City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, Vacaville. This is the regularly scheduled City Council meeting in the City of Vacaville. It's Tuesday, June 9th, 2026, 6 p.m. May I have a roll call?

Council Agency Authority Member Stockton?

Here.

Ritchie?

Here.

Chapman? Here. Wiley? Here. Fremont?

Here.

Vice Mayor, Vice Chair Silva? Mayor, Chair Carter?

Here. Here. And I do believe the vice mayor here is attempting to be online tonight. So we'll figure that out.

All right.

We did not have closed session. So what I would like to do now is if you're able, please rise for a moment of silence followed by the pledge. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So we'll move on to approval of the agenda. Any changes to tonight's agenda?

No changes, Mayor.

All right. With that, do I have a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Actually, I can't do that because we've got it online, so we're going to have to do roll calls all night. So nice shirt, Vice Mayor. I love it. So we'll go ahead and do a roll call on everything tonight.

Council Member Stockton? Council Member Ritchie? Yes. Council Member Chapman?

Yes.

Council Member Premau?

Yes.

Council Member Wiley? Yes. Vice Mayor Silva? Yes.

And for the audience, there'll be an item on tonight's agenda which really is going to be a change. And so what you're starting to see is we will be adjusting. And so we have, instead of just a dial-in tonight, the Vice Mayor is also testing the fact that this will be a new system that you will see presentations and those who will be attending online in the future. So just bear with us with some of the technical difficulties tonight. We'll move on to reports of the City Council and I am looking for the microphones and I don't see anything. Corey to the back room, I don't have anything on my screen as far as microphones. Like I said, this is a dry run, so here we go. We're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. You're going to have to look down at me and see and I'm just going to have to manage this. Any member of the Council reporting anything out tonight? You just have to... Okay, so I'm going to go with Council Member Chapman. Thank you. Can you hit your mic and see, because I can't, let's see. Let's try it and let's see what I get here. Speaking list. I'm going to try this and see if it's you. There's no names, so we are... Speaking list yeah, let's Yeah, I can't see Yeah, so we're gonna do it the old-fashioned way so I Can't see any anyone at this point so go ahead and turn your mic on so I'm gonna call on you Yeah, just the middle in the middle button

Yes, okay Good evening everyone. I really don't have anything to report out on There was a two-by-two Travis Unified School District two-by-two meeting that I was not able to attend breakdown communication there and but I would like to ask the council if we could adjourn in positive thoughts for the family and the youth that was killed during Semiata graduation this last week.

Yeah, that's fine. We're also adjourning in memory of the... Of the student? No, actually of the Recology employee that was killed this last week, but we can also add that to the next...

Please do. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay, anyone else? Councilmember Ritchie?

All right. I'll be trying to be microphone on very fast. Just attended the TCC's Travis Community Consortium. It was more of an update in regards to kind of just some of the work on a big macro project, regional event. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. children and youth in daycare it sounds crazy but that was one of the biggest concerns with two wars going it's supporting the people the base and daycare and find a way to help support in the community The other two is real quickly shout out to our fire department for executing an amazing burn as one is not going so well so I' m very proud you practice practice be perfection and a lot of respect for how they did it flawless. The last one is I got a call from my boss, my wife, and I got a honey-do list in the middle of the day. I'm driving down Main Street, Monta Vista. It was a mess. The cones were out. And all people I see, this car parked in the middle of the street, literally in the middle of the street, it was our chief of police. And I just honked and waved. And for me, that was the antithesis of what VAC was all about. It's not about the machines, the cities, the buildings. It's the people. And when I saw our chief pulled over and on the spot, just jumped in, it was a cool scene on my way to my honeydew list. So thank you. And it just reminds me, it's about the people. It's not the machines, the building equipment that makes VAC full of support. It's the people.

ANYONE ELSE? YEAH. OKAY. COUNCILMEMBER STOCKMAN.

THANK YOU. I JUST WANTED TO CONGRATULATE COLONEL PATRICK BRADY LEE, THE WING COMMANDER OF THE 349TH RESERVE UNIT AT TRAVIS RETIRED THIS WEEKEND. THEY HAD A WONDERFUL CELEBRATION, AND WE DO NOT YET KNOW WHO THE NEXT WING COMMANDER WILL BE FOR THE RESERVE WING THERE. I also wanted to let the public know that we're anticipating to do director interviews for the CAP Solano JPA on June 24th. If anybody has any from the council has feedback on anything that you would like me to bring up during that interview or potentially discuss, please reach out to me or email me so that I can make sure it gets brought up in the interview. I believe that Dr. Ledejew from Vallejo as well as Councilwoman Dawson from Sassoon will be on that panel. So if anybody has questions about that, please reach out.

Thank you. Councilmember Wiley.

Thank you. Just a couple of quick things. Councilmember Ritchie mentioned the childcare issue, and I was on a Zoom call through CalCities a week ago, and it was something that we started at the last meeting, and just a group of people that are working to see what can we do to improve childcare through the region. And so I talked about the base, too. So if there's things that come up, or if you know any great things, suggestions for childcare, I can work on that committee through that. And then tomorrow morning, we have the Yellow Solana Air Quality meeting, which we will finally approve the grants that I mentioned last time. And then as a fun thing, I got to attend the 250 years for heroes through history at the great Rowland Freedom Center a couple of weeks ago. Many of you also were there, but it was a great event. And then fourth of all, does anyone else, can you get the agenda on your thing? Because my agenda keeps just saying loading.

So we've got, so while we're testing it, I don't know, you have yours up? Anybody else? Okay, so you're not alone.

Okay, hopefully we will be able to get them up then.

Well, and I would ask any other members to try to pull up the agenda just so we can troubleshoot. I have the paper, but it's not there. This is going to be important, so bear with us. Anyone else have anything to add?

I do not, so I'll go ahead and pause the recording.

Good evening mayor vice mayor council members and community members. I do have three key announcements to welcome three of our newest staff members We're thrilled to welcome a Heather Zouk to the city attorney's office as our newest assistant city attorney She fills the vacancy that was left by the retirement of our beloved Melinda Stewart bringing over 25 years of legal experience spanning both public and private sectors, and most recently she was with CAL FIRE, and she arrives with a wealth of knowledge and breadth of experience, which will complement our team and strengthen our city attorney's office ability to serve the legal needs for the city. Is Heather here? If you can just raise your hand. Thank you. Also, our Assistant Public Works Director, Robert Armillo. He brings over 30 years of engineering experience, most recently serving as the City Engineer for City of Tracy and Assistant Director of Public Works for the City of Richmond. He has extensive expertise in project design and delivery, as well as working with private development. Robert, are you here? Thank you, welcome. And also, last but not the least, our new Assistant Finance Director, Shelby Milleran. If you can raise your hand, please, too. She has over 10 plus years of municipal financial experience in budgeting, financial reporting, and auditing. And she previously served as Chief Fiscal Administrative Officer for the Yolo County. And she started her government career here at Solano County about a decade ago. So welcome, new team members. That's my report.

Well, welcome to you all. You're joining, I think, a fabulous team. And so we're excited for you to bring your experience and also to help sharpen our skills as well. So thank you for joining us. With that, I'll go ahead and move on. We do not have a presentation tonight. So any member of the council or actually, Vice Mayor Silva, are you on the line?

Yes, I am.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and move on. I was just going to check and see if he had any report else. We'll go ahead and move on to consent calendar. Is there any member of the council or the public wishing to pull an item for discussion? So 9A through 9F, do I have a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. I have a motion and a second. Roll call.

Council Member Ritchie. Council Member Chapman? Yes. Council Member Fremont? Yes. Council Member Wiley? Yes. Council Member Stockton?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Silva?

Yes.

Chair Carter?

Yes.

Yes. We'll go ahead and we'll move on to business from the floor. This is an opportunity for the public to address the council and items that are not on the agenda but that are in our jurisdiction or purview. I'll give you three minutes to come share. Please come forward. And just bear with me because I can't control that mic. So I'm going to ask our team who's listening to, there you go. So maybe you have full control of the mic, sir.

I may never let it turn on. Okay, council members. Okay, I know you don't want to hear from me. So you got three minutes. Take a nap. Okay, last week I got a little heated and maybe said some things a little more harshly than was effective. I spent 22 years in the fleet and 18 years locked up in county jail. So maybe I'm not going to be the most nice person when I get heated and talk about things. But I'm going to talk about the same thing again. Here's our condensed version of the county staff report from 2024 that talks about how much California Forever will cost taxpayers. Billions of dollars, 49 billion just in infrastructure costs. $2.7 billion a year in the loss of Travis Air Force Base, which would likely happen. And here's the billions of dollars and years it would take to actually put in a shipyard at Collinsville, which is once again from the county staff report of 2024. None of this has changed. No one from California forever wants to address this because it's real. They've never, ever addressed it. This is a neat flyer they sent to, actually to my wife about a month or two ago, talking about the Solano shipyard. Okay, we've gone through this before. There is no way that anybody is building ships that are not built by the government on the west coast of the United States. The only people building merchant ships in the United States is either NASCO in San Diego or Hawa, which is at the old Philly shipyard on the East Coast. And they build them under the auspices of the U.S. Maritime Administration. And the only reason those four or five ships a year get built is because of the Jones Act, which we will not go into right now because I know that you don't care. The point is this, is that there is not going to be a shipyard here in Solano County. So anyone who told you that, that somehow, someway, there's... that sardonic or saronic is going to build anything here is lying to you. They've already invested over $300 million into Franklin, Louisiana, where they bought an existing shipyard. And if they wanted to expand further, they got room in Franklin. If they wanted another shipyard, hey, guess what? There's 300 shipyards up and down the Mississippi River, the Gulf Coast. that all have the same capability. They're not coming to Solano County.

Thank you.

That's it? Okay. My point, though, is that California Forever is nothing more than a land company. They don't build anything. They market property. Thank you. That's it.

Seeing no one else, I'll go ahead and close business from the floor and we'll move on to the public hearings. We have item 11A. Madam City Clerk.

Yes, this is a resolution to affirm the Main Street Entertainment Zone is exempt from environmental review pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act guidelines and an ordinance to amend Title 12 of the Vacaville Municipal Code by adding Chapter 12.34 entitled Entertainment Zones to create new policies, procedures, and standards for establishing and regulating entertainment zones within the City of Vacaville. And Associate Planner Demir Powell and Community Development Director Erin Morris are here to present.

Mayor, before we move on, if you need the stuff on the tablets, we might need five-minute recess to reset them.

Is everyone okay? Does everyone want to reset now or do you want to do it after? We'll take five minutes. We'll go ahead and we'll just, we'll reset. We'll reset this computer. So you got a five-minute break. So thank you.

Thank you.

you Thank you. you you you you you

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

We're going to go ahead and reconvene the meeting. It is 6.42, and we will pick up where we left off on the item that is, I believe, 11A. We'll go ahead and get started.

Good evening, Mayor Carley, members of the council, and all those in attendance. Tonight's request is to amend Title 12 of the City of Vacaville Municipal Code by adding Chapter 12.34 entitled Entertainment Zones to create new policies, procedures, and standards for establishing and regulating entertainment zones in the City of Vacaville. And for a brief overview on this project, we presented the topic to the city council on January 13th, where staff was directed to proceed with outreach and developing the program. And this program was authorized by SB 969 in 2024. which authorizes cities to establish entertainment zones, which are areas that allow alcohol to be consumed on public streets, sidewalks, or public rights within a zone boundary. Entertainment zones typically are comprised of two components, which include an ordinance and a management plan. And the goal of entertainment zone programs, particularly the one for Vacaville that we developed, is to activate the Main Street and prominent public spaces in downtown Vacaville, increase revenue for downtown businesses, catalyze a broader economic stimulus in the city, create vibrant public spaces, increase social activity, and enhance community culture. Here is the project timeline. As I mentioned, the project kicked off in January. We began outreach in early February. We conducted two community engagement meetings in February as well. We held a study session with the city council on March 24th, and we posted a public review draft of the ordinance and management plan And we went to city council on May 19th. And here we are on June 9th for the first hearing with the city council. And we will return again on June 23rd for a second hearing. And the entertainment zone ordinance and management plan is anticipated to be in effect on July 23rd should the city council pass it. As for our approach for the Entertainment Zone program, it is called the Main Street Entertainment Zone due to its location. We are currently proposing to have a pilot program which will have Entertainment Zone operations run for the 2026 Creekwalk Concert Series. This will sunset on January 1st, 2027 unless the City Council were to approve an extension. THE ORDINANCE HAS SEVERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR ENTERTAINMENT ZONE OPERATIONS EVERYTHING WILL BE CONDUCTED THROUGH A SPECIAL EVENT PERMIT APPLICATION WHERE APPLICANTS WILL BE ABLE TO CHECK THAT THEY WOULD LIKE THE ENTERTAINMENT ZONE OPERATIONS TO OCCUR A MANAGEMENT PLAN WILL BE REQUIRED TO BE SUBMITTED WHICH WE HAVE PREPARED FOR YOUR REVIEW Entertainment zone hours are generally allowed from a window from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., but this will be further restricted and scrutinized with the submission of a special event permit application for each event. General liability insurance will be required and there are provisions for violations and penalties should there be any nuisances or behavior that violates the ordinance. And a biennial review will be required to be presented to the city council every two years. to describe how entertainment zone operations are occurring, address any problems that may arise, and to come back with any modifications that need to be made. As for the management plan, the management plan outlines the fact that this is a pilot program, It identifies an entertainment zone lead who will be the main staff liaison or contact between staff and businesses that would like to participate in the program. The management plan will identify the participating businesses and city approval will be required. It will identify new events, activation and programming, and it will also identify health and safety measures generally and then they may be further scrutinized and added with a submittal of a security plan when the application is submitted. This is the entertainment zone boundary that is proposed for the pilot program and for after the pilot program as well for events that would like to include Andrews Park. When we last met with City Council, it was limited to this area here, just along Main Street and including the park. It has been expanded to include this portion of Merchant Street here, extending down to Parker, due to feedback that we received from the Planning Commission and City Council. And similarly, there is an alternative boundary for events that would like to operate but not include andrews park and this is what that map looks like and per city council requests we also identified that the town square could be called out to have operations only occur in that specific area as well and again just to recap some of the outreach methods that we underwent in this initiative two community meetings were held at the mcbride senior center in february We went through an extensive and thorough outreach program, including flyers, posting on the city calendar, newsletter, social media posts, creating a project webpage, going door to door with handouts, and conducting stakeholder interviews with businesses and organizations in downtown. We did receive survey responses and these have been updated as of April. But 29 out of 37 were in favor of the entertainment zone program. There were some concerns and comments such as street closures, monitoring patrons and public safety and business participation and crossing the streets with alcohol. As for the street closures, no additional closures are being proposed at this time. Only events with existing closures would be considered after the pilot program. And as for monitoring patrons, this will occur with a police assessment with a management plan on a case by case basis. There could be several strategies such as hiring private security or having staff that will monitor to see who's wearing their wristband when patrons come in and out. So for the City Council study session that was held on March 24th, we did hear from you all several concerns and comments. The first about the pilot program, if we can end it early if there are any issues. And yes, that is an option if we're noticing problems within the first two events or so, then we can go ahead and cancel operations. As for the application process, one application is required per event. Permits don't exceed one calendar year. There is no cost to apply, but a fee is being considered based on event size and other conditions. And as for town square events, as I mentioned, some events that are focused in the square should have operation zones restricted to this area. And staff updated the management plan with this option. For enforcement of zone operations and any ordinances or local regulations, the police department has the full authority to enforce all local laws and regulations related to alcohol consumption. Businesses that create a nuisance or violate regulations may be excluded from zone operations, fined, or face other civil penalties. And again, as for the boundary, we heard from y'all that you'd like us to expand it. And we can consider expanding it further or creating new zones in the future as well. The Planning Commission had similar concerns and comments. They also were interested in expanding the zone boundary. possibly exploring new zones in the city in the future. So that is something we can certainly look into. And how we'll monitor safety and fiscal impacts to city staff and resources. So that will be tracked and presented to the city council as well. And they suggested that we consider adding fees for business participation. And lastly, to track the benefits of the program, see if we can track revenue generated during zone operations for each of the businesses that are participating, as well as others that are in the area if they see an uptick in business activity. And as for the CEQA for this project, it is exempt under the common sense exemption. No new regulations will be created. The new regulation, excuse me, will not create new impacts and regulations will require project specific analysis. And to conclude, the city council will hold a second reading on June 23rd, 2026, and the ordinance and management plan will be effective on July 23rd, 2026. And before I move to the recommendation, a letter was submitted to you all today from the downtown Vacaville Business Improvement District. I would like to note that many of the comments and questions were addressed in our previous study session with the city council, but we can revisit any of the comments or questions that are in the letter. The only one that was not discussed previously was they suggested using the town square as the pilot area instead of the Creekwalk Concert Series. There's already an existing town square program, town square music series, and state law allowed an extension of the current alcohol, outdoor alcohol activity to occur. So based on staff's assessment, we think that Creek Walk concert series would be a better opportunity to assess a new program and see how this would really operate with a broader boundary. So our recommendation is to, by simple motion, recommend that the city council, excuse me, this is for the city council to adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Vacaville, concluding the entertainment zone ordinance is exempt from environmental review pursuant to section 15061 of the California Environmental Quality Act guidelines. and introduce an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Vacaville amending the Vacaville Municipal Code by adding Chapter 12.34 entitled Entertainment Zones to create new policies, procedures, and standards for establishing and regulating entertainment zones within the City of Vacaville. Any questions or comments?

Yeah, thank you. This is a public hearing, so I want to check and see if the Council has any questions before I open it up to the public to start this hearing. You have a question? All right, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you for the update on the security that you make mentioned during your report about possibly obtaining profit security. Would that be at the expense of the vendors participating in the entertainment zone and not a cost to the city?

That is correct. It would be at the expense of the business owners. City staff could explore some other alternatives because the city does hire its own security for some events, but that will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Silva, can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

Yes. I just wanted to ask if you had any questions before I opened up for this public hearing.

I just had two questions. One has two parts to it. What are measurements of success or measurements of not success for this? And then number two, I just need a little bit more clarification on the town square area. One of the biggest challenges there is that when there is an event there, there's different borders that have to be taped off. And I think there's know two goals out of this is to make sure that um the businesses that are put on events there collaborative events that it's a lot more easy to do that and a lot less cumbersome so i just need clarification on those two items thank you

For the first item, some ideas that we received from both the Planning Commission as well as the downtown Vacaville Business Improvement District are the number of attendees and participants, if we're noticing an uptick, and then people who want to come out and participate. Public safety, so looking at the number of code enforcement or police responses per visitor, that's a metric that we could use to monitor safety. Economic impact could be assessed by the amount of sales generated for all businesses in the operation. And the downtown Vacaville Business Improvement District also had a good idea of looking at any news releases, if there's any negative coverage or concerns from the public, moderating those as well and presenting those. And Council Member Silva, could you please reiterate your second question for me one more time?

I'm still confused on the town square comments. I think the ultimate goal is to make that much more streamlined and easy for the events that those neighboring businesses put on in that particular space. So just need clarification. Does this help ease that, those boundaries per se, or does it help ease those boundaries or open up the boundaries? And in what ways does this help ease up that process? Thank you.

Thank you Vice Mayor Silver. I'll take a stab at answering this question. So currently under a law that the state of California has that is good through 2029, the town square is able to put on the events like they do on Thursday nights within the boundaries of the square, and they don't need to go through an entertainment zone process for that. That's a standard special event permit process. It's not an entertainment zone, so it's not subject to some of these new program requirements. and that will be allowed under state law through 2029. If the council moves forward with this ordinance and program, if there was a desire for an event organizer to do an event in Town Square and create an entertainment zone that goes beyond the boundaries of the square, this would allow them to do that through the special event permit process.

Thank you. Council Member Stockton.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I just, it's on. Is it? Okay. I think, can you hear me? All right. I'll speak loudly if not. Could you go back to, yes, where the zones are? This like area right now that's highlighted orange on the screen, is it all or nothing or can that be shrunk down into subcategories within that square or do we have to have it open on Merchant Street if we only want it open on Main Street?

Yeah, that's an option that we can do.

So that could be added on today or is that included in what you're presenting?

Through a special event permit to utilize some area within this gold area and with an entertainment zone activated, that organizer would show the boundaries of where the zone would be. So it's not an all or nothing. They don't have to activate merchant if that's not part of their plan, but they'd be presenting an operation plan, a safety plan, a boundary plan, et cetera, that would address the area that they were going to utilize. Perfect. Thank you.

And those could be demarcated during the actual events with fencing and signage and things?

All right, thank you very much. I'm going to go ahead and open the...

I have one more.

Sorry. Councilmember Wiley.

Thank you. Thanks for the information. And I just have a question about the whole, how does it all work? So if it gets approved in July, then will the Creek Walk have to apply for the whole thing? Or is Creek Walk in it? Because we've been talking about Creek Walk.

That is a great question, Council Member Wiley. So if the council approves the ordinance of the program and a second reading happens, that allows for Creek Walk to have an entertainment zone. But the city would be looking for a partner to spearhead adding the entertainment zone to Creek Walk. and to work through logistics of that first entertainment zone permit. And that's something that following tonight's council meeting, if the council introduces this ordinance, our new economic development manager will be partnering with planning and other staff to really do a deeper dive into the logistics for this year's Creek Walk series.

And so I don't go to Creek Walk very often. So, but alcohol is sold at Creek Walk, is that correct? And is it, I thought it was only like in a certain area. So is the area expanded to all of Andrews Park, like the blue sign up there, or are they still only allowed to have alcohol in a certain spot?

Still the same boundary. This is the current boundary for the Creek Walk Concert Series, and there's no proposed change for this program.

So the alcohol can be throughout the park and is that correct.

No just within this blue area, there's a these are I currently fence boundaries.

Yeah, okay, so that's basically the down before you up the hill to then that part because I'm okay, I thank you and then I just said that time frame, you know 10 to 10. It seems like it would be hard to okay now it's 10 o'clock to really crack down on that so it. it seems like it's going to be a bigger monitoring program problem than it might be. Especially if they do have, you know, a Thursday night event and then a Friday night event and then a Saturday night and, you know, people are going to think, oh, I do that. But they don't have the wristband and just, I mean, so how does it all work with, who does the wristband thing? Is that all part of, everyone has, whoever's participating has to figure out what their color is and one night it's one color and one night it's another and

Correct, yes. When they submit for the special event permit application, they'll need to note all that and have that information ready for staff to review. There will be unique wristbands and colors for each event, so no one's using old wristbands and things like that. The police department will work with the business owners as well as the entertainment zone lead to help identify monitoring strategies as well to ensure that no one is consuming alcohol who shouldn't be.

So I'm glad it's a pilot program so that we can work through this and see if it does indeed meet all the goals without overburdening the police department or the business owners to try to monitor that. Thanks.

All right, now I'm going to, does anyone else have a question? All right, I will go ahead and open up the public hearing to the public.

Hello, Leigh Ann. With the bid, I just have a couple of questions. I think the letter, it was fun to write. But you mentioned fee for businesses. So is that a fee that the businesses who are already paying a bid fee have to pay to be a part of the event? Or is it the business that's putting on the event? And how will the boundaries be managed in Creek Walk? It's such a vast area with a lot of, Fiesta Days has to put up a fence. We have to put up a fence for certain ABC events. So what does that look like on an ongoing week to week basis? And currently there are no bars or restaurants on Merchant Street. So I like that it's being included, but just might want to keep that in mind as well. And again, going back to keeping it in Town Square, there are five bars and restaurants in Town Square that will have viable changes. They will be the ones that will easily be able to measure whether or not this is going to be a successful business rather than at Creek Walk. Now you've got people walking from Town Square where most of the restaurants are all the way down to Creek Walk and then buying more and over consumption becomes an issue. And so just kind of want to think through all of those things and how best we can help manage the program.

