City Council - Regular Meeting

Pest of a 60 year old man and to have the officer side with a 60 year old man kicking a child out of her public park. Number two, the problems laid bare when trying to run a public park as a private venue. If it's a public park, the public deserves access. Is this Spade Entertainment's park and Todd Spillman's park or is it Tulare City's park? Is this a public park or is it a private venue? In light of these questions and this experience, I would like to make a proposal to the council. Number one, either we allow time in the early morning, let's say till 11 a.m. so parents can access their public playgrounds and Mr. Spillman can still have his park. Number two, we split off the children's portion of Zumwalt Park with a fence along the border kind of along the gazebo, because then there would be no problem. The public would be able to have access to their children's playground, and Mr. Spillman would have access to his park for his amphitheater. And then the last thing is that last week, the council set president opening up the coffer for 400 handwritten letters from the business owners, 0.05% of Tulare's 74,000 residents. My question to the council is how many letters do you want me to get you to give for you to give the public access to their private spaces or to their public spaces? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Young. I have your card. And I think to some of the questions you asked, we will have our staff get back in touch with you on the policies.

Thank you, sir.

And would it be possible for the council to be appraised? I'd like to be appraised on what happens with this issue.

I'd be happy to let you know that I responded in the weekly report.

Is there anyone else in chambers who wishes to make public comment at this time? Yes, sir.

Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for inviting me to the lectern. Good evening, mayor and council members, city manager and city staff respectfully. My name is Rick Gorham. I'm a lifelong resident of Tulare. I understand that there's a fact-finding discussion happening at the local and state level regarding global stack. I've been independently doing my own research on this for months, including meeting with fair staff and reviewing the information for myself. I want to clarify one point. The Emergency Resilience Center at MLK and K Street is not a StatGlobal proposal. That project came out of 2023 when the city of Porterville experienced their floods. The California Department of Food and Agriculture already gave the fair $11 million and that's already approved in May of 23. This is intended to serve the community during disasters, and when there's non-emergencies, it will be a youth center. It is combined into four sections, a banquet hall, a conference room, a dance hall, and then volleyball courts and basketball courts. Again, this is not a Stack Global. Global Stack is proposing something different, a multi-level parking structure on the opposite side of the fairgrounds. with its mesh computer systems underneath rather than a traditional standalone data center. Lastly, I believe our residents deserve transparency and accurate information. We're now seeing no data center flyers posted on street poles and lights. This appears to raise questions under our hand-built ordinance. Residents are protesting something that in my view has not been fully explained or understood. This is creating unnecessary confusion and chaos. The answer isn't to dismiss the residents or dismiss the concerns. The answer is transparency, fact finding and giving the public information they need to make an informed decision. That's why I'm here asking the council to hold a study session. I know some of you already know what's going on, but I love Tulare. I come here, I've been here, I raised my daughters here. And, you know, this fair thing is spreading outside of that state control, and it's coming into the Tulare City. As you guys know, this morning, the Board of Supervisors placed a 45-day temporary ordinance within the county for no data centers. even in any city in Tulare. So I just ask the council please to just go ahead and get with Alex Macedo because I've been told that Stat Global said, okay, we'll sit down with you guys. So please guys, just sit down with them and address the community because they're all protesting right now. And I have a big concern because they're combining the two And for somebody to protest a youth center is something that it just goes against what Tulare is. So thank you for your time. Thank you.

I can just provide quick clarification. The Board of Supervisors did vote on a 45-day moratorium today. That is not a moratorium that prohibits data centers from going forward in cities. It's one that just says the county's opposed to any data center. Absent any facts about it, they're just a blanket opposed to any data center that might go forward, which would include potential data center at the fairgrounds. And then just for this gentleman's benefit, we have no more additional information. Yes.

And then again, I know I have to go, but again, guys, Just let the community know that they're two separate things. Let's not combine the two. Let them go ahead with the emergency center that's already been approved. Let them go ahead and build up the youth center. And then let's figure out the stack goal. But thank you, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else in chambers who would like to make public comment? Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Isherwood, council members, staff, fellow citizens, Jason Bender, Tulare. Today, I'm here to invite you to our Tulare Rotary 9-11 Memorial Blood Drive. It'll be happening Friday, September 11th, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. We're receiving blood donations. It is the 25th year of remembrance for 9-11. It is the 20th year of our blood drive. In that time, I believe, based on pints that have been donated and their factor of three lives sold for every pint, this blood drive has been able to save approximately 34,000 lives in our community. Attendance has been low as of recent years, and this being the 20th year, I'd really like the community to come out and donate. 7 a.m. is our remembrance ceremony that our fire department and police department do an excellent job on. We could also use some additional attendance on that. It's a great way to start your morning on that Friday. I don't have everything confirmed at this moment, so I don't want to promise anything, but I know that we do have food all day, whether it be pancake breakfast from Kiwanis, some sort of hot meal, either chicken or pork from River Valley Church, Lunch we're still working on but it's going to be some mixture of pizza sandwiches and maybe an additional hot food. We have tons of coupons for different places in our community and last year we started a drawing every hour where you can earn gift cards from multiple retailers here in Tulare and we're getting some more information on that. If you'd like additional information or you'd like to make a reservation to donate blood go to the Central California Blood Center's website, donateblood.org. That's donateblood.org. And we'd be very happy to see our community come out on Friday, September 11th. Thank you.

Just to make clear, who sponsors that?

This is the Tulare Rotary 9-11 Memorial Blood Drive.

Kiwanis makes the pancakes.

Yes, we do allow Kiwanians to cook for us.

But you put on the show, is that correct?

Yes. Myself and another young lady, I think you're familiar with her, Kathy Medeiros. Yes. Easy, Binder.

Thank you for that point of clarification. Is there anyone else in chambers? Mayor Clark, do we have someone on the phone or online?

Okay. Mr. Mayor. Yes. Annette asked to let you know she intended to be here, but she was caught up with something else.

Yes. Okay. I'm going to move forward then with that. On item four, presentations. 4.1, business toolkit presented by economic development. Is that you, Jennifer? That is me.

All right. Give Melissa a chance to pull it up. Okay. So this is something that I've been working on over the last couple of months. This is a business toolkit. It's meant to help. It's mostly focused for small businesses that are, you know, so we have a local resident wanting to start a business. A lot of times people have no idea how what the regulations are, what they need to do to even start a business. And so this is a very comprehensive document. And so I'll just try and go through a few of the slides. So it's broken down into a few sections, just a general checklist of things that people should be looking at doing. at the section on what things they should consider when choosing a location. Then I have a section that gives them some advice when they need to get some financing for their new business. And then we have the section that focuses mostly on city permit processes. And then the last section are some general resources that people can go to. A common thing is creating a business plan. Some people don't realize they need a business plan and how important that is to starting their business. It's often needed if they're wanting to get a loan through a bank, and so first they don't know it's needed, and then they don't know how to make one, so we do provide the resources on here of the local organizations that they can reach out to to help them create a business plan. registering their business name. Again, things that they need to do for choosing their location, permits, even recommendations when they're ready to hire their workforce, the local organizations that can help them find those employees. And of course the importance of marketing and utilizing the various tools out there that they can do to get their name out there, and of course also various support and networking that they should look into for their business. For the location section. I was trying to. inform and educate people the importance of understanding where their businesses might be allowed and not allowed. Some people will lease a space and come in for their permits only to realize that they're not in the correct zone, that it's not a permitted use. And so this is just to help them understand that these are things they should contact the city about before they maybe even sign a lease. And then for funding, just some general advice on ways that they can raise the capital that they need to get their business off the ground. And then the section here that's probably the heaviest section of this document is just what they can expect in our processes and what they will need to do. I put it in here, it has entitlement process, estimated timeframe it'll take for them to go through each phase of that process. The different type of forms and permits and licenses that they will possibly need. But they need to get a sign permit have a section here about the building permits and that they're going to be needing to go through various inspections. And, of course, there are things that can just be done over the counter so highlighted some of that information for them. Um, again, some people don't realize that there are things regarding public works that they need, you know, with a grease traps and a wastewater discharge permit. So again, it's just educating them of things that they might need depending on the type of business or opening. processes with getting their business license set up, pointing out to them that if they are going to be serving alcohol, they'll also have to get an ABC license. If they're serving food and beverages, then they also have to go to county to get their permits through them as well. And then this last section for resources, I capture all of the different departments that assist in starting these businesses. And so if they have questions during their process or even once they're open, this will kind of give them a better idea of who they should probably be reaching out to. And then of course I note other providers of utilities on here so they can know who they should be reaching out to to set up other type of accounts. And then, these are all the local resources that they can use to help them get started or even once they're open various resources that they might need. And that is it. So very excited to get this completed. We do have it also available in Spanish. And so we should be getting that up on our website page probably in the next few days. When we do, I'll reach out to Melissa to see if we can put something out on social media letting people know that that is out there um but yeah so hopefully um our local residents will find some good use out of this uh to be able to get their businesses going and growing here all right council members any other comments questions okay thank you jennifer downstairs counter are they going to have a copy of this so they're familiar with when people come in and start

reciting something out of this and the counter goes.

That's a good point. Yeah, I can certainly provide copies of that. So yeah, I can do that.

Thank you. Great job. Quick question. I guess, trying to understand on particular on food trucks, where Do you and your department and Mario's department sort of either come together or merge? Because obviously for a food truck, they go through the condition to use permit process, but then they may need some help with capital or they may need some help with business plans that Mario's department I don't think handles. So what point kind of like...

for you guys hand off or murders for our role in economic development we are certainly there as um guides and and direction to people that have various questions about starting businesses here and so that's why instead of me holding on to all this information myself i wanted to make it available to the public but you know we are certainly there to help them one-on-one if they have questions and point them to the correct staff that can dive deeper into things. I might be able, at a high level, answer questions about zoning or land use, but then when it gets down to the nitty gritty, I'm certainly going to pass that off to community development and have them address those things.

Right, because I think one of the things I've been hearing out, at least in my part of the city, is they're trying to organize some kind of association to kind of have some representation on things that I think mostly on enforcement and compliance, because I know that I would venture to say that maybe half the trucks aren't in compliance with the necessary permits. So I know that they've been talking about trying to form an association or have some kind of advocacy channel to whomever, your department or Mario's department.

Yeah, and I'm certainly there for anyone and everyone that has questions about compliance issues or concerns, if they've maybe been dealing with the city, but feel like they're their questions aren't being answered or they just aren't understanding what's being explained to them, I'm more than happy to kind of get in there and try and resolve any questions or concerns they have. Of course, these things are not decisions I make, of course, and so I'm not there to do that. It is still up to the appropriate departments to make those decisions and follow the rules and regulations and ordinances and such. But I'm certainly there to try and help with any meetings and trying to get everyone to be basically on the same page and make sure we're all talking the same thing.

And if I may add, I think this is a fantastic addition to the information we already provided at the front counter at City Hall. We've created an outline that we share with these food vendors on the permitting process, on working with the health department, kind of the regulatory process, if you will. This is now going to add the business component of it. My understanding with economic development is they're going to help businesses from the very beginning when they just have a concept to help them with a business plan and some resources. Then they come through us and even after they're operating, maybe they're ready to move into a brick and mortar or we can send them back to T-Biz. There's a lot of back and forth that happens between the T-Biz and City Hall and our two departments, but that's intentional. I think we want to have that coordination and the more information we can provide, our small businesses, not only on the regulatory process, but also on the business and financial resources that are out there. I think it's only going to enhance our outreach to them.

Okay. Moving forward on our agenda, item five, communications. Any communications received?

No communications.

All right. Item six, council reports and items of interest. Vice Mayor Harrell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On the 6th, I represented the mayor at the reopening of Grandma's house. It's been about a year since Laura passed away. They've had to get some things in order, which now has been completed and it's opened. And it's now being supervised and run by Monica Lindsay, who comes to us by way of, I believe it was Baltimore. A lot of interest, a lot of excitement. It was a great opening again. So I look forward to continuing on with that. and then on the twelfth attended the Downtown Association.

Councilman Segal.

Yes, I just wanted to say that on August the sixth as well, I attended the first Avanz Atelier Marketplace event. It was great. There was about 2,600 people that showed up with 70-plus vendors, food, and a number of things that were provided. They had live music. 300 backpacks were given away to kids, and it's a great event. Then the following Thursday, they had a little bit less, about 2,000 people that showed up. To the event. And so this Thursday again is another Thursday night market where there's a lot of food and vendors and there's a farmer's market. There's a lot of different things that are going on and it'll be going on every Thursday till October 22nd. And again, they will have live music. tonight, I mean, Thursday night. So it's just a great event. I'm glad that they're moving forward and it was very well organized and congratulations to all the folks who participated in the Tulare Marketplace at Zumwalt Park.

Pictures all over social media. Good, good turnout.

So you saw pictures all over social media. Good.

Yeah, good stuff. Councilman Medeiros?

On August 11th, I attended the monthly Mid-Kaweah GSA meeting. That was August 11th. August 12th, the ribbon cutting for AgWest Farm Credit with our mayor, who did a great job. Thank you. Other than that, that's it for the sake of time. Let's keep moving.

Yes.

I got a note handed to me. Did I say something wrong?

No, I have notes handing. I just want to make sure. I thought maybe somebody wanted to speak. Yeah, I think to piggyback with that, it was great to be at the AgWest ribbon cutting. I don't remember how many years they said in Tulare, but what, 103 years altogether? What was the years that they've been in business?

They used to be downtown Tulare. Yeah. And then they were farm credit. I mean, they were... federal land bank production credit at one point, then they merged that into Farm Credit West and moved out to the site that was built just before the overpasses were built. And then there was mergers and now they're AgWest Farm Credit. The amazing thing, in reality, was the architecture of the building that existed and the way they encompassed the expansion so that it looks like it was all built at the same time, virtually, and having the exposure of that facility right on Freeway 99 is a real credit to AgWest Farm Credit and a real... real exciting for the city of Tulare.

