City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Welcome to Visalia City Council work session. Today is Monday, June 15th. And we'll start this afternoon with public comments. Citizens are now invited to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visalia City Council and items listed on the closed session agenda. The council asks that you keep your comments concise and positive. Creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes. Any timer will notify you when your time is expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. And in case you're wondering, If not, Mayor Taylor, he is out of town. Vice Mayor Finn. Good afternoon. Welcome to Visalia City Council. Do we have anyone with public comments? Today's Monday, June 15th. Seeing none, we'll go ahead to our first work session item, the conceptual park approval. Staff report, please.

Good afternoon, Vice Mayor, Council, Jason Glick, Parks and Recreation Director. I have John McGee from Quadnoth here with us, and Chris Crawford, our City Engineer. This afternoon, we're gonna talk about the Neighborhood Park, Pearlwood property. Tonight's agenda, we'll talk about the history, the public meetings, conceptual designs, budget, and the recommendation. Council, you've heard pieces of this report during the January 20th meeting. Pearlwood property history, D.R. Horton chose Quadnop to design the Pearlwood Property Park. The Pearlwood property is a five and a half acres with a five acre ponding basin. The property was publicly noticed when it went to the Visalia Planning Commission and the Visalia City Council. The Pearlwood property is off of Road 148 in Cammon Creek. was recommended by the Visalia Planning Commission to move forward on June 12th, 2023 with a 5-0 vote and approved by the Visalia City Council on July 17th, 2023 with a 5-0 vote. Quadnoff engaged with city staff to get public input on park amenities from the community to create three conceptual designs for the Pearlwood Park location. The three input meetings were held during the spring of 2025. History at the January 20th City Council meeting. Council agreed on the Park and Recreation Commission's recommendation to remove the Musco Field lighting, the restrooms, and the park improvements. These reductions created a cost savings of $897,000, lowering the total project cost to approximately $6.6 million. Additionally, on January 20th, council directed staff to return with new conceptual designs that eliminate the botanical garden and incorporate a mini pitch while also presenting alternatives that include either two or four pickleball courts. Just as to look back during the public meeting process, these were the top amenities chosen for the Pearlwood property. A walking path with lights was number one, a BMX pump track was two, pickleball courts was three, restrooms four, adventure-themed playground, and then an amphitheater. During this time, we're also conducting public meetings for the Elliott property. So this slide shows both the Elliott property and the Pearlwood property amenities combined, what were the most popular. Again, walking path of lights was number one, followed by restrooms, pickleball courts, pump track, parking lot, botanical garden, athletic field space, amphitheater, traditional playground, adventure playground, basketball courts, and a mini pitch. The mini pitch was only shown for the Pearlwood property. This was a Park and Recreation Commission and staff original recommended conceptual design for the Pearlwood property. Again, the amenities that were eliminated from this was the must-go field lighting, restrooms, parking lot, botanical garden, and art sculptures. The highlighted amenities for this conceptual designs was four pickleball courts, a botanical garden. The botanical garden had art sculptures. There was some discussion on how much the botanical garden cost during the last council meeting. The botanical garden was $53,000. When you add the art sculptures, there's an additional $47,000. So that cost was $100,000 total. But it was brought up what would be the annual O&M on this, and it would be quite expensive. There's a fitness course, a nature playground, lit walking path, and a trail along the basin, and then a picnic shelter. Again, the Pearlwood property as new budget is a little over 6.6 million. This is the new conceptual design number one. Conceptual design, the estimated cost is over $5.9 million. When we were configuring all the new cost, we added land acquisition and soft cost into that figure. The highlighted amenities for conceptual design number one are four pickleball courts. There is a playground. There's open green space with a backstop. That green space is large enough for a full-size soccer field. A lit walking path around the park area. There's a trail along the basin. The trail has connectivity to the lit walking path and an arbor. Conceptual design number one. Conceptual design number two, the cost estimate is around 5.9 million. Highlighted amenities are two pickleball courts. We moved the pickleball courts closer to the basin and to the backside of Cameron Creek. We did that to move the pickleball courts away from the neighborhood. When doing research on pickleball courts, and John kind of helped me out with this, the pickleball makes a loud popping sound, so we're trying to move the courts far away from the neighborhood as we possibly could. There's a mini pitch for this design. There's a nature playground, a lit walking path, again, open green space for the backstop. There's a trail along the basin. With all the conceptual designs, the basin trail has connectivity to the lit walking path around the park and an arbor. Conceptual design number three, this one is over 6.1 million. Highlighted amenities are the four pickleball courts you see there. There's a mini pitch just to, that would be to the north of it. There is a playground on the backside of Cameron Creek there. There's a lit walking path, a trail along the basin, open green space with no backstop, and an arbor. The Pearlwood property recommendation staff recommends conceptual design number two with a projected cost of 5.9 million. We talked about this quite a bit and it was brought up during the last council meeting. This is a neighborhood park, and you really wanna keep neighborhood parks activated, but you gotta be careful of over-activating a neighborhood park. We've seen that with some of our neighborhood parks in town with, they can become quite impacted. What happens if a neighborhood park is over-impacted, they'll park in driveways, they'll leave a lot of trash. If there's amenity there that requires restrooms, they'll find a way to, use a restroom within the park. So we wanna keep this park activated. We feel that these amenities will keep it activated and not over-activate the park. When you look into larger amenities, you wanna get into larger park concepts like a community park or a regional park, but this is a neighborhood park. This park will be surrounded by homes, and we feel, staff feels, this is the best fit for this area. Once City Council approves a conceptual design, the engineering firms will create a construction docs based off the chosen conceptual plan for the Pearlwood Property Park. Now, Council, if you don't like staff's recommendation, you can definitely go another way. You can move around. If you don't like the pickleball court locations too, you can move those somewhere else. All of us are open for any questions that you may have. But this is where we have landed with this recommendation. Any questions?

Council, any questions? Council Member Nelson?

Yeah, no questions. I mean, great report, and I appreciate the fact that you highlighted what a neighborhood park is, because I think in the earlier stages of discussion, people have lost sight of what a neighborhood park is. It's not a community park. It's not a regional park. It's a neighborhood park. I also addressed in the earlier discussion that the findings that you found on public input on what they wanted BMX Park is because it wasn't limited to the neighborhood, folks that live in the neighborhood because they're not there yet. So you had a lot of people that have special interests and they bring the people in and you got a lot of votes for certain things. I think your choice for number two is spot on. I like where you put the pickleball courts because there are cities that are having issues with loud noise from the pickleball courts and houses and stuff. And as far as the design, I'll leave it to the experts, which I consider you guys the experts. So I'm good with the number two. So thank you for the presentation.

Council Member Petigian?

Yeah. I like number two. So on the backstop for baseball, we're not putting in base pass or mount or anything like that, correct?

Correct. That's an open space area. There is a backstop there, but it's going to be used for multiple activities. It could be a soccer practice. It could be softball, baseball, flag football, or a family out there that want to play Frisbee.

Yeah. Besides that, My only recommendation would be this. I spend a lot of time in parks with my kids. I would put the playground closer to the baseball field stuff because what I've noticed is parents will take one kid to practice and then have the other kids go play at the playground. So if you could somehow keep that a little closer than that, that would be a recommendation. I don't know how you do that safely or not. I've noticed that every practice I go to, if someone has younger siblings, they're running to the playground while the kids are at practice. So, but besides that, I think this is fantastic. I always say that the number one thing I see in the parks that's used the most are the walking paths. Every park I've ever been to, there's always people walking around the paths and green open space. And I think you guys done that and put a couple amenities in the park for the people in the neighborhood. So I'll be fully supportive of this tonight.

Council Member Soto, welcome back.

Thank you. I agree with Council Member Patikan. When I play at Rec Park, I notice parents will let the children play at the playground while they do pickleball or go to soccer practice whenever the families go. do soccer practice there. So I would agree to maybe put that closer to the open space. And option number two is something I also agree with. I think four pickleball courts might bring more people than they need there. So yeah, nothing else. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, I agree. Option two looks like you've really thought that through. I do like the pickleball courts moved over there. I would agree with Council Member Pachigi and maybe flip that green space next to the pickleball courts so that it's closer to the pickleball and also the practice field. But other than that, it looks great. And the lights, I want to make sure that the lights are solar lights that'll be on that walking path. Or are we in a, because I didn't want to, I mean, I know we have trouble with some of our walking paths with people taking the copper wiring or pulling the wiring out.

That's what the assumption would be, solar lights. Okay. So they do have a dimming portion of it for security over the period of dusk to dawn. So there'll be some light there, but not overly lit up.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. And I'd like to open this up to public comment now. Please come to the podium if you have anything to add to this discussion. Seeing nobody rushing to the podium. Council, I'm open for a motion.

I move to approve conceptual design number two for the Pro-Will Property Neighborhood Park with the provision of maybe moving the playground closer to the area design that Brian Pachigia mentioned.

I'll second that.

We have a first and a second. Please vote. Motion passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Thank you. Next item, a report on illegal fireworks by our fire chief and fire staff.

Okay, good afternoon, Vice Mayor Nguyen and council members. My name is Dan Griswold, I'm the fire chief, and with me today I have Corbin Reed, our fire marshal. This afternoon, Corbin's gonna take us through our pre-4th of July presentation that highlights the education, prevention, and enforcement efforts we have in place leading up to the 4th of July to try to reduce the use of illegal fireworks within our community. So with that, I'll turn it over to Corbin.

Good afternoon, Vice Mayor, members of council, Corbin Reed, fire marshal, Once again, this year, prevention is one of our major goals. Beginning during the month of June, the city begins, or will begin their Safe and Sane Fireworks campaign. This includes social media posts. Social media posts, banners at all the fire stations. We've updated the website, and then we also incorporated utility bill mailers once again. The call center will once again operate on July 3rd and 4th. It's comprised of 10 call takers that are dedicated to fireworks reports. This gives the citizens a live person to speak to to voice their complaint and provide the location information. That information is collected by those call takers and pushed out using an application that we partner with our MIS and GIS teams on so that the units in the field can see that data coming in in live time. Patrols will begin this month and continue throughout the Independence Day holiday with heavier saturation on and around the Fourth of July. Each patrol unit is comprised of a VPD officer along with a fire department staff member. Citations for illegal fireworks begin at $2,000 per offense, and they increase to 3,000 and 4,000 for each offense after that, and they're tracked over a three-year period. So if somebody was caught last year with illegal fireworks and cited, their initial citation this year is $3,000, and then it increases again with every year. and unfortunately we do have several that we issue $4,000 sites to each year. Last year we issued a total of 73 citations Citation numbers historically trend the same as or similar to the calls for service. As our calls increase, our citation numbers go up. Last year was a little bit of an anomaly. Our calls have continued to decrease after COVID, but last year our citations went up a little bit.

