City Council - Regular Meeting

I would watch it again. I remember Me too.

All right, welcome back everybody. We're going to reconvene our meeting for this roll call from our city clerk, Kathy Valdez. The record shall reflect that all members are present. Our city attorney, Walter Chung, will bring us out of close session. The city council took no reportable action in close session this afternoon. Council member Contrus will lead us in the pledge of allegiance.

Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And our city clerk Kathy Valdez has some procedural items to cover. Thank you, mayor. In accordance with the Brown Act, I'd like to announce that as a result of convening simultaneous meetings, the members of the Buena Sanitation District will receive compensation of $147.75 for the district meeting pursuant to Buena Sanitation District Ordinance 2006-1. I would like to remind everyone that the Vista Municipal Code requires members of the public to serve order and decorum at the meeting and to conduct themselves in a courteous manner. The ordinance was adopted to allow for public input and to facilitate city business without disruption of the meeting. Applause is appropriate for items listed under presentation portion of the agenda only. Students wishing to receive credit for attending this evening's meeting must stay for a minimum of 1 hour. However, we ask that you stay for the completion of an item rather than leaving in the middle of discussion. When you are ready to leave, you may ask one of the staff members at the back of the room to sign your paper. Thank you.

Okay. To speak on an item on tonight's agenda, please fill out a speaker slip with the number of the item you'd like to speak on. give it to the clerk, secretary, staff here at the DAS. Speaker slips are available on the table just outside the council chamber doors. For members of the public participating via Zoom, you may use the raise your hand feature to indicate that you'd like to speak or you may press the star 9 on your phone. We will announce when to raise your hand to indicate you'd like to make a comment on the specific item being discussed. Speakers will have three minutes each to address the council. And we'll go to city manager John Connley for approval of tonight's agenda. Thank you, Mayor. There are no changes to this evening's agenda.

Thank you. All right. We have one presentation this evening and uh like to invite Jonathan Foster, partner with Davis Far LP, the city's independent financial auditor, to come forward and provide a report on the city's fiscal year 2425 annual comprehensive financial report and its associated audit. Welcome.

Thank you, honorable mayor, council members. uh appreciate the opportunity to speak uh speak about a little bit of the work we do. Uh my name is Jonathan Foster. I was the partner overseeing the engagement. Uh first I just wanted to start out by thanking uh Mike and Matt and the work they did to be prep prepared for the audit. Um it's a lot of work going into this document. Um if you haven't reviewed it, um it's 200 pages long. Um so a lot of work goes both sides. Um they're ready for our audit. Uh responsive to all our audit inquiries. Um and with that, I'd like to share some of the important work that we did. Uh we started the interim audit procedures in approximately May of 2025. Uh as part of that uh we spent a lot of time walking through the city's internal controls. Uh internal controls are essentially the foundation of the audit. An extremely important element of the work that we do. Um some of the areas that we look at are your cash receiving, cash dispersements, uh compliance with your investment policy and compliance with your procurement policy. In addition, in that time, we did send a letter to council identifying some of the significant audit areas as part of that that um of our audit this year. Uh the most significant uh if you had noticed um is implementation of a new accounting standard uh Gazsby 101 compensated absences. Uh within the audit opinion, there is a new paragraph titled emphasis of matter. uh in that paragraphs paragraph it describes the implementation of the new accounting standard as well the prior period restatement that occurred from that and I just wanted to uh communicate to council um there's two types of prior period restatements that occur um the first is the correction of an error which this was not the second is implementation of a new accounting standard um so although that language is present in the audit opinion it is due to implementation of a new accounting standard we perform our final audit procedures in October Ober and November um where our audit team was out here in the field uh substantially performing final field work. Uh as a result of our audit