Yeah, it was great to learn about their history when I was there, a deeper history. As well for Council, I attended the TCAC meeting on Monday. And last week, I did attend the Cal City South Valley collaboration event. Thomas and other staff, Jason, were there as well. A key topic that came up there in their presentation was just, you know, they were sharing information coming out of Sacramento on the vehicle Miles traveled. Ted Smalley at TCAD gave us an update on STIP, State Transportation Improvement Fundings, and the FTIP. So really what it comes down to is collaboration and money, money, money, money that helps with our road projects in Tulare and in the region. It's good information. Moving forward, well, item number seven, consent calendar. I did receive a request from staff council members that John Potter, Staff is requesting to pull 7.4. John Potter, 7.7 7.8 and 7.14 for different reasons, I think, so there's those ready those items are not ready to be in front of us for action at this time with 7.5 was not part of that Thomas.

Before we dispense, I had one question though on 7.4. I don't know if it's part of why they got pulled or just a question, if I may, Mr. Mayor, but on the side letter agreements on this particular topic that are part of 7.4, I noticed that in the close seal one, there was a clause missing that the rest of them had. So under the rest of them is under F, They're labeled A through D, half or whatever. And the CLOSIA is like one through five, one through six. So it's labeled a little different, but it was regarding the minimum, nothing in this policy shall reduce the leave. So all the other ones had it except for that one. So I don't know if it's just oversight or they just have a different contract.

Allow us the opportunity to review and we'll get back to you.

Yeah, so I just wanted to note that because that's the reason why I have pulled it is just that the CLOSIA contract had a diff didn't have this clause and the, all the other ones did. So just.

Thank you. Before staff come back, we'll double check that.

Okay. Does council have any other items to pull or a recommended action?

Um, just real quick. So, um, so the other one that's recommended for, uh, postponing is 7.1, four as well. So just, again, just wanted, I had also requested, I was going to request for that to be pulled, but maybe in the looking at it once again, I had two sort of questions on this. The first one is, is there a threshold in our purchasing policy for something like this going out to RFP? So is there a threshold that has to be under it? And then the last one is, well, they're in the scope of work that the company's doing. Will there be a specific area for an over-cross or will there be options presented to council in terms of like cross over here or over there in terms of like their scope of work that they're looking at? And so those are the two questions that I was going to ask. And I don't know if that'll be something that we looked at as well.

I can answer both of those now. uh there is a purchasing threshold for different types of services and different dollar amounts however in this case michael miller will correct me if i'm wrong your council will recall that every year we go not every year but we have a number of times we'd go out to get contracts for continuing services from firms, engineering firms, architecture firms, landscape architecture firms, to do a lot of the ongoing work that we do. And so when we have opportunities that come up from time to time, we'll contact them and they'll give us, sometimes we work with one firm that we already know has a specialization in that process and they went through the separate RFP process. Sometimes we can, that work can be done by several different firms. We might reach out to each of them and say, how much would you charge for this work? And we pick one of them. Michael, does that sound correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And then in terms of the location, not really. There won't be multiple options. This is a proposed location of putting a Interchange and over crossing over the railroad through the city's corporation yard. So it really would just align with international. Agri center way extension as it comes over 99 and heads West. Go, it would go straight right through J street right through the corporation yard. We had a conversation with union Pacific if they would allow an under crossing. in addition to the concept of an over crossing and they said they will not allow an under crossing they would only allow an overhead an over crossing just like at or very similar to what's at cart mill uh and so this item we have to some we have to do some more work on this we'll bring it back in the future and then uh then i'd like to ask 7.13b pull from the consent which one

Can you pull 7.3.

So what we have remaining so far, 7.1, 7.2, 7.5, 7.6, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, 7.12, 7.15, and 7.16. I'll move the consent calendar as described by . Second.

We have a motion and a second. Just for clarification, there was a couple of items that indicated that I had a potential conflict of interest, and I came to the, there isn't a significant nexus that brought me to the point to where I felt like I did. So I am gonna vote yes on adoption of these conflict, these consent items.

Okay, so we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That's approved. 7.3. Mr. Medeiros?

I just want, there's a couple of things I wanted to, I think Mr. Segal has indicated that he likes to have this presented whenever it comes in front of us. And I also wanted to have an update as it relates to status of active projects, the International Agri-Center Way Extension. We had a, Michael, I think we had a timeline. And these days in light of, John Potter, I should have brought this up, I guess, in items of interest my inactivity during the period of time to file to run for office that kind of made clear that some of these items. I'd like to see completed within the next few months. John Potter, Are we on track.

We're still on the last schedule that was put together and shared with everyone, which is ready to list for construction October 5th. All final revisions for the various NEPA studies have been submitted to Caltrans and are sitting up with them. right now being reviewed. We're hoping to have those cleared by the end of August, which then gives us from the end of August to October 5th to get ready and list the project, put it out to bid.

Can we work on some of these items to put it out to bid contemporaneous with waiting for approvals on some of the other items so that we have no delay whatsoever?

Yeah, there's actually not a whole lot that needs to be done. The plans are complete. The specifications are complete. It'll just be a matter of filling in dates in certain areas. So it's not going to be a significant amount of time to actually put it out to bid.

Very good. Other than that, I had no questions as it related to the report, Jennifer, unless you wanted to add something.

No, I don't think I had anything else. Again, just a lot of building permits in the last month. So the summer has been very active. So that's great.

Okay. Do we have a motion to receive the report? Anybody else have any questions? If not, I'll make the motion.

Second.

We have a motion and second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Motion's approved to receive the economic development updates. Thank you, Jennifer. 7.13, Councilman Segala.

Well, just had a couple of questions for Alex. This particular item has to do with an agreement with Salt Light to provide some services for the homeless. I was reading through the new staff report, and I just had... a couple of sort of questionnaire to verify something I'm trying to understand. So in the staff report, It's noted that the grant is being provided to assist with dealing with some casework or some casework regarding homeless folks that will not be in the shelter, that are not going to necessarily be in the shelter. It states that the funding is going to be within the city and the immediate surrounding areas. So are we providing services outside the city, like in county areas?

So if I'm understanding you're correct, I think just generally what the gap that staff are looking at with this award recommendation to Salt Plus Light is to have an organization that has a necessary experience to offer what we call rapid rehousing or outreach case management housing navigation for people that are likely going to be ineligible to go to the shelter and for folks that inevitably will not remain in the shelter. So it's a... best practice to provide for community-wide street outreach, if that can be possible. And in this organization, they're not going to be beholden just to work within city limits. They'll be able to follow people and provide ongoing case management, at least for a year's period, if in fact these folks move out of the community. But by and large, if you look within the staff report and the attached agreement that was provided, their schedule is going to be for functionally the vast majority, if not entire of their time will be spent working along city staff. There could be an opportunity for PD and for code enforcement to notify this other agency prior to encampment actions to give this group an opportunity to offer services.

Right, because I think that kind of just... kind of what jumped out at me was, I know that, you know, we have a Tulare first policy with the shelter, right? That there is criteria that you have to be from Tulare. I mean, there is, I think, a percentage, I think a quarter from other county areas as part of a deal with the county. So someone from Porterville or Woodlake or Goshen or whatever technically could be housed at the center. So I was just curious to see that kind of that kind of jumped out at me because obviously this is a grant we got for the city for residents. But so you're telling me that that someone that lives outside of the city limits within the anywhere in the county or just specific areas is eligible for services as well?

No, sir. So the intention of this is to have an organization. So the Tulare Cares Emergency Shelter Team, which is contracted to the Lighthouse Rescue Mission, their focus is to provide intake for all the people experiencing homelessness that are going to be eligible for that. They're going to fall under the Tulare First Policy. Though there's likely, which we can see observationally throughout the community, tens, if not over 100 people experiencing homelessness right now based off point in time count data that may not be eligible for the emergency shelter or folks that go into the emergency shelter that are gonna be exited for a variety of reasons, both involuntary and voluntary. So this group will provide street outreach within city limits with the intent to get those people housed as well. So this is not running contradictory to the focus. The vast majority of the city's resources are going to the operations of Tulare Cares Emergency Shelter. This is a supplement where instead of asking Tulare Cares or city staff to lead street outreach and resolve homelessness for people that may exit themselves from the shelter or for people that are in fact ineligible, this could be an opportunity for the city to leverage a best practice. and enforcement and offer of services to anybody experiencing homelessness within the city of Tulare. Though that point on outside of city limits, that was meant to note that if in fact somebody moves just outside of city limits, this organization can still offer help to them. Though the initial point of contact is happening within city limits.

And so one of the reasons a person can be ineligible is that they don't meet the criteria that they're from Tulare. That could be one of the reasons.

That could be one of the reasons, but there's, I mean, the people experiencing homelessness, it's a fluid population. No, no, I understand. And so there's going to be people that likely have been in and out of homelessness or been street homeless within the community for a year or more, but that in and of itself won't establish somebody to be eligible to be, to utilize the Tulare Care Shelter.

And then along those lines, So for the case management, I think you set up the grants up to 30 right individuals that can be monitored throughout whatever timeframe. Where where are those folks eligible to be housed anywhere outside the city as well? So there's a spot. let's say at Salt Lake's facility, they can recommend them to their own facility or they can rent them to, what is the Eden House, I think, is that what it's called, the Mycelia? So technically they can go, if there's no room for them in Tulare, they can be housed in Porterville, Lindsay, wherever. And that includes the village that Salt Lake manages?

Well, basically for anybody experiencing homelessness that goes to an emergency shelter like Tulare Cares or is engaged when they're street homeless, we call it the coordinated entry system in Tulare County. And the idea is that available permit supportive housing or interim housing anywhere in our county would be made available to people working with the case manager. So in this scenario, if the city has an organization like Salt and Light that's focusing on everyone that's not going to utilize emergency shelter, they would just connect or facilitate exits to interim permanent housing wherever it may exist in the county, just like a Tulare CARES team is going to do for their guests. This is just adding a layer of service at least for the first year of the shelter's operations when there's gonna be some unpredictability and understandably movement of folks in and out of the shelter. This might bolster things and then we might be able to resolve homelessness for those folks as well.

Right. And I think that I definitely agree that that should be the end point, that that should be the final purpose of the whatever funding we have through this grant. So I'm just curious to see where would folks be housed? Because if you're ineligible to be at the shelter or you don't follow the very minimal rules that there are there and you... you end up out in the street again, then what happens, right? So this attempt to take care of that, and I was just curious to see, you know, how far the reach would be in terms of, you know, like I said, the language within the surrounding areas, the language that was in there, and then where they could go potentially, right? The idea is to get them off Tulare streets. The shelter is the first option, of course, but if that doesn't work, then we need to figure out where they go. So I just wanted a little bit of clarification in terms of how that was gonna play out. So I appreciate that.

If I can add a couple other quick comments. This is a good example where we sometimes will receive comments from citizens that don't necessarily understand grants, right? Grants are very complex and they change all the time. Sometimes people will say, well, I don't think we should be using this $125,000 for this purpose. We've already spent too much money on homelessness. We should fix our streets. And what I would say is, first thing is you can't use this grant to fix streets, right? So what we're always doing is we're trying to match needs with available grants, right? So if the grant shows up and says, oh, we will do these things with it, we're going to use that money before we use our local dollars, right? So we're always finding opportunities. That's the first thing I want people to understand. The second thing is, the way I think of this a little bit is, As this discussion was going, you know, if you're a person that finds himself homeless and you're in our city, we've had this discussion many times. We are providing this homeless shelter and assuming that you meet our criteria requirements, you should go to the homeless shelter. And if you find yourself not going to the shelter, choosing not to go to the shelter, and you're creating an encampment somewhere in the city limits, you're going to ultimately be arrested and taken to jail. That's the reality of it. This doesn't change any of that. That has been the approach and the strategy from day one. However, to Alexis's point, there may be some individuals that a part of a softer approach is you can go to jail. Or you can work with Salt and Light through this grant to see if you can be relocated somewhere else outside of the community in one of the facilities. And so we're trying to do both. Not only is that consistent with our ongoing philosophy, right, that we are firm, but we're also humane in how we treat these individuals. But this is the part that's important in my mind besides that piece. If you want to keep getting state grant funding, you have to remember the state doesn't have the same philosophy we do. So we have to try to also meet their interests, their goals, their requirements if we want to keep trying to get state funding. Because what will happen is we'll apply for state funding and they'll be like, well, how are you dealing with this, this, and this? And if we don't deal with it the way they want us to deal with, we get no money. So this is an example of where we're going to use some dollars that we can't use to fix roads. and we're going to offer a slightly softer approach to those who don't qualify and find them a humane place to go with these grant dollars not our local dollars and still be eligible to get more state funding so that i want you to see that whole picture okay thank you okay well there's no other questions uh if there is other questions okay alexis uh just clarification

These are grant funds, the PLHA funds that are provided by the state of California. To a certain degree, we're passed through, is that correct, to Salt and Light? These are not general fund? Correct, yeah. Not general. What do we have? Because the state's given us the money to administer it, and we're choosing through this agreement to administer it through Salt and Light. I didn't read the agreement. word for word, but just so that it's clear, do we have in this agreement assurances that Salt and Light uses it for people experiencing homelessness in Tulare and they don't take that money that has been allocated to the city of Tulare and use it other places that they provide services?

I appreciate the question council member. What was set up in the scope of work of the agreement is there's actually an exhibit that talks about a schedule for their full-time staff. And it's gonna be a requirement of the contract that city has with if council chooses that their street outreach and their offer of services were gonna be for people experiencing homelessness within city limits. Of course, their case management work could function to get them housed in a different community. but they are not starting their street outreach and picking up clients in communities outside of the city of Tulare. Their focus is just our community.

