City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, Vacaville. This is 04/14/2026. It's Tuesday. It's six p. M. This is a regularly scheduled City Council meeting. May I have a roll call?

Council agency authority member Stockton?

Here. Ritchie?

Here.

Chapman? Here. Remo? Here. Wiley? Here. Vice Mayor Vice Chair Silva? Mayor Chair Carley?

Here. And if you are able, will you please rise for a moment of silence followed by the pledge. Council member Wiley, will you do this in the pledge of allegiance?

Ready to pledge.

While we did adjourn into closed session at five there is nothing to report out at this time. And with that, is there any changes to tonight's agenda?

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members. Yes, the Consent Item 9D will be pushed to April 28 meeting because the title was incorrectly coded on the agenda. Thank you.

Alright, thank you. Do I have a motion? So we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. And now we'll move on to any reports of the city council or any updates from any boards or commissions? Not seeing any lights. Alright. Councilmember Stockton?

Yes. I just wanted to recognize that myself and Councilwoman Wiley went to the month of the military child and it was an incredible event out at Travis Air Force Base, respecting and honoring the children and the support system that them and their families provide for their enlisted parents. It was very well attended. I know council member Wiley handed out some some really cool gifts. They it was just really heartwarming with everything going on right now to know that there are community events and things like that to honour the families and the children of our brave men and women that are in our armed services.

So it was well attended, it was very meaningful and I look forward to going again next year.

Thank you. Just a couple of report outs. The typical monthly board meetings that did occur at the Sloan County Water Agency. Interesting for the public. While Lake Berryessa is 99.9% full, that's good for us.

The snowpack report was dismal. Now that was before there was some recent snow in the mountains, but that all affects how much the state gives allotments, and so we get water from many sources, So this was discussed at the meeting on April 9. The good news is we're in a very healthy position this year for our water, whether it's groundwater, various water in any of the state waters. Just wanted to pass that along. And then also the Sloan Transportation Authority held their meeting on April 8.

More conversations in the discussion about the future of transportation, especially because there is a budget deficit. Point, Solano County does not have any tax measure associated with transportation where all other eight Bay Area counties do, and so you can't expect that Solano County is going to have the same level of service. That said, there is truly a discussion in the next twelve to twenty four months of a potential fiscal cliff when it comes to Solano Express. So Sol Trans runs Solano Express for all the cities in the county so that there transportation is in and out of our county. So the good news is our team here in Vacaville is working with STA in some of the subcommittees to figure out a way to make sure that we actually can ensure that we don't lose this service here in Vacaville, in Dixon, and even how we're connecting to Davis, we're still holding on to a line that is by reservation only all the way to Sacramento because there's a belief that you can't just go to the Bay Area, we're right here in the middle and people are going both ways and so we're trying to hold on to that as well.

So that was an interesting topic, just wanted to report that out to the rest of the council. Slano LAFCO or Slano Local Agency Formation Commission, we met on the thirteenth this week. There's always discussions about different projects that are going on, some that don't really aren't as significant as others but are impactful but there was a report update on the municipal service reviews. I think what's important is our staff is working with the staff at LAFCO, working through the comments, working through the items on our draft MSR and so there will be a meeting with city staff and the consultants and the developers on April 30 to discuss our current draft MSR. So that affects Vacaville.

And for that, that's all I have to report out. Councillor Wiley.

Just a few comments and as council member Stockton said we did attend the month of the military child and this really event was for the reservists, so people that come leave their families once a month and come to Travis area so at this time their families came along to see where their mom or dad was most of the time. So I talked to people from Texas and also people from the Bay Area, Reno and a lot of places. It was really a nice activity for the families to see and the children were thanked for having their dad or mom have to miss birthday parties or ball games. So it was really a nice event. And also this past week I went to the Yellow Salon Air Quality Board since I'm representing that again and that was a good meeting.

This coming weekend we have our fifth annual Spruce Up Day in District 6 and this is the last four years we got rid of 109 tons worth of stuff that went to the landfill and stood in the garages and backyards of the people in District 6. And it takes 40 volunteers and I'm happy to say almost all the slots are full but hopefully we'll have sunny weather this Saturday for that. And that was funded with district dollars which is no longer a thing because we had to cut that when we cut our budget last year but I had money left over for that which is also Measure M money. And then the North Bay Operating Rooms are now up and going again. The two operating bays closed prior to the pandemic and then they opened just this past week and we took a tour and saw how it looks wonderful now and they've been doing hip and knee surgeries and it's a real benefit for Vacaville to have those operating rooms open again with North Bay.

And then finally on April, just a reminder, the air show is going on on base so they're really gearing up to have a lot of the community and company there so hopefully people will be able to go out to the air show and we'll have good weather for that weekend as well.

Thank you. With that I'll move on to reports of the city manager.

Good evening mayor, vice mayor, council members and community. I do have three updates. Angelina is going to run my quick presentation. Thanks Angelina. So I do want to remind the community about our education informational sessions around our tax measure discussion.

We have the community meetings happening across all the districts. We have planned two meetings for each district and the locations are there. These information is also available on our website called choosingapath.net or you can go to cityofvakaville.gov/choosingapath. Moving on, also we're having on April 25 an event called through the R PAL team, Vacaville Youth Summit Break the Chains Not Yourself. This is a great event which is free for youth age from the seventh to twelfth grade students who live in Vacaville and there will be during the summit youth led workshops which will be focusing on encouraging young people to break generational cycles, building resilience and becoming a better version of themselves.

This event is at Solano Community College from nine to three p. M. And last we have a fair housing workshop that in recognition of the fair housing month our housing and community development community services department is partnering with Legal Services of Northern California to host this workshop. It will be open to all landlords, tenants, rental or leasing agents and it will provide an overview of the important housing topics including federal and state fair housing laws, protected classes, landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities, reasonable accommodations and service animals, the violence against women act and all of this information will be available to our community at this workshop on April 16, Three Oaks Community Centre starting at 10AM and that's my report. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for this information. Well tonight we do have three presentations. We'll move on to the first one. It's Byovil USA twenty twenty six proclamation and I don't believe that director Morris is here,

is Assistant director Claudia is here.

Alright. So come forward and go ahead. I'm gonna go ahead and read this and then I'll turn the microphone over to you to share a few thoughts. Yes. Make sure your mic's on so that we can communicate.

So whereas in 2018, the city of Vacaville reached out to Solano College, the Solano Economic Development Corporation life sciences consultants and other stakeholders to discuss expanding the city's existing life science industry. And whereas in 2019, the city of Vacaville in partnership with these stakeholders developed a new strategy to grow biomanufacturing in the city. And in 2020, the city of Akville launched its biotechnology and advanced manufacturing initiative to attract more biomanufacturing companies to the city, and supported the creation of the California Biomanufacturing Center, also known as the CBC. A non profit organization supporting industry development and workforce training. And whereas the CBC supports the city's efforts to usher in the next era of growth and success for one of the largest clusters of biomanufacturing companies in the world, And the CBC, in partnership with the City Of Vacaville and Solano College, is prepared to present BioVille twenty twenty six.

And whereas BioVille twenty twenty six is a two day event that celebrates the biotechnology and biomanufacturing community in Vacaville with a career fair and an opportunity to tour the Solano College Biomanufacturing Training Center at Solano College and Life Space Labs. And whereas BioVille is an event that shows biotechnology can be fun and accessible to young and old and encourages all to venture into BioVille and explore biotechnology. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, John Carley, as mayor of the City of and on behalf of the Vacaville City Council, do hereby proclaim April 2026 as BioVille USA in the City of Vacaville. And this is actually really a great way to showcase it. It's not just an event for anyone who doesn't understand CBC.

I'm sorry that Vice Mayor Silva is not here because this is his world, right? In his education. But this is a real opportunity for us as a city and a community to showcase the very best of what advanced manufacturing looks like in biotechnology. I'm going to present this to you on behalf of the city and to present it so we can also showcase it. So congratulations. You. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I would like for you to share a few words.

Sure. Thank you so much Mayor Carley, Vice Mayor who's not here, and the rest of the council. We are definitely proud to be a partner in this effort and support BioVille. We always volunteer. We have a table. We represent Vacaville and review resumes for emerging professionals. And so this is a great honor. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And Yeah. There you go.

It is deserving and I know that director Morris has been at a at a an event that showcases and representing the city of Atkville. Could you share a little bit more about that?

Yeah. She's currently at the bio manufacturing Biomanufacturing event with our partners from Transwestern and representing Vacaville in a 10 by 10 booth and talking about our economic development there for tonight and tomorrow.

Doctor. Right, so that's the reason why she's not here because we're actively trying to continue the recruiting of our advanced manufacturers. So we'll move on to our next presentation, which is the twenty twenty six Fair Housing Month proclamation and community contest announcement. So I do believe Is Adesla Lopez, are you in the house? Yes, you are. I see you in the house. So thank you. It's a it's This is another wonderful proclamation. It really showcases what Vacaville is all about. So let me just read the proclamation.

Whereas the principle of fair housing is not only state and federal law and policy, but a fundamental human concept and entitlement for all citizens. And whereas discrimination based on race, color, national origin, gender, disability, familial status, religion, and other protected classes is illegal in California. And as a community, we welcome all good neighbors, recognizing the contributions and richness tendered by a wide variety of people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds, religious traditions, ages, genders, and levels of ability. And whereas interested parties from both private and public sectors will participate in a city, state, and national effort to promote fair housing. Now therefore be it resolved that I, John Carley, mayor of the city Of Vacaville, and on behalf of Vacaville City Council, do hereby proclaim April 2026 Fair Housing Month in the City Of Vacaville, and urge all residents of our community to personally adopt the spirit of equal housing opportunity and adhere to the letter and character of the fair housing laws.

So with that, congratulations to all the staff within our city that continues to work with the residents of our community to ensure that there is housing for those who may have be disadvantaged, but also to feel that when we're there helping them, that they can be encouraged and know that we're in partnership with them so that their life is a lot easier. Thank you and congratulations.

Mayor, council members, good evening. Each April, we celebrate the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 nationwide. The Fair Housing Act protects people from discrimination when they are renting, buying home, obtaining a mortgage, seeking housing assistance, or engaging on other housing related activities. It is illegal to discriminate or take any action based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, or disability. The city of Vacaville continues to educate residents access to housing, which contributes to their quality of life, enhances their connection to the community, and supports overall economic success of the city.

As mentioned by our city manager, Chaudhry, the Housing and Community Development Department is partnering with Legal Services of Northern California to facilitate a fair housing workshop this year and that will be held on Thursday, April 16 at 10AM at the Three Oaks Community Center. New this year, the Housing and Community Services Department also executed a contract with Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California to provide free and comprehensive housing services for Vacaville residents. In addition, the Housing and Community Services Department is sponsoring its third annual poster contest inviting participants to create original artwork depicting what does fair housing mean to you. The contest will be conducted throughout the Vacaville Unified School District as well as the City Of Vacaville after school program. This is encouraging youth grades grades eight grades one through eight to put their creative minds to work while educating them about Fair Housing Act.

The contest will run from April 1 to April 25 and participants may submit their entries either in person or electronically via email. For more information, contact us at 449-5675. Again tonight we recognize the City of Vacaville's commitment to the goal of equal access to housing for all. Thank you.

Thank you very much and appreciate all the hard work that staff does to make this happen. We really do appreciate the efforts. So congratulations. Thank you. Our final presentation tonight is twenty twenty six Dispatcher Week Proclamation. So I'm gonna ask, what's the cost again to come down? I do believe that you're going to be part of this. You are a communications manager in the police department but you wear two patches. Some people aren't paying attention. So with this, this is a fantastic week. Obviously, I had the privilege of working alongside of you for many years. I did just walk through the building and it looks like it's Camping World. Is that right?

Yes.

Well, it's always about making sure you enjoy the location where everyone is living when they're away from home. Really appreciate all the work and effort of all of our communication centre. So let me read the proclamation, where an emergency can occur at any time that requires police, fire or emergency medical service personnel and when an emergency occurs, the prompt response of police officers, firefighters and paramedics is critical to the protection of proper safety of the public And whereas the safety of our police officers and firefighters is dependent on the quality and accuracy of information obtained from citizens who contact emergency communication centers in Solano and Napa Counties. And whereas public safety telecommunicators are the first and most critical contact our residents have with emergency services. And that is true, you are the first first responders in most cases.

They're also the single vital link for our police officers and firefighters by monitoring their activities by radio, providing them with information and ensuring their safety. They are the unseen first responders. And when a call comes into a dispatch center, lives can be saved and they often are. Public safety telecommunications help bring babies into the work and they comfort and console residents during periods of grief. And each year during the second week in April, the telecommunications personnel in the public safety community are honored.

It is a time to celebrate and thank those who dedicate their lives to serving the public. The week long celebration of public safety dispatchers was started in 1981 by Patricia Anderson of the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office and later signed into law by then President Bill Clinton in 1994. And whereas public safety telecommunicators unwavering compassion, dedication and calm voices provide reassurance in moments of crisis and serve as the vital connection between our community and emergency responders. Now therefore be it resolved that I, John Carley, Mayor of the City Of Vacaville, on behalf of the Vacaville City Council, do hereby proclaim April the eighteenth twenty twenty six as Dispatcher Week in the City Of Vacaville. Ask the citizens of our community to join us as we recognize these outstanding professionals.

Congratulations. On

behalf of my wonderful team, I appreciate the honour and the recognition. We are proud to serve the community and our public safety partners every day. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right, we'll go ahead and move on to item nine. It's the consent calendar minus item D, which is pulled until the next council meeting. So we have items nine A through K minus D. Any member of the council or the public wishing to pull an item for discussion?

Seeing none, do I have a motion?

So moved.

We have a motion and second. So we have a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? All right, we'll go ahead and move on from there. This is the business from the floor. This is a time where any member of the public can address the council on any item that is not on tonight's agenda but is within our jurisdiction. You may come to the podium and share. You'll each have three minutes to share. Good evening.

Good evening council members, mayor. My name is Mike Whitley. I'm a member of the train gang over in Roberts Ranch. This is about creating quiet zones, we know is a process that's going on. First off, I want to thank Claudia and Aaron for their work on bringing this forward.

And I also want to thank Greg Richey for his continued support on this. The sticking point on this, what's affecting members of our neighborhood primarily is in the evenings. Per the noise element policy NOIP1.1, boat six, where the noise source in question consists of intermittent single events, the report must address the effects of maximum noise levels in sleeping rooms in terms of possible sleep disturbance. This was not done with village E or village A that were approved. And currently the sound levels that are being experienced inside are 66 decibels.

It's 21 decibels above the allowed limit per the city of Vacaville. And hopefully this will work. But I want to go through and introduce you to Yasim, Aliyah, Jaden, and Athena.

The train can be very annoying. For example, one time I went to

the bathroom

and the train was so loud. These guys I had gotten me the train also just now let me sleep. I make plan I make plans, like, why I I plan to wake up wake up early in the morning, and then they're canceled because I can't sleep. And one time I just go on my bed and the train honks so loud, I ran out of my room. The train does does not honk once, but sometimes it sounds like, I don't like it. Please stop. My grandmother's with us. It's very hard for her to sleep.

One time when I was almost asleep, a train came and it honked its horn. Sometimes when I go to the backyard, it scares me. I can't sleep because of the train. Yes. It's really loud.

