City Council - Regular Meeting

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find any money let me know i'm awesome good evening vacaville this is the city of vacaville city council two minutes for andrea yeah city council meeting uh june 23rd 2026 it is 601 pm you have a roll call council agency authority member stockton richie here chapman here female wiley here

I just see on the agenda that I pulled up, it's the planning commission, so let me see if the regular agenda is in here too.

Vice Mayor, Vice Chair Silva.

Ready.

Mayor, Chair Carley.

Here. And if you are able to please stand for a moment of silence. Council Member Fremantle, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Yes. Ready, begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we move on, there is a report out from closed session. And this is on item 1A. the following conference was following a conference with legal counsel the city council has decided to join several other cities and water agencies in filing an appeal in the city of indio et al versus the state water resources control board case number two four c e c g zero four seven seven nine and with that um i will check to see if there's any changes to tonight's agenda To our city clerk, city manager?

No, there's no changes.

Okay. With no changes, do we have a motion? Motion to approve. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. Any member of the council have any updates for any boards, commissions, or committee meetings? Or any updates? you have something okay well real quick i'm going to go to council member wiley

We had a meeting of the Yolo Solana Air Quality Board the day after we had last met, so two weeks ago, and there's an incentive program to allow people to apply for, like, up to $750 for an e-bike, and they have to meet certain requirements. So I'll see if I can get that information and ask Joanne to put it on our website so people can see the process for applying for that, because it would be a great opportunity for people to be able to do.

Council Member Ritchie.

So I did attend ABAC, which stands for Association of Bay Area Governments. It represents about 109 cities. We're in Frisco. The main point of the meeting, the topic was to really kind of have all the cities come together, all the city leaders come together, and look at regionalism. How can we work together instead of all these little independent pods? How can we all come together to make a regional benefit, a regional project, And that was the emphasis of how regional from like transportation, the freeways, the problem with BART, and just regional projects. That was it.

I have a question.

Yeah, go ahead.

Council Member Stockman.

Was there any mention of any potential bond measures or anything that they're looking to propose in the November election that they brought up during that meeting?

The bond measure in regards to taxes, no. It was more in regards to just projects.

Thank you. Council Member Chapman.

Thank you. This is regarding an event, and that's the ribbon cutting that took place put on by Habitat for Humanities. It was a well-attended and... What I appreciate was the message that was shared by Jeff, who's saying Jeff? Anyway, the CEO. And that is one of their recipients of one of the homes that was built, a young lady, had three children, and she passed recently. However, the message was, you know, these are individuals that in order to be a recipient, they have to give of their time. I think it's like 500 hours. And usually they get friends and family or anyone in the community to come in and assist in the building of that unit. And then there is a lower amount. They do pay. There is an out-of-pocket amount that they also have to pay. However, the message that he was giving or sharing is how we have these individuals that are in dire need of a home and what they're willing to give, and the example that it shows for the family, for the children. He went on to say that she was a single parent, became ill, and her three children, her son became a pilot, And they all have their, there's one left in college, but the other one completed their college degree. So with that, we have so many people today that are in need. We have our unsheltered, our homeless, and we have parent, I mean, individuals that are losing their apartments. We have young people. losing their apartments and living in their vehicles because of how difficult and challenging it is right now. And I know a lot is being stated about the homeless, the funds that have been cut from the state, and I'm not going to go on and on. However, it means a lot to me. that when people acknowledge what is being done and those individuals that are appreciative of it, and it has improved the quality of their life, and that's what we're about. And so there will be 20 units built on this plot of land. And the agencies that we work with, It's just outstanding. It's remarkable. And I'm just so thankful and just wanted to acknowledge the Habitat for Humanities. It took seven years for them to get to this place, but yet they'll be breaking ground soon. City clerk or city manager, comments that we receive via mail and it's for a public comment. At what time is it? Does it just go into the record or do we share that we have received these?

You can share those with me and I will share them with the city clerk and we typically attach them to the agenda.

Okay, but they're not to be shared during the meeting itself?

No.

It's passed on to you? Yes. Okay.

And that's a good reminder. We had a mock city council meeting here today in telling all the kids that you can actually, if you can't make it to a meeting, in the future there will be an online version of this, you can actually send a message by email to our city clerk typically. Sometimes it can come to a council meeting and we would forward them to the city clerk and it becomes part of the record. And I don't think very many people know that. So if it's before the meeting, it's officially part of the record. And if it's enough time before the meeting, like the day before, there's enough time for that to actually be added to the record so that you could actually see it, not even actually be speaking for three minutes. So good point.

Vice Mayor Silver. Yeah, thank you. So with those inspirational words, Dr. Chapman, a lot of focus on the good. One, I really want to thank staff for actually helping support, you know, this transition that we're going through to make our meetings more accessible. uh so i appreciate that especially with the technical difficulties just want to extend my gratitude to raise patience throughout that effort from the last meeting but moving forward in addition to that uh parks and rec are we got a lot of recreation programs for our youth actually people of all ages but we do have a scholarship program a limited amount of funds for families that qualify so you know get the word out there there's a lot of great programs that are going on through our parks and rec department I was able to tap into a few of those and just talking to a lot of the coaches, a lot of the youth that are in there, it's their first time checking out different sport or different activity. So I think those type of programs that allow you to explore different opportunities and enrich their lives definitely helps not just their development, but it helps their families and helps our overall community. So thank you, Parks and Rec.

All right and then the only thing that I'll add in addition to I think several of us were at that Habitat for Humanity. These are great programs. The sad reality is it took seven years to get to one project and that's not enough. I think the reality is it'd be great if they could actually do one project a year and do seven of them across the entire county. But I want to just do a quick report out. after or since the last meeting, Solano Transportation Authority, I sit as mayor on that particular board. However, I also am part of the Highway 12 subcommittee and the 113 subcommittee. I mean, they're not subcommittees, they're committees. But this particular one was a joint meeting. The reason is because with all the cities and all the perspective land development opportunities that can happen anywhere in the county, it became important to look at the way what we think of Highway 12 and Highway 113, but really all the feeder and secondary roads that impact Vacaville or they impact Dixon or Benicia or the county. And so I know I see we've got staff here from STA, I appreciate it, but so I won't do as good of a job as you would if you were speaking. The takeaway was this, there's an 18-month process in which our city will help participate in understanding what is the baseline. So it's kind of like when we do an MSR for a new development area from a transportation, not to be political, but to simply understand Where are we at as a county right now? Right now could be 18 months from now, but is what is the impact of Akaville? So our public works director, Brian Oxley, I communicated with our city manager, will be the representative to work through this 18-month process so that we actually have a good roadmap in the county. of what our development can look like and what its impacts could look like. And so they looked at alternate roads and routes around Dixon or Rio Vista or Sassoon or even Vacaville when you think of where Midway Road is. And so anyway, it's It was a joint meeting for the two so that it was a single understanding what's going on. But the working group will meet independent of that and I'm sure they'll be report out. So it's a real positive move and I just wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that. With that, we're going to go ahead and move on to report to the City Manager.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, and community members. I do have quite a bit of updates today. So first off, our fire department has completed wildland firefighting training. They completed approximately 36 acres burned to practice firing techniques and mobile attack. Our community and economic development department is going through some staffing changes, and so starting next Monday on June 29th, the counter will open daily from 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will be closed during the lunch hours. We are actively recruiting to fill the vacant positions, but we will also be sharing this information via email with all of our development community as well. Quick update on quite zone for Roberts Ranch So city staff has been coordinating with both the county as well as Union Pacific Railroad To advance the quite zone initiative. We have five railroad crossings in McAville so we will be conducting a diagnostic effort with them which will identify if there are any improvements required at any of the railroad crossings. This diagnostic process does not commit City to any funds beyond the $75,000 that we're setting aside to do the diagnostic at this time. If there are any recommendations, then those would be brought back to the Council because that will require some engineering assessments and other details. It may result into a construction CIP project, but those would be at the future date. In addition to that, I'm really proud to congratulate our city of Vacaville and our finance team. We have won GFOA, Government Financial Officers Association, Triple Crown Award. So what does that mean? It means Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting, Popular Annual Financial Reporting, as well as Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. We are one of the 441 governments across the nation that have won this award. So I really want to congratulate our finance team that has done a tremendous job in achieving these goals. Next slide, please. The last, but not the least, the update. Thanks to our public relations team, we have launched phase one, what we are calling Transparency Portal. The web address is available there, cityofvacaville.gov forward slash transparency. And I'm really pleased to announce this because we have done a lot of community outreach, and as a result, we identified the areas where community requires a lot of transparent information. So this webpage talks about our council agenda items, financial transparency information, contracts that are approved at the city council, tax measure facts and factual information on the choosing a path and we do plan to expand this transparency portal in october once the city council adopts the strategic plan if it is adopted tonight we will also be doing quarterly updates and there will be future updates on our cip projects our strategic plan goals and priorities all of that would be also published publicly for our community to see the progress we're making and with that i wrap up my update thank you

Yeah, thank you for that and sometimes it takes a while, but for those who may not be in the audience today who have come here looking to understand an issue, one of them was the sound of the trains. Here's an example of how a process works. It takes some time, but thank you. I think on behalf of the entire council, thank you for moving forward and trying to understand this issue. With that, we're gonna go ahead and move on to presentations. Tonight, we've got two proclamations. The first one will be a proclamation for Parks and Rec Month. And so I do believe, Melody, Melody Lynn, are you in the room? Yes, you are, come on. I saw you earlier. Come forward, please.

we have been doing this for a long time. July is annual park and recreation month and thank you for the kind words earlier we are working hard as we do every summer and throughout the year we kicked off the creek walk It was in our favor. We couldn't have asked for a better night. We have a plethora of summer camps happening, sports programs. And I wanted to take a moment to just talk about National Park and Recreation Association and the power of recreation that they've outlined through six pillars. And they are the power of connection, where parks and recreation provide spaces where relationships grow, cultures meet, and communities bond. The power of play, from playgrounds to programs, youth sports, play fuels creativity, joy, and lifelong learning. The power of community, where public spaces offer room for everyone to gather, celebrate, and heal. And we see that in our community centers, in our parks. And then the power of nature, access to nature restores inspires and improves quality of life and that's something that we have the pleasure of witnessing in our parks on a daily basis and especially when we have this great weather and people are out there utilizing those parks and the connection that people have. to the parks and to each other. So lastly the power of well-being parks and recreation advances health resiliency and economic prosperity especially when we get that tourism aspect involved so I just want to thank you all for a moment to speak about park and recreation month and enjoy your July and get out and recreate.

Well thank you before you leave well certainly on behalf of the council we appreciate our entire parks and rec department, full-time, part-time, seasonal. It's amazing the programs we have here. But let me go ahead and read this proclamation. Whereas parks and recreation is an essential part of the quality of life enjoyed by residents of the city of Vacaville, and parks and rec programs and community facilities promote physical, mental, and emotional well-being while providing opportunities for learning, enrichment, and healthy lifestyles for people of all ages and ability. And whereas parks and recreation fosters community connections by bringing people together, celebrating diversity, promoting social equity, and creating welcoming spaces for recreation, events, and shared experiences. And parks and recreation contributes to the economic vitality and identity of the community through partnerships, programs, events, and facilities that reflect Vacaville's unique character and heritage. And whereas parks and recreation protects natural resources, preserves open spaces, and connects people with nature while enhancing the beauty and sustainability of our community, and that dedicated parks and recreation professionals, volunteers, and community partners work year-round to provide high-quality programs, services, facilities, and events that enrich the lives of Vacaville residents. And whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month, now therefore be it resolved that i john carley mayor of the city of vacaville on behalf of the entire vacaville city council do hereby proclaim july 2026 parks and recreation month so congratulations thank you And we do have another presentation tonight and so I'm going to ask our Police Services Manager, our Arctic Manager, Nikki Bell from the Police Department to come forward. And you can bring your whole team. I'm not going to say no. They might be upset with you later, but that's okay. It's a team sport, yeah.

Okay, so we are missing two, but mayor, vice mayor, and council members, on behalf of the entire Real-Time Information Center, thank you for this recognition and your continued support. This proclamation recognizes a team of dedicated professionals who work behind the scenes every day to support public safety in Vacaville. This year alone, Arctic personnel have assisted with more than 500 calls for service, and our Drone as a First Responder program has conducted more than 450 flights in support of community and our patrol partners. As technology continues to evolve, our mission remains the same, providing timely information that helps first responders make informed decisions and better serve our community. To meet that mission, we've expanded our operations until midnight, and continue to look for innovative ways to support public safety. What makes me most proud, however, isn't the technology, it's the people. Like so many public safety professionals, members of this team routinely answer the call when needed. Just last week, several members gave up part of their Father's Day to assist with drone operations during the search of a missing at-risk. Thank you for recognizing National Real-Time Crime Center Recognition Week and for your support of the people who make this work possible. I'm incredibly proud of this team and grateful for the opportunity to work alongside them every day. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much. I understand, do you have operations going on right now?

We did. I was actually worried that the team would not be here because we had a structure fire and another significant call that they were flying to right until the last minute.

We so very much appreciate for the entire city but on behalf of the City Council and with that I would like to further recognize with this proclamation Whereas real-time crime centers and real-time information centers leverage technology, data analytics, and information sharing to provide timely, actionable intelligence that enhances public safety and supports informed decision-making, and the Vacaville Police Department Arctic serves as a force multiplier for public safety operations by providing real-time situational awareness, investigative support, crime analysis, and operational coordination to officers, dispatchers, and community partners. And I'll add this, it's more than just our officers, it's the entire city. You name the department, so. Whereas the Vacaville Police Department already integrates technologies including drone as a first responder, automated license plate readers, video analytics, public safety cameras, and regional information sharing platforms to support crime prevention, emergency response, and criminal investigations, improving response capabilities, enhancing officer safety, strengthening regional partners, and contributing to crime reduction within the City of Vacaville. And whereas ARDCs are staffed by dedicated public safety professionals whose experience, expertise, and commitment to the service help transform information into actual intelligence. Providing critical operational support and ensuring timely information is delivered to first responders and decision makers to enhance public safety. Whereas the Vacaville Police Department remains committed to the responsible, transparent, and ethical use of technology in support of public safety and is recognized as a leader in real-time policing and drone as a first responder operations through innovation, collaboration, and the advancement of emerging public safety technologies. And whereas National Real-Time Crime Center Recognition Week provides an opportunity to acknowledge the significant contributions of Arctic professionals and to recognize the important role that real-time information, innovation, and technology play in enhancing public safety and building safer communities. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, John Carley, Mayor of the City of Vacaville, and on behalf of the Vacaville City Council, do hereby proclaim July 12th through July 19th 2026 Real-Time Crime Center Recognition Week in the City of Vacaville. I realize it's the 22nd, but the reality is this is such an amazing advancement. my whole life in the industry was always, what would it look like? And we've seen what today can bring. And the addition to the real-time information center and the entire staff that is now comprised under your leadership and under the leadership of Chief Poland is nothing more than just exceptional, not only in the region, but nationally. So thank you for representing the city of Vacaville and keep up the good work. So congratulations.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

And I think if the council wants to stand up. Oh, we can stand up, okay. I was here to help. See where you started?

