City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Visalia City Council work session. We're gonna go ahead and call this meeting to order. We'll start off by public comments. Citizens are now invited to comment on issues within jurisdiction of Visalia City Council and items listed on the closed session agenda. The council ask that we that you keep your comments concise and positive. Creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes, and a timer will notify you when your time's expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Anyone wishing to speak, come on up.

Good afternoon, mayor and council members. I'm Brian Thoburn with Southern California Edison, I just wanted to wish a happy New Year to all of you on the council and to express Edison's continued appreciation for the partnership and support that we have with the city. It's been a long standing partnership. I not only want to convey our appreciation and gratitude to the council members, but also to the city manager and the assistant city manager and all of the staff and look forward to another productive year. Taking off my Edison hat and putting on my satisfied constituent hat, I want to once again give a shout out to the code enforcement staff for their excellent customer service and their conscientiousness.

So with that, have a happy New Year and look forward to working with you all.

Jim Rees, I say. I wanted to express my appreciation to the city staff, specifically Raina, for a public records request that I made, excuse me, last week. It landed in her email back email box on Monday morning, and I had my response by Tuesday at end of business day, which was, you know, the the public records request law says you guys have ten days to respond about whether how are you going to respond? And I got everything I wanted, immediately. And it was very thorough.

And I appreciate the quick service and the and the response that Reina and undoubtedly her staff, gave me with request. Thank you. Undoubtedly

Alright. Seeing nobody else, we're gonna go ahead and close public comments. And we will start off with item number one of our work session, which is to receive the city of Isaias annual comprehensive financial report.

Good evening good evening, council. My name is Renee Nagel, and I'm the finance and technology director for the city of Iselia. With me, I have Jason Montgomery, who is the finance manager. I have Carrie Williams, who is our financial analyst. And then I have Lindsey Zimmerman, who is a partner for Brown Armstrong.

Today, we're gonna be presenting the financial report for fiscal year 2425, which is for the dates 07/01/2024 to 06/30/2025. So this is also known as our ACFR, our financial statements document. This document can be found on our website as well. So if anybody's interested in looking at it, it is on our website. So basically how a year begins for us is we ask council to adopt a budget, which is also known as our spending plan.

We then come back to council throughout the year with a midyear report where we give updated projections. And then when we get to the end of the year, that's where we are, where we report the financial, statements, which is how did we do for that year and where did you know, what were our revenues, what were expenditures, and then, of course, all the other information that is required as well to meet the, GASB, or GAAP in accounting standards as we follow. This report was submitted to the GFOA on 12/19/2025. To date, the city has received 39 consecutive awards, so we're hoping this will be our fortieth award. We will will not know for a couple more months, but we're pretty excited and we're hopeful that it will to bring us to that fortieth consecutive award.

Thank you all. I will be presenting on the results of the audit. The state law requires a complete set of audit financial statements, and we, as Brown Armstrong Accountancy Corporations, have audited the city's financial statements as prepared by by the finance staff. The scope areas of focus and testing. We have the risk assessment and audit planning that we perform at our office.

We determine the major audit areas as part of our planning purposes. We review and evaluate the internal control environment through walk throughs, tests of controls. These tests of controls have a variety of different tests, including journal entry testing to make sure there's proper support, proper approval, cash receipts, disbursements, purchases, and payroll as the major processes that we feel we need to test in detail. We also test compliance on grants as in accordance with uniform guidance, and as part of our year end audit, we perform substantive tests of balances including reconciliations of cash and investments, third party confirmations, we perform variance analysis, and perform specific tests of transactions for any unusual or significant transactions to make sure that our audit is properly supported. And happy to report we have a clean unqualified or unmodified opinion on the financials as a whole.

This year, we did have one encounter, one audit finding, and that related to the cash and bank reconciliation process in that the cash and revenue might possibly be understated in the the general ledger. The variance was discovered by the staff this fiscal year, and the this was a result of some staff turnover and change in staff duties, and so the staff is diligently researching and addressing the issues, and we'll have that resolved by the next financial audit.

So it seems like every year we have new reporting requirements that we have to implement, and this year was no different. We had two GASB statements that the city had to implement. GASB statement number 101 regarding compensated absences was the only statement that had an effect on the current financial statements. GASB 101, updated the recognition and measurement of compensated absences. And for the city, the main change was the city having to additionally recognize an estimated liability for sick days more than likely to be used in the future by employees that had accrued sick time balances at year end.

The implementation resulted in an additional $5,600,000 of compensated absences liabilities.

Can you just kind of compare to how that was different before? Like, did you only have to account for a certain number of absences or a certain percentage, now you have to do 100%? Can you put kind of in layman's terms for me?

Well, in the past, for sick time, the city was only recognizing certain levels. You had to have ten consecutive years of service. And when you retired, you get paid out 30% of that accrued balance. So that amount was recognized. And then also for twenty years of service, if you happen to resign or retired at that point, you'd get paid out when we'd recognize recognize that that portion.

Portion. The difference this year with the implementation was you have to kind of look at prior year history on an employee's average life here at the city and how many sick days did they take during that time, estimate it, and then apply those averages to the current city staff as a whole and recognize that number. So it was a big

Yep. And and I I clarified with Renee. So this next year, it'll be a much smaller figure because you'll just be adding on to that or recognizing normal normal adjust what you do. Yeah. Mhmm. This year was just unusually high.

Yep. Thank you.

It will still be higher than in the past years, you know, because it's it's taking, all the employees versus just a group of employees like we were required to before. So it will be a larger number, but not to this magnitude. We're estimating the number to be about 500,000. That number is going to go up and down. It depends on usage, people retiring as well, because that will bring it down. So there's all kinds of factors that will have to be looked at, but it's a whole new calculation that we'll have to do annually.

Thank you.

The financial report is required to contain and is divided into the sections listed here. It's a complex document, as you know. It's always evolving as new reporting standards and required adjustments are implemented with new GASB pronouncements.

And before we move on, so if you can go back. So the document is a very thick, detailed document. And this isn't something that staff produces in a matter of thirty days. Takes the two. Of Carrie and Jason are focused on it, and Carrie actually starts in the spring. And and there's a whole team behind as well. We have a checklist that's probably got 400 items. And before you item 10, you have to be through the first. And if one person changes an item when you're at number 100, you go back again and you start over. And so it's very time consuming, frustrating.

And it also takes coordination with the departments because we've got to ensure they have all their stuff in as well. And so, again, it's a very detailed document, but staff does a wonderful job of understanding it, working through the details, and moving it along so we can meet the deadline. A lot of cities don't get the GFOA award because you have to have it filed before December 31. That's even hard when the bigger the city becomes. And so we're able to do that. Again, staff pushed very hard, and that's Carrie and Jason, and thank you, so we can continue to, receive that award as well. So I just wanted to say thanks to staff.

So some reminders to, consider as we go through the rest of the slides tonight. The financial report represents balances as of 06/30/2025. Fund balance does not equal cash. Fund balance, equals assets minus liabilities. It's what's left over.

The financial financial statements are separated into governmental and enterprise type funds and have different methods of accounting. The main difference is that enterprise funds include capital assets, debt, depreciation, and the net pension liability. Governmental funds are prepared on the modified accrual basis of accounting, which means they measure only resources and uses for that fiscal year. And they don't include those items listed there. Examples of a governmental type fund are the general fund and measure in. Examples of enterprise type funds are the convention center, solid waste, transit. The

general fund as we've talked about in the past is one of our is our largest fund which funds most of our essential city services. So we will have several slides in this PowerPoint that go over the general fund. However ACFR has more detail on some of the other funds and throughout this presentation the other funds will be a summary, but we do wanna go over some important key factors on the general fund. So this first slide is our general fund economic sensitive revenues. So these top five represent 80% of our general fund revenues in total.

And also they are economic sensitive, so we do watch them very closely. And so our sales tax increased by 2.2%. And the main areas of sales tax growth in Vicillia were general retail, which is your department stores, apparel stores, furniture appliance stores, which grew 2.3%. Food products, which is restaurants, food markets, and liquor stores, grew 3.75%. And transportation, which is your new and used auto sales service stations, it had a slight increase of 0.5.

We had our property tax, which grew 7.9% over last year, which is due to higher property values, and that's mainly due to new development in commercial and residential. And then, of course, the housing market is continuing to have premium prices for Visalia. So we're definitely able to see that growth, and we've continued to watch it grow over the last several years. Transit occupancy tax increased by 4.4%. This is also known as DOT.

Some of this growth was due to implementation of a new online payment software well as increased collection efforts in the short rental sector. Franchise fees did decrease by 19.5%. The decrease is mainly due to natural gas franchise fee payments. According to the Southern California Gas Company, the decrease was a result of a decrease in usage and then the price they procure it at and then charge back. It was higher in 2023, and that price has gone down over the last couple of years.

Business license saw a decrease of 3.8%, not due to less businesses. We actually had a growth in businesses of five seventeen accounts. Most of that decrease was due to us getting a new online software system and we were going through accounts, cleaning up some of the payments and past due and just having the system be able to tie better to our general ledger which resulted in some write offs and that's why there was a decrease. But again, businesses, we did grow by five seventeen businesses. We have a total of 13,990 business license as of June 30. Hopefully it has increased since then as well.

Hey, Renee, on the TOT, I know you said it was short term rentals and that, what about our hotel sales? Does that number go up as well?

Yes, our hotels did go up as well.

Do you know what percentage?

I do not know the percentage. I can get

that Or amounts back to served at a large jump or no?

From the hotel versus short term rental?

Yeah.

No, I did not do that calculation to determine which one it grew the most. Your short term rentals represents about 600,000 of that number. So most of that number is from your hotels.

Okay, thank you.

So this next slide is, again, it's your economic sensitive revenues that we just discussed. It's really just putting it into a chart showing you how much each one represents. And property tax and sales represents 88% of our general fund economic sensitive revenues. Of our total revenues, it represents about 80%. This next slide is to show as a comparison over the last three years for those same revenue sources.

It shows that for sales tax, we did have a growth of the 2.2%. Property tax, we've had three years in a row of consistent large growth. And then our transient occupancy tax, our TOT, has had growth as well over the last three years. And then, of course, you could see the franchise fee where we had a huge increase and then back down again, as I just mentioned. And then our business license, we had a spike last year.

And then we wrote and cleaned up some of those accounts. So this next year, we're expecting business license to continue to see that growth as we've already done the clean ups. So this is the general fund summary and we do break it out here by these funds because in the ACFR you see the total which is last column which says total fiscal year twenty four-twenty five. So in this chart we break it out so you can clearly see the general fund, what's the emergency reserves, and then what's our capital project funds in the general fund. And so it shows what our total revenues of $110,000,000 $111,000,000 and then we had expenditures of 91,000,000 which has our revenues over our expenditures of $19.78 And then we had other financing sources.

Yes, that's a crazy term, but that's a term that ties up to our financial statements. So the way this is laid out is we're trying to discuss as it is outlined in our financial statements. It is just different language. We just don't normally talk that way. But I just want to be able to go over it so you match up when anybody wants to go back to the book. And so then of course we had other financing sources. So that is your transfers, the funds that you subsidize. It would be your convention centers, your baseball animal. And then it has some of our other liabilities, such as leases to facilities leases which were required to recognize per some of the newer GASB rules. And so that's what's in that 19.88.

So that left us with a fund balance shortage of point one zero, and so there was no funds available this year due to the change, as Jason mentioned earlier, in our GASB, our compensated absences, which had no transfers then into our emergency reserve and our civic center fund. Emergency reserve, which is that next column, the second column over, the revenues were the interest, so there's no revenues in there. The only revenue that's in there is either it's gonna be a transfer or it's gonna be its interest earnings. So that 1.3 is interest earnings, and then expenditures are gonna be us having some expenditures for maintaining the fund. They're gonna be allocations or it's going to be minor other cost.

And then our capital, which is this is setting aside money to fund the capital that's approved in a general fund that is not being completed, that is underway or has not begun yet. This next slide is our debt slide. I always get asked whenever I'm up here, so I went ahead and put the slide in just so we can all see it. So the general fund last year did pay on we have three debt payments that we make. And the top one, the highlighted P-one, it was retired this December.

And so as you know, we've been kinda counting down some of these and getting them retired. And so that leaves us with the following two. But these were the three financials.

Yeah. Renee, if you were gonna go out today and get a loan, what is the interest rate currently you would see?

So Jason and I have been running different scenarios, obviously for different projects, and it's kinda hard to tell. The market's changing. It depends on your agency as well, how financially stable it is. And so if we had to predict today, it would probably be anywhere between a four and a five. And you could maybe get to a high three of a 3.75 or a 3.8. But that would be amazing if you could get that today. But the market is changing. Interest rates are lowering. So right now we're estimating probably a low four, mid four.

Thank you.

So the general fund emergency reserves has and again, I had just shown that we didn't transfer any new funds from the general fund in there. So we did have a beginning balance of $22,700,000 We had interest earnings of $1,300,000 We did not transfer, which gave us an ending balance of 24,000,000. So that puts us at 27.5% of operating expenditures. Council's policy, we changed last year, was from 25% to 30%

of

operating expenditures. We were there last year, and this year we fell shy due to that GASB compensated absences. If we didn't have that change, that money would have been transferred and we would have been at the 30% of operating expenditure as council's policy is.

On this slide, previous councils should get credit for this because they saw that when everything was going south that we had to start tightening our belt up and start saving in case for emergencies. And you can see it right here. Look at eleven-twelve, how low that was. Now, we're looking about thirteen years later, and that's what the long term vision of previous councils have led to, is how financial sound and stable the city is. Like I said, previous councils should be applauded for this, this long term vision.