It's hard for me to talk to my friends. It's literally, like, so loud that it thinks it's gonna I think it's gonna run me over. And it feels like like it's like thunder or something. It's like going through our house and it's really loud and it really annoys me when I'm doing my homework and it's really hard and for me to go to bed. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

My name is Jayden. I live at Rock Ranch and

Thank you.

I can really hear the horn on Sir, the thank you. Just At nighttime it's really hard for sleeping.

And the reason why I'm bringing this up, and I will walk away after this, is because of the fact this same noise exposure is going to be experienced at the A and P Children's Fund development, which is directly to the south of us. That's in the presentation decks that I'll leave with the city clerk.

You a presentation that you can leave? I just tried to understand what you just said.

Yes. I do have a presentation. I'll leave copies of that with the city

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

just for the record, Vice Mayor Silva has now joined the council meeting, so his attendance should be noted at this time. Good evening.

Hi, mayor. Hi, city council. My name is Sean Pointer, and I'm with the Try and Gang Group. This is what I have to wear at night. I also have to wear sound protection earplugs so I don't hear the train. And the headset is worn at night not to hear the loud train noise that goes off all hours of the night where I live. When I moved here over two years ago, the train noise put me at David Grant Hospital because of my PTSD. I'm a twenty nine year veteran, combat veteran, deployed five times. I've been around a lot of trauma, living in a war environment, and seeing a lot. Thank God for the VA for helping me.

I was in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Home base is Travis Air Force Base, but sent to The Middle East many times. Since I've got back, I've had two bouts of cancer, struggling with mental and physical issues. I have PTSD, fight or flight syndrome, and many health issues serving for our country in combat missions. I moved to Vacaville because I heard the city supports its veterans.

I moved out to Robert Ranch because it was supposed to be a quiet area. Nobody told me about the loud train noise running all day and night. I've had a hard time falling asleep because I have fight or flight, and the trigger of hearing the train noise at night sets me off. I must take sleeping pills, wear hear gear, and hearing plugs, which is very uncomfortable to sleep with. I have to go to get a major surgery in May.

And I'm not looking forward to hearing the loud train noise 20 fourseven while I recover for four to six weeks. Anyway, I'm not pointing figures at anybody anymore. Even the lawfully city of Vacaville general plan noise ordinance wasn't complied to before the construction of Robert Ranch. I'm not blaming it and and not blaming it on bullfrog sounds. I like the situation to be solvable like we do in the military when we're at war.

We make things happen, fixing things that go wrong. And this issue of the Vacaville general plan not dealing with the noise ordinance is a problem that needs to be fixed. I like to see a quiet zone implemented at the train crossing at Fry Road with the help of the city and the county so I can get a good night's sleep in my new home and get my health better. It's not just for me, but our neighbors who have small children who are affected as they just played. And the small children are our future. So thank you for listening. I appreciate it very much.

Thank you.

Hi, members of the council, Mayor Carley, my name is Ramon Campa. I came to Vacaville to retire. And again, my subject here is the train noise. What I want to just mention is that I also have to wear earplugs in order to sleep. So what I would like to see done is have the train noise essentially knocked out by a quiet zone.

And also what most people have not discussed is I'm also worried that if it isn't resolved, what will happen is we'll have a lot of trouble selling our homes. And by that, I mean that we'll have to maybe possibly reduce the price down to where we below where we what we paid for it. And that means that property taxes on that house, whoever buys it, would be reduced. So it would affect not just the city but also the county. Anyway, so any help you can give us would be definitely appreciated. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Over the years, I've brought to your attention many insights and research on cannabis and what's actually going on in our communities surrounding the lack.

Real quick. Just so you know, this is going to be discussed as part of our strategic plan. Do you want to hold this your notes to be actually on point on the issue?

Yeah, that'd great.

Yeah, it'll be coming up. That's on the strategic plan.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Yeah, thank you. Good evening.

Good evening.

I don't normally do this. I'm here for the building of the mosque or the planning of it. I just want to let you know that I don't think it really fits with our country peaceful downtown. I think it would be very ugly eyesore. There's many topics, but I just want just do one topic tonight.

During a planning stage meeting, the call to prayer tower was presented as a historical part of the mosque. A newly built tower is not considered historical, although historically, the prayer tower, not in The USA, but Muslim Islamic countries, was used towers to call those in a nontechnical time of prayer, but is not needed today. We have alarm clocks. We have clocks, phones with alarms, watches with alarms. So in reality, the prayer tower is not needed anymore.

And it's and also, we were told the prayer tower will never take place as in the call of prayer taking place. And yet we see it in Minnesota, Michigan, New York. And of course, we know that this falls under the First Amendment, which protects religious expression. And to amplify outdoor broadcasting is subject to local regulations. Yet the above mentioned places have adjusted their noise orderings to prevent the mosque to broadcast a call to prayer.

Again, we were told that this will never happen. But once the mosque is built, they can use the tower for a call or prayer, just like churches use bells. Yet, we will not, yet we don't hear church bells ringing in Vacaville. Yet, you will hear the call of prayer once the mosque is built. No mosque, no prayer, no noise, no problems Because it will be a problem.

It will be a never ending problem. You can Google it. It's all over the internet. Noise problems with multiple complaints and traffic problems which I don't have time to cover. I just want to know why can't we learn from other people's mistakes?

I hear now that the planning meeting, they're planning another meeting and they want to limit what we say. We can only talk about traffic, which I don't think that is good. We need to hear the truth of what this will cause. My husband and I have the saying, claiming to be wise, we become fools. And we'll be fools if we let the building of the mosque pass in Vacaville. That's just one section.

Yeah. Thank

you. Sorry if I took

No. That's fine.

Good evening. It's old commudgeon time. Yeah. There's been a lot of talk about the intent or the attempt to raise the city sales tax. And I just wanna reiterate again that this is a burden not on you, ladies and gentlemen. You're all doing well. It's not a burden on me, really. That the only thing I spend money on is food, and that's not tax. So I'm all good. But people on the lower end of the spectrum are going to be hurt the most by that.

I just wanted to mention that. And during 2024, the city spent $20,000,000 on the solar panels at various buildings, and I wasn't able to find out just how that was financed. But the point I wanna bring out is is that was discretionary spending. You didn't have to spend that money. The cost savings that was projected for that was $25,000,000 over like twenty years.

That means there's only a $5,000,000 return on projected return on investment for $20,000,000 spent. That's not good business. Perhaps in the future, the city should not make great big purchases of things that could be done without. Now during the weekend, back to my favorite subject, the impacts of California forever on the taxpayers of Solano County. During the weekend, Ron Rowlett, our former mayor, was down at the Republican State Convention trying to get the delegations from, Alameda County and Contra Costa County to present a declaration that the state Republican Party thinks California forever is just the most wonderful thing.

Well, the Solano County delegation found out about it, went and informed those other delegations about just what a rip off California forever is. Remember, California forever never has refuted the county staff report of what they will steal from the taxpayers. So just want to point out that, yes, mister Rowlett is now busy trying to pirate from the taxpayers, but that's where he went. And, it just struck me as strange that the California forever is so desperate to to legitimize themselves that they had to go all the way down to San Diego to try to get somebody from up here to say something positive about them when the people in the area know the truth. Just like former state senator Bill Dodd said, it's nothing more than a sleazy real estate scam.

Thank you.

Seeing no one else, I'll go ahead and close business from the floor and we'll move on to public hearings. We do have two tonight. Madam City Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. This next item, item 11A, is proceedings or public hearing for the proceedings for annexation of territory to the community facilities district number twelve police and fire services and is to inquire into the annexation of territory and the levy of special taxes in the annexation territory for the purpose of financing additional police and fire services and finance director Ken Matsumiya is here to present.

So before we do that, I'm going go ahead and share this. This is a public hearing for the proceedings for an annexation of territory to the city's community facilities district number eleven Southtown Police and Fire Services. The hearings are to inquire into the annexation territory and the levy of special taxes in the annexation territory for the purposes of financing additional police and fire services. If anyone wishes to file a written protest, they must be filed with the city clerk now. Seeing no protests, the hearing is now open and we'll first have a presentation by staff about the proposed annexation and after that we will receive comments and questions and any oral protests from any interested persons.

When all comments have been received, the hearing will be closed. So looking forward to your presentation.

Thank you. Good evening,

Mr Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the As mentioned, this is one of two public hearings. This first item is for the Vanden Gate development annexing into CFD 11. And so starting off with some high level background, Vanden Gate is conditioned to join CFD eleven as part of its development agreement. CFD11 was formed back in 2006 to provide a funding mechanism for the cost of fire and police services within that district. Vandongate will be the eighth annexation into the district and the development includes 42 single family detached homes.

And then based on current CFD rates for CFD 11, the subject development would generate approximately $90,404 annually at full build out. So that is when the 42 units are actually fully built. Here's a map showing where Vanden Gate is. It's the Southeast part of Vacaville with Vanden Road to the left and Alamo Drive to the North. And the steps to the annexation, are outlined here.

The first item on this list was adopting the resolution of intent which took place on February 24. Tonight, the agenda includes the items listed in the second bullet and so that's holding the public hearing, conducting a special election of property owners, declaring the results of that election and introducing the ordinance levying the special tax within the district. And the final step is scheduled for the April 28 meeting, which would be the second reading and adoption of the ordinance introduced tonight. The recommendation is to hold the public hearing for the annexation, if there are no majority protests, to have the City Clerk open the special tax election ballot and announce results. And if the ballot is voted in favour of the annexation, adopt by motion, the subject resolutions by title only, and introduce the ordinance.

And with that, I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. I don't see any questions from the council. So we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing to receive comments from the public and any questions and any oral protests from any interested persons. Seeing no further comments, I will go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the council and see if there's any other discussion items on this.

Motion to approve. Second. Alright, so before we'll do that, let me continue on this process. We'll now consider and adopt a resolution calling for a property owner to vote on the issues of the proposed annexation to the CFD eleven and levy of special taxes in the annexation territory. So now what I'll ask for is the motion. Motion approved. I second. So we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Alright, we'll move on. In anticipation of the election, the ballots have been completed by the property owners in the annexation territory and submitted to the city clerk. At this time, I ask the city clerk to open the ballots and announce the results of the election.

All seven votes are affirmative.

Alright, with the results of the election being in favour, we'll now consider the final actions of the proceedings. Do I have a motion to adopt the resolution declaring the results of the special annexation determining the validity of prior proceedings and directing recording of amended and restated notice of special tax and an ordinance levying special tax within CFD number 11 including annexation territory. I'll take a motion. Motion to approve. We We have a motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The resolution ordinance passes for this adoption so this will conclude this business item, actually this public hearing. So we'll move on to 11B.

Thank you mayor. 11B is also a public hearing for the proceedings for annexation of territory to the city's community facilities district number twelve police and fire services. The hearings are to inquire into the annexation of territory and the levy of special taxes in the annexation territory for the purpose of financing additional police and fire services and again finance director Ken Matsumiya will be giving the presentation.

So this is a public hearing for the proceedings for the annexation of territory to the city's community facilities district number twelve, police and fire services. The hearings are to inquire into the annexation of territory and the levy of special taxes in the annexation territory for the purpose of financing additional police and fire services. So if anyone wishes to file written protest, they must be filed with the clerk now. Seeing no protest, the hearing is now officially opened and we will first have the presentation by staff about the proposed annexation and after that we will receive comments and questions and any oral protests. And so we'll go ahead with the proceedings and the presentation.

Alright, thank you again. And so for Bannon Cove, it is conditioned to annex into CFD twelve. The timeline, and the process is exactly the same as the previous item. And so for some background, CFD twelve was also formed in 2006 to provide a funding mechanism for the cost of fire and police services within the district. Is referred to as the Infill District was set up to corporate or to annex in previously unincorporated undeveloped acres within the city's boundaries.

Vanding Cove in total the development will have 114 but for Phase 1 which is being annexed in this evening includes 30 units and this will be annexation number six into our Infill District. Based on the twenty twenty five-twenty six rates the development would generate $172,946 per year for those 114 units but for Phase 1 that amount would be 45,512 once those 30 units are constructed. And here is a map of Vanden Cove with the annexation area highlighted in green. And here are the steps to annexation. They're exactly the same, as I mentioned, as the previous item.

And the recommendation is also the same, holding the public hearing and having the city clerk open the special tax election ballot and then if in favour to approve the subject resolutions and introduce the ordinance. With that, I'd be happy to take any questions.

Yeah, thank you. I do see a question. Councillor Wiley.

Since these are like right next to each other, so why is one considered infill and the other not? I didn't quite see the distinction between the two.

So for the Van And Gate development, when that was approved back in 2018 as part of a development agreement it was conditioned to join CFD 11, whereas with the Van And Cove development when that went to the Planning Commission in 2023 the infill development was recommended. So we have approached the developer prior to this about potentially amending the development agreement to have Van and Gate join CFD12. So essentially they'd both be in the infill development but because of timing and cost they wanted to keep CFD11 and kind of move the process forward.

Thank you.

Seeing no other questions, we'll now open the public hearing to receive comments, questions and any oral protests from any interested persons. Seeing none, no further comments, I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the council and with that, we'll now consider and adopt a resolution calling for a property owner vote on the issues of the proposed annexation to the CFD12 and the levy of special taxes in the annexation territory. Do I have a motion? So Councilman Gritsch use the motion. Second?

I second.

You second? Okay. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? So in anticipation of the election, the ballots have been completed by the property owners in the annexation territory and submitted to the city clerk and at this time I ask the city clerk to open the ballots and announce the results of the election.

All five votes are affirmative.

And with those results of the election being unanimously in favour, we'll now consider the final actions of the proceedings. Do I have a motion to adopt the resolution declaring the results of the special annexation determining validity of the prior proceedings and directing recording of amended and restated notice of special tax and an ordinance levying special tax within the CFD 12, including annexation territory.

So I

think council member Ritchie you motioned, vice mayor you second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? So the motion passes. So thank you for the presentation and Council Member Wiley, did you have any further comment?

I just have one

question. Because they're right next to each other, you said one had seven owners, one had five owners. Is there anyone that's in both parties or are they five and seven distinct parties?

I believe it's one owner for each group.

So there's no one that has overlap in both things then?

I'm not aware of who the voters are.

It's the same owner for both pieces of land. The reason why the votes are done that way is that it's based off of acreage and so that's kind of how the votes are assigned and so I think for the development that think was like 4.6 acres, that gets routed up to where they have five votes based off of the five acres that they own.

But one person is making those five votes?

Correct. Landowner. Correct.

That's how it's satisfied.

And the same owner is the one that has seven votes over here, so one owner is the one who passed both of these?

That is correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright, so appreciate it. Thank you very much and we'll go ahead and move on to business.

Item 12A is a resolution approving the Vacaville Housing Authority annual public housing agency plan and moving to work supplemental plan for fiscal year twenty twenty six-twenty seven and approving revisions to the Vacaville Housing Authority Administrative Plan and Housing and Community Services Administrator Celinda Aguilar Vasquez is here to present.

Good evening Mayor Carley, Vice Mayor Silva and council members. Tonight I am presenting the Vacaville Housing Authority annual agency plan, moving to work supplemental plan and the revisions to the administrative plan. Tonight's action for consideration is for the Housing Authority Board to approve the Vacaville Housing Authority Annual Public Housing Agency Plan and moving to work supplemental plan and revisions to the Vacaville Housing Authority Plan to implement administrative policies and updates. The Housing Choice Voucher Program is administered by the Vacaville Housing Authority and is designed to assist very low income families, elderly and disabled participants find and maintain housing. The Housing Authority is currently allocated thirteen ninety two vouchers that allow participants to find housing on their own on the private market.