All right, seeing no one else from the public, I'm going to go ahead and bring this public hearing back to the council. And if there's, maybe if we could just address that. I think there needs to be some clarity. The boundaries that can exist are the broad scope of what could be applied for.

But it could be as small as Town Square.

So I think they would address that. So it's inclusive of the broader boundary and so I don't believe from what I'm hearing that it would preclude anyone from saying, other than the events on Thursday night, there's the opportunity to draw some different boundaries that is maybe around Town Square that doesn't impact, especially if you are a vendor saying, who's going to pay for the security? Does it really need to be all of downtown, all of Main Street, all of Merchant Street? But it could be. but they would have to go through the application process. Is that correct?

Can you just bring some clarity to that? I just want to bring clarity to a point that's related and also related to a comment. There are costs associated with activating the entertainment zone, and those costs are determined once a boundary is figured out and once it's looked at where are the barricades, where are the signs, how much those cups cost, those wristbands, and there could be security requirements that security had to be paid for. To put it Clearly, whoever's promoting that entertainment zone component is responsible for those costs. How those costs are paid, whether it's the bid, paying for those costs to help out their businesses, whether the business owners themselves are contributing toward those costs, that's gonna be kind of up to the organizer and the activator of the zone. I think as a staff, we're willing to work with people and figure things out, but we've brought you a program that does depend on a partner

To partner with the city to bring the resources to make the zone happen So for example the the bid itself could be working with the businesses in a smaller area around town square where there are extra restaurants and And bar, you know, there's a concentration of them to say this is a boundary that we could create I I think that that flexibility is there And I just want to make that clear to the bid that it doesn't preclude the bid from activating the town square. Is that correct?

At this point, there is no need for an entertainment zone to activate town square in its current configuration because there's already a state law that's allowing that.

Okay. But if they wanted to expand what is that town square, then they would.

Okay. Yeah, if they wanted to, then they could. They can identify that in the application.

And also in the pilot, I know that when there are the creek walks, there's fencing up and it's put up and then it's taken down. But yet at Town Square, not everything is about fencing. It's about barricades and sometimes they're invisible barriers, but it's like, do not go beyond this point, which could affect the costs, right? You don't necessarily need fencing if you're creating an entertainment zone. You don't want it to feel like, I don't want to go there because there's fences around it. You want it to actually be... APPEALING FOR PEOPLE TO COME. SO NOT EVERYTHING IS GOING TO HAVE A FENCE AROUND IT.

I JUST WANT TO BE CLEAR THAT A LOT OF THE PARAMETERS OF IMPLEMENTING THE ZONES ARE BASED ON THE PROGRAM, BUT ALSO BASED ON INPUT FROM THE VACAVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT. RIGHT.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I DON'T HAVE ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS. DOES ANYONE ELSE ON THE COUNCIL HAVE ANY COMMENTS? YES. COUNCIL MEMBER FREEMAN?

YES. SO THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY COST WOULD BE $1348, WHICH WOULD GO ON TO those costs would be incurred by the creek walk, right? The $9,435, does that sound right?

At this point, the city does not have a budget to pay for the costs associated with adding an entertainment zone to Creek Walk. So if the council adopts this ordinance or introduces it, it gets adopted and we have this program, the city would be either looking for a partner to cover those costs or we'd have to come back to council with a budget augmentation for the city to cover those costs.

Okay. Yeah. And then the security that we're talking about, that's security for individual businesses that want to participate, so they have to have additional security?

It's an estimate about what the city staff feel it would take to ensure safety within the zone that incorporates the Creek Walk and the outer business area. And it will be scrutinized further, would be looked at further if we find a partner and are moving forward. But we want to be transparent with the council and the community that adding an entertainment zone to Creek Walk does have costs that would have to be paid by somebody. Yeah.

I guess the reason that I'm asking this is because I know that this entertainment zone, if people are able to go to Town Square or to one of the establishments downtown, buy the wristband, buy the drink, walk down to Creek Walk, I think that that's kind of the point of this a little bit because I know that a lot of people have shared with me their frustrations about being at Creek Walk and standing in line for 10 or 15 minutes to get a ticket and then go over to the beer line and stand for 10 or 15 minutes instead of being out on the dance floor. So I think that's what I was trying to get at, the additional cost. So we don't know what that really is yet. Okay, thank you. That's all.

Councilmember Stockton.

Yeah, so with Creek Walk is a great example. Some of the surrounding businesses, if they want to expand into the orange zone that's outside of Andrews Park, would they be able to piggyback off of the city or would they just, for instance, there's like the opera house and a restaurant right there. If they wanted to expand just that short portion, would they have to just cover like the square footage of where they're at? Like, I mean, I guess those are some of the questions that I have. And then the other question I have is while the bid can apply, not everybody has to go through the bid for approval to do this, correct?

The second question is totally correct. This could be an event promoter who comes to the city with an event and wants to activate an entertainment zone. That's an option. It doesn't have to be the bid. As far as all the detailed logistics of implementing this, we have our expert on the special event permit process here in the building, but When the special event is proposed and the entertainment zone is activated, really at that point it should be decided who's participating. There's not really a scenario where random other businesses kind of try to jump in. It's figured out by the event coordinator in a cohesive fashion. But again, I think as a staff, we're prepared to get into more of the implementation details. If we have an ordinance to implement, we'll be diving into that topic.

I think what I'm getting at is we're trying to help the local businesses that are just outside of that operating area in the park. It would be good if there was some way to notify them and include them if they want to be included, right? And surely if their business is like four down, you'd probably have to talk to a multitude of different business owners to see if they wanted to contribute. unless that person just wanted to cover the added expense to expand it outside of Andrews Park. I guess I just want to make sure that that's something that we think about and that while we're going through this trial period that we can look at ways to maybe not put them on the hook for the entirety of the park with just adding on to it if that's something that can be done.

All right, thank you. At this time, this would be a good opportunity for someone to make a motion.

I'll motion to approve in a second.

We have a motion and a second. Roll call.

All right, quick comment.

Yes, Vice Mayor.

Sorry, guys. Just listening on this and just based on it, it really sounds like it's more of a deterrent to activate our downtown. And I think the ultimate goal is to find ways to activate our downtown, streamline our process, not add more bureaucratic steps. and kind of taken back by just that level of complexity that's been added to this whole process. So for me, it just sounds like, you know, if our goal is to activate our downtown by providing more foot traffic, more entertainment, supporting our restaurants, it sounds like this is going to add more of a burden to do that. Am I wrong? Am I missing something here?

Well, I think I'll let staff answer that. But I would offer that this allows for the process to do it. Right now, it's not allowed. So this is why it's the pilot. But if staff wants to maybe comment on the vice mayor's comment.

Thank you, Vice Mayor, for that comment. What I would say is that community and economic development staff and the police department have collaborated with a lot of our community members to try to come up with a program, a first-year program, that balances economic activity and all the excitement of a brand-new state law that we're going to test out with public safety. and I think that's why you see, and I understand your perspective on this, you see a pretty cautious program that also is implementing some pretty complex state regulations about what the city has to include in the program. So I would say that's where this is coming from, is a cautious approach while still an optimistic one to allow alcohol to be sold in different ways in downtown.

But did I hear you correctly that FreeFlox would now be responsible there'll be an added cost to put on Creek Walk that we can't put on. So does that mean Creek Walk doesn't happen?

Creek Walk is happening. The Creek Walk is happening. What staff was transparent about in the staff report is if there's a partner that wants to activate the entertainment zone during Creek Walk, there are additional costs, and they will need to go through the special event permit process to add that and identify funding for that. But Creek Walk is on as it has been.

but we're excluded from the security? The city of Vacaville is excluded from that added cost?

I may need to have the parks director help me out a little bit here, but there is already security and city resources on Creek Walk, and there's a budget for Creek Walk. The additional security that would be required to operate an entertainment zone during Creek Walk does not currently have a funding source.

All right. Thank you.

And if I understand it right, maybe this will help clarify it. The need to look for a partner to help potentially work through this pilot would likely have to bear the burden of the cost. Unless this comes back to a council within a pilot program to say, here's some ideas, it may require some cost. Is the council willing to carry the burden in this particular case? It may be Creek Walker, it may be something else. But this allows us to step into the testing of the pilot of the entertainment zone. There's work to be done and details to be worked through. Is that fair? Okay. All right. Vice Mayor Silva, does that provide some clarity?

Yeah, it does, but it seems like we should have that kind of clarity fleshed out right now. I mean, if there's going to be a huge added cost of security for any event by activating an entertainment zone, then, I mean, I guess that's the data we're looking for, that, hey, this doesn't happen, or we have folks who claim that, hey, this can't happen because it's cost prohibitive. We hear that with so many other things that people are trying to activate, you know, get done in our city. So it just sounds like we added a lot more steps To be able to promote, you know, different cultural events or whatever it is that also includes, you know, the main thing here of alcohol cells. So, yeah. But I understand the concept of pilot. I understand, you know, improving processes. I'm hoping at this point we'd be a little further along than that.

Thank you for your comments. I think I understand that this allows us to step into the process. The goal isn't to actually add complication, but we don't even have an entertainment zone right now, so it's a moot point for anyone to even apply for it. We're going to have to learn through this process. Hopefully the staff can really help guide and direct and partner with our downtown partners and the bid to make sure that we've got some clarity on what the first ones might look like. And again, the goal is to create that entertainment zone that activates it and doesn't become an obstacle. Well, we have a motion and a second. Roll call.

Council Member Stockton? Yes. Council Member Ritchie? Yes. Council Member Chapman? Yes. Council Member Fremont?

Yes.

Council Member Wiley? Yes. Vice Mayor Silva? Yes. Mayor Carley.

Yes. And thank you for that. And we'll do the second, the second reading will come to the council at the next council meeting. It will take 30 days and that's why it will go into effect in July. July 23rd. July 23rd. So thank you very much for the presentation. We'll move on to item 11B, Madam City Clerk.

11B is a resolution approving adjustments to the city's service and facility rental fee schedule, including consumer price index and market rate updates, and establishing new parks and recreation fees. And management analyst Crystal Welty and finance director Ken Matsumaya are here to present.

Good evening, Mr. President.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the Council. This evening, I have a brief presentation regarding updates to the city's service and facility fee schedule for the upcoming fiscal year. The fee schedule is a list of fees that recover all or a part of the cost of providing citywide user services and maintaining the city's rental facilities. Examples include construction permits from community development, special police and fire services, as well as facility rentals. The CPI adjustment would not apply to utility rates, business license fees, or taxes that are not part of this schedule. Changes to taxes and utility rates are subject to alternative processes that typically include voter approval. The service and facility rental fee schedule typically receives annual CPI adjustments to keep pace with the cost of service delivery and facility maintenance. This item was last presented to council on June 25th of 2024, and at that time we requested a CPI adjustment for one year because an external fee study was underway. But the request was otherwise consistent with the past practice of being adjusted by 4%, which is based on the April 2024 CPI for the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward region. This evening, staff is recommending council approve a similar two-year CPI increase to the service and facility rental fees schedule for fiscal year 26-27, while a new fee study is completed and public outreach is conducted. A periodic external cost of service or user fee study is a best practice to ensure the city is aware of the true cost of providing the service for each fee and the percentage of cost recovery, which is the best way to ensure that fees do not exceed the reasonable cost of providing a service as required by Propositions 218 and 26. The last comprehensive cost of service study was completed in 2017 and a new study was started in 2022 coming out of the pandemic. And what became evident throughout the fee study process is that a siloed approach that studies cost recovery activities within each department or division rather than across departments is no longer appropriate for the City of Vacaville. While many efforts were made to update the study to keep pace with an ever-changing organization, the model was not able to reflect city practices around service delivery that have become far more collaborative. thanks in part to efforts like the citywide development review process improvement initiative, which is nearing completion. While organizational changes and technological advancements like these are necessary and welcome, it does require that studies use a more dynamic model or are completed subsequent to these changes to ensure the conclusions are valid. In addition to the CPI adjustment, the proposed fee schedule for the 26-27 fiscal year includes adjusting parks and recreation fees to align the fee schedule to currently available services and amenities. These include expanding services to include new locations as shown. For example, the alcohol fee was previously available at many locations and would now be available at any permissible location. Likewise, attendance-based facility rental fees, which existed at Lagoon Valley, would now apply to other non-designated park spaces booked for events. Adjustments and cancellation fees are proposed to be updated to include a $40 booking fee for either and graduated fees for adjustments and cancellations as shown. Currently, renters forfeit fees if canceling within 30 days of the rental date, which would remain unchanged. Finally, the proposed fee schedule includes market rate adjustments rather than CPI. At McBride Senior Center, where rental fees would generally go down approximately 25% to encourage more rentals at this location and market rate adjustments at the Vacaville Performing Arts Theater, to keep VPAT competitive with nearby theaters. In addition to the adjustments discussed on the last slide, the following fees would be established for newly available amenities, which include things like a rentable bar cart, kitchen mixer, and outdoor chairs. as shown on the slide and as further explained in the staff report and as depicted in the proposed fee schedule. Changes to the structure of parking permits at Lagoon Valley are also proposed, which include moving from a six-month pass to an annual pass and offering a discounted parking pass for seniors 65 and older, which would be $35 per year. Fees for these new services and equipment are being set to make them available to the public as they become available. The recommendation this evening is to apply a two-year CPI adjustment, which is approximately 4.95% to the upcoming fiscal year and adjust the Parks and Recreation fees as discussed. If approved, the changes would go into effect on July 1st of 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. We are not requesting a CPI adjustment for subsequent fiscal years. An external fee study will be completed to evaluate the cost of service delivery and percentage of cost recovery and results will be presented to council upon completion. That concludes the presentation. We'd be happy to take any questions or comments.

Yeah, thank you very much for that. I'm looking for any questions.

So on the last item that you said that there would be a CPI adjusted added to these, would they be added to the new ones that you just said or the new ones that you just added? Is that standing without being increased? what is listed in the presentation is the proposed fee so those will not be increased by that so only the other ones okay thank you i have a question you have a question councilmember thank you um thank you the in your uh i believe it's the last slide but you have mentioned there are uh increase for seniors to park

Parks and Rec has asked to change the parking pass from six months to one year. And they're offering, they're asking to offer a discounted senior parking pass. So instead of $70 per the year, it would be $35 for seniors ages 65 and over.

Okay. I don't know what I was reading, but the seniors right now are going through quite a bit. And I know that we have to address... needs throughout these structure is there and and I want to make mention of we have the Napa Solano Commission on Aging and they're meeting a lot right now with communities to discuss how seniors are being hit hard right now because they're already on a fixed income, many of them are. Is there any way we can residents of the city that we could possibly exempt them from a parking fee in order to attend events at Lagoon Valley or other areas, I understand the need for us to collect what is needed for us to operate. However, I would like us to also be considerate of our senior community.

So with the fee schedule, I mean, ultimately it's up to council when that's where we get direction on if you wanted to move forward with that. Any amount that isn't recovered is getting subsidized by the general fund and everybody else. If council chooses to not collect a fee for seniors, that would be something we ultimately need direction from the entire council on.

Do you have any data on what seniors have paid in the past? Do we have any data to say, okay, without their participation, what type of impact would that have on the overall?

We don't have that data. I'm not sure if Parks and Rec has that data this evening, but we do not have that.

Okay, I see someone coming forward from Parks and Rec.

Good evening.

Good evening, Council. My name is Christina Santoyo. I'm one of the recreation supervisors for Parks and Recreation. Currently, with our parking meters, we are only able to check the number of sales, but we don't collect any demographic information.

Okay, so you're using meters to collect those funds. All right.

I would like... Yeah, I'm gonna direct this to our city manager, Chaudhry.

I just want to add one more thing. So the fees that are presented today are only related to facility rentals. The programming portion is separate. We already have a lot of discounted programming for the senior population. Okay. So these are two separate things. For the facility rentals, we basically trying to cover our fees for the facilities versus the programming is where we, I think overall as a city, we only recover about 60% of the cost for all of our programming for parks and bank. So those are two distinct things, if that helps. So if a senior person comes and attends a program which is, let's say, Creek Walk Series, they may get a discounted ticket, so that's a program which is separate from these fees where they're renting a space in McBride Center, for example. And that is also discounted, but at the same time, those are two distinct fees.

Right. I understand the facility rental fees, but the parking, to get the facilities, we're talking about strictly the parking right now.

So maybe we can, I don't want to... What I would actually, since this is, I can appreciate where you're going with this. I think it would probably help if maybe offline, maybe do some research within the programming to see if there are ways that we can assist those who are impacted, but looking at it separately than the council item tonight. But I hear what you're saying, and I agree. It's hard for those who are on fixed income to access it. Hopefully what we have been trying to do is provide discounts to those that we believe are impacted. At the same time, the separation between the rental facilities versus the program costs I think that there's so many out there, especially with the McBride Senior Center, that we would have to dive into that deeper, and I would just ask that you do that maybe directly with the staff.

I can do that. One final thing I would say on that is we have members in our senior community that are currently complaining about what we're offering them, and they're going to our neighboring communities. to participate in their programs. So I will discuss what I've learned with Parks and Rec and see what we can do. And I know I've already mentioned to the city manager that McBride is being listed. Let me stop there because yeah, I'll meet with Parks and Rec and continue the conversation.

I think that would be the appropriate way to handle it. Like we all have interest in being able to dive in with the city staff. separately than these costs, yeah. Council Member Chapman, excuse me, Wiley.

And so the parking, that was pretty quick. It was only for parking at Lagoon Valley, correct? And it had been $25 for six months, so now it's $35 for a year, so it's not a very big increase at the time. Thanks.

We good? We're good. All right. I have to look because I have no indication if somebody's thinking of speaking. And that goes for you as well, Vice Mayor.

All right, I will go ahead and... All right, yeah, thank you.

All right, I will open this up to the public for any comment. It is a public hearing. Seeing none, I'll bring it back. And with that, if there's no other comments, I'll be looking for a motion. We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Roll call.

Council Member Ritchie?

Yes.

Council Member Chapman?

Yes.

Council Member Fremont?

Yes.

Council Member Wiley? Yes. Council Member Stockton?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Silva?

Yes.

Mayor Carley?

Yes. All right, thank you very much. We'll move on to item 11C.

All right.

Okay, item 11C is a resolution approving the engineer's report, confirming diagram and assessment, and ordering levy of assessments for the City of Vacaville Landscape and Lighting Maintenance Assessment Districts for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. And Public Works Director, Brian Oxley and Assistant Public Works Director for Maintenance, Jacob Allred, are here to do the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the council.

Tonight, we're holding the Annual Landscape and Lighting Assessment District Levy Public Hearing. So the city annually levies and collects special assessment funds for neighborhood parks, street landscape areas, drainage and detention basins, open space and street lighting. And these funds are necessary to maintain, operate and service improvements at various areas throughout the city. So the process is set forth by the Landscape and Lighting Act of 1972, and it consists of three distinct steps. The first step occurred on February 24th, 2026, where the city council approved a resolution directing the preparation of the annual engineer's report. That report was then brought back to council on May 26th, 2026, where the city granted preliminary approval of the engineer's report and set this public hearing, which is the third and final step, which we're here for tonight. So the engineers report for 26-27 detailed 139 landscape and lighting districts and also set forth the maximum allowable assessment increase of 3.0%. And that increase is tied to CPI for the region and is also established in the Lighting and Landscape Act or Landscape and Lighting Act of 2017. 1972. So the district levies, as a summary, 76 district levies will be increased this year, 21 district levies will remain unchanged, 25 district levies will be decreased, and 17 district levies will not be assessed because the improvements identified in those districts won't be completed in the upcoming fiscal year. The item is exempt from CEQA, or the California Environmental Quality Act. And then talking about the fiscal impact, which is, I'll just go into that here. The fiscal year 26-27 assessment total is roughly $5.5 million. In addition to that, the general fund subsidizes the districts with approximately $1.69 million. That funding is made up of two distinct parts. The first is a mandatory 10% neighborhood park district citywide use contribution. And that accounts for the fact that residents throughout Vacaville may visit other parks that are funded by the levies. And in addition to that, there is a $1.265 million district shortfall amount. And this is the amount that is the difference between the operating costs of maintaining the districts and all the improvements that are in there and the amount that is assessed and levied. So in comparison to the fiscal year 25-26, at our last council meeting when I presented this last year, there was some comments about looking into the costs and understanding the general position in the budget this year. Staff did some work to look at how we could reduce the impact to the general fund. And we were able to reduce the total assessment or cost to the general fund by approximately $400,000 or just under 20%. And we did so by pausing contributions to the Equipment Replacement Fund for the LLADs, or the Landscape and Landing Assessment Districts. This Equipment Replacement Fund funds the replacement of things like mowers, tractors, work trucks, that type of thing that are necessary for staff to be able to maintain the districts. But after we looked at the data of our existing inventory and equipment that we have out there, we felt that we could pause this contribution without negatively affecting service to the public. What we were looking for was ways to reduce this, reduce the cost without affecting the overall service. The second way that we were able to do that was through correcting the water rate estimates. As you remember last year, there was a water rate increase and we conservatively estimated the cost impact that was gonna be given to the lighting and landscape assessment districts and overestimated the impact that was there. So based on the cost that we realized in the last year, we adjusted that down to the cost that we expect to be in this next year. Staff has also been looking at ways that if we were forced to down the path to reduce service quantity and that type of motion, which would be less service, less time, less water, that type of thing. But we have not gone down that path at this point with this assessment. So the strategic goals are initiative 2B to manage impacts from growth as the city continues to grow and initiative 4A to ensure fiscal sustainability of the districts to maintain service to the public. Our recommendation tonight is by simple motion to adopt the subject amended resolution and our director Brian Oxley and I are here to answer any questions.

Thank you for the presentation and I think it's not lost on us that the general fund is subsidizing this And there are those that are clearly benefiting from the fact that their rate does not cover their park. And it is what it is. We have a lot of the districts. I wish we didn't have as many. And I wish this could get stabilized. But I don't believe that now is the time to do it. But I appreciate the presentation. Council Member Wiley.

Thanks. So you said there's 139 lighting and landscaping districts, which sounds like a lot compared to some other cities. But then we have a lot of areas of the city that aren't covered. So about what percentage of the city is covered by lighting and landscaping?

Yeah, I don't have an exact percentage of that.

Half and half or...

I would say that that is approximate, yes, about half.

And you said you haven't gone down the path of reducing services because of our budget shortfall. But if we were to go down that path, I would assume that it would be for the people, the parts of the city that aren't covered. Because what our general fund is covering the approximately 50% of the city that doesn't pay into lighting and landscaping. That's correct assessment. So the people that are paying are really, they would not be reduced because they're already paying.

Yeah, that's correct. If the lighting and landscape district was solvent, we wouldn't be reducing the services at that point. And just to bring some clarity, what we're talking about here are neighborhood parks, a lot of those districts. We have six lighting districts that we can't cut from for safety for the public. And then only five of those districts are setback landscapes. So you're talking about neighborhood parks around the city primarily that are funded by these lighting and landscape districts.

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

Hearing no more questions from the Council, I'm going to go ahead and open up this public hearing to the public. Seeing none, I will go ahead and bring it back to the Council. If there are any other comments, otherwise a motion.

I make a motion. Yeah.

Motion? Second. Okay. Any other discussion? Motion and second, we'll do roll call.

Councilmember Chapman? Yes. Councilmember Freedman?

Yes.

Councilmember Wiley? Yes. Councilmember Stockton? Yes. Councilmember Ritchie? Yes. Vice Mayor Silva?