As you can see right here, this is in case something happens, we are in a pretty safe space compared to other cities or municipalities around California.

Definitely, and so you basically said everything that I was gonna say on this slide. Again, it's the importance. It shows history can tell you where you need to change, and when you look at this, it showed that you need to be ready and this council has made us, and the past councils have made us ready. And not only did you guys make it your priority to replace, but also to increase it from the 25% to the 30% because as you can see, our operating expenditures are also increasing. And so if there is an economic downturn, such as the one that was in 2008, you would need more than what we had in 2000

barely made it through five years and so if there's a large one that continues beyond that, it would be difficult. And

So the general fund ended the year with a total fund balance of $86,600,000 which is categorized as follows. 2,000,000 in non spendable for things such as prepays, deposits, and advances, 18,300,000.0 in restricted for remaining capital projects related to ARPA funds, 25,400,000.0 in committed funds, 24,000,000 of this is for the emergency reserves, 38,200,000.0 in assigned for council approved projects, CalPERS unfunded liability prepayment, and the successor agency note. And finally, 2,700,000.0 in unassigned, which is mainly used for the following. For grants to temporarily advance one time expenditures which are awaiting grant funds. Impact fees to advance monies to keep moving forward on projects, and for prior year adjustments as every year things pop up that come to light for that were related to prior years.

Unassigned fund balance fluctuates from year to year.

Things we need to consider while looking at each enterprise fund measures. We're gonna ask, are revenues more than expenditures? Are revenues covering operating costs? Is there a fund balance? Is sufficient money being raised to cover the debt service? And is sufficient money being raised to replace capital assets? Funds are categorized as major and non major funds. These are calculations done at the end of the year. They're based on assets, liabilities, revenue, and the expenditures. For governmental, we have five major funds, and we have 33 non major funds.

For enterprise funds, we have four major funds and four non major funds. These funds may fluctuate from year to year being a major fund or non major fund. So one year you might see it as a major, the next you might see it as a non major. This slide is a summary of major governmental funds and aggregate non major funds. The general fund, including the emergency reserves, we have covered in detail in the previous slides.

Measure n ended the year with a fund balance of 42,200,000.0. The American Rescue Plan is used to account for the ARPA funds. Their ending fund balance is zero. This is due to the reporting closeout as this has been completed. Transportation has an ending fund balance of 36,000,000, of which the majority of the balance has been committed for future projects.

The Civic Center Fund has an ending fund balance of 73,600,000.0 as construction of the Civic Center is underway. The last category is all other governmental fund known as the non major funds. These include special revenue funds such as Measure T, Measure R, various impact fee funds, debt service funds, capital project funds. They have a combined fund balance of $172,500,000 In total, governmental fund balances ended the year at 410,900,000.0 Council has authorized three funds to receive a subsidy. These are not paid back to the general fund like in advances.

Current funds receiving subsidy is the convention center. They receive 3,000,000, 1.5 in operations, 1.1 in debt payment, and 400,000 in capital. Animal Control received 1,700,000.0, 1.1 in operations, 600,000 in debt payments. Baseball received received $8.08 point 330,000.00, million, $6,600 100,000 thousand in in operations, operations, and 7,700,000.0 in capital.

Can I ask a question on that one, on the baseball fund? So I know we were giving him a $200,000 a year subsidy on that, but we advance all that for the projects. So on next year's report, will that still show that on there or no?

It won't show no, it won't show the $200,000 will not be in there cause we won't have it it won't be in an expenditure. You've already spent it. So it's us not setting aside each year to replace future capital.

All right. Thanks.

This chart is a summary of the general fund operations subsidies, a three year comparison. In total, the general fund subsidized 3,000,000 in 2223. This is the very last column, has the total. 2.7 in 2324 and three 0.2 in 2425. So keep in mind operational subsidies can change from year to year.

The question on animal control. I see that one went down. Was that because they collected more fees? Because I think our operating expenses went up. Do you know? Yes. No,

it was due, yeah, due to the new agreements that were entered into with the surrounding cities.

So they're making more revenue that we don't have to subsidize? Great. Thank you.

This next slide contains the enterprise funds. So this is all eight of the funds. So like I said earlier, the first four are major funds and then the last four are non major funds. The two highlighted are the funds that receive a subsidy. Water reclamation ended a fund balance with 260,300,000.0.

Their capital assets are $231,500,000 which is making up most of their fund balance. Storm sewer maintenance has an ending fund balance of $65,300,000 Again, their capital assets also making up most of their fund balance, which includes 65,800,000.0. These include storm drains, storm lines, and basins. Solid waste fund balance has an ending fund balance of 43.4. Transit ended the year with a fund balance of 77,000,000.

Convention center had an ending fund balance of 5,900,000.0. Airport ended the year with 12,400,000.0. Building safety has ending fund balance of $12,200,000 and Animal Control ended the year with $2,600,000 The net change in fund balance across all enterprise funds was $18,200,000 with ending fund balance 479,100,000.0. Just a quick recap on the internal service funds. These includes funds such as fleet services, vehicle replacement, information services, risk and health, and building maintenance.

They had a net change in fund balance of negative $1,300,000 resulting in their ending fund balance of 45,700,000.0 highlights for fiscal year twenty four-twenty five. The general fund tax revenues continue to grow. Economic sensitive revenue increased by $3,000,000 Property tax increased $2,700,000 The general fund reserve balance is at 27.5% of the 30% policy level. Emergency reserves are at $24,000,000 The enterprise fund balances continue to increase and are able to fund the operations and capital. At this time, are there any questions or comments?

You motion now or no?

Just to accept the report. The

only comment I would make is you guys start in the spring on this, and I got ten days to read it but it's all good. You guys did an excellent thorough report. I applaud you guys. You guys usually cross the T's dot the I's very well. So I'm totally supportive. I'll make the motion if no

one else has any other questions. We'll do a public comment real quick. Any other comments? Just Thank thank

you for the work that you guys put to do all this.

Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come forward and state your name and city of residence. Seeing no one running up the microphone, we'll go ahead and, on behalf of the city council, say thank you guys for the report and for all that you do. We appreciate it, and I will entertain a motion.

I move to accept the fine fiscal year twenty twenty four, twenty five annual comprehensive financial report.

I'll second that. First and second, please vote. I had pass this five zero. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Alright. Next, we're gonna go on to the item number two, which is the annual Measure T independent consultants report. And I'm guessing it's all the same people. Almost, besides our auditor. Thank you.

Counsel, the next two presentations are for measure t and measure n, which is a separate report report on applied agreed upon procedures. These are both required per the measure. We'll start off with Measure T for fiscal year ending 06/30/2025. In March 2004, voters of Visalia passed the sales tax override measure to increase public safety in Visalia. And in January 1320, '21, the Measure T plan was re authorized to continue the sales tax override.

The quarter cent sales taxes to enhance police and fire services and is split 40% going to fire and 60% going to police. Measure t has several requirements. Revenues cannot replace general fund revenues budgeted for normal operations at the previous year's service level. The measure has a detailed twenty year plan for hiring personnel, construction facilities, and equipment purchases. Since 2008, Measure T has been operating on an amended plan due to several years of lower revenues, higher expenditures, and no subsidy from the general fund as outlined in the original plan.

Measure t requires an economic certainty fund, which is 30% of the actual operating expenses. These will be deposited into a separate fund for emergency use. Continuing with the requirements. This also is a requirement for an independent accountant report on applied agreed upon procedures, annual recertification and effectiveness review. M.

Green and Company, certified public accountants, completed the report and confirms that the plan is being implemented and adjusted according to the ballot measure. Annual recertification of the plan is detail of what monies have been received, what monies have been spent, and what monies are still available. This is done every June. The last requirement is the effectiveness review. This is to review the progress of the Measure T plan and continuing need for the sales tax measure.

The next real review will be at the January 2029 meeting and every year eight years after that. The last review was completed in 2021. The report was completed by m Green and Company for the fiscal year ending 06/30/2025. There were no findings for the report period. The Citizens Advisory Committee has reviewed the report.

Their review took place 01/07/2026. This chart represents the police actuals for 2324 and 2425. Measure T revenues need to be able to first fund the operations and second, fund the uncertainty fund, which is 30% of the actual operating expenses. However, they must fund the operations first. So in this fund, there's a total of 23 officers in the amended plan.

There were no vacancies at June 30. In 2025, they had revenues over expenditures among the very right hand column in the middle, 1,500,000.0. Were even though vacancies were filled by the end of the year, there were some vacancies during the year. The economic uncertainty fund for this fund is in compliance at 30% of operating expenditures at $1,600,000 This next slide is for a measure T fire, again comparing the two years. The fire has a total of 13 employees in the amended plan.

There were two vacancies at June 30. So as you can see, the revenue over expenditures, 886,000, and that's with two vacancies. The fire ended this this will sorry. This will be less in future years as those two vacancies are filled and the employee costs will continue to increase. Their economic uncertainty fund is also funded at 30% and is in compliance.

That is at the very bottom there, 1,100,000.0. In summary, the independent accountant's report confirmed that Measure T funds are in accordance with the ballot measure program guidelines expenditure plan for fiscal year ending 06/30/2025. Tonight, no formal action required today. Just receive and review the report. At this time, are there any questions?

Questions?

I'll just make some comments real quick. Great job as always. I think it shows a lot that our residents care about public safety that much to support these measures. And also that I think it's pretty great that Visalia is one of the largest cities in the county, but yet we probably have the smallest sales tax in the county. So I take a lot of pride in that. So great job. I'll be fully supportive of it tonight. I just wanna make sure because this is a mood to accept, this thing says no action. So I don't know which one are we following here. Do we have to accept this or no?

Yeah, just go ahead and accept it. It wouldn't get very clear.

I said there, but it says nowhere. I was confused.

Any other questions or comments?

I move to accept Let

me go ahead and open up to the public. Sorry. Alright, we'll go ahead and open up to the public. Anyone wishing to speak on this item, please come forward. Nobody wants to talk on this item either. Alright. So again, on behalf of the Visalia City Council, wanna say thank you for the report. We also wanna thank the Measure T Committee for reviewing these financials and making sure that that the city is complying with what the voters approved. And so we appreciate all those involved. So I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

I move to accept the measure t independent accountants report on applying agreed upon procedures.

I'll second that.

First and second. All those in favor, please vote. And the item passes five zero. Thank you very much. Next we're go on to item number three which is the annual measure N independent accountants report. Staff report please.

Good evening Council, Renee Nagel, Finance and Technology Director. So I will be presenting the Measure N Independent Accountants Report. It's the same type of report that we just went over with T except it's Measure N. For the audience, we'll be going over some more detail for those that do not know what Measure N is. So the measure is a half cent sales tax for essential city services such as police, fire, recreation, as well as maintenance of parks, roads, and city facilities.

The measure uses a detailed ten year plan. Measure N was approved by the voters November 2016 and became effective 04/01/2017. Measure N has requirements like Measure T, but they are a little bit different. The revenues has where 30% of actual operating expenses go to the uncertainty fund for fiscal emergency, 10% of the budgeted revenues go to a split between 2% into the youth programs and 8% into a maintenance and emerging needs. These are separate funds than the than the big fund, so we do track these, funds separately.

For expenditures, money shall not be used for debt service payments. Annual expenditure plan must be approved by council after following has occurred, that the city manager makes a recommendation to city council. We receive comments and recommendation by the sales tax oversight board, and then two public hearings are conducted at two regular council meetings. Measure ins. Oversight board consists of 11 members that are appointed as specified in the plan.

The Oversight Board reviews the budgets prior to adoption and reviews any changes that are proposed throughout the year as well. And then of course reviews the independent accountants report on applying agreed upon procedures. Tonight we're here to review the independent accountant's report on the applied agreed upon procedures. And then of course there's the effectiveness review. So this was reviewed last year in March and then it's reviewed every eight years after that.

This report was completed or the independent accountants report was completed by Emgreen and Company for fiscal year ending 06/30/2025. There were findings. The Measure and Oversight Committee reviewed the report for fiscal year twenty four-twenty five on January 12 and approved it and accepted it as well. So these tables aren't real simple tables, but we do try to keep them consistent with what is in the ACFR, even though they're two separate documents. But a lot of times folks would like to go back and say, well, what is measuring and what did you spend?

This report does not go over the expenditures. Brown Armstrong only makes sure that we spent the money according to the terms and follow the requirements that I just went over. But we do like to tie the ACFR to these presentations, which is why we paste a chart from the ACFR into these. So these expenditures are also shown on our ACFR and on our website as well. So we're comparing fiscal year twenty three-twenty four to fiscal year twenty four-twenty five.

For Measure N, sales tax was 18,700,000.0. We had additional interest earnings and miscellaneous revenues of 2.1. And then of course we get some grant reimbursements and they have to be tracked with each employee. So if there's an employee getting reimbursed by a grant, you'll see grant reimbursements in these funds as well. So our total expenditures were 15.4 and we do have some liabilities. And again, talking about debt service, there was a question at Measure N that said, wait a minute, you can't do debt. You clearly said that. They're right. There is no debt. That's not a true debt.

It's a liability. But according to our financial statements, it's called debt. And so it's called SPITA, which is also known as a liability where we have to recognize future leases, which is like for in here, it would be the Axon or the body cameras type contracts. Because they're five years, you recognize the five years, it's a liability. It's a contract issue.

You have to book it as a future liability. It's a little weird, but it is to comply with our accounting standards. And then of course it had for our revenues were over expenditures by 5,500,000.0. As you can see, last year it was less, and that's because Measure N has capital projects, and so there's gonna be some years where your expenses exceed your revenues. It doesn't mean that the fund is going bad, it just means that we had more expenditures in that year.