And I ask this question because I want to make it clear to the people. I thought it was important that we as a council and you making the presentation, that it be clear, that point be clear to the public at large, that this money's not coming in from the state and then we're sitting there and turning it over to another agency and they're free to spend it however they want, which doesn't, help the city of Tulare exclusively under the terms of this grant. So that is clear in the agreement itself that they have parameters under which they're going to administer the funds that we're passing through to them.

Correct.

And this has gone on for more than just this year. We have done that with them for how many years?

Yeah, I would say if not with Salt Plus Light specifically, but with comparable nonprofit organizations, we've had street outreach agreements like this to offer case management for the almost six years that I've been with the city. So it's a common practice, just this time it's going to be unique because now we have a really formidable emergency shelter where in theory, the encampments should be not as persistent, not as large though. We're still want to offer this service for, and I want to also note it's only for a year term. So, you know, we hope that once things are functioning, the encampments are essentially rare and brief and there wouldn't be a need for considerable street outreach like this. Sure. Yeah.

Thank you.

Of course.

So Mayor, before I do the motion for this item, just real quick, maybe in the next, in the weekly report, I know we sponsored a bill in Sacramento regarding homeless housing. So I don't know if we maybe get an update or that bill's passed or stuck in committee or got killed or whatever. So maybe an update on that. But without any other questions, I'll move to adopt item 7.13 on our consent calendar.

I'll say it.

Okay, we have a motion and second for approval of 7.13. All in favor? Aye. Motion approved. Thank you. Moving forward to item eight, 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, you can press nine on your phone to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. We have 8.1, a resolution of necessity for APN 172-370-032. Mr. Thomas.

Sorry, I'm still pending the appraisal, so I just wanted to get a motion to continue this to September 1st so we don't have to re-notice it.

Okay, I think counsel with that is, I look to legal counsel that we actually open the public hearing and then continue the public hearing.

You don't need to, and especially because this is a resolution of necessity for a specific property, we'll have to keep it open regardless for the property owner to come at the next meeting. So you don't have to open it at this time, but you can continue it to the next meeting.

Okay. I'll make a motion to continue this to the September 1st, 2026 council meeting.

I'll second. Okay. We have a motion and a second to continue this to the September city council meeting. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? OK. Moving forward on our agenda.

Well, just a quick question. Is this delay anything on that project?

No. This is a project that Woodside and Edison are working on for a power pole relocation. That's already taken them some time. So we don't anticipate it's going to delay it any further than it's already been delayed. OK.

Item 9, general business. 9.1, investment performance review by PFM Asset Management.

Mr. Roberts. I'm going to start off. Comments related?

I generally don't. I do for public hearing, not for general business. I can. What Councilmember Medeiros is referring to is that for comments from the public related to general business, As well, if you wish to provide public comment, you can press 9 on your phone to raise your hand or click Raise Hand in the webinar. For items under general business, we will call upon for public comment. Is that helpful? No, I don't. However, I take the point, which is to all the public, There are times in general business. I have not went to public comment. And so I should. So it helps me to stay mindful. Yes. To go to public comment during that period. Okay. 9.1 investment performance review by PFM asset management.

So, Council, I'm just going to provide a quick introductory comments on the next two items. We're happy to present these, and I'll turn it over to Mark, and then Mark will introduce our guest. Council, I recall a little over a year ago, management recognized that the city really had not in its history been utilizing professional asset management services. We've been doing a lot of that in-house with staff, and or allocating the majority of our funds in one or two different places. We felt based on the performance that we were receiving and based on our observations of other organizations that it made a lot of sense for us to seek out proposals from professional firms who specialize in this type of work. We have a considerable amount of assets to be invested that we thought we'd be able to achieve a greater rate of return, in particular in terms of some short-term investments. You'll recall we hired a firm to do that. That firm is here today to share with you their sort of one-year results of that efforts, and I'll turn it over to Mark.

Thank you, Mr. Mondale. Yes, as the city manager alluded to, the city has taken measures, several actually, over the past approximately 18 months to enhance the city's investment returns. Turning the city over, a portion of the city's investment portfolio or surplus funds over to PFM asset management for active portfolio management as opposed to the, what you might call, passive management that was occurring before has been beneficial. The city acquired the services of PFM Asset Management in November of 2025. There was, as the city manager also said, there was a considerable amount of assets to transfer and they don't just turn over and sell everything. So once we got the agreement signed and we got the account set up over the next several months, five to six months, they set up the portfolio that they can now pretty much call their own as far as what they're managing for the city. And so the presentation that is before you will be the first full year of management of the assets under PFM Asset Management. And, sorry, Michael Cronbetter, the Relationship Manager with PFMAM, is here to present the results from that year. Michael.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate the introduction and background on the content I'll share with the city today. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council and staff. Appreciate this opportunity to come and present our first presentation to the city for the work we've been doing with the city, which we are greatly appreciative of the partnership that we have to be able to serve the city and continue to add value through the markets that we are contributing through our management of the portfolio for the city. It's a pleasure to be here. One little fun fact, I'm from the Valley. I grew up in Fresno and my grandmother still lives in a neighboring town here. So I spent a lot of time here coming to visit. So it's good to be here. I'll start by saying I see my name up there alone on this title page, and it's kind of embarrassing because this is not a me effort. This is a really large team effort. I get to come and talk to everybody and report on the changes in the portfolio. But ultimately, there's a team, a portfolio management team, a credit and a strategy group and analysts and just a team of various people, accounting and so on, that we should all appreciate through this. So again, I'll just... be the lucky one to get to present. Turning to the first page, I thought it might be a good idea to set expectations for the portfolio. Obviously the city is a local agency of California and therefore it's subject to California's government code and section 53600 the section that begins 53600 in terms of what it can and cannot buy and how it must invest or may invest the city's reserve funds. So we are managing within those confines and it does outline three objectives for the portfolio and an order of priority. It's safety of principle, And then liquidity. We've got to meet the liquidity needs of this city and then return on investment on investment. So in terms of safety of principle, what we're talking about is high grade fixed income securities, non-speculative investing, not stocks. It's diversification requirements, limitations on maturities and so on. liquidity. Of course, we're maintaining sufficient funds. The city does a good job managing its operating needs for the current year, looking at overnight investments to make sure that the city continues to operate with sufficient cash and then finally return on investment. Our job is to maximize what we can with the funds that are available within the guidelines of the city's own policy and of course state code. So just as an overview in terms of types of investments, we're looking only and able to only purchase those in that top section that's labeled high grade fixed income off to the far left in that vertical print. Everything between treasuries listed at the top row down to local government investment pools is what we're able to purchase. And of those in the green section out to a maximum of five years. That's the policy that's generally state code five-year max. There are situations where you can go beyond that with certain approvals, but that's where we're investing for the city. So items that you may be more familiar with in pension or your own retirement plans, mutual funds with equities, et cetera, everything listed beyond that local government investment pool row is strictly off limits for this portfolio. So everything in green is permitted and what we're looking to do to diversify the city's funds for safety. And then moving to the city's investment portfolio for the fiscal year end, June 30th, 2026, it's appropriate that I'm here. It's the first full year we've been able to manage. So we have that opportunity to present the performance over that time. And over the year, the market value of securities, which includes security market values, accrued interest and excess cash that remains to be invested or may still be invested, came to $156.6 million for the portfolio. And as I mentioned, we're looking to invest only out to five years, but we don't put everything at five years and keep it there. Bonds have various maturities within the portfolio with various durations. And the average of that is at 2.06 years. We are looking to target a two point, well, we're looking to target what the benchmark of the portfolio is. We have a benchmark that measures performance and help guide strategy. And the duration of the portfolio is 2.01 years as of June 30th. So we're about two and a half percent beyond that as of June 30th, that's within kind of our 5% up or down mark. But we are leaning toward a longer duration at this point. We feel it's a good time to extend duration where we can, although ultimately we want to stick to what the strategy is, that zero to five year. We use a zero to five year US Treasury index. And overall, all bonds in the portfolio, if we were to let them mature, we have a current average yield of all positions in the portfolio of 3.52%. And that compares to where the market was on that same day to 4.37. So we are trailing market by that amount. Part of that was the dramatic increase of rates since year to date, the unexpected turn of impacts that we'll kind of look at in just a moment with higher inflation and kind of geopolitical concerns and pass through prices of energy that caused inflation and market concerns. So yields did rise about 70 basis point on the two-year treasury. So there was that impact as well. That's showing a higher yield at market as of June 30th. But significant improvement over the prior year in terms of the portfolio's earnings at this yield. And looking at credit quality for the portfolio, we have a requirement on any credit, security in the portfolio with credit on it. This on the bottom left quadrant represents S&P's rating, but there may be other credit rating agencies that have higher or different ratings. So we're only reflecting S&P with this particular chart. And about 74% of the portfolio at this time is in AA or better. There are some indications here. Triple B, for example. Again, that's just S&P, but the requirement is a single A among any of the nationally recognized statistical rating organizations. And so Moody's or Fitch are others that we also rely on. And names like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, or Wells Fargo, where they have a triple B with S&P would show in this orange section. But we otherwise meet that criteria. And then the not rated, these are asset backed securities in the portfolio that by Moody's and Fitch are AAA rated. So the highest of credit ratings there. Um sector allocation. If we look to the top right, we like to see colors here because diversification also serves to that safety model. It also lends to higher returns and asset types like corporate bonds, which we have done a good job facilitating diversification into that sector. This chart looked very uniform the prior year with primarily agencies in the portfolio. So we feel confident about the diversification here. Currently, corporates lead. Federal agencies and CMBS represent about 55% of the portfolio. Those are also government securities. And then treasuries round up kind of the top holdings as well. Duration distribution is simply how the portfolio securities within the portfolio compared to the benchmark itself. Ultimately, we get to a similar duration, but each of the ranges of years may differ a little bit. And so we reflect that here. Blue bars are the city's portfolio versus the benchmark's gray bars.

Michael, would you take a moment? For those who may not understand the difference between duration and maturity, they may think it's the same thing. Could you explain why? what affects maturity, why you might want it higher and when the market is in one place and or you're expecting it to be in one place versus the other.

Yeah, thank you. Duration is the measure of the portfolio's change in value for a given percent of change in interest rates. So the higher duration, the larger the impact the portfolio will react to changes in interest rates. And again, the portfolio is exclusively fixed income securities. So all of the positions in the portfolio have a component of interest earnings on that holding. unlike other types of securities like stocks. So these are all interest bearing. So the higher the duration, again, the more impact in volatility the market values will have as interest rates rise and fall. As interest rates rise, market values fall in fixed income. And conversely, as interest rates fall, market values rise. Maturities are the final maturity when the final principal payment of a particular security will be paid back to the investor along with that last interest payment date. Okay, great. Thanks for the question. We'll flip over directly to the portfolio's performance for the three-month and one-year period ending June 30th. Here we're looking at... the contributions to the returns of the portfolio. The interest earned is accumulated interest in the portfolio. So for the one year, if we just look to that column, the one year column, total interest earned is $3.89 million. And there was a change in market value. And as I just said, thanks to Mark's question, the overall over the past year, interest rates had fallen in general, although there's been a trend of rising rates lately. But since the prior year, interest rates did fall, and that helped contribute to a market value increase of 1.3 million. So the total dollar return, as we're reporting here, of 5.2 million, this includes that accrued interest and change in market value, which may or may not be realized. The change in market value includes just strictly beginning of period, end of period, and the change in market value of the portfolio. So a component of that is unrealized gain as well.

Can you clarify, just so I know what our portfolio is doing compared to benchmark? Benchmark is expectation of performance. Is that going in? Is that what we're looking at? Thank you.

Excellent question. Benchmark sets... kind of the strategy for the portfolio, the performance, how the portfolio should be performing, gives context to how we're doing compared to something. And for the portfolio, as footnoted there, it's the zero to five-year U.S. Treasury index in footnote four. That was selected because of the maximum maturity, because the primary The primary objective of the portfolio is safety. So we're using that zero to five-year US Treasury index because it most, appropriately sets the tone for the portfolio.

And it's within the parameters of what's permissible under interest circumstances.

Correct. It wouldn't be appropriate, for example, to choose a one to 10 year when that's a different part of the yield curve that creates very different results.

Or take a flyer on a corporate stock of some sort. You can't do that anyway.

I'm sorry?

Or take a flyer on some stock, IBM or Apple or whatever you make. Correct. Or a high yield Bond right right during this one year we had 5.2 million that's what's indicated in total return yes return during a light period prior to you entering into our investments, what was our return. Or am I jumping ahead?

Well, not really because he's not going to be reporting on that. But suffice to say that when we transferred the assets, the average return was 83 basis points or 0.83%. You can see how that compares to the performance over the past year. Yeah, it's quadrupled.

Okay, so basically... It's a quarter. It was a quarter of this figure. So we've got four times as much as

Pretty much, yes. If you look at the investment returns from 2025 and what we're projecting in 2027, you're going to see a sharp increase due to this and other measures we've taken. Unfortunately, only a small portion of that goes to the general fund because the city has many funds. But yeah, you'll see a significant increase in the performance of the portfolio.

And most of this is in the enterprise fund that Tricia manages. Is that correct, Tricia?

Correct. Yes, it goes to those funds as well.

Yeah, yeah.

That doesn't mean Trisha gets to spend those money.

No, she's got them allocated already. Is that the best way to put it?

Yeah, we're saving our rate payers with those savings.

