City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order the special closed session meeting in the city council. It is 05:30PM, meeting three 09 one. Madam city clerk, roll call, please.

The record will reflect that all members are in attendance.

Thank you. Next, we have public input. At this time, any member of the public may address the council on matters which are on the closed session agenda. If any members of the public who are participating through Zoom wish to address the council, please raise your hand. And if you're calling in, please press 9 to raise your hand. Madam city clerk, any request to speak?

No, mister mayor.

Thank you. We'll move on

to the

closed session update, mister city attorney.

Yes. The city council will be convening in closed session to discuss items one and four as they appear on the closed session agenda.

Thank you, sir. We'll recess the closed session. Number three zero nine one. Tonight's invocation is by deacon John Raza from Saint Cecilia Church. Deacon?

Heavenly father, we come before you today in gratitude for the many blessings you have bestowed upon our community. We thank you for the gift of life and the opportunity to serve our fellow citizens. We humbly ask for your guidance and wisdom as we gather here to discuss and make decisions for the well-being of our city, illuminate our minds with clarity and understanding as we strive to work together in unity and peace. May our conversations and deliberations be marked by respect, compassion, and a spirit of collaboration. Grant us the grace to always seek the common good and to prioritize the needs of those we serve, especially the vulnerable and marginalized.

Help us to be faithful stewards of the resources entrusted to us, always mindful of the dignity and worth of every person. In all that we do, may we reflect your love and justice, serving as instruments of your divine will. We ask this through Christ our lord. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, deacon. The pledge of allegiance is by mayor pro tem Schnell tonight.

Thank you. Please rise if you're able to. Place your hand over your heart. If you serve in the military, you're welcome to render a salute. Place the flag. Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The

United States Of America and

to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, mister mayor pro tem. Next, we have public input. At this time, any member of the public may address the council on matters which are not on this evening's agenda and provided the matter is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council. If any members of the public who are participating through Zoom wish to address the council, please raise your hand. And if you're calling in, please press 9 to raise your hand. Madam city clerk, I have a few requests. Can I ask you to manage those, please? You can do the in person first.

Yes, mister mayor. Our first speaker is Anika.

Good evening. Before I begin, I would like to thank the Tustin City Council for the opportunity to speak at this meeting. My name is Annika Vanderhoek, and I am 16 years old. And I am currently a junior at Foothill High School completing the international baccalaureate program. This year, as vice president of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation Take Steps Youth Leadership Committee, I advocate for those affected by inflammatory bowel disease, also known as IBD.

Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic autoimmune condition that causes inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract. IBD affects approximately one in a hundred Americans causing pain, fatigue, and malnutrition, yet there is still no cure. Intustine, that is eight hundred people with diagnosis still increasing. This condition affects children, students, working professionals, parents, and seniors right here in our community. Today, I am respectfully requesting a proclamation for the city of Tustin to recognize World IBD Day on May 19, aiming to raise awareness and increase understanding of this lifelong illness.

When I was 12, I started experiencing extreme bowel urgency, debilitating fatigue, and dangerous malnutrition. These symptoms were all consuming of my life and oftentimes I felt embarrassed and unable to speak about what I was dealing with. Eventually, after time in the hospital, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a form of IBD. This diagnosis felt daunting with no cure, and I was unsure about how it would unfold in my life. I faced troubles with my classmates, people I thought were my friends, and even teachers making fun of something that affected me in my day to day life.

The stigma around digestive issues and the overall ignorance of the people surrounding me made it hard for me to live fully. During my first year of adjusting to IBD, I attended Camp Oasis, a camp experience with those diagnosed with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. At this camp, I met others with the same diagnosis for the first time. I realized I was not alone. Being able to see people thriving with Crohn's disease gave me hope for the future.

I no longer felt confined by my diagnosis and felt inspired to increase awareness so others with invisible illnesses did not have to go through what I went through. These last two years, I have especially worked to change my pain into purpose with the Take Septs Youth Leadership Committee, and this year, as Vice President, I strive to make IBD become more visible in the greater so that more acceptance, research, and movement towards a cure will come with understanding. My story is just one of millions of Americans living with this invisible illness, including many here in Tustin. By recognizing World IBD Day with proclamation on May 19, the city of Tustin can make an important and impactful step towards increasing awareness, reducing stigma, and affirming that people with IBD are seen, supported, and never alone. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good job.

Our next speaker is Domenico.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Domenico Pagoni, and I'm a resident of Tustin for over eighteen years. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to better understand how flock license plate recognition or ALPR camera systems are being used and governed in our city. I wanna be clear at the outset.

I support public safety, and I recognize that technology can be an important tool for law enforcement. My intent tonight is not to oppose those efforts. Rather, it's to seek clarity for myself and for other residents about how these systems operate, what safeguards are in place, and how accountability and privacy are maintained as their use expands. Since submitting my request to speak, I've begun receiving responses from city leadership and staff, and I appreciate that engagement. From those responses, it's become clear that while the city council plays an important role through budget, approval, and public safety priorities, the operation of these systems and the policies governing their use are handled administratively within the police department.

I've also learned that written ALPR use and privacy policies exist, that access is logged, and that audits occur. I've also received information at the county level which helped clarify there is no single countywide ALPR standard. Each agency operates under its own policy consistent with state law, but with differences in retention, auditing, and data sharing practices. That context reinforces why residents may reasonably want to understand how Tustin's approach is structured and how oversight is exercised locally. Residents, recent events elsewhere reinforce why this matters.