Yes.

Mayor Carley?

Yes. Thank you very much. Moving on to business, item 12A, Madam City Clerk.

Yes this is budget study session number two informational update on the development of the fiscal year 2026-27 budget and budget manager John Collette and finance director Ken Matsumiya are here to present.

So mayor I can get started on this presentation, and then I'll pass it on to Ken Mayor vice mayor council members and community members so today. We're presenting the second study session for the budget So today we're before I start this presentation. I just want to thank all of the staff the department department heads and especially finance staff that has spent months putting this budget together. It's not an easy task. It starts sometime early January and it takes almost four or five months for us to put the numbers together and make sure all the numbers are matching in the back. And departments have done a great job on identifying what the two and a half percent looks like, how we can still continue to move forward and provide the services that our community desires from the city without impacting any further reductions at this time. So today, if you can move on to the next slide, please. This slide kind of gives a roadmap of where we started. So 1st of May, we brought the first Budget 101 study session to kind of educate the council as well as our community members on what the budget process looks like, what are different funding sources for the city, how the city develops the budget, what and what cannot be used or which funds cannot be interchanged among themselves. Then we came back to council on May of 26th and we provided the quarter three update as well as the first study session for our budget. So today we're presenting the second study session and at the next council meeting we will be bringing the final document for adoption. Next slide please. So, the summary of the budget priorities, you know, we are compromised of multiple pieces when it comes to our budget. There are many departments. You can consider them as individual companies and then we have to bring all the budget together and funds are put into one general fund. So, today we're focusing on general fund aspect of it, but the departments will be going over their individual departments and talking about that. So the way we develop our budget is we rely on the prior year's budget and then we build off of that. We do not do zero-based budgeting. We do not do program-based budgeting. We take the data from the last year because now we have sequential data from multiple years to do projections and that helps us develop more close to projections for our budget. In addition, when we prioritize our budget, we also are responsive to our strategic plan. This is a unique year where our current strategic plan will be concluding in June of 2026, and we are going to implement a new strategic plan, which will also be brought to the city council at the next meeting. A strategic plan serves as the guiding document for our staff and departments on identifying the goals and initiatives that we spend our efforts on. We also address our immediate or long-term areas of concern that are either brought by the community or the council members. Obviously, everything is approved at the council level. And then we also look at whether we're going to maintain current and existing programs or if we are looking at expanding any of those programs. And all of this is being done by being fiscally responsible. Next slide, please. So the fiscal year 25-26, the current fiscal year, you know, we continued with the fiscally conservative approach. We did the 2.5% cut. We brought back quarterly updates. We're constantly monitoring our budget. And as again, you know, with inflation, our costs are increasing, so that is continuing our fiscal deficit. It is causing that gap between our expenditures and the revenues. And there is a big risk of reserves that are falling below the policy level. Our current policy says 16% to 25%. As of the last presentation, by end of this fiscal year, we'll be at about 28% to 29%. But then there will be a sharp decline if the fiscal deficit continues. So in about four years, we're looking at going down to almost 3%. So our proposed focus for this budget includes, again, continuing to look at the big picture, looking at all the reductions we have done so far, 2.5% reductions. We had three FTEs that were frozen. We started with 22 positions that were identified for delayed, and back in February, council allowed us to restore six of the firefighter positions, so that delayed position count is down to 16 at this time. Again, we paused a lot of measure and pilot programs as well as we reduced the capital improvement program funding for some of the projects. Moving on. So our approach for the upcoming fiscal year, 26-27, is fiscal, you know, be real about our fiscal situation. So we're calling it in a theme, fiscal reality and sustainability. And our proposed focus of the budget will include limit new augmentation requests to only essential things for the operations as well as needed at the time of the start of the year. We will utilize reserves to maintain existing service levels and programs that are benefiting our community. we'll continue to move future initiatives in the growth area planning and housing we will be continuing to work on our economic development strategy as well as starting july 1st we would have a centralized hiring where each department will be presenting a case to the city manager before we hire any new positions so we will be evaluating staffing as you know employees retire or move on to other jobs Is that the right position? Can we add more duties? Can we reduce the position? Can we merge or consolidate positions? We'll be evaluating all of those things as part of that process. Next slide, please. And so with this, I will be giving it back to Ken on taking on for the next steps. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. Before we start with tonight's study session number two, we just wanted to provide a brief recap of study session number one, a lot of which was covered in the previous slides. And so at study session number one, we led off with an updated projection of the next fiscal year. So the way things currently stand, our projection this upcoming year is that there's a gap of about $11 million with our general fund between our revenues and expenses. And so continuing that deficit spending we've seen over the last couple of years. We talked about the budget actions taken from fiscal year 24-25 to current, and so a lot of that being the cost savings measures deferring and pausing a lot of the capital improvement projects and maintenance efforts the city manager mentioned in the previous slides. Fiscal year 27 is going to be continuing of those cost saving measures. And in the last study session, we also provided an update on some items that were added to the base budget, either where there's a fiscal impact to it or an operational change, that being the fire academy that will be coming up in this upcoming year, the consolidation of risk management under the city attorney's office, and then budget augmentations. There was about $30,000 to the general fund And then with the five-year forecast, we presented an updated five-year forecast where by the end of fiscal year 27, so next year we anticipate still being within our reserve at 20%, but given the deficit spending that we will be below our policy by the end of fiscal year 28. Next slide. And so tonight's agenda is gonna be a couple slides on the operating budget, a summary of that, then we'll jump into department presentations, and then the second part of this item is an update on the capital improvement program and the fleet update that'll be done by our public works department. And with that, I'll pass it on to our budget manager.

Thanks, Ken. The next two slides are on the proposed operating budget and how the operating budget is allocated amongst the city's departments. The city's proposed operating budget for fiscal year 27 is 321,783,247. The successor agency operating budget to pay down the annual obligations of the former redevelopment agency is 5,906,583. The pie chart on the right shows the percentage of the total operating budget that resides within each respective department. Starting at the top, we'll work clockwise. Elected and administration is 7%, and this would include departments such as the city manager's office, city attorney, human resources, economic development and finance. The housing and successor agency is 12%. Parks and recreation, 4%. Just a real quick note here, the pie chart of the operating budget doesn't include large capital improvements such as the Measure M park improvements. That budget would be included in the capital improvement program budget later this evening. Police 19%, fire department 15%, public works 10%, utilities 29%, community development 3% and non-departmental 1% of the operating budget. In summary, the proposed operating budget for fiscal year 27 is $321.8 million. On this slide, the chart on the left shows the operating budget based on fund type. The general fund in the blue is $169.4 million or 52%. And again, this is the main operating fund for the city or the main checking account for the city. It's the most flexible. The enterprise funds, which are gray, 93.5 million or 28% of the operating budget, and this would include utilities operations, so sewer and water, as well as transit services. Special revenue funds in the orange, 58.9 million or 18%. And this would include departments funded by revenues restricted for a particular purpose such as grants. And this would include housing and community services and community development. And then last, we have the successor agency at 5.9 million or 2%. And then if we look to the chart at the right, This chart is similar to the one we saw on the previous slide, but specifically related to the general fund. So how is the $169.4 million allocated out to the departments? Starting again at the top, city administration, 13%, non-departmental, 3%, public works, 10%, police, 37%, parks and recreation, 7%, and the fire department, 37%. One last note on the general fund. Of the proposed budget of $169.4 million for fiscal year 27, it's an approximate 2.9% increase over the current fiscal year or fiscal year 26. So even with the continued cost savings measures from the current year, we're going to see some increases in some areas. For example, benefits have seen increased costs for general liability and workers' comp of almost 30%. We don't have control over these costs. They're tied to our actuarial reports that we receive. Another area would be salaries related to council-approved MOUs earlier in fiscal year 26 related to fiscal year 27. So while we're continuing with citywide cost savings measures from fiscal year 26 into fiscal year 27, we won't see dollar-for-dollar cost savings because we have increased costs in other categories. To summarize, the total proposed operating budget for fiscal year 27 is 321.8 million, and of that, the general fund portion is 169.4 million. And with that, I will pass it over to our city attorney, Andrea Borba, to kick off the department presentations.

Thank you, John. In terms of the city attorney's department overview, we are a full-service legal department supporting the city council, all of the commissions in every city department. We consist of a lean, high-performing team that delivers broad legal support, risk management, and administrative services throughout the city. Our total operating budget is $2.2 million with no Measure M funding being utilized. In terms of staffing, we have five legal professionals, the city attorney, a senior assistant city attorney, and three assistant city attorneys. We have five support team members, a legal services and risk manager, a principal risk analyst, paralegal, executive assistant, and risk technician. The staffing structure supports both the volume and the complexity of the city's legal needs in-house. This year we've begun the integration of risk management into the city attorney's office. The risk management division will be fully integrated to our department July 1 of 2026. This ensures that claims management, subrogation, workers' compensation, and litigation operates under a unified legal oversight. Hopefully this will have the intended Result of improving coordination accountability and financial recovery outcomes for the city our key accomplishments You know the amount of legal work that's generated from our law office is significant. It's hard to Detail everything we've done but some key things that have come to the council this year is the sidewalk vendor and battery storage system ordinances which were key ordinances regulating important issues within the city. We've provided legal support for the sales tax measure efforts and ensured full election compliance during the election season and will continue to through November. We have advanced the implementation of a contract life cycle management system that will modernize how the city prepares and tracks its contracts which serves to do a lot of risk transfer to the city and it saves us a lot of money and potential claims exposure we also completed a citywide legal service survey to better align our legal support with the department needs and we are continuing to make operational changes to improve efficiency and provide a higher level and a higher quality of legal service delivery terms of fiscal responsibility the city attorney's office has achieved the two and a half percent cost savings by making reductions in certain outside legal services training and general supplies again we have zero measure m funding used we are fully generally general fund supported the 2.2 million budget for the quantity and quality of legal services provided reflects responsible stewardship of the city's resources Looking ahead, we plan to fully roll out and implement the contract life cycle management system, continue to build out the integrated risk management program, and focus on more proactive legal support, improve contract oversight, and stronger loss prevention across city departments. And that is my presentation. I will pass it to George Am for the city manager's presentation. Thank you.

Good evening. The city manager's office has a number of different divisions, starting with the administrative arm, which really ensures things run smoothly, that budgets are met, bills are paid on time, and they provide an excellent, really high level of customer service to the public every time they connect with us. The City Clerk's Division is responsible for a wide variety of duties including City Council support, compilation and distribution of City Council agenda packets, elections administration, and records management. The City Clerk also administers democratic processes such as access to city records and all legislative actions ensuring transparency to the public. The Public Relations Division coordinates the city's communications, public information, and community engagement efforts. And this division helps share timely, accurate, and accessible information, supports consistent messaging across departments, manages media and community relations, and strengthens public understanding of city programs, services, and initiatives. Our special programs division focuses on citywide programs such as Measure M, Back of Old Neighborhood Associations, the legislative platform, strategic planning, and our broadband initiative. We have quite a few highlights from the city manager's office. Our public relations team has and will continue to implement the city's community engagement strategy and communications plan to strengthen internal coordination, improve consistency in public information, and expand meaningful opportunities for community input. This includes supporting departments with outreach planning, public messaging, social media, emails in the New City newsletter, website content, video highlights, community updates, media materials, and other tools that help residents stay informed and engaged. These efforts will continue to support more transparent, inclusive, and responsive local government. This fiscal year, the City Council, as you all know, have recently adopted a legislative platform that outlines the Council's priorities, principles, and policy decisions to guide advocacy efforts and inform stakeholders of key resident needs. The platform itself, I'm happy to report, and all of the supporting and opposed actions are available on the City's website for the public. As you know, the council's also adopted a draft new strategic plan. The city manager was just speaking about that, covering fiscal years 27 through 29. We'll be bringing the final plan for adoption to you at the next meeting. The plan's really organized around five core strategic goals that represent our highest areas of focus, organizational culture, economic development, quality of life, public safety and infrastructure, And the plan is designed to align our collective efforts in achieving our mission while reflecting our mission and our values. We've also been working really hard on the broadband initiative for several years now. I'm happy to report that over the last year, we've been focused on a public-private partnership that will not only provide another option for residents, but it's also anticipated to bring several million dollars of in-kind investment to the city and then items should be coming to you soon. Really excited about that one. Our Vacaville Neighborhood Association team has expanded its reach now with 23 registered associations. After starting with zero, the goal of the VNA program is to establish a vision in each neighborhood and identify its priorities, utilizing and increasing the neighborhood's capacity. It's been very successful at really creating connections, not only between our community members, but also between residents and the city. And I expect that to continue in the new year, even though we have reduced funding for that program. as the city that's been participating in the bloomberg's mayors and senior leadership program we have the opportunity to have a bloomberg harvard fellow with us for the next two years hopefully starting at the end of july and we've been working with them over the past couple weeks to try to make that work and to specifically work on the homeless action plan there is no cost to the city for the fellow who will help really implement and support the important work of that action plan For cost-saving measures, the City Manager's Office has reduced a number of administrative line items, things from professional services, training, repairs and maintenance, consulting, and general supplies to achieve our 2.5% savings. The City Manager's Office does have one program manager that's positioned that's funded through Measure M with a very small supply budget, and the total operating budget for the department is $4.2 million. And I believe next up is Erin Morris with Community and Economic Development.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm happy to present the Community and Economic Development Department. As the Council is aware, we now consist of five divisions. The Planning Division, which processes current development applications from private developers, and the Advanced Planning Division, which works on public policy and ordinance and other complex development projects. The Building Division consists of plan review. I'm proud to announce we're continuing to keep most of that in-house with the staff that we have, but also building inspection, which is a significant activity in our department. economic development. I will touch on the next slide as a new addition. They got their own. We got our own slide for that. And then we have the administration and planning commission divisions. The department has been working very hard over the last several years on some of these longer-term projects, but I'll just share a few highlights. The East of Leisure Town specific plan funded by developers should come to council for final action next year, but is well along its way toward a release of a plan. We're very excited about that. The Northeast Growth Area Planning Study is coming to Council in July. That first phase work is completed and is going to Planning Commission, so we're coming toward the end of that first phase. As the Council's aware, we're working on the Municipal Services Review, which is literally what allows Vacaville to grow, consistent with our general plan. We have several major development applications, which I will not go through tonight. We're in year four, almost year five, of implementing the city's eight-year housing element in partnership with Housing and Community Services. So that's some work ongoing and future work. Wrapping up process improvements phase one, heading into a new project called process improvements phase two in the new fiscal year. And then we're preparing for a land use and development code update like we do every year, but this new year is going to have an economic development focus. trying to make it easier for business in Vacaville to stay here and grow. On the topic of cost savings measures, we primarily got our 2.5% cut by reducing outside service contracts. That's been possible because we are staffed up in some of our core functions that we used to contract for. Measure M funding, our department has not received Measure M funding for planning building and admin and we also do not receive general fund money. The 8.8 million dollar operating budget is funded by the fees that developers pay when they come in to do building and planning permit activity in our city. Next slide. Economic Development Division, I kept this slide pretty simple. There's a lot going on, especially with our new Economic Development Manager on board, week five. It's going very well so far. Economic Development focuses on business retention, expansion, and attraction. And I cannot emphasize enough what a fluid space that is. It is a call late at night and a meeting in the car on the way. And it's just been really a very active activity. And I'm, again, pleased to have some staffing to help support those activities. We're really participating in regional efforts, working with our partners with the Solano EDC and with partners from other cities to really look at bringing business to Solano County as a whole and also to Vacaville, importantly. And then we're really, economic development, we're taking the lead on promoting a lot of the city's process improvements changes and touting those and sharing those and doing that storytelling, the true storytelling of how we're making it easier to do business in Vacaville. Some highlights, we're currently working on the economic development strategic plan, and that will be coming to council in the fall of this year. It is an active effort with our economic development advisory committee and just a lot of input from our important players. We'll be working on creating an incentive program to bring the kinds of businesses we want here, and that's a project for the next fiscal year, and then also working to support energy resilience efforts in Vacaville. Cost savings and economic development, we reduced some of our national advertising and a little bit of our professional services to achieve the 2.5%. Economic development is 100% funded by Measure M. So that's an important distinction from the rest of my department. And the total operating budget is $730,000. And I believe I'm handing it back to Ken. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. So in the finance department, we have 30 full-time employees amongst the divisions and services listed. So administration, budgeting, accounting, utility billing, revenues, accounts payable, purchasing, which falls under disbursements. Our highlights in the current year are we're updating the TOT ordinance, which had not been updated for a number of years, as well as issuing our financial statements. We were able to issue that three months quicker or sooner than we did in the prior fiscal year. In the upcoming fiscal year, some of the initiatives we'll be working on are updating our procurement policy to modernize that, line it with the national best practices and add some efficiency and more internal controls to that process. Similar to the TOT ordinance that was updated this fiscal year, we will be taking an item to council in August to also update our business license ordinance as well. And then we will also be engaging with a consultant to update our cost allocation plan and user fee study, which was discussed as part of the fee schedule item at one of the public hearings earlier this evening. With our cost savings measures, a majority of that is in our non-full-time or part-time budget that we eliminated. And so the main impact here is really to our front counter staffing utility billing. So the areas that are most impacted engaging with the public. We've had to reduce hours in our front counter because of the lack of the part-time funding. And then we've also had to reduce our training and supplies budget as part of those cost savings measures. The finance department doesn't receive any Measure M funding and our total operating budget is 6.1 million. And I'll now pass it on to Tamara Colden, our Housing and Community Services Director.

The Housing and Community Services Department is comprised of four divisions. The Administration Division, which focuses on internal operations for the department, as well as financial activities for the department. The Housing Division, which is comprised mostly of the Vacaville Housing Authority and Solano County Housing Authority. community services which houses programs like our community development block program as well as special projects. In the upcoming years our focus will be on continuing to implement the homeless action plan and activities surrounding that. Advancing housing element programs primarily focusing on affordable housing unit development in collaboration with the community and economic development department. and launching our Vacaville Housing Authority Project Move Up program, which was approved in April for the upcoming annual plan. And that program holds aside five vouchers specifically to support those moving out of homelessness in collaboration with an identified partner to provide supportive services around that. These efforts are intended to expand housing opportunities, improve system coordination, and help residents move towards greater housing stability. The total operating budget reflects primarily administration of the Vacaville Housing Authority Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Solano County Housing Choice Voucher Program. Again, that is administered on behalf of Solano County, but it also includes administration of smaller programs, again, such as our Community Development Block Grant Program or our Permanent Local Housing Allocation Programs. To help address the city's fiscal challenges and really the department's fiscal challenges, we have implemented cost-saving measures by delaying the hiring of three full-time positions. That includes the assistant director position, a housing administrator management position, and a housing technician position. While these actions help reduce costs in the short term, they do limit our capacity to be able to launch new programs, pursue additional initiatives, and expand services beyond core compliance and operational responsibilities. The department also, in collaboration with the finance department, oversees the activities of the successor housing agency. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jessica Bose, the Human Resources Director.

Good evening. The Human Resources Department is made up of several divisions, including our administrative division, payroll and benefits. We also process payroll for the Sloan Transportation Authority. And recruitment and classification is another division, along with labor and employee relations. Some of our upcoming highlights are our Leadership Academy graduation. This is our 25-26 graduation. year leadership program and we're hoping to bring those graduates to you at a council meeting later in the fiscal year, the new fiscal year. we've also developed a benefits road show which is to educate our employees on all the current benefits they have and how to utilize those we find that new hires are overwhelmed with what they learn upon being hired and they don't always need those benefits until later in their career so we are out going to departments in different areas explaining the benefits they may not remember or know about. We're also looking at updating policies in the coming year. We heard that that is needed citywide across most of our departments, so we are looking at working on that a lot in the new fiscal year. Our cost-saving measures include the elimination of an office assistant position, that was a full-time position, and a reduction in our citywide training budget. We do not have any Measure M funding, and our total operating budget is $4.5 million. I'll turn it over to Keith McDonald from I.T.

good evening mayor vice mayor council members uh... tonight i'll be summarizing the i t departments fiscal year twenty six point seven budget highlight key initiatives underway and share cost-saving measures that are were coming to be good stewards of public funds also one note to significant ORGANIZATIONAL MILESTONES. FIRST, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY HAS TRANSITIONED FROM OPERATING ONLY THE CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE TO STANDING ALONE AS AN INDEPENDENT CITY DEPARTMENT. SO, YAY. AS A RECOGNITION OF THE STRATEGIC, AND IT ALSO RECOGNIZES THE STRATEGIC ROLE IT PLAYS IN SERVING THE CITY OF VACAVILLE. SECOND, OUR NEW I.T. DIRECTOR WILL BE JOINING US JULY 6TH, BRINGING DEDICATED EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP TO SUPPORT OUR TEAM AND TO THE COUNCIL'S TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES. what we do. The IT department operates four core services and we're supporting over approximately 800 users across 12 different city departments. We have a help desk customer support division, who's the first point of contact for all technology issues related to the city. Frontline support for police, fire, and all of the city departments. Applications, this is a new developing area. We have supported applications in the past, but we're going to take it up a notch and be supporting it at the next level, and that includes enterprise planning software permitting finance public uh... the records management system as well as other things that are coming about in the city and then we have infrastructure infrastructure serves with servers networking equipment cyber security telecommunications that it also includes public safety radio system and of course we have our gis uh... division Some key initiatives that are happening in 26-27 is the digital strategic plan, multi-year technology roadmap is aligning with the city managed priorities and also drives data informed decisions across all the departments. A cyber resiliency plan, a comprehensive cybersecurity strategic plan protecting the city operations and residents' data. Includes also ransomware, tabletop exercises, incident response plan protocols, and staff training. And also we're supported by some of the specialized cybersecurity firm contracts with that. So the GIS master plan, again, we have a master plan that's going on, and that's to expanding the GIS tools, also including the Know Your Candidates and Know Your City Council story maps, integration for public works project management, EZCIP, to improve the capital program visibility. And, of course, we've got the VoIP implementation so we can modernize our phone system, and that is the Zoom system that we're currently working on. This will improve our reliability, reduce long-term costs, and support remote work capabilities. And, of course, as we discussed earlier, the broadband initiative, again, once that contract hopefully does go forward, we'll be working with the vendor to improve the connectivity across all the city facilities. And of course, governance and data security or data strategy, establishing data governance policies to protect sensitive information like PII and see just data. And then AI governance framework, that we're doing is basically in response to the city's budget reduction in targets. IT department has identified savings across several key categories. Professional services, repairs and maintenance, training, consulting services, and general supplies. All these things will help hit that target that we're hitting for right now for the 2.5. Note, further reductions beyond these current targets does carry a measurable cybersecurity risk and may impact service levels in the future. We are not funded by Measure M. And in closing, the IT department remains committed to delivering reliable, secure, cost-effective technology services to the Vacville residents and staff. We're building a stronger, more resilient digital foundation for the city's future. And thank you, and I'll turn it back to Ken.

Thanks, Keith. So the non-departmental budget is meant for funding or budgeting for operating costs that are not tied to a specific department. And some examples of that would be the county fees related to property tax administration, animal control and sheltering costs, the radio system, memberships and contributions. And so examples being the Vacaville Museum, Solano EDC Chamber of Commerce, homeless or house remediation, and then contribution from Medri for the library. And so for the highlights and cost savings measures, the fiscal year 26-27 budget is going to be a continuation of what was budgeted for 25-26, with the new item being the last bullet point funding for the upcoming November election, and that's that $390,000 amount under highlights. For Measure M funding, the homeless or houseless remediation services are funded through Measure M, and the total operating budget for the non-departmental The count is 5.1 million. I'll now pass it on to our Parks and Rec Director.