Good. OK, great. Fine. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions and observations. So as you were asking, the benchmark is kind of the performance measure that we aspire to exceed. And we've done that for both periods reported here, both the last quarter ending on June 30 and for the full year. where we began that since inception of the portfolio is June 30th, 2025. That was the end of the first quarter of active management of the portfolio. And then Mark shared with you prior to that, it was the setup of the account and the transition over to have PFM manage that this portfolio. And so therefore the one year column and the since inception, the numbers are the same because they measure the same period over time will allow the other columns will fill up of course. So this is the total return page. And the next page shows from more of an accounting view, actual earnings achieved on the portfolio. It strips out unrealized gains and losses and looks only at any realized losses or gains in the portfolio, as well as that interest earned, which is interest earned is the same number from the prior page. Now we're reporting only realized gains and losses. And then there's a kind of an amortization book value that's held on these bonds over time. The bond changes until its maturity date. So this is reflecting that accounting change. So these are kind of your book earnings, if you will, for the three month and one year period as well, with the one year being 3.5 million in earnings. And that, again, is the since inception date. This would kind of most closely tie off to that first page when we started talking about the portfolio and the yield was showing at 3.52. This kind of ties out to that figure. And we have made significant progress over the year to increase that. So earnings continue to grow. That would end the portfolio portion. And I'll just kind of speak to some points in the market and economy to give an indication of what we're monitoring in the markets to maximize value in the portfolio. If there might be any questions on this, I'll be happy to entertain them. OK. So each quarter, we provide a report to the city on its earnings, on activity, on holdings, on market values. And we concern ourselves with a theme over the quarter and what's transpired and what we're looking at and monitoring to maximize, again, the return of the portfolio. The economy, through a lot of volatility over the past six months, seven months, has remained quite resilient. The economic growth does continue to be supported by consumers and business investment. What we saw in the past few months of the year is kind of an interesting contributor to GDP more than we've seen in the past, and that's technology investment. That's really supported growth. In the first quarter, that led growth. In the second quarter, consumers returned with more spending. So that's positive. We're seeing consumers continue to spend at a growth. There's always two sides to the coin though. And part of that is, although consumers are spending, the wages aren't keeping up with that growth. So when you look after inflation, wages aren't necessarily keeping up with that spending. So we're looking at maybe that as a leading indicator, something to watch for long-term sustainability, how healthy is the consumer. And since they represent about two thirds of GDP historically, and that's something that we take note of. Unemployment remains low. It's 4.1% most recently in July. That's down a little bit, but it might be down for the wrong reasons because participation rate in the economy also fell. So there seems to be a good and bad to every side of the story here. participation rate was 61.4%. And that's measured as people looking for work versus the total labor force in itself. So it might be the wrong number moving there to get to that unemployment rate. So something to continue watching. inflation remains the primary focus for the markets in the fixed income world anyway, and equity, I suppose. Obviously, with the introduction of the Iran war this year, energy prices kind of shot up. and it impacted headline inflation so the interest at the time when that began in the beginning of march was how that would pass through to core inflation where you strip out energy and food and just kind of look at discretionary spending components um and that didn't have as big of an impact as we saw with the headline inflation so that's positive because um that interim impact on energy didn't necessarily flow through to the greater core goods and services components um and it's since subsided as well so Inflation seems to be in check, although it still remains elevated. We've returned to pre-war, I guess, war levels as we saw coming into the year at 2.5% core inflation. And that's still a little bit elevated from what the Federal Reserve would like to see. So they haven't made any changes yet, given all of this input to their assessment on where monetary policy should be. Their overnight benchmark rate hasn't changed through this year. It's 3.5% to 3.75%. But if we look to the next page, The market is setting up potentially for rate hikes. This is the year-over-year change in U.S. Treasury yields from one year ago and June 30th, the year ending June 30th. The dark blue line represents U.S. Treasury yields on June 30th, and the light blue line represents the prior year. And the shaded area is where yields have been over the past year. So we're, I guess, in the upper area of the range of where rates have been. This is a surprise to the market that thought we were going to be seeing lower rates this year. I think most notably on the far left, the light blue line was higher a year ago because short-term rates really do follow what the Federal Reserve does with monetary policy. And they did reduce rates since that period. I hear myself getting into quite a bit of detail. Ultimately, what I just wanted to share here is that we're in a positively sloped yield curve where the city is getting rewarded for going out longer and getting higher yield. If we just look and focus in on the two year, which is now at 417 to substantiate the view that we have, that it's a good time to extend to lock in rates where we are. This compares the dark blue line, which is the two year Treasury over the past ten years and compares it to the ten year average and 20 year average. And we remain elevated to those. So we use that as well as the Fed funds rate. to to kind of substantiate that position so we are continuing to look for opportunity out in the market to continue buying um over the next several uh it'd be six or seven months the city still has bonds that were purchased at a lower rate environment so we'll continue to see we anticipate that overall average yield in the portfolio continue to rise as well as we reinvest those And finally, we'll end on factors to consider and things we're looking at. Off to the far right, the two squares stacked on each other, inflation and labor markets. This is what's considered the Fed's dual mandate. Inflation, of course, still remains a little bit elevated, but there has been some breathing room for the Fed to not tighten policy because of the recent data points that have come in and the labor markets I've kind of addressed. But these really do have a significant impact on yields. And so we've watched those very closely along with all the others that we have here as well. But I thought this would be a good point to end on just to show kind of things that we're considering in the decisions and strategy and as we carry out the strategy for the city. And I'll conclude and take any questions.

Council members, any questions on monetary policy, economic growth, inflation rate, consumer spending? The other fantastic areas we just went through.

Where's your grandmother from?

She and my grandfather had a farm in Lindsay back in the 1950s. And then she now lives in Visalia in Sierra Village.

He's a Lindsay boy down there, I think. Right.

Avenue 228.

There you go.

Thank you very much.

Good presentation.

Thank you. So perhaps just in recap, and I think for everybody here, I'm understanding this right, it was mentioned this is primary enterprise funds. Mark, is this 100% enterprise funds? Is it 97% enterprise funds? What's the mix here?

No, I mean, the city has 50-ish funds. The enterprise funds do represent I want to say about 40% of the overall portfolio or of the overall budget. I think as far as fund balance, which is essentially, or cash is essentially what this is, probably is about 50%-ish of the portfolio.

So quickly, what would you say the other 50% is? What are some of the major, I don't need all of the major other chunks.

Well, the general fund would be the next biggest. I apologize. I am drawing a blank, but there's just, I mean, those are the major. Those are what you would call the major funds. Everything else is smaller funds. Development impact fees is another one. But after that, you start getting into just many, many smaller funds where there's just smaller amounts distributed.

Can I take a follow-up on that?

Yeah, I just was gonna ask one more. But if with the what you had said the general fund so we receive a report that our general bond reserve balance is like 20 million. So would that general fund reserve balance be captured in this in this as well?

The portion of, I can't speak to exactly what the general fund balance is. We have a specific reserve of 15.4 and then some unassigned fund balance. But yes, the portion of that that is cash, yes, is captured in this. Yes, that would be surplus funds.

So we have a report here that's collectively the enterprise fund and the general fund investments that we're talking about here. Are these separated so that we know what the performance has been for the enterprise portion and, in particular, which ones are earning what? And how do we allocate that for the enterprise side, even though it's, let's say, you indicated 50-50? Can the enterprise fund perform at one level and the general fund perform at another? And they're separated in that regard? Is that how you're accounting that?

No, performance for one is performance for all. We allocate any of the interest on every part of the portfolio on the basis of average daily cash balance for the month. So everybody... If you have 10 million in cash that was invested for the prior period, you get, and another fund also has 10 million, they get the same allocation regardless of the nature of that fund. It's just, you might call it blended because we have these funds, we have a significant amount in the local agency investment fund or LAIF, and we also have sweep account investments with the bank. And so you have three different interest rates essentially They get blended. They're all posted separately, but the blended rate is the same for one and all.

So it's kind of like to simplify, kind of like this is a community property type of situation where the enterprise, which is one spouse and the general funds, another spouse, and we earn collectively together. how we deal with this, no matter what the rate is in the individual savings accounts.

As long as all spouses are happy.

There you go.

I like to say happy spouse, happy house.

Yeah.

And I would say all the developers impact these other children. Oh, okay.

I'm sorry I started this.

Don't get me started on the inverse relationship between bond prices and interest rates.

No, just thank you for your report. And I think the questions and with that is I know and I don't mean to embarrass any individuals. I just want to kind of put this message is we do have two individuals in our audience, at least that have will be coming up in election for city council as across our community. And I hope that this shows and is good information for those interested in being in City Council, that basically our savings account amongst those funds is $156 million. The interest rate for which you talked about at 854 interest in the quarter, but the gain and the whole interest, but with the gains is at $3,895,000. We have a report that is coming out of our general fund savings that came out, at least above the 20 million mark to be exact. I just hope that this information is very valuable and I think provides that public demonstration of how our accounts are doing, what we're doing with our accounts, and you get to see straight from the horse's mouth what those balances are for our community. So it's not negative, for example, which is great. But I just wanted to add that little summary. But thank you. Are we ready to move on, Council? All right. Thank you for the report. Thank you.

Our next presentation is also a financial one. I'll turn it over to Mark here in a second.

Can I take a step back? Sorry, Mr. Manager, I need to mind. I started where I said I did not allow public opinion and public comment. I'm always getting public opinion. For 9.1, I do want to ask if anyone in chambers would like to have public comment on the investment performance review by PFM Asset Management. Seeing that, do we have anyone on the phone? All right. Thank you. Back to you, Mr. Mondale.

Sure. Thank you so much. The next item is also a financial matter. You know, counsel, where we call that In addition to hiring a firm to help us with our short-term investments, we also hired a firm, went out and did an RFP process and hired a firm a year or two ago to help us with overall financial advisement. That firm is NHA Advisors. They help us with a lot of different things. They're sort of a, they help take a, you know, I have a saying that says, if you're always working in the business, it's hard to work on the business, right? And so all day long, we're in the business, all the directors are, I try to step outside of the business. And then we have a firm in HR advisors that sits there at a higher level with us also to look at strategically the investments we're making to different strategies we're moving forward with to say you know it might be better if you go left or right maybe better if you double something here or triple something there and so um they're going to be talking with you tonight about another opportunity we have to potentially save the right pair of some money by refunding refinancing some of our bonds and uh so i'll leave it at that for now mark i'll turn it to you

Yes, and Eric Scriven with the, I'm not sure if Mike Meyer is here as well, but Eric Scriven with the city's, there is Michael Meyer, is with the city's municipal advisor consultants, NHA, are here to present the proposed sewer refunding bonds.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. Eric Scriven here with NHA and my colleague, Mike Meyer, who actually put the presentation together for the city. We've got really six slides. It's very brief. It's an alert to this refinancing opportunity. Let me bring it up. Is that working? Is that up on the screen?

Not yet.

Eric, let me try to share it.

There we go.

Is it there?

Yeah. Just maximize it.

Yeah. Maybe that's yours. Okay. Thanks, Mike. All right. Six slides. As your finance director mentioned, there is a refinancing opportunity with your sewer revenue bonds. There's four bonds outstanding, two of which are now available to be prepaid if the interest rates were low enough to accrue savings. The 2015 and 2016 bonds are outstanding, approximately $102 million outstanding. There is $132 million of bonds that you have outstanding that have been issued that went to constructing and refurbishing the wastewater treatment facility in 2009. And then there have been subsequent refinancings. Since then, that's where we have our four transactions outstanding. As I said, the 2015 and the 16 are refinanceable if if it's attractive to do so. Next slide. So in aggregate, all four of the deals that are outstanding are approximately $10 million. You can see the pieces of the outstanding debt are kind of irregular. The 2015s are in the light blue, and the 2016s are in the gray. Again, the 2015s look to be what we call in the money for refinancing in the current market, and a portion of the 2016s appear to be in the money. So the 2015 and 2016 bonds, the sort of aggregate outstanding true interest cost in those bonds is 4.73. We've been tracking the potential transaction for refinancing these bonds over the last nine months. And we're trying to integrate it with your cost of service studies. And we've been seeing those interest rates vary between 3.5 to 4.1%. They're on the higher end of that range. Currently, as we all know, rates are going up. the savings won't be realized until any type of transaction has actually gone to market. So, but currently we're looking at a transaction that has an NPV savings of approximately 5%, which is above the industry standard of about 3% NPV and the projected cashflow savings for this refinancing as we sit here right now is about 13 and a half million dollars. So the idea is to monitor this transaction, gain direction, as we're going to ask for in the next slide or two. But we've been looking at this and there may be different ways to benefit the city's rate payers with this refinancing, integrate the refinancing, either doing a level savings or perhaps structuring a refinancing where we gain some of those benefits, the savings up front. The typical transaction process is about three to four months. This is sort of the standard process where you assemble a team and then you go through the legal disclosure and credit rating process. And then you go to the market and price the bonds and close a couple weeks after that. That takes about three or four months. And we do believe, based on the size of the transaction, that it should be a public offering versus a direct placement to a bank. Interest rates are lower with the public offering. However, it is more work. Therefore, it takes a little longer of lead time to prepare for such a transaction. The normal team that would be in place to execute such a transaction, of course, the city's finance department leads the effort. And as the city's municipal advisor, we would serve as the fiduciary and the essentially eyes and ears project manager for the transaction. And then you would have your bond and disclosure council and an underwriter selling the bonds. And there are other players as well, like a trustee, the credit rating agency would be engaged. And there are some other miscellaneous parties that assist in bringing a transaction to market and close. So we put these recommendations on paper. I think that we concur with them. Your finance department has had us put these down and I think we're in agreement that we would recommend that the city continue to evaluate the refinancing opportunity for the 2015 and 2016 bonds, authorize staff to engage the necessary team members to analyze structuring options and prepare the legal and investor disclosure documents, and then go through a standard bond financing process, including a credit rating. The idea would be to get the transaction teed up, if you will, so that it could be executed when the market is right, the savings thresholds meet the city's expectations. That would not happen where we would bring a transaction to city council's review and final approval at the earliest would be November of 2026. I believe that's it. So that's our final slide. And I'm glad to answer any questions.

Council members? Okay. I think in quick notes that I have, go ahead, Councilman Mendeiros.

My question is, basically what you're doing is you're watching the market and determining, in your opinion, when the best time is to strike. Is that correct?