Just this month, the city's the city council in Santa Cruz voted to terminate its contract with FlockSafe because elected officials concluded, among other things, they could not adequate adequately control or audit federal access to the system. At the same time, federal courts are now hearing arguments and lawsuits challenging ALPR deployments in other cities where questions of surveillance, scope, and constitutional safeguards are being tested. I'm not suggesting that testing is Santa Cruz or any other city. I'm asking that we learn from these examples before unintended issues and risks arise here, including potential liabilities. My request tonight is straightforward, that the city defines and communicates at an appropriate level who has access to these systems, how that access is audited, what data sharing occurs, and how elected officials and residents remain informed over time.

Transparency and accountability strengthen public safety. They help sustain public trust and protect both residents and taxpayers. I appreciate the city's the the council's attention to this issue and any follow-up that may be appropriate. Thank you for your time and for your service to the city of Tustin.

Thank you for your comments.

Our next speaker is Grayson.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Grayson Alexander. I've been a resident here for just over a decade now. I'm here today on behalf of myself and other tenants at Woodcrest Apartments. We're just right up the Newport right next to Tustin Brewing, because of an issue that has, we thought was solved has since reemerged in terms of foot soil remediation machinery.

Essentially, what this is is they are remediating the soil due to an oil spill from decades ago, and they've installed machinery that will operate twenty four seven for an estimated five or ten years depending on how effective that this cleaning will end up being. We I've tried to reach out to Apex. They're the ones heading this operation to help me with the noise and emission problems, but they've insisted as they did in the past that everything is at acceptable levels for the area and have tried blaming other factors in the area. Given that it's roughly 20 feet from my front door and even closer to some other residents, we've been unable to sleep essentially. A good amount of us have had problems sleeping over the last week since this has restarted.

All this is in addition into routine maintenance they perform that sometimes starts before even seven in the morning. Although that is rare, that happened recently. This is the same machinery. This is not the first time I've been here. This happened two years ago.

Somehow, despite all that, I ended up going to the ER with elevated heart rate and blood pressure despite never having any health issues or having been to the ER. They couldn't find anything wrong with me, thankfully, but it did cause me to go there. Other neighbors have expressed similar discomforts, but not to the extent of seeking medical attention, thankfully. The best way to describe this experience, aside from the emissions that it emits, it's essentially if you were to pull alongside a car with their windows up and they're blaring their base, essentially. That is what it sounds like.

It's mostly a feeling. It's a sound. It pretty much there's no way to avoid it. To this point, Apex has not consulted any of this with us, the residents, as they really don't seem to have a motivation to want to help us. Right now, we're just trying to get a resolution that will allow myself and other neighbors to sleep through the night, go about our daily lives, and just you know, where there's a bunch of kids in our neighborhood, so it's really nice to have them running around and playing outside.

So far, the only thing that's been suggested to us was to keep the windows closed or to buy a noise machine to drown it out after one of the calls I had with them, which isn't great. So it's truly my hope that we can try to address this or at least get a dialogue going that would compel them to take action against this because so far that has yet to happen.

And thank you.

Appreciate your comments. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last speaker is William Johnson.

Three minutes. Thank you. That answers one question. Hi. My name is William Johnson. I I'm actually pretty under underprepared for this. The I'd like to start with a question actually as mundane as it may be. I was taught by the pastor Aldersgate United Methodist Church. I thought the benediction was great. You should get to know your neighborhood. And so I'd really like to know favorite colors. I don't think you can know your neighbor without asking a favorite color. Mister Nielsen, what is your favorite color?

We're not supposed to engage, but you can pick our tie colors or something. That might be an indication.

I'll just go one, if that's okay.

I can't. I can't. I'm not supposed to.

Okay. Is anyone's favorite color green by any chance? Any hands? Hey. Good. Okay. I've got a couple of them. My personal favorite color is a shade of green. It's the shade that you see, really in, like, the late afternoon sun when it shines between a growing leaf. It's a really specific shade of green. And I I enter today under prepared. I'm wearing flip flops. I feel like an idiot, but with, like, a really heavy heart, and that really meant something. Turn your pain into purpose. Thank you.

Well said. I really hear the gentleman who's dealing with remediation issues and noise issues in front of his home. I feel that deeply. I have a heavy heart, and I feel this, like, razor blade out the right of my eye, which is anger. It's funny to feel sadness and anger over something so mundane as, I was walking in downtown Tustin today, and I noticed that 80 year old trees that were aren't.

And I texted my mom who has been a resident of Tustin for forty three years. I've been a resident for forty one. I did leave for college. I did leave to build a career elsewhere, but I moved home to start something here in the city I'm from, which is the city of trees. But the city of trees isn't, and I'm upset.

And I I don't wanna enter this room without a plan because anger is wasted. Anger is best used as a plan, but, really, the best I can come up with is to approach this public forum and and to ask a humble question like, what's your favorite color, mister neighbor? And does anyone here share my passion for, green that shines through green leaves? As funny as that may be, but we're a neighborhood, and Tustin has to stand for something that used to stand for trees that are older than me and will outlive me. And I I want to talk to anybody that cares about trees that will outlive them in this city that I love and moved home.