All right. Good evening, Council. Summary of Parks and Recreation budget. So again, I'll start with the divisions and services. So one of those is our recreation programs and activities. And then we have our facility operations. So this is operating all of our community centers, the pool, and activating all of our sports fields and things like that. And then we have our park planning division, which helps to renovate existing parks and also expansion of existing parks and the new parks that come on with future development as well. And then as well, administration as one of the areas. Some of the highlights for this coming year will be the completion of Sierra Vista Park, which was one of those existing parks that we are renovating. An upgrade to the McBride computer classroom. And then where we can, we'll still try to expand recreation programs where possible. An example of that is we have a new girls outdoor basketball league, which we are working with an independent contractor to bring forward. some of the cost-saving measures that we've had to bring forward continuing from last fiscal year is a reduction in our non full-time staff we have a reduction in our performing arts theater city sponsored programs and we've had some reductions in funding for special events and funding for merriment and main and some reduction in use services and that is really like cuts to services supplies where we can for some for programming. As far as measure M funding we do get some funding so our youth scholarship program is funded through Measure M and then out of our 26 full-time staff. We do have four full-time positions that are funded through measure M And our total operating budget is 11.9 million. I will just say that that is offset with about $5 million in revenue from all the fees from the programs, rentals, those kinds of things for our budget. So that's Parks and Recreation and I'll turn it over next to Chief Drayton for fire.

we have a sub tonight that yes sir mayor vice mayor online council staff thank you for letting me present on behalf of chief Drayton so your fire department broken into a few different divisions your operations division the suppression and ambulances everybody that's out there running the 911 calls is our biggest division we also have our fire prevention that also oversees the code enforcement our administration team and then we also have a training division some of the highlights that's coming up in the next fiscal year is we have another recruit academy so you all approved the academy that we have going on right now with 14 personnel eight more personnel is what we're looking at with anticipated retirements and some vacancies that we still have that academy is broken up between the EMS academy where we oversee the paramedics and make sure that their skills are up to the standards that we have here in Vacaville and then we move into an operations academy where we dropped our recent firefighter one requirement and we now give the firefighter one and firefighter two that allows for more people to apply for our agency. We also have the REMS ESRI, which is our CAD dispatching system, is going to link up with our GIS, and it provides AVL dispatching. It's going to let us get the closest unit based off of where the incident is happening. Our closest units will now be responding, decreasing our response times, which is going to be a great addition to our fire department. Our budget is also going to include the SB 660, which is the California Data Exchange Framework. This is a state mandated EMS interoperability initiative. It's going to allow for data sharing. So if you're not at your primary care provider, you're going to still be able to have all of the information that's needed. It's going to increase patient care. So we're going to absorb the integration costs in this fiscal year. This next fiscal year that we're presenting will have an annual cost associated with that to make sure that we're in compliance with the state and that we still receive funding. We also have an overtime budget allocation. Here, this is where our partners in finance are going to be able to hold us accountable as well as you guys as well, increasing our overtime budget. The cost savings measures, we did brown out MEDIC 72, as you all are aware, on May 1st of this year. Looking at just May 1st to May 31st, we will meet the 2.5% reduction. The Measure M funding, we still have the upstaffing of MEDIC 73. So at that time, when Measure M was passed, we were cross-staffing an engine and an ambulance, and we added six firefighters with the Measure M funding. our total operating budget is $50.1 million for this fiscal year and I will pass it along to our partners in public safety chief poland.

we have two divisions in the police department and we have a lot of different services within those divisions there's a lot of there's a lot of names I'm here from patrol to personnel and training to our community outreach to our volunteers we have nearly 200 employees coming in and out of the building from volunteers part-time full-time coming in in the building every single day One of the areas that we highlighted is our work on our core values and our culture this past year. There's a variety of reasons why we went down this road. This initiative was really important to me and several others in the organization. We needed to identify our mission as an organization again, identify a bold goal which we have, and we identified these six core values. in this presentation. Some of the areas that I'm very proud of is we had over 75 outreach events this last year and that does not include your command staff going to different events this is just your this is our command staff down participating out in the community which is pretty remarkable for our organization. we continue to evaluate the real-time information center and the success that we' re having with that we are seeing crime trend down significantly 18% in property crime 8% in persons crimes about 56% reduction in stolen vehicles so our response rate time is six minutes for priority one so we are seeing significant success in the you know we pride ourselves with a holistic approach in the police department from prevention to enforcement and that will continue as I am your police chief and that has all my predecessors have felt the same way and hopefully continues after I leave. some of our cross-diving measures. We had to freeze four police officer positions. We removed the over-hire program, and as you are aware, we had to suspend our community response unit. So we sent four of those officers back to patrol along with one sergeant to assist with our staffing levels and the budget. measure M is a big funding source for the police department we support our basic needs services through measure M through their FRC program we also support a office assistant position at the FRC we also support police activities leagues programs and support three staff positions through that something that' It was done many years ago through Measure M when that was approved, and it still exists today. Thanks for our partners in finance. We have eight police officers that were funded, and we have one captain that is funded through Measure M. And in total, we have a $63.8 million budget. And that concludes my presentation, and I will turn it over to our Public Works Director, Ryan Oxley.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Members. Our Public Works is organized into four divisions, Engineering Services, Traffic Engineering, Maintenance, and Administration. That includes Transit and Office of Environmental Sustainability. The department is responsible for maintaining infrastructure, delivering capital projects, maintaining city coach, ensuring compliance with state and federal regulations while remaining focused on implementing cost effective strategies to support the city's long term financial stability. maintenance is focused on maintaining state regulatory requirements by updating the routine maintenance agreement with fishing wildlife researching and implementing non-functional turf compliance defining a strategy for advanced clean fleet and trash amendment compliance maintenance staff is also proceeding with facility and park improvements including basketball court resurfacing at cannon station and Trower parks fault protection at Central's garage and security upgrades at critical facilities just to me mention a few of their projects engineering staff is prioritizing the delivery of major capital projects for the advertisement in 2026 and 2027 including back-of-valley I-505 intermodal project the Jepson Parkway phase 3 widening project and the Rancho Lagunitas detention basin phase 2. to support lessening impacts to the general fund the department has implemented cost-saving measures by holding vacant positions for public works manager, the maintenance worker in streets and the part-time parks laborer. public works administers measure M funding for community services and infrastructure program including traffic safety Street and concrete maintenance maintenance administration play for all fleet and equipment replacement Caltrans landscape maintenance and operations at the Walter Graham Aquatic Center and the department's total operating budget is thirty eight point four million dollars and I turn the time over to Justin Cole our utilities director I

Good evening, Mayor, Council. The utilities department budget across both water and wastewater are continued focus on system performance, regulatory compliance, and planned infrastructure investment. Both utilities are enterprise funds, meaning they're funded through utility revenues and structured to be self-sustaining. Projected revenues and expenditures in this budget are consistent with the adopted rate study from last year, reflecting the financial framework previously established by this council. And like many utilities statewide, we continue to experience cost pressures associated with construction, inflation, regulatory requirements, aging infrastructure, which are all reflected in our long-term planning assumptions. So the water budget, we have several divisions which support our mission of delivering high-quality drinking water to our residents. This past year, we delivered over 5 billion gallons of potable water to our community. We advanced several long-term water supply reliability projects, as well as a lot of well projects. We're also advancing the Fairfield Vacaville Water Works project, which is expansion of the co-owned water treatment plant between us and the city of Fairfield. We also were able to complete a one-time sale of surplus state project water to the tune of $900,000. That money goes directly into our CIP accounts to fund actual infrastructure projects. Our cost savings measures is really associated with freezing positions and reducing overtime. The savings are $273,000 on the water fund and the positions are broken down between sewer and water. So you'll see some savings on the sewer side from those frozen positions as well. The department receives no measure M funding and our total operating budget on the water side is $42.9 million. This includes transfers to our CIP projects and other transfers out of the fund. On the wastewater side, We treated over 3 billion gallons of wastewater from our residents and businesses in our community. Last year, we were able to complete a 5 million megawatt solar system, which is projected to save the city about $25 million over the next 20 years. And a big lift by city staff was updating our municipal code and modernizing our construction standards to help streamline future development projects and get us in compliant with some regulations that were upcoming. So our cost savings measures on the wastewater side is nearly a half a million dollars from freezing or holding those positions. And again, reducing non-mandatory overtime for staff. We don't receive measurement funding and our total operating budget is $45.1 million. And again, that includes our CIP project transfers and other transfers out of the fund. And in closing, this budget reflects the continued emphasis on operational efficiency, infrastructure investment, and reflects the council guidance. And with that, I'll turn it back over to our finance director, Ken.

Thanks, Justin. So that concludes our operating budget portion of this item. And so before we jump into the CIP and fleet update, if there are any questions or comments, we'd be happy to take them. Yeah, I'm certain there's going to be some.

So I'm looking around to see if anybody here has any questions or comments. All right. Vice Mayor Silva?

I'm good, thank you.

All right, well. Thank you to staff for comprehensively covering all that. So there weren't questions. So we'll move on to the fleet.

Okay, once again, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the Council. I've been asked to come and provide an update on the equipment replacement fund status, as well as a 10-year capital replacement forecast for the city's fleet. This presentation is going to focus on the general fund portion of the fleet as opposed to fleet related to other funds like the enterprise fund or special district type fund. 440 of the 683 total equipment units in the fleet currently are funded by the general fund. And to give some examples of what these different pieces of equipment are, these are our fire and police vehicles, engines, medics, patrol units, our construction vehicles, dump trucks. pavers, grinders, bucket trucks, that type of thing, as well as our light and medium duty admin vehicles, work trucks, vans, the things that, you know, and then miscellaneous things like crack seal machine, maintenance type items. And these are the pieces of equipment that are required for staff to manage our programs, maintain infrastructure, provide critical public safety services, and meet the performance metrics that are set by council. So to talk on some of the funding and some of the challenges that we've had with growth, since 2018, we've had $2.3 million per year allocated for fleet replacement activities, and that has stayed static since 2018. So during that time, we've experienced some significant inflation, as you all know. An average of 3.67% per year has gone up for light and medium duty vehicles in the industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in December 25. So just to give you an example, if allocations to the equipment replacement fund were to keep up with that inflation, we would expect approximately $3.1 million per year to be going to the equipment replacement fund as opposed to the 2.3 that's currently going there. Unfortunately, the news is worse for emergency vehicles and heavy duty equipment inflation. Just to give some examples, a police patrol unit in 2019 cost the city approximately $60,000 per unit. Currently, we're looking at approximately $94,000 per unit, which is a 56% increase. For fire engines in 2019 we paid roughly 700,000 for a fire engine in 2025 we paid 1.2 million that's a 71% increase for a fire engine and in construction a dump truck in 2018 we paid $176,000 for a dump truck and our recent quote in 2025 for the similar dump truck for an internal combustion engine was 309,000 so that's a 75% increase so You could see that the inflation is clear and the impact to the budget is real. Over the same period of time from 2019, we've also grown as a city. So we've expanded parks and streets and service areas and programming. And so we've gone from 593 units, equipment units in 2019 to now we're at about 683 units. So considering that the funding has been flat since 2018, some of the strategies that we're using to manage the funds that have been allocated and make sure that we're able to provide the services to the city without any drop. We've extended equipment life, so if we have a vehicle that has lived its life in one of our departments and is ready to move on, we will move that to like a part-time vehicle for parks maintenance and get a second life out of that vehicle. You know, if it has low mileage and it makes sense for the city to do so. We've looked at the efficiency models. So if we, when we come up for replacement on a vehicle, we'll look at that replacement and the usage and how it's being used and if we need to replace that unit or if we can reallocate it to a different service. And so an example of that is with our public works manager when we had one retire at the end of last year, when we heard that position back, we made the agreement that we would pool vehicle that position and have them be able to either use one of the other vehicles that was there or use a pool vehicle. So we do evaluate those as we go to replace. We're looking at EV grants for alternative funding that are out there for things like electric mowers or if we qualify for electric vehicles. We use a smooth replacement model, so when you have 2.3 million in allocation and if you had two fire trucks come up at $1.2 million per fire truck, you would quickly eat up that budget. What we tend to do is kind of look at focus here as well. We'll buy one big unit and then a couple smaller units and then spread out those purchases over the years so we can plan ahead and put some money aside and when that purchase comes up, we have the money ready for it. But probably most important is our management of the data. So each year we go through a fleet life cycle report to prioritize replacements based on the condition of all the units that are out there. So we look at the age of the units, the mileage that they've accumulated, and also the cumulative maintenance costs that we've put into those vehicles over the life of those vehicles. So we're not vehicles that have had a lot of use and a lot of wear and that we've had to do a lot of service on. We're not continuing to put a lot of extra money into those vehicles. And so each one of those metrics will then result in what we call the green, yellow, red model, where green means the vehicle's in good shape and doesn't need to be considered for replacement. Yellow means that we should evaluate that in the next couple years for replacement and red means that it should be considered in the current fiscal year for replacement. It doesn't mean that we're going to replace it, but that that one should be up for consideration for replacement. And we've also increased collaboration with our key stakeholders. So we meet monthly with fire and with police to identify what their needs are and look at where we might be able to extend life on a vehicle or if something needs to move forward. And we have a collaborative approach that really helps meet the needs of the stakeholders. So the results speak for themselves. Most of our current fleet is in the green and not overdue for replacement. We're in a good spot with our fleet right now. And I'll talk to some of the future as we look into the 10-year program here So being asked to provide a 10-year forecast I had to make some assumptions in what how we were gonna you know derive the data for this and so We use the current purchase price that we're seeing in real time to kind of set a baseline for the vehicles that the current purchase price And then for the ones that we didn't have a current one on, we asked for quotes and recent quotes that we've gotten, we use those as some of the baselines. We assume a four and a half percent per year inflationary rate, which is a bit higher than the 3.67% that we've seen for light and medium duties, but is consistent with the fire fleet study that we presented to council a couple years back. And we wanted to keep the data consistent across departments. We assumed replacing like for like on equipment units. So if an F-150 came up for replacement, we would replace that truck with an F-150, not with an F-250 and didn't assume that there'd be an operational change there. And as I spoke about earlier, we assume extending the equipment life were advantageous to the city. So not putting additional money into an old vehicle that's had a lot of wear and tear and not just replacing based on the fiscal year or a fixed year. So if we assume 15 years out of a maintenance truck, for example, if we got to that 15 years and we looked at that truck and it had low mileage, we would continue to maintain and keep that truck until it made sense to replace it. We did not assume growth in the fleet for the ten-year projection because we don't know what the growth in the city looks like in six to ten years. We only know what we have now and what we need to replace over that time. And finally, we did not try to incorporate unforeseen market dips or inflationary costs that are going to hit because we don't know where that's going to hit in the next few years and we didn't try to guess at what the regulatory impacts for things like advanced clean fleet and how those would hit the budget. We did not consider those, we considered like for like. So with all that said, Here is the general fund capital forecast over the next 10 years. The top line is the general fund budget needed based on all of the equipment that we have and where we assume the replacement will fall in the next 10 years. The second line is the current allocation to the equipment replacement fund from the general fund at 2.3 million, assuming it's static over the next 10 years. And the final line is the gap between what our current funding is and our current need. And so as you can see in the next five years, we're in a pretty good space. As I mentioned, most of our vehicles are in the green and not up due for replacement. Over the next five years, our total funding gap is $2.86 million. So as I spoke about earlier with the funding gap, if we had been increasing it with inflation up to this point, that would have covered that $2.86 million gap. After the five years, though, you can see the numbers jump quite drastically. We'd be looking at over 10 years, a almost $23 million gap. And some of the numbers after you hit that first five years, the reason why some of those jumps happen is we do have some big purchases coming like additional fire trucks, additional paver and grinder. And it also, when you're doing a projection this way with a 4.5% increase, the numbers rise quite rapidly as you get back to the back of a 10-year projection. So a car now that is costing $90,000, if you continue to add that 4.5%, in 10 years that car is in the $140,000 range. So you can see how some of the numbers reflect that difference. So to solve that gap, if you were to fund fully based on our projections, an increase of $572,000 annually to cover the next five years would be necessary, or over 10 years, $2.3 million per year additional, which is roughly what's being put into the fund currently. So to summarize, the majority of the fleet funded by the general fund is not currently due for replacement. We're in a good spot and we're meeting public service needs. The staff is managing replacements using a collaborative data-driven process. We've recently installed new software that's gonna make it easier for us to have data readily available for projections and provide updates to the city manager's office and to council as necessary and also make maintenance more efficient for our staff. We manage our funds through a lifecycle analysis and preventative maintenance and repair, and that has resulted in extending useful life of our vehicles. And lastly, to continue to maintain and replace the fleet at the current service levels, additional funding is gonna be necessary to keep up with inflation and growth of the city. So with that, I'll pass it on to Brian Oxley.

Okay, thank you. Again, good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. As my part of our presentation tonight is the proposed capital improvement program budget for fiscal year 2026, 27. And I will also provide an update on the five-year capital improvement program The CIP budget is based on funding requests submitted by sponsoring departments, and based on these requests, various funding sources are identified and evaluated to support the proposed project. Council then reviews and approves funding for these individual projects and the CIP budget reflects these approved appropriations and adopted annually and the CIP budget represents the allocation by funding source which have been approved by City Council and is the formal authorization of funding for capital improvement projects. This year's CIP budget is approximately $39.1 million, and this chart shows the percentages of various funds being allocated to projects from the proposed budget. Impact fees are the largest fund source with 53%. Utility funds include 14% for water and 9% for sewer. Gas tax is 13%, Measure M 6%, and General Fund, Grant, and other funds make up the remaining 5%. This slide shows the amount of available development impact fees for budgeting over the last five years. The DIF fund that is available for projects for this fiscal year is approximately $24.2 million, and these amounts are directly correlated to the amount of private development that occurred within the city over the last fiscal year. The department responsible for managing the different impact fees decide the funding allocation to individual projects. This slide shows the amount of general fund that is allocated for CIP projects over the last five years. The general fund allocated to projects this year is $1,075,000. $350,000 of the general fund allocated to projects for this fiscal year is derived from the unapplied interest from the capital improvement program budget as well as savings from recently closed out CIP projects. As a result, only $725,000 is new general fund costs. Of the $39.1 million proposed for allocation in this budget, 12.1 million is proposed to fund 26 new CIP projects. 100,000 in traffic impact fees are budgeted to conduct the city's travel demand model, which is needed to update the traffic impact fee. Two new wells are being added to the CAP. Five million is proposed for well 24 to fund the replacement of an existing well in the Elmira Road Christine Drive area. And an additional 100,000 is budgeted for initial funding for a new well, but that location for this new well has not been determined at this time. The remaining $27 million being proposed in the budget will be allocated to 20 existing CIP projects. Approximately 353,000 of park impact fees are budgeted for the master planning, design and construction of the Unity Meadows Park master plan. The CIP budget also includes an allocation of $300,000 in traffic impact fees for the initial funding to design and construct the existing roundabout on Jepson Parkway and Foxboro Parkway. And this concludes the discussion regarding the annual CIP budget and would like to now provide an update on our five-year CIP program. As we discussed at the April 28th council meeting, the five-year CIP program is a multi-year planning tool for implementing CIP projects. And this program includes key elements such as determining infrastructure and facility needs of the community and prioritizing those needs on an annual basis. Creating and tracking capital projects, identifying appropriate funding sources, and creating a schedule for the project implementation. Staff has been utilizing the City's new EZCIP software to create this document. This is the first time that the five-year CIP program will be compiled in this format. And the packet that you received is the draft five-year CIP program document and includes only the financial information. However, the document includes all of the current CIP projects included in the program. Here is a summary of the funding sources included in the five-year CIP and the current funding amounts. The report you have breaks down the five-year CIP by projects listed by department, category, and funding sources. The report also includes future projects, and those future projects are defined as projects that have been submitted by the departments, have been approved by the city's planning commission, but were not approved due to not receiving funding in this year's annual CIP budget. However, these projects will remain in the five-year CIP while awaiting funding. The future and complete five-year CIP will include additional information for each project, such as project description, general plan consistency, justification, and strategic goal and funding information. And this document will be a very useful tool for the city to track and plan individual projects. The final five-year CIP will be brought before council in December for approval and then will be placed online for viewing by the public. And this concludes our presentation. We're happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Appreciate the update, especially on the CIP and the fleet in addition to the budget. I do remember those guides annually. They're very detailed and you could It was interesting getting through the Great Recession and then to look at our fleet and then how to actually manage it. So for the public who's never seen it, any department head and staff who's seen it, it's comprehensive to manage it. And I can attest to the fact that inflation has gone up, but that number has not maintained to actually capture that. Just a quick question on the fleet, though, because the rest of that was already comprehensive. Do we think that these numbers are the new norm? Because 4% is high, but the numbers that hit in the last few years, it's like an engine almost doubling. At some point, is there any settling or reset of some of these costs? Or is this just the new inflationary impact post 2020 because I mean it just it went through the roof and the hope was that somehow it's going to settle.

Well, I don't know specifically on the fleet part of it, but I know in speaking regarding construction that there is that, we're seeing the same type of inflation in construction. In speaking with other agencies, contractors, developers, the thought is that eventually as the economy slows, some of those numbers are going to have to come down. I'm not sure though exactly how much or when that would happen.

I'm just voicing my sentiments and frustration that at some point these impacts are born into the way we make decisions and then ultimately it affects future projection programming and planning for our budgets. It's like how do you make ends meet? I know we can probably feel this in our personal lives, This is a municipal corporation that's getting closer and closer to a third of a billion dollars. And it's not getting any cheaper to run a business or a government.

So a lot of this inflation kind of started back in the COVID years and some of the supply chain issues that were going on. And I can't speak to the future of where it's going to head, but I can say that in some of the turnaround times and the lead times for how long it's taken to build some of this equipment, those times are starting to come back down and starting to normalize. And I would hope that with that normalization of some of the turnaround times that the costs also follow suit, but it's hard to sit here and project or do conjecture on that. Yeah, thank you.

Any comments or questions? Councilmember Chapman and then Councilmember Stockton.

Thank you. Comments. First of all, your assumptions, I appreciate them. I mean, that was very... I'm gonna use the word factual, because you want to make assumptions in order to do a just analysis, and you did that, and I just have to commend you on your assumptions. The other thing I appreciate is seeing the grants included in your presentation. I was gonna ask that of the other departments for the city. I didn't see grants included in their budget, you know, Because I know it does comprise part of, make up the budget as well. And so it would be good to have information on how well we are doing in soliciting grants by departments.

I can respond to that. So our assistant city manager, she's working on a document where we will be tracking all of the grants that we apply for. So we will have more information in the next year. But we're planning to have a more streamlined process on tracking grants, when are we applying, what the matching funds are, and all of those things. But on an average, the city does get about $42 million worth of grants every year.

Okay, great. And I noticed in this presentation, I think over the five-year period, you've gone from the million down to maybe $200,000. And I know many grants you have to reapply or they're only for a specific timeframe, like a three- or five-year grant. So with that, because I see, I mean, it's evident what you showed here in your presentation, how it's declining. Do we, do you have, or do we have a grant writer who, well, you said, I'm sorry, I need to wait. I will stop here because it is being addressed right now by the assistant city manager. So I'll hold, I won't go any further with that. Thank you. Council Member Stockman.

Thank you. And thanks for covering some of the fleet stuff and making yourself available to talk to me about some of that as well. Who are we currently getting our fleet units from? Not necessarily the specialized equipment and backhoes and different stuff like that. I'm talking about the cars, the trucks, the SUVs, and the stuff that our staff is using.