Thank you. Thank you.

It's always great to be able to recognize the good work of our staff and the advancements in our community. So we appreciate that and please pass along to not only parks rec department, but also in the police department chief for all the exceptional work. We're gonna go ahead and move on to consent item or consent calendar. We have items 9A through 9M. I know that there's some items that are going to get pulled. Any member of the council or the public wishing to pull? I've heard that there's item 9A and 9G. I believe that's, is that 9G?

Yes.

Yes, okay. So 9A and 9G, any other items that the council or the public wishes to pull for a discussion?

I think I need to recuse myself from my end.

Okay, so you need to... We can communicate with, so to our city attorney.

So item 9G is being pulled and if the vice mayor wishes to recuse himself he would just remove himself from the dais when you guys discuss that item and we can bring it back into return when we go on to the next item.

Is it M? G.

Is that what you advise?

G. So your G? Yes, sir. Okay. So, all right. So other than items 9A and 9G, do I have a motion?

A second.

Okay, so we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right, we'll go ahead and open up item 9A. I do know that there's some members from downtown that may want to answer or have a question specifically. I don't know any one of any one of you who had mentioned that.

accepting our request in pulling this item. There are definitely items within the ordinance that had not been discussed prior. The having just a creek walk be the entertainment zone for the pilot program from now until the end of December. was not discussed. We understood it to be Town Square, which would affect five businesses versus Creek Walk affecting one business. In addition, the Creek Walk vendor has already purchased their alcohol for this season and made their financial plans based on that. And then moving back to Town Square, the boundaries are a little bit easier for us to measure. We'd like to see metrics of measurement to determine how this program is going to be successful and a few other we want to talk about the license type so beer and wine versus beer wine and liquor do we want people roaming the streets with traffic not being managed with tequila in their cup there's just a few things that we'd like to tie up before this comes to a vote so we appreciate you pulling it

correct thank you so we're pulling it for discussion yes thank you all right with that bring it back to staff we can always open up for any further public comment

Yes, so the boundary includes a larger portion of downtown. So all of the businesses within the boundary would be able to apply to participate in the program. And for the pilot program, patrons would be able to go to those businesses, purchase a beverage, and then bring it within the Creek Walk Concert Series boundary for the pilot program. For future events, if the program is extended, For future events, a boundary would be proposed for the special event permit application. And at that time, again, the same procedure would occur. So someone could say, hey, I would like to have an event in the town square. And businesses outside the town square or not adjacent to the town square but within the entertainment zone boundary would be able to have patrons come, purchase their drink, and then bring it within the town square if that boundary is proposed for a specific event. As far as metrics for performance, staff is looking to incorporate that into the program. So we'll present that to you all when we return to receive your direction on if the program should be extended. And trying to remember the last.

Yeah, I think it can help you. As far as alcohol type, beer, wine versus mixed drinks. EXPERIENCE?

YEAH, SO THAT WILL BE REVIEWED AT THE TIME OF SMITTLE FOR THE SPECIAL EVENT PERMIT APPLICATION. CURRENTLY THERE'S NO RESTRICTION.

NO RESTRICTION MEANING THAT IT WOULD BE BASED UPON WHAT THE APPLICATION IS AND OR WHAT ABOUT FOR CREEK WALK?

FOR CREEK WALK WE ARE WAITING TO RECEIVE THE APPLICATION AS WELL FROM ENTERTAINMENT ZONE LEAD AND HEAR WHAT ALCOHOL SALES THAT THEY WOULD PROPOSE TO HAVE. I'M NOT SURE WHAT'S CURRENTLY ALLOWED. WITH THE CURRENT OPERATIONS I THINK IT MAY ONLY BE BEER. Beer and wine. Beer and wine. Okay.

So at least the existing one right now is beer and wine. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I'm going to go ahead and open this back up. Do you have any other questions?

Yeah.

Okay.

Vice Mayor Silva. Thank you. Just, you know, I was on a... 2,400 mile away call last time. But in addition to what was in the attachment, can you just please clarify? So we're targeting that particular area of the creek walk. And so would any businesses within that boundary be able to benefit from that to where they don't have to pay into that particular permitting process?

Yes, I believe the application is currently free for a special event permit. So the participating businesses and the entertainment zone lead would partner together to submit the free application. And then from there, the only fees that would be incurred are just for the materials, the cups, the wristbands.

So for the, thank you, for the Town Square, if they, so for the Town Square area, the ones that originally were, you know, bringing this to our attention to discuss, would they have to pay for any type of permitting process for an entertainment zone or to participate in that?

No, no, sir.

Thank you. All right, let me go ahead. All right. I see a few more lights, so there's more questions. I was going to see if we had answered some of them. I'll go with Councilmember Wiley.

So you didn't mention security with when you said the price of the cups and things like that. So there would be a charge for security, is that correct?

Possibly. It just depends on if the police department determines that additional private security is needed. I know for staff, for Parks and Rec, we are considering having some additional security and Melody may be able to provide more information. Sorry, I don't have the report.

Good evening again. So yes, Parks and Rec was proposing some additional private security if the entertainment zone were to, you know, obviously include the Creek Walk. And it's really because the folks that we have manning the entry points are generally young cashiers and not knowing what that would look like. If we are talking about inebriated patrons, we wanted to have some additional security to help educate and provide any guidance. So we're not talking about our youth having to address those when typically an establishment such as a bar would have a bouncer who has training and who knows how to deescalate those situations. Obviously, PD's on hand and we would work with them if needed, but we understand also that they get pulled in many directions, so we just wanted to be prepared.

And so Parks and Rec would hire the security or the businesses that were doing it would have to do that?

I believe parks and rec would be hiring the security and looking for a budget augmentation to do so.

If need be. Depending upon the permit application.

I' m just curious, maybe I missed it, but when was the determination made on types of alcohol that would be served, beer and wine versus hard liquor? I don' t remember that conversation.

Yes, so we never restricted it. We kept it open to what ABC allows generally and we haven't really received any input from the Council Planning Commission or the public on restricting the types of alcohol that are served so. It's something that can be considered at each individual event, like for events like Creek Walk, where they only currently allow beer and wine. We would likely just continue to proceed with what's currently allowed and not make any changes in that case. So looking at it on a case by case basis. But we're open to hearing any direction from you all.

Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud. Big Brother's always breathing down our necks telling us the things that we can and cannot do in our lives with grown adults responsible. Most that are gonna be attending Creek Walk and these events, they are our neighbors, they're our community. And I think that if somebody wants to have a margarita or a lemon drop or whatever it is, These are the freedoms, you know, that we as citizens in a community should be able to make the decisions. Hopefully the city of Ackville doesn't end up paying for sloppy people coming in and ruining it, you know, with drunk and belligerent. I get that, and I get the concerns that our police department absolutely would have, but I just get tired of big brothers sometimes. So that's my...

And we can make that edit to the management plan at any time to add those restrictions later if we find that there are problems with certain types of alcohol.

And I would suspect that just like any pilot, the goal is to evaluate something to determine can we make something successful without creating something that clearly without good consideration becomes very quickly unsuccessful. So we want to be very careful. But at the same time, every event could be slightly different. I mean, it could be, depending upon what it is, a particular program that says it is beer or beer and wine or something specific to a permit that's applied for under the ABC rules. Okay. Council Member Stockton.

Yes, I I don't know that I want to wait till December to get feedback on this. I'm a little nervous about having hard liquor there just to be completely transparent. I think if we start small with beer and wine and maybe figure some of that stuff out to where we have people that can really watch the you know hard liquor consumption. can be a recipe for disaster if not monitored closely. When people are inside of bars and restaurants, there are certainly people there that are monitoring that. My concern is that I don't want people getting sick, hurt, or falling over on city property. So I have some concerns about the hard liquor. I also would like to stay in communication with the police department just to identify whether or not we're seeing significant response calls there. um because if we're on the hook for paying for the additional security measures to make sure that something like this is done safely I just I'm not sure we can wait until December to allow things to get out of hand if they are getting out of hand so it would be my it would be I would like to start small I would like to just do beer and wine and I'd like maybe um an event debrief or after action report with that to kind of look at you know how many um POLICE CONTACTS OR IF WE HAVE TO HAVE OUR AMBULANCE RESPOND OUT THERE FOR PEOPLE THAT NEED OUR ASSISTANCE AND STUFF. I THINK WE'RE GOING TO NEED INFORMATION BEFORE THAT DEADLINE. AT LEAST I WOULD FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE WITH IT.

ABSOLUTELY. YES, WE CAN SET UP THOSE COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS AND WORK TO COME TO CITY COUNCIL SOONER. If there is no opposition to restricting the alcoholic beverage type, we are certainly open to doing that. We can modify the management plan now before the event starts and then make sure that we condition that in the application.

In the way that it works now, the individuals that have the license to sell hard liquor can also sell beer and wine as well, correct?

Correct.

I'd like to start there. I think that's smart. I'm gonna go ahead and say what? I just said sorry, Ted.

No, no. Well, I think the key here is you're looking, staff's looking for direction, that's all. And it's like anything else, you're going to try and create something that is in the interest of what the council is asking for. I do believe that you can start with at least the way it is right now, but I think it is important to understand if it is something that's more open it's going to create more risks more you know all those things require security so i think going with the creek walk with what's already there that's an easy one to start with right so and then anything beyond that should be carefully and critically looked at from staff i think that that would satisfy it do you have a councilmember chapman you have questions

You addressed what I wanted to say.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the public, which also may help address the initial concern and anyone else with any further questions or comments.

I apologize for my dress. I wasn't planning on coming tonight until I saw this was on here. I'm Blake Borchers, my family owns the Main Grave downtown. I've been a pretty big advocate of downtown and entertainment stuff. You and your campaign had it many times about building downtown and building that up. I think that's something that I've strived for and many, many other people downtown have. I just want to make sure, because there's been a lot of talk about this the last couple years, it's been a long road to get us to where we're at today. We don't forget what the original spirit of why we started talking about this was to actually activate downtown. It was actually to, the reason why I started campaigning for it was to help the businesses that are down there. We as a community hold events and we keep bringing in outside vendors and outside people. Even, it's funny, it is Parks and Rec hired the company that vends the beer and wine for Creek Walk now isn't even a local, it's another city. And so we're not even getting that tax revenue. And so the spirit of this was to create more of a community and give opportunity for the existing restaurants to try to bring business in and to have people mix and mingling amongst the square, amongst downtown, different events so that we weren't having to bring outside vendors in and things like that. I do just wanna say everything that I've read about it and our consultants, the city has the ability to change it, make it whatever they want. You guys have the ability to make this something for Vacaville. But I just want to make a big point of that this was supposed to be a lot more than Creek Walk. Creek Walk already has this. It's already set up every Friday night during Creek Walk. There's a full RFQ, whatever you call it, that went out. That company paid very dearly to get that contract. It would actually be kind of detrimental to them if this was at Creek Walk. And it's also not realistic that someone's going to go from the corner where Journey is, buy a beer, and walk to Creek Walk. There's just like, as you guys were talking about, the front door for that isn't really equipped for that. And I think that would be a huge mistake if that's what we were going to do for our pilot program, because that's already set up. And like I said, the company that won that paid dearly for it. They paid fees. They pay part of the security. And they have to pay, I think it's 15 of all of their net sales every week um so it is a it's a big cost and i and honestly uh as much as i'd like to get it passed i i'd feel bad for that business if we did pass that so just i think it got pushed through without everybody kind of knowing everything about it so that's why i was hoping we could step back and maybe learn a little bit more plan a little bit better and then move forward so that's all i got thank you yeah thank you

So again, as a follow-up to that, if we go to Creek Walk, you're benefiting few businesses. If you go to Town Square on Thursday night for Thursday night music where already 1,500 people couldn't go down, then you're looking at five businesses that benefit from selling alcohol into the event, which was the purpose of this. The purpose was to go from a business, take your drink outside and enjoy the music. So Creek Walk to me for the pilot doesn't make any sense at all. So please reconsider and think about the five businesses that surround Town Square and that the Thursday night music is already set up. People attend, they're excited to attend. Let's utilize what we have.

Yeah, thank you.

I'll go ahead and close this portion of the public comment on it. Can staff actually address this? I mean it sounds to me like what we have is this is on our consent calendar we've already this is establishing the entertainment zones and policies and procedures. This does not formalize in any writing that says this is the way Creek Walk will be. We can do whatever we want. And so nothing passing tonight negates the fact that even this council can weigh in and saying we hear you and it sounds like that that's something that needs to be addressed if it's already under contract under Parks and Rec and the whole process. I totally get what the gentleman said and that is if you've just gone through this year and you just paid for it and you have to pay for the security, why would a business downtown? So is there a better way to pilot this and maybe is the town square maybe a better option? Or how do we lean forward and what will be the process for staff to review if these permit applications are free, what could be recommended to the staff that came here tonight or to the public?

thank you director Morris here I want to clarify a few things when we started this effort with council direction the allowances that the California Department alcoholic beverage control had to that allowed the creek what concert series to happen where all the businesses around there can sell alcohol and it can be taken into the square and concerts can be enjoyed it looked like those provisions are going away so initially there was focus on having an ordinance for a broad area of downtown so the council does not do the second reading tonight there will be no entertainment zones downtown but the focus was, let's look at Town Square, let's make sure all the cool stuff that's happening there can keep happening, and then let's look at other options. Since then, the event promoter for the events in Town Square, Sandra Over, discovered a new state law that extended the ability to keep doing the Creek Walk concert series the way it's been done. It's been kind of like an entertainment zone within the square. We did have multiple group meetings. We had multiple focus meetings. There was a lot of input. I mean, some of the folks that are here tonight may or may not have attended those meetings. But over time, this program kind of got a little bit, the ordinance is broad and the program is smaller. And a lot of it's due to those safety concerns that some of you have touched on, input from the police chief and his team. So at this point, the ordinance that you'd be doing the second reading for is the law that allows us to have a zone. The program that Associate Planner Demir Powell has been referencing is what we're recommending as the 2026 program, just to get us to the end of this year. Let's test out the ordinance with Creek Walk. Let's see how it goes. As Demir said several times, if during an event permit process we discover there's something we didn't anticipate, it's really easy to bring the program back to council and say, hey, we learned some stuff. Let's make this adjustment. But if you don't adopt the ordinance tonight, we don't have an entertainment zone. And so therefore, we can't have any kind of program related to implementing that newer state legislation.

I think that answers that. I appreciate it. So the ordinance allows the structure and the framework. A program can be adjusted, adopted, and brought back at a staff level and to council if we're going to make adjustments at any time.