And so the plan has where it's funding personnel, it has where it's funding big expenditures such as Station 56, Station 51 relocation, so it saves up cash to be able to do those larger expenditures. So you're gonna see some years where you have larger cash than you have in other years when it comes to revenues exceeding expenditures. And then it goes over the transfers ins and outs with a fund balance of 3.69 at the beginning of the year and ending the year with a 42,200,000.0. Next slide. So there were some projects that were not completed that were budgeted in last fiscal year.

These projects totaled 8.6 and so this would be, sometimes they're just a timing issue. Sometimes for the road projects, need them to be more completed in the hotter weather, so we issue a contract in the middle of that year, and then they don't complete until the summer. So the Cape Seal and Reclamation, they're done today, but they weren't done as of June 30. So their expenditures will continue into this fiscal year. The Station 51, that's currently money that's there that's being designed.

We do know that that project is going to need additional funds for the construction, and staff will be returning to appropriate additional funds, which is anywhere between $18,000,000 and $20,000,000 at this time. This next slide kind of breaks it out by the funds just to kind of give a summary and bring it back to different terms than what's in the ACFR. So we have our beginning fund balance, our revenues that we just went over and expenditures, other financing uses, and then our ending fund balance. And then it takes into consideration the CIPs that were rolled from last fiscal year that I just went over, and then it gives you your remaining fund balance. And so most of your projects and your personnel are all in your essential services fund.

And so that 23,000,000, some may say, well, that's a lot in Measure T, but remember we just talked about the Fire Station 51 still has to have its construction. The money has to be appropriated out of that fund. So it's been saving up funds to be able to do that project.

But Renee, the 6,000,000 under essential services is part of that for Station 51 design and everything that's showing as CIP?

Oh, no, that would be, go back, Carrie, to the other. That 6,000,000 is Oh, it's in here? Yeah, some of those projects in there that are in that category. Not all of those projects are in that essential services. Some of them are in the other categories on that slide we just showed. Thank you. So in summary, the independent accountant's report confirmed that Measure N funds are in accordance with the ballot measure, program guidelines, and expenditure plan for fiscal year ending 06/30/2025. This says there's no formal action but we would like counsel to receive and accept the report.

Perfect. Any questions at this time? Okay. Open up to the public. Anyone from the public wishing to speak on the Measure N report? Seeing nobody, I will turn it back over to counsel with a motion.

I move to accept the measure and independent accountants report on applying agreed upon procedures from m Green and Company for the fiscal year ending in 06/30/2025.

I'll second it.

We have for a second. Please vote in favor. And the item passes five zero. Thank you very much. We appreciate you guys' report today.

Alright. We're gonna go on to item number four which is neighborhood park development. Staff report, please.

Thank you mayor, vice mayor, council. Jason Glick parks and recreation director joined by Jason Huckleberry engineering director. Pretty excited about these two presentations. The city of Isaiah has built a neighborhood park in '15 or since 2015 so pretty excited. The first park we're gonna or property we're gonna talk about is the Pearlwood property.

We're gonna discuss the history of the property, the public meeting process, conceptual designs, budgets, park projects, recommendations. The property was publicly noticed and went to the Visalia Planning Commission. I I think I went to the Visalia Planning Commission, the Visalia City Council. I need help with the next one. The Pearlwood property is located off Road 148 and Cameron Creek.

I've got notes. Was recommended by Visalia Planning Commission to move forward on 06/12/2023 with a five o vote and approved by the Visalia City Council on 07/17/2023 with five o vote. Doctor Horton chose QuadNOV to design the Pearlwood Property Park. The Pearlwood property is five and a half acres with a five acre ponding basin. QuadNOF engaged with city staff to get public input on park amenities from the community to create three conceptual designs for the Pearlwood Property Park.

The three public input meetings were held for the Pearlwood property during the 2025. Pearlwood Property public meetings, the public voted on different types of amenities ranging from traditional sports, community amenities, active amenities, and site amenities. Traditional sport amenities included multipurpose athletic fields, lighted pickleball courts, lighted tennis courts, and lighted basketball courts. Community amenities were amphitheater, a demonstration garden, botanical garden, butterfly garden, interpretive signage, and public art. Active amenities included a a traditional playground with shade structures, adventure nature playground with shade structures, obstacle course, para course equipment, which is fitness equipment, disc golf, BMX pump track, cornhole, lighted walking path, mini pitch, court, and outdoor handball court.

Site amenities included solar pedestrian lights, restrooms, seating areas, parking lot, and drinking fountains. This is a picture of of one of our public meetings. And to to my left is one of the the voting boards, and residents would get six dots. Three of the blue dots were their primary choice, and three of the red dots were their secondary choice. The public could not put multiple dots on one amenity.

They had to choose six different amenities, and, we also checked, to make sure that folks were residents of the city of Isonia. The Pearlwood property, the top six amenities chosen are as follows. Number one was walking path with lights, the BMX pump track, pickleball courts, restrooms, adventure themed playground, and amphitheater. If you combine the Pearlwood property and the Elliot property together, these were the top 10 amenities chosen. Walking path with lights, restrooms, pickleball courts, pump track, parking lot, botanical garden, athletic field space, amphitheater, traditional playground, adventure playground, basketball courts, and a mini pitch.

The design teams used feedback gathered during the community input meetings to create three conceptual designs for the Pearlwood, property park. In addition to the valuable input provided by the public, the design teams working in collaboration with city staff carefully considered several other key factors. These included park size fit, available space, combat compatibility of amenities with the surrounding neighborhood and the city, overall functionality, initial construction costs relative to the available budget, and the long term cost of the complexity of ongoing maintenance. So this is conceptual design number one for the Pearlwood property. It features a half acre BMX pump track, a mini pitch field, pickleball courts, and a circular shade structure.

It has a if I had a pointer, it has a lit walking path on in the middle of the

is there a pointer? Can you explain real quick what a mini pitch field is? I actually had someone call me and ask

what So so a mini pitch, you could it's they're typically basketball courts and futsal courts where you can play futsal, and you can play basketball. And some of them are basketball courts, futsal, and pickleball. But these this is this is a proposed mini pitch that is soccer and futsal.

What what is futsal?

It's mod I guess the best way to describe it is modified soccer.

Can I have a demo?

Demo. It's it's like street soccer. It's like it's like street soccer, like, on a basketball court.

Right?

There you go. Yes. Thank you. So what's kinda neat about this one, it has the lot lit walking path, and it has a a DG walking path around the basin as well. So if it's if you're looking to get your steps, you'll have that option with this conceptual design.

All of the designs, we requested a Kodak moment where folks can take a nice little picture. And this picture is right off of the parking lot. Conceptual design number two, this one features pickleball courts, botanical garden with community art sculptures, inclusive playground, and the paracourse equipment, which is fitness equipment, and an amphitheater. It has a large open play area. Again, it has the lit walking path around the center of the park, and it has the DG walking path around the basin that connects to the park.

It has a parking lot. It also has a bathroom as well. Conceptual design number three, it features a nature playground, botanical garden with community circle and art sculptures. That location is where you have the Kodak moment. It has pickleball courts, four pickleball courts, passive play area with arch backstop. It fits soccer and baseball. In that open space area, you can fit a full size soccer field. This one also features a parking lot. It has bathrooms, and it has must go lighting in that full size green space area. Again, you've got the walking path.

You've got the DG path that circulates around the basin.

So in the top right corner, is that the backstop in there? That's a backstop. Backstop. Okay. Just want to make sure.

Staff of the Park and Rec Commission recommends to the Visalia City Council conceptual design number three for the Pearlwood property.

Question. Yes. Give me give me your definition of a neighborhood park.

So a neighborhood park is typically a park that is two to five acres. You have different so you have pocket parks that are zero to two acres, neighborhood parks that are two to five, and community parks are typically bigger than five parks. And then you get into your regional parks. Your neighborhood parks, specifically your amenities, you want your neighborhood parks active, but you want to be careful of the over activation. You want them to be active to deter illegal activity.

When you over activate a neighborhood park, if you put a fifth a 50 meter aquatic center in a neighborhood park, that would definitely over activate it. So wooden for pickleball courts? Well, we'll get to that in a minute.

No. I'm just saying. Yeah. Yeah. Because what I'm looking at

Good question.

Is when I look at a neighborhood park, it's in a subdivision. Okay? It's usually you consider walkability. You don't consider a parking lot. You don't look at it as I'm gonna draw contingent of people outside the neighborhood that's gonna hang out so you don't do restrooms because it's neighborhood park. You go home to use a restroom. So I'm just trying to get an idea. What is a neighborhood park, and then what are we trying to do to disrupt the neighborhood? And that's my concern. So go ahead.

Thank you. The Pearlwood Property Park budget estimate is, $77,567,000. The Pearlwood Property Park current funding is a little over 3,000,000. During the December 2 meeting, finance director Renee Nagel gave a presentation on our current park projects that are funded. The dog park, the projected cost is 2,000,000, with a budget shortfall of 1.7.

The Riverway Sports Park North parking lot has a $3,700,000 price tag with a shortfall of 2,000,000. The Pearlwood Property Park, which we're talking about right now, has a current shortfall of $4,500,000 And then the Inclusive Park has a budget shortfall of $1,900,000 Just continuing this fiscal year, this is our CIP listing for park projects in 'twenty five-'twenty six. I want to point out the Victory Oaks two acre park. There's $2,250,000 budgeted and $1,250,000 budgeted in fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven. The Riverway Sports Park North parking lot is in here.

The Pearlwood Property Park, the Elliot property park is in here as well, as well as master plan. That project is kicking off in the February. The Pearlwood Property Park recommendations at 12/09/2025, the Visalia Parks Recreation Commission meeting, the commission recommended advice that the city council eliminate the following amenities at the Pearlwood Park location. Musco field lighting at the price of $600,000, restrooms 250,000, and parking at 47,000. These reductions would generate a cost savings of $897,000 and reduce the total project cost to $6,670,500 and approve the conceptual design number three for the Pearlwood property.

In addition, to address the funding gap, staff proposes the following actions, approve the Park and Recreation Commission's recommended reductions, transfer 2,240,000 from the Victory Oaks property in fiscal year 2526, and appropriate these funds to the Pearlwood property project, transfer $1,388,200 from the Riverway Sports Park North parking lot project in fiscal year 2526, and appropriate these funds to the Pearlwood property project. These actions will fully fund the Pearlwood Property Park project at a revised total cost of $6,670,500. Staff further recommends moving both the Riverway Sports Park North parking lot project and the Victory Oaks property park project to the outer fiscal year. Once council approves a conceptual design, the engineering firms will create construction docs based off the chosen conceptual plans for the Pearlwood Property Park. Thank you.

Any questions?

And council member Nelson, to your point, this would, by removing the lights for a lighted field, the bathrooms, and the parking lot, you right size this park to much more what is appropriate for a neighborhood park so we don't cause problems for a neighborhood.

So the question then becomes, if you down if you do away the parking lot, you do away the restrooms, and you have four pickleball courts, you impact the neighborhood with parking. And then what people go to the restroom if you get four pickleball courts versus two pickleball courts.

Yeah, again, it's a very popular sport. It's very possible that it could be you invite your friends over so they go and use it. That's a judgment call at some point.

Well, understand that. Northern City did away with pickleball near neighborhoods because of the noise factor. So again, they did an ordinance where you don't have pickleball within the city. The idea of a neighborhood park is neighborhood goes use it. It's it's it's not a congregation of outside folks.

It's an amenity for neighborhood. And if you make it where a lot of people are coming, you have parking issues, you have noise issues, that's no longer a benefit to the neighborhood, and that's my concern. If you go down to two pickleball courts, you may not have that impact of parking and noise factor. And the other question I would ask too, you show a botanical garden and art. Who's supplying the art, and what's the maintenance cost on something like that? Because we don't have that in any other part of the city. Correct? That is correct. So what do you think

the maintenance cost would be on something like that? We estimated the maintenance cost, I believe, for, this property $38,000 per year.

Annual cost? Annual cost. And then you looked at doing away with the dog park, the, sports park, parking lot, and then you touched my favorite entity, which was the inclusive park. And I don't want to see the inclusive park being kicked down the road again because that's been on the board for now we're going on six years, and we're no longer no closer today than we were yesterday. And then in the fifth year well, yeah, in the fifth year, we find out it's a contaminated site, which I think we should have been able to figure that out by the first or second year.

But the inclusive park keeps getting kicked down the road, and I don't see that as a benefit for our community, especially a segment of our community that we are not funding for. And so that bothers me.

Councilwoman Brigitte, any comments or questions?

Yeah, so I agree with Councilwoman Nelson's comments about a neighborhood park. A couple of questions on a botanical garden. What's the cost of building botanical garden in there?

I don't have that cost in

front of me, but I can get it

to you at a later date. I'm concerned about like a I like that we're putting a photo spot in some places, but like I don't want, how do I say this nicely? I don't see people go in the park to take a picture right there on a lot of different things. I think we're doing things around the city, at the city hall or different places where people can come take pictures. I like the fact that we're doing that.

I think the botanical garden in the neighborhood, I struggle with that right there. But I do agree with removing the lights, being around a lot of kids' activities. I've been in parks where lights are on there. You see it affect the neighborhood greatly. In fact, we're at one park at playing a game at 10:00 at night, and my kids would go to the ball and the lights shut off because they had a time limit there on that. So I'm I'm I'm glad we're getting rid of the Musco lights there. I struggle with the botanical gardens in the park. If it's a big spiff, I would say we'd rather take that out. I've seen people say we need green space more than a botanical garden. I would rather have more green space for kids to play.