The Vacaville Housing Authority pays out approximately 20,900,000 subsidy into the local economy each year for rent payments. As a condition to continue to receive funding, the Vacaville Housing Authority must submit an annual plan each year to discuss the progress made towards the goals of the five year agency plan. The Vacaville Housing Authority is required to submit an annual moving to work supplemental plan in addition to the annual agency plan. The annual plan includes responses to all of the elements listed here such as new activities planned for the year and comments for the resident advisory board who have reviewed the plan. In the moving to work supplemental plan, you will see items listed here that include moving to work waivers and associated activities planned by the Vacaville Housing Authority and public comments to the plan.

The plan mirrors what was submitted to HUD last year and includes activities such as triennial recertifications for participants who receive at least 90% of their income from a fixed source and a landlord incentive program that includes activities such as establishing a damage claim fund for landlords, vacancy loss payments and incentive payments for new units. The Vacaville Housing Authority must adopt an administrative plan that establishes local policies administration of the section eight program in accordance with housing and urban development, HUD requirements. HUD issues program regulations that the housing authority must follow but also allows housing authorities to establish local policies through the administrative plan. The back of the housing authority periodically updates the administrative plan as regulations and other circumstances change, when new programs are added or when clarification of existing policies is needed. The administrative plan revisions include incorporated administrative policies and updates consistent with HUD regulations following the format of the industry standard model administrative plan and inclusion of a project move up program.

The project move up program is a part of our homeless action plan. The Project Mover program will be a program to facilitate the progression of individuals or families from homelessness to housing via the selected referring agency to permanently affordable housing via section eight tenant based voucher. The intent is admit five individuals referred from the selection agency each calendar year. The program will be implemented starting July 1. We will partner with local organizations who will refer individuals who are transitioning and in need of permanent housing.

In preparation of the plans, the Vacaville Housing Authority held a resident advisory board meeting on February 26 to review and provide comments on the plans. Public outreach was not required for the administrative plan but was included in the outreach for the plans and was included in the public notice annual and MTW plans in the Vacaville reporter in both English and Spanish. In addition, the plans were made available on the city's website for the public to review for the forty five day public comment period leading up to tonight's hearing. There are no amounts of funds requested for this item as preparation of the plans are included operating budget for the housing grant programs. The Housing Authority Board is being asked to hold the required public hearing and following the public hearing consider approval of the plans and administrative plan revisions.

If approved, the plans and required certifications will be submitted to HUD by the 04/17/2026 deadline. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions or comments from the board or from the public and accept any comments to the plan.

Thank you for the presentation. I do see a question here. Councilmember Chapman.

Thank you. Thank you for the report. You make reference to 500 properties and that referrals for those home for that property would come from agencies. Are those local agencies making the referrals?

It is local agencies and actually it's five vouchers. So it's a project move up program that it'll be five vouchers that are set aside for this program and so it'll be local referring agencies that will be sending the referrals to us.

Okay. I don't know why it said 500. With that, and the referrals will be for Vacaville homeless Correct. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome.

Seeing no questions, I'll go ahead and open it up to the public for any comment. Seeing none, I will bring it back. I know that this item requires a simple motion. Do I have a motion? Motion. We have a motion and a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. In favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much for the work that you're doing. Appreciate it. This is helpful. We'll move on to item B.

So mayor, vice mayor and council members before we move on to this item, I would like to remind everyone that as part of our mid year projections, the current projected budget deficit for the city for fiscal year twenty seven is about $12,000,000 In response to the city's current fiscal challenges. City leadership has taken a unified and a very proactive approach to step forward and support the long term financial stability while prioritizing the needs of the community. These action also demonstrate our commitment to responsible governance and to make thoughtful decisions as we provide support for both our immediate needs and the long term sustainability and financial responsibility. So today staff is going to present two scenarios showing potential budget reductions of 2.55%. These scenarios are intended to provide transparency and guide discussions around the difficult choices ahead for our budget situation including the trade offs between reducing costs and maintaining critical services.

The staffs continue to remain dedicated to open communication and fiscal responsibility and I would like to invite our Finance Director Ken Matsumiya to talk about the current fiscal situation, talk talk about the finance department and then each department will be taking turn to present their scenarios and we'll be open for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

So as the City Manager mentioned, starting with our current projection of our general fund for fiscal year twenty seven, our projection as of today, the data that we have is that for fiscal year twenty seven, next fiscal year, that the gap between our revenues and expenses would be over $12,000,000 and that's even with current cost saving measures. At this point in the process we're still in budget development and so this projection doesn't include things such as additional programs or any new programs, additional positions or any new programs. It also doesn't include any new funding for capital improvement projects. So this would be the second year in a row that there's no new money from the general fund or Metro End that's going towards any sort of capital improvement projects or those replacements. And then also, it also does not include any increases to discretionary services and supplies budget.

This would also be continuing a cost saving reduction that was implemented this year. And as the City Manager mentioned, even with continuing these cost savings measures there is no way to close this $12,000,000 gap barring some sort of significant impact or dramatic increase to our revenues. And so the topic for this presentation this evening is for the departments to go over the current cost savings measures and their impacts and then also to go over the 5% scenario or the additional reductions. There is no recommendation this evening to implement this for the twenty sixth or twenty seventh budget. That would be discussed at a later time with the budget study sessions.

So starting off with the finance department, this is our current 2.5% cost savings reductions that equal a little under 139,000. For our department this meant eliminating our non full time budget and so the impact of that meaning that with not having any sort of part time help that at our front counter we've had to close during the lunch hours and that's currently one of our the measures that we've had to put in place because of the lack of the part time funding there as well as in our utility billing section. City also or the finance department also had an intern program that we had to eliminate because of the lack of the part time funding. For both reduction in training and supplies, the key kind of stat here is that for a department of 30 we currently have $10,000 to fund our supplies and any sort of training for that department. Essentially, dollars 300 per employee and so we've had to move to more online training in order to have any sort of skill development but we haven't been able to send anybody out for the typical trainings that you would go for kind of understanding the updates with finance and changes in processes and the new pronouncements.

If we were to go with additional reductions, so a 5% reduction, there is no way for us to cut that from our service and supplies budget, as shown in the previous slide. And so the only way for us to reach that would be if there are any vacancies to freeze that position in order to achieve the 5% reduction or if our department was fully staffed then we would be looking at layoffs. So the impacts of that would depend on sort of where that vacancy exists or where that layoff would occur. So if it was in our front counter utility billing you'd be looking at reduced hours of upfront at our front counter on our call centre. If it was in our accounting section then that would result in delayed financial reporting or audit completion which has the potential to impact our ability to get federal grants and if it was in our accounts payable section that you'd be looking at potential delays with processing invoices and billings.

With that I'll pass it on to the next department or city attorney.

Thank you counsel. With the 2.5% reductions we are reducing our budget in three areas. The first is a reduction in legal and professional services. The legal and professional services are utilized for complex litigation matters and other legal matters which require a high level of expertise. The city attorneys employed by the city of Vacaville were generalists, were experts in municipal law, not necessarily experts in tax law, water law and so sometimes when those issues come up it creates a need for really specialised expertise from outside counsel.

Reduction in legal and professional services means that that work would be absorbed by the city attorney's office which will require a lot of deep digging and further individual education on some very specific areas of law. Reduction in training is the second area. We're all required to maintain a certain number of hours of continuing legal education to keep our bar licences active, reduction in our training budget makes it difficult, makes fewer opportunities for us to get that continuing legal education and we often will look or seek to find free trainings that aren't always relatable to the work we do for the city. Professional development opportunities are also an important recruitment and retention tool. Cuts in training signal reduced investment in staff when we're looking to hire qualified people for the city.

Reduction in general supplies, this is probably the least painful of all of them, we can still manage our core functions. At the 2.5% reduction, we can manage with careful prioritisation and workload management. Next slide, Ken. With the 5% reductions, we would further reduce our budget for legal and professional services and this is a significant curtailment of our outside legal services and the compounded reduction of these services will really limit our ability to engage outside experts and could result in the city taking on greater legal risk in high stakes matters which could come at a large cost to the city if we are unsuccessful in defending the city. Additional risk of unrepresented legal exposure, the city will face situations where legal issues could go unaddressed or inadequately handled and potentially resulting in costly litigation outcomes.

A further reduction in training, supplies and software, this would effectively halt most professional development in the city attorney's office, puts our staff at risk of falling behind on the continuing legal education requirements and makes it makes us unable to fund the necessary legal training to keep us from having gaps in our knowledge even in the areas of municipal law in which we're currently experts. These also make it harder again to retain legal professionals in a competitive market. Talented attorneys may seek positions elsewhere where there are better resources and development opportunities. I think it's very important to note and you'll see based on presentations from the other departments, the cuts that are being considered in other departments also have a side effect of creating additional risk for the city which will require higher demand on our office. The city attorney's office supports all of the departments and a weakened legal function affects the city's ability to provide timely legal guidance on contracts, employment matters, public records, land use and other municipal operations has a cascading effect on all city services.

Good evening, counsel. For the city manager's office, that includes the city manager's office itself, city clerk, and also public relations. And so we're looking at for two and a half percent reduction about $82,000 across a variety of different object codes. And so some of the impacts of those reductions are limited access to professional services and training, which can impact workloads, project timelines, engagement support, and then really specialized support when we need assistance with something like our broadcast system or our other systems that we have, and also staff development, reductions there. Also reduced funding for programs and materials like the Vacaville Neighborhood Association.

The last bullet is really associated with the 5% cut, so we'll move to 5%. So looking at the 5% reductions, is where the city manager's office isn't actually able to get 5% to 5%. When we are looking at how to get there, we don't really aren't expecting any staff vacancies. We're really looking at going into those line items and stripping out everything that's not exactly essential. These reductions really weigh most heavily on our public relations department, looking at pretty significant reductions to professional services, consulting, advertising, and software will take the biggest hits.

We're proposing to reduce software by about $25,000 which is only possible because we're able to prepay some things this year at a reduced cost. We'll also need to reduce advertising significantly, which could impact the level of community engagement that we've really been working to build over the past few years. And to get to the full 5%, we might need to look at staff levels being impacted as well. Next slide, Ken. So looking at information technology, 2.5% reductions are about 85,000 Again, there's no staff vacancies there, so we've really kind of gone in and culled out parts of the budget from across a variety of different object codes.

What some of that is creating risk for complex infrastructure and system projects across the organization, not really having access to those, again, specialized subject matter experts that we sometimes need to call on for, work on our systems and projects. Also, delays with system enhancements that reduce operational flexibility and responding to departmental technology needs. We're that department is supporting about 900 employees with about 15 folks. So moving on to 5%. 5% reduction would severely impact access to, those external subject matter experts that we really rely on for complex infrastructure and systems projects.

The impact would be risk of project timelines, failures, and capacity to take on new work, all that at a time when we're really trying to lean into emerging technologies to bring in some efficiencies. Also, some limited ability to respond to emerging threats in a proactive manner. Training reductions would further hinder the team's ability to maintain certifications and keep pace with rapidly evolving technology. Moving on to the city council, the 2.5% reductions really are focused this year on general supplies needed to maintain general operations. So for the city council, it's about $3,300 But moving to 5% reductions would require deeper cuts to both supplies as well as reductions to training and professional memberships, which could limit access to policy resources, training opportunity for council, and forums that support regional collaboration and informed decision making.

And with that, I'll hand it off to Jessica Bowes with Human Resources.

Good evening, mayor and council. For HR, our current 2.5 reductions include the elimination of one full time position. That position became vacant when an employee left. They were not fired or laid off. They had left, and we chose to leave that position vacant and actually eliminate that position for most of our two point five percent savings, which totals about $90,000 for HR.

A little bit more to make up the difference was a reduction in citywide training. You'll see most of the departments will show that they're going to cut their internal training. HR also has a budget for citywide training for things that apply to all city employees such as supervisor training, mandated training for sexual harassment, other things that are more broad and citywide. HR pays for those through either consultants or in house training. So for HR, our 5%, the additional 2.5% would look like a further reduction in that citywide training budget of about $45,000 That impact would obviously reduce the amount of trainings we offer citywide.

Staff will work to develop additional in house trainings, which we already do a lot of. We do a lot of self developed training that is given by our HR staff. However, the reduction in training could mean that we don't do a leadership program, stuff that we do for succession planning, other things like that. The utilization of online and reduced cost or free trainings will continue to be utilized. A reduction in our legal services budget.

This is, the timing works well because we have no labor negotiations for the fiscal year 2627. Because our MOUs don't expire until November '27, We won't be in negotiations for most of this fiscal year. So that is the reason we can cut that budget at this time. A reduction in training travel budget. This is for HR specific staff to do, again, training that's specific to our careers where we go out and get specialized training to keep up on legal updates, other things like that. So we would cut that in half by $5,000. Thank you.

All right. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members. Moving on to Parks and Recreation. So our 2.5% reductions, which were in our fiscal year now and moving into our next fiscal year. So some of those cuts that we've done is a cut to our non full time staff. This area has reduced some of our admin and marketing staff and has impacted our community center hours a little bit. And we've also cut our city sponsored performing arts theater events. We used to have four. We're down to one right now. So that is a cut, a savings of about 123,000.

And then we've cut areas and supplies and services in various areas of our programming. We had a music instructor before that brought in some pretty good programming. So we're able to, with that retirement, cut that. But we've also cut some of our supplies and services to special events, youth services and some supplies towards our Merriman Unmanned program, which got us to our percentage, which was about 240,000 for Parks and Rec. So then for additional cuts, additional two and a half percent which is another 240,000.

We really now need to start looking at some real cuts to be able to get us to where we need to be if we were to make this additional cut. So areas for consideration would be to really look at the special events we provide and look at ways that we need to find cost savings. So if we were to look at cutting a large special event like the July 4 celebration, the parks and recreation cost towards that event alone is almost $50,000 And that includes the fireworks show and also the concert and the planning around that event for the parks and recreation cost. Other areas for consideration. Right now, we have a funding of $150,000 towards our youth scholarship program.

So there's a consideration of cutting that. But that would impact two thirty to two fifty youth that are able to participate in our recreation programming with those youth scholarships. And then another area for consideration for cuts is our concessions that we have at some of

our community

parks. Keating And Nelson Parks, if we were to look at closing those concessions, we could find a cost savings of around 40,000. So those are some areas for consideration.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor and council members. As discussed in previous strategic planning sessions, the housing and community services total department budget is approximately 31 and a half million dollars. And of that, only about $200,000 or 1% is supported by the city's general fund. Within that total, the administrative portion, which supports staff, operations, and program oversight, is about 4,400,000. Again, only $200,000 of that or about 5% is from the general fund.

That means nearly all of our administrative operations depend on administrative fees attached to federal and state grants, which are capped and do not always adjust with inflation. If funding for these programs is reduced or eliminated, at the federal level, that will have a direct impact on the programs run by the department. So as an example, with the most recently released presidential budget, again, this year proposes elimination of the community development block grant program. If that program is cut, Vacaville would lose about $100,000 in administrative fees to run that program as well as the direct service funding for public service funds that support local youth programs. At the start of the current fiscal year, the department determined it would delay filling the assistant director position, And that was manageable in the short term, but it limits oversight, slows internal decision making, and reduces our ability to plan for succession and staff development.