Yeah, I'm sorry, one more thing. With the special event permit process, which is run out of the city manager's office, that my team's involved in, police is involved in, there's a ton of pre-work on these special events to figure out logistics, what's gonna work, is security needed or not, all those things. And there's always a debriefing process. So it's a very small group of staff that work on all the special events for Vacaville. But if there are problems, I feel very confident that PD and fire and others will be the first to raise those issues to the group. And we'll be able to pivot and bring program changes back or just not authorize things that aren't working very well. That's the nice thing about if you get the ordinance in place, the program is probably the most flexible thing and it can change as it needs to to address how this goes. And our goal would be to bring you a 2027 program that's more comprehensive, that's informed by what we learned during this sort of pilot program in the rest of this calendar year.

Great, thank you. Vice president.

Yeah, so I understand the concept of implement a larger to go encompassing a policy for timbers own the program is still unclear to me because what I'm so what I thought I heard was that town squares of a part of that are still has those businesses can still have access to this, but then I'm also hearing that they can't so just So how would this help what's currently going on in the Town Square area?

The Town Square area does not need this ordinance to pass tonight in order to keep doing what they're doing. Based on some flexibilities that state law, there's a state law that went into effect and it's given them the flexibility to keep doing what they're doing. This 2026 program would allow businesses downtown that are within the boundaries of the area that the ordinance allows to participate in an entertainment zone in conjunction with the Creek Walk Series. And that's the focus. It's with the Creek Walk Series events. So that's I hope that answers your question. There could be, I'll go further, there could be a future program that allows a standalone entertainment zone in conjunction with events in Town Square or a broader entertainment zone in conjunction with events like the car show, the summer car show. That is something staff would recommend that the council look at at the beginning of 27. So building off of that,

the businesses that would benefit in that defined area for that are a part of the creek walk those would benefit they wouldn't have to contribute anything more but and it kind of goes back to i asked earlier just to clarify but the town square businesses they would have to pay for additional permits each time they do an event

Our event permits are free. So Town Square is doing these events at no cost for events.

So the cost is for ABC licensing?

The cost for an entertainment zone activation is that if you start adding alcohol service in different locations in conjunction with Creek Walk, that will result in the need to have security. And this was explained in more detail at the last council meeting, but if we find someone who's going to partner with the city to activate the entertainment zone during the Creek Walk series, part of the permit process would be to figure out what kind of security is needed, what other costs are there, and either we'd expect that the person who's partnering would be paying those costs, or as we explained last time, we'd have to come to council to ask for an augmentation to cover those costs for activating the entertainment zone.

And then, so what, is there still a policy that requires some type of defined border in the Town Square area where I've observed there to be like painters tape to define where folks can bring their alcoholic beverage or not within that defined area?

What they're doing there right now is under kind of a different state law with the entertainment zone program that the council adopted at the last meeting. It really establishes all of those details of what would be required if the entertainment zone were activated in conjunction with the concerts.

So this would, they would no longer need to do that if we approve it tonight?

Not necessarily.

I know. Okay, thank you.

i and i think a broader question is i don't sense that the the members of the community who came here tonight believe or feel that this is helpful and what i'm trying to do is is help everyone understand what this is versus what this isn't it's a pilot program but we already have a creek walk series but with this ordinance passing on the second reading it wouldn't preclude anyone who is looking at what this pilot zone area is from applying for saying, hey, we want to create an entertainment zone for this. It could be an expansion of what Town Square is for a series of events that are like Town Square or maybe it's an expanded Town Square that includes more businesses. Would this allow this or are we restricted based upon this year's, if we adopt this policy?

What I would say is that the program could be amended by the council at any time. One of the things about developing this entertainment zone accompanying program in a fairly limited time period since January when we kicked off is it has taken quite a bit of staff resources from the different departments to come to consensus, okay, here's what we feel comfortable with and here's all the feedback we've gotten, et cetera. But if there was an event that someone came up with and they thought, you know, really, we have this entertainment zone by ordinance and we'd like to do something different than what the program shows, that certainly could come back to council. The program is always amendable. But not by staff, by council.

Council Member Stockton.

I guess my question is in a...

I guess my question is in addressing outside vendors with these permits, right? So if we move forward with opening the entertainment zone, can we give direction today that would say that we want to start off by seeing how this impacts our currently existing businesses without bringing in vendors inside of that entertainment zone outside of Creek Walk specifically? Is that direction that we can give today?

I'll look through the mirror. I don't think we've ever contemplated activating an entertainment zone with Creekwalk and then bringing in vendors. Part of the thought behind a more limited 2026 program is to really activate an entertainment zone to benefit brick and mortar businesses.

Right, and that's what I want to identify, right? Is it working to help existing businesses? If we have a car show or we have something else downtown and we bring in a bunch of vendors that are going to sell food and items, that's not going to help our local businesses. They might not even have permits with the city of Vacaville to even put in for that. And if it's at no cost, what's to stop somebody from doing that every weekend? And so I think what I would like to see is that as we start this pilot program that we're not allowing the vendors to participate in events that these special events so that we can truly gauge whether or not it's impacting having a positive impact on our local businesses. Is there a reason why we can't do that?

No, there's no reason why we can't do that. And again, to Erin's point, this is targeted specifically for the businesses. So when drawing that boundary and saying these are the participating businesses, it's for them and no external agency. The matter of this going on with the Creek Walk series is just because it's already happening and it's already in agreement that is currently happening.

But there will be potential other events that are our downtown business improvement district can do one of our local businesses are restaurants can set up on their own and I guess what I'm asking is can we give direction right now to not allow outside vendors that don't have permits and are operating within the city of Vacaville to can we keep them out to see the impact that is having our brick and mortar people.

i would say that they're not currently contemplated as part of the program that we've presented to council outside vendors it's really intended to be for the brick and mortars downtown when we come to you next year for the 2027 program like i know i'm aware from working with the bid that there's an interest in possibly activating the internet entertainment zone with the car show maybe with some of those other larger events and so foreshadowing your interest and thinking about that when we come back in 27 that should be part of the direction we seek from council is what does an expanded 2027 program look like and what are the things you want to make sure staff is thinking about and addressing as we develop that program.

Yeah, I mean, that's really what I want to know, because if this ends up being something where we're throwing parties in the streets and it's impacting our public safety services in a negative way, right, it's impacting our public works, having to pick up everything, and then we have businesses that aren't benefiting from it, I will not support it moving on. And so I want, you know, I want to establish the, I support establishing the district or the the special the area but i but it's very important to me the feedback that i'm going to get for businesses about whether this is helping or hindering their businesses because it's already hard enough for them councilmember freeman yeah i just want to say i appreciate what the gentleman from main grape said and i i think you've got a lot of wisdom there and it's

exactly how do we activate our downtown and i think that is the goal of our entire council what you know when we started thinking about this and just because i say something doesn't mean i've done a lot of in-depth studies to some of it and know all the intricacies i know that i've gotten a lot of complaints from people years gone by, waiting in line 20 minutes to buy a chip so you can wait in line 20 minutes to get a beer so you can get out on the dance floor. So that was one of my hopes. But the other thing that I think is really important too is how do we deal with bad actors? You know, so if we have businesses downtown that are requiring police services on a regular ongoing basis that are going to participate in this and they're not going to be a good actor, they're going to be a bad actor. Can we put something in place to perhaps prohibit them from joining in on this opportunity for activating business. I'm not trying to discriminate, but if we've got bad actors, then I think that that's something that needs to be addressed as we go forward.

The program allows the police department in particular to consider the participants and to consider that kind of background. So I believe that is addressed.

Great, thank you. Vice Mayor Silva. Yeah, I think, so just, well, going off that last item, I think just to put things in context, and anybody can correct me who has data otherwise, but I think, like, as far as the town square events go, I don't recall there ever being any substantial calls for service related to those particular events. And I think, you know, part of that shows that the individuals going there are being responsible, the business owners and staff are being responsible. For me, I totally understand, I believe I understand what's being said. This zone allows us to get the more flexibility to figure out how we develop these programs. I'm not sure how the heck we're gonna regulate to some point who has liquor and who doesn't. That's an interesting concept, but I think looking at these metrics that still haven't been defined are really key, but I think it's also important for the public and particularly those downtown to know. And I'm pretty confident that council as well is looking at how can we make things much more efficient therefore more effective for uh for downtown businesses to thrive so i i think with that said you know we we allow this this to uh assuming we allow this to go through um now the question is what what program what are the pain points that there are uh that we can implement policies to put in a program that makes sense um that everybody's on board with uh that in in a sense really helps set up our our downtown businesses to thrive um not just for the from whatever it is that they consider entertainment doesn't, you know, cause a negative impact. So that's kind of where I'm kind of seeing this, where we're at right now. Thank you.

This has also been discussed at length at a previous council. I know that you were remote, Vice Mayor, and in a lot of the attempts to get something done downtown and create an entertainment zone. For those of you who have been to entertainment zones in other cities, it's just normal. as anything. It's like, I can't remember a time when there wasn't one, but it's new to us. And so part of what has to be understood here is we don't even have a chapter in our municipal code. This establishes a chapter in the municipal code that helps to create under a title entertainment zones, policies, procedures, standards for establishing and regulating them. The programs underneath them are going to have to be tested, vetted, determined how they work. Clearly all these questions have to be addressed is particular cup, particular wristband, all the things that can identify when and where and how. And then a community that has a culture that goes, no, it's Creek Walk. This is what we do. And I think what we're trying to do and the purpose for bringing this forward was to create an opportunity to activate downtown. So what I don't like or I don't want as tonight's takeaway is if this passes is some sense that the city failed. The city has worked feverishly trying to actually listen and get an entertainment zone policy in place so that we can actually create programs. Is that correct? Yes. All right. I think that that's enough on this. I appreciate this coming to the public. Maybe there could have been some clarity and maybe just what happens is the moment something moves forward, then it creates a lot more questions.

There's going to be a lot more questions.

All right. With this 9A, this would be a time if anyone wishes to make a motion.

Motion to adopt the subject ordinance. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? abstain so we got some work ahead of you but this is some additional feedback thanks to the public for coming out because i think that it's just going to create more questions and just continue to lean into the downtown businesses so that we have a successful program so thank you we're going to take a three-minute recess so that we can discuss the next item in advance with legal counsel so we'll stand in recess for a few minutes

you Thank you. you you you you

We're going to go ahead and reconvene this meeting at 728. Apologize for the extended delay for the public and also for those who will be here all night. It'll be a long night. The next item was 9G. I'm gonna turn this over to our city manager, Chaudhry.

Mayor, vice mayor, council members, after discussion with staff, we have decided to pull the item, 9G, to move it to the July 28th meeting.

Thank you. So there's been some members of the council have been contacted and also city staff has and so what we're going to do is allow a process to work through. The agenda item was for our three-year extension on the contract with a company but some information that has been brought to our attention it's better suited to go ahead and move this to a future item and we've identified that in July. It will have to come back on the second or the only July meeting. So that's when it will be brought back to council. Yes.

So do we need to vote on approving that?

No, it's been pulled. So there's nothing to vote on tonight.

The item has been pulled.

Well, I'm going to turn this over to our city attorney. Do we have to take a formal action? It's been pulled.

No, the action is the city manager has continued the item to the July 28th meeting, so it will be on the agenda, approval of this agreement at the July 28th meeting.

Yeah, thank you. All right, so that's our consent item. We're going to go ahead and move on to item 10. This is business from the floor. It's taken us a while to get here. 7.30, business from the floor. Any member of the public wishing to address the council on any item that is not on the agenda that's within our jurisdiction, please come forward. Good evening. Good evening.

All right. Okay, so there have been discussions about raising revenues for the city. There's been previous discussions on how we can do that in other ways. There's been discussions about cannabis being taxed in the city. As we know, it's legally taxed in surrounding cities and it comes here legally, right? And it tax and that tax dollar goes to surrounding cities. And I'm just asking the city council to have another look at that. There's an argument that it takes a lot of staff hours and time to write framework around that, but you could simply copy and paste what's working in other cities and save time so that we can raise funds to go for the public, right? So those could be earmarked for youth programs, right? You could call it greens for greens if you want to. But the point is that let's look at a lot of different options that can legally be taxed. Then when you have that conversation to open up legally, I understand it's not a health ad for the public, but alcohol and tobacco is not either, but it's legal and it's taxed. Let's take that tax one and put it towards the public for the good. And then you can open up to commercial use and then at scale, it really starts to make sense. Pharmaceutical use is a large way to generate funds because it would take like 30 dispensaries at that tax rate to make up for the deficit that we have now. But Fairfield has four, Dixon has two, right? There's arguments that, oh, they have robberies, but like, so do liquor stores and banks. They're illegal. These facilities operate just as well and as tight and as clean as banks do. So let's have a broader and deeper look at that. I'd like to see a commercial application be looked at and look at people who are businesses that work in that field that can come see what they can do to our community. And that would be a big value add. It would bring a lot of jobs as well. So let's look at all sides of this. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening, Councilman. Hey, it's time for your normal three-minute power nap while I prattle on. Okay, back on Sunday, there was an article in the Fairfield paper about all the backroom deals and payoffs and whatever else that California Forever was doing to grease their way through Sacramento. It made it very obvious from the things that they intend that the local governments in Solano County will have no say about anything. And that this will be like we always thought, this will be Jan Stromek's little fiefdom. So those of you who are romancing California forever, better think about that. And let's remember the way that we originally learned about California forever. They were secretive. They were backhanded. They sued people into books. into bankruptcy simply for not wanting to do business with them. They very recently have used a fake lawsuit to destroy or to attempt to destroy the reputation of another local elective official who is simply not, you know, just telling them, hey, you know, come to us with plans, not with BS. And so they've gone after him. Hey, guess what? Like this has been said before, show us who your friends are and we know who you are. So those of you who are making noises about snuggling up to California forever, better think about that. I spent this weekend over in Sassoon tabling with Solano together. And the main thing I heard from people is that, yeah, those are the, and they use the word that most people would use to describe California forever, who sued those farmers. That's what people remember, think about it. Okay, so last week they sent my wife another one of these flyers about the wonders of a shipyard in Solano County. Okay, I won't go chapter and verse about that again, but we know that ain't happening. And now Saronic does build some really neat little boats. And one of them was used last week to rescue those downed flyers in the Persian Gulf. But remember this, they don't build ships. That craft they built or that they used had been built in Austin, Texas. And if they ever do build a Port Alpha, they've already spent over $300 million in Franklin, Louisiana. And they have a property concession in Brownsville, Texas. So if they're going to expand, that's where they're going. They're not going to try to do business here. It's too damned expensive.

Thank you.

Mayor and members of the Council, my name is Amber Maneni. I live in Lagoon Valley. I know this item is not on tonight's agenda, but I wanted to take a moment to raise awareness about the proposal for the Pilot Travel Center near our community. RESIDENTS UNDERSTAND THAT GROWTH IS INEVITABLE, AND MANY OF US SUPPORT RESPONSIBLE COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. HOWEVER, THE 24-HOUR TRUCK STOP WITH REFUELING FACILITIES, A CONVENIENT STORE AND A VEHICLE STATION'S OPERATIONS IS SIMPLY NOT THE TYPE OF DEVELOPMENT THAT MANY ENVISION FOR THE GATEWAY TO VACAVILLE AND THE LAGOON VALLEY AREA. The proposal raises serious concerns about the increased traffic noise, light pollution, air quality, safety and long-term character of the area. Once a project like this is approved, its impacts are permanent. What has been especially encouraging is seeing residents from across Vacaville come together to become informed and involved. Thousands of signatures are being gathered because people care deeply about preserving the quality of life that makes our city so special. I respectfully ask the council to ensure that the proposal receives a thorough and transparent review and that the voices of residents are given meaningful consideration throughout the process. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service to the community.