My name is William. My email is william at something wiser. It's one word. I don't I don't have more than a request that we sit down and talk about this. I understand it is a hard job that we are running a great city. There's a plan to put ninety in its place. Thank you very much for thoughtful action. I just I can feel myself vibrating, and I feel the conversation is much larger. So thank you with the time remaining. I'll wish you a good evening.

Thank thank you for your comments. Madam city clerk, any other requests to speak?

No, mister mayor.

Anybody else in the room? K. Thank you. We'll move on to the closed session report, mister city attorney.

This, council took no reportable action.

K. Next, have our consent calendar, items one through eight. All matters listed under the consent calendar are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion without discussion. Public input for consent calendar items. If any members of the public wish to address the council, please submit a request to speak for me if you have not already. If any members of the public who are participating through Zoom wish to address the council on items one through eight, please raise your hand. Madam city clerk, any request to speak on the consent calendar?

No, mister mayor.

Anybody in the room? Do any members of the council wish to pull an item from the consent calendar? Six. Okay. Council member Fink is pulling item number six. I have a motion for the balance?

I'll make

a motion. I have a motion and a second. Madam City, quick roll call, please.

Council member Nielsen?

Yes.

Council member Fink?

Aye.

Councilmember Gallagher?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Chenelle?

Aye.

Mayor Lundberg? Aye. Motion passes, five zero.

Thank you. Item number six pulled by councilmember Fink is recommendation to select developer for the 11 acre competitive offering within the Pacific Center East specific plan. Councilmember Fink, floor is yours.

Thank you, mayor. I wanted to pull this just to give an insight to the public that's here about what we're doing at that site. I'm very supportive of the recommendation. A couple months ago, we narrowed the the bidders down to two light industrial uses, and we're narrowing it down to our final bidder. Everything we see suggests that it's going to be a great operation there, a great addition to the city.

And what we're hoping for is to see that that site becomes a really maybe I don't wanna use this term because we've got another site in the city called Cornerstone. But Cornerstone is people enter and exit the city. And so I just wanted to take a moment to to make sure that everybody understood that this is a one, it's a great selection for that site for there, and it's the next step in the process. It won't all also, it's not the final result of what's gonna be there, but we're gonna see, hopefully, in the short amount of time, a new a new facility there, Light Industrial, that's gonna have a a flourishing test in business. I know when we narrowed it down to two, I I didn't I was against that because we were narrowing it down to only one type of use.

But certainly, ultimately, I'll be honest, it's this type of use that I think makes sense there, as I said. And the the bidder that we're selecting tonight is, I think, is gonna be excellent. So just wanted to have the opportunity to have anybody, including myself, comment on that.

Appreciate that. Is that a motion?

I'll move that.

Yes. Second it. And just to clarify for anybody that's paying attention, we are selecting a bidder to move into negotiations with, not a final agreement. Any further comments? Madam city clerk, roll call, please.

Councilmember Nielsen?

Yes.

Councilmember Fink?

Aye.

Councilmember Gallagher? Aye. Mayor Pro Schell?

Aye.

Mayor Lundberg?

Aye.

Motion passes. Five zero.

And thank you to the ad hoc committee, which was councilmember Gallagher and mayor Pro Tem Schell for their hard work on that item. Okay. Next, we have public hearing items nine and ten. The first item is number nine, assembly bill twenty five sixty one compliance. Gonna open the public hearing, and we have a presentation by the director of human resources, Derek Yasuda.

Derek? Thank you, mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council. I'm here tonight. You may recall I was here last year, for the first time on this new law, AB twenty five sixty one. So in short, each year, once a year, each city must present on the status of their vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts. If any bargaining unit has a vacancy rate very high, defined as over 20%, there's additional requirements. We do not have any that meet that threshold. And in addition, all of our bargaining units have the option to present at this hearing as well. None have expressed an interest in presenting tonight.

So I will very briefly go over this. Citywide, we have approximately an 8.2% vacancy rate as of January 1. Very similar, a little better but similar to last year when we were at 9%. By unit is broken down on the slide here. Nothing, as I said, is over 20%. Recruitment retention efforts, again I'm not going to read all these bullets. The point is we're actively trying to fill our positions. Try to be creative. We try to be flexible. I think compared to other government agencies, we do a really good job at this. So that's a highlight here, and that is all I have. The recommendation is to receive and file. Are there any questions?

Any questions for staff? Council member Fink?

My question, it's been, you know, obvious that the TPSSA is close to that threshold at 19. And I don't know if there's an explanation for that. I vaguely recall maybe the chief talking about some reorganizations if that was potentially affecting it. But I don't know if you could just give a little bit

of commentary. Some of

that is timing. I mean, it's a high number relatively. It's under 20. It's still a little higher than the rest of the groups. They're hard positions to fill, especially that includes dispatcher, I think that's probably the hardest position Dispatcher. To nine eleven dispatcher. That's not unique to testing. It's a very hard position to fill, and that's a lot of what's reflected there.

Any other comments, questions? Yeah. Mayor Pro Tem?

Great.

Thanks for the presentation. The one thing that stood out to me is the fact that we have zero vacancies in the police department, which we've worked very hard over the last year, year and a half to work on recruitment efforts, retention efforts. So I'm very happy with the new chief, and some of the things that we've done as part of the city council, have borne fruit. And and the fact that we've got full staffing in the police department is is great because public safety is is the most important thing as a, you know, as a council is to provide that for the residents of Tustin. So glad to see that. Thank you.

Additional comments. I gotta open up public input to no? Thank you, Derek.