We also discontinued the in house housing counseling services and work number services, which provided direct third party income verification for rental assistance applications and recertifications. Next slide. Due to limited administrative revenue projected for the current and upcoming fiscal years, in addition to the already vacant assistant director position, the department will also delay filling a housing technician position as well as a housing administrator position. These vacancies have an increased impact on the department's ability to manage department activities and leaves very little flexibility to implement any new initiatives. These three vacancies will be carried into the upcoming fiscal year and beyond if federal administrative, funding remains stagnant and the budget deficit continues.

Operationally, this will result in slower response times, reduced customer service, less training, and increased reliance on manual processes. Our work will be limited to maintaining core federally and state required functions. That includes administering the Housing Choice Voucher Program for both Vacaville and Solano County, Housing and Community Department compliance and reporting, affordable housing monitoring, CDBG administration, and managing our current development pipeline, projects like Oak Grove, Victory Gardens, etcetera. We would need to shift focus of housing element programs solely to those that support RENA compliance. So staff would move forward with issuing an RFP for suitable vacant properties to encourage affordable housing development, but several other housing, element programs would need to be postponed.

So this includes the relaunch of the senior home improvement program, determining the feasibility of a senior shared housing program, and the relaunch of the first time homebuyer down payment assistance program. Implementation of the homeless action plan would also be delayed. So we just would not have the capacity to move forward with the transitional housing pilot program or exploring the feasibility of the navigation center in the upcoming fiscal year. And our role would be limited to focusing on systems mapping, maintaining participation in the Capsilano and Housing First continuum of care, attendance to the homeless roundtable, and support through the Project Move On Vacaville Housing Authority program. And then finally, it's important to note that reduction in federal funding would further reduce the administrative revenue that the department relies on, meaning that even if the city's budget remains flat, our operational capacity would continue to decline.

So turning this scenario around would take additional investment of general fund to support positions within the department. That's just not feasible at this time. Thank you.

Thank you. To comply with the 2.5% reduction for fiscal year twenty twenty six, the Community and Economic Development Department reduced outside service contracts supporting planning, building, and administrative functions. The majority of that work was absorbed by our current staff and their existing workloads. I would also like to point out that our department is not funded by the general fund dollars. Our fees are sorry, our revenue is tightly close sorry, closely tied to development activity.

It's dependent on the permit fees that we take in during the building and planning project review process. Director Ken Matsumi and his team is working on a fee study that is going to come before you in May 2026 to discuss that in more depth. Next slide. To comply with the 5% reduction, we do plan to further reduce outside service contracts supporting planning and building and administrative functions. This would significantly disrupt our building division.

The ability to provide timely inspections and plan review would be significantly decreased. This would delay project review for our applicants. It would also it may also require customers to pay for their own third party review at their own cost. Additionally, we will remove the budget to support attendance to the Planning Commissioner's Academy by our Planning Commissioners. We would still provide training opportunities for them but they just won't be able to attend this conference. Thank you.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. You'll see a lot of the proposed cuts that we have in public works is gonna be coming from our maintenance and traffic. And that's because that's where most of our general fund lies. The other divisions, such as transit, design, development engineering, and inspection, all come from other services or other funding sources, I should say. And so as we looked at where we could make cuts, we tried to spread the cuts across labor, materials, and services.

So last year, freezing the public works manager and maintenance division has created an increased workload on other managers and supervisors at the corporation yard. Projects such as creation of master plans for fleet facilities and parks have been postponed because staff does not have adequate time to take care of those things right now. The street maintenance crews work in teams of five to six members, depending on the nature of the work that they are doing. These items include crack sealing, pothole repair, and paving. And not having an adequate streets crew members means that other maintenance staff from concrete creeks or storm drainage crews are pulled from their jobs to help out with street projects.

So this impacts not only streets but the maintenance crews of those other divisions. Also, when staff is not able to keep up with the workload, some of that street maintenance work is outsourced to contractors, which comes at an increased cost. And lastly, we had a one time freeze and maintenance for the play for all park was implemented because there was sufficient amount of funding for the annual maintenance of the park. Next slide. If cost saving measures are required in the future, public works is proposing the following items.

Park laborers work alongside full time staff in the maintenance of our city parks. These positions are responsible for work such as edging the lawns, tree trimming, and litter removal. A decrease in staff means that it will take longer for other staff to perform the work and less of this work will be completed. Traffic engineering interns conduct data collection for traffic counts that are requested by citizens at locations throughout the city. This work will now be placed on our engineering technicians.

So this will cause a reduction in the timeliness to conduct those traffic counts and put an added burden on our technicians, which will result in them not getting to their work as quickly. Also, are proposing a one time pause to the replacement of equipment utilized for maintenance of our lighting and landscape districts. There is a reduction in parks beautification funding. This is just a partial annual budget. But it will be a reduction that will include pausing basketball and tennis court resurfacing, painting bathrooms, resurfacing floors in the bathrooms, reduction in repairs of playground equipment, and an overall reduction in landscape improvements, such as tree and shrub plantings.

Currently, the city contracts to have the sidewalks in the downtown area pressure washed three times a year. This reduction includes a change to a new company to perform that work and reduce the pressure washing to two times a year. As a note, the city currently contributes 200,000 of general fund annually to a variety of projects in the downtown area, such as traffic control for events, litter removal, banners, and tree trimming. And this proposed reduction will come from this additional general fund contribution. And before I get to the fuel costs and the L and L districts, One, just to make a couple of comments.

First, in speaking with our city attorney's office regarding making cuts to staff that impact timing of work, such as repairing potholes, repairing sidewalks, or maintenance of trees, One concern is that there is a potential for increase of claims against the city due to not being able to conduct this maintenance in a timely manner. Second, I would like to add a few comments regarding the status of hiring maintenance workers. We are currently freezing staff and proposing additional cuts to staff next year. With that said, prior to discussing cuts last year, public works had actually was asking for three new maintenance positions and facilities, parks, and streets. We last hired a staff member in facilities maintenance in 2019.

And since that time, we've added six new facilities that staff maintains. We are currently running on less staff in streets and park maintenance than we have in the past. And in the last few years, the city has accepted six new parks, and we are looking to accept another five in the next few years. And the city continues to accept new subdivisions, which comes at an increase of maintenance of our streets, curbs, and gutter, sidewalk, storm drainage, traffic signs, and striping. All that is saying is the city continues effort to maintain the city is also growing without adequate staffing.

Not filling positions in the long term can cause staff to feel a burnout and lower morale. And I would just like to say that our staff works hard. They do a good job. And so when I say burnout, I'm not talking about them not wanting to do more, not trying to talk that they don't want to have work hard in their jobs. But it's more of a feeling of not being able to accomplish what they've been tasked with or not being able to spend an adequate amount of time on the task at hand.

Just to finish that thought, one of our greatest strengths that I believe and I've been with the city for a long time is our staff. They do an outstanding job, and they work very hard for the citizens of Vacaville. And just to conclude about the fuel cost, I was asked to share some information on that. Average gas prices in 2025 was actually lower than 2024. Gas prices typically drop in the winter months, and they start rising again at the first of the year.

And this year, we have seen a significant rise in gas prices. We had an increase of 18.5% from January to February, an increase of 19.1% from February to March. And so far in April, have seen an additional 10. And so the city has paid approximately $30,000 more this month than we did in January. On the lighting and landscaping districts, those are set up to have homeowners and businesses pay for maintenance of lighting and landscaping for neighborhood parks or set back landscape in their specific district.

Many of these maintenance districts do not assess enough funding to cover the cost of required maintenance. Therefore, the city contributes general funds to cover these costs and last year contributed 1,600,000 of general fund towards various lighting and landscape maintenance districts throughout the city. Furthermore, the city contributed approximately $977,000 of general fund last year to the city's community parks, such as Keating, Centennial, and Outpatch. This concludes my remarks. Thank you.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Counsel, this evening Chief Pernell is going to go ahead and present our 2.5% and our 5%, and I'll close.

Thank you, chief. Mayor, vice mayor, council staff, thank you for letting us be up here today. Our goal here is to maintain service reliability and community safety while also abiding to the fiscal constraints right now. So the two and a half percent reduction for fiscal year twenty six is reducing our minimum staffing from 29 down to 27, which is browning out medic 72. Our current overtime is trending higher than expected.

We have a compounding issue with, the summer months coming up, wildfire season, and then we also have an academy for, all of our our positions that are, not staffed right now. So trying to get that academy going. So we have to bring in people to teach in the academy and those people that are in, that situation. So, we're concerned with the health and safety of our firefighters right now. We're mandating them with our minimum staffing.

We have to backfill, with overtime. They're working seventy two to ninety six hours. They just don't have the amount of rest time that's that's normal, that's, needed, and we have an increase of on the job related injuries currently. So the impact is the brownout of one full time ambulance. It's going to redistribute the call volume amongst the other four ambulances.

Medic seventy two does touch each one of the other four ambulance districts, overlapping and that's the reason for medic seventy two brownout. The potential increase in response times, but please realize that we do have an ALS engine company at Station 72 with a paramedic that is on there. Next slide please, Ken. The 5% reduction. So hopefully we don't get there just like every other department doesn't want to.

But this is going to cause the full brown out of medic seventy two, which is a $1,400,000 cost saving measure. And then we still need to get up to that $2,100,000 and we're gonna need to cross staff medic seventy five and engine seventy five, closing down every other night, with a $430,000 cost saving measure. We will also have to eliminate two code compliance techs in the fire department. So this brownout of one full time ambulance and the additional of reduced overnight EMS capability, we have an increased workload on the remaining units that are that are still responding to the same amount of calls. And then it's also going to reduce our code compliance team two thirds, basically eliminating it.

And it's an increase in call complaints and less enforcement.

Chief?

Yeah. And I'll just wrap up that both options are 2.55%. The reason we're able to the only option I have is to reduce overtime. Currently, I'm 21 bodies down. October, we're gonna hopefully recover between 12 or 13 of those.

So I have no other options other than to reduce the units I have and switch that burden to the people who are in the field. The 5% reduction, I just gotta make it clear that that is not a sustainable option for me. My concern is that's gonna shift the liability a lot to the city. I have potential mistakes out there, wrong medications, people getting hurt. And that 5% reduction is not sustainable long term. And we'll have to figure out other options based on how long the deficit goes. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, thanks for allowing me to present to you tonight. I have the two captains with me in case I need to ask a couple questions that come up. So our 2.5% strategy, as you can see, we're as of May 1 because of our overtime costs, and I will explain that, we need to close our community response unit. We also need to freeze, eliminate four police officer positions, freeze, eliminate the overhire positions, freeze eliminate an office assistant position.

That position, the office assistant has already been vacated, we decided not to fill it, anticipating where our overtime is at and where the city is at with their funding. So I briefly just want to give you some ideas as to where the police department is at. As of right now, we have eight vacancies, three vacancies in dispatch. We have eight people out on injury, and we have four people out on short term long term FMLA. So every single day we're down 20 people.

That is a significant staffing shortage for our department. And for months, we have been going through backfill of overtime for our patrol, our core function which is patrol. We average about ninety hours a week in patrol in overtime to backfill these positions. So we have been hearing from our staff over and over again the burnout that they're having in patrol based on the amount of overtime they're working. So we've been pulling resources from our special units to offset some of that.

We've also been posting overtime And that is causing us, we estimate that it's going to be a $300,000 savings by shutting down crew and bringing those four police officers and one sergeant back to our core function of patrol. We are as of right now, we are allocated $1,600,000 in overtime in our budget. And we are trending about 2.5 at the end of the fiscal year. We understand that the city needs revenue. We understand it completely and we support you.

But just like the public works director said, as the city continues to grow, we're not growing with you. So we're trying to keep up with that demand that you guys want and that the community wants. And as of right now, we have a six minute response time for priority ones. It's rare. It's extremely rare. That's an amazing service that we provide to our community. We also decided not to cut training for a variety of reasons as the city attorney alluded to. When you start cutting trainings from our perspective, you're going to start seeing a back end results of litigation, which is going to cost the city millions of dollars. So we decided not to cut that side and we also decided not to cut outreach at this point in time. Next slide.

The five percent reductions will be a permanent closure of our crew team. We're going to suspend, freeze eight police officers, continue with the four overhire positions being frozen. The elimination of a community service officer, the one just retired, we decided not to backfill that. The office assistant that we previously talked about, we have two mental health coordinators that are currently one just passed background and has been given a job offer, the other just completed the background and we decided to hold that position and not hire it. The public safety dispatcher, we will freeze one position there.

And I think it's important that we start talking about the service reductions. And it's something that's very special to the city of Vacaville and what we provide as a police department when we have these special moments like fourth of July, Fiesta Days, Halloween Ciril, Merriment on May, National Night Out, and Retail Detail. We're spending around $145,000 to $150,000 in overtime to cover these events for security. Years ago, the city decided to move away from, decided to fund the Family Resource Center and the basic needs funding, is $90,000 a year that helps support utilities. People are struggling with rent, sometimes food.

This is a huge benefit that most of our community doesn't understand that we provide that the city council authorizes. That's a $90,000 a

year

savings. There's also a homeless outreach that we help support with the Opportunity House. It's about a 57,000 year position. And as you all know that we fund two beds at America's Best Value Inn at $25,000 a year for people that are looking to change their lifestyle and are working with our homeless response unit or community response unit. We put them into hotel rooms to start transitioning them out as they want to seek those services.

So we've had that for a number of years and we maintain that as a service that we truly enjoy. And that's about a $25,000 a year savings if it's eliminated. And lastly, the shelter beds at Shelter Solano, we had five beds. We are proposing that we reduce that to one bed. As people as our patrol officers come across folks that are still in need, are willing to change their lifestyle and willing to accept the help, we still feel like we need to have a bed available for them.

But that is a reduction of $137,000 from five to one bed. Those are our proposed strategies right now. I will end with you know, it gets real when you start having these conversations with your staff. It gets alarming to them. And all the department heads, I can guarantee you that they've all had these similar struggles.

When you bring this topic up to your staff, you start talking about cuts of services and possible positions, they start wondering are layoffs coming. And when I had to meet with our community response team to let them know that I'm going to present this to You should have seen their faces. You officers who truly enjoy their work. They have this mission, they have this belief in what they're doing. So when you put them into these roles that they just want to go out and work and then you say, hey, we got to close it because our overtime is off the charts right now. We got to do better. We got to figure out a way to cut some costs. They understood. They want to help. They're going to go back to patrol, they're still going to try to do their job.

But you should see them. It's hard for them to see their passion to help people to take it away. So as we navigate this, as a city, as department heads, as a team, I think we should all have these constructive conversations. I tell my staff, no knives in each other's backs, let's be positive. Let's work through this together. Nothing's going to be easy, but let's continue to have hard conversations and work through it. So as I present this to you tonight, just know that, all of our staffs are are worried, about the potential cuts on the horizon. But I know we're gonna navigate this together, I just appreciate you giving me the time. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

That concludes the presentation. We're open for questions.