Quick question. Yes. I noticed some cities have $10,000 fines. Is there a difference in how many of these you hand out if it's a higher number, or is it the same no matter what number we send it to?

It... I guess it's one of those things, to me, $2,000 is a big deterrent anyways. I think at some point you get to the point of, well, I can't afford $2,000, so what's it matter if they catch me or not? I don't really know. We've worked with the city attorney's office each time we've increased it, and at least the last time we did our updates, it was recommended not to start off higher than that, just based off of other litigating factors. Kim can correct me if I'm wrong.

No, that's accurate. We've updated it a couple of times here to increase the fines and just tried to do what seemed to be most prudent. These numbers are not written in stone. If you all collectively wanted to look at something different, we could do that.

Aren't these numbers two years old?

Probably three, something like that.

So if we take CPI we can increase it, yeah. It's been this way for two years and I think I agree with customer Soto that maybe it's time to look at it. and I'm not looking for a $10,000 increase, but I think that maybe increase each one by 1,000 and go that direction. That would be what I would do.

I believe that's what we did last time. It went from 1,000 to 2,000. We did.

When we started our citations initially up to, I think we went from, so originally they were $100, it's the same as any other citation in the city. Then they went up to 500 and then I think up to 1,000. Each time we increased it, we were ahead of basically anybody else in the valley or any of the larger jurisdictions that we were researching. I believe Porterville has started their sites at like 2,500, five and then 10 now. So we have dropped back to not be the, highest number in the valley, so we can explore that and come back with recommendations. We wouldn't be able to do that before this 4th of July, so it'd be the next one, but we'll look at that. Oh, and our reward system. So, I believe 2024? Council directed us to implement a reward system for information leading to the arrest or citation of folks selling illegal fireworks. We issued our first reward last year for successful arrest of somebody that was selling illegal fireworks. So that $500 reward was provided to one of our citizens.

I would also look at increasing that for next year.

That may be able to be increased before next year if you want it, because it's not directed by ordinance.

I would be in agreement with him as well.

We don't have another meeting, regular meeting at least. Oh yeah, it has to be noticed. Yeah, so I think we'll have to look at next year.

And to finish off our report, The Parks and Recreation Division is once again holding their third annual independent spectacular out at Riverway Sports Park. Be another great event and it will be the first one incorporating a fireworks show. And park staff is here if you have any specific questions on that event.

I actually think that Mr. Glick may have some exciting news to add to that one. Jason?

Yeah, thank you. We just got approval for a flyover from the Lemoore Naval Air Base. There'll be hopefully a couple of F-35s. We don't know the timing of it yet, but we're really, really excited about that. So thank you.

Thank you. One comment, I know it's not your jurisdiction, but can we get animal services to start putting messages out since we're doing fireworks? Awesome, thank you.

We partner with them on all of our social media posts as well, and then on the fireworks portion of the website, visalia.gov forward slash celebrate safely, it also has tips for animal safety as well. Thank you. And this concludes our presentation. Any questions, comments?

Council Member Soto, have any more questions?

No, no, all my questions are answered. Thank you so much. And hopefully it's less people than last year.

Council Member Cheehan?

Yeah, great report. I'd be supportive of all the action that we talked about here tonight. It's actually my idea for the fighting system. I heard it in another community and they were talking about how drastically it went because all of a sudden the next door neighbor that you're getting upset in the past five years had the chance to turn you in for a reward. You saw that go down drastically. So I'm curious to see where that goes. Yeah, it's like herding cats sometimes on the 4th of July. I'm sure it'll start this weekend with fireworks going off. I know you guys are super busy, and it'll probably last for another week afterwards. Like I said, I honestly don't mind fireworks going off on the 4th of July, but as long as it's like 2 o'clock in the morning on July 5th in the morning, the fireworks still going off, or on the 2nd, I can see how it gets pretty annoying pretty quick. So yeah, I'll be fully supportive of everything tonight.

Council Member Nelson.

No, great report as usual. And it's not an exact science trying to find people doing illegal fireworks. That's why I would recommend raising, you know, for next year, the tip line kind of concept. But I mean, it's still not exact science. And I appreciate the effort that the city puts into illegal fireworks. Where I live, I think two blocks over, they'll go off until after two in the morning. which is very irritating. And so, but all in all, you guys are doing a great job on trying to correct a negative situation, and I appreciate that. So thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Great report. I just want to encourage you to bring that back, you know, as soon as you can get it onto the agenda while it's still, especially if that first or that first meeting in July or August, because people will still have that irritation from having the fireworks going off for the next few weeks. And on the tip line, I know you've discussed this before, but I'd like to have this out publicly too. How can I turn in my neighbor, you said selling fireworks, but how can I turn in my neighbor who is blowing off fireworks that day? Can I videotape them and submit it to you? Would that be eligible for the reward? I want to get the crime stock person going here on fireworks.

Currently, the only thing eligible for the reward is leading to the... confiscation or arrest of somebody selling fireworks. Because we have so many reports, we've steered you guys away from going down the route of the use reports as being a reward because we don't have it would be a very big undertaking to collect the accurate information and a lot of the times we'll get multiple reports on the same address from a variety of people and we don't have a way of collecting that data accurately to roll out a system like that. Not to say that we couldn't, it would just be a big undertaking to, it'd be a big development with our MIS department to figure out how to do that accurately. Okay.

And if I could add on to that, it seems like part of the discussion last time was, you could provide video evidence of your neighbor using illegal fireworks, but then you also have to make yourself available for the appeals process, because they have a right to confront their accuser in that process. And I don't remember the discussion exactly, but it was, do we want to invite that neighbor on neighbor, conflict at the time. We could revisit it and look at it again and Corbin and I could discuss it and try to plan that to bring back to you as part of that next conversation if it's something we wanna entertain again this year. But that was one of the items that we discussed last time.

We actually have, we started doing that either last year or the year before. If you had video evidence of your neighbor lighting illegal fireworks, you can submit that and we will issue a citation. based off of that evidence, but again, you have to be willing to enter into public record that it was you that did it, come in and attest it's your video evidence. Essentially the same as any other body cam video. The cop has to say, yes, that was my body camera. Same with your house or video, but we have had, I think three or four that we've issued that were because of, yes, neighbors were very angry and they said they were perfectly fine with that. So, yeah.

Okay, as long as that's still an option. It is. Thank you so much.

One last question. The F-35 flyover, that's not on our dime, right? Awesome, okay, thank you.

Hey, I heard a rumor that our police chief was gonna be doing a solo at the 3rd of July competition.

The flyover.

Okay.

Public comment. I'd now like to open this up to public comment. Please come to the podium if you have anything to add to this item.

Jim Reeves Visalia. Two things. On raising the fines. I don't know if. that would really accomplish anything. The people that that are most likely to be cited are going to have trouble paying the $1,000 fine as it is. Going to $2,000, you just dug them a deeper hole. And the people that can afford $1,000 if they want to put on a fireworks show, I don't know that the $2,000 is going to stop them. And the other thing is 10 dedicated call takers for the fireworks complaints Do we even have that many dispatchers, 911 operators on duty on a Friday night on Saturday and Sunday? So anyway, sounds like a lot of call takers to me for fireworks when the 911 center needs people. Thanks.

Corporal, would you like to answer that question?

Yeah, so the call takers are actually other city staff.

That's what I was going to say. You can get volunteers, yeah.

Yeah, it's opened up to city staff and they are able to come in on... on overtime and work that, so we're not pulling from any other city services for that.

And you provide them with a script and?

Yes, yeah, they're provided with a script and then they enter it through the computer and it's a very user-friendly system. Okay.

And if I may add, Vice Mayor, to Mr. Reeves' comment, that's actually one of the benefits. If we wanna reduce the burden on our, 911 dispatchers, so we bring in the 10 dedicated city staff call takers specific for this fireworks detail. RIS department sets up a legit call center in our EOC, and that's where they operate from on those two nights, so.

Okay, great. And once we started this call taker system, very seldom have calls overwhelmed that and rolled to dispatch, so it's been a huge burden taken off of them.

Okay, but it does have that capability. If they get overwhelmed, it can go to dispatch.

Essentially, yes, if all 10 phone lines are tied up at the same time, it will roll into dispatch. Or if it were to be called right now, that number goes directly into dispatch. So it's always answered.

Okay, great. Seeing no other public comments.

Question real quick. Oh, go ahead. If we had any volunteers with maybe previous dispatch experience and wanted to volunteer that night, would you take any volunteers?

Someone who might serve on a citizen's committee?

I'm just throwing it out there, just real quick. Yeah, possibly?

All right, thank you. Seeing no further business on our work session, we will adjourn for closed session and be back at 7 o'clock for our regular meeting. Thank you so much. See you at 7. Good evening. Welcome to the Visalia City Council meeting of Monday, June 15th, 2026. My name is Vice Mayor Liz Winn. Mayor Brett Taylor is unavailable tonight. We will start this meeting with our Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilmember Steve Nelson and an invocation led by Pastor Sean Eubank, Christian Lutheran, Christ Lutheran Church. Please stand and join me as we salute our flag.

Please join me in singing our flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

My name is Sean Eubank and I am from Christ Lutheran Church. I'll be leading us in our invocation this evening and perhaps besides my Prepared comments, we should have added into the prayer something for air conditioning and fans and their operations, so bear that in mind. Let us pray. God of compassion, we pray this evening remembering how the scriptures unfailingly point to your love for all people, especially for those that are often forgotten, the poor, the hungry, those with health challenges, and any that society might overlook. In a political climate where all too often we revel in what separates us, may all in this chamber seek what unites us and what is best for our community. May all who provide comments seek to use their words to build up and to make better this community, and to seek what is best for their neighbor along with themselves. This evening, facing a lengthy agenda, May our elected leaders be blessed with endurance, wisdom, patience, and insight into what is best for our community. Grant them courage to do what is right and good, and provide for all clarity for a shared path forward. We pray all this, trusting in your love and mercy. Amen. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to invite the staff up for a special presentation of our TCAC, that's Tulare County Association of Governments Local Motion Award Recognition.

Good evening, council members. Chris Crawford, city engineer. Apologize because I didn't have the actual award with me tonight, but just wanted to let you know that a bunch of city staff, city manager, and a number of other staff went to the TCAC Local Motion Awards, which is basically an event that TCAC holds once a year where all the agencies get together, Caltrans, quite a few legislators, and they give awards out to kind of outstanding projects that different agencies have done throughout the year. uh this year the city submitted and won like an outstanding bike award for that riggan mooney to conyer project like in particular for i think it was probably one of the first like protected intersections that have ever been done at gettings like um into larry county so it was kind of a big deal for um for tkag and for all the staff and just want to say that we appreciate all the staff that worked on the projects and everything um i'm sure you've seen all the work going around and around town right now we'll have a ton of projects we can submit next year too so we'll probably bring in a bunch more awards next year but it was a really great event tkag does and it kind of promotes a lot of camaraderie between the agencies and tkag and caltrans and we have a lot of great caltrans staff right now so they got some awards and i think it was really good for our relationship with caltrans and everything so it's just a super positive event that they do like every year so that's Not a big presentation, but that's kind of what we got the award for.