Yeah, our standard process, good question, thank you. Our standard approach to replacing light and medium duty vehicles and that type of thing is to use cooperative purchasing agreements where either it's California awarded agreements that are already bid out and they provide efficiency for the city. So we don't have to go and bid every single time through. We know we're getting a good price for the city. We're also primarily a Ford fleet, so we try to do that for efficiency purposes in terms of our staff training, parts, inventories, knowledge about the vehicles, those types of things. And so depending on the contract that was awarded through the cooperative purchasing agreement process, then we will usually go to those dealerships and ask for the quote from there to start. And if it's not available there, then we will look for another location. Sorry to interrupt.

No, you're okay. So do we have any local cooperative purchasing agreement dealerships in our area?

So yes, they're located around the area. I think one is in downtown Ford in Sacramento. There are none in Vacaville directly that I'm aware of.

What about in Solano County?

I would have to go back through and look, but I don't believe that the ones that are awarded through the major dealerships like Ford and Chevy are in Solano County.

So I guess my next question would be, how do we know that we are getting the best deal by going through these groups rather than looking at or at least opening that bidding process to some of our local dealerships here, knowing that sometimes when we invest in local or at least regional businesses and companies, that money seems to kind of circulate through our economy?

Yeah, that's a good question. So we will start usually with the cooperative bid purchasing agreement, but in some cases, the build process is up to six months for some of these, and if that's not gonna meet the operational need, then we will do bids from local dealerships that are around, and we do see the real-time prices of bids that we collect versus what the cooperative bid agreements are. and we see that the cooperative bidding agreements are generally lower costs. Sometimes if a dealership has something that's on the lot and they want to move it, then we can get a better deal on it or they'll have a promotion and sometimes we'll take advantage of that. But generally speaking, the cooperative bid purchasing agreement is the best price for the city.

And I certainly want to make sure that we're getting the best deal that we can. But I'm curious whether or not by opening or reevaluating that if we might be able to help some local businesses at least attempt to to get some of those, sell some of those vehicles, if not. And then how many maintenance workers do we have actually working on, you said 683 units? So how many maintenance workers do we have? And are we getting any sort of maintenance package from any of these that we're purchasing these vehicles from?

Yeah, thank you for that question, and we don't get to spend enough time in a presentation like this when we're talking about the equipment replacement fund to highlight our staff, but we have a very highly trained you know skilled Go-getter staff that really gets things done in our garage at the corp yard We have six full-time mechanics and a supervisor as well as a part-time and we have two office positions there that support in the The billing and the purchasing and the and all the work order side of things They turn out an incredible amount of work over 4,000 work orders in the last year and and we do utilize outside service agreements quite frequently actually because despite having a full service garage that's there and we maintain everything from fire engines and we have EVT trained technicians there to to our tractors, our police units, all these things. But we don't specialize in everything. So for up fits of police units, we'll send those out and have those up fit. For specialized fire apparatus repairs, we'll send those out. If it's a tractor repair, it's going to take us too much time in the garage to do that, we'll send it out. Or if we're just short staffed for some reason, if we need to turn something around, we'll use outside service vendors that are local to Vacaville.

Okay, and the upfitting, that's done through a different company?

Generally, we have a cooperative bid agreement through Lear that does most of our upfitting for our police vehicles.

Okay, and does that go out into a bidding process, or is that a contract that we already have established?

So there are two options for that. We did do a bid outreach in 2023, I believe it was. And then we also, there's a cooperative purchasing agreement that's available. So we did our own process in the city back in 23, and there's also a cooperative purchasing agreement available if we wanted to utilize that avenue.

Okay. And you said that we're primarily a Ford fleet. Is there any cost saving by looking at other auto manufacturers and trying to see whether or not we can get these vehicles maybe quicker or get the turnaround faster when we're having them serviced? When's the last time that we looked at that?

uh... we look at it on a case-by-case basis depending on operational needs so afford for example doesn't have a sedan so if we needed to uh... if we had a department that was looking to replace a sedan then we may explore chevy or dodge or one of the other manufacturers to see if there's a a way for us to uh... meet the operational need and then be able to turn that uh... you know and then be able to get that uh... We're not actively looking at the turnaround times for light and medium duty vehicles because they don't have the extended lead times of things like fire trucks and that type of thing.

And I totally understand that with like the Pierce fire trucks. And I know that's a nightmare to get those things when you need them. So when you're looking for these sedans or specialized units, you know, sorry, non-specialized units, does that go through the same company, the cooperative purchasing agreement company, or does that go out to bid to local dealerships?

Typically with light and medium duty vehicles will start with the cooperative purchasing agreement price and reach out and see what the availability is and if that meets the projection of the Operational need then we'll move forward with that and if not, then we'll look at our other options Okay, and then do we own these vehicles or do we lease them?

I?

We own our vehicles, primarily. There's been some limited exceptions where there's been a leased vehicle here and there, but for the most part, we own vehicles in the city of Avalon.

Is there a reason why we do one over the other as far as what the maintenance or availability of... Because I understand some police, so I have a background in law enforcement, I understand that when we lease some of these vehicles, sometimes they can replace the vehicle while the other one's being fixed and we're not having a unit that's down, especially if some of these are anywhere from $60,000 to $94,000. Is that something that might be able to save the city some money if we look at the lease option on some of these vehicles?

So this is a topic that's come up in the past and has been extensively researched by city staff. There are files on that. I'm not prepared to speak on the specifics of them now, but the decision, I believe it was 2019, and then there was another look at it in 2022, I believe. Don't quote me on the date. But that has been looked at multiple times, and the decision has always been that it's more efficient and cost-effective and better. The bottom line is it's easier for us to serve our stakeholders within the city by owning and maintaining the vehicles. We have more control. We can turn things around faster, and we provide better internal service to our internal stakeholders, which in turn provides better service to the citizens of Vacaville.

And then I had a question for the police chief. Are we going back? How far back are we going on this whole thing?

Well, this is open for all of the budget-related discussion.

Oh, okay. Just a couple questions, chief. I won't full court press you like I did these guys. I'm sorry. You know, I know that we have, with cost reductions, removed the crew team and the... four police positions and the four trainee positions. What is the cost that it would be needed to bring those back? Because we're dealing with percentages, right? And so I'm just trying to think what the real world cost is.

Can you get your mic? Sorry. I don't have control.

So we estimated the the crew team rotating back to patrol Cost savings of our time to be around 350 360 thousand dollars annually But I think what we have to remember is given given the vacancies that we have and on top of the injuries that we have we were seeing a Burden on our patrol staff that we were having to manage So we're going into vacation season along with our injuries along with our vacancy rate we had to the burden on the overtime of our police officers working too much so crew also helped offset that burden that we were facing. To answer your question we' re anticipating $350,000 to $360,000 just for the budget side of it.

then what about for the officers as well because that' s going to be generating some overtime as well by not having I think it' s eight positions correct?

we have eight we have eight so four positions that are frozen and then we reduced that we eliminated the over higher portion of this temporarily but so the eight positions that are frozen or that we're not utilizing let me back up so the four positions that are frozen then the eight vacancies that we have, and then on top of that is the 10 injuries that we have. So all of those in combination, it's a daily obstacle to make sure our patrol teams are functioning with the needed bodies out on the street every day.

i'm just trying to figure out if we exceed the projections you know the doomsday projections that we have what it would take to at least get crew back i know that they've done an incredible job uh the pit count went from 200 to 40. it's incredible which is outstanding and so i know that's a service that a lot of our local businesses um are worried about being gone and so i'm just trying to figure out um you know what if we exceed projections right or if we're we're we're able to find that money somewhere what it would take to get them back and and if you don't have the answers that right now it may be offline we can we can chat about it I'm just I know I've had a lot of people reach out to me about them specifically.

Yeah I'm worried about crew not being functioning at some degree as well I just we need to find some solutions to make this thing happen I think we can get there as a city if we unite behind it but I think we can get there it's just it's going to be a challenge as we navigate the vacancies we never navigate the overtime budget et cetera et cetera but I do believe that we need to get crew functioning in some capacity sooner than later one of the concerns I'm worried about is the cost of having to go back and clean it up again right so you know you we get there or we we find services for unhoused we're doing a very good job of finding those services and now when we start seeing more people needing our service it's going to be a catch-up time for us we're going to have to spend more time and more money to give them the resources that they need so it's it's a double-edged sword that we're trying to battle right now so hopefully we can we can unite and find a way thank you you're welcome

Just a quick question. Do you have any plan to be able to track if there is the uptick in the challenges with the reduction? I mean, I recognize the fact that If you don't have the overhired, you don't have the staff at some point, you're trying to focus on the essential response of patrol. So you're trying to solve multiple problems, not that there's a permanent solution. But as far as the homeless response, the city of Ackville has been very successful. How do we monitor that and how do we know when all of a sudden we're losing?

so we still sergeant stefanoni is still engaged lieutenant mccoy is still engaged our three of our officers that were on crew are in day shift patrol so they're doing their best to monitor and provide the resources just not on a full-time basis basically on a case-by-case basis so we're paying attention to it we are seeing a bit of an increase um But we're still trying to deal with it More of on a part-time basis than on a full-time basis Because those those officers are really good really committed to making sure the unhoused get the services that they need But it's just not at the quality that we expect from from our police department.

So yeah, thank you All right, I'm gonna come back to you I just got one for the fire Well, do you have since he's up here? Let's go ahead and keep you here, Sir. Yeah, so it'll come back to you.

Yes, I know that it's hard to put a number on it, but you know, I personally have seen new faces in town. Me too. I'm aware of vehicles dropping people off in town now and I've seen it first hand on Alamo and 80 or a car pulls up and people are getting out and that's so I know the numbers are going back up and. I'm already hearing about it downtown. I'm hearing about it. I've seen it in the park. I'm back to people saying I don't want to take my kids down to the park anymore because it's happening again. So we went from 270 to 40.

That's a credit to Tamara, to the O-House, and to our outreach team. Yeah.

100%. I guess what I'm curious about is the uptick in the additional costs for you guys now. I mean, I hate to put a number on a person, but it's going to be more first responders. It's going to be more time, you know. It is. And right now we have budget constraints and cutbacks and cutting back is, I just don't see that as the, as the pathway to the future. But when I look at everything and the cost of, I'm listening to a great rep, just a great record of what you guys just laid down in front of us and just knowing that five years ago, you know, to buy steer tires for a big rig, you know, one of your dump trucks or whatever. Steer tires were, you know, $500 or $600. Those same steer tires, five years later, $1,000 now. They're $900 to $1,000 now, you know. So we've got 630 vehicles. And if you just go with an average of, say, 25 gallons a vehicle, That is, I just put some numbers, that's about 15,000 gallons of fuel a week that the city is using. That used to cost us four years ago, say three and a half bucks a gallon, so it was 22,000 $500 four or five years ago, and now that same load of fuel coming in with 8,000 or 9,000 gallons on it is almost upwards of $90,000 now. And how do we keep up with this, right? So I'm really happy that we are trying to drive new business in, and we're trying to raise our Our increase in revenue from promoting business and getting business friendly, but I just don't I don't I don't see how these are all just bandage on a broken leg right now. So I'm just really concerned for our city right now. You know, I don't want to see our park starting to turn brown because we have to turn the water off because we can't mow there anymore and impact. homeless and the impact of more people that can't afford to live and all of these things so we have to find resources and find ways to bring more money into the city and I applaud all of our department heads I all of our staff that have done a really good job in the reductions you know and I was you know you know I'm a kind of guy that's you know just always fiscally mindful of you know our taxpayers money you know But watching for the last year and a half that I've been on city council, I've watched everybody tighten their belts and doing a lot with a little. And so I just applaud everybody and just on board with trying to help with the solutions that

Basically, we just need to figure out how to get more money into our city My my final comment unless you guys have questions for me, you know, I rambled on that pause I've sat around this our department heads and we've we've done everything we can you know, we have cut where we can cut we have done based on what our city manager wanted us to do is you know, let's let's figure out a way to do this together and they have come together and they have they have presented to you what they can what they can do and so we are now at a point where we have to figure out as a city what's next yeah and becoming a united city is is what we do best and it's time good thanks chief thank you uh councilmember stockton you know the question he had a question for pseudo frank drayton so chief vernell chief vernell

Sorry to call you on the spot, but it's the same question. Medic 72 is in the heart of our city. It's closest to probably some of the more senior neighborhoods in our community, and it's being browned out right now. How much money is needed, if you know? and in order for us to reopen that and then a sub question of that if it's related to the staffing or a combination of the two will the recruit academy with the eight people give us any hope of whether or not 72 might be that that ambulance might be able to be reopened

Yeah, thank you for the question. Currently, we're projected to be at that 2.5% reduction. It's about $97,000 in overtime costs that we're saving a month by having Medic 72 browned out. It's just over a million dollars in the cost savings for the year to have Medic 72 browned out. So that's what we'd be looking at to bring back if possible. The staffing level with those recruits that are coming out, we would be able to staff back up Medic 72 with that. But again, just like what Chief Pullen was saying, we have to unite. We have to be able to find the funding to be able to upstaff it again. The personnel will be there with the academy graduation, but we really need to be able to have the money released back to upstaff the medic unit.

Okay, and then I got to talk a little bit about fleet with these two gentlemen. I know that that was something that we've talked about extensively. As far as your fleet goes, are you able to meet the needs of the city as it stands, or are we still behind with some of the units and apparatus that you need?

Just like the team presented, Jake has it as the majority of our fleet is in the green. We were able to make an acquisition of a used fire engine that kind of bridged the gap from several of our units that were down. we do have some pierce engine companies that are on order that the council has approved us to be able to purchase as as well as a truck company so our fleet within the next three to four years is going to be in that green completely for the fire department and we should be able to operate without any kind of issues and hopefully we can continue to to get that budget allocation you know up to the what the matrix study said We're currently budgeted at seven hundred thousand. So our gap in the fire department is about five hundred thousand right now in our fleet Any other questions It's all I have for the chief and I have some for Savita, but I'll let other people talk.

Thank you All right to any other questions from the council All right, I guess all right carry on Oh city manager Chaudhry Do we have any large job providing revenue generating businesses in the pipeline or that we're actively talking to try to assist with some of this budgetary shortfall that we can discuss with the public?

I have to check with the city attorney, so give me a minute.

So there are a few items that are in the pipeline. I don't think we can discuss all of the details because we'll have to go through the closed session process. But yes, there is interest in some property purchases that we're looking at. We're also negotiating with the premium outlets. We're working with Tower Investment that manages our nut tree. They are also looking at attracting some businesses. We're developing a new economic development strategy. As of my monthly update, at the end of every month that I share with the council, I shared a story map that we have started generating, not only for retail, but also for different types of industry. We mapped out all of our business parks based on the sales tax data. So now we have a clear data on where we're having or seeing increases and where we're seeing the downside. So for example, and that's something I can share, like our Golden Hills Business Park had a reduction of almost 20% in their sales tax, versus our downtown saw an increase of 4.3%. uh we also implemented a new software called costar which has given more tools to our community and economic development director and the team and then they can not only look at what the properties are available for the city but also at all of the real estate data that we can publish on the story map once it's finalized so that would show in a particular business area which property is available for sale We have also done extensive research on, for example, our outlets are number 77 in the nation and number 65 in California, and they are generating twice the sales tax in comparison to Petaluma, Gilroy, and Folsom outlets. So we are collecting a lot of this data that would help us market our city, help us have a data informed decision making. But that's the extent to the information that I can share publicly at this time. But I'm more than happy to discuss a few things as they come up in the closed session.

Okay, thank you. And the last thing I wanted to do is just to thank you. I know that this is never a topic that anybody wants to deal with. And I just know that you have really approach this with a very collaborative effort. I know that you and the directors of these different departments have worked and analyzed everything and come up with whatever you could come up with to try to maintain the essential services that we exist to provide while making some really difficult decisions about how we move forward and we do that and so i just wanted to thank you city manager and i wanted to thank all of the staff that was involved in this i know that this is a lot it's a lot for us to process as well and i know we have a lot of questions sorry fleet people but i really do appreciate ALL THE EFFORT THAT WENT INTO PROVIDING THIS ANALYSIS. I KNOW WHEN WE DID OUR LAST BUDGET SESSION, WE LOOKED AT WHAT 2.5% LOOKED LIKE. WE LOOKED AT WHAT 5% LOOKED LIKE. AND IT SOUNDS LIKE THE CITY IS STILL GOING AFTER BUSINESSES, DOING OUR BEST TO KIND OF MAINTAIN WHAT WE HAVE NOW, AND THEN LOOKING AT WHATEVER WE CAN DO IN THE FUTURE TO TRY TO BETTER OUR SITUATION. AND SO I JUST WANTED TO THANK EVERYBODY IN STAFF AND UNDER YOUR LEADERSHIP, CITY MANAGER, FOR EVERYTHING THAT YOU'RE DOING.

appreciate that and in the closing statement I would like to recognize our staff because as you know chief mentioned we have gone through extensive process since January in preparing analyzing all of the data presenting this budget and the decision that we discussed this evening I would say these are more than just budgets and projects for us these are the investments that the city provides in Services infrastructure or maintaining the quality of life for our residents, so it really means a lot to us It takes a long time to come up with reductions because we have to evaluate how we can continue to maintain those services and quality of life for our residents while reducing budget and impacting our decision-making process and in addition to that I also want to thank our council and our community members for because we did go through a lot of participatory and collective feedback through this budget cycle and also collected a lot of data in, you know, defining our new strategic plan. So I think that strategic plan will also define our priorities for the next three years. So really looking forward to advancing all of those priorities and thanks to everyone.

Yeah, thank you.

Council Member Freeman. Yes, just... So if I woke up tomorrow morning, City Manager Chaudhry, and my dreams came true and all the things that all the people in this room are working on right now and economic development to bring new businesses in, if I woke up tomorrow morning and those businesses were starting tomorrow and gonna start working in January business, how much would that cut into our deficit? I mean, we have a $9 million deficit right now. Would it affect it by half? Would it affect it by, 25% this I'm not gonna hold you to the number of course, but I'm just wondering I'm I'm just trying to really get a handle on where we had as a city and I know that everybody that's on the City Council is We all want the same thing economic development a good tax base that That keeps our city afloat, but right now we're on the sandbar and the ship is stuck and

and we have thrown everything overboard and we're bailing water and yet we're stuck yes so i don't think there's any guarantees on economic development we always make efforts and try to attract different industries as you saw in our community economic development director's presentation we are going to start looking at incentive programs We're going to start looking at different industries and retail, how we can attract them, what those attraction efforts look like. As part of our leadership program, one of the group projects would be how to market city of Vacaville better. It will be called marketing strategy, which our public relations manager, Joanna, as well as our community economic development director, Aaron and Amanda, are new. economic development manager they're going to be guiding the team we're going to work with businesses and identifying what the needs are how we can market ourselves better but to give a hypothetical example for a typical restaurant it brings about eight to ten thousand dollars in additional revenue to the city a typical gas station brings about twenty to twenty five thousand dollars in revenue on an annual basis a typical store like you know home depot or one of our you know higher top 10 or 25 businesses, they will bring anywhere from, I would say, $100,000 to $200,000. So it depends on the business. It depends on the market. And again, we can't control the economics, what is happening politically, but we are doing our best effort to attract businesses and looking at all different types of businesses.

And I applaud you.

Thank you.

I'm going to just check in with Vice Mayor Silver. Are you there?

I mean, I think the main thing, kind of echoing Council Member Stockton's point, I think we really need to dig into looking at what we can do to recirculate our funds back more, if not in our city, within the region, and being a lot more proactive in that area in economic development. All the other questions are...

Yeah, thank you to be official. I will open this up to the public for any comment because we have not done that yet Seeing that I'll bring it back and I'll just add my final thanks to staff Thanks to our city manager as you're approaching your first year you stepped in But I applaud the team for pulling together. It's not an easy thing to do and Having been on staff during difficult years, it's a challenge to start saying, where do you cut? And what services do you give up? And for me personally, I remember starting crew. It's hard to see something that you know is very supportive and very powerful and very effective. At the same time, I also can appreciate every department trying to figure this out. And so thank you. for working together as a leadership team, but also the team behind you, because if you aren't working within your department to get this done, what you're presenting along with our city manager, it wouldn't be a full package on how we're going to step into this next year. We know that we're in a structural deficit. We know that we're in a fiscal deficit. I can see through all these presentations The the rigorous effort and I think the entire council can see that so thank you Appreciate it before we wrap up.

I would really like to acknowledge our finance department Yes, we all worked a lot, but they they worked I would say tenfold of what everybody else worked on so We couldn't have done collectively without their efforts. I mean they did spend lots of weekend hours doing this work, so thank you appreciate I

It's hard not to bother yourself. Well, just sit there. Go ahead.

Sorry for going out of turn. I've just sat here and listened very passionately to everyone. It's been amazing, the hard work you guys did all year. I feel like it's taken a perfect circle. It's not too hard to figure it out. Can't really mess it up. It's like metaphorically, We're grabbing sand with our hands. You guys are going to grab it. You're holding onto it. It's going to slip away. The answer is we've got to grow or die. We've got to create revenue. If we don't, you guys did an amazing job to find cuts, find ways to make us work better, more efficiently, less with more. But if we don't have the rationality that if we don't grow, we're going to die. We're going to join the group of cities, Newport and Vallejo. We need to grow. We need to create revenue through business, economic development, and just revenue creation. If we spend all our time like ostriches, their head in the sand, trying to find that worm, we've got to figure out, look up, and we need to face reality that we need to create revenue. We can only cut so much before we go extinct. We have to create revenue or else we're going to perish. I think the passionate presentation we had, to me, everything I heard was very redundant. It was very kiss, keep simple, stupid. We have to raise revenue or else we're going to fail. I think you guys did an amazing job to work with what we have, but we need more. And so I think it's our economic development job. I think it's a job, great revenue. So I can't wait to the next item. Yeah, thank you.

All right, we'll go ahead and move forward to our next item. Madam City Clerk.

So item 12b is an informational update on voter survey results and resolution directing the city manager to return with an ordinance imposing the 1% transaction and use tax for consideration at the June 23rd City Council meeting. And Assistant City Manager Georgianne Meagher-Smith is here to make the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. As Michelle mentioned, we're here tonight to share the results of a tracking poll we recently did and to ask for council direction on bringing back a sales tax ordinance at the June 23rd meeting. We're trying something new tonight with having our consultant on Zoom. I'm not seeing him, so I'm not sure he's there. Adam, are you there? All right, give me just a second. Let's see if we can get him on. Corey, any help?

I'm here with you. Do you see me?

I don't see you, but I can hear you. So that's great. So tonight I have Adam Probolski from Probolski Research on the Zoom or on the line, who will be walking you through the poll results. And we also have William Berry of William Berry Campaigns in the audience to answer any questions you might have. I have a few background slides to frame the conversation, and then we'll jump into the poll results. So as the budget team has been sharing with you quarterly and through this budget process, the city has a structural budget deficit of $11 million. This is an improvement. If any of the community members had been to some of the community meetings we've done, we were talking 12, 12 million. So there's a little bit of improvement there due to property taxes. And I think it's important to note that we didn't jump right to considering a sales tax measure. We've been working to address the budget with program and department reductions, as you've just heard, which in some cases means we've frozen or delayed positions, we haven't included CPI in the current or next year's budget for supplies, we've deferred maintenance, and we've looked at other ways to generate revenue. The reductions that we've been talking about have amounted to about $9 million for the current fiscal year. So looking at the timeline, staff presented and received direction from council on issuing an RFP for voter opinion and public education services. We selected and hired consultants and presented the results from the initial statistically valid poll of likely voters in February. Based on those results, council did direct staff to begin a community education and outreach effort on a possible one cent sales tax measure. From that February council meeting to now, we've been working to share information with the community in a variety of ways. One of the key ways we've done that is by creating a website called choosingapath.net. It's accessible right from the city's home webpage. The Choosing a Path website includes data on the city's budget, both general fund and revenues, a budget forecast. It also includes a link to the city's financial transparency portal. and information on Measure M. It also has links to all of the city council staff reports and presentations on cost saving measures, correspondence from the city manager, police chief and fire chief, and slide decks and recordings from our community meetings. Frequently asked questions are there as well, and a link to a community questionnaire that we've been trying to generate some input and feedback from the community on their thoughts on this. So our goal was really to meet people where they are, and we held a hybrid town hall meeting on a possible sales tax measure in the city's financial situation to offer a remote opportunity for those that prefer that option. We also held 12 community meetings with two in each district on different days and times to try and provide an opportunity that worked for anyone who was interested in coming. We also met with local organizations and were willing to meet with others as well. The city manager and police chief also did a podcast with the community group. And we've also shared information through the city's newsletter, emails to residents, and social media. So even with all of those efforts, you'll hear from Adam shortly that we really didn't reach as many people as we'd hoped. It's really hard to reach people these days. Everybody gets their information in a variety of places. And so with that, I will turn it over to Adam Probolski to walk us through the poll results.