Thank you.

Alright. Public input. If any members of the public wish to address the council on this item, please submit a request to speak forum. And if you are participating through Zoom, please raise your hand. Madam city clerk, can you request to speak on this item?

No, mister mayor.

Anybody in the room? We will close public input and close the public hearing, bring it back to council for discussion. I'm there is no motion or vote. So any further discussion?

K. We'll

receive and file. Thank you. Next, we have item 10, which is resolution adopting the citywide comprehensive fee schedule and cost allocation plan. I will open the public hearing, and we have a presentation tonight by director of finance, Jennifer King, and our consultant, Tony Thrasher.

Thank you, mayor mayor Pro Tem and members of city council. We appreciate the opportunity to come before you tonight for a brand new comprehensive use of fee study and accompanied by a cost allocation plan. So just a brief background and this is a brand new study. The last time we looked at current citywide fee schedule was June 2025 as part of the also at the same time as the budget adoption. And it was just a CPI CPI update.

And so we didn't go through and look at all the fees and how we how all the costs are pulled together. And that's what the study tonight has been it's presenting. And so for tonight's presentation, we'd like to go over the recommended citywide fees and as a result of the fee study and the cost allocation plan. And Tony from Weldon Financial Services will go through the background, how the process was conducted, and what are the components that we looked at. And because we always look at our fees in comparison with our peer agencies, we also took some of the fees more commonly used by residents and business and did comparisons with our neighboring cities.

And finally, we'll wrap everything up with recommendations. So if I can, I will turn it over to Tony? Thank you.

Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and Council members. I am Tony Thrasher with Willdan Financial. So just to start off, I've been with the company for about fifteen years specializing in cost allocation plans, user fee studies. Approximately in the past five years, I've done around 100 of these working with different agencies, predominantly within California. Willdan has been providing municipal support services primarily to California agencies for the past sixty years. We are now national with offices in most states. Most of my work is California, but I do work in around seven other states as well. I wanna give you a little background. Now we're starting off kind of at the end here, and I'll work backwards a bit.

So this is the summary results of the recommended fees showing the kind of current cost recovery as well as the recommended cost recovery that result of the fee changes themselves. I do want to note things for like planning. Most of those services involve deposit based activities and so they are actual cost recovery utilizing fully burn hourly rates so depending on how much time is spent it recovers full cost utilizing those fully burn hourly rates. Any unused deposits is returned to the applicant if more is needed then more is requested. You'll also see that water is included within there but these are not utility rates.

Utility rates cannot be addressed or adjusted as part of this sort of study. These are single time use fees. So kind of things that kind of surround that but are not the utility rates themselves. Now here's a summary of the fee changes that are being recommended. And just to kind of note there, all the way on the right. I'll start with the second column. You'll see most fees do result in an increase when you're doing a fee study. That's kind of just the nature of the beast. Costs go up. But all the way to the right, you'll see kind of the average fee change, the average revenue change that we're kind of looking at there.

That is fairly moderate when we do these studies. It is recommended they're done every five years. A lot of cities don't do them every five years. And Usually when we come in and do these studies, those percentages are usually a lot higher as far as a recommendation goes. Your practice of doing a study every five years, as well as using a CPI increase, which is a conservative inflation factor, has kept you up with your cost of service so that you don't see such larger increases as we typically recommend.

Right, now going back to the beginning about what we're talking about. This is a user fee study that we're doing. So user fees are private benefit services, and state law requires that use of the service be voluntary, either through service requests or through a compliance requirement. Fees cannot be set more than the full cost of providing the service. Otherwise, there are tax.

Ultimately, fees are adopted through counsel through a public hearing. And also very important to note, we do not include development impact fees, utility rates, taxes, essentially things that are governed by other kind of legislation. Those aren't included in this. This is purely operational cost provided services and determining what that full cost is so that you can then set fees. This graphic shows the summary steps of the study itself.

We start off with developing the model so we can identify what the overhead factors and fully burdened hourly rates are for all of the city staff. And so kind of what does it take for them to provide service on a one hour basis? Then we meet with the departments to go over their fee structures, their schedules themselves, identify any changes they wanna make to make sure that the fees reflect how service is being provided. And then we do those updates, adjust and change time data because, again, we do this every five years. So we have kind of the prior time data what it takes to provide service as a basis to start with, adjust that so that we can then reflect updated full cost of service.

We compare that to the current fee to identify subsidies in place and identify targeted cost recovery for services, credit report around that and then bring it forward for your consideration. Now I've said fully burdened hourly rates a few times. What that really means is that we include salaries and benefits, any of the operating costs that are budgeted to the departments themselves, as well as any internal service fund charges and internal overhead or indirect overhead coming from a cost allocation plan. Really what that does is identifies the central functions of the city, how they provide support to the other operating units, and then allocates those costs out. So human resources allocated out based off salaries and benefits and how many positions are in each department, things of that nature.

So identifying how they provide that support. We also calculate a productive hour for employees, which is identifying not the total hours in a year, but reducing that down to identifying when they're actually on the job so that they can recover that cost based off for every hour spent. The idea being that if they spend 100% of their time on providing user fee services, 100 of their cost is recovered. Now this is a citywide user fee study, so I'll read them off, but it involves every department. And also important note that this is mostly general fund.