Vice Mayor, we have a second one as well.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening, Council Angelina Baker. I'm the transit manager for the city of Visalia. At the same awards, and I just want to note that I was ambushed. I didn't know that we were doing this today. So transit did win for outstanding transit project. So this is the award that transit received. Very cool. And it was for our Visalia connect micro transit project, which as everybody knows has been super successful. And this week we actually had our one year anniversary. So we did a raffle. And some folks were asked to get on social media comments. And we raffled a name and we handed out some free micro transit credits for the app. So that's it.

Thank you.

Would you like me to leave this here?

You've both downplayed this a little bit. This is a big award. You are being recognized for your outstanding work throughout the county by many of your peers, and also county and state staff. So thank you so much for your hard work and for submitting those projects that are innovative and make all of our lives a little bit better.

Quick comment. And they're hiring, right? Drivers still? They're hiring, so.

If you haven't taken Vice City Connect, it's a fabulous service. Five bucks gets you anywhere in town. And then the county has a similar system that's five bucks in the county. So it's really a great way to ride share. All right, now we come to public comment. This is a time for general public comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visalia City Council. Each speaker tonight may speak for up to three minutes during this general comment period on a matter that is not on the agenda. The public may also make one comment for up to three minutes prior to the consideration of the consent calendar, that's coming up next, and immediately before any regular agenda item is heard. The council asks 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 is expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. If you'd like to make a public comment at this time, please come to the lectern here in the middle. Anyone?

Hello good evening my name is Sonia Sanchez and my name is spelled S-O-N-I-A S-A-N-C-H-E-Z. I'm a resident of Visalia in District 5. And I prepared my comments because I wanted them to be succinct for the time I have allotted. Good evening Mayor Taylor. I know he's not here but I did email him as part of this council members and city staff. Again my name is Sonia Sanchez and I'm a resident of the River Run neighborhood across from Golden West High School. I'M HERE TONIGHT TO REQUEST AN UPDATE REGARDING EMERGENCY ACCESS AND EVACUATION CONCERNS THAT I RAISED PREVIOUSLY WITH THE CITY, INCLUDING THE CITY ENGINEER STAFF, MAYOR TAYLOR AND DISTRICT FIVE COUNCIL MEMBER NELSON IN EMAILS THAT I SENT ON FEBRUARY 17TH AND ON MAY 15TH. My concern and the concern of my neighbors is that the Riverwood neighborhood relies on just one primary functional access route through Muck Olive Street and St. John's Parkway. So right in front of Golden West High School. While East Herald Avenue exists, it's restricted to a right turn only and directs traffic right up against that same corridor. So we're all accessing just that one single access point. This raises important concerns about emergency evacuation capacity. This neighborhood is located adjacent to the St. John's River corridor where they have been potential flooding concerns and also brush fire incidences. In addition, the area already experiences congestion during student drop-off and pickup times at Golden West High School. With the 160 new homes that are currently being built as part of the Larkspur neighborhood subdivision, my neighbors and I are concerned about how the existing access configuration will serve both current and future residents of this area. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE CITY APPROVED A SEQUEL REVIEW FOR THIS PROJECT IN 2022 AND THAT INCLUDED A TRAFFIC ANALYSIS. I RESPECTFULLY REQUESTED THAT SEQUEL REVIEW AND ALSO HOW THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION CAPACITY WAS EVALUATED, WHETHER AN UPDATED CIRCULATION AND SAFETY REVIEW HAS BEEN CONSIDERED AND WHETHER FEASIBILITY FOR A SECOND ACCESS ROUTE HAS BEEN EVALUATED. One really great potential location for a secondary access route could be extending the River Run Street towards East Houston Avenue. And this would also alleviate traffic around Golden West High School. I appreciate your time and attention to this matter and look forward to getting an update. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Chris, could you go out with Ms. Sanchez and get some information so that we can get back to her?

Irene Lappin, Visalia. I don't know if any of you have heard of the Potemkin villages in the 18th century Russia, which were impressive facades built to deceive observers to hide a less desirable reality. The term originated when statesman Grigory Potemkin.

Miss Lappin, I'm sorry. We'll give you a kick. Can you bring that microphone down just a little? I can't hear you. You can't hear me? Yeah, bring it down just a little. There you go.

Can you hear me now?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

all around dreariness to impress Catherine the Great during her various tours. They first came to mind when I remembered Visalia under an earlier administration who was determined to keep the city green. Oh, the concept sounded fine and it was welcomed, but then a zealous young man from urban forestry drove all over town and planted truckloads of street trees on our mow strips, not on city properties, but in the residential zones. Who asked him? What was the outcome? There were deciduous trees and there was no plan for how to take care of them. First we were assured the city would water them and then we heard it would be our responsibility. Then came those draconian drought guidelines, remember? The rest was history. Extra cleanup work for us amid cracks, sidewalks, and curbs. With the Tulare Avenue so-called rehab project some engineers and a couple of bike advocates were sure the students of the elementary school would start using Tulare Avenue to come and go. Well that's my neighborhood and not only have I failed to see one child biking on that street before and after school but a single adult. So it goes without saying good city planning requires the courage and motivation to be clear-eyed about every angle and about every possible negative consequence instead of relying solely on available state grants. and resistant to being sucked in by hype and new age concepts alone. Last, I see videos from the four creeks you already purchased, which cost taxpayers something like $12,000 as one of our Pechomkin villages. These are the same videos that attracted so much negative feedback from Facebook followers approximately three weeks ago. It doesn't matter as grand money or not. It's taxpayers' money. Council members, it's well past time to get back on track and plan more responsibly and realistically. Thank you.

Anyone else? Are you for your other item?

No? This is regarding my interaction with the city manager, Leslie.

Okay.

So good evening. After my last name please. My name is Hermit Singh spelled H A R M E E T last name Singh S I N G H resident of Visalia. On the last meeting, I had brought a comment to the mayor about accountability. Same goes for the city manager here. She called me back after speaking to the manager. She said she reviewed documents. documents, I asked her what documents did she review. All she recited was what was written on the notice from the city. And then I continue, I go, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and put you on recording. And I recorded her and started asking her questions. She could not answer the questions and she just hung up on me. So I'd like to play that for you.

The copy I have here, I cannot read that. Okay. I will have to do something else to get that.

Okay.

Anyway, you have the date of the hearing on Monday. I'm sure we will see you then.

Well, ma'am, actually, no, because... Okay, so she just canceled the call on me while I'm still talking.

Okay. If I come here ask city representatives that are supposed to help the public is this the kind of behavior that you expect from the city council member right city manager. She's supposed to be in charge of overseeing the city. How am I supposed to get justice if that's the kind of behavior that I get from her.

And that was the entire conversation you recorded?

Well, if I can, you only gave me three minutes to speak. I'm not able to play the entire conversation, right? I can play the entire conversation if you give me time. I can play it. Are you allowing me time to do that? I can go ahead and play it for you. Okay? All right. So I would like to file a formal complaint right now in front of you guys for that kind of behavior. That should not be the behavior of somebody in her position. Please investigate that. And if you guys need to get in touch with me for that additional information, I can provide you the rest of the recording. Thank you.

Anyone else? Seeing no more public comment, This is a time for members of the public to provide public comment on an item on the consent calendar. Comments will not be taken individually by the public if an item is pulled by a council member. Each speaker is allowed up to three minutes and a timer will notify you when your time is expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Does anyone have any comments on an item that is on the consent calendar? Please step to the center microphone.

Irene Lappin again I'd like to have number six set aside for public comment. Do I go ahead and make my comment now. I noticed the three companies submitted bills bids for the design advertising and marketing for three streets. Their request for proposal was very specific in mandating that ATP guidelines be strictly adhered to. Two companies were local, but the one you picked is located abroad, in New Zealand to be exact, with the only US office I can see located in the state of Georgia. The bid by the one you chose totals approximately $1.3 million. So my questions are fourfold. Can you summarize the ways in which they were seen as superior to the other two? Will those bike lanes be anything like the ones you put in on Tulare Avenue? Three, I see a lot of references to education by the consultancy, but will there be any public input? And number four, I have a printout here of the Highland Community section. And I asked the, his name is, Thomas Stoeckel, I believe, located in New Zealand. He wrote me this morning, and then I wrote him a couple of hours later, and he didn't respond. Under Task C, where it has a whole bunch of expenses that they put in, I like to know what, I'll just pick out one here. They charged, they're potentially charging $1,500 for wrenches, screws, and related tools. They call themselves, this sounds kind of Orwellian to me, they call themselves a transportation behavior modification operation.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? See no further comment. I'll bring it back to council. Council Member Nelson, do you have any items you'd like to pull?

Yeah, I'd like to pull items 15 and 28.

Council Member McEagan.

I'd like to pull item number 5.

Council Member Soto. No items. I would like to pull item number 34. Let me make sure I have this correct. 15, 28, 5, and 34, correct?

I know. Well, we'll just take our times and get it.

I didn't need to pull six. Did anybody else need to pull six?

I'll pull up six, too.

Okay. All right. Can I have a motion on the balance?

Before I make the motion, I'd like to just say for the public that doesn't do deep dive in what we do or what the city does, there's a total of 43 items that we receive staff reports from from our department heads. and I want to applaud you on the thoroughness of the submittals that you did. Trust me, reading 43 submittals is a lot of reading to do from Friday to tonight's meeting, but the thoroughness makes it easier for us to do what we need to do up here, and I just want to say thank you, and with that, I'll make a motion to accept the balancing consent calendar as presented.

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Call for vote, please. The balance of the consent calendar passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Staff report on item five, please.

Good evening, members of council and vice mayor. My name is Margie Perez. I'm the city of Visayas housing specialist. I'm here for any questions.

Yeah, I don't need a report on this. I just have some questions on this one. But I think it's great that we're getting funding for the navigation center at Sequoia Village. I'm fully supportive of that. But when I was reading this, it shows that you have to give 48, guaranteed 48 hours to remove an encampment. So can you, so what's the justification of an encampment?

Sure, and that really only applies to code enforcement when they need to public notice something that's large and a nuisance, but it would be through the code enforcement department. They currently give a 24-hour notice. Therefore, they would only be giving an additional 24-hour notice. PD has their own law enforcement that they abide by, so it wouldn't impact them.