Okay, thank you very much. You can go to the, probably this slide is perfectly fine. What I'll say is this is a very typical process. You are unique, Vacaville is unique, but the The process we went through to get here is very typical for every city in California that goes through situations where they need new revenue and go through a process of looking for new revenue and seeing if the public was supported. So very, very typical process. The poll is very similar to the original poll we did where we talked to 400 people. Again, for context, statewide we do about 900 or 1,000. So very robust for a city of your size. 8% of your likely voters, which is who we talked to, chose to talk to us in Spanish. And we talked to people on the telephone, landline, mobile, and then most people, of course, talked to us online where they took an email or a text and went through the survey. So with that, let's get to some of the numbers here. First off, we ask him some open-ended question. What's top of mind? What's the top issue? And the key there is nothing dramatically stands out. There's nothing that is off the charts. It's really just kind of disparate all throughout. So that, I think, is more telling than anything else. I wouldn't read too much into these numbers because they're really small. Moving forward to the next slide, we ask the question about overall quality of life in Vacaville. Ninety-nine, 100%, right? Everybody says it's either good or fair, and we don't put a value judgment on fair, so it's really, really strong. This is not normal. People are very, very appreciative of the life they get to live in town, so really strong numbers, and that's increased since we last did the survey. All right, we can go to next. And we talk about satisfaction with the services the city provides. Really, really strong numbers. And I'm going to keep saying that, but these numbers could be 40, 50, 60 percent like your peers, and it would still be good. But you are really in a dramatically different position. The numbers are much stronger for your city. And, again, those numbers improved since the last time we took the poll last year. We can keep going to another really positive number. Fire gets a really strong satisfaction rating in, you know, 80% plus. And very few people. The one thing we look at is that delta between the unsatisfied and the satisfied, and it's a towering number. So really strong numbers. We'll keep going, and we'll see next up police. Similar numbers, 76%. small number of people who are unhappy for whatever reason. Next, we can go to public works. Great, 79%. Again, not really normal because most of the time cops and firefighters have a much greater advantage when it comes to these kind of numbers, but not true in Vacaville. You've got public works is right up there. They can pat themselves on the back. Next, we have Parks and Recreation, even better than everybody else, in a really strong position. They're really happy with what you're doing there. Numbers have improved since last time. So, preparing for emergencies, a little bit less of a number, still a really strong majority. Why are we not so strong? We have gone up because you've talked to them about what you're doing, but there's a big group of unsure because they're just not, you know, context for it. They're not following it. They're not paying attention. And that's okay, but you definitely have improved those numbers since last year because you've been talking about your work and what you're doing. And then we ask that they agree or disagree with the fact that you manage taxpayer money responsibly. Here we have what we call mixed numbers. You have a plurality that agree, and that number has improved a little bit. That is being depressed. by kind of that national narrative that uh... that's being told to us from the right and the left it doesn't really matter what media you're consuming that government isn't doing a good job uh... and that's really reflective of that national concern it really isn't local but it's affecting all of us uh... even on the local level but still you have a plurality that agree that you're doing a good job managing taxpayer money responsibly next we can look at another agree-disagree statement, that the city is transparent in how you operate and spend taxpayer money. Again, your numbers here really impressively have crossed, have improved, and I know maybe it doesn't feel so good to have less than a majority saying they agree and a big group of people saying they disagree, but this is evidence that the conversations you've been having are getting through to some degree. They are understanding that where you are being very open with how you talk about your budget and your process and your expenses, and they are right here telling us they appreciate that. That number has really dramatically improved since 20.5. All right, and then another agree-disagree statement, we say that it's smarter to pay for things now, like infrastructure, rather than later because it's gonna cost more later. the clear idea that inflation is going to make those costs go up. And this is a very clear message that they truly understand. If you make those expenditures today that are going to last 50 years, 100 years on whatever infrastructure building, they understand that that's better. And so numbers very similar to past years, a really strong, compelling case you can make. All right. The city is facing a budget deficit. and making cuts, but you still need more funds to maintain services. Here again, a very clear indicator that your message is getting through. You are not in any way advocating for a vote because there is no election anyway, but more importantly, you're just telling the community about what the needs are and how you hope to accomplish it and what you could accomplish with more revenue potentially. And they are really getting that message. It's a strong message coming through to them. All right. And here's where we ask the question. And this is the mock ballot question. Essentially, what is very close to what your voters would see, what you would all see sitting at your kitchen table as you're filling out your ballot, or if you go to the voting booth, you'd see on the screen or on the paper. And we ask the question about the sales tax measure, and we give details about what you could accomplish with it, of course, and other general things. And you have a plurality support at 47%, similar to the previous survey, up just a bit, and similar to the people who say no. You still have about 12% who are unsure. And then we can go to... um some some messages that we test uh and uh here we we say that you know every dollar generated for this tax is going to stay uh in in backville you the county can't take it the state can't take it and this is moving to people 55 are more likely to be supportive having this understanding that uh that those monies are yours and nobody else gets to take it uh if we go to the next message We have another message that moves people to be more supportive, 52% more likely, knowing that the measure would require independent citizen oversight and mandatory financial audits and yearly reporting, all the things that you would naturally do. But you're expressing that overtly, that you are going to be very open in everything you do. They're appreciating that significantly. All right. Next, we tell them that the sales tax measure, if it doesn't pass, there may be some consequences, real consequences with services. And we kind of detail some of those. And this is less compelling. The idea of losing something is oftentimes a big motivator. In this case, we didn't find that entirely. And so this is not necessarily something that's going to be so compelling. It's certainly something you'd want to talk about and explain because that's the transparency. But the truth is it's not like a big compelling message that's going to move people necessarily. But it is more compelling to the yes side than it is to the no side. All right. And then 36% are more likely to vote no. knowing about the sales tax limit. So the idea that there's this limit to where you could potentially go and if another agency goes and grabs that ability to tax, it restricts your ability. They are not buying it. It's just not interesting or compelling or that message is hard to understand. Probably because most of us are not spending much of our time talking about taxes and tax policy. So not one that's really going to be part of your conversation necessarily. It's not really too relevant to the voters. Another one that is because we have to kind of test what the real world could look like. We talk about the fact that raising costs to people at a time where gas and groceries and all these other things are higher, not that utilities are all higher, that this might be the wrong time to do it. And this is kind of a statement that you may hear out there in the public. Anyone as a voter could come out and say, you know, this just doesn't feel right. And that is significant to people, 49% more likely to vote no hearing that, but not as significant as some of those messages that compel people to vote yes. So here you're going to see that line up where it's, you know, maybe 5%, 50% and some of those numbers that compel people to be more supportive. And then that one message that is a little wrong there of what, you know, people might say negatively and how that might impact the vote. So more messages on the positive side really are more compelling. Next, we retest. We ask the question again. And we kind of get the same answer. We basically have a plurality. And we still have a significant number of people who are unsure. And in the world of statistics, we would tend to allocate those unsure proportionally to those different areas. And so you would probably see a majority voting yes, but it is close together. And here we end up with a message where before those questions were things that people mostly don't talk about. They don't talk about tax policy necessarily. They're not talking about things like that on a regular basis. This is what we do is the conversation that people might have as they're pulling their garage, their garbage can down to the curb, you know, two neighbors. You know, Gomez says, you know, that, you know, The future is a place I want to live. This is what we can do with more money. I'm okay spending a little bit more money. And then Duran says, you know, the opposite. And Duran does get a little bit more support than Gomez does. And so the idea here is we do identify some weakness and some need to continue outreach on the subject. Okay, we ask about choosing a path, and you have adoption, right? You have 32% or more likely are recognizing of the brand. So that, I think, again, you might feel like you wish that number was bigger, but you don't have the marketing budget that big corporations have. And so your outreach and your conversation with the public has reached a good number of people, almost a third of your population, just not the majority. And I'll quickly speak to this because I want to make sure everybody understands. We didn't talk to residents, your census makeup. We didn't even talk to voters, which is kind of a very, you know, a smaller group and a more finite group. We talked to likely voters. People who we expect is almost the secret sauce of what me and Bill Berry do as consultants. We kind of identify who is likely to turn out. And so that's what this profile is, the people we expect to turn out. That's why you're going to see differentiation between council district or see a different profile of resident that looks a little bit different because these are a finite group of likely voters. And I know that was a lot of data, so I'm happy right now to take questions. I know Bill is there to kind of take it from here and speak to the data and his impression. And certainly, going forward, we are on team to get you whatever you need.

Yeah, thank you.

SO JUST THE FINAL SLIDE IS REALLY THE RECOMMENDATION, WHICH IS TO RECEIVE THE PRESENTATION ON THE VOTER SURVEY RESULTS AND PROVIDE DIRECTION TO STAFF TO RETURN WITH AN ORDINANCE IMPOSING A 1% TRANSACTION AND USE TAX, ALSO KNOWN AS THE SALES TAX, FOR CONSIDERATION AT THE JUNE 23, 2026 CITY COUNCIL MEETING. AND WE'VE GOTTEN SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT, YOU KNOW, WHY 1%, WHY NOT HALF A PERCENT? JUST WANTED TO POINT OUT, A 1% sales tax is expected to generate approximately $28 million annually. So it would not only address our current structural deficit, but also provide additional revenue to help meet ongoing service infrastructure and really long-term financial obligations.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the public for any comments. And seeing none, I'll bring it back for any comments from the council. I'll start off by saying I know when this whole process started, this was, okay, what do we know? And having lived through a structural deficit in my prior career on staff, it's important to know what the details are. And I believe what we've seen, it's been projected for the last several years. where we have been deficit spending, but what we have done as a council policy is initially just some careful monitoring of our five-year projections. And I know what we have seen the last two to three years is revenues are flat. And I think some of the presentations and even having attended One of the community meetings raised really good questions, but I was also very impressed with watching our team and staff actually make the case for where we're at. Part of this is, unfortunately, a national narrative that do we trust government to be spending our dollars wisely? And then secondly, is there a there there? In other words, is there money that's not being spent wisely? I can appreciate having been on staff and also what it means to come forward with a budget and looking at every dollar, every employee, every service, and there isn't any other funds. There just isn't. We talk a lot about looking for grants. We certainly have focused and I've heard this council speak about economic development and so I do appreciate it. It's easy to start looking at well one business will equate to what? Even if you had that tomorrow and I said it previously we have We have a current fiscal deficit, but we also have a structural deficit with the shift of the cost of government that isn't changing anytime soon. And I know when this came to council last year and it was a discussion about what would our options be, I appreciated that we hired the consultants that we did to perform the surveys and also to understand what our community might expect or what do they understand. And so, I mean, for that reason, I sit here today because I've often said it, raising a tax should never be a first. It should always generally be a last resort. We had previous discussions tonight on CIP, on fleet. the I can I can appreciate respect the fact that if all these things have gone up in price and there's there's no way to meet that objective and as much as we are about as aggressive as any city in this county and beyond I IN TRYING TO ATTRACT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. IT DOESN'T CHANGE THE BOTTOM LINE. THE SAME WAY AS MY OWN PERSONAL LIFE OR ANYONE WHO'S RUNNING A BUSINESS WOULD LOOK AT THIS AND SAY, WELL, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? SO RIGHT NOW, WE'RE BASICALLY JUST GETTING BY. AND IT'S A SHORT-TERM RESPONSE. IT'S NOT A LONG-TERM SOLUTION. AND WE'RE FINALLY HERE. SO I APPRECIATE THE WORK THAT'S GONE INTO THIS. I, for one, believe that it is time for this to go to the community. The choose your path, it looks like not everybody knows it. It looks like there's going to be, in my estimation, some clearer messaging, but that's what a tax measure is once it's put on the ballot. I am in support of putting it on the ballot. I do believe that the people should be able to be I'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR A LONG TIME. I THINK IT'LL BE CRITICAL, BUT I ALSO BELIEVE THAT THEY SHOULD GET TO DECIDE BECAUSE THIS IS A REAL CORPORATION FACING REAL DEFICITS, AND THERE'S NO MORE REVENUE OUT THERE. AND SO FOR THAT, I JUST WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO STAFF FOR GETTING TO THIS POINT. IT'S NOT EASY, AND IT'S CERTAINLY NOT EASY TRYING TO CONVINCE THE PUBLIC WHEN THERE'S STATE AND FEDERAL NARRATIVES THAT DON'T NECESSARILY SHOW YOUR LOCAL BUDGET. would be a local measure and I believe that we've been as transparent as we possibly can and And unfortunately there are times when a community is just not involved and I do agree that half the time people are not interested until it's a crisis and That's just the reality people people are caught up in and so much of just everyday noise. So Any other comments from the council? Yes Okay, council member Fremont I think the survey- You can go ahead and hit the light. I'm sorry, I can't control it.

Hit the light? All right, there we go. The survey was good, but I think the survey misses a lot. Not anything bad on you, sir. It was done well, thank you. But I think other important surveys are ones that we can all ask ourselves. We have an aging population in Vacaville. And the average cost, I believe, of this is around $500 a household. Does that sound about correct?

Yeah, it's about $550 to $650.

I know that there's a lot of people that are struggling just to make ends meet right now, and I don't take that lightly. But there are other questions that I would ask of myself, and that would be questions like, a couple years ago, Some dope fiend, you know, kind of chased my wife down the street and she was scared and yelling, you know, get out of here. And she ran to a house and knocked on the door and they called Vacaville police and they responded immediately. The guy got away, but eventually they caught him a couple hours later across town at a Starbucks harassing young girls at the high school. But what's that worth to get great responses like that from our first responders or your house is on fire or your kid is choking on a marble and you know if we have a decline in services or just all the problems that happen that that all these different departments work with like you got a bad neighbor and maybe it's a drug house and you got problems and you don't know what to do and you call and we have a community that responds to that. So I guess I would ask the people that don't want to spend the extra $500, what would it take for you to spend that $500? Would it be a loss of a loved one? Would it be the loss of a child? Or would it be a stroke that maybe it took a little bit longer to get Are first responders there, or would it be a really bad neighbor that you can't handle without the help of the city? There's questions like this that I think are far more important than some of the other questions that were asked. Not that they're not important, not that they're... But I know there's, like myself, I'm getting a little bit older, and I want to know that, you know... some years down the road when a call goes out that I'm going to be taken care of. And it's not just that. I've got kids. I've got a kid in high school. I've got a daughter that's 18 years old. And The community that they're going to move up, the safety of our community. My kids spend a lot of time at the parks playing basketball. My kids spend time at the parks. They're out in the community. They're involved in the community. to have safety for my children and to have good parks for my kids to go to and to have a structured community that we can rely on. So I guess it goes to me as if something goes really bad and it was preventable, what wouldn't I pay? Would it be Would it be a hundred thousand? Would it be a million? Would it be a hundred bucks? What would it be? I guess it depends on the severity of whatever it is that I was dealing with at the time. But I am very cognizant again of people that can't afford another $500 right now. But I'm also really happy with the city that I live in. The response from all that makes our community all the different departments that make our community and all the money that is spent you know and it and we're so in intertwined with what the state tells us we have to do and spend money on the county. The federal government you know and it's and it's a big it's a big ball it's a big it's a big mess you know but we are where we're at and so I'm. I'm in favor of moving this forward and let the people decide what they want to do. I just know that I love Vacaville. I love our community. I think we provide great services to our community, and I'm willing to do anything I can to support to get the ship off of the sandbar.

That's it. Thank you. Council Member Ritchie.

Thank you so much. Just listening to Mayor Carley and Councilman Freeman speak, it kind of echoes exactly my passions. And he actually, we didn't talk ahead, but it reminded me of something that you guys probably don't remember, but about nine months ago, I just broke down and started crying and ran out. And That's something I think either, I think Mayor Carlos said trust in government, there's a lack of it. There is. But we have a huge expectation in the back of public safety and back of public works and back of first responders. There is a lack of trust in government. But I'm telling you why every day in Vacaville, we have this conscience or subconscious super high expectation and are in Vacaville. And what the national narrative is not the Vacaville narrative. Like we expect the best, we expect this. And I think a lot of people don't realize how much we take for granted. Because I mean, living in Los Angeles, I realized like I had to race out here to make sure my brother was safe because they were rioting down the street. And I know Long Beach PD wouldn't get there. They won't get there in time. They don't have the response. I know exactly where we are and what we have. Until you truly understand that, I think a lot of people have this false perception. They don't realize how good we have it. Just like three weeks ago, my dad passed out, fell, crashed into an aisle on PetSmart. The faculty parameters are so fast that he's already in the room at North Bay. They didn't bother taking him to David Grant. I mean, it's like the speed. The speed was amazing. And that just doesn't happen on accident. It's practice, practice, practice, and professionalism. So my dad is getting older. He's starting to have some dementia issues. Now he's holding a story. I'm seeing too much now the level of service and the quality that we expect and I know that You know, once that leaves, certain things happen. Like, once they realize we're understaffed, we're unappreciated, we lose response time. Like, people are going to prey on us as a soft target. Like, I know it's going to happen. And it's like, we have an amazing city. The pit counts are low. Like, it's going to take a hard time to get it back to this level if we slip. And I don't want to pay a dime more. I mean, I'm in real estate. I don't want to pay anything more. But... I know the cost of not is greater than the cost of not doing it. So I will find a way for the greater good of my family. I made a comment to I think Chief Pullman one day. I'm in my office all day downtown. I never worry about my son riding around on his old bike, my daughter, about being, like a young black male in Vacaville and being profiled or getting, you know, that is something that's very unique. I know the public safety here are amazing people. There's certain things that the level of service from this chief to this chief, who they hire in the city matters too. It's not just like, I mean, the level of standard, it's more than just something on a piece of paper. I've never had that feeling of being worried, oh my God, my son might get, because I know the people in the uniforms are amazing. Because we make sure that we hold them to that standard. It's like this to me is so serious and we don't find a way to keep this around and lose it. It's like cancer, it's hard to get rid of once the problem is set in. I really think it's bigger than just raising expenses, it's keeping what we have whole.

Council Member Stockton.

I don't want to use like scare tactics to talk about this and I know a lot of us and a lot of our community have huge expectations. But I think what we really need to do is give people realistic expectations and I think that's what we've kind of started to do tonight by addressing kind of the status of where we're at, what we've done. A two and a half percent reduction legislative platform to address anti-business issues happening at the state level. I think everybody up here recognizes that gas prices are up, electrical costs are up, water went up, groceries are up, and we have a lot of people living on fixed incomes or living paycheck to paycheck. But I do think that the people in back of the live here for reason a lot of that is based on the quality of life here and a lot of that quality of life here is because the people in this room that talk to us today about how they're going to cut their departments to a percent just to sustain what they're doing. So while I while I'm all for giving the community, you know the option to decide whether this is the direction that they want to go. I think that we owe it to them to make sure we're giving them realistic expectations about what it looks like for a yes or a no to approve or disapprove a tax measure if that's what the council decides. But I also want to make sure that we're that we're being sensitive to some of the folks that this really is going to impact. I'm not a millionaire. I don't make a million dollars. I work a full-time job. This is something I do on the side, and there are a lot of people that are struggling. And so... I hear things like grant funding. That's just a synonym for taxpayer funding, right? So I really have a lot of concern about whether or not this is going to pass. And I guess my next question for staff, because I believe that you've given us some realistic expectations about what we can expect if we have to continue with the reductions, is what assurances, what realistic assurances can we give the public that this money, if they do decide to invest in Vacaville, is going to be spent responsibly? What does that look like? Because right now, we talk about oversight, but what does that look like? How do we know that that is going to be as transparent or more transparent than what we experienced with Measure M? I think people deserve to have those answers before they make this decision because the reality is this is a general fund sales tax. This is not a special sales tax because it would require a higher percent. And I think there's an education component and one of the things in the survey that is glaring to me is the fact that they're talking about how there's a lack of understanding when it comes to the 10% sales tax cap. right and there are other entities of the county just talked about a tax measure other other groups like you know a bag of the association of area governments are talking about tax incentives and we're at I think it's eight point one two five percent right now if those other if those other entities. let's look at the association of bay area governments there were one of nine bay area counties if every solano county voter voted no but the other eight counties had a vast majority to get over that threshold to impose a tax on us they would get that money And if that brought us all the way up to that cap, we couldn't even go to our voters to ask for more money. And we'd have no control over what they did with the money that they took. And that's just one group. The county is another group. There's infrastructure needs. I could see something like that popping up. And I don't know if they will. We'll know very soon, I think. But we have to make a decision about whether we want to provide this opportunity to our community. I think it'd be irresponsible not to provide them with that opportunity. But I think that we need to also recognize that what we are looking at is a general fund sales tax, which means that the seven people up here are going to decide how that money gets spent. So how do we make sure it doesn't get wasted or used irresponsibly is maybe a better word. those provisions need to be crystal clear to the community if they are going to consider doing this because everybody is hurrying. And not everybody can bear what this 1% is as easily as other people. And so I guess moving forward, I'm asking for some really clear expectations about what that would look like so that voters and our community members that are going to vote on this can actually make good decision, not based on fear, but based on realistic expectations. So that's my ask.

To our city manager, would you like to comment?

Yes, sure. To address the community's concern, so our staff, community, and council has provided a lot of great feedback. When we did the focus groups back in November, we collected data from everybody saying, if we consider this possible sales tax, how would you like to spend your money? And we gave them four different categories, infrastructure, community programs, internal service funds, and addressing our long-term fiscal liabilities around OUR RETIREMENTS AND PENSIONS. AND THE COMMUNITY RATED AT CERTAIN TABLES, IF THERE WERE EIGHT COMMUNITY MEMBERS, EACH ONE OF THEM RATED. AT CERTAIN TABLES, ONLY ONE AVERAGE WAS COLLECTED. AND THEN AS WE COLLECTED THE DATA, THEN WE HAD A CITY COUNCIL STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSION AND WE REQUESTED ALL OF YOU TO VOTE. and rate, and there was a gap of 1% between what community expected and what the council expected. For example, for infrastructure, community's number was 34% and council's was 35%. So we took all of that data and presented it to the council. I don't remember the exact council meeting date, but I think it was sometime in February. or March, where we adopted a new general fund reserve policy. So if this tax measure were to pass in that scenario, how would the city spend the money? And that's how we have categorized it. The other step we have taken is as part of our city council, the strategic plan that we're adopting, some of those infrastructure projects are included in the plan such as you know we require major upgrades on our fire stations we require many capital improvement projects across the city so those are listed in there those would be again coming back to the council for prioritization so that's how we are addressing it at this time we can't talk too much about it because you know yeah we have to go through Keep our election guidelines in mind, but we have taken steps We will be looking at an oversight committee Typically based on you know looking at how other cities manage it so the oversight committee is typically compromised of three to five individuals that have some financial background and then they meet with your finance team finance team will provide them and how the tax measure language was, how we're spending that, and then that independent oversight committee provides, basically they meet on a quarterly basis, and then they provide an annual report. Again, the sales tax stays local. Our job is to provide factual and information to the community members, we can't either support or say anything in, if it comes across as advocacy, so we can't do that, but those are some of the steps we have taken. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Any other? No. I have not, Vice Mayor, are you on the line, Sylvan?