We have been watching the market, but we wanted to be, in combination with staff, very strategic about when to execute this, knowing that you've been going through a cost of service study. And we want to make sure that we optimize the refinancing and integrate that so we keep the rates as low as possible for your customers. So, yes, we have been monitoring it, but we're not sure. We believe and recommend that the time is right to tee the transaction up so that you can strike. We want to make sure that the result, though, meets the city's expectations. So we work very closely with staff to structure the transaction and set the parameters for the right savings levels before we execute.

So the answer is yes, basically.

Yep.

Yep. Sorry. The 2015 and 2016 are the two that you're concentrating on because those can be prepaid at this time.

Correct.

And once you refinance or recommend and it's approved to refinance at favorable rates, when you refinance, those bonds are for a period of time not repaid. not be in a position to where they can be prepaid. Is that correct?

That's correct. Typically, you're going to be locked out from prepaying the new transaction for about 10 years. You can negotiate that, but that is the standard of the market.

So fundamentally, if you decide, which you apparently have or were arriving at that time, to make this move at a lower rate, you'll save the amount of money that... that you're projecting. But if rates continue to come down, even more could have been saved. That's kind of the projection that has to be made by experts such as yourself. Is that correct?

Well, no one's got the crystal ball, right? That's what I'm getting to. Go ahead. I mean, nine months ago, the interest rates were lower, right? We could have saved a lot more money. But we wanted to be very strategic and integrate this refinancing with your rate structure to optimize it and keep the rates as low as possible, truly. That's what we've been doing.

But there are a lot of factors when you take everything in conjunction with what's going on in the economy. the economy, the appearance is that there's right now a lot of inflationary aspects of what's going on that could very well cause this to be a problem if it continues to head in the other direction. So I can see where your recommendation may very well be we better strike now or tee it up, as you say, as opposed to waiting to see what's going to happen six months from now or a year from now or whatever the case may be. Is that fair?

It is. I think once we establish structure but also savings targets, the idea is to strike and not look back. could look back nine months ago as well, right? And say we could have done it nine months ago, but we want to make sure that we do, we get what we want and be thoughtful about how we structure the deal to maximize the benefit. But no one has a crystal ball for 12 months from now.

Just do the best you can and move on. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead.

No, I was just doing a recap, which is my understanding, like I said, 2015, 2016, $103 million in sewer bonds, $10 million annual debt service. You had mentioned the MPB savings at around 5%. So that would save us roughly $13.5 million towards the total bill, or roughly $680,000 a year, if my quick summary has that right.

That's correct. Although you can structure so that those savings are not uniform over the life of the loan, the 680,000, you could structure that 13 and a half million so that you front-loaded a little bit to enable it to benefit the rate payers in the near term. That's to be determined. I think looking for staff and counsel, to give direction as we get into the process. That does not need to be decided now, but something that I think is important.

And I think also, if I could, I think when we're doing these studies for rate studies as it relates to our enterprise fund, that's, if I'm not mistaken, that's more in line with decisions that the Board of Public Utilities will make. And we'll basically get reports on that. Is that correct?

TODD BANDUCCI- To a certain extent. But as you saw in their presentation, we do intend to bring it back to you guys as well. We want to get everything teed up and bring it back to you. It gets a little strange in the city of Tulare because of the bifurcation of those duties and responsibilities.

I don't think it's strange.

It's very unique and very well thought out.

100%.

I think the founders of our charter were geniuses. Um, I've just never seen anything like it before. So it's strange to me and I'm a strange fellow. So, um, but I, you know, we do intend to present this to them as well and make them aware of this. I'm hoping there's not a conflict between what you want to do and they want to do. I think everybody wants to save money. So I think we should be okay. I don't know, Tricia, if you wanted to add anything.

No, I was going to add the same comment. This same presentation is going to the board on Thursday. So some of these big decisions do have like joint approval requirements under the board and the city council. So that's why we bring them to both.

Okay. With that, I'd like to open this up for public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who would like to comment on 9.2 authorization to proceed with refinancing process for sewer revenue bonds?

Okay.

Clark, do we have anyone on the phone? All right.

Anything else?

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Scriven. We appreciate the presentation. Yes.

Um, thank you so much, uh, fellas. Um, I want to build off of something you said earlier the last presentation. So we're really pleased that we are able to show you tonight some other examples of things that the city is doing to save money to generate additional revenue. There's many other things we work on to gain greater efficiencies and reduce cost, et cetera. i just want to remind everyone that you know they might look at this information and say wow like the city's making four times on its investment earnings and so we wouldn't need a sales tax measure for example or the city could refinance these bonds and generate $10 million and we could use those dollars and fix all our streets. And the reality is, of course, no, you couldn't do that. These dollars are restricted on how they can be used, right? So they can't be used to do streets. And we're getting ready to come back to give you, I think probably in September, a pavement management study that's going to show you, I don't know what the numbers are, I haven't looked at it, but I'm going to, Bet it's going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars of work that's going to have to be done on our streets. That's in addition to the 1.5 billion dollars of master plan improvements that we have to deal with in the city. And that is compounded by the reality that we see other revenues. Some of the revenues we really count on, like sales tax revenue declining over the next five years. So If you only look at a little sliver of something like tonight, which we shared, you might, and it is something to be optimistic about, but you might look at that and say, oh, everything's great. And the reality is we're doing okay. But over the next five years, we're projecting some real challenges that are coming our way. People say, well, we haven't fixed the roads. And it's like, because we don't have dedicated revenue stream to fix the roads. And so that's why we're talking about some of these other strategies. And when you look at the totality of all these strategies, It puts us in a really good position going forward into the future. I just don't want that to be lost on anyone. Thank you.

If no one has, did we do, we did public comment, is that correct? I did. I'd make a motion that we authorize city staff and the city's municipal advisor to proceed with the next steps necessary for evaluating and executing a refinance financing known as refunding or teeing up, as was referred to several times, of the city's 2015 and 2016 sewer revenue refunding bonds.

Second.

Council, we have a motion and a second to authorize the city staff and the city's municipal advisor to proceed with the next steps necessary for evaluating and executing a refinancing of the sewer revenue funding bonds. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion approved. 4-0. Okay, moving forward on our agenda, 9.3, progress report on housing element, housing plan implementation. Mr. Anaya.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Isherwood, council members. We have a moment here to allow my colleague here, Alexis Costales, housing grants manager, to come to the podium. I'm going to kind of tag team this presentation, but... Quite a few slides. We're going to mostly hit the high points. This will be a conversation with council and there'll be a chance at the end for questions and feedback that we're requesting from the council. So with that, I'll start the presentation. Council may recall we adopted locally the city's housing element for the sixth cycle back in May. And so it's been a few months since then. One of the requests in the conversations we've had that we've heard from the DICE has been, hey, there's a lot of commitments here that the city is making in the housing element. And we have these numbers in our arena, housing production numbers we have to meet. How can the city do a better job of meeting those, especially when it comes to affordable housing? So this presentation is meant to provide an update on where we are with the housing plan how we intend to meet those goals and those actions in the housing plan um and so with that um is maybe we'll start at the beginning what is the What is the housing plan? So the housing plan is the last section in the housing element. The housing element has a fairly thorough needs assessment that looks at all sorts of data points that show what the housing needs are in our community in the city of Tulare. And then the housing plan is essentially how the city plans to meet those needs through a variety of, as you see listed there, the goals and policies. There's 15 implementation programs, which we'll cover this evening. And then there's actions and quantified objectives that are covered in those. In your staff report, there is a printout of that housing plan, of that chapter. So the goal with the presentation this evening is to review those programs in the housing plan. An update on the actions that have already been taken by staff that have been implemented by program since 2023. So the current housing element cycle runs from 2024 essentially is when it starts in January through December 31st, 2031. So we're about two and a half years in. And then a preview of anticipated actions we've yet to complete, as well as gathering direction information from council on the progress we've made on some of the challenges ahead of us. And so just to note, as we go through the slides, like I said, the housing plan verbatim in detail is included in your staff report. We're gonna focus on hitting the high points this evening in our presentation. And so the slides, as we go through them, we'll highlight several completed actions for each program, as well as those that are yet to be completed And then there's a progress bar that's indicated that essentially mirrors, hey, there's different actions for each program. Roughly, where are we for each program? Are we at 50% progress, 25% progress of actions completed and so on? So without further ado, we'll start with the first program. The first program is called Regional Collaboration, and it focuses on actions that the city would take to collaborate with our regional partners, whether it's TCAG, county, other surrounding jurisdictions in our region around regional planning issues, particularly around housing and transportation, right? So you'll see there, in terms of actions taken, some of the things we've done to collaborate and some of the anticipated actions that are described in the housing element that we've yet to implement. One potential idea you see there is something like a regional housing trust fund to provide greater affordable housing in our region. That's just one idea. You'll hear several ideas mentioned during the presentation. That particular example in some of the research that Alexis and I have been conducting came from our colleagues in San Joaquin County who have done just that and have taken a regional approach to creating kind of a pot of funds for affordable housing projects. Program number two, you've heard me mention this during prior presentations quite a bit. This is about having, this is kind of the first step, is how do we provide for the housing needs in our community at the various income levels? Well, the first step is we need to have enough sites zoned at the appropriate density to meet those needs. and then monitoring those sites to make sure we don't lose that inventory, right? So you'll see here, there's a couple of maps in the presentation and these are just examples. We're not gonna go in the weeds on them, but just to give you some, Some examples. So the one on the left, these are kind of maps we prepare when we meet with developers to show them, hey, you're a multifamily developer, for example, and you build higher density housing. Here are sites that we have in our city that are already zoned. to allow projects such as those that you're interested in developing as by right projects. So here's where they're located. On the right is the greater housing needs inventory, which was in our housing element. So that includes all of the opportunity sites. It includes the rezone site we had over by the winery, but it includes other sites. that are already zoned or have been up zoned to provide different, you'll see different colors. Those equate to also different densities, right? So we need sites for single family. We need sites for medium density, multifamily, as well as high density. And when we talk about no net loss, it means making sure that We're not losing the inventory of land we have available for multifamily development by allowing too many what we call down zone or zoning to lower density. And when we do that, the state actually requires by law that we replace that acreage by including other property that can incorporate those needs. Program three is a by-right approval. So this is a very specific language that the State Housing Community Development Department requires. This is something we do in practice already, but there's specific language they want in our code to make it explicit that this is a policy that's been codified. And you'll actually, Council, within the next month, this will be coming back to you. We are, knock on wood, I think this is the final revision for us to get certification from the state on this housing element. It's been adopted by Council. It's been in review now over the summer with the state. And they want us to make some very minor text modifications to this section of the ordinance. And this in particular pertains to, hey, making sure that if we have a developer that's actually willing to propose a project that includes 20% of their units as affordable to owners, so if it's an ownership project at 60% area median income or below, or to renters at 50% area median income or below, that that project is permitted by right. That's required by the state, and they just want to see that reflected in our development code. So once we bring that through and through council approval, we would meet our requirement for that specific program. Program four relates to replacement housing and displacement protections. So this is what can the city do to make sure, you'll see on the left, that we continue to work with our partners and with different legal groups to provide our community with resources and education around fair housing. that's required by law, but it's also just a practice of, I always say in our department, we're looking at the housing needs of our entire community from luxury housing, all the way down to transitional housing and our own house neighbors and everything in between. So it's how do we make sure that The folks in this community are educated and know, one, the rights, but also what resources are available for them, whether they're renters and they're participating in our tenant-based rental assistance program, or they're looking to become first-time homebuyers and participating in that program, which we'll talk about in further slides. And so one of the things that you'll see here in anticipated actions is some of the things we can do are, hey, maybe we adopt an anti-displacement strategy. What does that look like? and really at the core of that, this is something the state is really hammering home because in some communities, well not in some communities, this is one of the big kind of topics in urban planning, is how do you go into a community and increase investments in a positive manner and improve the community and make sure that the folks that are already living there that it's serving their needs and they're able to benefit that and it's not just displacing folks because all of a sudden property values just you know go through the roof and people are being evicted and so trying to be very intentional and that's a very there's more to that um and there will be you know future study sessions and policies that we can have with Council to explore that issue but that's what that program is is related uh to Program five is about accessory dwelling units. Council, you may be aware, I mean, you've heard of, I'm sure, ADUs or accessory dwelling units. For the past several years, the state has passed a number of laws really emphasizing, really at the end of the day, streamlining the process and making sure that local jurisdictions are not making it harder to develop these secondary units on residential properties. So one of the things we've done to show progress under this program, we've amended our zoning code to comply with state ADU laws. That's bare minimum, of course, but then one of the things that have been new laws passed now that we've incorporated that allows us to facilitate and promote the development of ADUs by establishing a and they do program essentially. And we have a webpage dedicated just to folks that wanna develop these in the community that includes, these are all the ways if you pull a permit for an accessory dwelling unit, these are the steps and it's heavily streamlined. There's very little kind of local provisions outside of state law requirements. And then we also have now adopted pre-approved plans. We've worked with an architect to develop a set of several plans. So someone could come into city hall and talk to the planners there and say, you know what, I want to prepare one of these units. pick a plan and if it fits on their site meets the requirements um you know that may get them a little closer to the feasibility of their project because now they can use that design it's been pre-reviewed by staff so it's already approved uh to be used with their permit and here's a picture of our accessory dwelling unit um page on the city's website on the planning department so we have um a place to submit plans. There's forms that the applicants fill out. There's forms that architects that want to submit plans to have available for folks to use, can participate in. And then we actually have links to the plan. So we have a studio at 360 square feet, a 484 square foot one bedroom, 748 and a 1200 square foot pre-approved plan. One of the things that you'll notice, actually if I go back a little bit on the to-do list is, how do we get this education out into the community and make sure more people are aware that we have these resources and that we really do our best to advertise and promote this so that accessory dwelling units in any neighborhood in Tulare if there's folks that have room in their backyard and a lot sometimes it's multi-generational housing right we will have whether it's the parents or grandparents they may want to live you know, on the same home, but still have their, in the same, on the same property, but have their own separate private space. Other times those can be turned into rental units and income units for families.