So back up a little bit more. So what is the encampment? Is it like... We're talking about St. John's river and like entrenched in there. Are we talking about a couple of people on like sitting in pence? Correct.

It would be something that's large that needs to be removal. If it's something that, um, of course, if PD has it, or if it has an impact to health safety or intimate, anything that's, um, needs immediate removal, therefore it can be immediately removed.

So, If I was reading this correctly, too, if there's any kind of felonies or we're going there for crime purposes, then we could break up the encampment as well, correct?

Correct. That would be under PD and it wouldn't be applicable to this.

Okay. Maybe I have this question for PD. When you guys break it up into encampment, is the majority of the time there's criminal issues in there of which this wouldn't apply to you?

Thank you, Councilman Pachigi, and Jason Salazar, Police Chief. So we've looked at this. We don't feel it's going to have any significant impact on the operations of the police, and I think really probably limited for code enforcement. For one, we've worked very hard to try and not allow those large encampments to become... established so that's the that's the first piece on the police department side we tend to force more criminal laws than we do with them we are the municipal ordinance piece so i don't think this is going to have much an effect on us if it's it's a public safety issue we're going to deal with from a crime perspective as much as we can and i don't think it'll have any impact on us because i but i'd be fully supportive of this time my only issue is i don't want to handcuff our law enforcement try to go in there and try to

take an issue off the street or something like that and say, hey, you have 48 hours. So will that not affect us at all or no?

I think it'll have some limited effect to some of the code enforcement. But as I mentioned, I don't think it's going to be significant. Like I said, we, for the most part, try not to let those encampments become established in the first place. And for the police department side, we don't think it'll have an impact.

So can I ask you one more question? Yes. What is an encampment? Is it 10... Tense.

Is it like, what, what justifies like, what would this, it could be one, one person can establish an encampment that will, that we will address. Okay.

How long does it have to be there to be an encampment?

Usually you have an encampment, usually something that has been there overnight at least, but, um, depends on where it's at, how quickly it's seen, but usually it's something that's established overnight. Okay. Um, all right.

Any further questions? I'll accept a motion. Not on consent. No.

I move to authorize staff to apply for encampment resolution funding round five up to $5 million for operational funds for the Visalia Navigation Center, Majestic Gardens, Sequoia Village, and services coordination. I'll second it.

We have a first and a second. Call for vote, please. Passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Thank you. Item 6.

I don't need a report here. We had a resident that asked to pull this. They had a lot of thorough questions. I saw Chris making notes. So if you could answer some of those questions, Chris, I'd appreciate it.

Cody McLaughlin, associate engineer. I can start with the first, with the selection process. So this was an RFP for a proposal for consultant services. We do have a process where we have staff, in this case it was three separate staff members review the proposals independently, score them and grade them based off a rubric. Obviously we do associate a certain scale of points to being local. With that, that is not the most heavily weighted. We do want to make sure we get the most prepared and competitive consultant for the scope of services. This consultant specifically had really separated themselves on the scoring rubric with respect to understanding the scope and the educational side of it and the actual infrastructure that was being installed on the construction side of these projects to really understand what our end goal was with educating the community and being able to deliver that. In addition, they did have background understanding the type of funding and the funding sources and the requirements associated with that and being able to deliver that within those guidelines is where they really outscored the other two consultants on that rubric. That's where we ended up going with selecting this consultant based off their high scoring in those sections. And that put them outscoring the other two proposing consultants. What were the other two, Chris? And the other two questions were... Gotcha, yeah, and locations-wise, we do have, so even though they are located not, their home base is not local, that's their headquarters. They will have project partners on site, boots on ground on site that they're coordinated with. They will have a project manager local working with that, and like I said, project partners that are actually local to our community that are very big advocates with respect to cycling and getting different modes of transportation will be project partners with the consultant as a part of this as well, so. Okay, sure.

Yeah, there's a huge online app and a lot of tools that they use to, I guess, to specifically get out to certain residents to try and encourage bike riding on a one-to-one basis that we definitely didn't see that some of the other consultants had that put in for the RFP. This is what this company does basically. They try and promote behavioral change to try and get people to ride bikes. It's what this company is geared towards. Just to answer the second part of that question, just about some of the details of these projects. That first one on there, that's the Highland Community Connectivity Project. That extends kind of the Houston bike lanes from Dinuba Boulevard or State Route 63, like east over to the roundabout on Santa Fe. And that's planning to continue like the class four bike lane on the south side of the road, and also the class two bike lane that's up against the curb on the north side of the road. But that product also has a whole bunch of other improvements in there for like the local resident community. That's like sidewalk infill, putting new curb ramps in, There's like a lighting component to it. So there's a whole bunch of other improvements that are also included in that grant that's going to improve the community besides just the bike lane stuff. The Santa Fe Street bike lane project, that project is... It's going to be something pretty unique. That's going to be like what they call a cycle track that's going to be on the east side of Santa Fe, and that's going to be from Tulare Avenue all the way to Houston Avenue. So that'll connect to the Highland Community Project and the Houston Project that I think you've seen some of the preliminary-like layouts on. And that'll be pretty different because it'll be that cycle track, which means it's going to be like both the north and south bikes are going to be on the east side of the road. So that one will be a little bit more of a unique project. The number three on there, that's the Goshen-Visalia corridor project. That is the big Goshen trail that we have on the north side of the road that goes from Mooney Boulevard. This section is from Mooney Boulevard to Camp Drive. And then the city teamed with Tulare County as part of this project. So there's like a bunch of improvements in the community of Goshen also along with this. And this probably it won't change the bike path as much as some of the other ones or the road as much as some of the other ones. This is going to build a nice like big new class one building. shared use path on the north side of Goshen that's going to be raised. There's going to be curb and gutter put along the north side of Goshen to prevent the flooding that happens now. A lot of the public outreach feedback with that was a lot of the residents wanted more shade on the trail, would like to see more lighting, so that's going to be a part of that project. So there's a lot of details like that that are going into that project. It's a lot of work with the railroad and everything to get that accomplished. That's probably a pretty good summary of those projects. The engineering staff, we're gonna be running the same program that we have with some of the other projects you've seen recently, like the Houston Connectivity Project, where we're gonna have the design engineer come up with kind of a real preliminary design, bring that to council for presentation, for review and comment, and then approval to move forward. So you'll be fully kind of informed of what we're going to be doing with those projects here in a little bit when we actually get to the preliminary design stage. And then if council has any more questions, feel free to ask for Cody. I'll try and answer him or.

One more aspect to that, the specific digital aspect of this grant was very specifically called out for and required a significant digital presence, which this company meant that. We looked at that pretty carefully.

Yeah, do you want to expand on that a little bit more, Leslie, or is that?

Yeah, I'm

Yeah, I guess the, you know, when these grants were written up, there was a big, like, the NI is a non-infrastructure component, which is basically the public outreach component. Like, it involves a whole bunch of things, like community outreach events, like trainings, like with the kids that they're trying to get into rides, bikes, training with residents, like riding bikes, you know, bike rodeos. like in a whole bunch of like online activity and everything with residents trying to encourage them to ride bikes. There's kind of even like a little bit of a game they've got with the app to try and encourage people to compete and like get to bike riding and everything. So it's like a really big component of winning this grant. Like, and I think the large majority of the money that's being spent on this came from the grant with the exception, I think of some of the funding on the Goshen trail, like a non-infrastructure portion. But again, With the exception of that, I think almost all this money came from the money we actually got from the grant to run these programs.

Thank you.

All right, thank you. I'll entertain a motion if you're satisfied, counsel.

I move to authorize. the city manager to award three consultant contracts to Love to Ride for the non-infrastructure programs for the following projects and amounts one, two, and three. I'll second it.

We have a first and a second. Please vote. Item passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Okay, we will move on to item 15, Goshen Community Services District Updated Service Agreement.

I don't need a report. I have a concern. The amount of effort, time that it took to get to this type of agreement for the wastewater treatment plan and the issues involved getting to this agreement I kind of take exception to the phrase good faith effort to notify city of any potential increases in wastewater flow. I think the problem I have there is good faith intent based on the complexity of getting to this point. There are no assurances when it's a good faith that they're going to come forth and say, hey, we're going to increase the flow and then we're caught shorthanded. So that's my concern. So if you could kind of address that, I'd appreciate it.

Absolutely. Nick Bartsch, Public Works Director. So as was mentioned, this was a long time coming. We've been working on this for probably two plus years, and we're excited to be able to get to this point where we're ready to clean up a lot of the ambiguity in our prior contract. So tonight we are very supportive of executing this agreement and recommending our approval. As far as some of the terms in the prior agreement related to Available capacity, there was a lot of ambiguity in what that actually meant. And the prior agreement, or I guess existing agreement, really did not really define that clearly. And it basically made the city responsible to provide any increase requested by the district if we had available capacity. And what became a challenge on our end is the city was planning for our own development and then we would get a request from the district expecting that because we've always been able to accommodate their requests in the past that they expected that was gonna continue without any additional planning effort. We've worked very hard with them to identify terms that would be productive on both sides to be able to plan for that growth. One important clarification in this new drafted agreement is that we have planned for their expansion within the build out of their sphere of influence and within the district as a part of our most current master plan update that we did with the wastewater treatment plant. That we took a number from them that they projected out that would be required for their build out. We factored that into our master plan and that gave us a 10 year outlook from our perspective of what their needs would be. If they need anything outside of that 10-year projection, which in talks with the county, it sounds like they may be interested in pursuing additional, we didn't feel it would be appropriate for the city to pay any additional cost to redo the master plan that we've recently completed. We expect that to last about 10 years. So what this agreement does is it identifies a pathway forward for future requests, whether it be from the district, to be able to accommodate future growth beyond what we've currently planned. It doesn't guarantee that it's gonna happen, but it at least creates a pathway for that to occur. Um, any, any planning outside of our, our current window, uh, would be done at the cost of, of the district if they desire to make a request outside of our, our tenure projection. Did that answer your question?

Yeah. I mean, Basically, I read that in the report. I'm being honest. I mean, I understand that. I mean, if everything falls into place, it works. I think the concern I have is good faith is if they all of a sudden decide to go larger in their growth plan and it just happens to happen and doesn't let us know unless we keep our eye on the ball. Uh, how does that impact our wastewater treatment plant? Because I'm concerned that our capacity, our wastewater treatment plant meets the needs of our, the people we represent. And if there's a complexity with someone deciding, I'm going to do a master plan. Now I'm going to increase housing. I'm going to bring some industrial in here. And all of a sudden there's a flow increase that we're not ready for. That's my concern. And you know,

yeah fair enough and and what's different about this agreement is it does stipulate maximums uh... we only can as identified we've clearly planned for a certain capacity where the the prior agreement basically left that open ended so we've we've established a maximum that we are contractually obligated to provide them and the timeline that that fits within anything beyond that is not guaranteed that's going to be subject to additional planning and uh... and uh... obviously cooperation with the district with approval from council if we are gonna expand anything beyond this. And that's the biggest difference between the prior agreement and the proposed agreement is that there's actually a cap written into this one that specifies a maximum.