So all the costs that are involved providing services come out of the general fund themselves. And I do also always want to note, we're not including taxes, impact fees, things like that. No utility rates are involved as well. Now kind of going right to the policy. What I was touching on with that general fund comment is that since these are private benefit services, if you don't charge full cost for the service, it has to be subsidized through your other general unobligated dollars.

And so that can limit your factor your ability to pay for, say, public safety, council initiatives, or other general benefit activities. So the general standard is private benefit is recovered with through a fee to pay for a 100% of its cost. But I've never worked with a city that doesn't have some level of subsidy. Primarily, you're looking at your recreation community services. You're currently at a 30% cost recovery for services in that. That's actually very healthy. We're since post COVID, we've seen that percentage go down quite a bit. There are fee recommendations, adjustments to those fees, but they are not intended for additional revenue collection per se. They're not cost recovery. They're just to right size those fees.

We do recommend the city continue to use utilize the CPI factor to annually adjust fees with the fee study every five years. I failed to note when I was talking about how you have kind of moderate changes in here. Staff did do comparisons to identify where you're at with your neighbors as well. While it's not recommended to be the basis of setting fees, it's important to know where you're at. You are comparable to your neighbors. I'd say actually some of your neighbors don't do fee studies often enough so they've fallen behind a bit. But I'm going to, I believe right now, throw it back on over to Jennifer so she can go over those comparisons.

Thank you. So what we did here was that we took some of the fees that most commonly used by businesses and residents and we have three fees for comparison here. And the first one we looked at building permit fees. We have building permit fees based on building valuations. So we have five tiers of building values and respective fees.

And we took we looked at the county plus five other cities around us. And as you can see, the first bar first group of bars is Tustin. And we are somewhere in the middle in comparison to other agencies. And we're in a pretty good spot. That's where we want to be.

And the next group of fee we looked at is engineering's encroachment permit fees. Again, we Tustin is the first bar and other agencies are the remaining remaining numbers. And we are there are agencies that are higher than us, but again, we are in the middle of the pack. The last group we looked at is residential alarm permit and charges. And this looks at the permit fees plus any false alarm occurrences.

And we allow the use of fee schedule allow for up to we have seven false alarm up to seven false alarm in three hundred and sixty five days. So we took that and compare with other cities and the county. And, again, we have we have a pretty good measurement in terms of staying in the middle of all the other cities. And with that, I would like to move on to the recommendation for tonight is the public hearing is being it's underway to consider the proposed 2026 use of fee schedule, which is originated from the use of study and the cost allocation plan. And also adopting Resolution 2,605 for the fees, for the new fees.

And if they are approved, the new fees will take place in after sixty days and 04/01/2026. That I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Jennifer and Tony. Are there questions for staff before I receive public comments? I'll wait. Okay. Alright. Thank you both. We will open public input for this item. If any members of the public wish to address the council, please submit a request to speak form. And if you are participating through Zoom, please raise your hand. Madam city clerk, any request to speak on this item?

No, mister mayor.

Anybody in person? Okay. We'll close public input. And note for the record that the council did receive one ecommit that was made available to the public on the city's website. We'll bring it back to the count oh, let me close the public hearing. Bring it back to council for discussion. Council member Fink, you had a question or comment?

Yes, mayor. I had a question specifically about that e comment that came in. It was about the the from the Test and Girls softball about the music fees on the the fields. And that we also got, I think, response from our parks director. And and I was wondering if maybe mister Clinton, the great Chad Clinton, could just address that so we can have clarity about what's going on.

Yes. Thank you, mayor, members of council. Council member Fink. Yes. The comment was about the raising of fees as it relates to sports, youth sports organizations in the city.

We we did raise fees across the board as you saw in the the presentation. In this case, we raised fees from field use per hour 13 to $14 an hour, so it was $1 increase. And then fields with lights, we charred, we went from $25 to $26 So we will go from $25 to $26 So this is a nominal increase, about 4% for the $25 to $26 is what that increase is. That's just again keeping up with CPI. We didn't increase these fees last year, it was the year before, but we usually are a little bit delayed in ramping in the fees because the field group users, they we do their permits six months at a time.

So we all the permits right now are out there starting January, and that it's for all the field use from January through June. We even though as as director King pointed out these fees go into place in the April 1, we actually don't implement those fees with groups that have existing permits until after July 1. So really, tomorrow, we'll be notifying the groups about the fee increase and letting them know about that, about how we won't those fees won't be coming into place until the next six months of field allocations.

And and actually, there was this question about how you ramp it. Now I understand what you mean. Yeah. So I appreciate that.

So according the with that group, they thought they I think they're under the impression that we just increased fees. We didn't it was year before, but it we were delayed in increasing fees, so it looks like two years in a row.

Right. Right. And I'll just say, mayor, I mean, everything ends up costing a little bit more. That's part of the user fee study. Our our if we saw that chart there, the the parts department is where most of where we don't recover most of our fees. Where is that, like, 30 to 31%? And and that's not a knock on mister Clinton and his department, where there's a lot of good programs, obviously. But it's because the goal in parks is to make sure it's accessible. So to keep it accessible, eventually those fees have to go up from time to time.

And we have done research on field use fees or all our fees. And as was pointed out previously, similar to the examples provided, we're middle to

on on our fees or sorry. Middle to

low high on our fees, including field reservations.