Yeah, I had a question along those lines. So what would be the driving force for, I know that in previous reports you shared with us that I think we've only had like 40 built over a five-year period or something like that. I think we're averaging eight a year or something like that for ADUs?

Yes, it's gone up recently. So we were averaging about five to 10 a year up until I think the last year or two, we're now about 20 a year. So it's doubled.

So what would be the driving factor? Is it more to make income, generate income for whoever puts it together or to provide... sort of more housing? Because I guess the question is, is there any limitations on those pre-plans? I mean, I saw one that was like 1,200 square feet. That's a pretty sizable ADU. Is there anything that prohibits them from turning those into Airbnb type of situations? Because that would generate income for someone that may need it versus someone that's trying to house...

people that need a place to live yeah there's been a little bit of back and forth at the state level on house strike at one point when they first were passing these adu laws you even had to have a covenant that says that the primary property owner has to live in one of the units and they got rid of that um the state's going all in on these adus and so i think they're willing to overlook things like short-term rental provisions now granted we're to larry so um Kind of a short answer I give to people when they ask about short-term rentals is we have not had a significant number of issues with them where it's a reoccurring issue. Once in a while, we'll have a problem property. We'll address it through working with our code enforcement partners, and usually it's resolved. But as it becomes an issue, we can adopt specific short-term rental regulations. Now, in some communities that have much higher tourism numbers, maybe along the coast or near a major tourist attraction, that is a major factor in their housing market. And in those communities, there are specific policies that are put in place as part of their ADU permitting to ensure that, hey, you have to have 30-day stays or longer. You can no longer or even longer in some communities. We'll see if the state comes in with various specifics. But as of now, they're pretty loose on the requirements. I think the intent is they want to see production and they want to see they see ADUs as a way to have low impact infill. So in other words, And we do see this in our city. Especially we have some of the older properties in town. They're deep, narrow lots that have alley access. You could easily fit a second unit and have off-street parking where it doesn't crowd the street necessarily. Although with ADUs, they don't require you to replace parking. But yeah, it hasn't really been an issue. And to answer your other question, From the applications we've seen at the counter, it's a split. We get folks that are, hey, we need extra room for a growing family where it's a multi-generational family. And then we also have folks that have rental units and they see it as, I'm going to get two folks living on this property where previously I had one or two families. And so, so far it's been a mix.

But is there anything that prohibits us as a city or as a council to kind of prioritize one over the other through incentives. For example, when you put out those, hey, here's some free plans that have been approved on what you can build. Those are made available to everyone. But if they were just made available to folks that may be committed to providing more of a housing type of scenario versus a for-profit scenario, are those things that prohibit a city from doing that?

No, well, to answer your question, the specific, the pre-approved plans, we have to make those available to all. So we cannot condition those on that they'd be used for like, say, affordable housing. But to your point, and you'll see that reflected in anticipated actions, one of the things we're going to look at is, hey, can we offer incentives that go beyond that? So maybe it's, you know, when it comes to improvements that are required, or maybe there's a certain, one of the biggest challenges with building accessory dwelling units, you could have pre-approved plans. If you look at the overall cost of a project, there is a cost to have someone design the plans, but by far the largest expense is actually getting the thing built, right? materials labor and that's where the state was offering financing they still do it's been very limited and oversubscribed and so can the city do something to create an incentive program there's been some cities that have these programs they call them like how's a neighbor where hey if you are willing to rent this at a certain rent cap right so it's affordable based on your areas area median income maybe the city has some skin in the game and can help offer some gap financing. Or maybe there's something around the development standards that the city can offer some flexibility on. So there is room for us to go beyond just the state minimum. And I think, honestly, and as we go through this presentation, with the housing element, a lot of it is, hey, you're checking the box, you're meeting requirements. But if we're really going to move the needle on terms of how do we get a greater variety of housing types, and especially at different income levels, I think it is going to take council and our community as a whole together to kind of take some of those steps of what else can we do, right, to go beyond kind of the minimum to get, especially on the development side, have these actually be incentives to achieve some of the goals we have. And then so moving along program six zoning code amendments. This is I'm glad to say this is the first program we have 100% achievement on. And the reason for that is because council may recall the comprehensive zoning update that we completed. And what staff did is we had a list. You'll see all the actions on the left here, actually on both sides. Many of these are driven by state law requirements around different things like transitional housing, just different modifications around parking that we have to implement by law. So as we were completing a comprehensive update, we had our consultant for that project incorporate all of these in our zoning code. So thankfully, we were able to meet all of these by adopting that zoning code, which thankfully your council approved. And we were able to show progress on that one. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Alexis to go over some of the next programs.

Hello again, council. Just a few notes here before jumping into program seven and the subsequent ones. For definitions, when we say affordable housing, think on the rental side, I'll just give you some figures. This is just a simple estimate. On rental housing side, think for Tulare County, which we would use, whether we're using HUD or federal or state limits that are set on annual basis. For an area median income for Tulare County, think for a household of four, that's about a little over 90,000. And then when we say low income, we're referring to households at 80% of 90,000. So that's usually around low 70s. So think household of four making about $72,000 a year gross income for all adults. Then for a single household with one person, that would be about $52,000 a year. So when we think rental housing, take those gross incomes, and usually the calculation is about 30% of gross income should be set aside over the course of the year to cover your monthly rental fees. On the homeownership side, we want to promote affordable opportunities for our residents to purchase homes at an affordable rate. Think those same income levels, but then the calculation is what type of mortgage, primary mortgage, are those low-income households going to qualify for? And typically, programs that the city's implementing are offering some type of secondary grant or loan financing to help close the total purchase price of a home. Just wanted to ground it there. On Program 7 here, Facilitated Affordable Housing Development, On the actions taken side, those examples given, it's just really the city looking to leverage as much subsidy available possible. So think federal and state programs, whether that's grants or preparing a project that competes for federal tax credits. These are usually new multifamily rental construction projects. Also think what actions are the city taking to train and network properly so we can build staff capacity. And then as Mario's mentioned, there's considerable examples on land use or zoning changes or changes to development services to facilitate this type of new rental housing construction that is in fact affordable. And then on the anticipated action side, it's a lot of the same that you saw in the actions taken. It's for the city to focus on additional land use or development services adjustments to facilitate these projects, never want to get in the way or hinder them. And then also, adjust the deployment of maybe our existing resources. So the city is a federal entitlement grant jurisdiction. We receive home investment and CDBG funds annually. The city has had a decent track record on competing for additional state grants so we can get more of this affordable rental housing built. And on this slide, just as examples, the project that you'll see, Santa Fe Commons, that's a typical It's a great project for the community of Tulare, though it exemplifies the often necessary complex financing involved in getting this type of large multifamily project built. Think 100 plus units. Think the tenants there are at incomes of 80, 60, 50, and even 30% AMI for your community. And to the city's credit and our partner on this project, Self-Help Enterprises, the city was able to put up a little bit of a million dollars up front to help with development costs. And that made the developer be able to compete for tax credit financing to get this whole project built. And then on the back end, the city's been able to help with operating subsidies, which basically function as ongoing rent assistance for some of the tenants. Then also pictured here, this is an example, a target area for SAF where we wanna continue to facilitate. So the image on top is actually a project. It was to be considered a small multifamily rental infill project, I think maybe under 10 units for the whole build. staff are are encouraged to learn that you know this is a it's a great product being built they're actually offering rents that are at limits hud or state limits and below and then uh also would be just this illustrative of missing middle so there's going to be considerable staff attention to facilitate this build and we're actually going to be coming back in october with a pilot program where we want to try to capture, we want to try to work with the developers of these type of projects in our community to see if we can't get some of those units set aside with minimal affordability restrictions. But at minimum, promote both of these types of projects, large multifamily that are 100% rental, and also promote some of this small, more missing middle type builds that the footprint could reach all areas of our community. Program eight, this is gonna be more about preservation. So when you think here on the action side, it's the focus of city staff to always have an accurate inventory of properties. Think single family units and rental units in our community that have some type of affordability covenant. And so that's usually tied to the development financing or the financing that went in to help somebody purchase that home. And it's city's task to be able to keep an adequate inventory of the properties they were involved in and also just generally all subsidized properties within their community. So that we can hopefully coordinate to maintain those covenants. So even when they expire, there's going to be an opportunity for the city to get another low income household to purchase a home or to work with an owner of a rental house, excuse me, a multifamily project so that maybe there could be an opportunity for a new group to purchase the unit or work with the existing developers for them to maintain a level of affordability within their share of units. And then on the anticipated side, think what are the, the city needs to have a defined strategy, deploy its resources or financing to uphold those covenants when possible. It's not always gonna be the case, though there's, it's very often, and I'll go into the next slide here. This is just illustrative of an opportunity to try to preserve housing that's already affordable either. So on the left side here, this is actually a table taken from the city's housing successor report. And I just wanna call out, this is single family. So think your three bedroom, two bath homes. It's likely that the redevelopment agency used financing to either help the homeowners rehab their home and then there was a covenant or they use redevelopment financing to help them purchase this home or a combination of the both. So when those covenants expire, there's an opportunity for the city to coordinate with the homeowner and using its like, for example, its first time homebuyer programs to keep to get the new buyer of the homes to also be, you know, moderate low income household. Usually within the affordability restrictions, that's a, you know, a a lien on the land itself so it stays there for a fixed period of time. And that's when usually the city has either the opportunity proactively or at the time of sale to try to keep that home affordable. And on the right side, that's a picture of the Tule Vista project. So that's an example of the redevelopment agency working with the housing authority of Tulare County. That one's unique where it has the 55-year affordability covenant, which is common for a lot of large multifamily rental projects like that. though it also has a special provision within it where there's gonna be an option for the existing tenants to perhaps purchase the unit that they're living in. So city staff right now are actually working with the housing authority on developing a feasibility plan for that, which we would bring back to council for direction. Program nine, housing preservation and rehabilitation. This is probably an area where the city has a long track record, even from redevelopment years into more recent of the last five. So think here, council, this is city staff using federal and state grant funding typically to help owners that are in fact low-income owners of homes complete necessary rehab or even complete reconstruction when there's considerable health and safety issues in the home. And on average, the city's helping about 15 different homeowners complete either minor rehabilitation. And I'm going to move to the next slide here, though looking on the left side here for you, the MORE program is an example of the city receiving $1.5 billion from the state to focus on mobile home parks within our community. So that's a subset. of your existing housing stock. And what we've seen thus far today in about a year and a half of running that program, we've helped with 11 different households complete both repairs and rehabilitation in the ballpark of about 80,000. And we've seen complete unit replacements like for like. So kudos to city staff and our partner, Southwap Enterprises for getting that more program off the ground. And then our CDBG, that's one of our more common examples where we use grant financing and you're completing a necessary roof replacement or adding HVAC. And then we're gonna look at program design to try to emphasize energy efficiency or accessibility improvements within a home for that owner. So that's the grant financing piece. Program 10, lower income and special needs housing. This is over the course of two slides, but just something to emphasize here. This is really a subset of program seven. So it's a focus on either think new development, new builds or rehabilitation projects, or how is the city leveraging its, available program resources and policies. So there's housing, adequate housing for our seniors, there's adequate housings for people with a disability, adequate housing for people exiting homelessness, appropriate housing, as well as housing for farm workers. Those are very common examples of special populations within your community where there's usually federal or state resources for the city to buy for, to put some projects together, both new build and rehabilitation. And just an illustrative here. So the city was successful in securing encampment resolution funding round one and round two dollars. In the round two fund, the city was able to put about $900,000 towards Madsen Gardens. That's the two-story multifamily project here just north along Highway 99. And so that set aside 15 units for people coming out of homelessness to that property through the City of Tulare program. So that's excellent. That's not a new build. That's a use of, yeah.

That's beyond the city limits, though. Correct. I mean, that's actually county, but that's in the Tagus area. That's county, is that correct? Was that coordinated with the county?

Given it was like a, that specific project was a home key or room key type rehab project because they were dedicating all of the units for people coming out of homelessness. City staff strategy was to secure a portion of those units for people exclusively artillery residents are experiencing homelessness so that we could have uh basically 15 floating units set aside for us at any given time that's similar to what was done with the eden house i think we had some beds in correct houses absolutely yeah under erf that too we had operating subsidies go to mats and gardens eden house interim housing enact and the neighborhood village project in goshen But that's a good example for within getting permanent supportive housing for our local residents. We really lean on a countywide network of housing options. Of course, the city can continue to build its own projects. And for example, at Santa Fe Commons, that's within our city limits. That also had to set aside a units for people coming out of homelessness. And then the project on the right, Tulare Cares Emergency Shelter, specifically highlighted there the 16 modular buildings with 13 individual rooms that was built with $1.2 million from ERF2. So that's to function for foreseeable future as interim housing for people coming out of homelessness, both individuals and families as well. Program 11, first time home buyer. So of course, different than trying to promote new rental housing. The city's had a long track record, although there was a pause on one of our most sizable sources of funding for this type of thing under the home program. The city right now has a little over $500,000 available to offer special secondary financing to our residents to help them purchase homes, both new builds and existing homes within our city limits. So thank you to council and city management over the last few years for, you know, investing in the people power and the housing division and planning and community development writ large, because it's our, our, hope that we're going to really work on marketing. We're going to strategize and work with available lenders and our partners, Southup Enterprises, to help implement this type of program to make sure that we're reaching a large pool of interested and eligible residents that may want to purchase a home and that we get the type of production outcomes and loans that we're hoping for. And program 12, this is really illustrative here. The focus is on how the city and other public agencies, including if there's any state government owned property within your jurisdictional limits of how our public agencies, but in this case, the city, repurposing or releasing their property. There are both state requirements and incentives available for the city to sponsor affordable housing or even mixed use projects on available parcels. So this one's really specific that in this cycle, if we have a surplus of property and there's an opportunity to have some type of affordable housing built, there's considerable state resources available for cities to go forward with that type of project.