Alright, I'm sure there's gonna be several questions here. But it's a lot to digest, no doubt that sometimes we've been through these difficult times before but the exercise is still painful and the gap is real. I'll start by saying I'm sure that there's gonna be several things listed in one of the comments that I'm just gonna point out. It's not the first time we've talked about the L and Ls, 1,600,000 is funded through the general fund and that's a conversation about the fact that they're supposed to be self funded. I do appreciate the comments from all department heads.

I also think that there's special I'm sure on this council, there's special projects. You look at this and it's like, well, that's real. Imagine not having fourth of July. Well, that's real. Imagine not having a merriment.

Or I think something that I also observed just listening is we've got six new parks and we've got five new on the way. That's staff time and so we have to maintain those because the quality of community is also in the parks that all of our families enjoy. One of the questions that I have though is the bodies that are down, know, police chief, you identify the 20 bodies based upon vacancies, sworn and civilian and injured. I I think came to 20. And I believe on the fire, it was 21. The question I have is, are there 21 actual vacancies or is it a combination of vacancies, injuries, or the like?

Vacancies and injuries. Okay. Now we have six people off on injuries. The rest are vacancies.

And then the academy will be how many?

Hopefully we'll bring in another 14 onto the floor.

So adding 14 will also help reduce the overtime? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and open this up to the public for any comment.

It was a pretty thorough but I'm sure there's going be some public comment. Yeah, please come forward.

Hi, my name is Wendy Brecken. Been a Vacaville resident for thirty two years. And I just want to say I want to thank staff for their hard work on trying to figure out these cuts. And it's never easy, as the mayor said. I was part of a group about, let's say, more than five years ago called Vacavilians for Fiscal Health.

And we worked on studying the budgets. And at the time, we were asking the council to focus on community needs like parks, roads, development or remodeling of 3 Oaks as promised to the voters in Measure M. And this was around the same time as the grand jury reports came out. There was a couple years where grand jury reports came out and said there's an unfunded liability problem in Vacaville for the OPEB, which is health costs as well as pensions. And so we were working trying to work with council to get city council to consider alternatives to the current health plans.

Maybe consider, if not that, looking at post Medicare costs when retirees have Medicare, how much really should be paid towards those costs and maybe

just look

for win win situations. But I was trying to figure out before coming here what the unfunded liability is for OPEB now and I wanted to ask about that. I saw the net liability in 2022 was 68,100,000 and I know that the city council decided, I think around that time you have to correct me on the exact year, you put in tens of millions of dollars, I think $10,000,000 each year. I mean, you can correct me on the figures To pay down, that was the choice that the council made. Pay down the liability and the debt rather than look at the benefits per se.

So I think that OPEB liability has gone up but I just wanted to ask that question. Also, the reserve policy, think that's talked about next. Okay, so don't talk about that. Also Measure M is, at least in the draft budget, it was showing $8,000,000 that was not allocated. Dollars 12,800,000 was identified for specific uses, So I wanted to ask about that.

And I would just urge counsel, please consider not cutting services to the community like parks, police, fire, street repair, gang violence prevention, and domestic violence and all those things. That's very much what the community needs and maybe consider other alternatives. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no other comment from the public, I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for any discussion and providing any feedback. And I'm not sure if there's any comments that you can make based upon the question from the public.

Yeah, can respond to the thanks for the questions. Can respond to the OPEB question and so when we did our update in February, the OPEB amount was $92,000,000 and so that amount has gone up. And the reason for that is the increase in health care costs, that amount increasing annually. On the pension side, our funded status has gone up and so as counsel's aware, when we were not deficit spending we were making these additional payments towards the pension to lower the unfunded liability, increase our funded status. And so the pension side, we've seen that increase.

And on the OPEB side, although the unfunded liability amount has gone up, the funded status is pretty much kind of held static. And with Measure M, there was a question on the $8,000,000 that if you were to look at Measure M by itself that it seems like the revenues are more than the expenses that are allocated to it. And so if you were to look at Measure M on its own, that the extra money that the revenues are higher than expenses but you have to look at in comparison to the general fund as well. And so if it were not for Measure M, our general fund deficit, the one that we have mentioned is $12,000,000 for next year, that would be much higher because you would have those expenses that are currently being covered by Measure M, the staff, the programs, that would have to be covered by the general fund. And so there isn't any extra Measure M money.

That money is built in in part of when we talk about a deficit of $12,000,000 That's a combination of general fund and Measure M.

And just one question before I call on some of the rest of the council. If you had a number to say what is the percentage of, at least in the general fund, because I don't know that everyone understands, there's other funds that we're not talking about, but in the general fund, what's the percentage that it is funding personnel overall?

So like many other cities because we're a service industry, it's gonna be close to 80% if not higher that's gonna be related to personnel and you'll see that consistent with other cities and government because we are a service industry.

Great. Thank you. Vice Mayor Silva. Okay. Thank

you for the rundown. I have a question for Chief Polin or whomever my go to. So the question is, just help me clarify. So when we use we approve a budget that goes out for a year. So in my mind, funding's there, funding is there for this entire fiscal year. Help clarify why our services or departments like crew being cut back before the end of that fiscal year.

It's a combination of one, I'm over in my overtime budget by almost 1,000,000. Two, the amount of people that we're trying to offset the overtime shifts on patrol right now is causing us our overtime to continue to go up. Because of our vacancies, because of family medical leave and our injuries, most of those are coming out of patrol. So every day, the ninety hours a week are being filled in overtime. So as I'm continuing to trend too high in my overtime, I need to bring people back to patrol to offset those ninety hours a week. And crew is going to do that.

And so, okay, the other question related to this. So if we have so what I've seen in the past is that and this is for many different business models. When you when there

are

less positions when there are more vacant positions, there is a unintended cost savings associated with that. So if we fill those roles today, are we going to be even extremely higher over budget?

I think I understand the question. So, we might have a salary savings based on our vacant positions, but the city is still trending $12,000,000 over or there's a deficit of $12,000,000 So, if our savings can go back to the city's fund to offset where there's over just somewhere else, then we have that obligation to help.

I guess, okay. I just have seen in the past where like, hey, we have 10% or 20% vacancy, but then there's there's a higher cost because there's an overtime. Right? So we're looking at the budget item, we're looking at overtime, but they're overall net budget in itself. If there's there would be 20 less positions. So whatever that comes out to based on those positions. So if we fill those, it sounds to me like we'd be even further over. So I'm just a little maybe I'm just a little concerned.

If we fill the positions, we'll be over more in overtime?

More over over just budget, period. Regular time and overtime. Well,

I mean, it's hard to say. I haven't been fully staffed since twenty eighteen-seventeen. So we've been operating like this for quite some time. But the vacancy rate and the injury rate right now of being 20 people down at any given moment is causing us. All of our specialty assignments right now are running at minimum, almost minimums.

Our traffic division which is the highest complaint in the entire city is traffic. We only have three motors. Always trying to play this eggshell or move the ball of where can we put people to reduce overtime and reduce the workload of people. If I was fully staffed, I would love to have that opportunity to see what my overtime rate looked like. I would love to be held accountable to this overtime rate if I was fully staffed. But because I haven't been there since 2017 or 2018, I truly don't know what that looks like. So

hold on I one want to inject something but I'm also going to go to our city manager, Chaudhry.

Yeah so I do want to add to what Chief Mullen just mentioned, know we on an average assume six to 7% vacancy rate when we are planning for that budget so even though their positions are vacant we're assuming that 67% of our positions will be vacant as part of our budget planning and I would have Ken answer the questions on what happens if it was fully staffed.

So we budget when we actually adopt a budget it assumes that those those positions are gonna be filled. Like we know in reality that's not what takes place and that's why what the city manager had mentioned that we can build in a vacancy factor when we're doing our forecast but if the police department was able to fill all of their positions, there would be adequate budget for all those full time positions. I would assume that if you were fully staffed, the overtime number would come down and that you would be within the overtime budget that is approved for the police department, if that answers the question.

I'm saying if I hear that. I understand that. And I guess I'm not using the right verbiage. So I'm just trying to clarify. If all those positions were filled, yes, I would presume that the overtime budget cost would reduce, but our overall cost to our budget because now we're paying more salaries that we're not currently paying would even drive up our deficit even more than what's what we're currently looking at.

Yes. If we were fully staffed at a 100 then when we're doing our forecast, if that's what we're seeing, then we would have to lower the vacancy rate if that's when we're if that's the question. Like right now when we forecast, we assume there's gonna be some vacancies. If the city was able to be a 100% staffed, then we would have to adjust our forecast to lower that that vacancy factor, that savings. And so to your point, yes, if the vacancies were lower then our forecast or expenses would be higher than what we're projecting because we project a vacancy factor.

Okay. Just one another clarifying question. So over my six years on this council, we really dug deep on how do we make sure that we offer a fair compensation. My understanding, like, when we went in and made after that second adjustment, particularly for police department, we were able to fill, if I understood correctly, we're able to fill those vacancies. We had a fully staffed department and then within a year or two that somehow something switched. Maybe I misunderstood something. Based on your comment, you said we haven't been fully staffed since 2018. Yeah. Adjustments helped correct that and

Yeah. When the council made the adjustment, we it helped. It didn't get us to our fully staffed model, but it did make an impact. And the profession across across the board is just struggling with hiring police officers, dispatchers into this field. And for there's a variety of reasons behind it. But competitive pay and benefits still is very important to people that are looking at our city.

All right. Thank you, sir. Welcome.

Well, yeah, go ahead and stay there. I think there might be a few more questions. I think for clarification, there's a difference between the number of bodies down and that's why to our fire chief I asked the same question. When you have a percentage of workforce that is unable to work but they are employed, it takes overtime to cover those shifts. At the same time that employee is getting paid.

And so that gap sometimes is hard to actually fathom unless you've been in it. I certainly have, I understand what you're talking about. I think just to clarify that in a perfect world, overtime is driven towards court, operations, events, and trying to manage it. Over the years, I've seen the city actually try to hit a target so that you can, what I heard you say is, to be held to account to say, you give me the overtime budget that's going to be nominal for all those things, and then we'll manage it. And I think that that's part of the problem.

When you're 20 bodies down, but you're only eight vacancies, math says you got 12 people you're paying and then you're still trying to hit minimum staffing. And then what you're doing is as you're moving bodies around at the same time, you're getting burnout and sometimes that gets lost. So one question before I I just want to clarify that. Appreciate that. But one question I wanted to ask you is, well, one other comment and question.

The other thing is the vacancy rate means that somebody retires, resigns, transfers to another agency, the goal is not to have people leave here but when they do, there's a time period and so there's a gap sometimes from the time somebody starts. Or the vacancy rate is, if somebody retires, been here for twenty, thirty years, they're at a senior level, somebody is hired a step one, there's a gap savings and all of that and that becomes part of the factoring in all departments. So I think that that's what you're describing. I'm just trying to add some context. But you've been making some other cuts in the police department knowing that you've got the gaps in staffing.

It isn't just crew. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. So our YSS section is down, our traffic section is down, patrol is down, dispatch is down, professional staff, FRC is down. We've been monitoring our spending and we have been doing for quite some time now. I'm just not sure where the city was at in the financial status. So, across the board, all of our sections are feeling the impact.

Yeah, thank you. Councilmember Wiley.

I do have a couple of questions too. But thank you for the information. It was sobering to look at all of that and it is interesting when you look at the 2.5% or 5%, it's so much for the police and fire because your budget is so much bigger. So when you're trying to cut 5% out of a, what was it, dollars 3,000,000 budget or whatever, you have to really cut hard to make those cuts because your budget is so big to start with. And we talk about the overtime and we've been saying it's a million over the budget or a million over the budget. So what is the I thought for police and fire was both over the budget. So what is your budget of the overtime?

My allocation for overtime is about $1,600,000

So you basically double it if you're at 1.4 over, is that what you said?

Yeah, we're trending to be at 2.5.

Over? 2.5 over?

At total. 2.5 total.

Total.

Yes. But we're allocated 1.6.

Right. And just like we talked about with public works, gas is higher, everything's higher because salaries are higher, the overtime is a lot higher too than it used to be, correct? I mean, that that is a factor.

Very much so.

Right.

But, you know, some of the things that we don't talk about is and it's hard to explain unless you're given the context to explain it. But, you know, we talk about how much a patrol car costs. It's not just the patrol car. It's the technology in the patrol car that people demand from the police department. They want transparency. They want us to tell the story immediately if something happens. So to do that, we have to have in car camera. We have to have a computer in the car, we have to have GPS in the car, and you have to have a body worn camera on the police officer. All of that costs money but people don't necessarily understand the rising costs of those components to make sure that we're transparent and we're held accountable for what we do in law enforcement. So, are the things that work cutting costs and overtime and positions.

But sometimes it's the things that cost money to make us the police department that you want to work for and that you want to be proud of. So we have to continue to do these things.

Right. So you can't make the cuts and have the same level of service

Correct.

Because of those things. So I wasn't going to ask about injuries because I don't know if we have so many injuries because people are doing overtime or because they haven't had the adequate training or but how many of the injured people are on light duty and are still working but they're just not in their regular position?

So I have what I'm showing is eight on injury. I'm not sure how many of those are off off, off off and some that are actually in the building taking cold reports or working in a special unit. I have to figure out that number. All of one off and one's in the all are working but one. Okay. So all are in the building working except one.

Can you answer that for the fire department?

All but two are working for the

Light duty.

Working light duty. And just to add one thing on the overtime. Generally, and it's I'm almost sure it's the same. But when we have a vacancy and I fill the vacancy with overtime, as soon as I hire a person and they start the academy, now I'm still paying the overtime and I'm paying the salary and benefits of that person for six months, six to seven months, just to get qualified to be counted as staffing. And that six to seven months is not budgeted anywhere.

And my overtime is the same as chief. And that's you know, 1,600,000. My five year analysis has showed for me to be successful and not go over on overtime, I need somewhere between 3 to 3,400,000. Right now, my overtime is at, on average, is $5,000,000 a year. I have to back out the salary savings to that and that the average is about 3 to 3,400,000. So it's not just overtime pays for the vacancy, it's why they're in training. I'm paying almost twice until they count as staffing.

But because the city pays what people are in the academy and the city pays while they're in the academy and we don't have the services yet because they're getting trained to be that. So even though we added police positions and at the last meeting or so we added more fire positions and I'm glad to talk about housing too, we added housing technicians but now we can't support that. And we've added parks and now we don't have the park maintenance. So we are really needing to deal with the growth of the city.

And the people behind it.

Yes, yes. All right. So that was my questions for police and fire and overtime. And in the housing, I just wanted to comment on the fact that we had added the technician not too long ago and now the I thought didn't we add like a couple years ago we added some housing technicians? Since I've been on I think we added housing technicians but okay. So it's not just last year. And then just for Parks and Rec, you mentioned concessions at Keating And Nelson. So it seems to me like concessions pay for themselves but is that mostly just the person that's selling the concessions? Is that what we're having to let go because we charge a whole bunch for a bag of chips or drinks?

Yeah. No, there is revenue attached to concessions as well. And but that's I mean, is tough for us because when we look at the recreation services we provide, a lot of that has a percentage of cost recovery associated with it. So when we cut programming that brings in revenue as part of that cost recovery, it also cuts down our revenue. So this, yes, this is an area where we do have revenue associated with these concessions but it's still a cost.