If we do that, I just wanna know what that cost is. If it's not that expensive, I understand, but if it's a big expense, I'd rather rip that out and have the savings there. But besides that, those are my 2¢ on this. I do agree with removing the restrooms from the park because really a neighborhood park, people go to park from the neighborhood, use it, then you go to bathroom, then go back to their house. I think you put a restroom, it's an attractive nuisance where people can start hanging out there and doing things more there. So totally I agree with the move in that. But those are just my 2¢ about it.

Councilor Morsodo, any comments or questions?

No, I wanna wait for public to give us a comment before

I make my comments. Okay. Very well. Vice mayor Winn? The

Parks and Rec Commission is made up of how many citizens? Right? And they they've approved all this. They've looked at it and approved it?

Yes.

Okay. And then, I like the design. We have a huge master gardener club here in Tulare County, so I think a botanical garden is not a bad thing. In the pickleball courts, my only concern is, the noise from those in the neighborhood. You had one design where they were a little further into the middle of the park, but I don't know what's across the street there, if those are residents, and if that becomes like a nuisance for them.

But I think number for a neighborhood. They they can bring their families there, and I hear those complaints often that there's nowhere for people to go with their kids and play, because it's so impacted out at Plaza And Rec. So I don't think this is a bad thing to have four pickleball courts in a neighborhood. They're not gonna be lighted, so they're only gonna be used during daylight hours. And, I think it's a great idea, I think others who have more experience in this than I do, have made great recommendations. So I will fully support.

Can I ask a question real quick?

People keep thinking, is pickleball loud? Because I don't know. Is the racket? Because off the top of my head, I don't think pickleball is that loud. I think a baseball off a middle bat's louder than that. Like, I don't know,

It makes a popping sound.

Do we get lot of complaints about pickleball? Because I've never heard of this before, and all of sudden, heard from two different people at night. Is there a lot of complaints about pickleball in neighborhoods or no?

We don't have any neighborhoods.

So the answer is we'll find out here in a little bit then, The

only public complaints I got were when we had a family set up a pickleball court in their cul de sac, and they're playing

at night and taking advantage of

their street lights, the neighbors were very upset.

When we were going through some of this design, I did talk to our former parks manager, Alvin. We now have Ivan. Not that I don't get that mixed up from time to time. But I asked him about the botanical garden, and he said that if so, it would still be designed as water efficient so that both the the maintenance then becomes less once it's full more fully developed. He did not see that as a significant cost. Still may choose to use the space differently, but I just wanna note that we did had talked about both the planting and the maintenance, and I hope Ivan agrees.

Weren't we looking at botanical behind the civic center on the trail?

I have heard a proposal for more of an oak

The oak, but I thought we were also looking at a botanical.

We have not gotten that far in the development because we're waiting we know that there'll be significant construction interference with that grounds there, so we really haven't gone farther. But I have heard requests for an oak preserve.

All right. So I just have a few questions. You didn't know what the cost for the botanical garden was gonna be? Do you know what the cost would be for the proposed art?

No. I don't have those costs.

Okay. I'd like to see that because, I mean, obviously, art can be $20,000 for a statue or it could be a 100,000 for a statue. And depending on just how much art and what kind it is. So I'm just kinda interested to see what the price is on that. I think do you know what the cost is for the a mini pitch field is?

The mini pitch field is, I believe, 250,000. The pickleball courts, the four pickleball courts are 600,000. Okay.

So 600,000 for the four. And then, I'm sorry, what was the minis? 250,000. 250,000, so, okay. Which is gonna be kind of my question was, given that this is a neighborhood park, potentially going down to two pickleball courts and adding a mini pitch field is kind of something that popped in my head. But, anyways, those are the questions I have right now. I do want to hear the public. But I want to say thank you guys for doing this. This is really exciting for our community. You know, that side of town, there's not a lot of parks over there.

So I know I've already received quite a few phone calls from the community, and they're excited and wishing this was already under construction. So I wanna say thank you. Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anyone wishing to speak on this item, come forward and state your name and city residence, please.

Lisa Walsh, city of Visalia, former parks commissioner. Appreciate the work that the parks department has done on this. Very impressed with the number of people that have come out. I don't personally see that a pickleball courts are going to be that disruptive to a community or to a neighborhood. We have kids that play soccer in our neighborhood parks all the time.

Basketball, there's a lot of other things that they can be doing to make a lot of noise, and I would happily see families out there utilizing public space like this. I do think if you did two of them, it would be a little bit more advantageous with the mini pitch. Think I could agree with that. But, I don't see those types of amenities any different today than what we used to have as basketball or tennis courts. I think they're fitting based on the amount of feedback that we had as a parks commission over the last six or seven years of the people that like to play pickleball in the community.

All All these people in the audience must be ready to talk about the pool, I guess.

My name is Joanne Chamberlain. Had the went to people went to the meetings for these parks, and they were voted on for pickleball as one of the most popular things out there. But obviously, you guys don't play pickleball, and you don't want pickleball courts out there. It just seems that this is what the people voted for. This is what they want there. They should have it. Same thing with restrooms. They voted for restrooms too, but you don't seem to want restrooms out there either.

Okay, anybody else? We will go ahead and close public comments then and turn it back over to counsel with any further discussion.

I got a question. Mini pitch field, is it how many pickleball courts go on the mini pitch field?

So that's a good question.

And there is light up there with that?

I thought you had a

Sorry? The the first I thought the first one So so this conceptual design does not have a mini pitch.

No. Within your first one?

One.

More. Right there. Right right there.

So that is there's different sizes of mini pitch facilities. The one we're putting at Jefferson Park is smaller. The one at the I'll show you later at the Elliott property that we're proposing is a bit smaller than that. That is a pretty large mini pitch facility for futsal and outdoor basketball. So you can probably fit at least two pickleball courts in there.

So if we get rid of two pickleball courts and put a foot sole in there, basically we'd be saving $50,000 even at Pickleball and the mini pitch there on the same area, correct?

Yes. Would this require them

to check out net that we

have at the Anthony Center or there be a makeshift net that someone could just put out in that area? Or how would that work?

So in in mini pitch facilities, if there is pickleball, you would, bring your own net. The there's For footsall, there's netting's already installed inside of it, the basketball hoop is on the outside of the goal area.

Any other questions or comments? Public comments is cosigns. Thank you. So, I did want to say something about the bathrooms. I think everybody up here would love to have bathrooms in our parks in every single one of them. But the reality of it is is in California, they turn into a nightmare where people break into them constantly. They're using them for illicit purposes. And at the end of the day, it turns into more of a nuisance. And they end up looking like prison bathrooms and actual bathrooms that people would wanna use. And so even though we would love to have them, at the end of day, it's just not something we can do as a community because it it just turns into an eyesore.

It turns into an attractive for homeless to come in and wanna use it. And so just, you know, living in there, I mean, it just time after time, it has not worked out. So it's not that we don't want them. We would love to have them. Just in California, you know, people can destroy public restrooms, and there's nothing you can really do about it. I will entertain a motion if there's no other comments at this time.

I I really wanna know how much the botanical garden is because, like, it was if we're, like, around a million bucks, then I'd say scrap that thing, and then we could do a lot of I mean, if a botanical garden's that expensive, I'd rather scrap that and do pickleball courts or do mini pitch. I think people will get more use of that than a botanical garden. Just my own personal opinion.

Q. Think, sure, on a mini pitch, it's a three on-three. And I think you'd see you get a lot of usage out of that because of all the different soccer teams going around, plus you have adults play three on three. It's just like basketball. And all of a sudden, got a little league going on, and, yeah, it's a it's a great amenity. And and let me address. I'm all for pickleball courts. I've never said I just like pickleball. What I do like is I wanna make sure the neighborhood's not impacted, and that's my only concern. I think we're looking at a different another park with pickleball courts. Are we not? Yes. Okay. Yep. I'm gonna with the number coming.

We're putting in pickleball courts, And I'm sorry that we don't have a complex that has 30 pickleball courts together because I know the pickleball court community would like to have that. I'm looking at the integrity of a neighborhood. I'm not too gung ho on a botanical garden and art, but you can convince me otherwise. I am for the

Well, let's look at go back to the amenity votes if you can. That's the only thing I'm saying is

that this is what the

board voted You said vote. Okay. So I walk up in that community meeting, and I show you I'm a Visalia resident. I get to vote? Yes. Okay. So I don't live in the neighborhood, but I'm a pickleball player or I'm a BMX writer or I'm a foosball enthusiast. I could go there and take a crowd of people and submit votes. Yes? Yes.

If you're a vice president. So in a niche little area, I could have a group of people that we're all gung ho for horseshoes. I could get 50 of my friends to show up, and I can vote for horseshoes even though I don't live in the neighborhood. And that would go towards that vote. Correct? Yes. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Do we have any proposals or any recommendations for additional information? Are you guys wanting to get, more detailed, numbers from staff before we vote on this? No. I'd make

a recommendation to go with one pickleball court, foosball soccer mini pitch. I definitely for the trails and the surrounding basin, I think, is important. And I think green space for additional activities for the neighborhood

is what I would look at.

I got a question. We have four that are planned. Correct?

Sorry, Bert?

Four is planned on that?

Mhmm.

Yeah. So you wanna go with one? And then because we technically, you go with the two pickleball courts, one mini pitch.

You've added, but I think you'll get you'll get the usage on the mini pitch. I I think you'll get

the Well, no. But you still but then why would you eliminate an extra pickleball court then? Because you go two of two.

If you had if you had a court in the mini pitch and you already built other courts, that gives you back up to your because right now, you could have two four pickleball courts and then another court on the mini pitch. Well, that won't happen.

Yeah. But then you create a issue where people are fighting over the mini pitch with pickleball courts.

I understand that.

So I would think you'd wanna do two pickleball courts and one mini pitch with more amenities, right? Because we could fit that in the same footprint right there, correct?

Yes, you can put that in the same footprint.

Okay.

Okay, we have a motion. Does anyone want to second that motion?

May I ask a clarification when you said more green space? Are we appropriate to assume you mean instead of the Botanical Garden? Just clarifying, thank you.

Hold on, so I just want make sure you said one pickleball court and one mini pitch.

Okay. So, it looks like the motion fails without a lack of a second. So, I'll entertain any new motions.

Or, I'll make a motion here. How how do I word this? I make a motion to move forward with the park minus the botanical garden and replace with green space. And I would say two pickleball courts and one mini pitch facility with those changes. Is that clear enough?

Yeah. Councilman Pashegan, can So this was conceptual design recommended by the commission. So where those pickleball courts are located right now, are you saying two pickleball courts with a mini pitch next to it Yes. And re and taking out the botanical garden with sculptures. Yes. Okay.

That's it. That's it. And

just real quickly for the public, can you kinda highlight and show us exactly where that little botanical garden would go? Because I I think for a lot of people, they're not quite sure.

The the botanical Garden is that The yellow part. It's the yellow part right there.

Can you get a highlight? Or do you

have I don't have a it's not working?

I just want the public to know what that actually looks like or what that means. There we go. That works.

Right there.

Yeah. So then basically what's being proposed by Councilmember Puchiguin would be to have two pickleball courts replace that botanical garden to the north of it with a mini pitch.

That makes more sense. So

what I was saying, sorry, I I think we're all over the place. But I was thinking it was those four courts where go two courts and the mini pitch next to that. But if you guys wanna go because really, if we're getting rid the botanical Garden, the question is how much is that? Because if that's the case, I'm happy with going four pickleball courts there and the mini pitch where the Botanical Garden is. That makes more sense and more more use of space. I mean, that's what I was thinking. Mean, in my head, I was thinking everything where the four the four courts were. Like, I just I really need to know how much this botanical Garden is because I think that if you're gonna say the botanical Garden is $10,000, it's not worth the time. We might as put the botanical garden and then move forward. The fact, like so can we table this until we figure out what that answer is?

I'm okay with that.

I think that would be the most appropriate thing to do to make sure we think the right

Can I ask you a question? Ballpark, what's the botanical garden? Are we talking about 100000 Dollars or we talking I about would

say it's under $100,000

Are we talking about like $10,000 because that's really not gonna push the envelope that much if we could put the botanical garden in.

Could we set a limit to the botanical garden? Just say with a limit of $100,000 like you said or less than that depending on what the council

agrees with My biggest fear of the botanical garden is we're gonna put it this beautiful botanical garden. Like, we've happened on roundabouts where we put in all this beautiful landscaping and then we come back two months later and someone takes all landscaping out and takes it home with them.

Exactly.

I'll be fully honest. That's my biggest concern that we're going to spend this much money on that. And then all of sudden, we're going see the plants that we plant on there throughout the neighborhood or different people's houses.

Well, let's try a different vein.

Councilman So to, you asked a question. Yeah. I you could put it say, hey. It's under 50,000 for

the yes. So look look at look at it a different way. Look at the, maintenance cost on a botanical garden versus a mini pitch with some maintenance on a mini pitch? Less. How much less? How much would you

give? Significantly less.

Yeah. So if we can do that, if we can rid the it all depends on pricing, but I'd rather do four pickleball courts and mini pitch right there if we get rid of the botanical garden, but I think that just increases

That's gonna

increase the cost, yeah.

Because then you're looking at 600,000 plus another 250,000 minuteus whatever the botanical garden cost, would be under 100,000.

Can we just bring this back down?

Increase of roughly $125,000 at least, maybe $150,000 Yeah, so it looks like would you guys be okay if we just brought this back with a few of our questions answered to a future councilman? Okay.

I make a motion to table.