procedures we issued an unmodified opinion. Uh an unmodified opinion indicates as auditors we did not have to make any modifications to the opinion and that is the highest level opinion that a city can receive. Um so I'm happy to report um again that you did receive an unmodified otherwise known a clean audit opinion. Uh I did want to speak a little bit on the new accounting change. uh just because it affected uh governments across the entire country. Um there was uh the old way uh governments accounted for compensated absences. Um this is your sick leave um your vacation leave uh other bonus time off. Uh previously governments uh across the United States accounted for this only uh and what an actual check would be paid out. Um, so if a monetary amount had to be paid out to an employee, uh, that was a liability that governments had to recognize. Um, so you might have noticed a slight increase in your compensated absences liability. The new requirement now is that local governments must account for not only uh cash compensation paid to an employee upon separation, but now time they will most likely use in future periods. Um, so that's an extra bucket of time that employees may use. Uh so governments across the country including uh yourself now must account for that additional time that an employee may use and not necessarily be paid out uh at time of separation. In addition to our audit opinion um and the annual comprehensive financial report uh we've also issued financial statements of the Buena sanitation district and the Vista Joint Powers Authority. Uh those two sets of financial statements also were issued unmodified audit opinions otherwise known as clean audit opinions. The remaining work we have as part of our annual financial statement audit is your single audit in this fiscal year. Uh any year in which you spend uh $750,000 or more in federal grant funding uh climbing to $1 million in future fiscal years. Uh but for the

current year, single audit is required. Uh that is currently underway by our audit team. Uh the due date uh for the completion of the single audit is end of March. Um but we're almost done with our audit procedures over the single audit. Uh so that is expected to be issued later this month. Uh with my presentation to city council, I would like to open it up to any questions you might have uh on some of the work that we did or the financial statements uh and for any of you today.

Very good. Well, we appreciate your report and your great work here and I will open it up uh if my colleagues have any questions. Not seeing any questions. We want to thank you again. We appreciate it. I'm glad to have another good audit report and appreciate staff uh inviting our auditors to come and speak and inform the public of the success of our audits. Thank you very much, Mr. Fiser. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, that'll bring us to oral communications. Any member of the public may address the city council on agency related matters that are not on the agenda by requesting to speak during this section of the agenda. If you're participating via Zoom, use the raise your hand feature or press star 9 if you'd like to speak. The number of speakers heard during this segment is limited to 10. Any remaining speakers will be heard under the second oral communications item. We do have uh Gail Martin with us I think here in the chambers would like to be heard. There she is. Good evening uh Mayor Franklin and council members. It feels good to know about so much that is happening with our parks and recreation centers. Uh I have been noticing uh for our fine facilities that we have rentals available and when the Vista communications come to us in the email blast, newsletters, announcements, I was hoping that I could please ask you to add uh the following facility to the category of rentals and that would be the uh Mlen Senior Center, please. This is uh a part of the list of our parks and facilities and I would like to see that added to that rental list. Also uh we have brand new restrooms in the building and uh we can promote uh the center as a rental facility now that we are upgrading it. Uh and the second part of my uh request is that when we list the services that are available at the senior center that we also add rentals available for events to the list

of things that are available at our center. it's a good idea to fill in some of the gaps uh so that our um community knows about these rentals that are available and knowing that we work so hard to have nice parks and nice recreation centers. Uh we do want to promote every single one of them uh for the benefit of our communities. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now we'll hear from Marjgerie Bramwell. Good evening.

My name is Marjorie Bramwell and I'm here because um I came this morning and I noticed that there was no handicap parking. It was all replaced by the EV charging, you know, and I had to walk almost from the library to come to the building. And I think that was a lot lot especially for seniors like myself and handicap. Anyway, also I'm also here for the um senior center, the McCullum Center, and I was there today and they did a lot of upgrade. However, um I noticed that some of the funding was cut and I would like you to um address a little bit about that to increase because we we have a population that do need the service there. Thank you. Thank you. I see our city manager made some notes about the handicap parking and I'm sure we'll be making sure to get that replaced promptly. Okay, now we're going to go to Zoom. We'll hear from Madison Rap followed by Debbie, followed by Becky Rap. Madison, can you hear us?

Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Yes, we can.