Thank you. Good evening.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Christine Castillo and I'm here today to express my opposition to the proposed pilot truck center on Cherry Glen Road. Before discussing the impacts of the project itself, I want to address a fundamental concern with this process. Many of the residents who will most be affected We're not notified. Families living on Cherry Glen adjacent to and near this proposed 24-hour truck stop deserve meaningful notice and an opportunity to participate before discussions move forward. I know this because my property borders two sides of that proposal. Public participation is a cornerstone of good planning and it's difficult for residents to engage when they're unaware of a project of this magnitude is being considered next to their homes. We ask that this process not be done in secrecy. I shouldn't have found out third-hand from a next-door post. You mailed us notices when you wanted to build a guard shack at the new homes in Lagoon Valley and when you wanted to build a temporary fire station. Why not this time? This project would place a large-scale 24-hour truck facility in close proximity to existing residences, with some homes located less than 100 feet from the site. The impacts to surrounding residents cannot be overstated. Constant truck traffic, engine idling, air brakes, lighting, noise, diesel emissions, and increased activity throughout the night will fundamentally alter the character of this area and significantly diminish the quality of life for nearby families like my own. Many residents rely on private wells and have concerns about potential impacts to groundwater quality and availability. There are also legitimate concerns regarding traffic, safety, air quality, and the cumulative effects of introducing an industrial style use immediately adjacent to established residential rural properties. Additionally, this proposal appears inconsistent with the long-term planning vision for this area and is incongruent with the principles that guide orderly growth and land use compatibility. A regional truck stop operating around the clock does not belong next to existing neighborhoods and rural residential properties. I respectfully ask the city to ensure that all impacted residents receive proper notice and have opportunities to participate in this process moving forward. I also urge the city to carefully consider the significant impacts this project will have on nearby homeowners and ultimately reject this proposal. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? I would ask that you go ahead and form a line. Good evening.

Hi there. Chris Whitaker. That's C-H-R-A-S-W-H-I-T-A-K-E-R. Vacaville resident. Keep Vacaville safe. Pleasance Valley Ag Association. I would come on July 28th, but I'm going to be out of town. Last week we were at the Planning Commission and learned about the... general plan amendment and also the Northeast growth plan and figure while I was at it, I had a few other items to talk about as well. So thanks for your time. So the general plan amendment, as I understand it, a developer has requested a change to amend the general plan. Removing internal quality controls by request from an entity that the internal control is safeguarding against begs some serious questions about opening up the city to higher risk of fraud and abuse. Now, the Northeast growth plan. So I noticed with the city here that there's, or I should say the balance between ag land preservation and promotion and economic development in this town is holistically lopsided towards development. And I say that as one who about a year ago, we went to a community feedback meeting over at Three Oaks. We were all crammed into a room there and we were shown slides of the Northeast area there along 80 from Leisure Town up to about Midway. There was one slide that had everything was ag. It was like 90, 95 percent ag. Then they showed the next slide and it was almost zero ag. We're like, what in the heck is this? These were all people that live in that area. They broke everybody into two groups and said, well, what do you guys want to do with this area? We want to leave it as ag. What do you want to do with this area? No, we really want to leave this as ag. They kept going and kept going. And finally, we had to tell these consultants, look, we know what you're going to do. We're going to tell you something, and then you're going to go say that in your presentation. Well, fast forward a year later, guess what? Last week, that's what happened. They didn't even mention the community feedback at all. They gave three examples, three alternatives that included explosive industrial and commercial development all through that entire area. Now, the one thing that I will say for this is that Not only was the public feedback buried, but the other part of this is we're talking about people where these best locations are. In fact, their alternatives included best locations right in the spots where they're proposing them now. These are people that you fought for, and now we're going to turn around and dump this on them, and we're going to sweep away the community feedback? I don't think that's really cool. um the other thing i wanted to talk about was the pilot travel center uh looks like my time's up um but the last thing i want to say is the real crisis uh is no longer just at the expense of affordability and this is about the uh east of leisure town growth plan which is another way of you know people being steered into saying things that aren't really what they want and so the the debate point is the community doesn't want all this so thank you

I'm gonna go ahead and close the business from the floor and bring it back to the council. What I would ask though, to our city manager, can you please just maybe give an overview so that some of the comments that were made tonight, especially about a proposal that's not even a proposal, to help the public understand that we don't have information that's necessarily gonna, that we're even going to acknowledge a project.

Yeah, I would like to request our community economic development director, Erin Morris,

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. We did receive applications for a pilot travel center near Cherry Glen Road in Vacaville. This is a new application set that was just filed. This project is complicated and involves annexation to the city of Vacaville. and a whole bunch of other review. We were just in the first 30 days of that review. We did send out a neighborhood notification to a 600-foot radius and to everyone in Lagoon Valley. If the person who did not receive notice follows up with me, I'll make sure she's on the mailing list. But we will be hosting a neighborhood meeting in the short time ahead. And so that will provide that opportunity for early public feedback and information sharing well ahead of the project going for any kind of decision.

Thanks.

In my understanding right now that... ...head of the project going for any kind of decision.

Thanks. In my understanding right now that that is an unincorporated Solano County. It's not even in the city limits yet. Yeah, it's in unincorporated Solano County. The application is a desire to annex?

Yeah, the application is with the city of Vacaville proposing to annex into the city of Vacaville and to construct a pilot travel center. Okay.

Yeah, thank you. I think the council and many other people have received some feedback Robust process would always be likely to follow. So I'm I'm glad that we were able to send something out But there is nothing in front of the council right now. So, thank you All right, we're gonna go ahead and move on to item 11 a To our city clerk Sorry, so I'm sorry.

Sorry How long would that process be? When when when should the public here as far as next steps I

I would say about six months, six months to a year.

Okay, so just so I understand, I'm just going to say this. The city of Ackerville, like any city or county, can have individuals who are interested in land use. It could be east of Leisure Town, it could be a northeast growth area, it could be in our sphere of influence that's been in our influence. proposed annexation for 10 20 years there's always going to be those opportunities that the city is going to look to grow and get that input and ultimately make decisions so i do appreciate the last thing you want to do is pave over into parking lots rich ag land the city of Vacaville happens to be up against rich ag land and so this has been identified. But there's other areas that could be near Vacaville or whether it's in the city limits or an unincorporated area who look to develop and that is within their right. We don't necessarily go advertise for development but if there's land in or near the city that's either in our sphere, development applications may come in. And those applications may be the very front end of we have no idea what it's going to look like and all the reviews it's something that has to go through. So it's way too early for us to even know what that is or even if a proposal actually pencils out for a developer or a project, especially with one that is not even in our city limits. I do know that that area is zoned highway commercial. So these are the challenges of any type of a growth. So I suspect that we'll hear more, but I think even in six months, it's going to take much longer than that. I mean, a normal project could be how long for something like this?

Well, Aaron can answer that specific question. But for pilot, we're estimating about six months to a year before it would actually become a project for us.

Okay. It's not even a project. No. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Just real quickly, just... Since it is county and city right there, what classifies as a neighborhood? I was questioning that too. If someone is 100 yards over here, they're quote unquote county, then this area can be city. They get notified. three quarters of a mile away, but someone 10 feet away maybe could not get notified. How are we going to ensure that quote unquote neighborhood is a radius? Because it is a hodgepodge of county city, county city right there.

I think the key here then will be for staff to help us understand at some point. Sounds to me like we want to make sure everyone's noticed. And this is about as advanced notice to anything. Noticing the community before a project's even a project, I think is about as forward

thinking as you could possibly get your staff and I can add a little bit so the way we typically do is from the center of the parcel we just draw a circle 600 feet I believe and then that's where the mailing goes out so if somebody's missed by mistake we always are happy to add them to our mailing list but that's a typical process yeah okay yeah thanks we're gonna go ahead and move on to public hearings so this

approving the issuance by California Statewide Communities Development Authority of exempt facility bonds for the Vacaville-Gables apartments located at 131 Gable Avenue and Housing and Community Services Director Tamara Colden is here to present.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members. Tonight, I'm here to request that Council conduct a public hearing under the Tax and Equity Fiscal Responsibility Act, or TEFRA, hearing for the benefit of Vacaville-Gables Preservation LP and adopt a resolution approving the issuance of bonds for the rehab of Vacaville-Gables Apartments. IN 2019, CITY COUNCIL APPROVED LEDGE TO ASSUME THE EXISTING DEBT AND AFFORDABILITY RESTRICTIONS ON THE VACAVILLE GABEL APARTMENTS. THE COUNCIL ALSO APPROVED AN EXTENSION OF THE TWO EXISTING LOANS AND THE CITY AFFORDABILITY RESTRICTION. to accommodate the anticipated new housing revenue bond senior loan funding the project. From 2019 to 2023, Ledge sought tax credit funding to complete the full scope of the planned improvements for the project, but was unsuccessful in their applications. in april of 2024 council approved modifying the debt extending the maturity date and affordability restrictions and also extending that agreement to 2079 in order to increase the competitiveness of ledge's applications and in august of 2024 ledge was successful in securing bond funding for the project An initial hearing was held in December of 2024, and then the city held another hearing in May of 2025 as the borrowing entity had changed from Ledge Vacaville LP to Vacaville Gables Preservation LP. So why are we here again tonight, you might ask? Well, TEFRA approval expires after 12 months. As the bonds are anticipated to close later this year after a slight delay, that timeline falls outside of the May 25th, 2026 expiration date. So the city must conduct a new public hearing providing the members of the community an opportunity to speak in favor or against the use of tax-exempt bonds for the financing of the project. Adoption of this resolution is for the purposes of satisfying the requirements of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. And if the bond issuance is approved, repayment of the bonds is solely the responsibility of Ledge, and the city will not be a party to the documents or have any financial or other responsibility for Vacaville Gable Apartments or the repayment of the bonds. Ledge will make repayments over the next 30 to 35 years from the rents generated by the project. And in no case will the bonds exceed $20 million. So tonight, staff is recommending council hold the public hearing and approve the resolution for issuance of the bonds. The council could choose not to hold the TEFRA hearing or adopt the resolution. However, this is not recommended as it is required for Vacaville-Gables, Preservation LP, or Ledge to meet the tax credit financing requirements to access funds needed to make the property improvements at Vacaville-Gables Apartments. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions or take any comments.

Yeah, thank you. Vice Mayor Silva.

Thank you. Quick question in general. When these things are, when the bonds are issued, excuse me, what stipulates that they actually are putting in some equivalent amount or proportional amount of investment to that property? So like if it's $20 million, are they putting $20 million back into the property?

Yeah, so it would be the responsibility of the bond issuer or the agency issuing the bond and providing the financing. They would be the ones that are like keeping, making sure that the improvements and the rehab that was approved is taking place. In addition, the city does have liens and affordability agreements on the property that continue to be in place. And so the city can serve as a backup to ensuring that the rehabs that were approved are actually being conducted and are being finished with those bond proceeds. But ultimately, it's their responsibility of the bond issuer and the entity financing that rehab.

And then just for the sake of time, just a quick comment that in the past, your department has been very very good and much appreciated in working with property owners, whoever that might be at different times, and the tenants in any events where their rents in themselves are disproportionately increased, which displaces those individuals, you know, from those units. So I just want to HOPEFULLY, BUT MY POINT IS HAVING THOSE DEED RESTRICTIONS ALLOW THE CITY TO ADVOCATE ON BEHALF OF THOSE TENANTS.

THAT'S CORRECT. SO THE CITY WILL MAINTAIN AFFORDABILITY RESTRICTIONS AND AFFORDABILITY AGREEMENT UPON THE PROPERTY. IN ADDITION, WITH THIS REHAB, THE PROPERTY WAS AWARDED 24 PROJECT-BASED VOUCHERS FROM THE VACAVILLE HOUSING AUTHORITY THAT WILL BE IMPLEMENTED ONCE THEIR REHAB IS COMPLETED. AND SO THE PROJECT AND MANAGEMENT WILL BE WORKING CLOSELY WITH MY DEPARTMENT AND THE VACAVILLE HOUSING AUTHORITY TO NOT ONLY ENSURE THAT THE RESIDENTS THERE ARE NOT DISPLACED THROUGHOUT THE REHAB, BUT THAT THEY REMAIN ELIGIBLE FOR THOSE UNITS. THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER WARREN.

I think that was just about my question. So there would not be a situation where improving the apartments, the pictures looked wonderful, they need to be improved, would result in rents that would put people out. So you're saying that would not happen?

That is correct. The project is 100% affordable even throughout the rehab.

I'm going to open up this hearing to the public. Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the council. Not seeing any lights, do I? Motion to approve. We have a motion. Second. We have a motion. Wiley seconds it. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right, thank you very much, appreciate it. We'll move on to 11B.

11B is a resolution to reaffirm the Vanden Gate Mitigated Negative Declaration for the First Amendment to the Development Agreement for Vanden Gate Subdivision located east of Vanden Road and south of Joyce Drive, and an ordinance to adopt the First Amendment of the Development Agreement between the City of Vacaville and Vanden Cove LLC regarding the development of the aforementioned property. And Albert Eno, Senior Planner, is here to do the presentation today.