Okay, so just humor me, okay. So you have a cap of, and I'm just using say a thousand whatever pounds, okay. And all of a sudden here comes 1,500 additional pounds from the district. You can't shut it off. And knowing how the city operates, we're not going to shut it off. We're going to be good neighbors. My concern historically is that we, and I agree with you, this is a great, I mean, I'm all for this. I just have a problem with that good faith based on what's happened in the past. Like the worst thing you could have at a wastewater treatment plant is to wake up one morning and say, hey, surprise. And that's my concern. But if you think it's addressed good, I mean, yeah, look out 10 years.

Council Member Nelson, I'm comfortable as well that it addresses the scenarios you're describing. They would be a breach of the agreement. There would be enforcement mechanisms on top of a breach of the agreement that we could utilize to correct those behaviors. I do know that the staff is very diligent about tracking what goes into this system, so it's not going to come as a surprise to us. I think this is something that would likely be anticipated and addressed before it happens, but in the unlikely event that it wasn't, there are mechanisms in the agreement and with our codes and enforcement procedures that would allow us to address that much more directly and forcefully than we would be able to under the current agreement.

Okay, thank you, that's all I have. Thank you, appreciate the report.

Answered all your questions?

Yes, it did.

All right. I'll take a motion.

I move to approve the updated wastewater service agreement with the Goshen Community Service District.

I'll second. Motion and a second. Call for vote, please. Motion passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Thank you. Next item, Tulare County Economic Development Corporation membership agreement.

Vice Mayor and members of council, I ask that this be pulled tonight, first because there was, seems to be a misunderstanding that we need to work out. It noted here that there, we understood, staff did, that there was significant funding, appropriate funds within the TCEDC to cover the current contract that had been established for outside consultant. Today we learned that there may be two thoughts on that one and so we will be researching that with the county staff and the TCEDC board over the next month or so and come back to you if it's appropriate. But so I just wanted to clarify that that may be a misunderstanding but we would still encourage you to support the current dues that would be due. Thank you.

So, okay, from what you just said, you're going to investigate the budget, but you want an okay tonight of the $30,000 dues.

We would ask that you go ahead and complete the dues.

Then I'll make my comments.

Hold on a second. Just for clarification, she's talking about dues? Yes. So they brought a consultant to rework the organization. That consultant, there is a fee on top of that. This isn't part of that. There might be a NASC letter to pay for the consultant. If I'm saying this correctly, that's what we're trying to justify. But this is the second part of our dues that we haven't paid at. Correct? Is that a better way to put it there?

It was budgeted in this current budget year and it would just be the completion of payment of our dues, which council asks that we bring back before paying in each of the segments this year. Yes.

Okay. Sorry. Okay. So, um, I've taken issue for the last, well, now it's gonna be 13 years with the organization, the lack of results to the city of Visalia and the cost that the city has put in. I've questioned, I think the current board made up is strong I THINK IN THE PAST THAT HAS BEEN A WEAKNESS OF THE ORGANIZATION. THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WAS A MAJOR ISSUE, AND THEN THERE'S A NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AND NOW THAT ONE'S GONE. AND THEN WHEN I READ THIS, IT'S TO REANALYZE AND ORGANIZE THE ORGANIZATION, STRENGTHEN THE ORGANIZATION, WHICH I THINK IS REALLY GREAT, BUT I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR 13 YEARS. AND FOR 13 YEARS WE KEEP PUTTING MONEY INTO THIS ORGANIZATION. And I think at some point you got to cut bait at some point, you've got to say, Hey, we've invested this amount of money. Oh, and now we're going to reinvent the wheel. Let's invest more money. Oh, let's reinvent the wheel again. And we're going to invest more money at some point. You've got to say enough's enough. And I think we have a strong enough economic team right now. And I understand we want to be good neighbors in our county. And I think we can do that on our own and work with the county. But I think we're just keep dumping money into an area. that just swallows that money and we're not seeing the results from it. And so that's all I'll say. So I won't be in favor of this.

So I'll say my piece right now too. I sit on this board. It's former chairman, current chairman, uh, totally kind of supervisor, Emily Shuckling's here as well. Um, we were paying a lot more into this and then me and Amy got on the board and we actually cut our dues way down. Um, I can't tell you where this ends up, but I think we want to be a part of it. I think it's kind of been our goal is to let the economic guys get together and work together more, the Pauls, the bike wash-ups, and everybody work together. And now they brought a consultant on who's also, I believe, also works in site selection, stuff like that. They do different things and try to reorganize this where it's more reliant on the economic brains in the room. then the appointed reps, the board, we still have a board, but we still have individuals there. Our economic teams are working together more as like a nucleus or I don't know how you say it, kind of like the TCAC admin side, that kind of side. And then we report back to the board. I think that's a more solid pathway because those are the guys we're working in. And being as one of the largest cities in the county, I think we want to be part of this conversation moving forward just to see where it goes. Um, and like I said, the plan comes back and we don't like it. Then at that point, if you guys won't pull out, we could do that. But I think being the largest city that we should be part of these conversations.

That's a continuation of every discussion we've had for the last 13 years. The last 13 years has been, hey, we're going to make improvements, so keep your dues coming in. Then it became, oh, we're going to cut your dues by tremendous amount. Hey, you need to stay in. Oh, we're going to make this change. You need to stay in. There's always a carrot there for the reason for us to stay in, and then there's nothing there. The carrot's not there. I mean, I've listened to this for 13 years. And the story is always the same. The rhetoric is always the same. And we ended up putting more money into the organization. So.

Thank you for those comments at this time. Is there any other. At this time, I'll accept the motion.

I'll move to approve the updated. Sorry, I'm on the wrong thing. Sorry. There's 34 items on here, or 28. Usually this does it for me automatically. It didn't do it this time. I move to authorize payment of the Tulare County Economic Development Corporation for the second half of the fiscal year, 25 slash 26, the amount of $30,000.

Um, I second, uh, but just to add a comment to this is probably the last time I support this. Um, I'm starting to lean towards what council member Nelson Nelson is saying, and rather this money go to towards youth grants or the arts. So thank you.

Thank you. We have a first and a second call for the vote, please. Most motion passes three, one mayor Taylor absent. Thank you very much. And let's go on to item 34. I pulled this item because we need to end on a good note. I'm very excited to see this grant. I'm very excited to see the changes that our shelter has made in their website where it's very easy to see the adoptable animals. As you suggested at some of your public outreach meetings that you did, Candace, you did a great job. And I'm also excited to see how many trap-neuter-release surgeries are going to happen with this grant. And I ask everyone in the audience and out there and online land to keep your fingers crossed for us because we really need this and I really like the fact that Visalia Feral Cat and Petco, all of them, it seems that we're all heading toward the same goal of making our animals and our populations safer for everyone. So thank you. I didn't have anything else.

I agree with you totally and I appreciate your comments. Yeah, this is a big step forward and I agree with you, Vice Mayor, Hopefully we get this and we keep moving forward. And you guys are doing a tremendous job out there, a lot of great improvements, and I applaud you on that. So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'd like to echo those comments. And so thank you for everything you do, and hopefully we get lucky and get this grant. Do you mind just sharing, I know we talked about this earlier, but you guys will be posting firework-related animal services posts starting soon, right? Yes. Just so the public knows?

Yeah, absolutely. So Candace Harrington, the manager at Visalia Animal Care Center. Yes, so we're going to start putting out those posts for fire safety and tips and tricks for keeping your animals safe during this fireworks season because we know many animals go missing during this time and we want to make sure the public is aware of the microchip scanning stations and some of the other different avenues to keep their animals safe.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. And with that, I'll accept a motion.

I move that the council authorize staff to apply for the ASPCA grant for up to $100,000 for purchasing supplies, subsidizing both TNR surgery fees and large dog spray and neuter fees for the Visayas community and appropriate if grant is awarded.

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Call for vote, please. Item passes 4-0. Mayor Taylor absent. Now we'll go on to the regular items in public hearing. Comments related to regular items and public hearing items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of 30 minutes per item. The mayor may reasonably limit or extend the public comment period to preserve the council's interest in conducting efficient, orderly meetings. First on our agenda is the contested special assessments. Staff report, please.

Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council Members. I'm Ruth Pena from the Finance Department. This is a presentation of the Tax Roll Contested Special Assessments. A public hearing was held on June 1st to approve the annual tax roll assessments. At that meeting, six assessments were formally contested. Council gave direction to staff to evaluate those that were contested and return with this report. Staff reviewed the information and discovered that all the proper notification was done, the pills expired, and so they have a recommendation to place all six contested assessments on the tax roll. Three of them are from the code enforcement department, two are utility billing items, and one is animal control services. We have a June 30th deadline, so if any payments are received by June 30th, they will be removed from the tax roll. So the action required tonight, staff is recommending adoption of Resolution 26-44, which authorizes the placement of the contested assessments on the Tulare County Secured Property Tax Roll. And staff is here to answer any questions if you have any.

All right, council members, do you have any questions for Ruth? Will you, public comments? Council Member Soto, is that okay?

No, no comments. Thank you so much for the report.

All right, we'll open this now to public hearing, to public comments. Please come to the center podium to make your comments, and remember, you have three minutes.

My name is Hermit Singh. I'm from Vesalia, spelled H-A-R-M-E-E-T. As she mentioned that they were reviewed, they were not reviewed. I've been trying to get in touch with somebody to review this, so I'm going to play this over here.

Yeah.

I'm here for a permit for keeping of homing pigeons. And you're telling me that this is not the place to be here?

For licensing? No. For a permit. But what are you constructing?

I'm not constructing anything.

And I do know that what was given to me by the director... And then that department didn't know about the permits. I went for the permit, and then they issued me a citation. This is...

Yeah, but you're saying based on that inspection.

What inspection did you do, my friend?

I told those people I don't have chickens. I have pigeons. Okay.

Relax. So that's what you're saying. So basically you're saying when you come in, if you see the inspection, you do the inspection, and you will remove the fee if it's already within the limits. Yeah, so if you guys are in compliance with everything that I listed there, right, you have to be, if you guys have the pigeons, they have to be right.

How do you write these, man?

How do you come up with this?

This is like, this is like threatening people for shit.

You don't even know what's going on.

You, you, I don't know where, who gave you... No, it's because I came in, I came in because I put the structures on based on what you and the other guy, when I came, met with him. Your superior went...