Okay. Thanks so much, mayor and city council members for the chance to speak tonight. I'm a mother of young children and like many parents, when I buckle my kids in the car, I assume the road around us is reasonably safe. But the science on cannabis impaired driving tells us that assumption is becoming harder to make. A major review published just this month in the journal Current Addiction Reports examined the most recent research on how cannabis affects driving. The findings were clear and consistent. Cannabis products containing THC impair driving performance. This is not speculation or outdated data. It's based on controlled experimental studies conducted over the last 5 years. The review found that impairment occurs quickly, most strongly within the first hour after use and can last four to 5 hours after inhalation. During that time, drivers show reduced reaction time, impaired attention, and poor lane control, skills that are critical to preventing crashes. Even more concerning, participants in these studies often felt ready and willing to drive shortly after using cannabis despite objective evidence that their driving ability was impaired. In other words, people don't reliably perceive when they are unsafe to drive. The risks increase further when cannabis is combined with alcohol. The review found additive effects, meaning the impairment is worse than either substance alone. This combination significantly amplifies danger on the road. As access to high potency cannabis products expands, our policies must keep pace with the science. Protecting public safety, especially children, pedestrians, and other drivers, requires a system to measure impairment levels from cannabis use, which unfortunately doesn't exist yet. So, this could be

something to look for in our road safety. Thank you. Thank you. Now, we're here from Debbie, followed by Becky Rap, followed by Terry Skellyy. Debbie, are you there? Debbie, can you hear us? Debbie, are you there? Okay, we're going to move on to Becky Rap. We'll come back to Debbie. Becky, can you hear us? Becky Rap.

Yes. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Becky Raph and I'm concerned regarding the public safety of residents. As marijuana is being sold and delivered throughout our city, I'm concerned for the public safety risks and the often unaccounted for costs to city resources associated with marijuana sales. Couple weeks ago, a marijuana delivery drive driver in a neighboring city was shot in the neck during a robbery. That incident involved multiple suspects, a firearm, helicopters, and a major law enforcement response. Thankfully, the victim survived, but we know that cashbased marijuana delivery creates targets for violent crime. Marijuana delivery drivers are known targets and they carry product and cash, often work alone, and move through our residential neighborhoods. that increases the risk for armed robbery, gun violence, and danger, not only to workers, but to residents who live nearby. This safety threat comes with real public costs. Police response and overtime, helicopters, emergency medical services, investigations, court proceedings, and long-term impacts on community safety. These are taxpayerf funed expenses. After Vista's first outdoor marijuana event, we heard from many residents that it was a huge disruption to the community. I asked this council for a transparent and accurate account of all public health threats and financial impacts surrounding events where marijuana is actively being sold and consumed. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll hear from Terry Skellyy followed by Michael Conrad. Terry Skellyy, are you there?

Uh, yes. Good evening. My name is Terry Skellyy. I'm a parent and and a community volunteer with school programs that serve youth, especially those in need. Since we've completed the first semester of school of the school year already and we began the second semester, we have a pretty good understanding of the needs of our young people. We recognize the indications of mental health struggles of our students and hopefully the most severe form of mental health struggles, student suicide ideiation. Personal and mental health resources have been written more robustly into our school district's budget these days. It will take these dedicated resources and commitment from everyone at school and in the community, including the decisions made at the city council level. Now more than ever, we need the city council to make a commitment to youth. We need enforcement of our laws against tobacco stores, vape shops, and marijuana storefronts who selling flavored uh products, which is against our laws and the state laws. Students need clear messages from all levels of city government regarding how to best handle problems that are not short-term solutions. An example of such a message is drugs are never the answer. Not alcohol, not tobacco, not vaping, not marijuana, or abuse of prescription drugs. This would show your commitment to prevention and to youth. Perhaps an example of this commitment would be no more marijuana advertising or promotions or events that unfortunately catch young adults attention. Thank you for hearing my concerns this evening. Now we'll hear from Michael Conrad.

Michael Conrad, are you there? Michael Conrad, can you hear us? Hello. Yes, please go ahead.