So we have to we're trying to come up with creative ways that are not as impactful to our overall services that we can cut. And so this was just an area that we looked at and we could come up with some cuts. There are a lot of different ways to slice the pie but the pie has to be cut somehow. So these were some ways that we suggested some areas.

Except if you have no concessions, you have no pie. Anyway. That's right. All right. Well, thanks. I just wondered about that. All right.

Yeah, why don't you go ahead and share

some of the questions. Sorry.

You jogged my memory. So we added a limited term housing tech because we took on administrating the Capsilano, JPA program administration and fiscal as the fiscal agent. Once they started expanding funding that they were receiving, we negotiated with Cap Solano to cover the cost of a limited term housing tech that works directly in that program. That position is slated to end June 30 when we give back the fiscal agent and program administrative duties back to Capsulano.

Okay. So that's what I was going to ask. If we didn't do that, would so but we are going to stop doing that in July 30?

Correct. Because that position is fully funded with administrative fees earned through cap sillano grant administration.

Okay, thank you. So those were my questions, mayor.

Sure, thank you. Council member Richie.

Okay, so I don't really have any questions. More comments.

Yeah, that's what we're looking for.

Oh yeah. I wish when you break my whistle here, I hate that I wish he was here to interact. As I listened to comments, I did a post the day before Easter, like in two hours, 1,400 members of our community just responded. I have responded. I've seen a lot of amazing comments, passionate comments from the community in regards to my comments about VACA was at a turning point.

And I've used analogy before and VACA bill. VACA was at a turning point. And we're now dealing with the now and the present of decades of lack of decisions, lack courage. Like, no one wants to be the bad guy. Everyone wants to make everybody happy. No one wants to be that person that raises fees and raises cost. They kick the can down the line. Someone else will do it. Someone else will do it. It sucks.

Talk about raising fees, raising revenue, taxing ourselves. No one's done it. We had to measure in, but we haven't raised the sales tax. And we haven't raised it, I think since the 80s. Back at all metaphorically, I've used this analogy before, we're like a teenager.

So I don't want to get on the subject of any tax measures, so keep your comments to what's being presented.

Okay. I

won't talk about tax, I'll talk about revenue. So the problem is, this is about revenue. We're sitting here in a situation and all I hear is cuts, cuts, costs, costs. If we're going to run the city like a business, we're failing. You cannot run a business and always try to cut, cut, cut. And hopefully, Fremont knows what I'm talking about. You have to create revenue. Metaphorically, we're on the ship. If all we're gonna do is get pails of water and pail the water out, we're not gonna fix it. We're gonna drown.

We need to create revenue. There's ways we have to do it. So I won't talk about one form, but so the back of fiscal health, this way way before my time. So that sounds like a great group. They got together, they're looking at ways to cut costs, cut costs, save, save, save. But I didn't hear one comment about how you guys got together to create revenue. Like, you can't cut your way into a good budget. You gotta create revenue. So I really appreciate what this whoever was the part of that group that was fiscally responsible, but you've missed half the equation. You can save money, but if you don't figure out how to make revenue, you're going to fail.

And now we're at the crossroads. We haven't created revenue. We haven't brought enough business and income to the city, and the city has grown. Like metaphorically, it's like we're caught between us like a teenager in a big city. We wanna admit that was not a one stop city anymore. We have grown, but we don't wanna admit it. We wanna live back in the eighties with revenue from the eighties, but we're growing. The police force, their parks, their requirements are growing, and we're not growing with it. We have to create revenue and find ways to fund our services or else all this is in Maine. We'll never make it. We better focus on economic development, bringing revenue to the city or else we're going to fail.

Yeah, thank you. As a reminder, some of these subjects we'll be talking about in further council meetings ahead, especially when we get into budget. I know we're having a discussion on our strategic plan, so I just wanted to keep us within the boundary of this agenda item. I believe, council member Stockton, I believe you were next.

Yes, I'll try to be careful. I agree we need to create revenue. How we create revenue, I think, is the key. Right? There are multiple ways that we can do it.

I think that what frustrates me is just the lack of the business and economic investment in Vacaville recently, and I don't know how we can find ways to become more attractive or incentivise these companies to come here instead of leaving. I mean, we're seeing it happening throughout our county. We've seen Valero leave, we've seen Budweiser leave and that's impacted Vacaville families. We kind of broke even with Lonza but we didn't gain anything either. So I think this is a two edged sword.

Before we ask individuals to help, I think we also have to make an effort to try to really do something innovative and risky potentially to bring some of these businesses here that can withstand the current situation and climate of business in California. I'm going to bounce back a little bit because some great comments have been made. First off, want to thank all of the staff and all of the directors and administration that have come together to put this really comprehensive look into the situation that we find ourselves in and it's really apparent. Think you did an excellent job of communicating what we're dealing with here. And Chief, I think you said people don't necessarily understand the cost or the increasing cost to have and I agree.

I don't think that we maybe we take for granted or maybe we don't truly understand how important it is to have the staff that provide the services that directly impact the quality of life that makes each and every single one of us choose Vacaville, right? And we exist to provide services but you need staff to do that and you need revenue to have staff and so here we find ourselves in a challenging time. And so yeah, this is very enlightening for me. We talked a little bit about some overtime issues, I'm not going to beat that to death, but one of the things that I'm trying to understand better is where is the balance or the cost threshold between overtime cost of an employee that you're already paying a salary to, health benefits to, a pension for, versus hiring another staff member where now you have those added fees but you don't have that overtime cost. So I'm trying to understand, I don't know that I'm going get that answer today because I think it's different for each department, but I'm trying to understand where is that break even point, where is that sweet spot where we can, you know, we understand that some of our staff members from time to time are going to get tapped to do something extra but that it's not done in a way that is exhaustive or becomes routine, frankly.

So that's kind of a question I'd like somebody to help me answer, especially with some of the larger departments where this is going to have a larger impact. Browning out fire stations, overworking individuals that work in high liability jobs, that carries some pretty serious inherent risk to it. But I think where I'm really focused right now is just any decision that we make, we really need to think about the quality of life impacts it is going to have on our community. Some of the projects that you brought forward are some of the things that we enjoy the most about living here and I'm not sure what this community will look like if we continue to move forward without some of these services that we exist to provide. That's not to say that we shouldn't be careful and responsible about how we do it, but I just want to thank you all for really painting a really crystal clear image of where we're at right now.

Thank you. Council Member Fremill.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Ken, for the presentation. And, you know, I'm new to the council a little over a year, and, you know, I just want to say before I got here, one of the reasons that I thought that I was coming to council is that I thought maybe our city could do better with less, and that there was maybe some recklessness in our city that, you know and I gotta tell you, this was because I was really naive and I didn't understand cities or how it runs. But, you know, what I do understand is I understand businesses and how they run, and this is very similar to a business and how a business runs. I know as I was growing as a company and the cost of living increases and the cost of tires goes up and the cost of fuel goes up and insurance goes up and health insurance coverage goes up, taxes increase, the cost of everything from clothing to boots and shoes and glasses and safety gear and all of these things increased substantially.

And the only way that you can manage that is every once in a while I had to adjust my rates and I had to raise my rates and I had to, at the same time, trying to keep employees happy, right? So you've got to consider your employees. They're the bread and butter of the business, which is what you guys are all. You are all the bread and butter of our business as a city. And so, you know, but as I started out with, you know, that I thought the city could do more with less or do better with less.

I was mistaken. I was mistaken because now that I've got to come in and see how all of the individuals of our city hall work hard in your positions, and you're already doing significantly a lot of work with less and less resources and less of everything. I want to address something that I see with every one of these divisions within our city and that is that right now we're looking at every one of these declining service levels. That's faced what with. We're faced with declining service levels and I know that as a businessman, you can't do that.

You can't have declining service levels and maintain your employees, excuse me, maintain your customers. Because your customers are gonna go somewhere else, so they're gonna get very upset with you. So, you know, and it's a fine And you know, I gotta tell you, I'm very fiscally conservative. I've always prided myself on calling myself fiscally conservative. And I'm in a really hard spot because I know that there's members in our community that are like, I am not I do do your job with what you got.

Do it with, you know, you know, this is we're tapped out. We we we can't be charged anymore. We can't do anymore. Well, you know what? I I know with crew, for instance, I know that our pit count last year was two seventy. Am I close? Two seventy? Does that sound about right? And our pit crew, our pit numbers this year were 40. Is that about right? Okay. Give or So I'm in there. So look what our crew has done for us. Right? And so now we're getting ready to eliminate that.

And guess what's going to happen? The flood gates are gonna open up. People within our community are gonna go, hey, come on back. It's all good here now. They're gone. I'm really I'm really hot about this. I'm not happy with this at all because I gotta deal with people downtown with their businesses. They're saying, hey, we got people that are pooping in our in our doorsteps. You know, they're they're they're trashing our parks. There's needles in the parks. We got all of these issues with And now And guess what? It's gonna be more on our first responders because they're gonna be called out even more because that's gonna bring other elements back in, you know. And I know that there's people that are gonna be upset about me with the way I'm talking. I don't really care. I really don't care.

You know? And I I see and I've talked to some of our first responders. And I I I I but what I don't want to do is and I'm sorry if I'm gonna ramble on, but I I need to ramble on here a minute. You know, all of you guys from our city attorney's office, our city manager who inherited what we are all facing now, and she's trying to figure it out, and she's she's trying to guide and direct you guys, and hey, we're going to have to make cuts and we're going to have to do this. But you know, guess what's going to happen?

We're going to start having more crime. We're going to start having more unresolved crime. We're going to start having some hiccups with our fire with first responders because you're understaffed. Right now, you guys I mean, I'm listening to both chiefs here, and basically what they're faced with right now is they're upside down a thousand hours a week and man hours that they're losing with their with the 20 individuals basically that they're using. But but they have but they still have to pay for it.

So basically, let's just say it's a $100 an hour for a person regularly and now we budgeted for that, but now we gotta pay an extra thousand hours a week at a $150 an hour because it's time and a half. Right? And for those that are double time, I mean, we're at $200, you know? So it's not hard to understand why something is heading towards 5,000,000 or something is heading from 1.6 to 2,500,000. Right?

So, you know, we're here talking about this tonight, but but I'm not I'm not happy about this, you know? And, you know, it's real easy. I I had friends that came over this weekend and saying, I am not paying more money. I'm not paying, another 1¢ sales tax. They can they can do it, and they can do that. The same kind of mentality that I had, you know, and I'm having

Sir, I'm just gonna bring this back. We're not we're talking about cuts. Alright. Anything Alright. That's in the future.

Alright. So anyways, I'm not happy about cuts. I'm really displeased with it, but I understand that we have to right now. But I am gonna you know, at the risk of people in my community, people that voted for me, I see what's going on and I understand what's going on. The only thing that uprights this ship, and people are gonna be mad at me, is we we have to I know this gentleman here is gonna be unhappy with me, but you know what? We have to We have to somehow promote this 1¢ tails

to self. So actually, I'm gonna stop here.

Alright, I'm sorry. I'm gonna stop here. Okay. I'll stop right there.

Councilmember Chapman?

Thank you.

I appreciate Ken and each of the department heads for your reporting. A lot of time goes into looking at your entire department and making decisions on how to reduce the funds that are allocated to you. I have a couple of comments, but I have one question I want to ask first. Do we pay into workers' compensation the state workers' compensation board?

I'm sorry, what? The state workers' compensation board?

Not board. Do we pay into state workers' comp?

Do we pay into state workers' comp? No, we're self insured for workers' compensation claims. So it's city's funding and then our director of human resources can correct me if I'm wrong, but anything that exceeds a certain limit, then it's part of a pool that we belong to.

I'm gonna ask our HR director. Wait a second, hold on a second. Never had that before. I've reached my maximum microphones. There you go.

So we cannot get insurance from an insurance provider because we have police and fire. No insurance company would cover us and we're in the same boat as other public agencies. So we are self insured. We pay the first dollar of every workers' comp claim up to $350,000 of that claim and then after $350,000 we have an excess insurance pool that we belong to that we pay a premium to every year and about a million dollars a year and then that insurance pool covers any workers' comp claim that goes above the $3.50.

Okay. Thank you. Did that answer that question for me? Let's see. One thing I noticed right off from the reports that were given was the area about youth and community events.

And this is only for information tonight. I understand that. And I will be looking at all your reports very thoroughly. However, I do and I'm going to say I would desire to keep all the cuts or any rearrangement of funding away from our youth and community events. We still have to provide some activities, some amenities to the community.

As difficult as things are today, that outlet is needed. But whatever we provide, make available the scholarships for our young people to be able to participate in some of the activities. I understand the concessions. Everything where my mind is, and you can probably hear from what I'm saying, I want to keep it away from the people, the residents, and the youth. There are so many people dealing with so many illnesses today.

There are challenges we're all dealing with. We heard about the cost, how it has increased, and I don't think that's the full amount of the additional cost that we will be paying as a city. The 2.5% reduction is one thing, but when you're looking at a 5%, that is unimaginable. And I think it was just time wasted having to even do the calculations of 5%. I think we're going to have to do the best we can with rearrangement funds we have to work with.

However, we need additional revenue coming into the city. And in the past, I have spoken of diversification. Yes, biotech and all of them, they're when they become fully operable, all of them, it's going to make a difference. The solar panels, we're not recovering anything right now from having the solar panels. But in the end, years away.

But we need something else here in Vacaville, another economic base to assist us in times like this. So like I said, I'm going to have to put a lot of time into your reports. I want to thank you very much for the time that you put into it.

I'm gonna stop there. Thank you. And I'm gonna to our city attorney.

Mayor, before we close this item, may I clarify something for the public record?

Yeah, and I'll turn it to you as soon as I'm finished.

Okay, thank you.

I just want to say thank you to the staff. An exercise whenever the budget is tight and I fully understand the issues of trying to backfill when you're trying to staff and the great questions that may take a long time to get answered, there's always a delta when it comes to overtime. What is the right amount so that you cannot overwork a staff that has to work twenty four hours a day and how do you budget for that? There is a lot of expertise out there but we're not unique in the city of Vacaville, any operation. But I think a final comment just for clarifications because I do understand it.

There was a period of time, we'll call it maybe ten years ago, where a prior council understood this because it was explained on how you can without changing your FTE number, you receive permission to you could call it over hire but what you're really doing is pre hire so that that gap isn't there. Because you never run-in a deficit because if you are now, if you have a minimum floor, you're paying overtime. Private sector does this all the time, we just don't necessarily see what's going on behind the scenes. I've said it before, you'll never get on an airline that has short staffing. It's because there's a whole percentage of staff that's behind the scenes to make sure that we can fulfil our obligation.

So as a city, we have an obligation of a level of service that we've agreed to and we've demonstrated we're capable of doing it. Costs go up and then the implications. All of them are accurate including benefits and there's been a lot of work over the years on trying to mitigate some of those costs. The question often should always come into the consideration and I can see it in just listening to I know from the fire chief's perspective or what is the primary in some of these operations. Where is it where if we hit risk, we've gone too far?

Because sometimes the risks as you can't cut, otherwise there is a higher level of liability. And in some cases like, well, we just can't do that service. And what I feel tonight is we're all feeling this in our own way that I don't want to see that go. I don't want to see that go. I don't even want to talk about 5%.

But the reality is, is tonight's exercise wasn't a decision item. We're operating on a 2.5% cost reduction that was directed in the past. We're in a budget cycle and so this is going to come before us in the future and we have to hit our budget just like in our personal life or in a business so we have to do that. So the feedback I think is what everybody has said and I appreciate what everyone has said with specifics and with passion. I really do.