So last time I was trying to finish the same story here. I had another home. I moved because the lot size was less than 10,000 street. I paid $25,000 extra, bought another house to comply with these requirements. They did not have a permit. That's what the city manager was not able to answer. They kept sending me to try to get a permit from a place where I did not. Your time's expired, sir. but everybody else here gets more time. But as she said, it was investigated, it was not investigated.

Sir, please, this is a public meeting. Calm down.

I will calm down if you guys listen. Nobody wants to listen. I've tried to attempt to reach you guys, to attempt to reach you guys, but this is the response that the manager has given me.

You're okay. Don't do this in front of your child. Please calm down. Just don't get everybody riled up. Okay? Anyone else wishing to speak? Public comment? Seeing no other public comment. Council, do you have any questions for the staff?

Can I just get a little bit of background, brief background on this situation? I missed the last meeting, so... if possible. Just a brief summary.

Yeah, good evening, Vice Mayor Nguyen, members of Council, Paul Burnell, Planning, and Community Preservation Department. Just to kind of briefly summarize, so there was a citation issued by animal control officers regarding issue with pigeons in the backyard. Ultimately, that resulted in the owner of the property being directed to our department to obtain a permit, which in our ordinance, you're allowed to have pigeons subject to a bunch of requirements. The application, we recreated because we didn't have a current one, but that was provided within a couple days, and the applicant or property owner submitted it. that was issued, so there was two things in play here. One, the issue related to animal control and the violations as noted in the staff report for that. The other was violation of structures and the location of pigeons without obtaining the proper permit through our department. Those were the permit for the structures and the pigeons was issued. The other item is related to the animal citation.

And there was an appeal period that he missed is my understanding because he's not really, the property owner is a different name.

That is accurate. So this is about the two citations that were issued and were not appealed in the process. During the permitting process, there were no citations issued and he was, you know, helped along that process without any citations or other fines.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I move to adopt Resolution Number 2026-44 authorizing the placement of the assessments 094-110-008, 087-380-063, 112-312-009, 121-353-027, 103-520-002, and 101-390-011 on the Miscellaneous Special Assessment on the Tulare County Secured Property Tax Roll for Collection. I should let you do that one. I'll second it.

We have a first and a second. Call for vote, please. Item passed is 4-0. Mayor Taylor absent.

I think that's it for the consent calendar.

I mean, for that contested special assessment. Next up, we have public hearing and adoption of the budget. Staff report, please.

Good evening, Council. My name is Renee Nagel, and I'm the Finance and Technology Director for the City of Visalia. With me, I have Amy Swearengen, who is a financial analyst for the City of Visalia. Tonight, we're here to present the continued report of the proposed budget for fiscal year 26-27 and fiscal year 27-28. So tonight, as I just said, we're gonna continue the discussion from last week. The budget was presented as a total document to city council last week, or last week, June 1st. My days are all running together. On June 1st, and we're continuing that presentation. And then we're going to also address council's questions from the June 1st meeting as well. So I just also want to put out there a reminder that the adopted budget can be revised at any regular scheduled council meeting. And throughout the year, staff will continue to monitor revenues and expenditures and report back to council through mid-year and mid-cycle reports. The budget process started in August. So basically for the last 11 months, staff has been working with departments and city council to establish the budget that we presented again on June 1st. And so there was many opportunities for public input throughout the different sections of the budget that was presented. As you're aware, capital was presented from February to May. We had separate meetings for CDBG home and measure in funds as well. And then of course we had council strategic goals, work sessions, and then the citizen input, which was a survey as well. So staff has allowed several opportunities for public input. And again, I'm here tonight for public input as well. The budget includes council's strategic goals, which are five, which includes quality of life, infrastructure and growth, fiscal strength, organizational excellence, and economic vitality. So this budget includes several items. So the budget consists of 76 funds, which is over 200 divisions. So if anybody gets bored, we have a nice detailed budget. And then of course we have the summary budget, which is what we submit for the GFOA award, which the city has received for 30 plus years. And so we will be going out for that as well to hopefully to continue that. So the total number of FTEs in this budget is 742, which includes 21 new positions over the next two years. It also includes numerous hourly positions. So the budget includes over 900 employees when you add up the full-time employees and the hourlies inside the budget. Total proposed revenues and expenditures for all funds for revenues over the two years equates to $663.6 million. For operating expenditures over the two years, it's $546.9 million. And for capital projects is over $210.6 million. When you put all those funds and divisions together that I just mentioned, and then we categorize them into the next six categories, the total appropriation requested with this budget for the first year, which is fiscal year 26-27, which starts July 1st, is $408.7 million, and for the second year, $358.8 million. The difference in the second year from the first year is due to capital projects. There's more or higher cost capital projects in the first year than in the second year. In addition, the general fund is higher than shown in the summary because it includes sub funds such as your civic center, your emergency reserves, and any other sub funds that get rolled up into the general fund. So as we talk about the general fund throughout the presentation, we'll only include the general fund. So that amount will differ from this total appropriation. So this slide shows the budget and a pie chart, which then shows that the general fund is the single largest fund. In categories, business type funds is the largest, which is 41%, but the single largest fund is the general fund at 27% the first year, and then 31% the second year. As mentioned, since the general fund is the single largest fund, I will have a couple slides just to kind of go over that. It also funds majority of the essential city services, which is why we're spending more time on the general fund than going into all the other funds. Otherwise we'd be here all night going over each fund and would probably bore everybody since we've had so much fun over the last several months of going through all the capital projects and everything. So again, this slide is focusing just on the general fund. For total operating revenues, the first year we're projecting 112.8 million. The second year, 116.4 million. And then for our total expenditures, 110.5 million. And then the second year, 110.8 million. We are projecting surpluses in the general fund in both years. So this is before the transfer to emergency reserves or anything like that. So the surplus we're projecting is 2.4 million. And then for the second year, 5.6 million. So most likely this surplus would be larger. As in the past years, we always budget as if we're fully staffed. We know that we always will have vacancies, whether we like it or not. We always want to have all our positions filled, but vacancies do occur. And so this does not include any vacancies. It's also very conservative with the operating revenues, which is our past practice. We're always conservative with the revenue. So if there's an economic downturn, or if we don't meet those milestones, or if there's additional expenditures that come up that were not planned, such as maybe a well go out in a park or something, there's extra funds that we didn't anticipate. For the general fund, the top five revenue sources is sales tax, property tax, franchise tax, transit occupancy tax, and business tax. These top five revenues represent 90% of the total general fund revenues. Staff is projecting that all the revenues continue to have growth in the budget, and projections are conservative, as I mentioned, as in our past practice. Our single largest sales tax is sales tax, which represents 44% or 50.4 million. As mentioned, since sales tax is our single largest revenue in the general fund, we always like to talk on it a little bit. I am going kind of quick just because some of this is review from two weeks ago. So if you want me to go back, just kind of let me know. So this slide shows where we've been with our sales tax and it shows our growth. And what you'll notice is in fiscal year 21-22, which is that little spike right there, it looks like a little mountain. That was due to COVID due to the one time stimulus monies. And so it spiked our sales tax. And over the last several years, it's kind of realigning itself. It also the COVID one time monies did increase our average growth, which that 15 and 20 year. the 5.5 and the 3.9%. So if you're looking at we're projecting for growth or what we're actually going to collect, you may say, well, you're below, we're not below. It's just that number of spike due to the COVID increase, which was 29%, um, over a three year span due to that COVID money. Um, so you'll see there for fiscal year 26, 27 and 27, 28, we are projecting a 2.5%. Um, growth or the next two years, this year, the current year we're projecting a 3.5%. Again, that's very conservative. We know developments continuing throughout Visalia, and we know that's going to continue to increase our sales tax. Um, not to mention our neighboring cities, um, their citizens are coming here due to some of our commercial growth. We have Costco just opened up and I heard it's pretty packed. That's good news for us too, which will help increase this number along with our industrial park and all those other businesses that are coming in. Property tax is our second largest revenue source in the general fund. And this chart shows that over the last eight years, we've had growth in our property tax, which is approximately 7 million. We went from 15 million in 2021 to what we're projecting to 27, 28. Again, is a $7 million increase from 15 million to 21.9 million. And this is due to the growth that I just talked about on sales tax. So on property tax, we're projecting continued growth of 3% each year. We do think it will be higher as we continue to have real estate transactions occurring, all the subdivisions that continue with the growth in Visalia. This next slide is our general fund expenditures. So our total operating expenditures for the first year, we're projecting 98.5 million, and the second year, an increase to 102 million. And so of that majority of that is for salaries and benefits, which is 76%. So 76% of our operating is for salaries and benefits. And then of course we have our capital expenditures, which is the bottom half, and then transfers to our other funds that we subsidize. And then of course our debt, which I have some slides on as well. This next chart shows our general fund operating expenditures, which the general fund is made up of nine departments, with the single largest department being police, which is 43%, and public safety does represent 61% of the general fund operating expenditures. For the general fund, we do have some debt that we have that we'll be getting ready to retire. We just retired the 2014 COP this fiscal year that we're in. We are going to retire the next, which is the animal control facility loan in this two year budget, which would be fiscal year 27, 28 will be that last payment. And then we'll be left with the last COP, which doesn't retire until fiscal, until fiscal year 2930, which is not in this budget. It will be in the next two year budget. The total payment from the general fund for the debt that we have is 1.6 million annually. based on everything that I just talked about from the two years that we're proposing. And then we project that out. Um, every time we come to council, we do try to project out our general fund so we can always see, um, what's occurring in the general fund. And since, and since it is our largest fund, we need to be on top of if there, if we're having any issues, if expenditures are outpacing our revenues. Um, and so it's a fun that we try to watch and forecast out every time we come here. And so anytime we get additional information, whether it's on health benefits, PERS or anything like that, we do plug it in and we constantly update our five-year projection. So for the general fund, the projection still looks good for the city and that's just due to growth. This is very conservative forecast. It assumes no recession. but yet we do have growth, but the growth is also conservative. So we're trying to tread the middle there, not doom and gloom, but yet still growth, but not growth that's just way up there to where you would have to back it back off. We show, again, continued growth in revenues. We show no additional employee benefit costs, which means things that are unknown. So if PERS has a downturn, let's just say, in their interest rates, our PERS costs are gonna go up. This assumes there's no change in any of that, that we will continue to have the same type of growth in our payments that we've had had in the past. And the same with health and workers comp. It assumes no increase in wages in the out years. And that's because that's a bargaining item with city council. And so this assumes a zero wage increase. It does assume changes in wages due to additional employees, just changes in positions. And so you'll see a cost increase, but it's due to other changes. It assumes no new state or federal mandates. And then of course the debt is paid off as I just talked about. So it has those structured in there as well. So with that, it has a surplus for each year going out to 2930 and that we continue to fund the emergency reserve set aside, which is the 30% of operations as it's per council's current policy and still leaves an additional surplus as well. This next slide is our general fund emergency reserve. And it shows a lot of important things. And as you guys know, I always talk on it. But it's important for the audience to know how important this emergency reserve is. And so this chart shows how important it is because in 2008, we had the Great Recession and we needed this reserve. And we used it. And we used it all the way down to 1.3 over a time span of five years. So it shows the importance of it. And then it also shows the importance that council has put in their efforts into this. And this is the current council and past council as well with, with rebuilding it and increasing it to the, to 30% from 25 of operating to 30%. So this shows how council has made this a pro made this a priority. Moving to our next category of funds, which is our special revenue and capital funds. Um, so this is the, this is major funds such as gas tax measure R N and T. Um, and so the budget assumes for these funds, a 2.5% increase over both years. This fund is funding 194 projects over the two years, these funds more than one. There's 48 funds in here and a total of 106.4 million in those projects over the two years. So there's a lot of capital, a lot of infrastructure that council has approved because you've reviewed these over the last couple of months and these are built into this budget as well. The next category is our enterprise funds. So this consists of eight distinct operations, which is spread across 14 funds. It represents 41% of the city's total budget. So the proposed budget for the enterprise funds is 166.6 million, and for the 27-28, it's 130.7 million. For capital projects over the two years, they total 88.9 million and 130 projects. So funds that receive, enterprise funds that receive a general fund transfer, or also known as a subsidy for operations, debt, and capital, is Animal Services, which the total amount in the budget is 2.1 million. And for Convention Center, the total subsidy in the budget is 3.1 million. The next category is Internal Service Funds. These funds represent 8% of the city's total budget. The proposed budget for the internal service funds for fiscal year 26, 27 is 34.2 million. For fiscal year 27, 28 is 35.5 million. For the total projects across both fiscal years for the internal service funds, it totals 8 million and 38 projects. Even though our forecast shows that we will have surpluses over the next five years in the general fund that we just went over, the city is also dealing with challenges just like everybody else is. And so our challenges that we will continue to have to monitor and continue to review and talk and update council is rising employee costs, which could be wages to remain competitive, health insurance, PERS, and workers' comp increases. We also have been experiencing technology cost, which we've all recognized we need more technology. We need to be implementing it. However, it comes with a cost, and it comes with a cost with maintaining those softwares, replacing the softwares, the equipment, and then, of course, being able to have cybersecurity to protect the data and everything that we have as well with the technology. So we recognize that's a cost and we constantly put that in there and it's in our forecast as well. We have to deal with inflation, interest rate changes, foreign and domestic factors as well. So being conservative is very important with this budget because any of these items can change your budget, you know, up or down. In summary, the city of Visalia is in overall good financial shape. Revenue is up in all categories and is projected to continue to increase. Development continues throughout Visalia. Departments are controlling expenditures. Budget includes investments in city infrastructure. And the general fund has a healthy reserve balance. In addition, both budget years for the general fund are projected to have a surplus. This slide is to address council's question from the June 1st meeting. So the question that was asked for staff to return with is what percentage of the budget is for public safety compared to other cities similar in size? And so we attempted to answer your question by doing a survey, diving into other budgets, looking at cities that are similar in size, and then of course looking at cities that are near us as well. I will tell you, it's not as easy as it sounds. The question seems very easy, but everybody's budget is a thick document. And as I mentioned earlier, ours is made up of 200 plus divisions and over 78 funds. So you can imagine every city has that as well. And we all track them all differently and we call them different things. So for example, some cities tax measures are inside their general fund. They don't separate them out in separate funds. We do because that's a requirement that we have in our tax measures, but it is not a requirement that all cities have. So we made that attempt. And so with that, we have found that for Visalia, our public safety with general fund only is 61%, as I mentioned earlier, but when you add our tax measures in, with our public safety that it equates to 67% funding. And we were in average. There are some higher than us and there are some lower than us. Um, it's also hard to tell where you fall because you'd have to know what operations are in each department as well. Um, some public safety have code enforcement, some have animal control officers. some do not and so it's again trying to figure out everybody's operations you'd have to have a lot of detail to be able to do apples to apples so this is our attempt at doing that and based off of what we found we do believe that we're average don't say like that say we're better than average we're better than average thank you thank you For tonight's action, staff would like to answer council's questions and then conduct a public hearing and to potentially adopt the budget tonight for fiscal year 26-27 and fiscal year 27-28. Any questions from council? Okay.