So I had a question on this one. I know we have sold surplus property in the past, in the years that I've been here. When we do have that property available, we make it available to nonprofits, right? I mean... developers or nonprofit developers first to see if it's something they would be interested in acquiring. But I'm recalling the property on K Street that I think Knight, was it Knight? I'm thinking Knight, right? Or that's a show, but. All right. the property that's over by the night transportation, right on K Street. I'm not sure where that property is. I know that we had put it out for someone, but I don't, the fact that it's in the middle of nowhere, there's no infrastructure, it's not a place to build anything. But the idea of swapping land was something that I had brought up. Is that something that's been on the radar somewhere? In other words, for example, that K Street property that would be sold for X amount of dollars, if there was a way for the company that wants to acquire to expand their business, from what I remember, I don't know if that's still the case, but if they were to say, hey, we found a piece of property within the, you know, closer to the city that we would swap it for, in other words, you know, we'll take this land, 10 acres at X amount of money, and we'll get you three acres at X amount of money, the equivalent, right? Is that an option that cities have to be able to say, we'll buy some land here and then we can offer it to a developer? Because we lose that opportunity when the land's just out there.

I've heard you bring this up before and I'm always confused. Why would you do that?

Well, because the idea is you would build housing. I mean, one of the goals from the surplus land process is to try to encourage housing. Try to encourage, and you make first dibs to a self-help or other types of groups that are into that business. But if the land's not usable, would it be, instead of getting X company, So paying a million dollars for a piece of land, instead of paying a million dollars, they just find a land that's equivalent in not necessarily size, but in cost, where it would be easier for a developer to build where the infrastructure is already built and so forth. So is that an option?

For example, you're talking about the Blackstone property.

Well, it's off. No, I'm not off .

You brought that up?

Yeah, I think that was the one on Blackstone by the freeway.

Well, it's actually Blackstone that would turn into K Street. Night transportation is close by. That might be a piece of property that they would be interested in. So what you're saying is, let's make them go buy another piece of property and then will require them to swap those two pieces of property. But from a commercial standpoint, somebody like Knight Transportation they will run risks if they go buy another piece of property as to what the circumstances of that particular piece of property is once they go on title as it relates to whatever may come up on that other piece of property when all they want to do is buy the piece of property that we have available to sell them. And they're not going to see any advantage whatsoever in doing a swap because there's no tax advantage to that because we're a governmental agency. What we do is we sell it to them, take that money, and then set it aside if we want to and go do the kinds of things that you're talking about. But there's no advantage. I know you've talked about this before. There's no advantage of a swap. There's no tax advantage. There's no advantage whatsoever.

I mean, you're a lot more, you're an attorney, you have that background. I mean, for me, it's just the idea that, you know, I'm going to be in December being here for 10 years on this council. And I don't just quite honestly don't see any headway we're making on RENA. I mean, I'm just trying to think outside the box and what can we do to try to reach those arena numbers that just keep getting bigger and bigger and harder and harder. So, I mean, if an attorney is going to come in and say, hey, you can't do this, this is the wrong thing. Well, let's figure out something else. I mean, let's make a policy that says that any surplus money, I mean, any money generated from surplus property will go into a housing fund. I can support that. Because the fact is, just be creative. I mean, if this night transportation company really wants that piece of property, then we're probably going to sell it to them for whatever price. I just hate those opportunities to be lost. So can we think outside the box to figure out how we can provide young families with affordable housing or low-income families to have a decent place to live? I'm just saying to just think outside the box. If you come and tell me, hey, we can't do it because X, Y, and Z law, then maybe we try to change the law. But at the same time, let's not just get further and further behind on RENA.

That's the fundamental problem. I'm not saying you can't do it. What I'm saying is a swap doesn't accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. There's other ways that can be done that. But I think staff could explain, you know.

I want to move forward. Alexis, do you have a program 13?

We do. Okay. Council. Okay. And then I'll go, I'm going to turn it back over to Mario and I.

Yes, and we'll definitely have some room at the end for further discussion. So this is just to introduce the policies. You know, like I said earlier in the presentation, surplus land is a good example of that. There's what we're required to do surplus land as a process. But then what we do with those funds and if there's a specific council policy, it's a policy decision, which, you know, council obviously has liberty to come up with a policy. as we move forward with implementation. So moving on to program 13, community and economic development, there's a number of actions here that are required around this. Many of these are actually one of the benefits, you know, thanks to city leadership and this city council funding the T-Biz, for example, we have right next to city hall, working closely with our Chamber of Commerce, a lot of these programs that are called for around employment workshops, around everything from if you're starting a business, if you're looking for a job, if you're looking to hire employees, And kind of having that be kind of a jumping off point, if you will, to working with other regional partners like the Workforce Investment Board, CSET, that has quite a bit of job training opportunities. And then it also includes, this program also includes continuing to invest and neighborhoods through our cip process and so we include as part of our cdbg funds that the city receives every year we typically allocate some of that to infrastructure projects in qualifying low and moderate income neighborhoods to improve the infrastructure in those locations. And so there's examples. I just have the picture there, of course, of the T-Biz. Here's some of the work that's funded by those CDBG dollars to fill in sidewalk gaps and make sure utilities are upgraded too. We partner with our utility funds to do those projects, but this is the Apricot and Academy. It's an example of that. Program 14, Alexis alluded to this earlier. What can we do to, so our owner-occupied rehab program, for example, Maybe the Moore program for that matter. Most of the projects that are funded through those are critical infrastructure in terms of if someone's roof's failing and they qualify for the program, they'll receive assistance to replace the roof. So a lot of it is structural components and kind of major systems. But there is also funding for, you know, we had a conversation around the heat here at, you know, why don't we have more participation in the cooling centers, for example. Well, maybe we can take a proactive role in advertising to some of our low and moderate income households. We have a lot of seniors on fixed income that don't have access to air conditioning or maybe need to have their air conditioner replaced. That's a qualifying project. Insulation, weatherization. The goal is as the city receives these funds is to utilize those funds. And obviously if someone needs a roof replaced, that's a pretty high priority project. But the point is, let's get this information out there and make sure our participation rate is as high as possible to make sure that folks are taking advantage of these programs. And I don't know, you know, making sure that information is available in the community that they understand that Like, man, I wish we could afford to replace RAC. Well, there are programs if you qualify as a qualifying household to take care of some of those things. And so that's something we need to do a better job of. Alexis mentioned, hey, we're going to start kind of pounding the pavement and doing better advertising, both through social media, having booths at community events, continuing to engage with our community. And Alexis?

Yeah. And then lastly, program 15 is revisiting the area of federal and state law around fair housing, Fair Housing Choice Act. So in this current housing plan cycle, they added people power and the availability of grant program administration funds. Housing staff, in conjunction with planning or other staff, as necessary, we're going to do a better job of So really think the target populations for everything fair housing would be your renters, your property owners, or excuse me, your property managers and landlords of rental units, your lenders within your community for first time home buying opportunities, and your prospective buyers. Those are just generally your target groups for a lot of the underlying issues with fair housing, which is essentially anti-discrimination across all of that. And just for illustrative purposes here.

Go back to the last one. Is that where you're at now?

Yes, right here.

Can some of these funds be used to, when people buy their first home, used to buy down interest rates to assist them to get loans at a lower interest rate? Therefore, when they get a loan, their monthly payment's going to be less. It'd be a long-term benefit that might make the difference between them buying the home and not buying the home.

That's a good, good question. Councilman there is from what from what I understand very often, whether it's grant financing or in the form of a loan, it's usually like a secondary instrument that they used, which perhaps if we're working better with lenders, they could see that as, you know, additional asset or income source right for the homeowner, and maybe they get more favorable rates though staff are happy to look into if we could structure the money specifically for that purpose.

Yes, sometimes a person's in a situation to where, say, interest rates are today at 6.5%, but if somebody pays that interest rate down or pays extra money, $5,000, $10,000, whatever it may be, they could take that down to $5.75, and someone who's not otherwise capable of making a payment at a higher rate may be capable at that point in a first-time homeowner home buyer would be able to get in. So that's a program that could be used to assist people to buy that first home. Understood. And can these funds be used for that purpose?

Staff are going to want to clarify specifically for the idea of improving your primary financing or your primary mortgage. Though, as of right now, I wouldn't want to rule that out. So staff, if you have your permission, we'll get back to you.

Okay.

And then lastly here, this would just be an example of educational materials. On the left is something available to the civil rights department here at the state level, everything around just a general fair housing fact sheet that we can make available on our website and market appropriately. And then on the right, this is an image taken from a guidebook that is, that could be shared with landlords of rental housing in our community, as well as tenants alike. And this is just about situations about what may or may not be within a lease, what might be instructed to tenants that have children. So it covers a variety of topics. And lastly, next steps. So we've gone over all the programs within the housing plan, though city staff just wanted to call out for council's attention. Some actions in the very near short term where council and all other stakeholders in the community can input or have input on strategy and how things are implemented. First, in October, city staff planned to bring back a pilot that city staff housing staff, along with Mario, our community director, have been working on that we're going to try to incentivize small infill rental housing projects within our community, where there even could be a set aside to have some of those units on like a eight or 10 unit project set aside for households that are low or low income and under. uh then in december so we'll bring that for council's uh full review in october and then in december staff or by december housing staff with our community plan to carry out a request for proposal where we want to use available home funds as well as housing successor funds i think to try to get another santa fe commons type project off the ground so the city would like to commit this financing to help with either eligible pre-development costs on a large multi-family project or to help with construction costs. This would start that capital stack for an eligible developer. And then by December as well, staff intend to come back to council after public comment to get direction from council on how to set the strategy for the next five years of PLHA funding. We anticipate having a little over a million dollars. So council and other stakeholders will be able to set the focus areas of how that money should be deployed locally. Of course, one of those areas of focus could include new multifamily rental development. And then lastly, with our city planner and others, Council can always expect a presentation or workshop on progress to the programs that are mentioned, which is called the annual performance report for your housing element.

Thank you, Alexis. And with that, Council, as we conclude the presentation, we want to allow time both for the public, but also for council to weigh in with any comments, questions. This is an introductory presentation. I know we covered a lot there. As Alexis mentioned, every spring we come forward with the housing production numbers from the prior year. So we'll continue to do that. But this is only the first conversation. We'll be coming back with a number of policies and different things that we discussed today. for council feedback and implementation. Some of it requires commitment of city funds, others are changes to development policies, but really the intent is to, how do we kind of close that gap again? I've heard it referenced a few times as we're behind on our arena, We're not the only jurisdiction that's behind, but what can we do that makes sense for Tulare to help us show some real progress and some really neat programs that really help incentivize some of the projects that we're not seeing, right? Different kinds of housing and things of that sort. So with that, we'll conclude our presentation and open it up for general feedback on the housing plan, on the implementation programs we reviewed, and also additional policies and programs that you'd like staff to look into. or questions you may have about those about particular policies.

Okay, thank you, staff. I think with that, that way I don't miss this opportunities is to open this up to public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to comment on the progress report on housing element housing plan implementation? Good evening. Welcome. Yes, you may approach the microphone.

Good evening, everyone. I really do appreciate this space. I'm a 23-year housing professional, and I've been in the city of Tulare. I've been raised here. I've worked in several states, some landlord states and some tenant states. I have a really good outlook on what we can do to be creative about generating more housing for affordable housing for individual populations. One population that was not mentioned was transitioning, transitional age youth coming out of foster care. I love the idea of ADUs. However, if you take the broader space and you say, how can we move the RHNA numbers? What you could do is just kind of like Sagala, Council Member Sagala stated, Think outside the box, I work for a spare net and they are a transitional age youth nonprofit organizations been around for a while they're all statewide. And we we get our funding for our particular population from child welfare services so that money is is preset right so it's not a voucher it's not a voucher it's private funding. Right. We were going to go into acquisition to purchase property to build like a four or six plus for our population. But if we took a if we took a spot of land and we said, what does West care need? What does champions need? What does a spare net need? And pull those individuals to the table to say, what funding sources do you have? to get this property built and maybe you take four units and you take four units and you take another four units, well, then you have a 12 unit property with three different nonprofit agencies that are actually active on one parcel of land. We would need some additional funding because infrastructure is a bear, right? Getting something up and off the ground is hard to do. putting the monies together, but if you have your own individual funding that you can pull to support those units. and extend residential tenancy, then you might move the needle as far as the arena is concerned, I was also a part of the San Joaquin Council Council of governments. when they did their regional housing trust fund as well. So I just wanna offer my services, my experience to the group, and I can leave a card with the secretary here if somebody wants to reach out to me, and I really appreciate your time, and it's just something to think about.

If I may, real quick, and I apologize, I didn't capture your name when you came to the microphone.

I'm Julia Nelson, and I live on the west side of Tulare. That's okay.

Julia. So, Julia, thank you for your comments. Thank you for coming up and providing comments to this. But yes, I just want to endorse, if you would give your cards to the clerk, and the clerk will share that information with council and staff, and we'll keep you engaged with the conversation. Thank you.

And for clarification, and I don't mean to be, we have a city clerk. We don't have a secretary. So I just want to make that point.

Is anyone else in chambers wish to make comment? Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone? OK. Council members, briefly? I mean, that was a huge topic, but any other quick questions that we have?

I had one on on I guess slide number four or I guess before. Or it talked about just different strategies on. Let me see just so you guys get back to number four. Right there. In terms of displacement protections, I know we talked about that. Was it the fair housing or something we did last time that was part of the housing element? Are strategies such as trying to protect from rental increases that are beyond... rational in terms of like if, you know, a law allows you to raise your rent by 5% and you're raising it 15%? Are there any those types of protections that the council can impose? In other words, not necessarily as far as rent control goes, but in regards to like you know, you can't raise it more than one or two points beyond what's allowed, right? I mean, are there any, do you guys feel there's any of that type of need to protect housing and displacement of people? Because I mean, not to compare it to the taco trucks, but as I talked about earlier, that's one of the reasons why the taco trucks, when they get together, it and kind of organize is because the gas stations or the parking lots or wherever, they're charging them 100% rental increase because they're doing well. But in terms of like housing, is that a strategy that can be used to keep from people from being displaced?