K. Thank you. Mhmm.

Any other comments, questions? I'll entertain a motion. I'll move the item. I'll second. Motion and a second. And I did wanna clarify too. So $26 per hour for lighted fields and $14 per hour for unlit fields. Yeah. And we subsidized most of our parks with those rates still. Yep. Okay. Madam city clerk, roll call, please.

Councilmember Nielsen?

Yes.

Councilmember Feet? Aye. Councilmember Gallagher? Aye. Mayor Pro Temp Schnell?

Aye.

Mayor Lombard?

Aye.

Motion passes five zero.

Thank you, and thank you to the ad hoc committee that was council members Gallagher and Fink for their work on that item. Okay. Next, we'll move to other business. Mister city manager, do have a report tonight?

Thank you, mayor. I wanted to provide a couple updates. The first one regarding our Civic Center generator replacement project. The project achieved a key milestone with the successful placement of the new emergency generator. In addition to the generator placement, the generator building has been constructed, and all electrical conduits are now in place.

Work continues regarding the installation of the new transformer and overall systems testing, with coordination of the final power switchover tentatively scheduled for next month. I also want to provide an update on the federal front. Last Thursday, the Senate passed the House approved minibus appropriations bill containing earmarks, which included our $2,500,000 Tustin Security Improvement Project from Congresswoman Kim and the 17th Street Dessalter Project of $2,000,000 from Senator Schiff. The President has not yet signed it, but we expect him to sign the package before the end of the month. Once the earmarks are codified into law, the federal agencies will begin The administration process generally takes us six to eight months to work with those federal agencies on those appropriations. And that concludes my my comments.

Thank you very much. Mister City Attorney, do you have a report?

I have no further report this evening.

Okay. We'll bring it back to the council for reports. Mister, council member Nielsen, let's start with you tonight.

Okay. Well, since we haven't met before and that may be a little stale, but, happy New Year to everybody. We have a new, New Year in the city of Tustin, and I'm looking forward to, all sorts of things that we're gonna do this year. Very positive. So, anyway, it's starting out really well.

On the January 17, there was a great program by Rotary Club, a dinner that was honoring one of our, I guess, landmark, businesses in the city of Tustin, which is Blue Boy, Swim School, was honored for seventy years of being in business. And, the Johnsons, who a lot of folks know, Johnny Johnson and Cindy Johnson, were recipients of a lot of praise. There was probably, I'd say, well over a 100 people in the audience and lots of links with different things. I know my my kids both learned how to swim from Johnny and his staff. So congratulations to Blue Boy for a remarkable achievement, and they keep going.

So, we like to see it, and they also had a lot of, Olympians that had come through their program, and, now they're teaching Olympians children. So, very cool all the way around. January 19, a day of service, Martin Luther King Day, put on by, Tustin Community Foundation and Aldersgate Church. It was great to see a lot of nonprofits there, and two of my colleagues, MPT Ray Snell and council member Fink. And we were put to work right away into all sorts of things, doing star cards for veterans, doing glass glass donations for impaired for the Lions Club, cleaning them, getting them ready to go, and there were a myriad other projects going on at the same time.

So it was a lot of fun and a lot of, fellowship, and, it was great to see everybody there doing work that'll help influence other people's lives. So, it's a great way to start the year, and that's all I have for, this evening, mister mayor.

Thank you. Councilmember Fink?

Thank you, mayor. I was pleased to attend two of the events that councilman Nielsen just mentioned, the rotary event honoring Cindy and Johnny Johnson. I was there with my daughter who's who's taking swimming lessons now, and she loves it. She'll be there tomorrow. And so it was a great event.

And was at the Martin Luther Kate Martin Luther King Day Day of Service event yesterday at Aldersgate with the Tusk Community Foundation. It was the second annual event, and it was, you know, 10% bigger than the first annual. So that it continue that it that it continues, that it grew, is really great. And a lot of people doing a lot of good work. Council councilmember Snell and I were cutting stars and and for the star cards and got to talking about all sorts of all all sorts of manner of things, but it was just the two of us.

Councilman Nielsen just sort of came in and bopped in from time to time, so there were no Brown Act problems. Well, he was working on a different program. He was working on a different program. You think you were working on the eyeglasses program. So we we were all above the board from Brown Act stage, but I enjoyed spending that time doing that service and getting to to to talk to the various folks. And we talked a little bit about the hangar in the process and and ways to think about that. So, hopefully, we can continue to explore that. Before the holiday, a number of us attended the grand opening of the Tustin Kia over in the Tustin Auto Center. And that was it's a really cool building. It's a two story, and I I hadn't really seen it like that.

But it was a fantastic event. John Patterson of of Patterson Auto did a great event bringing in the the head of Kia, the president of Kia, the corp corporate. And, of course, their headquarters are right across the street for their US division. But really great, and that was supporting a whole bunch of Christmas events, including at the Orange County Rescue Mission. And then just a a note on what I was doing.

My my tour of the parks has been completed. We've me and my chief adviser on parks and libraries have now played on every playground in the Tustin Park system during the last year. Our last our last park was the McFadden Pasadena Parkette, which has sort of a kind of, I guess, an alternative playground area, which I think she was looking for swings on a more little conventional set, we went over there. But I I really appreciated the chance to get around through them. We'll probably do the same thing in the over the next I wanted to thank the the speakers tonight, Annika Vanderhoehn.