all right we're going to open the public hearing at this time and also we'll open the podium for public comment anybody wishing to address the budget all 200 pages please step to the microphone seeing none oh maria

Good evening Maria Guillen accent over the E by city resident. Just a curiosity. We have fortunately this big surplus and I was just wondering about. whether or not city departments have put in maybe requests. One point you made was that city departments are controlling their expenditures. But I was just curious, are there any departments that are maybe perhaps doing some more visionary kind of thinking and planning and that would really, really like to have additional funding to do something that would really have some kind of major impact on the community. that could really bring Faisalia forward. It's just a curiosity. Are those kinds of things coming forward and then we're just saying, no, let's be conservative because we don't know there might be another recession or something else happening. I was just, like I said, very, very curious because I always hear about how we have all these different issues and concerns whether it's encampments or whether we're fencing in our parks or things like that and I was just wondering you know is there anything that we can perhaps be hopeful for in regards to having all this really wonderful talented staff that we do and I do mean that we do have that. So again that's just a question from my being curious. Thank you. Thank you.

Do we want to. Leslie Cavillia, city manager. We certainly encourage people to look visionary. The department heads, I would say, especially right now, we're looking at the parks master plan. So parks and recreation master plan, and really trying to look at that very differently and how we do things. We have the general plan coming up, which I know sounds boring, but is actually gonna paint the future of exactly what this community will be. So yes is it always the latest and greatest sometimes latest and greatest bites us a bit too. But there you know we welcome opportunities to look at new things that can bring more arts culture and a variety of activities to the community.

I'd like to share I shared this with the city manager in the budget process and when it listed down departments the departments gave their vision of what they would like to accomplish for the coming year. And I said to the city manager, I said, If we hit all the buttons, it'll be truly amazing some of the thought process that went into the vision that the individual department heads have for their departments. Some of it has to do with growth, some of it has to do with technology, and some of it, it's amazing to hear what they have planned. And so yes, our department heads look at that when they do the budget.

And I'd like to echo that as well. As we start in August and look at all the capital improvement projects and the rationale and reasoning behind them, you can see that the staff is very thoughtful in how they spend taxpayer money. And while we do show an excess of $3 million here and there, a new park's like over $10 million. So I think they do a good job with everything that they have, and I think keeping that reserve so that when we do hit some financial times, we are not suffering with public safety and our parks and things are well taken care of. But I appreciate the question and the interest.

And I can't help but comment is when I watch the Civic Center being built, it's very exciting about what that will bring as far as enlightening that part of our community.

Now, if you have a chance to drive by that on Burke Street, I encourage you to do that. It's it's incredibly huge and big and you can just in your mind envision farmers markets, weddings, big public events are really it's going to be a really great asset to the community. So thank you. Any other public comments? Okay, seeing none, I'll take a motion.

First of all, I'd like to say again thank you to your department, Renee, and to you for the thorough job you do in preparing us to be able to make decisions. We did receive the two notebooks, and it behooves us if we decide we want to read them or not, but they supply us with the information, and the process that we go through, trust me when I say this, is phenomenal. for a successful city budget. The city of Fresno is going through a one year budget and they do it in one week. And as big as Fresno is, you can imagine what they're going through. So I applaud you on what you provide us. I applaud the department heads on the thoroughness of what you supply towards the budget and the thought process that goes into it. I echoed this in the last meeting. You make this, tremendous job a lot easier in the way you do the presentation. Can you go through it again? Oh, I'm just joking. I mean, it was just like this. I mean, this is a thorough presentation. You hit all the main bullet points. Yeah, I just applaud you on what you do. So with that, I move to adopt fiscal year 2627 and 2728 budget and approve resolution 2629-39. That's how you do it. I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Call for the vote, please. Motion passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Next item measure T district tax recertification.

Good evening council, Amy Sorensen, the budget analyst here. And with me, I have Renee Nagel, our finance and technology director. Um, tonight we'll be going over the measure T annual recertification and maintenance of effort for fiscal year 26, 27. So measure T is our quarter cent sales tax enhanced for, um, police and fire services. It's split 40% fire and 60% police. It uses a detailed 20 year plan and the plan, um, is required to be reauthorized every eight years. Um, the last one was done in 2021. So our next one will be in 2029. Measure T has two annual requirements. One is the annual recertification, which is what we're doing here tonight with you guys. And then also the annual maintenance of effort calculation. The maintenance of effort is to ensure that general fund money is budgeted for police and fire operations do not fall below the previous year's service level. So as you can see here for fiscal year 26, 27, we are above 25, 26 by 7.7 million. The plan elements implemented so far, we built two police precincts. We've hired 23 police officers and purchased vehicles for them. We've hired 13 firefighters. It's also built Fire Station 53, 55, and the training facility. It's purchased one new fire engine and one new fire ladder truck, and it's also contributed towards the BECC. Um, we are currently operating under amended plan since, uh, June of 2011 council has amended the plan due to the revenue shortfalls and the higher expenditures. Um, we've reduced the police officer allocation by six. Um, so our current, our current number of officers is 23 reduced from 28. Um, we've reduced the fire position allocation from 18 to 13. Um, we recently moved on our recently, um, but we moved the police, the battalion chief and admin captain to measure in, to help. THE FIRE FUND. WE ALSO DECLARED A FISCAL EMERGENCY FROM FISCAL YEAR 0910 TO 2012-2013. WE'VE ALSO CHANGED IT BY ALLOWING A MAXIMUM OF ONE VACANCY FOR BOTH POLICE AND FIRE. SO THIS CHART RIGHT HERE SHOWS WHAT OUR ACTUAL REVENUES HAVE DONE IN THE PINK LINE. IT SHOWS THE PLANNED REVENUES AS THE BLUE LINE, AS YOU CAN SEE. And then the yellow line is our amended plan expenditures. So as you can see, we had a dip in revenues in 1920 from the COVID. Then we also had the spike, as Renee talked about previously, in the general fund. And then as you can see, our amended plan expenses are projected to kind of be right at where our revenues are projected. So we're still watching that very closely. And I'll go into that more in the next one. So for police, here's our five-year forecast, including the current year. You can see we have a surplus every year. And our surplus actually grows in fiscal year 3031 because of the VEC debt gets retired. So that surplus goes up a little bit. For fire measure T, however, you can see our surpluses. We have surpluses proposed for the two budget years. But as you go out, we actually go into the negative. However, this is fully staffed. We probably won't end the year with that if we hold the vacancy. So we save a little money there. So for tonight's recommended motion, we recommend that we recertify the Measure T expenditure plan for fiscal year 26-27 and continue with the amended plan until all staffing levels have been met.