Good evening, Council. The item before you tonight is the Vanden Gate Development Agreement Amendment. Specifically, this is a request to amend the Vanden Gate Development Agreement to remove the Community Benefit Contribution Fee requirement. It involves an environmental assessment and a development agreement amendment. Those are the two entitlements. The figure on the right-hand side of the screen shows the location of Vanden Gate Subdivision, located east of Vanden Road and south of Alamo Drive. What we're talking about is in the southeast corner of the city of Ackervolts, within our city limits, and the area of the project site will describe the characteristics of what that project looks like and the relevance of this amendment. But for some background, this all started in September 2004, when LAFCO approved the annexation of this particular project, and the development of the project, which included the development agreement, was approved by City Council September of 2018. As part of the development agreement, there was a requirement to pay a community benefit contribution that went towards the funding of the fire station, as well as some other components that it could be used for. Progress was made with that project when the Director of Community and Economic Development approved the house plans for that subdivision in January 2020. But then the property owner later came back with a modification to that tentative map to change the street alignments and eventually reduce the lots from 43 to 42 lots. But in June of 2022, City Council provided direction to city staff that in conjunction with the adoption of the development impact fee, fees from 2022 that as part of that action city council directed staff to suspend collection of the community benefit contribution fee and so as part of that we went through the implementation process of conducting a variety of different administrative amendments to existing development agreements however what we found was that there were a number of different development agreements that were out there that could not utilize that administrative process this being one of those projects that didn't need to come back to city council and so that's part of the reason why we're here tonight Progress with the development of the project continued when City Council approved the final map, and that has been recorded. So if you go to the assessor's map, you'll see the recordation of those lots currently now. And so we took this development agreement amendment before the Planning Commission. We have a summary of what their review was that we'll share in the presentation later on. But for now, we're going to be talking about those two entitlement processes. As part of any kind of project, we have to conduct environmental assessment and, of course, there being a development agreement amendment. The overall project site is 9.36 acres. There's 42 lots. The developer is proposing, is going to be building single-family residential units. Vehicle access associated with this subdivision, which we'll show in some maps coming up, is going to be on Joyce Drive and Vanden Road. The DA, as it was originally approved in 2018, has a term of 10 years that would end in October of 2028. That DA does specify a requirement to pay a community benefit contribution, and $2018, that's $83.70. per single family unit that would be paid with building permits. The amendment is necessary really to comply with the original direction that came from City Council in June of 2022. All other terms remain unchanged in that development agreement. Some more information about the project site. The general plan identifies this as residential low density. The zoning is consistent with that general plan designation. What you're looking at are minimum 6,000 square foot lots within that subdivision. That looks a little something like this. that access along Joyce Drive to the north. And then I had mentioned that there would be access to Vanden Road, but that's going to be being provided with the adjoining development called Vanden Cove. So you've got 42 units within Vanden Gate and then 114 units to the south in Vanden Cove. All of them, as approved, would produce single-family detached residential units. That would be all market rate for sale. So our review is to make sure that we're complying and we're being consistent with a variety of different regulatory documents. The ones that are pertinent to hear are City Council's direction from 2022 as well as the Vacaville Municipal Code. This particular amendment would comply with City Council's direction. When we look at the Municipal Code, it would meet the findings that are required by that. I mentioned environmental analysis is required for any type of project, and so we looked at the California Environmental Quality Act and found that it would be appropriate to reaffirm that previous environmental assessment, that no new document would be required as part of this amendment, and the project meets those findings within the municipal code. did take this to the planning commission on may 19th they did vote 7-0 to make a recommendation for the approval but they directed staff to provide some additional information for city council related to whether or not we were leaving any money on the table and so what we felt was necessary it's identified in the staff report we felt it was necessary to identify it on the screen it's really a comparison between the community benefit contribution fee that was outlined And the development impact fee that was adopted, and so as part of City Council's action with the adoption of the 2022 development impact fee, Council felt that the recuperation of all the actual costs associated with those community benefit contributions, they would be recuperated with this update to the development impact fee. and so the table is intended to show you what that looks like with the pre-2022 diff and then with the adoption you'll see that increase of around 356 000 that's when we adopted the 2022 diff that's how much more would be collected by that new diff and so if you compare that to what we were going to collect from the 2018 cbc fee with the increase um that occurred since 2018 that amount really you're looking at only 98 000 that's being left on the table with that cbc removal so that information is available to the council as part of this action other pertinent information is related to the public outreach we send out a notice about the public hearing for the planning commission on may 6 held that planning commission meeting on may 19th On June 10th, we sent out a notice for this hearing that we're having tonight, and of course, welcome to hear any comments that the public might have concerning this item. Up until this date, we haven't really heard any major concerns from the public. In conclusion, staff supports the proposed amendment, meets the required findings, complies with the general plan zoning, development standards, complies with city council's direction, and all the other terms, this is important, terms and obligations remain in effect in that development agreement. So as part of our recommendation as well as the Planning Commission's recommendation to adopt the subject resolution and introduce the subject ordinance and that concludes my presentation.

Yeah, thank you for presentation. All right, looking for questions. Council Member Wiley.

If you, just quick question, if you go back to slide 10 with the chart, so did we collect the DIF fees from the post-2022 DIF fees, or is that because we don't collect those until things are built, correct? Correct. So really, we haven't recouped that, so it doesn't seem like we've lost more than the 98,000 since we haven't collected any of that? Correct. 98 million, 98,000? Correct.

We have not collected the CBC fee for this development. They haven't built homes. They're in the process of pulling building permits, but per City Council's direction, we've ceased collection of any CBC fees.

Right, but since we also put a hiatus on the DIF fees as well, so those are not going to be, when they are building the houses, we'll... We put a hiatus on the 2025 DIF increase.

The direction that came from City Council is related to the 2022 DIF fee, which is currently in effect.

but they're not paying it because the houses aren't built, so.

They will be paying that death fee. When they apply for the building permit and they pull their building permit, they'll have to pay all those development impact fees. So as they're building every single family home, they will be paying for those fees.

Okay, so even though it was from 2022, which has changed because they haven't done it yet, that was the agreement in place. So when the house is built, they will pay that.

Correct.

Okay, thank you for clearing that up.

I'm gonna go ahead and open up this to the public as this is a public hearing for any comments. Seeing none, I will bring it back to the Council. Thank you for putting this information together. I think the CBC is part of our past and I appreciate the staff report explaining this. So with that, I'm looking for a motion. Motion to approve. So, Councilmember Ritchie motioned and I think I heard a second from, well, it was a fight for who's approving it. Go ahead, go ahead. I don't mind. So, a second from Councilmember Freemill. With that, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. We'll go ahead and move on to item C.

This item is a resolution to adopt the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. And engineer Matthew Preece is here with his team to present the item.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, city council members. We are here to present the 2025 update to the urban water management plan prepared by Aldura, formerly known as MKN, on behalf of the city of Vacaville. My name is Matthew Fries. I'm the engineering manager for utilities. I'm joined tonight by Tim Hawkins, the assistant director of utilities, and by Cindy Sevilla Esparza, the project manager from Adora. Tonight, Cindy, in a few slides, will walk us through the details. But first, I'm going to share a little bit about the process. So while we are here and the process that brought us to this point, the urban water management plan is a statutory requirement under the California Water Code. Beyond meeting the legal obligations, the urban water management plan supports regional long range planning and provides a standardized methodology for evaluating the city's water resource needs and availability. The development timeline for the 2025 update was very short. The California Department of Water Resources released the 2025 guidebook in January of this year. ADORA quickly completed an administrative draft for the city to review in March, and in April, we notified partnering agencies and posted the plan for public comment. A public hearing ran in the reporter, and we are here tonight for a public hearing and proposed adoption. Following council approval, the final document will be submitted to DWR by July 1st. Part of the process, we coordinated with and notified surrounding agencies. These are those that are listed on the board here. This coordination ensures that our planning is aligned with the broader regional water picture here in Solano County. Now let me give you a little high level picture of Vacaville's water system, which is the foundation for this report. The city draws water from two primary source types. The first is imported surface water through three entitlements, the Solano Project, the State Water Project, and Settlement Water, which is a subset of the State Water Project. The second is groundwater from our wells. We operate 11 reservoirs for storage and they have a combined capacity of 22 million gallons. Water is treated at two surface water treatment plants, the Diatomaceous Earth Water Treatment Plant and the North Bay Regional Water Treatment Plant. Our distribution network spans over 340 miles of transmission and distribution pipelines serving the community. This is a robust multi-source system and that diversity is an important asset as we look ahead to future demands and potential drought conditions. Now I'm going to pass the presentation to Cindy to cover some of the details of this update.

Thank you, Matt. The urban water management plan seeks to evaluate the city's future supplies and demands, but it does also take a look at its supplies and demands ending in the year 2025, given the name of the plan. So as you can see here on this slide, this summarizes the demands for the city of Vacaville for the year 2025. As you can see here, single-family and multi-family users comprise the majority of the city's demands, followed by landscaping and then commercial and industrial users. In the year 2025, the city's total water usage was 17,323 acre feet. As I mentioned, part of determining the analysis for this plan was to calculate the total water demands, which first started by projecting the city's population projections. We did this by starting with the city's 2025 population that's addressed in the city's annual comprehensive financial report of 100,320 people. From then we analyzed the five year, 10 year and 20 year population projection growth and determine the 1.1% of the 10-year projection growth was mostly aligned with the city's other planning documents, and that was applied from 2030 to 2050, which is the range that the Urban Water Management Plan requires purveyors to report for these items. Following that, as you can see here, the projected 2050 population is just under 132,000 people. Once we identified the population growth, we were able to calculate our water demands by applying the city's 2025 gallons per capita per day, which is essentially the average amount of water a person uses per day. This for the city in 2025 was 153 gallons per capita per day. So once we multiply that with our population projections, we were able to calculate our demands. So as you can see here in the year 2050, we're looking at about just under 23,000 acre feet of water. And I did want to point onto this slide. Back in 2015, this urban water management plan is required to be submitted every five years. And in 2015, the state required purveyors to set gallons per capita per goal in order to meet in 2020. The city set this goal at 164 gallons per capita per day, and not only met that goal in 2020, but also met and exceeded that goal here in 2025. So I did want to provide kudos to the city for their water efficiency and their actions to meet that goal and exceed it as well. Once we've calculated the demands, the next step is to determine the city's available water supplies. And this, as you can see here, is summarized into two categories, projected supply volume as well as total availability in the supplies. The total availability is what the city is contractually obligated for their entitlements. However, the projected supply volume is more of a realistic average based off of historical conditions. So for example, as Matt mentioned, the city receives water from the State Water Project. The city's entitlement under their contract is just under 9,000 acre-feet per year. However, every year the Department of Water Resources releases their percentage for their allocation for the purveyors. And in the past 10 years, this allocation has never been the 100% as totaling almost at 9,000 acre feet. So we looked at the historical allocations that the state has provided and we used that to come up with our more realistic supply availabilities. And as you can see here, we have these totaled from 2030 up until 2050 for all the city's water supplies. And we did want to note that this does not include any reductions as of right now with the Bay Delta plan. That plan is set to be finalized by the State Water Resources Control Board at the end of this year. And so for the purposes of this plan and the submission by July 1st to meet DWR's deadline, we've included those notes to the state so they're well aware of those future results that may come into play. Following the analysis for the supplies and the demands, the next natural step is to determine if the city has adequate supplies to meet these demands. As part of the urban water management plan guidebook, the city is not only required to assess this for normal years, but also to assess this for multiple consecutive dry years. So the way we determine these multiple consecutive dry years was by looking at 15 years of historical data, rainfall data to be specific. Once we identified these years, we took a look at the city's available supplies during these years in order to determine any patterns that any increases or decreases of available supplies during those consecutive five years. And as you can see here in the table, based off of those historical available supplies, in that first dry year, there is a decrease from your normal average conditions. And then the following years, those supplies returned back to those average conditions. All of which, as you can see here, there is still adequate supplies from 2030 to 2050, even with that reduction that was noticed historically for that first dry year. So currently with these patterns and with these items that we use to analyze, the city is projected to have sufficient supplies to meet their demands up until 2050. part of the water the urban water management plan also includes the water shortage contingency plan which was a new requirement in the 2020 plan and that carried over into this 2025 update as well this came about after the projected 2012 to 2016 long drought that most of the state required and so as part of that the state required agencies to put together these six shortage levels in which the city could identify the percent shortage range. And so as you can see here, these shortage response actions range anywhere from conservation methods and outreach and education, to more stringent landscape irrigation restrictions and even potential water use allocations. These are the levels that were enacted as part of the city's 2020 water shortage contingency plan and have remained the same for the 2025 water shortage contingency plan. And in addition to this update in the 2020 plan, one of the new updates was the city being required to conduct an annual water and supply assessment due by July 1st every year, which the city has been conducting. So this is the new requirement that carried over into the 2025. Can you go to the next slide, please? And following with the water shortage contingency plan as well, the city was required to identify these demand reduction actions. And as you can see, these actions are correlated to the corresponding shortage levels from that one through six that we saw previously on the slide. Obviously at these, at the more, At the short stages one and two, you have some, you know, expanding public information and offering water use service surveys and toward the more stringent levels four through six, you start seeing more landscape and vehicle washing restrictions and other items like that in order to have civilians be more efficient with water. And so, as I mentioned earlier, with the city's goals to meet that gallons per capita per day, these demand reduction actions seem to be effective for the city over the last five years. So following the next steps, as Matt mentioned, we're here today to hopefully adopt this urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan. We will aim to submit this on or below, before the July 1st deadline through their WUE online portal. after that dwr takes a couple of months to review the report and all of the tables and supporting data that we provide as well and they will provide comments if any and then at that point ardura will work with the city to address these comments and following that the water shortage contingency plan and urban water management plan process will be completed until the 2030 update So at this time, we'd like to open it up for any questions or comments. We appreciate your time here tonight, and I appreciate the City's Utilities Department for their efforts in this plan. It's a very data-driven report, and so not just Matt, but his entire team have been very great with providing us the data we need to help prepare this.

So thank you all. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. Looking for questions, I see Council Member Chapman.

Thank you. Thank you for the report. Slide 11. Okay, yes. Much of this requires the assistance of the residents, property owners in the city. How are we communicating this message? How are we communicating this shortage? And I know everyone is not watching this council meeting this evening. However, pools, your landscaping prohibit certain types of landscape. How do we go about that?

Matt, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the city's primary source of communication is through mailing slots in water bills. I'm assuming the city website will have some of these items posted as well, but feel free to provide any input on any additional measures the city takes to...

Yes, and we also work with the Solano County Water Agency as part of their outreach efforts as well. So we're as part of that agency to educate the public through social media and things like that.

Okay, so it's not only left up to us. But when we use terms like require, how do we mandate to property owners that we want them to assist us in reducing the water usage? So, you know, that's a very demanding word to require.

Yeah, so for shortages, they'd be, you know, declared by council and, you know, it really comes down to public outreach and our staff working with members of the public during, you know, additional water patrols and things of that nature to try, you know, and follow the ordinance that was adopted by council earlier this year.

So there's no consequence to the homeowner?

There are consequences as outlined in the previous ordinance that was passed. I'll have to get that information for you.

Okay. Pretty much what I'm trying to communicate is the terms that are being used are like mandates. And so if you don't do this, then what? My property, I saw it down twice after each drought. My property right now looks terrible because of an investment that I don't want to do again because of the water shortage. I still adhere to past ask that were asked about years back. But when you tell me, that I have to do this. I have a pool, allow filling of swimming pools only when appropriate cover is there, is in place. I just had my cover removed a few years ago because it had aged out for me. But that's an expense, a huge expense. So I'm just saying, when we use turds like that, you can't force. but you can ask. So are there incentives to help the residents to, hey, there's really a problem, yet if you work with us, are we giving up anything?

Yes, so through the Solano County Water Agency, there are rebates available for residential customers as well as commercial customers. The city covers 50% of that cost. It goes to a committee through SQUA. So there are incentives for residents to comply with these requirements.

Okay. So go ahead. You were going to say something.

I was just going to say that if there is a water shortage, it would be declared as an emergency or on what level we are at. And if an enforcement program or fine program or something needs to be determined at that time, that can be resolved at that time.

OK. And another incentive that you used in the past, I guess it was an incentive, if you put in low, what do you call it, low maintenance lawns, then I think it was a couple of thousand dollars that you could apply for. Would something like that still be available and how will we communicate that?