It's not wrong, I just know that we have to stay on a particular point. So I look forward to the leadership with our city manager and with our department heads and all of our staff to help us figure this out. It's a $12,000,000 gap. We're in budget season and these are real discussions just like we would have to decide. If I don't have the money, what has to be cut until we can right size the economics of our corporation. Thank you very much and I'm going to turn it over to our city attorney for any final and also our city manager.

I just want to make it clear this evening for the public record that the city of Vacaville, city staff, city council, any city resources have not been utilized to advocate or endorse any ballot measure or item that may be coming to the public for a vote in the future. The purpose of tonight's presentation and all resources utilized to make the presentation or for informational purposes only, the city is not advocating any certain position. This is part of our budgetary presentations that will continue in the coming months and so I just want to make that clear for the public. Again, there is an informational campaign or informational process that's going on right now. It's called Choosing a Path.

There are six different meetings that are scheduled for the public to come and get information about the city's current fiscal situation and proposed plans for the future for consideration by all the public. There's nothing currently pending in terms of a measure for voters to consider and so I just want to be really clear about the purpose and the resources used this evening were for informational purposes only.

Yeah, thanks and to our city managers.

Yeah, I would just like to add on to that, you know, this exercise was more informational because as part of our this current fiscal year we have already done 2.5% cuts, we will continue with those. If we continue with our financial deficit situation as a city manager, as our senior leadership team, it is our due diligence and transparent effort to inform our community if the fiscal deficit continue what kind of you know future reductions we would be making and that's what the 5% was representing. Those are no decision required today, those are just options to the council. I do want to address a couple comments, there was a comment made about Measure M 9,000,000 access you know money sitting set aside. It's not access because you can think of general fund and Measure M as two checking accounts.

Your one checking account is a negative, you're using this money from the second one to balance it and that's what we're doing. Our general fund is almost down by $21,000,000 Our Measure M has this access that is not access, it's actually not allocated which is 8.9. When we shift it to this checking account we still have a balance of $12,000,000 deficit. Just wanted to clarify that. The second thing I heard loud and clear on economic development efforts and you know we are making efforts, we have hired a firm to help us looking at different options for diversifying and they are going to look at different tiers of how we can expand beyond biotech.

Biotech is great but we all know it's right now not building anything. So this new plan that we're developing is looking at not only just biotech as our tier one, we will also consider advanced manufacturing, defense industry, you know, ag tech because we're so close to UC Davis and also a tier to focus on retention for our existing small businesses. We're also looking at options for how do we do place making and activation efforts around our downtown, around our outlets, nut tree areas, so we will be coming back to council in about six months on some of those ideas and then get feedback from you. Some other things in addition to that we're also considering is with these different kinds of industry, each industry has unique requirements for their incentive packages for you know kind of things that we can offer them to attract them to city of Vacaville so we'll be evaluating all of those ideas as well. So there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes and I really want to thank our senior leadership team, there were many hours that went into preparation you know as Council Member Chapman referred it is not a one day effort like we thought about it yesterday and it's here today, it has been months of efforts having those difficult conversations with employees so they're not surprised when we bring this to the council and as Chief Bullard mentioned, yes those difficult conversations are very disheartening to employees because they do put a lot of work and effort and hard work in everything that they do to serve our community so I do want to thank our senior leadership team and our staff members who actually helped put all of this together.

Again, this is informational only and we'll be coming back with more information as we go through the budget development process. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. So that's the conclusion of this item. We're gonna stand in recess for ten minutes and then we'll be prepared to take up the next item.

All right.

It's 08:50. We'll go ahead and reconvene. We'll move on to item 12C.

Thank you. Item 12C is a resolution adopting updates to the general fund reserve policy and again we have Finance Director Ken Matsumiya here to present.

Good evening again. So the following item is as part of the strategic plan process, staff was looking at ways to strengthen the General Fund Reserve Policy to kind of assure our long term fiscal sustainability and so that is the topic of this next item. So starting out with a background on why reserves matter. Our general fund reserves are one of the most important tools we have for maintaining long term financial stability. A key attribute of financially stable organizations is appropriate reserves.

They help us respond to economic downturns, adjust the state and federal funding impacts, and manage emergencies or unexpected events. Together, our annual budget and the reserve policy create the framework for allocating city resource to meet our commitments and address unexpected events in a fiscally responsible manner. So just some background on our policy history. And so the General Fund Reserve policy was first adopted in 2011 following the Great Recession. The General Fund Reserve at that time had fallen below 10% and the council that time identified creation of a policy as a top priority.

The policy was based on the Government Finance Officer Association's best practices. It's a national organisation that gives guidance on best practices in fiscal management and then also from benchmarking our policies against other cities. And so for the original policy in 2011, it set a target reserve range which we still have in our current policy of 16% to 25% of general fund expenditures with that target of 20%. So essentially two to three months of a reserve. It also provided guidelines for using reserves during economic uncertainty or emergencies and for allocating year end surpluses.

And then in 2022, we did an update to align the policy with new gas refund balance classifications and so this came out of an audit recommendation to expand our policy to be in compliance with these new accounting rules that were put in place at the time. And then we also at that time updated the policy to expand the allowable uses of excess revenues for internal service funds to make accelerated debt repayments and also to contribute towards our unfunded liabilities like OPEB and pension. And so as mentioned, as part of the city's ongoing strategic planning efforts staff evaluated opportunities to strengthen the policy to better support our long term fiscal resiliency and though the city is currently in this deficit spending position, it's important to establish a clear transparent framework for how the city will allocate surplus revenues in future years when revenues exceed expenditures and the city has also met its reserve target. This framework focuses on four key areas and that's infrastructure which would include things such as public work capital improvement projects, streets and kind of pavement condition enhancements, public safety training facilities, things of that nature. Internal service funds which would be our workers compensation and general liability reserves, fleet replacement and ongoing maintenance, technology infrastructure upgrades.

For unfunded liabilities and OPEB, this would involve making additional contributions towards those long term obligations to save on interest costs. And then finally for community programs and services, this would be things such as one time payments for community benefit projects, the park master plan implementation or expanded staffing or program to enhance service delivery. And so as mentioned, by having this framework in place now it provides transparency on how surplus funds would be used and reflects the priorities expressed by the community and council during the strategic planning process. And so leading up to the strategic plan, the city conducted community focus groups in the fall to gather input on how surplus general fund revenues should be allocated once the reserve is met and then participants allocated funds among the four categories, so infrastructure internal service funds, unfunded liabilities and community programs. The chart on the right shows the average of the responses received with the strongest support for infrastructure and community programs.

It's shown 34% for infrastructure and that 29% for services and increased community programs. And then during the January strategic plan retreat, council went through the same prioritization exercise. Although individual rankings varied, the collective council priorities were very closely aligned with the community results. Infrastructure consistently ranked first or second followed by community programs, internal service funds and the long term liabilities. Similarities between the community focus groups and council gives us confidence that the recommended framework reflects shared priorities.

And then for the proposed policy allocation based on both community and council feedback, staff is recommending the following prioritization for allocating surplus general fund revenues in the years where the city does meet its reserve target. And this approach balances a balanced distribution that supports operational resilience, long term financial obligations and investment in community serving projects. And just as an example because the previous slide kinda has those percentages, this shows that kinda using dollar amounts, if the city were to finish a fiscal year with $10,000,000 in surplus revenues and it met its reserve target, the excess would be allocated according to this framework as follows and so it would be $3,500,000,000 towards a capital improvement project that wasn't funded to budget adoption. With this policy, it doesn't impact our budget adoption process that would continue to go as is but with budget adoption we usually don't, we typically aren't, we're not done with the fiscal year and so we don't know how that fiscal year ended and so we're basing that off of kind of our projection of where we think revenues and expenses are gonna be in the upcoming year. When we do the Q1 budget update, that's when we know what the final numbers were for the fiscal year.

And so by having this framework in place and kind of using capital improvement projects as an example, if there was a CIP project that wasn't able to be funded at budget adoption because there wasn't adequate funding to do that, having this in place if we had that $10,000,000 surplus that we finished the year with, 3,500,000 of that would be used to kind of fund another project that didn't get funded at budget adoption. 3,000,000 would go towards a one time community benefit project or service. Dollars 2,000,000 would go towards our ISF, so technology and fleet replacement or general liability or workers comp funds. And then 1,500,000 would go towards making additional payments on our unfunded liabilities to save on long term interest costs. And with that, the recommendation is to adopt the subject resolution to add the framework for allocation of excess revenues to the general fund reserve policy and with that, I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you for the presentation. I know that this is fairly fresh for all of us because we participated in this and so I'm not seeing any questions at the moment so I'll go ahead and open this up to the public for any comment. Seeing then I'll bring it back to the council and I know that on the heels of item B, C is a little bit of a reflection of where we would like to be and what we would do with it responsibly in the future. So with that, I'm looking for a motion.

Motion to approve. Second.

So we have a motion and a second. All in favour? Aye. Opposed? All right, thank you very much. We'll move on to item D.

Yes. Item D is a resolution of the city council of the city of Vacaville adopting the strategic plan for fiscal years 2027 through 2027 through June 2029 and tonight program manager Rica Goodre is here to make the presentation.

Evening, mayor, vice mayor

and council.

Just a little bit of a background. The strategic plan serves as the city's long term roadmap to guide decisions and actions. With the current plan concluding in June, council requested a new three year strategic plan for the years 2026 to 2029. The plan would align strategic initiatives, policy direction and daily operations. As such, it provides a clear framework for priorities, resource allocation and service delivery.

Lastly, it supports cross department coordination, performance evaluation and long term sustainability. So the planning process features an inclusive engagement approach that incorporates input from the community and leadership. This includes feedback received from over a thousand survey responses, interviews with the mayor and city council as well as senior leadership team. Further, in person and virtual community focus groups and open public strategic planning sessions were held and overall the broad participatory method the city used ensures diverse perspectives toward the strategic plans, priorities and actions. So the development included two days of strategic workshops that defined the vision, goals and priorities as well as create the mission, vision and values.

The department level input was also used to form the strategic goals and objectives. From there, staff then identified 37 objectives and 178 strategies at which I'm presenting the draft to you tonight and its adoption is slated for June 23 later this year. The implementation will align the strategic plan with the budget and resources within the months of April through June 2026. ClearPoint strategy software will be used to enhance efficiency transparency and tracking, improving visibility, governance, and collaboration. Also, it will support monitoring progress and communicating results to the public.

So this quadrant shows how the city will measure its progress. So for example, during regular senior leadership team meetings, management will review and discuss the progress on the strategic plan and supporting actions. These discussions will focus on tracking implementation, addressing challenges and making timely adjustments as priorities or conditions evolve. Moving over to the right, for quarterly reporting on progress, throughout the year reports provided to the city council and the community will reference goals, objectives and strategies contained in this plan. This approach ensures continued alignment between policy and operations while keeping the community informed of the city's progress.

And then down to the bottom left under annual strategic plan review, the city will conduct an annual comprehensive review of the strategic plan and provide the city council with a status update on progress toward our stated objectives. This process alone will support evaluation of the outcomes and allow for thoughtful adjustments as needed. And then lastly, staff will continuously monitor the performance metrics outlined in the budget book, provide annual reports on the progress and track trends over time to support informed decision making. Staff recommends that council adopt the draft strategic plan for fiscal years 2026 to 2029 as well as approve the resolution by simple motion. Now, we did receive a public comment from one of our community members that's here tonight on a potential cannabis program.

Mr Frank Nelstone, our community member provided a cost benefit analysis on the development and how to launch and maintain the program. Tonight I'd like to ask counsel if for further direction on whether staff should proceed researching on this topic. And with that I'll take any questions or comments.

Thank you. I appreciate the presentation and the staff report that accompanies it. I believe the road map ahead is really important, especially the place that we find ourselves in and so I want to start by saying that I appreciate working with the rest of the council as we established what these would look like. As far as any questions, I don't have any questions. I'm looking to see if any of the members of the council do before I open up to the public. Vice Mayor Silva?

So the question is, go back to the previous slide. Question is direction on whether or not this should be included as part of our strategic plan. Question to the city manager, what would it cost for us to pursue a cost benefit analysis?

We don't have that information yet so if the council desires staff to work towards that, we will come back with that information. Just didn't want to commit staff time if there was not a desire from the council Thank to proceed on

you.

All right, I will go ahead and open up to the public for comment. Sir, this would be the time. I know you wanted to speak during business from the floor but No. I know. That's when you're usually speaking from it but this is, yeah, that's right.

So, over the years, I've brought to your attention many insights and research on cannabis and what's actually going on in our communities surrounding the lack of unlicensed cannabis in our city. I've also mentioned a few personal stories about people in my life and other everyday folks that's been affected by the lack of regulated cannabis products and programs in our own neighborhoods. Over that time, we provided tons of data and information on the council for the council to review. Information has been gathered from many credible sources such as various California state departments, Solano County Board of Supervisors, various city councils and staff of nearby cities, and even those city's police departments and school boards. The packets of info y'all have received showcases a positive impact and potential a legal cannabis program can have on the city, residents' quality of life, and youth use.

I also feel that having this time helped demystify many of the preconceived notions folks have about cannabis, its consumer use, and the actual impacts of a regulated program. As you know, we've also looked at other aspects of this, like how it plays a part in counteracting the illicit black market and decreases youth access to the plant. We've looked at when cities deploy their cannabis programs, they receive state funding, additional city resources now available to allocate to their city to other city projects, and economic growth trends. We looked at how it can produce large amounts of annual revenue for the city's general fund, helping offset some of the deficits and financial challenges we face. And with that, we of course looked at the cost versus benefits of to the city for deploying and maintaining a cannabis program within Vacaville.

Although many of the local cities don't have their specific costs to deploy their programs available, they do have a bit of information on some allocated resources, received tax revenue, and economic and social benefits since their deployment. I've brought a cost benefit analysis showing the estimated startup and ongoing cost of a cannabis program in in contrast to the benefits it could bring to our city. Counsel, please understand that having a licensed cannabis program in our city is not a detriment, but a benefit in many ways. This can help improve the quality of life for many of our many of your constituents as well as the city's economic economy. I know I brought a lot to the council over the years, but my point of it all was to help inform and equip you on this topic with measurable data backing it.

We residents want this to move forward and showed it by voting and passing this in 2021. There's already an ordinance and zoning plan drafted and an outline of what the council wants in the in the past proposed cannabis program. The next step we residents are requesting the council to take on this matter is to simply no motion to direct staff to continue working on and forming and solidifying these plans and research so they can true up drafts to bring before you for your review at a later date. Counsel, it's been over five years. It's time to move forward with this and not just for the benefit of the city, but for our individual residents too.

Thank you. And to my point, I have a cost benefit analysis I did myself. Like I mentioned, my career is IT infrastructure and data analysts, so I spent many times on this. I also have appendix documents in a flash drive that I'd like to get to you guys for your review, as well as sales by city on the back, which is how much revenue our local cities are actually getting. So it's very visibly how much sales they're making per their program and how much sales they're actually getting, which exemplifies pretty much how much we're not. So thank you.

And you can provide the the any document. I don't know that the city is gonna accept the thumb drive though. I'm not sure. Just for safety, IT safety reasons.