Any questions? Council, do we have any questions for staff?

No?

All right, seeing none, we'll open this for public comment. Please come to the podium if you have any questions or concerns with this item. Seeing none, I'll accept a motion.

I move to recertify the Measure T expenditure plan for fiscal year 2026-27 and continue with the amendment plan until after the staffing levels have been met.

I'll second it. I have a motion and a second. Call for vote, please. Item passed is 4-0. Mayor Taylor absent. Next we have a public hearing and ordinance adoption. Staff report please.

Good evening, Vice Mayor Nguyen and City Council. Brandon Smith with the Planning Division. This item before you is a public hearing for a general plan amendment and change of zone for property located on the northwest corner of Acres Street and Reagan Avenue. As shown in the aerial photo, this is a site that is now developed, bordering, has border development on three sides, and to the west there is a approved high density residential neighborhood that has yet to break ground. The request before you has been initiated by the city to change the general plan land use and the zoning designations from their respective parks and recreation and quasi public destination to commercial mixed use. And this is a 21 acre site. The request is to change the entire 21 acres. And the objective is to prepare the site for future commercial development. There is no particular development proposed at this time. Uh, so given some background, a very brief background, uh, this is a site that has been designated for parks recreation since 2010, uh, and beginning about 2020, uh, there was a series of council meetings to start talking about, uh, the possibilities for the site and maybe consider some alternative land uses, uh, and given direction in 2024, we, uh, planning division began the process of, uh, changing uh... looking to change the zone in general plan designation we came to the council at september second based on a prior recommendation of changing sixteen acres to commercial leaving five acres as part and then uh... we were uh... given a revised direction to designate the entire twenty one acre parcel that did require having to go back through an environmental review and uh... whole new process uh... we're also directed to return to some additional information on the park plan for the northwest so uh... we've uh... discussed before just about the uh... uh... commercial mixed use designation, the ability for that to be a very flexible type of zone that can accommodate a wide variety of commercial uses, office uses, residential uses. Even parks are allowed as a conditional use permit within that designated, within that land use designation. So with regards to the community park designation that it is right now, that is a designation that is called out in the general plan. Somewhere within the Northwest Quadrant, there is a plan to have a community park which ranges from five to 12 acres in size. And staff has reviewed the entire northwest, has come up with four potential sites that are yet undeveloped that could accommodate a community park in the range of five to 12 acres. One of these sites does have potential opportunity at this time for the city to purchase land based on conceptual development plan that we've seen. And the other three, the city has not seen uh, potential, uh, development at this time, but that they may come in over time. Some additional maps have been provided to the council and the, uh, placket, uh, maps that, uh, uh, this one, for example, uh, shows all the, uh, developed and undeveloped parks within the, the Northwest quadrant. Uh, particularly there are four, uh, undeveloped parks that match up with the, uh, with those that were just listed earlier. And then all the developed parks are a variety of neighborhood parks. Also shown on this map, just for reference, is the Visalia Unified School District's high school site, which the future of that high school is not certain at this time, so there could be some new opportunities that may arise in the future there. Another map has been provided to illustrate for all the neighborhood and pocket parks. And this map actually shows the Carlton Acres specific plan area and the Lowry Ranch plan, which has not been adopted or considered, but has been presented in concept through the school district. And the intent on this map is just to show the proliferation of a variety of additional park options through a neighborhood and pocket parks. So even though we may be considering the elimination of 21 acres at Acres Riggin, there are a number of future park opportunities throughout the northwest. And just to summarize quickly about future plans for the site, if the council should adopt this change, There are a series of steps that must occur before the site could be sold off to a potential developer. And staff does anticipate planning on coming to the City Council at a future point in time to talk further about what the design, what particular design features the Council might have interest in that site. And as for the Parks Department, they are ongoing with a master plan, which is expected to be complete in 2027. So it is staff's recommendation and the Planning Commission's recommendation that the City Council adopt a resolution to adopt the Environmental Review, which is the name of the declaration, and to adopt general plan amendment number 2025-02, and approve the first reading of ordinance 2026-04 for change of zone 2025-03. And staff is available to answer any questions you might have at this time, thank you.

Thank you, Brandon. Council, do you have any questions? You wanna wait till public comment?

Yep, same. You're okay? Thank you.

All right. Let's go ahead and open this up for public comment. If you have anything to add to this, please step to the microphone.

Maria Guillen, G-U-I-L-L-E-N, accent over the E, Visayla resident. So I'm trying to follow this. I appreciate the nod to a little parcel of land there for the park. But again, when I think about how this whole area was designated at first to be park area, to be park area, that the city could develop. And I remember at the time, you know, being told that it might not be such a good idea because it's also located next to a middle school and that that might not be good for whatever reasons. And so now, and I know that there's been a lot of talk about we could use this land, we can get money, you know, and benefit and from, you know, turning it into commercial or for additional development, housing development. But I guess my question is thank you for acknowledging that the master plan is in motion and it hasn't for the parks that is and it hasn't been developed yet. But so I was just wondering are we talking about we're going to wait for that first before we make moves on this or are we asking for this to get approved now and then whatever happens. happens happens and I guess that's where I'm kind of kind of lost with this. Kind of disappointed because I actually live in that area and could really see the benefit of having an additional area for recreation, for perhaps a community center out there. I don't think that Visalia is so small that we should be only thinking in terms of like say one senior center. I don't think that that's... So these are the kinds of things that I was talking about earlier about how we have gaps, but I'm not sure if anybody's really advocating for them except the squeaky wheel here. But anyway, just wanted to add my two cents. Thanks. Thank you.

Jim Reeves, as I say, I'll add a couple of pennies too. I think we're kind of missing out on selling the property completely. We apparently acquired the property at 2010 prices or lower. Any other parks that we're gonna do, we're gonna pay 2026, 2030 prices for the property. So I think we missed a bet even if we just kept it down to the five acre parcel that we had talked about for a little while. But I'm sorry we're gonna miss out on a nice park on the corner.

Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to council. Council, do you have any comments or questions?

Well, yeah. First of all, I'm in favor of... redesignating this and so everybody understands this property was purchased with Park and Rec funds so the sale of this property the funds go back to Park and Rec which they can then utilize to build that community park or offset some of the cost of the community park is community parks are very expensive but they reap the benefit from the sale of this property that is a very traveled corner. It suits to commercial use. It's a long time coming and I think that the time is right to make this change. So I'm totally in support of this item.

Yeah, I'll also be very supportive of this. I think it makes more sense for that to be commercial on that corner. All those funds will go into Parks and Rec, and they could really get a good use out of those funds. Park doesn't make sense in that area right there, that travel corner, especially with all the schools going in there. Commercial would be better suited to that, and that's why I'd be fully supportive of it tonight.

Thank you for the report. Yeah, I like the direction we're headed in. And that's only because I do want to see us break ground on an aquatic center in the next couple of years. I'm crossing my fingers. And I'm hoping that the funds from this sale will be the beginning of that. And so, yeah, I'll be supportive of this tonight.

Um, I too will support this. I think one thing is that helped me with that is that less than a half mile we have coming off a Linwood in that base and there's going to be a five acre park there. And I think it's about five acres when Linwood goes through where the ponding basin is. And also the development next door has some open space in it as well. The plans that I've seen anyway for the high density residential, it looks like a really nice development. So I will be in favor of this. And again, the money goes back to parks so we can spend it appropriately on parks projects. Any other comments or questions for staff?

And just to clarify, we're still gonna come back with potential other locations that we can purchase and or already own for a park in the future in that area, correct? I know we designated a staff to come back with other locations since we were going to get rid of the five acre. Uh, it says it on the, on the presentation.

Just wanted to see if that was coming back soon or it would be based on the, on the park master plan.

Okay. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Brandon.

I move to approve resolution number 2026-37 to adopt initial study and negative declaration number 2026-14. And I move to approve resolution number 2026-38 to approve general plan amendment number 2025-02. And I move to conduct the first reading of the approval of ordinance number 2026-04 to adopt change of zone number 2025-03.

I'll second that. We're even now.

We have a first and a second. Call for vote, please. Motion passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. Next item please. Fiscal year 26-27, rates and fees.

Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council. I'm Jana Ferguson, financial analyst. I'm here tonight just to review the proposed rates and fees for fiscal year 26-27. To briefly review, at our last meeting, I explained what the proposed inflationary rates are. We have the standard CPI increase, which affects a majority of our fees, which is calculated on the California CPI, and it is 3.09% for this year. We have the engineering news record construction cost index, which affects our impact fees, which is a negative 0.79%. And then the business tax fees are based on a three year average of the United States CPI and those calculated this year out at a 3.23%. At our last meeting, we detailed all of the new fees any fees that were exceeding CPI for increases, adjusted fees, fees that were not actually in our document to begin with that we wanted to include this time, and then fees that were no longer necessary and would be deleted. We also were prepared to answer questions and provided some follow-up on some of the Parks and Recreation fees. Tonight, we are asking to conduct the public hearing And the potential adoption of resolution 26 dash zero two to amend the city's, uh, fee document for fiscal year 26, 27 as presented. And the effective dates would be impact fees would be effective August 14th because they do require a 60 day notice parks and recreation program fees. Um, it was requested that because there is a significant change in them that they would flow. to August 10th, which is the start of the fall registration period, and then all other fees would be effective July 1st. I'm here for any questions.

Thank you. We are opening a public hearing. Council, do you have any questions or comments for staff?

That was the best report of the day. Thank you.

Okay, we'll now open this for public comment. If you have any comments on our rates and fees adjustments, please come to the podium. Seeing none, we'll close the public comment section and I'm open for questions. Motion.

I move to adopt resolution 2026-02 to amend the city's rates and fees document for fiscal year 2026-2027 as presented. I second.

We have a motion and a second. Call for vote, please. Motion passes 4-0 with Mayor Taylor absent. And do we have anything from closed session?

Yes, Vice Mayor. The city acquired property for the Caldwell widening project between Santa Fe and Lovers Lane. And the details of that transaction are included in the agenda for tonight in accordance with the Brown Act.

All right. Seeing no other matters to come before the council, I will adjourn this meeting and invite you to join us on Monday, July 20th. 7 p.m., same place.

Also, many thanks to Raina, Renee, the facility staff who turned, I think, every personal probably fan in this building, and to Wonder Man, Eric Ramirez, who got the air conditioning back on.

Yes, thank you.

Meeting's adjourned.