Are you asking me for a comment or somebody else commenting?

Yeah, I'm going to be looking for everyone's comment at some point, but I just wanted to check in with you.

I appreciate everybody's comments and different perspectives. One thing I really want to add, I mean, I agree with a lot of what everybody said with some exceptions. I think that it's important to know for everybody that I think we have to be very cognizant, this is for us as elected, we have to be very cognizant of What we put out there will continue to put out there. Something was mentioned about profiling. We still continue to see that within our community, even if somebody is an elected official. um and i think you know if we're talking about it how when we generate revenue of how we take that and reinvest in our communities we need to hold ourselves accountable to that and how we support each other and really show that when we when we all contribute to this pot that this pot in itself is something that can go back and help address the different inequities that exist in our community while maintaining the quality of life that we all benefit from as eloquently as many people have already stated So that's really all my comments. Thank you.

Any other comments? Yeah, Council Member Chapman.

Thank you. We've heard mention of the quality of life, and we all, I'm going to, make a statement that generalizing here that each of us have used the term quality of life and we each have our own definition or meaning conception of quality of life and what it actually, what what it actually means to us and hopefully we're rendering and making certain that the residents, that we are offering them a great quality of life. So whether that's meeting their basic needs, mental, physical, economic, in essence when we talk about safety, like the city manager was just mentioning, she can't go into detail right now as to what will be offered through this increase, through our ask of this 1%. It will be revealed in writing if we as the council decide to move forward and say, yes, put this on the ballot, make it a ballot measure. Above all else, we always put safety. Safety first. Safety, what does that mean for each of the residents? To feel safe. I've heard so many things as to how people define safe. You've expressed about what Nancy, your wife, has gone through. to feel safe knowing that the first responder is going to get there in time to save one of my children or my husband or come to my need. Safe walking down the street, safe means something different to each of us. Where I'm going with this is from the survey and We have learned, even though it wasn't very lengthy, but transparency. And that's been around a long time, and I feel that we have improved. We have improved and been transparent with the implementation of our PI, our public information department. We're utilizing all means to communicate now to the community. That is critical. And I don't know if they understand what it has taken for the city to be, that's part of being transparent, but it's important to be able to communicate. So with that being said, times are very hard right now. And to ask to go into your pocket, we only need to increase by 1%. For each of us, we can say, what's 1%? You've even given the figures. Can you give $500? $500 to a household right now who is wondering whether or not they're gonna have a rope over their head tomorrow. Someone has mentioned our aging community. The pinch is there. We are living a new norm. Since COVID, it was said, no one knew what that norm was going to look like. Right now, California, how expensive we are, we're the highest state, cost of living state right now, next to New York. It's going to be a tough decision. I'm going to support putting the measure on the ballot. We need to hear from the people. It's going to be close if it passes at all. If it passes at all, it's going to be very, very close. We have the need, we have the need. And I know that we have increased in so many areas this year. Every agenda has probably had a fee increase of some sort. We've been going around and around with the developers right now just to get them to pay their fair share. I think we're all tired of having to put this out there we need but the community we need you right now we are operating at a structural deficit which is ongoing it's not going to end tomorrow it's not a revenue a fiscal it's structural is ongoing and we need to nip it now another thing i want to point out and that is in the survey i believe what survey might have been a comment um regarding putting um infrastructure, any project really. The longer we push it out, the more it's gonna cost. And we have projects that we need to address now. Times are difficult. Times are very hard. So people, it's gonna be in the residents' hands. It's up to you what tomorrow's gonna look like. That's all I have.

Councilmember Wiley.

All right, just a couple of things to say. I feel that The need for sales tax is a reality. It's not something that we're just jumping to. This is the reality. And we have a significant gap of $11 million in the current budget, and that really is not all it would be if we had everything that we wanted. The infrastructure that we need, the increased cost of doing business like digging a well and doing all the other things, the increased cost of public service and public safety and everything that's going up, does come down to a gap in the budget. So I do feel like, you know, I attended a couple of community meetings. It's unfortunate that more people didn't attend community meetings. I think Dewey did a good job offering a lot of community meetings, but in the final, the final countdown the voters will decide and we need to work to get that clear message so they hear the message and we also need to get participation. We had a recent election very low numbers of voters in this whole scheme of who could vote so i am in support of putting it on the ballot we have work to do to get a clear message out so voters see the real need and don't say things like oh i think someone's mismanaging or i think you're asking for more than you need and that sort of thing i appreciate those comments this is uh yes go ahead

For staff, is there ever something that can be passed based on incremental increase, just to clarify? No. So for example, throwing out the numbers, 0.5 year one, 1% year two, something like that.

So you're asking if a tax measure can be implemented where it escalates?

Yeah, I just want to make sure the questions clear So on a sales tax measure it because it's going to a voter We have to tell them the exact amount so having like a variable or an increasing amount is really unrealistic Additionally once a tax measure is approved by the voters The collection of those taxes is done through the state of California We have to have a agreement with them for that process and so having changes like that is not a realistic approach to this and so that is not advisable and I think we would be subject to legal challenge if we pursued an option like that.

Thank you.

Oh yes, Councilmember Wiley.

And I would just say Councilman, Vice Mayor Silva. There was a discussion whether or not to do a half cent versus a cent. And if we did a half cent, we would shortly find ourselves in the same position and have to go to the voters again. So I believe I'm speaking correctly. The decision was made to go for a full cent to then get us down the road and we would be able to not have to ask again.

So some of the information I can help put in perspective for the community, and we have been sharing that in our presentations. So for example, if you round off, our budget is about $300 million. And for 100,000 population, that comes out to be $3,000 per resident. If you divide it by 12 months, that's about $250 per resident. And on a daily basis, for $8.30, our residents are getting police, fire, water, sewer, roads, streets, all of that infrastructure for $8.33 per resident. So if you take just the general fund portion of it, which is about $164 million, it comes down to $4.50 per resident per day.

Well, and I certainly believe that the services that are provided in the city, and I'm just going to speak from my own personal perspective, and that is Vacaville, I've often said it's more than just a place. I mean, it is a feeling. you live it and you know it when you live here and we can all talk about what it' s like to be elsewhere. I don' t want to judge us against any particular city but you know it when you feel like you' re getting the service that you want to live in. And the concern is the long-term structural deficit. I believe that giving the voters the opportunity to choose the path is the right path, but I think it's going to be important that there is greater clarity of what a long-term structural deficit actually looks like. Because sometimes what we think happens to all of us, you try to make ends meet every month more than you try to look at your annual bill when you have to true up with with the state and i a r s when you start living your life in your ten years down the road and and uh... we can drive down the road and we can look at the neighborhood we can see a house you like there's either a structural deficit going on that how there's too much deferred maintenance and that's where as a city is is if you're looking long-term a business won't last if it can't maintain its trajectory long-term if it's only looking for year one or or a pathway to stabilize you know the next thirty six months it's way different than when you start looking at CIP and you start looking at fleet and start looking at all the deferred items that there's no catch up to that and i think it's going to be very important the public actually can see what that is to feel the benefit of what you get to live here but to see what that long-term is because the challenges is sometimes it's easy like i see in the survey for someone to say almost like it doesn't matter what what difference does it make to me well i understand that i can appreciate surveys but the reality is is uh... with you know if this is presented to the voter, it's going to have to resonate with the voter. What's in it for me? And do I believe what I'm being told? Two things. And so I appreciate the process to get here. It's going to be a lot of work to get, I think, our community. A lot of good information, but it's going to take a lot to get uh the the majority of the community to actually say yep i see what's in it for me and i'm willing to do it and unfortunately i think we all can agree there's going to be those and it's an average of 500 per unit per household it may be up or down depending upon the household it's still an impact and so i think that it's going to be very imperative that that we bridge that gap but uh We've heard from all seven. Is there a particular process? Because the ask is to bring this back to the next council meeting in two weeks. Any further direction that you need?

No, I think that's the direction we need to bring back the ordinance at the next meeting.

Okay. Would you like that in a vote? Or did you hear it clear enough from all seven of us?

I don't think we needed a vote. Just looking for a council direction. Okay.

Well, from what I've written, I've listened to everyone's comments and I think you have what you need to bring back this on to the next council meeting for consideration. Can we take a break?

I'm sorry, Mayor. We do need a vote because we have a resolution attached. I apologize.

Oh, there's a resolution attached. Okay. So go ahead and... Well, you need a motion and a second? I'd like a motion. You'd like a motion? Okay. So Fremont motions second? I think you seconded first. So Chapman seconded. Roll call.

Council Member Fremont?

Yes.

Council Member Wiley? Yes. Council Member Stockton?

Yes.

Council Member Ritchie?

Yes.

Council Member Chapman? Yes. Vice Mayor Silva?

Yes.

Mayor Carley?

Yes. So bring this back to the next council meeting. Thank you. And with that we're going to take 5 minutes for to stretch your legs recess and to get ready for the next time we are going to switch the next 2 items so we're going to take item 12 D when we re region.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening Vacaville. We're re-adjourning. It's 1040, so we'll get started. We're going to step back into our agenda, but we're moving to item 12D. Right?

Sorry, taking notes over here.

Oh, sorry.

So item 12D is resolution of the City Council authorizing the submission of a home key application to the California Department of Housing and Community Development for funding a 52 veteran permanent supportive housing units within the Victory Gardens affordable housing development located at 5763 Vanden Road. And authorizing the city manager or designee to execute all required application documents and related agreements. And Housing and Community Services Director Tamara Colden is here to give the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members. Tonight, I'm here asking Council to adopt a resolution authorizing staff to submit a Homekey Plus application to the California Department of Housing and Community Development for approximately $45 million to support 52 veteran housing units within the previously approved Victory Gardens development at 5763 Vanden Road. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that the initial publication of the staff report had an incorrect amount of 4.5 million and actually the application will be 45 million. A little bit of background, this site was identified in the housing element as an opportunity site for affordable housing with a military and veteran focus. Since that time, Council has approved an exclusive negotiating rights agreement, disposition and development agreement, and financing amendments intended to improve competitiveness for state funding programs. In May of 2025, the Planning Commission approved the project entitlements, allowing the development team to move into starting financing activities. Victory Gardens is a mixed-income affordable housing development, and while tonight's request focuses on the 52 veteran units, it's important to note that approximately the remaining 75% of projects serves working, low-income, military-focused families and households. The 52 veteran units are also supported with project-based vouchers through the Vacaville Housing Authority and will receive supportive services through Insight Housing. The reason for tonight's request for application to the Homekey program is that the state recently amended the Homekey Plus program to encourage greater utilization of funding reserved for veterans. These changes significantly improve the competitiveness of the project OF VICTORY GARDENS BY ALLOWING APPLICATIONS BEFORE TAX CREDIT AWARDS ARE SECURED AND BY PROVIDING ADDITIONAL OPERATING SUPPORT FOR VETERAN HOUSING. SO WE BELIEVE THE PROJECT IS WELL POSITIONED TO COMPETE BECAUSE OF ITS MILITARY FOCUS, THE NUMBER OF VETERAN UNITS ALLOCATED TOWARDS THE PROJECT, THE FACT THAT THERE IS THE SUPPORT WITH THE PROJECT-BASED VOUCHERS THROUGH THE HOUSING AUTHORITY AND ITS PROXIMITY TO TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE. With the project, property management will be provided by Mutual Housing Management And supportive services will be coordinated by Insight for the 52 units. All residents are required to sign leases and are subject to standard property management requirements. And residents receiving project-based voucher assistance must also comply with Housing Authority program requirements, including ongoing eligibility reviews. The project will operate as permanent housing with standard landlord-tenant protections and enforcement mechanisms. So tonight staff is recommending approval of the resolution and that will allow staff to work with the development team to submit an application to the Homekey funding source that supports the veteran housing component of the previously approved Victory Gardens development while minimizing the need for any additional local funding participation. AN ALTERNATIVE IS THAT COUNCIL COULD CHOOSE NOT TO ADOPT THE RESOLUTION, HOWEVER, THAT'S NOT RECOMMENDED AS THIS WOULD, THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM WOULD LOSE ACCESS TO A SIGNIFICANT STATE FUNDING OPPORTUNITY SPECIFICALLY TARGETED TOWARD VETERAN HOUSING AND WOULD NEED TO IDENTIFY ALTERNATIVE FUNDING SOURCES WHICH COULD DELAY PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION AND IMPACT THE PROGRESS TOWARDS THE CITY'S ARENA OBLIGATIONS. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions or comments from council or the public and the developers here as well and would like to share additional information with the council.

Yeah, thank you. I'd like to go ahead and have the developer to provide additional response and any presentation that the developer may have.

Either way.

Either way, yeah. You can either come to the podium here and just hit the mic on for me. There you go. Yeah.

Hello. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and council members. Thank you so much for this opportunity, and I'd also like to thank the staff for working with us. I am Revati, the project manager from Mutual Housing California. We are co-developing Victory Gardens with our partner, Insight Housing. Mutual Housing is a 40-year-old nonprofit affordable housing developer, owner, manager, and resident services provider headquartered in Sacramento. Mutual Housing Management, our property management company, manages about 25 of our properties in the region. Around 90% of our residents voluntarily utilize the services that we offer. All our properties are well managed. We have never defaulted on any property. and drug use is prohibited in our leases, we also undertake strict measures to ensure that our properties are crime-free. I'd also like to show some pictures of our properties and invite all council members to visit our properties if you want to have a look at it. We would love to organize that. Sorry, we're probably having some difficulties. Okay, yeah, these are some of our properties in Sacramento. With that, I'll hand it over to Inside Housing to introduce themselves.

Great. Hello, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and council members. My name is Blair Fret. I'm a project manager with Insight Housing. And thank you all for letting me speak tonight. So I'm going to speak a little bit to Insight Housing. We're a co-developer with Mutual, but also the lead service provider. INSIGHT HOUSING HAS BEEN OPERATING CONTINUOUSLY SINCE 1970 WITH A VERY SIMPLE MISSION OF ENSURING THAT EVERYONE IN OUR COMMUNITY HAS A HOME. AND WE DO THIS BOTH THROUGH HOUSING DEVELOPMENT BUT ALSO THROUGH COMPREHENSIVE SOCIAL SERVICES PROVISION. AND WE DO THIS ACROSS SEVEN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COUNTIES. In the interest of time, I'm going to skip over. We have two slides here about our sort of like flagship developments. In the interest of time, I'm going to skip those. Hope Center and Dwight Way, but we're always welcome to answer questions on these projects. And also, we would love to offer a tour as well so that you can really see how we manage these projects, how we implement our social service provision.

You can go to the next slide.

And then the next slide, yeah. All right. So service provision is really insights. It's really our expertise. It's what we do. It's what we've been doing since 1970. And we deliver across six core service areas. So from emergency shelter to permanent housing, daily meal services to street outreach, we provide structured wraparound services for all of our participants. And we believe this is really what makes us a strong partner with Victory Gardens, both as a co-developer, but also the lead service provider. Our services team is going to be onsite every day, ensuring that each and every resident of Victory Gardens is stable, safe, and supported. Next slide. And with that, Insight Housing has a very specific focus on veterans, and that's something that we take great pride in serving our veterans. So through our Roads Home program, Insight has been delivering wraparound services to veterans since 2011. And this year alone, we expect to support over 2,700 veterans and their families with outreach, housing support, and other social service navigation. And this is something that we're really proud of, but we have a 95% plus housing retention rate across our programs. And so this is something that we're really good at. And we also have a high resident satisfaction of over 90%. And so with this, we really believe we have the team, the experience and this proven model to really deliver on Victory Gardens and believe this is an important next step in expanding our impact. Next slide. Also just really wanted to highlight, pictured here are some of veterans that are currently housed in Insight's properties that are similar to Victory Gardens. Again, this is really a cornerstone of what Insight does and it's something that we're really proud to be able to support and uplift our veterans. And tonight you'll actually be able to hear from a couple of veterans who have stayed here for many hours. Really, I think a true testament to the cause and how important this is to them.

With that, we'll bring it back to the project. Next slide. Tamara already introduced the project, but I'll just run through the number of units. Total number of units are 206, of which currently we're talking about the 52 veteran units. This is spread across 8.4 acres, and we have four buildings three-storied. A point that I'd like to note here is that there is no change in the population from the time we provided a response to the city's RFP way back in 2024. The next slide. Victory Gardens will house veterans and families earning up to 65,000 annually, and the rent for this average two-bedroom unit will be merely $1,470, as we can see. This is when the community's overall rent burdened. We can see the market rents here for a two-bedroom unit. For an average two-bedroom market rate unit, it is $2,500, when the average income in Vacaville is $130,000. Moving on to the funding and the project schedule. The funding landscape in California is extremely difficult. In spite of great scoring, we were unsuccessful last year in gaining CalHFA's MIP funding. The regulations for Homekey, as Tamara mentioned, have changed this year and mutual housing played an important role in the advocacy to make this happen. The current version of the program is radically different from the motel conversions that are associated with this program. Homekey Plus can now be used with tax credit financing, which is similar to any other affordable housing funding program. This project was originally planned with VHHP funding, which was specifically for the veteran component, but unfortunately that program has since then dried up. So the home key plus is our best bet at getting this project funded and off the ground. The funding is available only till funds last. So that's why it's really important at this stage. And with the change in the regulations, applications have been pouring in for this particular program. With the Homekey Plus application, we are planning to do the application in June, which will enable us to go in for a tax credit application in September. With an award in December, we will actually be able to start construction in June of next year, and the project will be fully leased up by Q1 of 2029.

We can go to the next slide.

Here I just want to reiterate a few key features of the Homekey Plus funding program. The first being that funding mandates, this funding mandates that apartments are allotted to veterans. So these 52 units would definitely be allotted to veterans. Based on market requirements, majority of the units are going to be one bedroom units, though we have some studios, two beds, and three beds for the veterans. The second thing is that this program is not limited to unhoused veterans. As we saw that there are units reserved for veterans earning up to 65,000 annually. The third important point is that the program comes with the robust operating funds. Tamara mentioned this earlier too. This would be important as supportive services and case management will be provided by Insight Housing. The fourth point is that we also have 52 project-based vouchers by the VHA which will be used towards these veteran units. And the last being that on top of all of this, our operating budget always accounts for replacement reserves and other reserves to ensure appropriate maintenance of the property. Yeah, so of this overall, I would say that the development is going to be for low income families and veterans. And I will leave it to Blair to sum it up for us today.

All right, so in summary, we really believe that Victory Gardens is a place for veterans, veterans who have served our nation and who deserve a stable and supportive place to call home. And we really hope that you'll join us tonight in making that possible here in Vacaville. And in a moment, you're going to hear directly from two of Insight's current veterans, Mr. Watson and Mr. Dominguez, who have been very patiently waiting here to really speak about the impact that a project like Victory Gardens has had on their own life and why we hope that it'll be supported tonight. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you. And we'll hold off on the speakers. What we'll do is I'll bring them, allow them to come up when I open it up to the public. I just wanted to make sure that you had the extra time to present. So just give us a few more minutes and then you both can come forward and speak. Any questions from the council? Councilmember Stockton?

This property was donated by a family that wanted it to go toward veterans housing. Is that correct?

That's correct, the property, the use would have to be to support military families.

Okay, and would some of the folks like at a Yontville qualify to stay in a place like this with some of these permanent supportive units?

So with the 52 veteran units, the part of what we would have to do is with the requirements of Homekey is have a plan on how we would coordinate referrals or entry into those units. So if someone from Yountville was identified as possibly being successful.

Would this be housing for seniors that would qualify, like some of the folks that would have qualified for a program like what they're doing in Yountville?

So as long as they're veterans, then that's the targeted population. So my understanding is in Yonville, that's a project for veterans. So if anyone was interested in coming to this project and went through the referral process to coordinate entry into this project, then they could reside at Victory Gardens.

Thank you. SEEING COUNCILMEMBER PRIMA.

YES. SO WOULD IT BE 52 UNITS AT A MINIMUM THAT WOULD BE DEDICATED TO VETERANS?

SO THESE 52 UNITS, YES, AT A MINIMUM ARE RESERVED SPECIFICALLY FOR VETERANS. IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT ANY OF THE OTHER UNITS WOULD NOT HOUSE VETERANS. IT MEANS THAT THESE 52 HAVE TO. THAT IS THE TARGETED POPULATION FOR THESE UNITS.

GREAT. THANK YOU. VICE MAYOR SILVA, DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

We have Rocky Hill Apartments that's dedicated to veteran housing. For a minute there, there were a lot of vacancies. What happens if there's vacancies for this site? And also, based on your projections, what's the current demand to fill those respective units that are being proposed?

So for the 52 units, which this funding is targeted for, they have to go to a veteran. If there are veterans at the 30% income level that there are not enough veterans to fill those, then the units can be filled by what they called secondary veterans. So then it would go next to veterans earning up to 50% of area median income. And then after that, it would go up to veterans earning 80%. But they have to be veterans.

All right, thank you. We just want to make sure we honor our veterans and not use them, so I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the public, and this would be an opportunity for you to come speak.

I know you've been waiting a long time. I apologize. No, it's fine. It's fine. This program is really great, hands down. Just a little sight. I was sleeping in my truck, you know, I had my kids and really didn't know where to go. And I would go sleep in my truck and wait for my job and wait to go to work in the morning, you know, and I found this program. And it's like, it's just the best thing that could ever happen to me. You know, now I'm stable. I can get some rest and get up and go to work 3 o'clock in the morning. And I can focus on my job, not worry about my kids. You know, I get kind of emotional. It's not as tough no more, you know? Life is a lot easier. It's a lot less stressful. And I was telling one of my members that to stand up here and represent this in-house organization is beautiful, to show other veterans that there is help out here, that we don't have to be homeless. We just got to get up and do the footwork because it's here for us. And I really appreciate this inside housing, you know, and all the staff on it, you know, it really has changed my life. You know, my children, you know, they got me a house, man, literally that's right around this corner from the school, you know, and it's just, it's just, it's no worry no more. You know, it's just getting up and going to work and my kids coming home instead of me worrying about, because like when it first happened, I was homeless and I had to find a way to put my son because I didn't want him sleeping in the truck with me. And that was kind of a tough thing to go through. But through Inside Housing, it all just worked out great. I mean, you guys, this is beautiful. You know, this is, yeah, this is the best thing that could ever happen to me. And I really appreciate you guys allowing me to sit up and speak, and especially representing Inside Housing, because I don't know what I would be doing without them. Probably still in my truck. But here I am. And it has helped me tremendously. And I want to thank you guys for everything you guys are doing and going to do for us veterans. And last but not least, because they always said that there was no help out here for veterans. And that's not true because it is help out here. Thank you so much.

Thank you for sharing. Really appreciate it.

My name is Alexander Dominguez.