Yes, we still pay into the program that provides education and outreach as well as the, I don't know if it's called cash for grass or exactly, but it is that low impact, low water rebates.

Yes, it's through squaw rebates for turf replacements as well as rebates for landscape irrigation efficiency. So we post on social media that these programs are available. If they reach out to our staff, we definitely you know, tell them how to apply for those rebates.

And the city's website also has a robust list, not just of the rebates and other programs, but also the educational efforts that the city of Vacaville is in partnership with to not only promote water education, but also ways to involve the younger, you know, K through 12 grade schools in doing their part in encouraging their parents to be efficient with their water as well. I think that's good information for residents to have.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Vice Mayor Cillow.

Yeah, so kind of along the same lines, so not to reiterate that, but I think, you know, just adding in a lot of public information or education around the different rebate programs where people can actually, you know, modify their lawns with the financial incentive to offset that, that has a greater public good to lower in our water take. I think it's key. Recently completed a water education for elected leaders program. And in Pasadena, they actually had these kits that they would provide for different home, you know, And I remember one of them was like just even a tab that they can put into their toilet bowl to see, or some aspect of that, one of them tanks, to see whether or not it was leaking. So I think any, you know, I'd be really curious to see if there's any funding or, you know, indirect grants that are out there that can help, you know, keep different residents informed of just mitigating their own water loss, those that are trying to do the right thing. So thank you. Council Member Wiley.

Thanks for the information. Could you go back to slide 6, please? So size 6 identifies the land uses of the water uses of the high ones. And one of them you mentioned was landscaping. And then I noticed that landscaping is potable water. Where are we with using recycled water in the purple pipe because I know it's a big expense to be able to have to do the whole program, but especially district 6 a lot of the new neighborhoods had the purple pipe, but we're still using potable water. So what do we need to do to use recycled water in irrigation.

So recycled water remains a long-term opportunity. However, it does require additional infrastructure. we would need at least one to one and a half miles of pipeline, booster station, storage tank in order to begin utilizing recycled water. We actively look for funding opportunities and we haven't adopted Recycled Water Master Plan. So we actively look for grants associated with recycled water. However, they've not been available to the city thus far, but it's definitely something that we actively are looking into.

All right, because that's a lot of use of water that doesn't, because we pay to get that water potable and then we have the other tertiary water is ready to use. So we're not utilizing that. So if we can continue to look for sources of funding would be great.

Yeah, thank you very much. I'm gonna open up to the public for any comment in this hearing.

Good evening and Brandon Sherry did not say my name last time. Just curious, we've had some education on devices that could save water but more education on pollinators. and native plants that easily grow in these thirsty, thirsty lawns. You know, produce is very expensive now. Education on being able to grow food in yards and this can be done in a acceptable way that looks pretty and beautiful and can still adhere to standards that we have in our communities. You know, HOAs and things of that nature, right? But we're talking about severe you're cutting your water use in half by going down to a vegetable garden in the front or wild flower gardens. So that allows us to have a lot more water in our reserves, right? So that's something that I don't think we're looking at enough. Purple pipe is a long-term solution. But we have no idea how intense our climate can be in the next five years even, and how dry it can be in the next several years. I think we need to really spend more energy and time into looking into how we can educate our public. We had victory gardens in World War II. We just had D-Day. That was something everybody used to have a garden. We also are healthier when we're working in our garden. If we could spend a little bit of time in educating our public on how we could get them to grow their gardens, I mean, it would be such a community add, a benefit to our community and save a lot of water. So something for us to look at.

Thank you. Seeing no one else, I'll go ahead and close the public portion of this hearing and bring it back to the council. I want to thank staff for doing this. I realize that most of us have lived in Vacaville and in California through drought years. We all cheer when we see the water at Berryessa come to the top and spill over, but those in the water business understand that you want it to go to the top and not spill over, right? It's like any savings you have is lost. It's an interesting phenomenon, but it's the relationship we have. So we benefit for having The Solana project water is amazing for what we have, not only for municipal but also for ag. But again, this is, just to be clear, this is a requirement by the state. DWR puts together a checklist. This is one of those moments where I'm not against the DWR on everything. I think the Solana County Water Agency is frustrated with some of their mandates that we have right now with what we're going to do with the water. At the same time, there are reasonable reasons for why we have to prepare for drought years and to have the measures depending upon what severity. Thankfully, we're not enacting that right now, but what happens is every year our allotment isn't always 100%. Thank you for bringing that up. I don't know what the date is. I'll ask offline, but when was the last time we got 100%? It's probably zero. They never give you your allotment. Again, this is where fighting for our own water rights is important, but at the same time being responsible with the use. So I'm grateful that our staff has done this. I appreciate it to have this in place, checks the box. In fact, it's a DWR completeness checklist. So we're accomplishing that, but at the same time, the bigger issue is we're educating the public and we're preparing ourselves. So with that, I just say thank you for doing that.

Vice Mayor Cillian. Yeah, I'm sorry, just clarifying question. Going back to slide, I believe it's eight, between eight and nine. So based on this data, the question I was coming up with, how are we maintaining, how are we creating more water? We're not creating more water as far as saving more water. Here it looks like we will be importing. Did I miss that in the presentation in attachment? So I'm just looking at this graph right here. Imported water is from row two. And yeah, the other two are consistent. So we're looking at, so that implies that Can you please help elaborate why we see an incline of imported water?

Yeah, so groundwater is expected to be able to increase as more wells are drilled. The Solano Water Project does increase over the years, and our ability to capture that will be tied to our surface water treatment plants and expansions at those plants. imported surface water from the state water project and the settlement water were kept consistent based on historical trends. So yeah, they're not projected to increase. But the difference between the projected supply that we currently have and the total availability are in part due to what allotment we get, but are also our ability to access that water through either treatment or additional wells.

But this is an assumption that we'll be able to access more imported surface water from the Solano project? Yes. And is that tied into the Bay Area Delta plan?

that will be determined with the bay area so and that is not incorporated in here no correct okay and all right thank you with that um i do appreciate it and i think for clarification when we use imported what we're meaning is it's not coming from the ground beneath us it's not like we're bringing it in on trucks we have sid we we sell water water is exchanged through the different programs correct all right with that i'm looking for a motion

So moved. Second.

So we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. We can meet the state's deadline, right? Move on to item D.

Item 11D is consideration of submitting to the voters of the city of Vacaville at the November general municipal election and measure establishing an additional one cent sales tax and a resolution requesting election services at the Solano County Registrar of Voters directing the city attorney to prepare an impartial analysis and setting rules for written arguments for the measure. And Assistant City Manager, Georgianne Meagher-Smith, will give the presentation.

Great, thanks, Michelle. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Tonight's presentation summarizes the city's response to a structural general fund deficit. Over the past several years, council's received updates on the city's financial outlook, approved cost saving measures, reviewed community feedback, and directed public education regarding the choices facing Vacaville. We're returning tonight with the final step in that process, consideration of whether a locally controlled funding measure should be placed before Vacaville voters in November. This slide illustrates where general fund dollars are spent and it's one we've been sharing at our community meetings. Approximately two thirds of the general fund supports police, fire and emergency response services. The remainder funds public works, parks and recreation and administrative services functions required to deliver city services. Understanding this allocation is important because when the general fund revenues do not keep pace with expenditures, the city's largest service areas inevitably become part of the discussion. The key issue is not a single difficult budget year. The challenge before us is structural, meaning ongoing expenditures are projected to outpace ongoing revenues. The city is currently projecting an approximately $11 million structural general fund deficit in the upcoming fiscal year. While reserves can help bridge short-term gaps, they are not a permanent solution to an ongoing imbalance. Without additional recurring revenue, continued and additional reductions or service adjustments would eventually be required. Before considering any revenue measure, the city first looked inward. We didn't go straight to looking at taxes. Council approved approximately $9.2 million in cost saving actions across the organization. These actions included expenditure reductions, deferred spending, operational efficiencies, and use of available one-time resources. Those measures significantly reduced the projected deficit, but they did not eliminate the underlying structural imbalance. Without additional ongoing revenue, the city may need to evaluate further reductions in the very services our residents rely on most. At the April 14th council meeting, staff presented examples of what 5% cuts across departments would look like. Staff evaluated multiple revenue options available under California law. After reviewing those options, the local transaction and use tax or sales tax emerged as the revenue option capable of generating the most significant locally controlled revenue. Vacaville currently has the lowest sales tax rate in Solano County. A one cent increase would place Vacaville in the range of our neighboring jurisdictions while generating approximately $28 million annually. This process has unfolded over the last 10 months and has included council direction, professional voter research, public information efforts, and follow-up tracking research. At each stage, councils review the information and provide a direction to staff before moving to the next step. Choosing a path was developed to provide factual information regarding the city's fiscal condition and available options. The effort focused on explaining the structural deficit, actions already taken by the city, the services supported by the general fund, and the potential consequences of various policy decisions. The purpose was not to advocate for a particular outcome, but to ensure that residents had access to the same information that council was using to evaluate the issue. The city also used research in the form of statistically valid surveys of likely Vacaville voters to inform the process. The surveys were intended to measure public awareness, community priorities, and voter attitudes regarding city services and fiscal issues. The February survey helped establish a baseline of voter views about city services, local government, and the proposed one cent sales tax. The June survey indicated increased awareness of the city's financial challenges and continued positive views regarding quality of life and city services. The measure before council would establish an additional one cent transaction and use tax. It is projected to generate approximately $28 million annually. As a local transaction and use tax, revenues would remain under the authority of the city and could not be reallocated by the state. City council would maintain local control and set the priorities. The measure also includes a citizen's oversight committee, annual independent audits, and public reporting. It would continue until ended by voters. The proposed Measure V ballot question is shown on the screen. I'll go ahead and read it. Shall the citizens of Vacaville adopt a measure maintaining the city's financial stability and essential services, including 911 emergency response, fire and ambulance protection, crime prevention, parks and recreation, safe public spaces, supporting local businesses repairing streets and other general city services by establishing an additional one cent sales tax providing approximately 28 million dollars annually with local control citizens oversight annual audits and public reporting until ended by voters The legal structure is also clear. Pursuant to revenue and taxation code, the city has the authority to submit a local transaction use tax measure to voters. Because this is a general tax for general government purposes, the vote threshold is majority approval or 50% plus one. The resolution requests consolidation with the November 3rd, 2026 statewide general election, directs the city attorney to prepare an impartial analysis, and sets rules for ballot arguments and rebuttals. If approved by voters, the tax would take effect on April 1st, 2027. Tonight's decision does not determine the outcome of the election. It determines whether voters will have the opportunity to consider the measure in November. Tonight's decision is the culmination of a process that has included fiscal analysis, budget reductions, public outreach community education, and voter research. Staff has presented the city's financial challenges, the steps already taken to reduce costs, and the potential impacts of a continued structural deficit. We've also shared information with the community and returned with the results of statistically valid voter surveys. The action before council tonight is not whether to impose a tax, rather it is whether to place the proposed measure before Vacaville voters so they can make that decision themselves in the November 2026 election. The recommended actions tonight are administrative and procedural in nature, introduce the ordinance, adopt the resolution calling the election, request consolidation with Solano County Elections Department, direct preparation of the impartial analysis, and establish the required rules and deadlines for the ballot arguments and rebuttals. Last but not least, we're hoping to get council direction tonight on establishing the Citizens Oversight Committee. The Citizens Oversight Committee would apply to Measure V if approved by voters and also to Measure M either way. The staff is recommending a committee with five members having a variety of backgrounds including things like finance, accounting, public administration, and business. We would bring back an item to council in August with the details of the application process along with the purpose and guidelines of the committee. We anticipate that the committee would be appointed in October and then would start in January. If council approves these actions tonight, the measure will appear on the November ballot and the voters of Vacaville will determine whether the proposed transaction and use tax should be adopted. And with that, I'm open to questions and comments.

Yeah, thank you for this and also for all the work staff has done leading up to this trying to help us understand. the true structural deficit that we're facing. A quick question. As far as a citizen oversight committee, what would be the process? You say there's an application, but what do you foresee that? Because I truly do believe that that oversight is necessary.

It's absolutely necessary. We don't have the application completely figured out. So after tonight's, based on council's direction tonight, we would go back and kind of formalize that process and bring it back to you in August for adoption and approval.

Okay, great. Vice Mayor Silva? Two questions, one along those lines. I'm very much interested, so what will be the role of the advisory committee?

Oversight committee and and so we would be meeting with them on a quarterly baseless With the city manager and finance director and finance staff really sitting down looking at expenditure and revenue records related to the measure and ensuring that the Oversight Committee would be looking to make sure that we're spending the money as is as is stated in in the ballot measure itself and

So how is that so it's a yes or no? And how is that and so alluded to like my first point? How is that related? How is that not related to an advisory committee?

I don't know that I can answer how it's related to advisory oversight committee But also we would be looking for that oversight committee to report back to the council During a public meeting on an annual basis as well on their findings. I don't know if the city attorney might have directed to the city attorney

So the difference between an advisory committee and an oversight committee is, you know, an advisory committee is established to explore community input, you know, other factors, provide advice to the council prior to council making a policy. decision. What an oversight committee would do, and especially in this circumstances, council will be making the policy decisions on how to utilize the revenues that are received by this tax measure based on what the measure itself says, which is a general tax, so it can be used for all city services, including those specifically listed in the ballot measure. But in addition to that, council has the adopted reserve policy that you guys adopted earlier this year, which will guide your policy direction to staff on how to utilize funds. What an oversight committee will do, well, after the funds, after the policy direction is given by the city council, the funds have been applied according to those policy directions. they will get the information from the city manager the finance department about all expenditures how they've been done they will do an independent review to ensure that the funds have been spent in the way that the council has directed them to be spent and then they will come independently to provide their feedback and report to the council confirming that based on their oversight of what staff has done based on the council's direction is in compliance with how the council has determined these funds will be spent.