I know you're from IT, but I'm just saying.

Any other comments from the public? Seeing none, I will go ahead and close the public comment portion of this item. This item is our strategic plan for the next several years and so I know that there's a, at least in this particular ask of a potential direction, It's above the normal discussion because it's a particular direction but we believe that this would be the opportunity for the council if there was a desire to give staff direction because up till now, the only direction we have is what's in our general, you know, our strategic plan now, which this has been discussed in the past and it has not had the majority of the support of the council. So any comments at least on the strategic plan and of course if there is a comment that any member of the council wants to make on the other, ask as far as direction. Councilmember Chapman.

Yes. Go to the previous slide again. Mr. Nelson, for the three three plus years that I've been on the council, has been coming to the meetings providing us with data from his research. And my own personal not me personally but within my family due to health issues, I would like for us to let me go back.

And plus a previous council did look into this and is there an ordinance already in place?

Well, think we'll send that question to our city attorney.

I apologize. Can you please repeat the question?

Is there an ordinance in place currently?

For which?

For cannabis.

No. What we have right now is we do have ordinances in place that if the city were to allow cannabis businesses in the city, it would talk about how those will be regulated but we do not currently allow cannabis businesses in the city. So we went through the process of establishing some regulations and then at that time the council did not have the appetite to allow those businesses in Vacaville.

Okay. Thank you. So with that, I would like for us to give direction to the staff to explore this further as part of the city's strategic plan. Okay.

Councilmember Wiley?

Just another historical question. I think it was about the time we were discussing this before. It was on the ballot and I think the people of Vacaville passed that we could tax cannabis if we had it, was that that vote that if we had it, it could be taxed. And I know that people have talked to me about having cannabis for medical reasons so I am interested in entertaining, getting more information about it as well because we have passed those two pieces of it so it seems like we should look at the third part and then make our decision about whether allowing it or not.

Chief, I'm going put you on the spot for a minute and if you wouldn't mind coming forward. And I also just want to make a comment before I ask you the question. Purpose of this item, I don't want to get lost because the work to create a strategic plan is really about setting the course for the future. It's what we're talking about is adding on and unfortunately, think what we're doing, in my opinion, is we're minimizing the fact that we're setting the tasks that are tied to objectives for what our strategic goals are. I just wanna make sure that we don't lose sight of the value of the work that's gone into creating a strategic plan.

Two questions, one is as far as medical marijuana, is medical marijuana allowed in Vacaville? Yes. I'm sorry, I don't have your mic on. Right. So the provisions of that's been in place for quite some time. Yes. Right. And that preceded recreational marijuana? Yes. Okay. I don't mean to sound like this is a courtroom. I like it.

Just Yes, the nose work for me, sir.

Especially after previous. And the second is just like your I mean, my former law enforcement experience, there can be a lot of thoughts on this. So this is where I am putting you on the spot. I just like to hear from your perspective, your career in law enforcement, because this is very different than what you're looking at as far as rules and laws in a cost benefit analysis. We're looking at impact and the community. So I just like to hear your perspective as our top law enforcement official for the city.

Yeah, this is tough. I mean, see the benefits from the recreational side when it's related to a medical use. I hear the benefits that marijuana can provide for a medical need. I am a bit concerned about, I know it's out there on, I hear Frank talk, he's extremely nice gentleman and I could talk to him about a wide variety of things. But at the same time when it comes to our youth and I understand it always will be the gateway.

It's the gateway to the next and it's alcohol, it's marijuana, and what's next after that. As your chief, I'm always concerned about the youth, I'm always concerned about what it leads to. There's still deliveries that are coming into the city of Vacaville and in a legal way, and it's being delivered to people's homes. And so to have a dispensary in city, really depends on what you guys want for our city as a storefront. I've seen certain cities that have had success with it, meaning they've had very little problems because they've worked well with their law enforcement having cameras readily available to law enforcement, whether it's through dispatch or through our Arctic.

There are some success stories that people point to. I go back to the previous councils who wanted to see where this landed. Wanted to see, they didn't want to be the first on in the county to say, Hey, we're going to have dispensaries. They wanted to see how it played out. I think the evidence is out there that I don't think there's a clear cut yes or no on whether it's going to work for you or not.

As your police chief, I don't want it here. I think there's ways to get marijuana legally and I don't think you need it at a storefront and city of Akville, but that's probably just my little bit of my traditions talking.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Hold on.

Should I stay up here?

You you just might. We'll just hold on. Okay. Council member Stockton.

Thank you, chief, for your comments. Just and Dixon, just right up up the 80, can you tell us about some of the problems that they've had with their with their dispensary, the the one that's over by

4 twenty, think his name is.

Yeah. Cat Cattlemen's and and over there. Yeah.

Repeat the question. I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm just asking if he could provide some insight and additional information about some of the problems that most of law enforcement agencies in Solano County are aware of have happened with the dispensary that's in Dixon right next door to us?

You know, I I can I can I can speak to I I don't have the numbers, of course? That's that's where I struggle. So, you know, I can talk to their police chief, I can talk to Dixon Police Department. The burglaries that take place or the Let me see how I can phrase this. I know different dispensaries in the Bay Area, they've had major problems with robberies, they've had officers that were in shootouts as a result of the dispensaries going to and from.

It's hard to say whether Vacaville is going to be subject to that, I don't know. That's why my preference is if you can still get it legally, you can still get it delivered to your house. Do we need the storefront to accomplish that goal? The

other question I have is for staff. Mean, just heard a pretty lengthy report about our current staffing and the amount of time that it would take to really be able to do this, I think has been a significant factor in the past when we've considered this item. Have there been In addition to that, let me back up a little bit. My understanding is that several of our neighboring cities have had lawsuits and problems with their process in and of itself and people suing as a result of how, who got the different licenses and stuff like that. Are any of those still being resolved or do you have any feedback about any of those?

You know, I would have to look into that. I haven't been closely following litigation. I saw some early matters that came about but I don't know exactly how all that was resolved. Of course, if we adopt anything here, we're going to make sure that whatever we do, the regulations are sound and that our administration of permits and etcetera are equitable across whomever might apply. So we would definitely the council decides to proceed down that path, we'll definitely make sure that everything we do is as legally compliant as as we can get it.

Well, sure. And and I would expect that it would be. Just for the record, I'm I'm I'm not in favor of doing this right now. I think we've got we've got to look at bringing our staffing levels back to where they need to be and we need our folks focused on the the already extra work that they're taking on as a result of our staffing levels. So I'm I'm I'm a no on this, but I am very grateful for staff's involvement in putting together this strategic plan. It looks really good.

Council Member Freemell.

Yes, was just curious, along the same line of questioning, are you aware of any delivery issues coming into the city with anybody getting robbed or anything like that?

Sir, not that I'm aware of. Would have to inquire a little bit further, but I don't I'm not it's not being brought up to me that it's that it's a problem here in Vacaville.

Yeah.

Do you know if the police department in Dixon's satisfactory? Are they happy with what's going on there?

Hard for me to comment on that one, sir.

Okay.

I struggle a little bit on just just to make sure that I hone in on what their their police chief would tell me and I don't have enough to go off of that right now.

Okay. Sorry. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. I'll just add that I am in total support of the strategic plan. I too, I struggle with looking at a ledger bottom line cost benefit analysis because it's far more nuanced in my view because of my lived experience and career and the impacts of even though it's legalized, it doesn't mean that it's good in all cases. My own personal experience, I've seen too many kids that have started in what seems to be it's okay, it's legal.

I've seen too many adults that have faced near death experiences personally in my life because it was easily accessible simply to go into a dispensary and pick up some, might as well be candies, get some gummies. And for those reasons, I'm just I'm opposed to something that tends to lean into something even if we could argue you could make money. There's a lot of things that we have the opportunity to focus on. When I look at economic development as strategic goal, it doesn't mean we can look at any and everything and say it's all good and if we're focused for me, I'm just speaking for me, if we're focusing on the opportunities, biotech, ag tech, aerospace, robotics and advanced manufacturing. That's enough on the plate of staff especially when we're talking about the limitations of our staff and potential cuts.

So for that reason, Frank, I really believe that you have done a tremendous job in trying to make great presentations. I'm just a no on the sense of my lived experience and my family's experience And even in the last two weeks, I've had several people unrelated to this, probably didn't even know this was on the radar, spoke about how they had hoped, I mean, they hoped that we don't ever actually just do storefronts in Vacaville. And I didn't continue the conversation, I just listened and it was just a reminder for me that I do believe that our focus on economic development and in my opinion and depending upon where this council goes on whether there's direction to staff, is it's still accessible. It's legal in the state of California, it's still accessible but that accessibility in my view just doesn't have to be so easy that it's just as if I'm going into the grocery store or any other store. So I'm not in support of doing it at this time as well.

I realize there's a structure for it. I've watched it when I was the chief before. I stood right here and had to answer the same So there's nothing new about it. We're probably just ten years later in the process of discussing. So with that, I know that there is an I know, Councilmember Chapman, you're asking for it. If somebody else wanted to also give direction, it would require a second. Is there a second? For adopting the strategic plan but also giving direction unless the city attorney wants me to separate these two.

I think we could probably direction given to staff doesn't have to be done by way of motion so if we would do a motion to accept the current plan that's proposed and then because it's not clear to me from the comments thus far if we have a majority of the council that wants to

Let me continue that

way. Yeah.

Okay. So what I'd like to do is go ahead and make a motion that we adopt this strategic plan. Second. So we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye. Just a second. Are we accepting it and this is it or we're accepting this draft and we will have future input on it? I'm not if I vote yes, does that mean there won't be changes to this?

Well, what we're doing right now is this draft has been presented to us and that is the ask is to adopt a resolution to accept this as the strategic plan for the next three years. I mean, that is the action item tonight. That was the staff report and that's the presentation.

The

additional discussion from the city manager was because this has come up and it came up during that is to receive direction. Do I have that clear, our city manager, Chandra?

I just want to clarify one thing on the strategic plan. Tonight what we're adopting is the draft and then if there are chances or after review you have some suggestions, we're willing to take that into consideration. We will work with our departments and come up and change this plan with staffing budget and resources, what can we actually accomplish. Some of these things are pie in the sky you know there's a lot of infrastructure projects here about our fire stations. With our current fiscal deficit situation we can't even start those until year two or three.

So this will create the frame, this draft

creates This is more of a framework we just need to go back and come back with the budget process to officially adopt the strategic plan, if that makes sense.

That's what I wanted to know that there will be could be an opportunity to make changes because I prefer to see it and look at it and think about it all. It's harder for me to get it as part of this whole agenda thing. So if I would vote yes since it's already being voted on, but I want to know that because like you said, some of the things I see are not things that we're going to be able to really do right now. So I want to make

it a realistic strategic plan. So you're voting to a template. Just to

be clear to the council is to move this forward and give direction to the city manager that this is the draft of the strategic plan that then can be finalized when it comes back to the council. But what we're doing is we're making this motion tonight for that.

Okay. And then we'll come back and address the We'll

address that separately, yes. Okay. Council Member Stockton?

Is it acceptable for us to do a roll call vote on this and each of us give direction on the other item?

That's what

you said.

They have to be separate?

Well, it's completely separate, so what I'd like to do is just have the discussion on the resolution.

Okay, well I'm

ready to vote.

Yeah. Vice Mayor Silva?

Yeah. So I'm just I remember in two sessions, two study sessions about strategic plan, in there on our agenda specifically, there was a discussion, a line item on cannabis. And then in this particular situation, there was a comment from the public about requesting a discussion on this and that was shut down as being too controversial. That's what I overheard from the consultant. Why was that the case?

Why wasn't that a part of that discussion at that point to see where we're at as a council, if anything had changed? When was that? At our last study session on our strategic plan on that Saturday day. So we had the two day retreat, it was a Friday Saturday, it was on that Saturday. City manager?

So this came as a public comment as a request from the community member, this was not a direction we received from the council to consider cannabis. When we looked at the previous session on March 28 cannabis was voted no but because this is a new strategic plan and there were focus groups and community input so when the community input came you know we as staff are sharing with the council this was the most, not most, most is not the right word, this was the ask from a community member about this specific project. Most of the other community feedback is already incorporated which was part of the focus groups and community sessions but this was never directed by the council to be part of the strategic plan and that's the reason since it came as a public comment we're presenting if you want us to spend energy on that, if you want this to be part of our strategic plan.

I think for me the question still arises that came up two years ago is what is the impact to staff time and that's what I'm hearing, one part of what I'm hearing coming up this evening from some of our council members. So like what would it take to just do a cost benefit analysis to make to where there's that informed decision to let the public can say, Here's the total cost of it.

Well, we'll have to have internal conversations because we'll have to reach out to other jurisdictions, we'll have to see how successful they are, we'll have to have some time to even come back to you and give that, okay, we're gonna need three months or four months to do this analysis. I haven't had a chance to discuss that with my senior leadership team yet. So I need their input based on their experience or the things they have heard from other jurisdictions, okay you will need at least three months or six months to do this analysis, we can bring that back to the council and say it will take us six months, are you okay? And then we go back and do that but it will involve a lot of staff time because we have to reach out to other jurisdictions, we have to do the and you know the other challenge is the financial markets are changing so the cost benefit that some of the other cities may share with us may not be the same kind of benefit we may have. For example, based on my past experience we did certain projections in the previous jurisdiction I was at the cannabis will bring this kind of revenue but by the time the actual dispensaries were put together, the storefronts opened, the revenue was much less than what was projected in the beginning as part of the cost benefit analysis and again as these dispensaries are opening across various jurisdictions the profit margins are getting really low.

So that's another concern we can do and spend a lot of time in this cost benefit analysis but by the time we would actually adopt the ordinance and go through it the margins are going to reduce further and further and further but we don't have that data right now. Well need to research then I'm

also curious because I keep hearing this gateway concept I mean, I'm unclear what the data would show on how that applies to alcohol and tobacco sales. If we're talking about substance abuse or gateways to what it also could be contributed to other lack of mental health access issues and effectiveness. So I mean, I guess my point is that if that's going be continued narrative then and if we're here about that, then I mean, to me, that just seems to be a part of that conversation. So I think it sounds like the goal is to approve the strategic plan and then I'm not quite clear on when

So I'll clarify that. The discussion. So it'll help you. What's missing in the strategic plan is the added strategies and tactics. The goals and the mission vision and then to get to the goals sets the framework. What was shared is there's still work to be done that builds out the rest of it. So when you look at this, you have goals and they're all broken down, then there's objectives. What's missing is strategies and tactics and how that gets entered into the master plan still is yet

to be

done. The ask is, okay, this is what needs to be done. Do you want to add cannabis to this? So there is going to, this is a draft, there's work to be done, the question is, does this council, does the majority of this council today, I know we've been talking about what's happened in the past, but does the majority of this council today want to give direction in addition to by simple motion adopting this as the strategic plan, then add that. So we're separating the two but it doesn't mean that we're not going to then know tonight whether or not there's four out of seven that want to give direction.

Yes, just one clarity to that. So I believe that this item from my recollection two years ago, not to bring up the past, but that's how I think of it. It's like if unless there's some other change from how that discussion went, it was that it sounded as if council was open to entertaining it. However, it wasn't a high priority. So I guess the question comes back, are there options to, yes, this can be a part of the strategy as far as pursuing a cost benefit analysis, but is a low priority.