I think she left, but I've had Vanderhoehn. But I had some communications with her, so I hope to follow-up. Domenico Pagon. Yeah. He's still here. I'd I'd love to follow-up because I wanna understand the issue more, and I know you've gotten some feedback. So thank you. I'd love to talk to mister Alexander about his issue, and I wanna talk about something if it's in the area. And then mister Johnson's comment about trees in Old Town is something that we've seen a lot of comments on in the last couple of weeks. And, you know, he actually knows my favorite color is is green as it turns out, and I'm very supportive of the green and the trees in the Old Town.

And it's I I completely understand folks who are concerned about a number of trees that have come down over the last couple of weeks, because it is part of a plan to make our downtown area sort of more pedestrian friendly, more walker, bicycle friendly, more friendly for outdoor services and and strolling and use of that. And so except for one, maybe two, but I think it was just one, trees, those are all in areas where we're gonna be building parklets. And as you mentioned, we're gonna be replacing those trees and more. So we're not gonna have the same old growth fichuses. I should say, but the only ones that are coming down are the ones in those areas and one that has a sewer invasion problem.

But most of those old trees will continue to be there and be part of the canopy. And as you mentioned, there'll be more trees by some 90 in Old Town once the project is complete. And I mentioned to the great Mike Grissell and others that, a lot of what's replacing those trees are Chinese elm drake trees. I understand they're very fast growing, so they're going to grow three to four feet a year. I'm looking at Mike Grisso because he really knows, and he educated me.

But they're going to grow three to four feet a year until they get to their maximum 35, 40 foot height within within a ten year period. And I I suggested, you know, we should really team up with some of the schools in the area, including, like, even Tuscan Preschool, which is where my daughter goes, and tie our trees to the kids because they will see those trees come to be full height and bloom just while they're in school. So I know that right now, it looks bad, but we are trying to do that. And and I think and we'll also see along Main Street integrating that into Old Town. And so I think it's gonna be I I'm very excited about it, but I wanna keep hearing from folks as we go through that because it's something that I appreciate everybody looking at.

But I'm I'm hopeful that it is a a green forward project and not receding from that. The last I also wanna say I've heard a lot of folks. I understand that the center plan has been submitted by the by the applicants. And I knew know you hear a lot of that, especially on the heels of us approving Cypress Grove last month. But I'm looking forward to seeing center reinvigorated.

And so I've played phone tag with the folks at Burnham Ward about that, and we'll be seeing more of that. But I I wanted to let folks know that that's both out there, and it is not to get rid of Enderlea Center. It's to reinvigorate Enderlea Center. And finally, I just wanted to come to to have a note as we're here at the beginning of the year. I'd really suggest I really would encourage us to take some time out of our agenda over the next couple of months update our strategic plan.

We have a we adopted in 2018 a five year strategic plan. I think there was an update two or three years into that. And I know that there have been sort of internal management documents that have identified, but those aren't sort of public documents. So we're still operating off of a a strategic plan a five year strategic plan that would have come to an end in 2023. So now we're in 2026.

So I don't think it's gonna necessarily take us a a full, you know, days long consultant based idea. I think the bones of that are still there, but I think it's important for us to make sure we know where we're going and understand that. And so I'd encourage us, and I'd ask that we and I'll suggest we put this on the agenda to figure out how to do. And and, personally, my suggestion would be we we might pair it with a with our budget workshop that comes up later in in the year in our two year process. But I think it's important that we when we have a strategic plan, all of our staff reports talk about our strategic plan and our focus to make sure that we have a strategic plan that's up to date. That's all.

Thank you. Council member Gallagher.

Two quick items. I plan to comment tonight on the educational and information pieces in Old Town and how impressive I thought they were. And the comment tonight from our speaker kind of took me off my tracks, but I I actually was thinking about it. And I think it's I'm really glad that we heard that feedback tonight because in addition to the benefits that council member Fink pointed out, there was also the impact of the sewer system. A lot of the business owners in in Old Town that that felt the impact of that financially were were applauding the the removal of those trees and the replacement of new ones.

But it does point to the fact that that outreach may not have the maybe some FAQs or some additional pieces of information because the last thing we want is someone to to be upset going to Old Town. And and I think for me, at least, understanding the background, I can I I can see and obviously supported the project because of the mitigation and the benefits? And so if that information is not clear while you're standing in Old Town seeing it for the first time, we should do see what we can do to fix that. And so I do appreciate you bringing that up tonight. And then the second one is it's somewhat related to the item we just approved but also not and that's why I wanted to save it for comments is to all the directors that are here tonight, we approved a rate increase because it's good policy to recover the cost that we're spending and to subsidize the things that are important to us and we haven't changed that mix of subsidizing and we've kept we've done our fiduciary responsibility by making sure that we increase the cost to be in line with what it actually costs us.

This is where the challenge I think goes to our directors, our management is that what we can control is what those costs. And so five years from now we're going to go through a similar study we're going to look at what do those tasks cost us and that's where investment in technology, looking at the way that we're operating, looking at our neighboring agencies and finding ways to improve and we can just focus on the top 10 like what is the biggest impact to our residents. Just because a building permit we're right in the middle doesn't mean that if we can invest in a technology and make it cheaper for our residents we shouldn't do it. And so I think that's the challenge is finding ways to streamline Tustin. This isn't new to us but I just I think it's a good reminder that hey We've got five years out until our next one.

Let's pick a few in each department and find ways to reduce the cost to our residents so that we don't need to do a rate increase. So I'll leave it at that.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Chenal.