Perfect. A motion to table. And do you understand the the that we've kind of assigned you with, which is Yes. Seeing what the cost would be to keep the botanical garden and the artwork or to lose it? Can I ask a I couple other questions in there, though? Hold on one second. Sorry. And to add potential mini pitch field. And then any other questions that council has?

What other space what else could we do with that botanical garden space right in there? Because if we get rid of that, what

are we gonna put in

a split? We could just put green space in, but, like, is there something that we could put there at a low cost, cost effective to

Keep in mind, given the parameters you're providing, if you were to think about two pickleball courts with the mini pitch, we would probably look at relocating zones and maybe shifting them to maximize the green space. So I know there's been some interest in growing the green space. So you might not see the same exact configuration. It might be more efficient to turn things and maximize green space. So those things are all on the table as long as we know what we really want to come back with. I would ask just to confirm, I think Jason had a question really or looking for council's direction to lose the lights. I didn't hear Yes. Then Lights and Restroom and parking.

Yeah. I think the council's kinda unanimous on removing three. Okay, so we have a first to, we have a motion to table us the future item with some questions for staff. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

All all those in favor, please vote. The motion to table this to a future agenda item is five zero. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Alright, next we're gonna go on to the item that I guess everyone is here for, which is aquatics One

more. More.

Oh, the other, yeah, sorry. We have we're going on number two here.

Okay. Our second neighborhood park we're gonna talk about is the Elliott Property. Again, the history, the public meetings, conceptual designs, budget, recommendations. The Elliott Property was noticed every time it went to the Visalia Planning Commission, the Visalia City Council. The Elliott property located on Walnut And Robyn was recommended by the Visalia Planning Commission to move forward on 08/12/2024, five o vote, and approved by the Visalia City Council on, 09/16/2024 by a five o vote.

The Elliott property sits just west of Central Valley Christian High School kind of in that area. San Joaquin Valley Homes selected Wood Architecture to design the Elliott Property Park. The Elliot property is four acres. Wood Architecture engaged with city staff to get public input on park amenities from the community to create three conceptual designs for the Elliot Property Park. The three public input meetings were held for the Elliot Park and took place during the 2025.

Same as the, the Pearlwood property, same process. We use the the traditional sports amenities, community amenities, active amenities, and site amenities. The the voting, everything was pretty much matched the Pearlwood property. Again, here's here's an example of a voting board that we used. The public meeting process.

In one public meeting, we actually had 88 people show up. That was pretty exciting. The top six park amenities chosen for the Elliott Property are as follows, a walking path of lights, restrooms, pickleball courts, BMX pump track, parking lot, and botanical garden. Again, if you combine the Elliot Property Park with the Pearlwood Property Park, these were the top 10 amenities chosen, walking path of lights, restrooms, pickleball courts, pump track, parking lot, botanical garden, athletic field space, amphitheater, traditional playground, adventure playground, basketball courts, and a mini pitch. Again, this is the same statement we use for all of our public parks.

We're getting public input. City staff will meet with the design teams, and we'll we'll figure out what the best fit is for the park, the city, and the surrounding neighborhood and and take maintenance into account for these these amenities that are chosen. This is conceptual design number one for the Elliott property. It features a basketball court, restrooms, pickleball courts, the lit walking path, the passive play area, the big open space in the middle, a traditional playground, and the Kodak moment is right off of Robyn Street. You can see the the again, the perimeter of the walking path is lit.

Conceptual design number two that features a pump track. It's located off of Roben. There's a basketball court, pickleball courts, lit walking path, the wide the big passive play area, a traditional playground, restrooms, and your Kodak moment is on the opposite corner of where you can take a picture or or do it with just just a family picture or whatever.

Real quickly, go back to number two. What is up in the top left hand corner, those circle black and and gray circle things? Playground. Just like regular play equipment? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Conceptual design number three, the amenity features. There's a pump track, a modified pump track that's about as big as an outdoor basketball court. There's a mini pitch, a passive play area, a lit walking path, cornhole, and horseshoe pits, a fitness course. The fitness course is off of Robyn Street. The Persian ditch on all of all three conceptual designs has a bridge, and the fitness court is off Robyn Street on that walking path down there.

Traditional playground and your Kodak moment is off of Robyn Street near the fitness course walking path. And then you have the big passive open green space area. On 09/09/2025, the Parks and Rec Commission recommended the Visalia City Council conceptual design number three for the Elliott Property Park. Budget estimate, the cost estimate for the Elliott property is, just under 4,800,000.0. The Elliott property has a current budget, so this this property is fully funded, and there is some wiggle room here.

So we don't need to make any kind of funding adjustments whatsoever.

How much wiggle room do we have?

Not too much, just a little. Okay. Sorry. Recommends by City Council approve conceptual design number three for the Elliott property. I'll go back. Any questions?

Yeah.

So the dope botanical garden here, great. Fantastic. I struggle with this. Like pickleball is number one on the list, and then we don't have a pickleball court on here. I get the mini pitch thing at school. It's great, but we don't know if it's gonna be used a lot. So now we're putting mini pitches in multiple parks. I struggle with that because will they use it? Will they not use it? It's one of those things.

We know the pickleball courts will be used. And that's why, like, I wish we put some pickleball courts here at the at the at this facility because that was number one on the list, and that but then we didn't put it on here is where I struggle. I think the pub track's cool and the mini pitch is cool, but how much use are those gonna get? I know the pickleball courts will get used. I know a basketball court will get used. Like I said, I spent a lot of time on practice fields. I've always said walking paths is the number one use to get every single park, green space, and then I see basketball courts and stuff like that used a lot. I don't wanna put a mini pitch in, and then it it just sits there empty a lot of the time.

A mini pitch could be used by soccer teams for training.

No. And I and I get that.

I'm just saying.

But, like, so could the grass areas too. Like, different things could be used. And, like, my kid plays soccer, so I don't want to say, like, I'm not I'm not against soccer at all. It just mini pitch wasn't on any of the list, but, yeah, we're still putting it in over the thing that was number one on the list. That's kind of where I struggle with on this one. Maybe I'm wrong and I wish we had a multi use thing, but then also I wish that we don't because then people are fighting over it and this is why I want to mini pitch now where I want to play pickleball court on. Those are my only two senses. Pickleball was the number one on the list, but yet we didn't put it

on the park.

For this one, yeah, would if we're

gonna move forward with the mini pitch at the other park, I would wanna replace mini pitch. I wouldn't say I mean, I think pickleball is top three, so that would I'd definitely consider that over the mini pitch at this park. That's if we move forward with the mini pitch at the other park. If we don't, then I do wanna have one in the city to to see if it it'll become something that'll be used, know, by the public and and therefore, maybe build more in the future. I do wanna have one at one of these parks.

I I think when we looked at pickleball courts, we have pickleball courts at Plaza Park, west of town. This park location is probably three miles from Plaza Park. We have pickleball courts in the middle of town at Recreation Park, and we don't have anything, east of town. Mhmm. And that was kind of the thought with the pickleball courts.

So so on the pickleball courts, I have a wife and two kids. My wife and two kids don't like to go Placid Park. They feel like they don't belong there. They feel like they've been pushed out of there. And that's my only concern. Was, like, if families wanna go play poker ball freely and just have fun with each other, this would be a perfect place for that. Like, I'll be fully honest, like, Plaza Park is not that way. They feel like they've been kinda pushed out of Plaza Park, feel like they don't belong there. And that's why I think this would be a perfect fit to put it in here.

Any other questions? Let's open it up to the public. Go ahead.

So let help you on the mini pitch. So if you're taking a youth soccer team and you want to work on eye hand coordination and speed of eye hand coordination, you go play indoor. A lot of people can't afford to play indoor in 1852. The reason you do mini pitch is you quit you do eye hand ball coordination. You keep your eye on the ball. It's a quickness of play and it's a quickness of reaction. This can, and I would venture to say, be used by your recreational soccer teams. It's a different form of soccer. It's a quicker form of soccer. It keep it teaches the kids to keep their eye on the ball.

Where you play on a large field and practice, you'll have kids standing there kicking and digging holes in the dirt because the ball is not around them. So that's what the benefit is. You don't have them in the city. You won't know until you put one in one or two in the city, and this is a different part of the city.

I I I don't disagree with you there, but that's not the purpose of

a neighborhood park. A neighborhood park is a place for someone to, like some or for a place for,

like, a team to come to practice at. That would be something at a regional park or a larger park scale. That's my only concern about that. It's not a place for a team.

The other park you put a green space in so people can and play soccer, play football, play one at a backstop.

In a neighbor that's a bigger space. This is a smaller park, correct?

It's a neighborhood park. It is smaller, but it's a neighborhood park.

I see on the on the data from the two meetings that you put Pearlwood only for the mini pitch, and it was only eight votes. So that means no one voted for the mini pitch at the Elliott location. Is that true?

We didn't we didn't have the mini pitch available at the Elliott Park location for the we added it for Pearlwood.

And and when you presented the mini pitch at the other park, did did we show them what a mini pitch was?

Yeah. And they still had they a lot of people couldn't comprehend what it actually was.

Okay. And and I get that. I council member Nelson made a solid point. It was these people or groups went there and said, want this. They voted on it. So people kinda lobby for votes, but, I mean, that's the way voting works out sometimes. You know? So whoever shows up, you know, squeaky wheel gets the oil, as my mom used to always say. So We

so that mini pitch could be futsal and pickleball without the basketball combo.

I get that, but I don't want it to be like, well, I wanna play soccer in elbow. I'm playing pickleball and people are fighting. It's like it's gonna be first come, first serve. It's one of those things. I'm fine with doing a combo pickleball court and I'm fine with that too.

We have some cost and then we get it increased a little bit, so it's okay.

For a botanical garden.

The wiggle.

Let me ask you a question. If you do

the multi use on there, but then you have a net, like how do you do that? You have nets up?

So you would have the goal set up. Folks would have to bring their own pickleball nets to set up.

Are we gonna have to bring our own pickleball nets in any way? If we go for pickleball courts, there could be pickleball nets on there.

There should be pickleball nets on a permanent pickleball.

Yeah. That's what that's the problem with the multiuse. We'll never get multiuse at that point.

Okay. Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Even from the public wishing to speak on this item, please come forward and state your name and city residents. Okay. Seeing nobody. Ma'am, if you wanted to speak earlier

My question was answered. I had

a question.

Perfect. Okay. Alright. So if nobody else wants to speak, we'll go ahead and close public comments and Well, the other thing you can you

know, you're talking about, well, we only had eight people vote for this. We only had three people vote for that, whatever. How many people voted for cornhole and horseshoe pits? It's an amenity we put in because it can be utilized. And and you're not going by a popularity vote of, I had 50 people from my organization show up and vote. I just have a problem with that.

That's cornhole for the water.

That's my point. But how many people voted for cornhole and horseshoes? I think it's a great idea, but I'm just saying. What's the hung up on numbers, but yet you don't have any votes for cornhole or horseshoes.

What's the cost minimal.

Minimal. I

was hoping you were going to say like 200,000. I would swap those things out real quick.

I

make a motion to table until we figure out whether we're going to do a pitch at the other park to therefore make a decision whether we're gonna do a mini pitch at this park to not have too many pitches since it was voted only eight times.

Okay, we have a first, we have a second to that motion. All right, that item, that's the table until we find out further information about the previous park we just learned about.

So, sit down with that one?

Unless there's a second, it's gonna fail. Okay, seeing no second, that motion fails. I'll make a motion to move ahead with conceptual design number three,

but replace the mini pitch with four pickleball courts. That'd two pickleball courts?

Aren't they $2.50 a piece?

Pickleball. You're changing $2.50 per

six It'd 100

be one.

About 250,000 a piece.

To keep it within budget, would be, or with what we're proposing, it would be one pickleball court.

I don't like that either. No. All right. I make a motion to move forward with conceptual design number three.

I'll second it.

All right, any further discussion? All those in favor please vote. Alright. And the item for design three moves forward, five zero. Thank you very much for that.

Before you go, what's the timeline, Jason? Now that we beat you up, what's the timeline?

Will it

be done next week? So

for so the Elliot property is moving forward.

Yeah.

A year or

two an email to Leslie recently on the timeline. I think we're gonna be breaking ground a breaking ground ceremony in the fall, October, November, 2026.

So that's historic construction.

And and from and from there, it's about twelve to sixteen month build.

So '20 early twenty twenty eight, late twenty twenty seven, if we get lucky. Sure. 20

These are these are unique in that both both parks discussed tonight are being built by the development company themselves. They are anxious to get those things moving. They like to submit fantastic amenity for their for their projects. Yeah.

Now when we do that, Jason, do we do the infrastructure, correct?

In these cases, both of them, all infrastructure is being provided by the development company. So they're building the streets that surround it, providing water, sewer, all services. Outstanding.

Thank you guys very much. Alright. We're gonna go on item number five, is the aquatic facility presentation.

You, mayor, vice mayor, council. Tonight we're doing our second aquatics facility presentation. Our first one was on October 20. We've brought in Dennis Berkshire from the aquatic design group. Dennis is the president, has more than forty years of experience in the aquatics industry with extensive expertise in swimming pool design, construction, operations, and training.

He has worked with multiple states on swimming pool environmental health codes and chaired the operator training module for the model aquatic health code. Dennis currently serves as the National Sanitation Foundation Joint Committee on Recreation Water Facilities and is an instructor for the certified pool operator and aquatic facility operator courses, having trained more than 1,000 operators nationwide. He was named to Aquatics International Magazine's Power 25 for his second time in February '23 in recognition of his leadership shaping the model aquatic health code. As president, he oversees project management, commissioning, and aquatic facility assessments and studies. Dennis Berkshire.

