city seal, transfer that.

Yeah, either or.

OK. We have a motion or a second?

I will second that motion.

OK. We have a motion and a second. Is there further comments from council? OK. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 50. I did not want to interrupt as we were already in the motions. We were already in the act of a motion, but I will come back to public comment as we have somebody that would like to make public comment on this item. We will surely receive that.

Hello, Council. My name is Jose. I am a resident of Tulare. Apologies for being late to join the Zoom. I was having technical difficulties, but I did want to respectfully urge the Council to not to reject this resolution. As our community faces the possibility of a tax increase based on family members and other to their residents that I've conversed with, we expect the council to focus on the issues that directly affect our daily lives. So regardless of the historical and legal arguments presented in this resolution, displaying the slogan in council chambers is a symbolic gesture that is already taking place in the back of the council chambers, and it will not improve city services. It will not strengthen public safety, repair roads, address infrastructure, or generate revenue. Even if the financial cost is small, the real issue is priorities. Every item the council chooses to pursue reflects what it believes deserves the city's time, attention and resources. And I don't believe this proposal addresses the demonstrated need within our community, nor does it solve a problem facing our residents. I don't think the question is whether it's legally permissible, whether other cities have adopted it. But again, it's to ensure, especially with the potential tax increase looming, that we're thinking about the priorities of our city. I would also just add that if money is being donated by the public for this, personally, I would prioritize the signage on Lincoln Schools Park so that the park can start looking like a park again and not abandoned all boarded up. I think that that would be a better use of money. donated monies. With all that said, I respectfully ask the council to pass on this, especially given our current city circumstance and the need for a tax increase. Thank you.

Thank you for your public comment. Appreciate it. Okay. Any other public comments or anyone else on webinar phone call, Madam Clerk? Just to make sure. So with that, moving forward on our agenda, we have 11 future agenda items. We have none submitted. Item 12, staff updates.

Okay, well, first off, I'd like to thank Council for recognizing Parks and Rec Month. There's a lot that goes into our parks. There's a lot that goes into all the programs you see out there throughout our city. With that said, we have our first movies in the park next Friday night at Zumwalt Park. It will be the movie Hopper, and we will have movies throughout our parks the rest of July. So thank you.

Nothing to report.

We have a big event planned for this Friday. I believe maybe Mark will mention it. So I'll leave it to him.

Just a happy new fiscal year and that's all I have from finance.

Nothing to report.

Nothing to report.

Nothing to report. Nothing to report.

Nothing to report.

Had a busy 4th of July weekend. You all should have received an email today. It appears everybody kept their fingers throughout the city.

Nothing to report.

Nothing to report.

Uh, the last word following Mr Miller's comments, we do have the long awaited homeless shelter ribbon cutting event Friday at 9 0 AM. Uh, we're very pleased great progress from staff and a contractor. The road's been completed. Uh, the pavements done, um, the elect the building has been energized, but thank you so much Edison for getting out there and getting that done. um we don't we won't have a couple most of the furniture and equipment have been installed we don't have the shade devices over the bathrooms yet i'm not sure if we'll get that done in time i think we have the shades i'm not sure if they'll be installed uh the dog kennels we we were using a firm um they were non-responsive we shift to a local firm who's actually been able to build them a little they're custom building them a little cheaper or less expensively which is great but they won't be done in time So until those are done, we won't be able to operate the facility. We're hoping and we're assuming it pass all the inspections. We're hoping to open the facility to guests on July 27th. Right now, we have 98 guests that have signed up for the facility, along with 33 dogs. So we should have a great event on Friday. And we, again, thank Council for its vision and commitment.

All right. I got to stick to the script. We don't have closed session tonight. All right. Dennis, you got anything going on that we get you there somewhat on time? No? All right. Sorry about that. Okay.