That's an excellent question. So this program in particular is based on, we conducted the housing needs assessment. There was something called we had to look neighborhood by neighborhood at the relative risk of displacement. And so there's a lot of metrics that go into that, but essentially it identified historic West Tulare, the Southern part of downtown, historic East Tulare, and the Northern portion of South Tulare. So it's a pretty broad swath, but essentially it's older housing stock, right? It's older housing stock and older neighborhoods that perhaps if with new investment coming in, could these landlords perhaps utilize that and seeing, hey, here's an upswing in the market. Maybe we will say we want new tenants and come up with a way to. Essentially, you know, have people will be forced out. So really what this program focuses on is making sure that we have education and engagement with tenants. One of the things we've talked about as a. in the department in the Housing Grants Division is a really solid rent registry in terms of knowing kind of properties, landlords can participate and have a role, right, in helping them with their own education and things they need to know as a landlord, but also with tenants and making sure we have robust tenant information and perhaps just making sure that we have things like You know, just cause evictions are something that is baked in that. In other words, there is a process for landlords to evict folks and and everything's on the up and up, but making sure that we don't have these kind of situations where we have a wholesale change. Now we increase density. Let's say we do that. And so now investors come flocking in and find kind of excuses to flip properties. And it's a delicate balance. There's property rights that you have to be mindful of right on the landlord side, but there's also tenants rights. And so this is something that has come into place. We've seen it in other parts of the state, much more so. One example from when I was working in Southern California, there was a place called Elysium Valley just outside Dodger Stadium. And that was historically low income, low density, older housing stock. Well, when you have all these laws on the books from the state to increase density, you have developers coming in, buying out those parcels and building higher density units, but new housing stock rented at a higher rate and with very minimal protections for tenants. And so it's looking at doing that analysis and it's not a one size fits all. We're really gonna have to see what the need is and what makes sense. And that's a continued conversation that can come back to council.

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate what you're talking about. I was just talking more specifically about rental increased safeguards, right? I mean, like what could happen? I mean, I'm familiar where you're. I'm familiar with what you're talking about. I mean, otherwise known as Frogtown over in LA. But those are a lot of single family homes that are sometimes rented. So the idea is to try to keep people in their homes and unreasonable rental increases is something that hopefully we might be able to explore down the road. But that was just one question on that particular topic.

I was just going to add for information of with recent federal policy that have been passed with state, there have been rent control measures. For example, any of in the city of Tulare of projects that were built with low income housing tax credit under LIHTC. I can't have any sugar, but thank you. It's all good. And I think staff is confirming that. LIHTC, which is like Santa Fe Commons, and there are older projects in Tulare, that you cannot raise the rent more than 9% annual. So state law with under HCD funding projects, certain provisions the state law did pass, other rent protections, affordable housing was exempted out of some of those policies. They're happening. And I think part of what you had said too is there's perhaps... Orders that city could take of rent control. But if we have, or maybe if we were to come in and we were using the city's money, like home or other funds, would we be able to put in policies? And if I'm correct to staff, a lot of time, I'm not trying to answer it all, but I think a lot of times what also comes when we do that funding or work is like it's guidelines that go in that. And I think what you're asking is not just in the housing element, but then program guidelines. We'd have to work in the weeds. We're not speaking for council that we would or so forth. I think just you're asking is there element in those weeds and guidelines for that? And to my understanding, and if you're nodding, there is possibilities for that.

Yeah, so I appreciate all the feedback from Council. And the only notes I'll add to your point, I would treat subsidized properties and private market properties very differently. And if you're alluding to maybe privately owned and then rented units within town, there are minimum standards within California that subject folks to a certain annual like year-to-year percentage increase that could go to rents then there's it usually is pretty open-ended once there's a change in tenancy right there's a new tenant that comes in which is why you could see some misgivings when it comes to landlords you're looking at high rates of eviction in certain properties across your town so By and large, there are tools available, if counts directions and others, that staff can look into on the rent stabilization, if you will. But there are minimum standards already, which relating to fair housing and other education efforts, staff have to do a much better job in educating both property owners and renters in our community on just basic standards in that space. And then we'll also better investigate the trends around rental evictions and even foreclosures on homes for that matter.

One last quick question I had just as anticipated actions and input if i'm right on one of the slides you had which was anticipated actions was a developer came in and have. Potentially 20% of set asides they that developer could get a buy right didn't and i'm going to say is that multi families that single family was a both.

I believe actually it's typically for our arena sites that we're including in our housing cycle, which we tend to, because we tend to overproduce single family, it ends up being our, I suppose if somebody came in and proposed affordable housing on our single family, it would apply as well. But typically the sites that they're concerned with are our arena inventory sites. And so if somebody proposes a 20% affordable project for ownership or 60%, or I'm sorry, 20% of the units affordable to owners at 60% AMI or 50% for rental, It is by right, whether it's single family or multifamily to answer your question.

So when you say it is, so anticipated actions, is that the state policy or is that anticipated actions that the state is doing or is that alternatives for us to consider?

No, the state has already required this. And so they're asking us to make it very explicit in our development code that we are complying with that state standard.

Okay, I, I didn't know that that had been implemented. So, so far projects if you come in and you're going to build somewhere. If you have 20% I don't mean to expand on this council just I think so we understand this could very well be in front of us. I'm going to build a hundred unit apartment complex. And I think for the public but if I do 20%, which is just 20 units. I can take that whole project and get a buy right. And the reason it's kind of, if it's already policy is, I don't necessarily know buy right for 20%, 20 units out of 100, perhaps maybe 50% or so to get a buy right. But okay, but that what you're saying, sorry, Mario, I'll shut up.

Actually, I'm glad you caught that because that was one of the points of contention back and forth with the state. We already have state density bonus law. And we have several things already in state law that to be quite frank, council, I think what we were experiencing quite a bit when we were going through the review cycle, the state couldn't believe that we were, I guess, as developer friendly as we were in terms of, you really allow these projects by right? And the reason that is, is because in other communities in the state, there's a lot of pushback, both from local community, perhaps city councils in those neighborhoods to try to find loopholes or ways to, not be as, you know, to try to slow down the process, if you will, gum up the gears. And, you know, we've tried to kind of demonstrate to them that to this council's credit and to really our community as a whole. Generally speaking, the story I've tried to tell HCD and the folks at Sacramento is we're a community that believes housing should exist for, you know, everyone in our community. We're open to development and growth. We're not trying to stop it. We want to be thoughtful about it. But yes, if somebody were to come, in fact, what we have is a capacity issue. We sing accolades on the self-helps and the other folks that we partner with for some of the projects. We just don't have enough of them here. There are enough developers that are doing these projects, and so kind of the conversation with the state is we're trying to set these sites to be by right. And no, we don't require an additional level of architectural review, which I think is technically illegal now at the state, but we have all these things in place. And so they're having us put this language explicitly to say, hey, those sites you're counting on to meet your RHNA, you're not going to all of a sudden come up with a different requirement for this developer. It's by right, correct? And some of that came out of, you might have been following the news, in some cities, they did what's called a floating overlay, where they said, hey, we have a base zoning for this, but we're also going to label this as one of our arena sites, and someone has the option to develop affordable housing on it. And so it's kind of a sneaky way to say, well, we're going to take credit for it, but we're not going to hold someone to it. And so I think the state's been having a lot of those back and forth with some of the other jurisdictions. And so they've kind of implemented this blanket policy that now has to apply for all cities, Reno sites.

Thank you. It's just this is going to be in front of us in the future. And just so when that happens, the public is aware of that process. So we're touching on it now. It's not going to be brand new when it happens. Sorry, I counsel any other comments or questions or we'll move forward. Do you... Do you need a, this is just receive a presentation and, and chatter and input. So you don't need a formal action. No, sir. Okay. All right. Thank you staff. And we'll move forward on our agenda. Item 9.4 designation of voting delegate and alternate for annual Cal cities conference. Melissa, you need us to designate a voting delegate and alternate.

That's correct. So every year, the annual conference has a general assembly where the council may or members of each, I guess, members of the League of California Cities would have the opportunity to vote on any resolutions that would be presented at that general assembly during the annual conference. So they need each member to designate a primary voting delegate and then two alternates. And this year we have three council members attending, Council Member Sagala, Council Member Thayer, and Council Member Medeiros. And so of those, we need to identify who is the primary and who are the alternates.

You're going, Dennis. I'm going. I never indicated that I was going. I didn't indicate I wasn't going, but I never indicated that I am. Too late now. Here we go. Can you cancel? Usually, I find these.

That is my area. I must have been looking at last year's. So it's only council members and council members there.

OK. Yeah. I mean, I find them very helpful. And you learn a lot. But after eight years, I don't know that I would benefit to the point to where it would be worthwhile to the city for me to go. So I'm not planning on going. So I'd make a motion that Mr. Segal will be our voting member. And did you make the motion already?

We're going to have C. What?

She's going to be the council.

Oh, she's been here. She's been here. All right. I guess I'll take it.

Okay. Yeah, make the motion. Okay, I'll make the motion that Mr. Segala be our voting member, and if she attends, the alternate would be Mrs. Serra.

Second. We have a motion and a second for Councilman Segala to be the designated voting delegate, and Councilmember Serra's the alternate. All in favor? Aye.

Now, I guess I have a question. Do we need to take a position on this thing, on the resolution, or is it up to me?

the resolution that was provided for your information, if the council wanted to discuss that in- I mean, usually, well, why don't you review it and bring it back to council if you think a recommendation needs to be made before the convention itself?

I know that it's going through a process, right, as well? Okay. I would just wait until League of Cities is doing their analysis of it, right? Yeah. Okay.

In fact, seeing as you're- I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, but seeing as you're the primary and- Terry is the secondary. The two of you can go over it, decide how you're going to recommend.

We can share the red card or yellow card.

And then make the recommendation. All right, no problem.

Yep, sounds good. We have a 4-0. Approve. Okay. See, Steve and Freddie, one day when you guys are up here, I'm curious at what time in the future it'll change from a gavel to a zapper. Maybe get something from the police chief. I'm just curious when that will happen one day. You both hear city council meetings. All right, moving forward. All right, item 10, future agenda items, none received. We will go to item 11, staff updates. Mr. Beck.

Thank you. Staff last weekend had a long weekend. We had the Thursday market. We had two amazing concerts on Friday and Saturday. So we're trying to rest back up for the next concerts. With that said, we do have our Kids Day event coming up Saturday, August 29th from 9 a.m. to 12 at Zumwalt Park. I hear there's a rumor that Chief Ott is going to be in the dunk tank along with Captain Guerrero and Richard Torres. So that is Saturday the 29th at Zumwalt Park from 9 to noon. So come and dunk Chief Ott.

Nothing to report. Mr. Miller?

I heard there is some interest in the international agri-center interchange and when that will open up to traffic. It's supposed to open up by the end of this month, but the contractor isn't in a very big hurry to complete it and apparently Caltrans has limited options to speed them up at this point since they're still within their allowable number of contract days. I also want to report that we had the construction kickoff meeting for the Tulare Dayton Street Improvement Project today. So it's coming, it's coming.

Can I see after council meeting to get some more info on that or maybe I can buzz you tomorrow?

Yes.

On that, great.

Either. Thanks.

When does the contractors allow the time expire?

I don't know that. It had a set number or had a set contract completion date, but as they go through the construction period, additional days can be added due to weather delays, that type of thing. I'm not privy to the information on how many days have been added and what the final completion date is.

Well, as everybody else, there's a lot of frustrated people out there that, you know, we had this big ribbon cutting and, uh,

yeah why is it closed is what they're saying i would direct them to contact caltrans christian lukens is the public information officer and uh caltrans district six that's kind of useless i can tell you when when you tell that to somebody they don't accept that very well it's a caltrans project yeah nothing to report

I do have one quick item. Last council meeting, we had a presentation on Prop 64 with Tulare County Office of Ed, said that I was going to have an item on the agenda for this week. Did not happen, and it's because we did not receive the contract from the state. We did receive that today, and so next agenda, it should be on the agenda.

Nothing to report. Madam Clerk?

Nothing to report.

nothing to report nothing to report nothing further thank you uh getting ready for next week uh transfer everybody to the opening of the shelter so we're doing the last fixes and repairs and stuff that we need to get ready that's it nothing to report nothing to report another nightmare

And Mr. Mondale, before I give you the last word, can I touch on a couple of things? You're the mayor. A couple of weeks ago, we had the passing of Jerry Saltz, one of Tulare's centurions. Did I say this right? Centurions. I think if I say that name right. Yes, I heard over. And of course, just been a... You know, a long time fixture of our community. And of course, but now passing with that. So with guys we close out the meeting would just close out and recognition towards Jerry salts. And the last time I just wanted to say real quick because I missed it earlier was our artillery boys tenure back tenure back from the Cal Ripken World Series. Didn't come home with that championship this time, but they came home with wonderful stories and memories and worked very hard. So welcome back to the baseball association. Good to have the safe trip. And it was wonderful to hear a lot of the boys stories of the wonderful baseball games.

Mr. Mondale. No comments.

Okay. So with that, as we said, what we're going to do real quick is I'll do a quick moment of silence and memorial for Jerry Soltz and Bud Mao. Thank you. And with that, we'll go to item 12, recess to closed session to discuss the following public employee performance evaluation per government code 54957. Melissa, thanks for putting them in the test. Next time, tell us we have to. we're reconvening as counsel, there is nothing to report from close session artillery city council meeting is adjourned.