So thank you for clarifying the legal terms and application. So in there, so I guess like what, so one of the things that's come up since me being on council was this big, and it continues to this day on this council, of how and where we allocate funding to. And so in that, all that's done is created a large amount of mistrust that in itself, we find ourselves in a situation of, okay, is it worth me allocating more funds to, can I trust my council to advocate on my best behalf? And the question, who is my, or who are we advocating on? And I'm sure we can argue, hey, we look out for everybody directly and indirectly. And I would argue that as well. But as far as that, so within this oversight committee, Part of my mindset is like, how do we make sure that, and forgive me, but how do we have more diverse representation of how our community is evaluating that so we can maintain the trust that we don't continue this cycle of where you have this fraction within our community of where hey, money's only going there or money's only going over there. When in reality, it's been going to all these different departments over these past several years. And I still find myself in conversations about how we haven't put money to XYZ when in fact we have. And so, I mean, so I guess I'm pretty sure the answer to or what i'm alluding to is it's really going to be up to council of how we want to structure and who we have on these oversight committees or it's up to the public to use their their power as citizens or just as residents to be able to advocate with whomever's on that council at any given time

so I can answer some of that um so again as our city attorney mentioned the oversight committee application process will be brought to the council they will become part of our ongoing you know how we adopt any other commission or appointments in the January process so this first time the committee would be for 13 months because we would start bringing something to you in August by the time we complete the process we'll have the committee in place by SO THEY WILL CONTINUE FOR THE FIRST 13 MONTHS AND THEN AGAIN IT WILL BE GOING THROUGH THE REGULAR COMMISSION APPOINTMENT SORT OF PROCESS. BUT ON PARALLEL SIDE, AS A CITY ATTORNEY MENTIONED, THEY ARE, THEY CAN BE A DIVORCE GROUP WITH A SPECIFIC BACKGROUND SO THEY UNDERSTAND A LITTLE BIT ABOUT PUBLIC SERVICE, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, A LITTLE BIT AROUND FINANCE BACKGROUND. BUT AGAIN, THE CRITERIA WOULD BE DEFINED BY THE COUNCIL. When it comes to the expenditures, in that scenario, council will be making that decision. So hypothetically, if this measure repasses and we have $28 million, our deficit is about 11 to 12 million. So the first 12 million will have to go to cover the deficit. Then the remaining 16 million that's remaining, according to our general fund policy that council adopted in April, 35% will go towards infrastructure. 30% will go towards community programs and services, 20% towards internal service fund, and 15% towards unfunded liability. So let's take example of infrastructure. So whatever that surplus is, the $16 million, the 35% of that is what, 4.8 million. So the council will decide which projects that 4.8 million is allocated to. And the oversight committee will make sure that staff actually spend the money to the projects that the council approved. Does that make sense?

Yes. Can council change that distribution? So that pie chart that you're referring to, council can change at any time. So even that's not said. Yes. So I guess my point to that, it's still important that our community is concerned about how their elected representative are allocating money. They have to stay diligent and be engaged with their elected representative body to ensure that funding is allocated on where they see fit for the community.

One point of clarification, when we adopted this policy, we had gone through a lot of community outreach. We had done surveys, focus groups, people actually rated where they wanted this allocation to be. And then we did the similar exercise with the city council during the goals and priorities strategic planning sessions. And council and community were literally off by 1%. Communities infrastructure was 34% and council was 35%. So that's how we came up with these percentages. According to the policy, we have to revise our general fund reserve policy every two years. And if there's a desire, we can go through a similar process every two years with the community engagement and the council engagement to see if we are on line with the priorities the way they are defined.

Okay, you answered that question. So my other question is, as part of, I have three conversations this morning about things related to this and directly to the sales tax proposal. One of the things that keeps coming up about is where is it gonna be allocated? So I guess one recommendation or request is how do we put where these sales tax will not be applied to basic certain essential needs that people will be consuming.

Well, so there's two ways. One is the general fund reserve policy with the surplus, how it would be allocated. And the second one is the strategic plan that the council adopted.

I apologize. So when people pay a sales tax, there are certain items or categories of items that will not be, there will not be a 1% sale tax on.

That's groceries and medical supplies.

Right. So what those are, it'd be my advice is to please communicate that. to help me clarify or communicate with the public.

We can do that. There's a list through the California Department of Tax, Fee and Taxation Administration, so we can share some of that information with the public.

Thank you. Council Member Wiley.

Thanks I also had a question about the oversight committee because you mentioned it would start in January, but then we said if it's passed it wouldn't kick into April 27. So why does it need to start in January if it's time to start in April and then it takes a while to get the information back for how it's working.

right um good question um but we would also apply to measure m so the measure m doesn't currently have an oversight committee so whether measure v passes or not it will apply to measure m and so we would be starting to meet and talk to the committee about measure m and that was my other question so measure m will have it regardless of whether or not yes exactly thank you councilmember ritchie

Okay, so the trip for a thought. Quick comment on Council it's right for so this when it comes to visualizing what tax go for don't go for. It's what could come on by the kids method keep a simple stupid. Infographics if we make it too hard. It has to be so blatantly easy for people to understand. Picture of an apple, not tax. Picture of this, tax. The easier it is, bring it down to fourth grade level. Keep it simple. I think that people will really get it. Now, that was just off of his comment, but I'm an absolute proponent. I own Windsor Time. Please put me on a timer. Three minutes, I'll be done. I'm a part of this not to me to I call attacks. It's revenue. I've used met metaphors holding say your hand. This is revenue. This is how we survive and thrive to me this ballot measure is a confirmation of what what we want back to go. Like what back to do we see what level service were called quite life do we expect are willing to contribute. I had a conversation earlier today about solving homelessness. Why don't we turn this Nat to a 200-person bed? Why don't we reopen Napa? I'm like, well, it costs money. Do you want to pay more in taxes? No. So everyone wants something, but they don't want to contribute. So it costs. The level of service, quality of life, it costs. And in order to function, nothing's free. This will be able to create revenue. What do we want in Vacaville? What level of service? That's a question we have to ask ourself. When we walk outside, are you happy with what you have? Do you want more or less? If you just keep it very simple, I think Vacaville will really understand. We have an amazing city. We have made the choice to live here. I just had a conversation with someone earlier today about my own family's choice. My father was all over the country, many bases. When he landed here in 72 after Vietnam, he did everything he could to get stationed here and stay here. He made a choice to stay in this community because it was an amazing place that he wanted to have kids. I mean, we make a choice coming to Vacaville. And it's been a choice people want to do. And that really got to me as to why. And so as we walk outside, the level of service, quality of life, the safety, the minis, the parks, the community. But costs keep rising. In order to keep that, we have to keep up. I mean, I'm not using a mobile phone or Aquanet. The 80s are gone. We've got to step up and come into reality. So I am just an avid proponent. I think we have a negative connotation. I don't think we're going to ever hit 28 million. You keep saying one cent, I think it's one percent. One percent of one dollar is- When I say I don't, I almost have a heart attack. It's one percent. Okay, but because one cent will not get it done. But we're going to see a reduction. America is going to, we're going to break. We're going to see a reduction. People are going to start spending less. Every person will start to think that inflation is wearing down America. So we think we're going to get $28 million. We will not get $28 million. We'll see a reduction in spending maybe 3% to 5%. We might end up at $21 million, $24 million. If we do not do this, It would be like putting a dragster on a strip. You go straight off the cliff. Like we need to create more revenue or all we're doing is exasperate the problem. Like we have to step up and kind of really capture what we want. And this revenue and this bond is going to do it. That's our measure.

Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and open this up to the public for any comments or input.

Sorry, tall people problems. I just want to thank... You guys spent a lot of time on this, a lot of staff time and hours. So I thank you for that and robust discussions around it. I just want to... challenge us to are we looking in your inward enough like have we hired or considered hiring independent audit of the of departments to operate leaner like we want to build a a city that can continue to run and be fiscally responsible for our children that's why we're here right are we looking like inward enough in making decisions that are really gonna benefit us positively. Like you had brought up your point that we are the lowest tax rate of the county. I don't know if that's the best argument to go on. I think those cities could do a lot better financially and look inward and cut a lot of fat. And I think we can too. And have we thoroughly done that? We have interdepartment buildings that the public does not understand how that works. Can those be done more efficiently to capture a lot more revenue? I think the immediate solution is to have revenue and use that to operate on, but why not? Again, I'd love to hear the oversight committee is still going to move forward with Measure M because we need a lot more oversight, but the public... doesn't understand how this works. They're not here, they're engaged on social media, but they're not engaged here. I would like to see more apples to apples charts to explain things like they don't understand that groceries aren't taxed on this, you know, but no oil changes, right? So those things would really help public understanding and create some clarity, but I would like us to look inward more. Can we, you know, thank you city manager for making those cuts that you have and seeing where areas are, you know, duplicated and where we can make cuts, but I think we can do more. I really do. I think we can operate a lot better within the means and not saying, well, everyone else is raising taxes around us, so we should too. But we should continue to look inward and see how we can really, really reduce costs now and have revenue. So fix the issues, fix the bleeding, fix where we have inefficiencies now. How we consider the independent audit. Those are not free, right? But will that benefit us in the long run to make sure we're on the right trajectory to not just because what measuring sunsets in 12 years? Have we factored in, is this going to generate that offset? Or are we going to be here in 10 years doing this again? Because we haven't really addressed the issues that we have fiscally. We have unfunded liabilities. It's a different conversation. It's structured differently. We can't just cut off CalPERS, but there are inefficiencies we can work on. I truly believe we can look inward more now. I'm just like, why we've not had oversight 10 years ago? independent oversight, you know, and get the community more involved. I think it's super important. So thank you for your work on that. Just some thoughts I wanted to share. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening. My name's Cass Padgett, long time Vacaville resident. I'm just wondering if this Measure V passes, will that be folded into the general fund? And if it is folded into the general fund, I think maybe Measure M is folded in the general fund. I'm not totally sure about that. But if it is folded into the general fund, and given the fact that our police and our fire get 67% of the general fund, I just don't want to see that inflate the police and the fire. Because we have other things that we need to pay for. And I think the residents are pretty happy with what we have with respect to safety in this town. I am definitely happy about it. But I think, you know, I just don't want to see any extra funds going into the upkeep of, you know, all the toys that the police have and things of that nature. If it's needed, obviously we want that and we want to keep it. But I would like to see that kind of funding, if it is approved by the voter, that kind of money I would like to be spent on parks and other things that are of benefit to the residents as well, not only just fire and police. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and close the public portion of this meeting and bring it back to the council. I see a light, but initially I'll just, I'm going to start with my comments real quickly. I want to thank staff for looking at, you know, every possibility and going through the process twofold. One is to understand the public sentiment. Many of us have lived as I did as staff through Measure M. It's an interesting place to be. You see the evolution of our community over time. You see the economy change. We've gone through some difficult years. We have gone through some, and I'm going to use it, some crazy inflation. And we have discussed it as we've been in front of discussions about DIF fees. And if that isn't an eye-opener about what everything is costing, well... This is actually an extension of exactly what we're seeing in our economy and in our communities as a whole. We're not the only ones going through it. I am hearing, tonight's not the only, I appreciate your comments tonight. This isn't the first night we've talked about budget. It's not the first night. And so I want to understand collectively, we've been addressing this since last year. As a council, we've been looking at our reserve policy, our deficit spending over time, and belt tightening. And one year of belt tightening turned into looking at what it's going to look like this next year. And so that was another presentation that came before the public here recently to help inform the public And I believe that what has been demonstrated is a need for the voters to truly decide. Anyone who, especially, I'm not going to speak for the council, but I'm sure they have their own comments, but anyone who's actually gone through the budget process, which I have when I was chief of police during difficult years, and seen all the cuts, I appreciate things being called toys with all due respect though. They're life-saving equipment and but I can appreciate the public having a desire for something. I want parks. I think we want parks and police and we want public safety and we want all the things that we call Vacaville but everything costs money. My position though is I believe that the staff has demonstrated the need that this structural deficit doesn't have an alternative. And so for me, it's up to the voters to clearly have a choice to decide what future Vacaville wants. And so Councilmember Stockton.

Yes, thank you. A lot to take in. I want to start off by thanking staff. I know that every staff member here, all the directors and department heads did a deep dive into what was absolutely essential for each of your departments. And I know that that's difficult because you know it's not just dollars, it's people. It's the people that work here for the city that provide the services to people in our community. And I know that's a difficult thing to do. I thought your analysis on, you know, if you're the expert in your department, the analysis that you put into knowing what is absolutely essential and what is not, what a 2.5% cut looks like and what a 5% cut looks like is a difficult process to go through when you see the people behind the services that we provide. So thank you first and foremost for that because I know that that's extremely difficult. I also know that there are independent audits that are done. We have one of the most transparent websites when it comes to where our money comes in, where our money goes out, and how council decides to allocate the money, the general fund money that we have. And I will agree with some of my colleagues that brought this up. I think, as important as um fixing this structural deficit is and if the voters choose to utilize a tax measure to do it is making sure that they have representation on this council that is going to be fiscally responsible with the money that may be gathered or that may be collected as a result of a tax measure like this if the community chooses to invest in us that ultimately is their decision i think the best way to include the community is allow them this decision. And so I will be supporting this, putting this on the ballot, but I wanna be very clear to the community and to everybody, that does not mean that I'm endorsing this tax measure in and of itself. I think that it's more complex than that. I don't think it's simple. And I don't think that our community is unintelligent. I don't think that we need to diminish things to a level that makes it seem like they're children. I think that we have a very competent We have people who are doing everything that they can to try to take care of their families, keep their businesses afloat, and maintain the quality of life that they did come here for. And so I think that we need to continue to move forward with honesty. about what these real life impacts look like depending upon the choice that they make. Good, bad, or indifferent, I think that our department heads and our city manager, your leadership on this has been outstanding. I think you have painted a picture of what these choices are for our community to be able to make an informed decision, and I think we can continue to do that. One of the things that did not come up today is is the tax cap. I think that is something that people need to truly understand. I asked a question earlier and I appreciate that Council member Richie went to a bag. It's a represent us there because there are other entities that we belong to.

Excuse me, did you have question?

Nothing. There are other entities that are looking at raising revenues for their causes and what one of the things I think our community really needs to understand is if the investment isn't here in Vacaville, and it goes outside of Vacaville, we may not have another opportunity to do something like this. And that's a complex issue to understand, but I think that we can tell that story and that we can count on our community to do what's right for them. I'm ready to respect the decision that they make regardless of what it is. And I feel like I have a part to play in making sure that they truly understand what the impacts are that were shared by our department heads and by our city manager and staff. So I just want to thank everybody for that, for your input on this. And like I said, I will be supporting putting this on the ballot and giving them the opportunity to weigh in on whether or not this is the choice that they want to make for Vacaville.

Councilmember Freeman.

Yeah.

We need tools, and that's what money comes down to. Money comes down to tools that we need to run all of our agencies. And those tools are, whether that's for our first responders, our police, our fire, those tools save lives of our officers, of our firefighters, and also our citizens. when you put a call into 911 you know somebody's going to show up quick so we need to make sure we have the best of the tools that we need to to do that and the same thing in our public utilities the same thing in our water treatment plants we need we need the best tools that we that we can use now it's already been stated and we've already been talking about this for the last year we've been going back and forth and looking at places to cut money and cut a lot of money and we've also identified if this were to pass where that money would be spent and how You know, and I mean, I am wondering who has the final say on who's the citizen oversight committee, you know, and that's something that, you know, as you said, it was come back to council. And we know sometimes council can be divided on issues, you know, but hopefully there's wisdom that's going to be exercised. completely in that and with that and when whenever anybody's ready i don't have anything else to say i'm ready to move forward and uh i'll motion to approve whenever if everybody else is done i'll second all right we have a motion and a second since this requires two-thirds i'll take a roll call councilman richie did you have sir go ahead with roll call

Council Member Stockton?

Yes.

Council Member Ritchie?

Yes.

Council Member Chapman? Yes. Council Member Freeman?

Yes.

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

Yes. Well, thank you. This goes to the voters, but there's a lot of work ahead to prepare it. And I do appreciate the conversations about the oversight. And I am glad to see that because we saw that in Measure M. And the important thing is for the community to trust it. Now it's gonna be up to the community to decide what they want for the future. So with that, we'll go ahead and we'll move on to, finally, I think we're gonna get to business. So item 12A.