Thank you. Good evening honorable mayor, vice mayor, and esteemed city council. It's a pleasure to be here with you this evening. So my firm, Aquatic Design Group, is an architectural engineering design firm founded in 1984. We've completed more than 3,000 public sector projects now working in 48 states and 26 countries.

We've done, our scope of projects take us anywhere from Olympic venues as you see here, to resorts in Las Vegas that you may have been to, to high school and city pools that we do throughout the state of California. Aquatic Design Group has 11 world records, 26 American records, 39 US Open records and 21 Olympic trial meet records set in pools that we've designed. We also, the United States Swimming National Championships, six of the last ten years have been in California. Five of those six championships again were held in facilities that we designed. And I can take all the credit for these records but the real secret is if you want a fast pool, get fast swimmers to swim in your pool.

So our agenda tonight, So what we had set aside to go through this brief presentation is to talk a little bit about our goals and objectives from aquatics, our aquatic opportunities, to explain a little bit of how we're looking at construction costs as compared to operating costs and project costs and explain the differences in all of those. Take a look at some pool options that we've been discussing with city staff and some site considerations for us to consider in wrapping all of this up. And goals and objectives. Throughout the history of mankind, people have been drawn to water. Water has been a sense of life, a sense of safety.

In modern days, it's a matter of quality of life. So when we take a look at aquatics and how that can serve a community, we take a look at a wide array of various programs and amenities this aquatics can be serving municipal public swimming. We'd identified in actual swim programs in municipal swimming, we've now identified over 60 different programs that we might look at, whether that's learn to swim programs, mommy and me programs. I mean, last year for Thanksgiving, I had the city of Bakersfield call me and want to know if there were any health risks to have frozen turkey races in the pool as part of their Thanksgiving celebrations. So everybody's looking outside of the box here as to how aquatics and stuff can be brought in, how that comes into water safety and learn to swim, all of these.

And as part of that then that also means that when we're looking at aquatic center we're trying to come up with something that can provide something for everyone. Know the US Sporting Goods Association reports that in this community or this area 12.7% of the population can be expected to participate in municipal aquatics. That's anywhere from someone that's two years of age to 102 years of age. So looking at facilities and trying to satisfy the needs for everyone is key to coming up with a successful facility. This also then allows us to create safe water, right?

Learn to swim and water safety for our community. Also this allows us to pursue excellence in the sports. Know, our most vested users are going to be the organized swim groups, the swim team, water polo team, triathlon training. In some areas that can be artistic swimming, used to be known as synchronized swimming, or in some communities diving as well. We also though want to be good stewards of the public's money and what we're doing here to both build and know what we're going to operate and do this in an environmentally sensitive fashion.

You know we've heard some really good discussion this evening about pickleball or noise or traffic and what that does to various neighborhoods. So that's all very important to discuss even in these aquatic centers. This slide shows on a mean average from the surveys over the last five years in California of the top 10 aquatics programs for community use in pools. And you can see number one age group lessons from a high medium average to open rec swim, lap fitness swim, the need for sight lighting, disabled special needs in terms of aquatics, whether that's competition or rec or learn to swim. And you can go through the list as to these various programs.

So when we talk about our project and construction costs, our construction costs are gonna be the building gross square footing. When we talk about the pools, the site, the utilities, the amenities that are gonna be around. As part of this, this will include what it's gonna take to get a contractor into the area to mobilize for this construction, the infrastructure that's gonna be required to support this facility, site improvements, landscaping. Parking was a big discussion we've had with the city staff to date, and we've come in with estimates. What we're gonna show you here tonight are going to be a full build out, what we consider the maximum number of parking spaces that we would need to support programming.

As we roll this down the presentation though into site selection, then we would take a look and say some sites might have shared parking with other amenities that's next to it, which means we don't have to build that full contingency. But in our cost estimates that we're presenting here tonight, we're trying to give you kind of the best case or worst case, what the total dollars would be if we were going to have to build all of those parking spaces as part of that decision. Also we get into the soft costs. So soft costs would be design and engineering development, fees for testing and inspection, county environmental health review plan checks, equipment and furnishings and then carrying contingencies as part of this. So if we take our hard contingencies construction costs along with those soft costs, that's going to determine our total project costs.

And ultimately we would take an estimate like this and say we can also put in escalation saying the rate of inflation to the midpoint of construction if we have an idea of when we wanna set that as a target. Cost recovery is another issue. So aquatic centers aren't something that you're gonna put in and it's going to make money each and every year to help pay for pickleball courts and art projects that we're going to do around the parks. So when we take a look at this and then we look and this is based on averages that we get from public pools throughout California. Each year we put out a survey and ask them to provide us with their revenues and what they've done for the year.

And in a summary, what you can see here is that recreation admissions account for 55% of the revenue on average here in California for a municipal pool. 20% of the revenue comes from swim lessons, 7% from aquatic programs, another 7% from group sales, and then the competitive meets themselves on average account for 3% of the revenues that we find on municipal aquatic centers. When we take a look at the expenses, so we're gonna try to maximize our opportunity for revenues. We wanna try to minimize our expenses where we can. So when we take a look at expenses, 60% of the expenses come from salaries and benefits for the employees.

Another 24% are utilities. 5% for maintenance repairs and another 11% makes up all the other sundry of expenses whether that's insurance or advertising, cost of goods sold, things like that. It's all part of what we see here. So if we take a look on average, we what see is that if we come into California and say we want to design, build a competition indoor only pool, on average we find that pool will generate about 50% annual operating cost recovery. Now also I want to point out when we talk about the revenue and the cost recovery, that also depends on what we want to charge in fees and rates.

Many communities, some of these fees and some of these programs may be subsidized. That's going to lessen those revenues, but we may be making those decisions on purpose with determination that we want everyone in the community to learn to swim, to be water safe, whether they could afford swim lessons or not. Looking at how these fees are being charged, it does have a basis on how these things are affected. Also we can take a look commonly at these aquatic centers, we end up with doing things much like if you're familiar with the old Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where we come in and say these basic services, learn to swim, rec swim, or things that are offered at subsidized programs. But as we become more individualized up that pyramid, things can now start to get into more market value fee generation or revenue fees for that.

Perfect example of that would be that we subsidize swim lessons where you can come in and take group lessons. But if you want to come in and sign up just your children for private, semi private lessons, then it's going to be at a higher rate. And if you want to come in and sign up for private lessons, then that might be more of a market value rate would be an example of how that might look. So if we take all of these revenues, then we come in and say, well we get facilities that can have equal competitive water, which is normally deep water, colder water, compared to the recreation water, warmer and shallow. When we get to an even percentage of surface area, now we get facilities that are generating somewhere around 70% to 80% annual operating cost recovery.

And we can take this all the way up to recreation only facilities, outdoor water parks that actually make a profit when they're applied. So we start talking about pool options. When we look at these pool options, we want to be careful to point out that this is going be the right balance of not just wetland but dry land amenities as well. So first of all, we want to identify the city's goals and objectives. We're going to talk tonight about 50 meter pool long course swimming for example in a moment.

And is that a level of service that we want to provide the community that we feel is important for the community? That would be part of these goals and objectives. We want to talk about how this thing is going to be marketed as we were just talking about fees and things. The space program in terms of the acreage of this, the parking, how this affects where this is gonna go on the site, how we're going to operate this with city staff, with outside contractors, and again, our expectations of costs and revenues so that we go into this with a facility that's gonna be successful for the next thirty, forty years. So as an example, we take a 50 meter by '25 yard.

This is considered an Olympic sized pool. By California our health code says that a public swimming pool has a shallow end no deeper than three feet six inches, three and a half feet. If we take a look at the depths, if we have a pool that's got depths for competitive water, for water polo, and safe diving off of racing platforms, that depth would be seven feet deep. If we want to go to one meter springboard diving, that's a high school swim meet event, then we go to a 12 foot depth. If we said we wanted to go to the three meter, what I grew up a kid calling the high dive, that's gonna be a 13 foot depth.

This would be a pool then that can support water polo, swim meets, synchronized, artistic swimming, a whole host of programs can be in there. And also we'll look at how much shallow water of that code required three six we put into that towards community and recreation uses as well. So that's gonna be a pool that's at a minimum 12,300 square feet with stairs 12,350 square feet. Just the pool itself in today's California hard construction cost, that's a $5,600,000 to construct. It doesn't include buildings and sidewalks and shade and all the other stuff.

This is just giving you pool comparisons only. And again, the estimated subsidy for that type of a pool is about $500,000

Can I shoot a question on that?

Yes, sir.

How many so you play water polo. I'm not familiar. So how many water polo courts? Is that what you call it? Fields of play. Yeah. Fields would you be able to fit in on a 50 meter pool?

You would be able to fit depending on how much shallow water we put in, you have a floating goal field of play that will run on the long axis of the pool, and that can be anywhere from 25 yards long to 30 meters long. A typical 50 meter pool, to answer your question directly, normally can support up to two fields of play. And typically we do it as a T configuration. So a short course on the end and then a floating goal beyond that and then the shallow end off of the end.

All right, perfect. Thank you.

We also get into multi purpose pools and again trying to make this pool figure out what everybody wants to have. So in this example you're seeing a pool that's got a little mini lazy river, what we call a current channel, with a beach entry, some interactive water play for the toddlers to get into. We have fitness areas in the pool. We have exercise areas in this pool and a lap area knowing that in a multi purpose recreation pool, whereas that 50 meter Olympic pool typically operates around 78 to 82 degrees. For some of us that's kind of chilly if you're not very active.

When we get into a recreation pool, that's probably going to run-in the 84 to 88 degree range. It's going be a little bit warmer and a little bit more comfortable for other folks. So in something like this, again, we're looking at lab, recreation, fitness, the various programs, and again, trying to figure out how we can figure it to again satisfy needs from two years old to 102 years old. So in something like this, here you can see in a recreation pool of 4,700 feet as shown in this example. This is just under $1,300,000 pool. Yes ma'am?

How many people would a pool this size accommodate comfortably?

By California code, the maximum occupancy of this pool is one person for every 20 square feet. So in a 4,700 pool, that's gonna be two thirty five people by code. Now that's very crowded. Realistically, I'd say it's about a third less than that.

I ask a question? Yes, sir. How do you do lap swim? This is Eustace's lap swim. What Is it that little circle right in the middle there?

Well, to the right of No. To the right of the slide, there's actually a rectilinear area that's not shown in this picture. There's another piece of the pool. If you look at the yellow just above, I don't think this works right, just above the upper picture above the slide you'll see a little square corner. That's one corner of a rectilinear 75 foot space.

Sure. We also then need to get into the building spaces. So what does our building need to be? Some bath houses on a municipal pool might have a window that users pass by to pay fees, sign up for swim lessons, things like that. Others we can have more of an elaborate building where we've got a lobby, entry area, control desks, public locker rooms, bathroom showers that are required by health code.

Oftentimes we'll have family changing bathrooms or all gender bathrooms. If I want to bring my granddaughter and she's too young to go into women's by herself and I don't want to take her into the men's or vice versa. So having family changing or all gender bathrooms is important at these facilities. Oftentimes classrooms, meeting rooms, birthday party rooms, concession, lifeguards, all of these are things that we want to look at when we talk about buildings and support spaces for the facility. Also we can get into optionals which might be team rooms, where we might take a facility, and we'll show you here in a moment, where we might bifurcate it.

So we have the competitive water that could have a swim meet, and at the same time, we divide that with bathrooms to support it and a second side that's allowing still have our water aerobics classes or or rec swim or other things so that the swim meet doesn't shut down the entire facility. So in some cases, we might divide that up. And again, fitness center, weight training, obstacle courses, zip lines, all kinds of other things that we can consider in these. So as we look at these options, and again these are not suggested but are just examples of what we're going to look at, what you see here is a very basic 50 meter pool. And in this 50 meter pool, the light teal color that you see there, that would represent the minimum amount of shallow water to meet health code requirements for that pool.

Then it becomes a matter of do we carry that further out? Do we get to deep water to support? Once again, do we want two water polo fields of play to happen simultaneously or not? Do we just need one and we could get more shallow water? Here's an example of a small recreation pool.

This is actually a pool that was built here about a year and a half ago up for Rancho Cordova up in the Sacramento area. Where it has a small beach entry, a little bit of interactive water play. You can see a truncated area for fitness classes or somebody that's wanting to do some recreational lap swim in the pool, stairs, double handrails, so it's got two means of ADA access into the pool. Is all part of this. Here's an example of one that's 4,500 square feet.

So now we've taken that lap fitness area, expanded that out to 75 feet, increased recreation water, or we can get into something that's a large recreation. And again, we're we're showing these intending to talk about surface areas. It could get configured any way we want. So these are just examples of some that have been built. So in our costs that we're going to share with you here in a moment, we broke this down to three options. Option one is a 50 meter pool with a small rec. Two, a 50 with a medium rec, and three was a 50 with a large recreation getting ourselves upwards of almost 8,000 square feet of recreation water.

Just to clarify counsel, we were using the 50 meter pool assumption based on the last direction that we believe we got from you at your last meeting, that you were interested in looking at 50 meter pool. So that's why that is the consistent recommendation.

So in the thank you for that. In this option then, here's a breakdown in terms of the spaces and everything that we're looking to provide from the 50 meter pool to the small recreation pool, the decking that's in here. This is assuming a 1.5 to one ratio of deck to water, shade areas, an entry lobby, the locker rooms, bathrooms, operator offices, classroom, concession area, lifeguard. You can see all of this. So our building ends up at eight thousand six and seventy square feet.