Uh, thank you, mayor, and city council members for hearing me. I'm concerned with the Mista logo rebranding of the city and I just hope that the poll uh will be translucent so that the comments that are made on the poll will also be available for people to see when the polls concluded in March. I also feel that not uh many people of the city of Vista knew about the love of rebranding until last month when the news agencies of ABC News and Channel 5 Fox uh made comments on social media about it and I don't feel there was sufficient notification about the competition held in February of 2024 for the love brain and I appreciate your time and thank Thank you. Uh, now we'll return to Debbie. Debbie, are you there? Can you hear us? Debbie.

Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please go ahead.

Ah, okay. Um, I just want to say also, um, I was looking at the proposed logo designer representation for the community of Vista and I, uh, had not heard anything about it. And I just want to say initially I'm not necessarily in favor of the three choices presented and I'd like to ask for a possible postponement of the implementa implementation of uh rebranding uh and more community input on it. And I sure thank you for at least uh considering uh my concerns. And I would like to see the city of Vista have something that is immediately um recognizable and uh receivable by uh or the ordinary Vistan that has lived in this community uh for uh many years. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you to our or oral commenters. Uh just uh for the benefit of the public, for city clerk, uh we are still uh actively testing with a youth decoy every marijuana dispensary in Vista every single year. Is that true? Um we try to get to everyone. We do everyone for audits. Yes. And so we go in and inspect and ensure that they have everything in place. And then um decoys are used periodically. And and how many failures uh have we had on the decoys?

None. Yeah, that's uh I I just wanted to point that out. We haven't had a failure yet on the decoys. Uh we'll have to bring that back as we should be testing everybody every year. So, uh we should make sure that we're doing that. Okay. Next up is our consent agenda. Uh we will start uh the recommendations on the following consent calendar will be enacted in one motion unless an item is removed from the calendar. Any member of the public may remove an item by submitting a request to speak card to the clerk secretary by using the raise your hand feature on Zoom or pressing star 9. Items removed from the consent calendar will be considered immediately following the adoption of the calendar. We have 10 consent items tonight. I'll make a motion to adopt the calendar this evening and I'd ask the city clerk to note my opposition to item C4. Uh Deputy Mayor O'Donnell.

Second. Okay, we have a motion to second. Seeing no conversation or discussion, please cast your votes. Very good. That'll bring us to our first and only public hearing this evening. Uh public hearing is regarding fees for recreation and community services. The public hearing is now open. If any members of the public wish to speak on the item, they may indicate so by using the raise their hand feature by pressing star9 or submitting a request to speak card. Speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Our recreation and community services director, Margaret Hamer, will introduce the item. Welcome for your your first big presentation.

Thank you. I'm going to have our management analyst, Sydney Roth, present. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you for the introduction. So, the city of Vista's recreation and community services department continually evaluates operations with the goals of being able to uh better serve the community and also to generate additional revenue which is critical for the city to continue providing services at the level expected. So, with those two tenants in mind, there are recommended changes to the recreation services fees as well as the Wave Water Park fees this evening. The first recommendation is to reinstate Open Gym at the Jim Porter Recreation Center. Open gym is a community service that is commonly offered throughout many cities in San Diego County and it allows access to the gymnasium for a small fee to the public on a first come first serve basis for non-league usage. And so after an assessment of current staff and operational capacity, it is recommended that we offer open gym from 9:00 a.m. to 100 p.m. Monday through Friday. This is also based on availability because in the evenings and um on the weekends, Jim Porter Recreation Center is quite busy and with existing programming as well as facility rentals. It's also recommended that we have open gym from fall through spring. And this is mainly because during the summer season we have uh city staff who are quite occupied with our um bustling day camps. Um and then of course all of this information would be posted on the website available to the public. So if there are any slight changes in the

schedule it would be posted there. It's also recommended that the fee be at $5 a day to drop in for open gym. When open gym was last offered in the city in fiscal year 2011, it was $3 a day. And it is worth noting that $3 or $5 a day is pretty consistent within the county. Um for open gym and staff recommends that open gym take effect March 1st of this year. Can we address any questions regarding open gym? Deputy mayor.