Thank you. Just to amplify what council member Gallagher was saying about, no one likes to see fees go up. But if you put it in context, remember the numbers, I think it was like $10,100,000 is is what the expenses, what it costs the city, us, to actually deliver these these fees. We were generating, I think, about $6,200,000. We're increasing those fees by 370,000. So we still have a deficit of about 4 and a half million dollars. Right? So we are heavily subsidizing these fees so that everyone can enjoy at a relatively inexpensive price all the beautiful things the parks and the fields, etcetera across the city. If you take a look at that amount, 370,000, it's half a percent. It's 0.05% increase.

And when you take a look at five years of CPI compounded, it's about 24%. So again, not to be cavalier with people's money. We are trying to be good stewards. And that's the reason why I went through this study. We'll do it again in five years is to make sure that we're trying to collect you know, revenue to to cover as much of these costs we pop possibly can, but keep these activities and the access to our parks available at an inexpensive rate. I wasn't gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna wish everyone a happy New Year. I know it's the twentieth, and I and I always say you get the first week and that's it, and then you need to pack it away with the Christmas tree. But I'm really excited like council member Nielsen said. I mean, we set a very high bar as a council for twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six.

We've got so much so much activity going on. We've got over probably a 100 acres of land out for development. Councilmember Fink talked about Pacific Center East. We've got Cornerstone, which 52 acres of land that's out there on the final stages of making a decision. We've got Flight two. So we really have a ton of great energy activity, and I wanna thank Aldo and the rest of the staff for all they're doing, and we're gonna ask you to do more. We're gonna raise the bar even higher because we wanna deliver for the residents of Tustin. But thank you very much. And, again, excited for what the year is gonna bring. Also mentioning December 18, went to John Patterson's Tustin Cube Gram opening.

The mayor was there. Gave gave a great speech. This is the fourth dealership that John Patterson owns, the third in Tustin. And the auto dealerships generate 40% of the tax revenue for the city. So and John gives back in abundance to the city. He supports a lot of the nonprofits. He supports the OC Rescue Mission. Very, very happy and wanna congratulate John for opening up his fourth dealership, third in Tustin. On January 16, had the honor of treating council member John Nielsen to lunch, which was great. And when actually in my district to Baja Fish Tacos, and I thought it was excellent.

Conversation was great. Food is great. Thank you, John. On January 17, I also attended the Santa Ana Rotary event celebrating the seventh seventieth anniversary of Blue Buoy family swim school. And the core was to celebrate Blue Buoy, but also its rotary use it as a vehicle to raise money for their educator Good Idea Grants, which provides funding directly to the Tustin Unified School District educators.

So not only did we get to celebrate a longstanding business in Tustin, we were able to raise some money, have a lot of fun, and support the kids of Tustin. And then also attended the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, which was organized by Aaron Nelson at the Tuscan Community Foundation. It was a great way to spend a day off. It it truly was. And council member Fink and I actually cut out hundreds of stars from dignified retired flags. Just gonna show you the card and on the back of it. So these cards are actually for veterans and also for their family members. So you take these stars, laminate it in a card in the back is a really nice statement. I'm going back to New York.

I'm gonna actually give this to my my mom and my sisters in memory of my dad. So it says, I was once part of the American flag. I flew over America, the land of the free, because of the brave. I can no longer fly. The sun and the wind have caused me to be tattered and torn. Please carry me as a reminder that you are not forgotten. Thank you. So god bless our troops, and, that concludes my report.

You, mister mayor pro tem. Real briefly, on, January 14, I chaired the OCFA Budget and Finance Committee meeting where we discussed, among other things, our financial forecast, and that agency is approaching a 100% funded on its un unfunded live pension liability, which is freeing up money for capital improvement projects that are desperately needed in station upgrades and the like. So I am grateful to be part of a city that follows a similar approach of voluntarily paying down our unfunded pension liability and keeping an eye on our expenditures and our future savings. And on that note, wanted to echo councilman Gallagher and mayor Prodem Chenelle's comments on the cost and expense savings approach that staff continues to make. I wanna thank you.

I know we discussed the bridge redesign here recently. Saving taxpayer dollars when they're not necessary to be spent is what we're here to do. And I think on the fees, you know, we we recover costs where we need to. They're voluntary user fees. They're not they're not mandatory fees that all residents have to pay. In in order to do that, when we do that, that enables us to pay for our cops and our fire and have clean streets and and safe roads. So I think our priorities are are correct, and I appreciate staff taking a look at that. And we haven't always done the

five year study. That was

a policy enacted five years ago to make sure that we check back in, and so I appreciate staff following through with that. Small adjustments are a little bit less painful than big ones and big surprises. So thank you for that. And I want to say congratulations to our newest commissioner who was on consent, but Christy Martin is our newest art commissioner. And I will be in attendance tomorrow night to swear you in. So congratulations, and thank you for stepping up to serve. And

with that, a couple of

upcoming events. We have the senior grocery and food distribution on Thursday, January 22 from 01:30 to 02:30PM at the Tustin Area Senior Center. And then we have a birthday celebration Tuesday, January 27, 11:30 it says PM, but I think it's gotta be AM, 11:30AM at the Tustin Area Senior Center. I don't know if anybody would be there at PM, but that's on January 27. And with that, we will adjourn. The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, 02/03/2026, for the closed session meeting at 04:30PM and the regular business meeting at 6PM. Thank you. Have a good night.