If we took that maximum occupancy for this facility that the code requires for and we assume four people to a car, then we come up with this number saying that we're gonna need two forty eight parking spaces to support this if this was completely full. And so that's gonna be used in our cost estimate as well. Sidewalks, landscape, and in the landscape number we also have an extra acre to allow us for future expansion or just as a fudge factor into our site, which now then takes us to a total acreage site of just over four acres to support this program. In this, we're now looking at a facility based on all of those amenities we've talked about with a project estimate somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000,000 to $28,000,000 for construction. Annual operating revenues projected at 600 to $700,000 for this facility.

Operating expenses 1,200,000.0 to $1.07, so showing a subsidy somewhere in the half million to million dollar mark.

Those numbers are based off of California mean averages all across California. As we know, we we live in one of the poorest counties in the state, So those numbers may not reflect what would happen here in Visalia.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that. And again, that gets back to what are we able and willing to charge for our services. In option two, we then take that small recreation pool. It becomes a medium sized recreation pool. Again, we go through all the square footage.

With that extra pool water, that means we need more bathrooms, more toilets and showers to support this. The mechanical space gets bigger. All of these things start to grow as water grows. Couple of the we're a couple the have future. Revenues, And the projected operating expenses, again based on California averages for these types of facilities and a required subsidy.

What you're seeing is a subsidy starts to go down even though the facility goes up because we're adding more recreation water ratio to that competitive water that allows us to generate more fees. And then our third option, a 50 meter pool with a large, did I go backwards? Yeah, a large recreation pool, 7,500 square feet. It becomes a little over five acre site. And now we've got a project of 31 to 33,000,000 in estimates with our net subsidies now netting out in those same assumptions of around 300 to 800,000.

Staff recommendations. Staff recommends city council consider the information provided in the presentation on aquatic facilities and provide comments and direction. Number one, direct staff to focus on plans for a 50 meter competitive pool and a large recreation pool. Number two, direct staff to further assess the feasibility of two to four of the proposed aquatic facility sites to include development cost, initial environmental assessment, owner willingness to sell if if not a city owned property, and other aspects of the parcels proposed for the development of proposed the aquatic facility. And number three, provide staff with direction on the timeline for development of this facility, whether the project could be phased, the priority for development given the current available funding, and or direction to bring back funding options for development of a phased project or the complete project.

This slide shows potential sites that staff has identified. The existing public pools are numbered in red. We have El Diamante, Redwood, Golden West, Mount Whitney, and College of the Sequoias. I think everyone in the room knows where these properties or these pools are located. And then we identified city owned properties and privately owned properties.

The first city owned property is Recreation Park. The Recreation Park is just a tad over six acres. The first city pool was at Recreation Park. The problem with Recreation Park is it has a lot of underground utilities. So to put a pool there, you would have to relocate so many utilities, and it really it would really, really get expensive pretty quick.

Number two is a civic center area, five acres. That's listed at number two just to the east of Recreation Park, five acres. Number three is East Side Regional Park. Everyone in the room knows Eastside Regional Park. The ponding basins are being built. There's 230 acres at that location. The fourth site is city owned property. It's seven acres. It's just to the west of, the Target shopping center on Mooney Boulevard. There's seven acres at that location.

We've also identified some privately owned property. Number one is a property located It's owned 80% of this property is owned by Visalia Unified School District, and Quia Health owns about 20% of it. That purchase was made by, Visalia Unified, I believe, in 2018. This is a proposed sixth high school site for Visalia Unified. The number two site is 66 acres.

It's just to the west of Ridgeview Middle School. That is the fifth proposed high school site for Visalia Unified. The privately owned property number three is 7.9 acres. It is just west to Adventure Park, which they had now have a new name. It's on the tip of my tongue. Boomers? Boomers? Boomers. Okay. And just to the south of that, Central Valley Christian owns 20 acres. So those are the properties that we have identified.

But it would be we don't know if they are willing sellers. So those would be some. We have informed them that we were bringing it forward to you. But there's still a lot of negotiation if they would and if so at what price.

As we talk about the site selection, then we want to talk about not only what serves various parts of the community, but this becomes as much a geopolitical decision as it is what we want in terms of our needs. So what we show here is a site evaluation scorecard that we developed. And we would propose developing something like this with you so that as we start looking at these sites, rather than just saying emotionally this is my favorite, this is where I played as a kid or whatever, to come in and allow us to score various things. And you know proximity to public transportation or proximity to bike paths, how close it is to neighborhoods and a noise or traffic consideration. Is there shared parking available?

Are there, as one of our landscape architects calls it, the gifts of the site that might make this more well suited for us than something else. So it allows us to get everybody that's involved in the site selection to come through and score all of these sites, take these scores and empirically score these so that we can then look at this in terms of a rating and it's not so much an emotional type decision. So again, these are all some of the things that we would come in and develop a scorecard for the community here when we get to that actual site selection discussion.

Recommended motion. Propose an aquatics facility that will include a 50 meter competitive pool and a large recreation pool and or direct staff to conduct further feasibility research on named sites for an aquatic facility and or direct staff to bring back funding options for total and phase approaches for the project and project timelines.

Off the top of your head, what funding options do you see? What funds do you have available right now? We have no funding available. With so then what would be in your in your mind funding options? What would you identify?

Counsel, if we were looking at this, I think there has been significant and long term discussion about the property at Acres And Reagan. Did I get that right? Yes. Acres And Reagan, and that when that was sold, that it could go back into the park impact fee fund because it was purchased with park impact fees.

And Correct.

There's at least been discussion that that could then be utilized to start a pool project. We will be getting additional impact fees. And if you direct us, then we go out and figure out what to do. There are limitations, and then there can be trade offs with other projects. So that would be a council decision, but if it's your direction to do it, then that's what we look for.

So in that suggestion, if you divert the funds, you would stop development of neighborhood parks because it would impact the park park impact fee.

That could be one. It would just stop. I mean Yeah. We could instead of doing the two that we talked about tonight, you could choose to put that towards a pool. Do I recommend that? No. We haven't built a neighborhood park in now going on eleven years. Fifteen years. But it again, if if you can look at the debt additional income sources if you want, sales tax and so on. Staff didn't come prepared to recommend any specific ones. We're looking for your interest and your priorities on projects.

Size of the high school pools are 25 meter? A typical high school pool is

a minimum 30 meters long and 25 yards wide. So high school still swims 25 yards, well so does NC2A in fact. And then the 30 meters of length there to get water polo field to play in.

So you could adjust the size and save on cost, but then does that impact what you're trying to achieve? Very well can.

For example, we normally go in with the assumption that you can get four to six swimmers in a lane practicing at one time. So if we have a 30 meter pool then we're going to have 13 lanes in that pool. And so we can look at that from the six swimmers per lane to look at the maximum number of swimmers. Now how big is a swim team? How big are the user groups?

You know, to the question that was asked earlier about how much space, how many people can does that serve, and what are our goals and objectives there? You go to a 50 meter pool and depending on how it's configured, it's usually 20 to 21 lanes. So if we have 20 lanes, with six swimmers per lane, we get 120 swimmers at one time practicing for that.

Any other questions for staff I this

do have a question. Can I get an, I guess, there like an estimated timeline with the current funding situation taking into account ACRES and Reagan that this would be the timeline of when this would be complete if we didn't make any changes to the surplus funding, meaning that that's still going to phase three of Civic Center?

Do we have an estimated timeline for that?

Hold on. Before you answer that, let's just put things in perspective here.

Hold on. Actually, let's give an answer, please, then. Oh, yeah.

Go ahead. It

all depends on priorities of council because there are other projects that you could choose to postpone and to move other projects forward. And those are your choices.

And so to raise the $70 to to $80,000,000 that we raised for the Civic Center took us over twenty years?

Yes.

Yeah, okay. Then,

okay, okay, thank you.

So to put things in perspective here, we built on a park tonight that won't be finished for two years. It took us to do the sports park. We started at what year was that?

We started purchasing land until about 2000. I think we opened the park in about 02/2006.

We opened in August 2007.

But we didn't complete that till '20 Right,

we phased it. We

planned the Civic Center for twenty plus years. So for anyone who thinks it's gonna be a quick decision that we're gonna vote on this and it'll be done, I just wanna put things in perspective that we're a government agency that doesn't make snap decisions. We make long term plans and that's where our city looks the way it does today because we've done things the right way because we put a lot of thought on things. So, everybody thinks that we're gonna have a swimming pool in a year, just look at the timeline. It's not gonna happen.

Okay? But we wanna make sure that we do things correctly and planned out correctly. So, just look at the timeline of how we've done things in the past. I just wanna temper expectations because I know that there's an article in the Ballet Voice that's saying a swimming pool's coming. Doesn't mean it's gonna be coming soon. Okay?

I I agree. The but the one thing that we can do is instead of making it twenty years from now, we could make it five to ten years from now. And that can be with a sales tax measure that we'd let the voters vote on and then set priorities. It could be a sales tax measure of 3 fourths of a cent where all that funding can go towards CAP projects. And how we split that percentage wise, seventythirty for new projects as opposed to current projects, you know, that's up to debate.

But if we were to do that, measure t, which is one fourth of a cent, and measure n, which is half a cent, which is the three fourth cent that I just mentioned, generated about 25,000,000 just this last year. Meaning that, I guess, one of my questions, if we were to pat or put a measure on the ballot in November, we would get the first funds for that the next year. Right? So 2728. And then if we sell the part, I mean, the piece of property, we'd essentially have the funds to build this in the next five to Oh, yeah.

Ten years. Okay. And so that's something I would propose tonight that we potentially put some funds towards hiring a consultant to look at what language we can use on the ballot to to give us the highest chances of passing in November, this coming November, for that sales tax measure to pay for this. And, Eastside Regional Park, phase 3 of the Civic Center. We have 10,000,000 downfall on parks and rec as we currently speak. So, I mean, this this funding for the next couple years, whether we set a timeline on it or not, you know, we'll let the consultant figure that part out, would help tremendously with all the CAP projects that we've been discussing for the last couple of months.

The problem is you the council set priorities, and the priority was to build a civic center, and then you have phase three of the civic center. And if you don't build phase three, it'll never come. I mean, just reality. If you wanna look at look what you have on priorities now, one through three. This is number four.

You gotta complete what you start or you never complete anything. It took the sports park twelve years to finish. Rough numbers. If you wanna look at a complex, I think you're bite into too much off. If you wanna look at a phase approach and make it the most in inexpensive, you got dirt that you want on the East Side, do a phase approach and start it. The other thing I I disagree on a sales tax measure. There's other agencies looking at sales tax measures. And in the current economy, I would question if a sales tech and you only get one chance at a sales tax measure, and then you gotta wait a while. You gotta make sure it's gonna go through.

Yeah. And that's why we hired the consultant to check that language. And

that's normally.

If the consultant comes back and lets us know, hey. This is not a good year to potentially put that, then we we scale back. We take that back, and we don't put it onto the ballot. But we won't know that unless we hire a consultant

to So at this time, are there other questions for I I would like to open up to the public before

we come back

to more discussion. Any other questions for council at this time? Okay. Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come forward and state your city and city of or your name and city residence. So if you'd like, you guys can go ahead and and create a line right there and come up to the podium and one at a time speak.

I'm Dave Albertstein. I live in Visalia. I'm a member of the water polo community, but I think the questions I have are kind of generic. In the cost presentations for each of the three options, you showed a pretty narrow range of estimated revenues, but a pretty broad range of estimated operating costs. Could you shed a little light on why they're so different in terms of their level of uncertainty?

All the questions you have, go ahead and ask them. And then counsel will go ahead and ask the consultant or staff to respond to those in

the Okay. That's first question. Second question is whether these cost estimates have made any assumptions with regard to lighting of the facilities to enable their use at the nighttime. Also, whether the cost estimates consider the possibility of putting putting solar panels over the parking spaces to offset some of the electricity costs that would be associated with using the facility during the nighttime. Lastly, it was indicated that we have currently no money for this, but I understand I was here on October 20 that Greg Collins indicated he'd been in discussions with California Water Service, and they were offering up a certain amount of money per year or a certain length of time.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but I'm sure your your meeting minutes would indicate what they are. In exchange for naming rights for this facility, they offered a certain amount of money to underwrite operating costs. I would comment that naming rights can be done in several creative ways. You can have a name for the facility. You can have a name for an individual pool. If you're building two pools, one for a creation, one for competition, they can each be separately named. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. So you don't need to ask for permission. Just go up and create a line, and one at a time, feel free to speak.

Good evening. My name is Luis Sepulveda, district five. I'm speaking in favor of municipal aquatic center. I was a former director for the West Houston League swim and dive championship for several years. So I understand the importance of maintaining a well run swim meet and maintain it means safe.

A regulated community pool would allow for tourism dollars to enter the city, and it'll give swimmers an opportunity to place for them to increase their skill sets and have an equality swimming pool. A modern aquatic center can host meets and tour tournaments to bring visitors from outside to compete in this community where we'll generate revenues, hotels, restaurants. It's just it's it's a positive looking at how it'll affect the entire community with with with regards to revenues. Revenues. I ask for his support on this measure.

Anybody else wishing to speak?

Hi. My name is Marie Labee, and I'm a resident of Visalia. Just a couple of things. First, again, super exciting that this has even gotten to this point because there's been a lot of conversation for a lot of decades, this is feels like progress. So that's great. And, a lot of the conversation that we had was in the first meeting. And just some of the things I wanna, like, reinstate this time are, one, one of the benefits we have is we are a low income community. And we have the Visalia Community Enhancement Foundation to be able to support funding options that are outside the norm, including grant money and private funding and just fundraising efforts through that organization. Now will that cover everything? Absolutely not.