Yes, this is a resolution adopting the strategic plan for fiscal years 2027 through 2029, and program manager Rika Goodry is here to make the presentation.

Well, good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and members of the city council. All right, I'm just gonna give a little bit of a background.

Let me just start my presentation real quick.

All right, so the strategic plan serves as the city's long-term roadmap. It guides decision-making, establishes priorities, it also informs resource allocations, and it aligns organizational actions and community needs and council direction. So in June 2025, council directed staff to develop a new three-year strategic plan. It was initiated because the current plan conducts at the end of this month. So the goal was to create an updated roadmap that reflects evolving community priorities, organizational needs, and future opportunities. So a little over two months ago on April 14th this year, council adopted the draft strategic plan. It was developed through an extensive engagement process, gathering input from residents, community organizations, businesses, city staff, and other key stakeholders. So a key priority throughout the planning process was ensuring broad and meaningful participation. As previously mentioned, the engagement efforts included the city council, community members, senior leadership team, and staff from departments across the organization. So the community engagement generated significant interest and participation, where it received more than 1,000 responses. To maximize the number of participants and to gather these diverse perspectives, feedback was collected through a variety of engagement methods. These include interviews, focus groups, workshops, and public meetings. All of the feedback that was collected throughout the process was carefully reviewed and analyzed. Now, let's shift our focus to implementation. So following the development of the strategic plan, the departments worked collaboratively to identify actions necessary to achieve each objective. This included identifying project start dates, estimated completion timelines, projects and support leads, and other departments to support the collaboration. We came up with 37 objectives and 177 strategies. Staff further assess the operational and financial impacts associated with implementing the strategic plan. Preliminary budget considerations were identified as part of the implementation planning process. This structure strengthens accountability, it enhances transparency, and it also helps ensure that resources are aligned with the outcomes. So to support a successful implementation, staff will utilize the ClearPoint strategy software to centralize the strategic planning efforts and performance management. The system itself is built to allow the tracking of initiatives, milestones, budgets, performance measures, and project status updates. Further, it establishes clear ownership by improving visibility, governance, collaboration, and organizational accountability. Lastly, a key feature of the system is that it's public transparency portal. It provides community members with access to the progress of each of the objectives. For example, how initiatives are advancing, how resources are being utilized, and overall, it demonstrates the city's commitment to accountability and transparency. So with that, staff recommends that the city council adopt the strategic plan for fiscal years 2027 through 2029 and approve the accompanying resolution by simple motion.

Thank you for the presentation and for all of staff's hard work to get us here. It's been one of those opportunities to include the public but also to hear from the council and set the direction for the next several years. I want to also thank our city manager for helping to finalize and guide this, but it takes an entire team, so I know that you'll give the credit where credit is due, but on behalf of, I'm going to speak not just for me, but on behalf of the council, I just want to say thank you. Appreciate it. I'm going to open up this to the public for any additional comment, knowing that there's only one person here. Okay, there you go. All right, thank you. Alright, I'll bring it back and again with that I'm going to ask Vice Mayor Silva.

So three items focused under economic development and so on to ED 2.9, identify neighborhood revitalization strategy areas. So what I'm focused on there is identify. I think we want So one, can we please define the NRSA? When we talk about identify, what's the scope of that? And is the goal just to say, oh, there it is. What's the, then what? And I ask that because I feel it's, when we take actionable, when we use different adjectives as far as actionable items, that's a particular area that know again i you know strongly feel from feedback from the community is how do we uh how do we support different endeavors that in themselves are trying to generate and support themselves um can you please repeat the strategy number sure yeah so page 16 of the report ed 2.9 is the last item listed in that particular category it specifies identify neighborhood revitalization strategy areas abbreviated as nrsa's

I would like to invite our community and economic development director because this is, I believe, part of our general plan as well. Tamara.

Good evening, council members. That's my priority item. The strategic revitalization areas are a term used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's an area that can be identified where community development block grant funding can be targeted for economic development activities with reduced restrictions on how that funding can be used. The plan is to work off of the work that was already done in the Markham Callen strategic plan to then identify that as a priority area to invest those funds in sometime in the future.

So my question is, why does it say identify but nothing else other than identify?

That is a great question. We can work at being a little bit more specific in that area, identifying those strategies. That is just trying to be a little bit general and not necessarily restrict what areas in the future might be strategic revitalization areas. But there is a plan for at least one area that has already had some work done to help identify.

So what I would suggest for council to consider is to add in, so identify and pursue appropriate implementation strategies for the NRSAs.

So can I add something to that? Please. so there was a reason we kept it at very high level because this is at a strategy level once the staff starts working on it there will be action items under each of these so the software that rika mentioned each high level strategy will have action items where we can then break it down into identify procure you know whatever we want to do with those strategies because uh What really happens is when you get very specific, then sometimes the lower action items don't match up with the higher level strategy. So that's the reason the way it was done. But if there's a strong desire from the council to repurpose or re...

reworded we're open to that for just to clarify where i'm at on like these type of items like we say i don't know how many times throughout my life for here hey you know we identify the problem or hey here's the solution but where's the action orientation behind that and it doesn't mean that we necessarily will be able to achieve this because there's a multi you know multiple variables that would prevent that but having it I mean otherwise what's the point of having going into this level of detail on these documents if you know if we're not if we're not putting the verbiage on there to commit ourselves towards at least exploring implementable action items beyond identifying so what is what is it that you're recommending identify identify and pursue or implement identify and Yeah, identify and implement neighborhood revitalization, identify neighborhood revitalization strategy areas and implement programs and policies as appropriate.

Okay, thanks.

You need 3.7. Thank you. Well, actually, so number one is more of a comment. Thank you for adding this in. I think beyond this, one of the biggest, I guess, personal gripes that I've had is how, and it came up in a comment earlier, what are we doing to prioritize our own local businesses or regional businesses, in this case for 3.7 is referring to agritourism, so it's not within the city per se. But I think the more that we look at how we can reinvest our own funds back internally, the more important that is. You know, in fact, Councilmember Stockton mentioned a comment before about, you know, as far as at least allowing, you know, or at least looking at ways that we can support, you know, dealerships and whatnot with certain contracts and whatnot. All in for that type of concept, you know, as it continues to make sense. And I think from what I hear from the public, that's another important component there How do we make sure that the tax funds that we have is reinvested back into our local economy? So I'm not sure how, you know, if that's something else. Yeah, I can answer that.

So for the procurement policy, we do have a local vendor preference, but right now the way our policy says it's only for goods, So as we review our procurement policy, we would be expanding that local vendor preference to maybe goods and services. So that's one way we would address it. And procurement policy will be one of these strategies that we would be working on in the next fiscal year. And then our community and economic development department is also working on an economic development strategic plan. So some of those items would be sub items under that. So those are the two areas where we would include the local preference.

And so extending off of that, one of the things just to get it off here is with ARPA funds, when we had those, we allocated that to a concept called Shop Vacaville. So the software, I don't know if that's still being supported. That was with a partnership with Vacaville Chamber of Commerce. But maybe there's opportunities like that that some of our partners can spearhead to support local businesses. And the last item I wanted to bring attention to is ED 4.1. So it states, explore public-private partnership opportunities to advance renewable energy solutions that improve electrical infrastructure reliability and support business attraction and economic growth. So all for that. was there any so some of the feedback are provided around this and it's come up in different Council discussions through the years is uh moving towards or at least exploring the opportunity for us to become more energy independent whatever that may look like at whatever capacity is that is that something that was discussed or that can be added as maybe potentially a third item here

So that would be part of this energy resilience effort. We kind of kept it vague on purpose because we don't know which direction we're going to go in. We are already evaluating CCAs, which is like a community choice aggregate, which will make us an independent. purchaser of the energy, but we don't know where to start on this right now. So we just want to keep it awake where we have options available to ourselves. And then as we develop those action items, then we can start addressing those as we work towards these projects. I do want to clarify one thing. The way the strategic plan is done is not necessarily like every, like some of these have CIP projects. It's not necessary that everything in this plan would be done in three years. It may be a major portion of a particular project might be done. For example, in year two it talks about upgrading like four or five fire stations facilities. we may not even have funding to do that in year two depending on, you know, how our fiscal deficit situation continues. But if we have the funding, those projects may not all happen in one year. We may do like a design phase and they will continue into year three to be completed. So that's how this is structured and that's the reason we kept it at high level.

So in that, it would also include exploring not just partnerships, but any ability for us to become more energy resilient, aka independent. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate the questions and comments. I appreciate that these are high level because that's what this is really geared to do. So it gives us the ability to explore in various opportunities as a strategic plan as a city. So with that, I wanted to say thank you. And I'm looking for a motion.

Approved. I second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Now we have a roadmap as a city. Thank you. Next, let's see if we can adopt a budget.

Yeah, thank you.

We'll move on to item 12B.

Yes, our final item tonight is resolutions of the City Council and successor agency to the former redevelopment agency adopting the fiscal year 26-27 budget, the CIP budget, and approving the current pay schedule per government code 20636. And our budget team is here with you tonight, Finance Director Ken Matsumiya, Assistant Finance Director Shelby Milleran, and Budget Manager John Collette.

I will start the presentation, but before I do the presentation, again, I want to acknowledge all of the staff members, the department directors. There's, you know, I would say 100, at least 100 people were involved in this whole process throughout the city. And I don't know if Leslie is here, but I do want to acknowledge Leslie Hoover, who was our assistant finance director, has now moved to PD as the budget manager. Basically, throughout the last few months, she was doing two jobs. We're really excited to have Shelby join our team but I do want to acknowledge Leslie specifically because she spent hours and hours and she maintained the PD budget while doing the overall budget for the city. So thank you everybody that participated in this and thanks to Council for providing us the direction to adopt the budget tonight. Next slide please. So a little bit of recap on our budget process. Throughout the year, our finance department does provide quarterly budget updates. Then around mid-May, we provided counsel with a budget one-on-one, what is the budget, different types of funds, understanding the budget, budget calendar development, as well as discussion around the tax revenues. And then we went into the budget study session on May 26th, where we did the projections. It was our first study session. We talked about the continued cost savings measures, budget update, and a five-year forecast. Moving on to the 9th of June, each department provided their operating budget summary, including department presentations and CIP budget, in addition with the fleet update. Next slide, please. The budget overview, we continued throughout the organization. Different departments were working on balancing the budget. We utilized access general fund reserves to balance the budget. We continued the citywide cost savings measure, as well as as part of the growth area planning and housing efforts, our community and economic development department and housing, they worked on Northeast growth area and other amendments that will be coming to the council In future meetings. We also adopted a new strategic plan tonight And we also implemented a measure on centralized hiring Starting July 1st where each recruitment will be evaluated and approved by the city manager. Next slide, please our general fund overall appropriation that council is approving tonight is a little over 169 million dollars our special revenue funds are close to 59 million dollars our enterprise funds which is our water and sewer utilities are about 93.5 million so our overall total operating budget that we're adopting tonight is 321.7 million dollars We also have about $5.9 million in the successor agency and a capital improvement budget for $39 million for fiscal year 26-27. Next slide, please. And with this, I'll pass it on to our finance director, Ken, to talk about the next few slides.

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council. The following slide is really just going to be an at a glance or a recap of what we already went over with budget study session number two. And this is just a pie chart of how the total operating budget is allocated amongst the different departments. And so I won't go over each one of these, but just wanted to call out that difference because a couple items ago, we kind of mentioned how public safety was 67% of the general fund budget. But as you can see for the total operating budget, that percentage is a lot smaller. And then if you go to the next slide. So this is our five-year forecast, our last one of the fiscal year before we move into the new one. So the columns represent expenditures with the general fund and Measure M, and then your lines that are going across are your revenues. And so as you can see over the five-year forecast, as we've discussed, we are in the deficit spending position. And so for the upcoming fiscal year, that gap is expected to be $11 million, and then 10.6 in fiscal year 28. And then kind of over the five-year forecast, we're looking at a gap of around $7 to $8 million and $10 million over the next three years specifically. So really just highlighting the need for us to increase revenues in order to bring structural balance back to our general fund and measure. And I'll now pass it back to the city manager.

Thanks, Ken. PEPRA requirements, so the Public Employee Pension Reform Act, it requires officially an adoption of a publicly available salary schedule each year, and also the government code that's listed there requires us to call out the executive compensation. So with this resolution tonight, we're adopting both the salary schedule and the next slide will show you that we meet all the requirements. Can you please go to the next slide? Here's the salary schedule of our executive salaries, and this is also available on our website. Next slide, please. I do want to acknowledge and wrap up the presentation by thanking the city council for your leadership in helping us establish various fiscal policies, general fund reserve policy, also the strategic investment in the organization and community by looking at all of the projects that were approved throughout the year. We also support appreciate your support that was needed for various augmentation requests throughout the year that helps us strengthen our delivery to our community. And also to our staff, specifically our department heads and lots of staff members that provided not only high level of collaborative involvement, but as you saw, we did a very deep dive on coming up with two and a half and 5% projections and all of that were prepared. If the fiscal deficit continues, we understand we'll have to take some difficult decisions, But tonight, you know, I do want to acknowledge the staff for the work that has gone into the preparation of the budget, and specifically budget team. John and Ken and Leslie sat through biweekly meetings with me, excruciating meetings where everybody knows I ask a lot of questions. We have a good budget, and we're prepared to get it adopted tonight. Thank you. All right, so the next steps, we will continue our quarterly budget updates that will be provided to the council and community to track the progress. We will continue to work on fee recovery schedules as we discussed through cost allocation plan as well as the user fee study and we will continue to explore the sales tax measure options and visibility. With that, I wrap up my presentation. And these are the recommendations on adopting various resolutions attached with the staff report.

Thank you. Thank you to all staff for all the hard work up to now. I'm looking for any questions from the council. I know we've done some deep dives. And if not, I'm going to open it up to the public for any comment. All right. Seeing the nod. So we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you staff for doing this. One of the things I will say and we continue to get questions and I know some other members no longer here but there's always the questions that we hear in the public and we see it on the media and social media you know waste fraud and abuse i don't think anyone on this council would ever tolerate what we would perceive as as being you know just wasteful spending certainly not fraud But it's important that the public weigh in. And I think even some of the different things that we had to discuss tonight really opened up that conversation to be had further, whether there's oversight for Measure M or a future tax measure and oversight for that. public needs to be involved but what I want to say is I appreciate the leadership of our city manager and the entire team to actually put together a package that looks really really big but I think I recently heard city manager Chaudhry tell the story in a way that was compelling and that is what you get per person and you look at that and the value of what this community provides, it's tremendous. It's tremendous. It looks big when it's a big number. When you break it down, there's a lot of value in this community, and I'm proud that Vacaville is what it is, and it's because of all the hardworking staff that are here and for all that are not here. So please go back to your departments and say thank you on behalf of the council. So with that, this meeting stands in adjournment at 9.35. Good night, Vacaville.