I would like to give a brief history of my family just to get some credibility. My dad's brother is buried in Normandy. At that time, my father was Army Air Corps but volunteered for recon. He was drafted into Korea. My older brother is a Marine. My mom's family, her uncle is buried in Belgium. He was a tail gunner on a B-17. They got shot down. Her brother was a POW in Luzon with the Japanese. And I'll begin. I was what you call a vagabond. I got stuck in traveling. And I got stubborn about it. And then about a year ago, something said, you got to start settling down. You're going to be 77 pretty soon. And so I went to the VA in San Francisco. And luckily, this girl and a guy referred me to the Hope Center in Berkeley. And I used to thumb up there a long time ago. So I was like, all right, I like Berkeley. So I was drafted. I was supposed to have been a Marine. 1966 out of high school, but I was a devil pup when I was 14, because my brother was a Marine at that time. So the Marines were messing around, so I wasn't in the mood for the Marines. So I kept telling my friends, they were like, we're going to the Marines. I said, well, I'm going to get drafted. They go, how do you know? I go, I just know. So anyway. When I got back, one of the reasons I got this is I never looked my age. So every time I used to go to a veterinary center, they'd go, can I help you? And I'm like, yeah. So for the longest time, I didn't want nothing to do with a VA. But luckily, I had friends that were vets, too, that said, you have to go and start taking care of your business with a VA, whether you like it or not. Little by little, I got into going to the vet centers. And luckily, this one in San Francisco referred me to the Hope Center in Berkeley. And his program for housing and stuff, and I had heard about it. I didn't really understand it. And eventually, I was told about a place in Rio Vista. I told myself, you know, it's time to start settling down and start a different kind of life. And this place where I'm at has been very, very beneficial, not only to my health, but my mentality. I finally reconnected with who I was at one time. Because every time I would say, well, you know, I almost got killed by a landmine, booby trap, I caught malaria. They go, well, you're just, you know. But now that I finally made an effort to settle down and I've gotten this home thing, it's been very, very beneficial to me. I've come back to what they used to call a human being. And I've always been a happy person. even when I again almost got killed in Vietnam, but Just these programs are very very beneficial I'm putting it this way also because I've talked to a few vets who? Will not talk about and I would try to tell him I psychology was my major in college I tell him you know what this has to be done I don't want to hear it but for myself, I took that route and I Well, it's very beneficial. It's like when you're in the service, you have this camaraderie with people. So where I'm at, it's like a family now. Everybody kind of reconnects to their past as when they were happy at one time. You know, no more of this war thing anymore. And it's just, I'm amazed at how I'm coming back to being happy and thinking in a positive way, well I always do, but staying in that kind of attitude. And these homes, are very, very beneficial. They do a lot, gives you a chance to sleep in a room by yourself, watch TV, interact with your friends, talk about things. Like where I'm at, we joke a lot. And I forgot I used to be like that. And so I even tell them, well, you guys have brought me back to how I used to be. So for me, these programs are very beneficial. They really make a difference. But again, some, I don't know, I wish they would forget combat. Some can't, I could. I guess I'm just a different character. But for me, it's been amazing. It's done a lot for my, again, my health. I'll be 78 in October. I don't even believe that, believe me. But it's brought me back to my youth somewhat in terms of how I used to feel. Happy and hey, I do all that stuff, you know. But yes, they are beneficial, and they do make a difference for vets. I rarely say this, but there's times I've run into vets that were crying out in the street. I wanted to help them, but I thought Vietnam vets were the only ones that came back like that, you know, messed up. But a lot of vets do need help. And It'll do something for them. That's how I look at it. It'll really make a whole difference in their life. Some people don't want it. Some feel like they don't want to be heard. But I don't know. It's just been very beneficial for me doing this program and living there. I'm very, very happy.

Well, I really appreciate you sharing. I really do. I think your stories, both of you, are just compelling. And so thank you for coming and taking the time to share it with the council. I appreciate it.

I would just like to leave with this. I'm a direct descendant of the first Spaniards in San Diego. I grew up in a town called Redlands. That talent taught me a lot about how to be a human being, how to interact with people, how to respect people, and appreciate what you said. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you both for your service.

Yeah.

hello and good evening mayor vice mayor and council members my name is Jermaine Dowdell I' m a journeyman carpenter and field representative for the north coast states carpenters union I' m here tonight also before I get started I want to say thank you and I respect and appreciate all our veterans is very important and those words were very very needed in saying that the north coast states carpenters are not in support of this project We've reached out to the developer and we have not had a conversation about if this project is going to be built responsibly. We had a lot of conversation up here about the community and about safety and about the things that are going to make this community thrive, right? And if we have a non-responsible developer come in and take advantage of workers with wage theft, misclassification, and possibly not even having workers from this county, we'll come in and take the jobs, take the money out of this county, and we get nothing. we need to make sure we take a good look at what' s going on around us and with these projects so we can make sure we protect our workers and our communities as well. As the north coast states carpenters we also have helmets or hard hats we definitely appreciate and uplift our veterans it' s a program we go by I have a lot of young men and women on our we have to make sure that these projects are built responsibly and that we' re looking into these job sites to make sure that our workers are taken care of especially when they' re prevailing wage. Thank you very much I appreciate it. The north coast

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Angela Upshaw, and I am the chief operating officer with Inside Housing. And I just want to thank, again, our veterans for coming and speaking. I really appreciate them. It shows their dedication and my team. So thank you all to them. But I'm here tonight in strong support of the city moving forward with our Homekey Plus application for Victory Gardens. Inside Housing has been committed to ending veteran homelessness for over a decade. In Solano County, we operate programs that connect veterans and their families to housing, employment, healthcare, and stability that they have earned. Our Rio Vista home, which you heard a little bit about tonight, though a smaller project in scale, stands as a powerful proof of what's possible. when veterans have safe and affordable and housing that they can thrive in, and so do the communities around them. Victory Gardens represents an opportunity to expand that promise at a meaningful scale. Vacaville can be a part of a growing and proven national effort to end veteran homelessness, and this Homekey Plus application or funding is critical. It's a critical bridge that gets us from just the project vision to actual construction. I also want to speak to the stigma that sometimes surrounds affordable housing because this is personal for me. I never served in the military, but my family and close friends have, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. I know what service and sacrifice looks like up close. I also know what homelessness looks like up close, because I've lived it. Affordable housing was my path out of homelessness and to stability. It changed the trajectory of my life, and the evidence bears this out broadly. AFFORDABLE HOUSING STRENGTHENS FAMILIES. IT STABILIZES LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND ECONOMIES AND MAKES COMMUNITIES HEALTHIER AND MORE RESILIENT. AND AS COUNCILMEMBER RICHIE MENTIONED EARLIER TONIGHT AND EXPRESSED THAT VACAVILLE IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE AND THE COMMUNITY. AND THAT SHOWS THROUGH THIS PROJECT AND WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO HERE. The people who will call Victory Gardens home come from different backgrounds and different roads to this moment. But they share something profound. They serve this country. They deserve dignity and a safe and affordable and decent place to call home. Approving this application opens a door that could change everything for dozens of veterans and their families. So I urge you tonight to support. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right, I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council as I see anyone else. Anyone else wishing to speak question. Yes, let me bring it back to the council. Council members talking.

Yeah, I'm just wondering if the developer would sit down with the gentleman from the carpenters unit at least give a chance to explain why they want to talk to you about this project.

Yeah, sure.

The problem is that- Can you hit the button? Sorry. There you go.

Yeah. Typically, it is the GC, the general contractor, who appoints the subcontractors. And that is not something that the developer does. Also, we are currently in a really early stage of the project. We're gathering funding for the development. So we are not that far along that we would be able to actually appoint the subcontractors. That's the only reason why we have sort of delayed this conversation.

And I'm not telling you that you have to use them, but at least to offer them an opportunity to talk about this. It sounds like they have programs that help veterans that they utilize, and if that's what you all are trying to do, it might lead to something productive. It might not, but you'll never know if you don't talk about it. Yep, absolutely. Are you willing to exchange information with the gentleman in the back?

Yes, sure. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate you. that. I think it' s important I did I have no control of anyone's might. Okay, all right, I normally here's an example of why this straight dice doesn't work is we can't speak. All right so to my monitors to the right apparently gets member Wiley you were first.

Okay, thanks for the information I just have one question because in looking at that first picture, you know it's a pretty elaborate and it's apartment complex and So usually those are done in phases. So if phase one is, are all the 52 veteran units going to be first or are there going to be like 10 of them in phase one and then 10 of them in phase two? Can you answer that question?

I think I can answer and then maybe if I don't get it right, you can correct me. But so this project is being approved in phases. However, the first phase is all 206 multifamily units. And then if you remember, the second phase is 15 additional single family units around the outside. So the 52 veteran units are a part of the full 206 that will be constructed at the same time.

OK, thank you.

And I just want to add additional information that the project is already approved. What we're asking for tonight is moving forward with a home key application, and that any award of public funds, including the 52 project-based vouchers, requires prevailing wage to be paid during the construction of the project.

OK, thanks.

All right, so I think you were next.

It's coming back on. Somebody's playing with me. Thank you. My question was the same. I just wanted to know, understanding about the lack of communication with the carpenter union. And so understanding, you know, this preliminary work, however you are open to communicating with, okay. And there was an exchange of information, I believe. Okay. And you know, you handle your own business, but I would hope that you are, you know, someone reaching out to you to at least respond, reply to them. If not, you'd see they come to the council and we have no jurisdiction at that time. Okay.

All right. Vice Mayor Silva. Do you have any questions or comments?

My question was just going to be, was already asked about clarifying about the bailing wage. Good to go.

And I was aware of that. Thank you for bringing it up. It is important to understand, and I do agree, it's early on. Tonight's action isn't a final approval. It's the city has to participate in a lending opportunity. So we are very preliminary in any process. However, It would require prevailing wage. It's all but a mandate. But part of the benefit is, and I can appreciate the perspective, is every time we have projects, the goal is to try to advocate for our local workforce. And as a developer, you're not the ones doing the building. And so obviously that becomes the pass-through. But the key here is, how do we care for the very people who are trying... We know that people live here and they're driving hours to go to work every day. So the key is is how do we stop that and we work with our local professionals and so hopefully this can be a process where you can talk but if successful this has to come back to the council anyway so I appreciate it. The action on this item is by simple motion to adopt a subject resolution. I'm entertaining a motion at this point.

We have a motion and a second, roll call.

Council Member Stockton?

Yes.

Council Member Ritchie?

Yes.

Council Member Chapman?

Yes.

Council Member Fremont?

Yes.

Council Member Wiley? Yes. Vice Mayor Silva?

Yes.

Mayor Carley?

Yes. Appreciate this. This is the veterans housing is long overdue This has been a project that's been set aside But this is not the the this is not the final action that the council will take this is just to apply for the homekeep funds With that we will go ahead and move to item 12c. Thank you all for coming to our vets. Thank you for your service and The stories that are real for you are heartfelt and I appreciate you taking the time and sorry that took so long to get to to this item So we'll move on to item 12C. Madam City Clerk.

So this is a report on the upcoming Brown Act teleconferencing and public access requirements and a resolution adopting a disruption of telephonic or internet service during meetings policy in accordance with Senate Bill 707. And Public Relations Manager Joanna Leal is here to assist me in presenting this item. So, Senate Bill 707 was adopted in late 2025, going into effect in January of 2026. Because it was such a heavy lift under technology and some other items that cities had to had to be able to do to meet the requirements. Some of these portions are going into effect in July of 2026. So we're going to be focusing mostly on those. The other items are mostly cleanup items that were in the bill and have already gone into effect. So Senate Bill, sorry, Senate Bill 707 modernizes the Brown Act to reflect technology changes to promote greater public access, including requirements for specific legislative bodies, a need to adopt the disruption policy, changes to teleconferencing rules, and cleanup and other minor updates. Next slide. One of the things that SB 707 did was create a new description under the SB 707 eligible legislative bodies are defined as a city with a population over 30,000, which is what we are, so that's why we will be adopting the 707 regulations. Next slide. 707 required us to provide access and comment opportunity to our public via a two-way telephonic service also known as teleconferencing. So that is effective July 1st and our public relations team has been working very diligently to get the technology in place in this room so that we can meet that mandate of whatever our first meeting in July is. My understanding is that we might have one prior to July 28th, but anyway, certainly we'll have that all up and running the way we should. The City is required to post and provide the call-in option for the platform on the meeting agenda and also have a dedicated page on the website that talks about how the public can participate by teleconference. And SB 707 requires that if the teleconferencing service we use provides captioning, that that must also be made available to the public. Next slide. There are some excluded meetings to this. So one is when the body is meeting at a location that does not accommodate teleconferencing. So if we had to have a meeting in another facility for some reason and there was not access to internet or telephonic teleconferencing, we would not have to provide that option. The others are very unlikely types of meetings that we have, but if the Council was to inspect real or personal property where the topic of the meeting would be limited to items directly related to that property, we would not have to have teleconferencing. Or if we were to meet in or near a facility owned by the city where the meeting topic is limited to items, again, directly related to that facility, we would not need to provide teleconferencing. There are times when the body might have to meet for federal or state elected or appointed officials solely to discuss legislative or regulatory issues affecting the local agency and within the jurisdiction of that elected appointed official. That would not have to be teleconferenced. judicial or administrative hearing where the local agency as a party would not need to be teleconferenced. And then if the city were to have to have an emergency meeting, most Brown Act requirements, including the teleconferencing, would not be required because of the state of emergency. Next slide. So we are required to adopt a policy on the disruption of service, including good faith attempts to restore service for at least one hour or until the, if earlier the service disruption is solved. The city must announce the service disruption. If there is one, the council is required to take a recess. And if there is a closed session agendized, the council can convene in closed session during that recess. And during the recess, the city must be making good faith attempt to restore the service. Next slide. If we are not able to remedy this disruption within an hour, the city may further extend the recess to restore service We may adjourn the meeting or we may reconvene an open session, but we must adopt a finding by roll call vote that good faith efforts were taken to restore the service and the public interest in continuing the meeting outweighs the public interest in remote public access. Next slide. So in the disruption policy, there is a part where if a virtual commenter disrupts the meeting and a disruption is defined as rendering infeasible the orderly conduct of a meeting, a warning consistent with Brown Act indicating behavior is actually disrupting the meeting. And if they fail to cease the behavior, it will result in removal. And then if the commentator persists, the speaker will be put on mute or removal from the platform if muting does not stop the disruptive behavior. So the city is required to engage in unrepresented communities, engage with unrepresented communities. So I'm gonna let Joanna talk a little bit about how we're gonna reach out to those communities.

Thank you. Good evening. So we do a number of ways that we already reach out to our community. Folks can sign up to receive the agenda directly via email. We post it to social media. It's posted on the website and, of course, outside on the board. So in addition to that, what our plan, our intention is to increase the email, the number of emails that would receive this. We have several lists within the city's email database where we would expand to ensure that we're reaching more of our unrepresented communities. And then we would also continue to do the efforts that are already underway and just to ensure that that access is there. And then as far as the web pages, we do also have translation on the web pages. So we're going to be working more closely with eScribe just to ensure that translation is also going to reach those communities so that we can ensure that all of the languages spoken within the community are also receiving that.

Thank you, Joanna. So the SB 707 has a lot of requirements for us on our website to provide plenty of access and information for the public on how to engage with the agendas and the meeting materials. Most of those things we already have there. We'll probably have to just reorganize where they are because they do have to be a lot of them have to be visible from the city's main web page and has to have a little bit more explanation on how to get the agendas and information on that so we will be doing a bunch of cleanup on our on our website to make sure that we have it all very clear for the public next slide um The other new mandate is that we must provide a readily accessible physical space near where we already post our agendas for the public to provide other translated agendas. The posting board outside of the council, we have found another board that we weren't utilizing very much since we've gone ahead and put that out there. There is a There is script on there that allows people to understand that this is solely for using for translated agendas and that any other materials posted there would be removed. And that we are not liable for the actual proper translation of the agendas. So we don't have to double check the agendas that somebody posts there that are translated in another language, but we also are not responsible for what is posted on those agendas. And then we talked about already the making efforts to invite groups that do not usually participate and we can go to the next slide. So, We are required to accommodate translation interpretation requests, which means that we have to provide assistance to anybody who wants to have translation services at the meeting. So if somebody is hoping to have translation services at the meeting, we have to help them find a space where a translator would be able to assist them. We need to slow the meeting down enough so that translation can occur properly for the for the individual making the request and maybe have a little bit extra time at the podium if they were making public comment. Also, there is a mandate to translate and post agendas if you have a language spoken by more than 20% of your jurisdiction, as outlined by the American Community Survey published by the U.S. Census Bureau. The city does not meet that threshold at this time. However, our website does have the capability for most of it to be translated. unfortunately our section where our agendas are posted actually goes out to another provider and right now it doesn't have the capability of being translated but if anybody were to contact us and we'll put information on the website if anybody were to contact us we would make our best effort to give them translated agenda There are new updates to teleconferencing requirements, so the classic teleconferencing remains the same, whereas if a council member were attending remotely, such as Vice Mayor Silva is tonight, the agenda must be posted at the location where he is attending from. The public must be able to attend the location that he is at. And all of the agendas that we have posted wherever we normally post them would have the information on where the location is that that other meeting is, they consider that another meeting site where that is occurring. And a quorum of the body must participate from the agency's jurisdiction. And all those be taken by roll call as we did tonight. So that remains the same. The new legislation allows teleconferencing as a reasonable accommodation for a disability. And that changes a little bit from remote participation under classic. the member must participate through both audio and visual technology whereas in the classic remote you only have to you can you can do both but you at the minimum can be on telephonic the that requirement would not stand if the person had a physical condition related to their disability so they would not have to be on video and if that was part of their disability And before any action can be taken, the member must disclose if anyone 18 or older is in the room with them and the nature of the relationship to that person. Their attendance would be treated like they were at a quorum with the rest of the council. And then all the other classic requirements do not apply to that individual. So some miscellaneous updates on this. AB 992 made several social media restrictions for elected officials who have pages where you could not... You could not make comments or post likes or reactions on those pages. That had a sunset date which has now been removed. We are required annually by January 1st to provide elected officials with copies of the Brown Act, which we did earlier this year. A few other little things. There are no special meetings for consideration of the legislative body's salary or benefits. We already had restrictions on that for other executive salaries and benefits and now that extends to the legislative body as well. The prior language of the removal of disruptive virtual attendees did not acknowledge virtual attendees. It only acknowledged in-person attendees. So that was added. And that is pretty much all of it as quickly as I could go.

Sorry, I tripped over myself a lot there.

But anyway, so the recommendations where you receive the report, which you just did, and adopt a resolution of policy of disruption of telephonic or internet service during meetings.

You know, thank you for the presentation. I mean, I don't have any questions. I'm sure there's going to be questions as we implement this. We can already see changes that Corey and the team are starting, like with the screen in the back, and what we started to experience on the front end, I was assured that the technical difficulties in the computer had nothing to do with where we're going, but it's going to be a little bit bumpy, but, you know, we fall within that guideline, so we're making progress, and I appreciate the update, so... With that, I'm gonna open up to the public for any comment on this. It's getting late, seeing no one. Everyone's tired. Bring it back. This does require a council action item. If there's no other comments, I'll entertain a motion.

I was thinking you into different languages, but a translator. I mean someone could also ask for a sign language interpreter as well. That would be the same as a translation. So if someone needs something they have to make the request and was there a certain time frame they had to make the request before the meeting? There probably is.

We already have that in place for hearing assisted or ASL or for people who need the word for hearing impaired. So on the translation, the SB 707 doesn't give us a time frame. We could set our own. I did not want to really put a restriction on it. I think we will probably try to feel that out. think that we could accommodate somebody all the way up to 24 hours prior After that it's it's a little bit more difficult But we definitely would try and insist if somebody came along and asked for us to provide the agenda Translated there's no requirement for all the agenda packet materials to be required to be translated, even if you are a city that meets that threshold. It's just the agenda itself. So I think we'll try and see how that plays out before we put any restrictions on it because we want to be as accommodating as we can.

I have two questions. Yeah, Council Member Freeman. So there's a mandate coming from the state. What is the cost to a city like us on an annual basis? Do we have any idea?

I think the cost varies depending on the city and what equipment they already had. I think Joanna might have a little bit of an idea of what the costs have been to us and she can explain how the funding for that was handled.

It depends annually. So I would say one of the biggest ongoing costs is staff time. So we do need an extra staff member to ensure, to basically manage the Zoom room and support the mayor letting people speak and so on and so forth. So there's a management aspect for every single council meeting that we have to take into account. As far as the hardware, there's a combination of things. So we have like a Zoom license, which is pretty nominal annually. But then some of the hardware that you visually see, some of the work that happened behind the scenes, Public Works was fantastic. They came in and helped do a bunch of the wiring for us. A lot of that one-time cost, I don't have an exact dollar amount because we're also not done with it yet, but we do. It's not general fund dollars for the most part. There's some licensing and software costs that are general fund required, but most of it comes through PEG, which is our government channel funding, very specific funding that can only be used for hardware for making... meetings like this accessible to the public. So we're using that funding. Part of it is going to be dependent upon some of the issues that you experienced tonight. So we have to reroute a lot of the systems that I could not get technical with, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done so that we can make this fully Zoom room capable. So that's in addition to SB 707 and the direction we're going with council chambers. As far as dollar amount, if we have to purchase the captioning, because there's a captioning requirement, so if we have to purchase captioning hardware, we're probably in total looking upwards of $80,000 to $100,000. The captioning is really expensive. It's very pricey to have that real-time captioning. If we don't have to do that, it gets a lot, maybe in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, depending upon, again, the hardware and how much it will cost for the consultant to come in and do all the back-end programming on the system.

Thank you. And I guess the next thing would be like, what I'm thinking about is controversial issues where You're gonna have 60 people lined up on the phone to make comments and the added expense that that's gonna be for each one of these cities, cuz now it's gonna be so easy to line up 100 people. And so can we limit the amount of time that somebody can have on a teleconference instead of going to three? If we know there's 30 people stacked up on a phone, can we limit them to a minute? Is there some hope that we can get out of here before 4 o'clock in the morning?

Yeah, and you can go ahead and answer that, but those are the things that we're already discussing because in some cities where that could be complicated, you can actually change business from the floor while you wouldn't necessarily deny people the right to be able to speak. What you can do is pull cards, have it coordinated so that it's controlled. In some cases, just say there's an X amount of time for business from the floor and beyond that, it goes to the end of the meeting. There's nothing that says that business from the floor has to occupy itself and you can't go past it. So there's things that we can explore. Thank you, that's it? Yeah, those are things that we're looking at. Councilmember Stockton, I think that I saw you down there interested in saying something.

Oh, I was just going to make a motion to approve.

Okay, so you motion.

I was trying to fix this. I was having some technical difficulties.

There's been technical difficulties all night.

It was like flashing at me.

So we have a motion, a second, roll call.

Council Member Ritchie?

Yes.

Council Member Chapman? Yes. Council Member Frimo?

No.

Council Member Wiley? Yes. Council Member Stockton?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Silva?

Yes.

Mayor Carley?

Yes. Well, I appreciate it. That's the last of our items before we adjourn. I had said this, and I appreciate we'll have to follow up with what your ask was, but in tonight's adjournment is going to be in memory of Chris Piyaslian. He was the Recology employee that hadn't even worked for Recology for a year. He was tragically killed last Friday. And I know that one of the things that working with city staff and also with our city manager was to allow the company to all assemble on the same day and so adjusting the schedule so it will affect the Recology pickup in Vacaville next week. But it's unfortunate these accidents do happen, and it was tragic. I remember I was driving through Dixon and just seeing the lights and sirens and not realizing I was driving right by where the man had passed. So it's a tragic, unfortunate accident. But tonight we're going to adjourn in his honor and keep his family in our thoughts and prayers. So with that, good night, Vacaville. We'll adjourn at 1143. Well, okay. Yeah. Okay. I knew nothing about it. Normally it's coordinated in advance. So you and I can discuss meeting. We'll adjourn in that for the next meeting. It would just be a lot easier.

Okay.

No, I haven't forgotten. So anyways, good night, back at home.