But it's a supportive funding system that may not have been thought about in presentation. Another point you guys keep bringing up is do we want to wait another five years before we move forward with our next 20? Probably not. So by agreeing to move forward now in progressive measures allows us the timeline to start now and not in another two decades, which is kind of our theme right now. So to think about moving forward more quickly than slowly so that we can get that timeline started is a benefit to all of us.

It's exciting to see that all of the options include a 50 meter pool, which is really the problem solution that we keep bringing up. We have aquatics programs that are growing, not shrinking. We have aquatics programs going through VUSD with funding options. That is free money that maybe wasn't considered in the presentation of funding that should be included in recovering costs. So there's a lot of things to discuss and to talk about, and I'm excited to see where we're progressing forward.

And I think a lot of those options were really great options of where we can put a pool. And, of course, always, we wanna think about the most convenient part, how do people around the city, whether they have transportation options or not, how accessible that location is so that everybody can use that. And again, just reiterating, let's not forget, using some of our low income to our benefit. We have different funding options that maybe weren't discussed tonight.

Good evening. My name is Maria Guilen. That's g u I l l e n, accent over the e. And I live in Visalia. So tonight, I was recalling all the excitement of a couple of months ago when this topic first came up.

And as somebody that's never learned to swim and feels very deprived of it and of the benefits, I want to actually advocate for this aquatic center and what it could mean for the population here in Visalia. And I kind of envision myself as this quote of says, the one who plants trees knowing that they will never sit in their shade has at least started to understand the meaning of life. So even though I don't really envision myself in a bathing suit or in a pool, I do believe that this is something that would really enhance life in Visalia. So I was listening to the presentation. And it's true that we have many, many benefits that this pool will bring, be it recreational, health health and wellness, saving skills, learning life saving skills and so forth, therapy for people in need of that, and also to attract competition and also bring bring in business opportunities for the city.

But I was kind of a little taken aback when it was suggested that we have this chart, which looks really good, to decide what location or whatever to put this in, to put the aquatic park in. And what was said was that it would take out the geopolitical criteria or sentiments in that process. And I actually understand what you intend with that. However, I don't agree that there shouldn't be geopolitical criteria or sentiments included. After all, we're a society.

We're a society. We're made up of humans. And I think that there needs to be some consideration of things that have happened in the past, like during the times when we used to have big public pools. And then those went away. And why was that? And it had to do with the fact that we didn't want people of color in these pools, right? We wanted to keep people out. So I'm about access. I'm about making sure that we have a pool that recognizes

Hello. My name is Irma Wheeler. And I'm going to speak from the heart. I am 56 years old, and I moved to Visalia about thirty years ago. My son is sitting here.

He's 28 years old. I started coming here when he was a baby, when he first joined the Seahawks, where I volunteered over seventeen years. 700 kids swim every year for this city representing three teams since I've been here. I know so many kids in this town because I cheer for each one of them. At the same time, I'm very disappointed because I had to let not participate so many kids because we had a limit of how many kids can participate.

We all had this had to deal with this every single year, wait list kids that wanted to play. And those were the ones that could. And then I ran into families that wanted to participate and couldn't. I've been behind the fence walls of Golden West High School. And I can tell you over 100 families walked through that fence and said, is this free? What are you guys doing there? And I'm bilingual, so I'm able to explain to them, no, it's a swim team. You have to register ahead of time. Your kids have to know how to swim. I had this conversation thousands and thousands of times.

Now, going back to twenty years, I laughed a little when guys say it takes twenty years because I feel I've been coming here for twenty years. So that time has already passed. My head is gray. I have adult children. I was joking with my son that maybe his grandchildren will one day see their pool.

So to me, unfortunately, this is a little bit of a joke, but I'm coming here for support. I do want to appreciate Visalia because for not having a pool, I got to drive hundreds and miles, spend thousands of dollars on other city pools. I can describe every city and every high school in California, Northern and Southern, you can test me, every junior college in California, every division one school and division two school. And if you don't believe me, can go to my Instagram. I take pictures on all these location everywhere I go.

I make videos. I have a YouTube page. None of them in Visalia because all these competitions happen abroad. So my 2¢ to this is I still have energy. I tell my doctor I want to live to the age of 100. So you have a parent here that cheers for our kids, our community kids. I'm not afraid to say this. Kids know who I am because I jail for them. I cheer for them. And I will continue cheer for our kids, no matter what their background is. I think it's at the surface that our kids can swim. It's embarrassing that our kids cannot swim. And that should be a legacy.

Thank you. Alright, is there anyone else who wants to speak? Because we do have, go ahead ma'am, we do have to take a quick recess and then we have our regular scheduled item at seven. So is there anyone else, if you wouldn't mind real quick, just raise your hand if anyone else wanted to speak? Okay, then we're gonna go ahead and name, you'll be the last speaker, ma'am.

I'm Ellen Dollenberg Visalia. You were talking about this taking a long time. It has been a long time. I could swear to God when my kids graduated from high school in 2010. They were talking about building this pool. There is no 50 meter pool except in Fresno or Bakersfield. For people who even wanna consider swimming that, they have to go to Fresno or Bakersfield. I was just talking to a girlfriend. She was saying, what about getting even private sponsors to help build the pool if that's an issue? So, it's food for thought.

Perfect. Thank you very much. We're gonna go ahead and turn this back over to council. So, any further discussion at this time between first. Council? I'll

So, first of all, I know council member Sodos City wanted to raise the tax on our residents. I don't support a tax on this. I just want to be supportive of that. I know a little bit talked about youth sports. I think compaction to youth sports is across the board.

By some wanting to play basketball this year, we tried to sign them up and they told them, well, there's 40 people in front of you, so you're not playing basketball this year. Same thing happens in baseball. I think it happens across the board on every single sport. So it's just not specific to swim and I know we do have swimming pools throughout the city. That being said, I do think it's time that we do have a 50 meter pool in the city of Visalia, and if we start the process now and moving forward with that, I would be supportive of continuing this conversation.

I would be supportive of option number three, the 50 meter pool and the large recreational pool because I'm gonna be fully honest with you guys. The recreational pool helps more people than the 50 meter pool does. It brings back more more money, but I think that we do need a 50 meter pool. My priority would be the large recreational pool first followed by the 50 meter pool. Now, I'll take it a step further when I'm looking at the sites as well.

I'll tell you my own preference over where I think we should put this on and tell you why I will explain that. Okay? I think if we're looking to do this sooner rather than later, I think you're looking at Sites 34, sorry, private owned Sites 34, city owned and one. Sorry, quickly, privately owned Sites 34, and city owned Sites 4. Forge right behind Target and I think you already have that set up as you have commercial around there, you have school right there, and you also have acres and 4 is 20.

You're close to the freeway and you're next to hotels plus boomers and restaurants commercial right there up Cypress. I think initially that could feed off meats where people could go there. If people come for You have hotels right there, and you also have entertainment, and restaurants all right there. If we're looking for a longer term vision of what we want to do, I like city owned Site Number 3, which is the East Side Regional Park, or private owned Site Number 11 known by Acquia Health on Caldwell. I think this could be a good use in the East Regional Park.

The East Regional Park is two thirty acres, so we have a blank blueprint of what we want to do there. There is not much commercial set up there, but it's a longer term vision on that, but it would be like the regional park that we have now. Riverways Park, we built it, now you're seeing all this stuff commercial popping around it. Longer term, it'd be kind of sparse out there right off the get go, and same with privately owned number one, but you have a lot of room to work with there, but there's not other services to support that. That's my own personal opinion.

Like I said, this will be a long process. Moving forward, means that we start talking about it now, but we also work on funding sources would be the number one priority. Finishing the Civic Center is my number one priority right now. We've been doing that for thirty plus years. We already have phase one and phase two. It's time to come to phase three and finish that. So, we want to move this forward and find out how we're going to fund it, that's great. But we need to find funding sources before we move forward. So, that's my 2¢. That's what I would be supportive of today.

Okay. I'll put in my 2¢. You know, I think this is a great this is a great discussion, and, I've advocated all along that we need to prior councils missed the vote. They should've been done a number of years ago and it always got kicked to the curb like a lot of things we talked about tonight kicked to the curb. I think you got to look at your number one funding revenue is recreational usage.

I think that you could look at a phased in approach where you put in the recreational component, you take the revenue stream from that and it helps offset the cost of the 50 meter pool. I also agree with the last comment that I think there is funding sources that we haven't even looked at, and it could be private. It could be grants. I've always said, I I feel you could find funds to build a pool. It's how do you maintain a pool?

And so you gotta figure out the maintenance cost and how do you cover maintenance costs. So I think we we need to start working on a two phase approach. We need to start discussion and continue the discussion on this on this this But I think we also need to start looking at how we're gonna fund the project and what sources are really out there. What can we what can we really pick and choose from that'll help us fund the actual pool? My sights would be, because I think you get on it can get on it sooner and a lot cheaper, would be the East Regional Park, and a lot of people say, well, no one's gonna drive out there.

That's the same thing they said when we built the Sports Park way on the North Side of the city. No one's gonna go to the sports park, and now you have so many people out there. It's unbelievable. So I would go with Site Number 3, which is the city property on the East Side. Then I would go Site Number 4, the city property, which council member mentioned.

On private sites, I would do number one and number four. And I I I think, in all honesty, this can be done. I think priority my my priority for council to serve the commute the whole community and create a revenue stream is to look While you're doing the recreational component moving that forward, I think it behooves us in the private sector to look out where we can find additional funding. And it was brought up by Cal Water. Cal Water has been talked about a lot. Maybe there's other sources that can impact as much Cal Water, and then all of a sudden, you can build a 50 meter pool. We haven't done that, and I think that would that's where we need to go with this. So that would be my recommendation.

Thank you, councilor Marciano.

So, yeah, I I like option three, large pool, 50 meter pool. As far as the sizing goes, locations, I'd I'd like to stick to city owned properties, options two and three with significant preference of number two of city owned properties, which is centrally located. As far as funding goes, I I agree with Pacheegan and and Nelson that we should look at those private funding avenues and grant funding. But at the same time, we should also leave it to the voters in November on whether or not we should pass a measure, let them to see if they were willing to pass a measure to get the ball rolling a lot sooner. Not just for this project, but for phase three of the Civic Center, as has been mentioned a couple times up here and the shortfall of the $10,000,000 in parks and rec funding.

And so that's if possible and council would be willing to hire a consultant again to see what the chances are of that potentially passing in November and approving some funds for that tonight.

Vice Mayer Wynn?

Yeah. I I think we need to go big or go home. You know, we need to do the big pool and the big recreation because that's actually gonna serve more people as for new growing community. I liked, I like the city owned, properties, all of them except for Rec Park. I look at those three sites, and there's gonna be easy transit to each one of them.

There's there's opportunities for shared parking. Even the little side over by, Target, there's lots of room for, shared parking, and I'm sure those retailers would love for us to bring in an extra group of people every week. Moms could, shop while they drop the kids off for swim practice. I I am not opposed to at least looking into, a sales tax measure. I I worked in this community in fundraising for many years.

I have no doubt we could raise the 31,000,000. But it's not my my heart would not be to leave my children and grandchildren who all live here with a million dollar subsidy for a pool. So we need to find some way to to figure that out. I'd love to see us do look at the sales tax measure that wouldn't just be for the pool, but other recreation. We've got a senior center that needs help. We've got a short shortfall in our parks. There's other things that are quality of life issues here in Visalia. And when you spread it out over a sales tax measure, it's not just people from Visalia that are helping foot that burden. It's others who come in and use our facilities. So I'm not opposed to that.

I wouldn't mind at least getting a public survey. I know this is not a climate right now that people are really big on sales tax measures, but we have a group that we could utilize in these all these swim parents and all these people that I think would be, very favorable to helping us out with the community. If we do something like that, it's a 51% vote. But I do think we need to move on this quickly with a consultant. And then if he comes back and our our public survey say no way, no how, then we know.

You know, then we've gotta start thinking creatively because that's just a long term expense that we don't have the money for right now, ongoing. So we've gotta be creative. We've gotta figure it out. And I'm sorry. I love your swim teams and your competitions, but you're not bringing in more than, like, 3%. So we're gonna have to help us in some other ways.

Yeah. Thank you guys for your comments. I appreciate it. And thank you guys for being here. I I know my kids have always been very active in swimming. Irma, we were out there at Golden West for many years, and we moved on to the Buccaneers. And now my six year old is diving over at at COS right now. So, obviously, this is a great activity for kids. Everyone up here and everyone in the audience is gonna agree this it's would be a great recreational activity for our community, fun for for everybody. My worry is the cost.

You know saddling our community with a million dollars in debt a year that could be dangerous and so I would want to move forward with option three to look at real funding options because potentially have some land that could be worth a few million dollars, it could be worth $10,000,000. I'm not really sure but I would like to see what we actually have because even though I love it, I'm not gonna go into debt just to get a really cool party pool. You know, I wanna get something that will be viable for our community that'll be a win win not something that we're gonna have buyers regret on. So I too would agree with option three which is looking at real possibilities. I do appreciate all the passion here.

I know the community has already said that they're willing to go out and advocate for this pool. So I would like to see this community put something together and and see if we can really get the community behind this. I'll entertain a motion at this time.

Did you have a preference to locations?

At this time, no. I wanna see if we can fund the thing first before you even get that far. So Okay.

I'll I'll make a motion.

Just

go to number three. Yeah. Option three.

Yeah. I'll make a motion with option three, fifty meter pool plus large pool. Oh, you meant option three here.

Mhmm.