Yes, thank you. Um, so for open gym, is are there is there going to be a differential in price for youth versus adults? That could be reviewed. I I would like it to be if we could just because if you have children that are trying to get there on a daily basis or more often, uh the lower we can make the price to get them in there, I think the better off it would be. So, I would I would like that reviewed. And at this point, that was my only question. So, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Confer.

You know, I think this button has a little bit of a delay again. Um, you know, that's a really good um question that you bring up. Uh, Deputy Mayor O'Donald, I I'm kind of curious. I know we're going to go on to lap swim, but um I I see the point that you're making like say, you know, you have a parent that has two children and they want to go use the open gym. I wonder if there's like a a certain um age limit where it might be free. Um I'm also wondering if there's the potential just like we're looking and we'll talk about shortly about the lap swim to have some kind of a a punch card like the 12-day pass with no expiration. Um just to kind of make it a little bit easier. So, I I don't have a yes or no, you know, thought on either one of those, but just I would love to see that considered um to potentially expand the way that folks can utilize the space and ensure that it comes at an affordable cost for larger families that might want to be able to utilize that space.

Yeah. Thank you. And we already have staff at the Jim Porter Rec Center during these hours, correct? So, we're not increasing any payroll expenses. Is that correct? That that is correct. Okay. And uh so I'm sorry if you just said this and I'm asking you to repeat yourself, but when was the last are we offering we're not offering open gym right now. It is currently not offered. It was last offered in fis around 2011. Okay. And do does anybody uh with the city remember how well enjoyed it was? How many people used it on a regular basis? We don't know. Do we know how many people use it in Oceanside? We don't have that right currently, but we could um investigate that and report back.

No, I don't want to put you out for that. I'm just curious what our anticipated revenues are here. Uh you know, if we think we're there's going to be a 100 people a day, uh you know, they maybe the $500 becomes significant, but if it's only a few people a day, uh I kind of see the point that my colleagues are making, especially about the kids. Uh maybe we could offer like um you know maybe we could offer some kind of a pass. Can we do a pass like maybe for $12 a month you get unlimited access or something? Yeah, we absolutely could and maybe discount it for kids.

We do anticipate when we first implement this it'll be light, but my expectation is if the word spreads and that type of thing, it could get quite popular and that's what we're hoping for.

Good. Um yeah, and I think uh if you're maybe we should allow an adult to bring children, you know, if you if you're coming with your two kids, you want to bring them, maybe it's, you know, either free for the kids or discounted it, but they're providing the supervision. Now, let's talk about because this is kind of interesting. You have young people, you got to have some kind of supervision if they're, you know, frankly, if they're under 18, they got to have some level of supervision. So, what what's that? I mean, if there's if there's 60 kids in the gymnasium, that's a that's a supervision challenge for our one staff member. At that point, do we need the money to staff up so that we have appropriate adult supervision? Is that what we're thinking? And that's one of the reasons the charge is important.

In general, they would need to have an adult with them. The expectation is let's say it's a homeschool group or we end up finding that there's groups that want to come. We would propose it to be more of a rental than a dropin. Dropin really is supposed to be the parent, their child or you know a group together. A group of adults this time frame will be focused mainly on adults, but we do anticipate children could be coming and again hoping that we could grow and expand these hours. This is just a to test the waters and try to reopen the doors so the public feels welcome in the space. So a 16year-old wouldn't be uh able to come and use the facility by themselves. They would have to have a sign off from an adult. Yes. Oh, they they got to have to permission slip from an adult.

Yes, we could allow that. Yes. And and does that apply to any age or where would they would that begin at 14? We we could designate what that would be. I'd look back to see what the policy was in 2011 and we would follow that same guideline.

Yeah, I I would I would uh leave the discretion to the staff to set that policy and to amend it on the fly as necessary, especially if you know if it's not working for 14 year olds and you need to up it 15, you know, cuz you know, age is not appropriate or behavior is not appropriate, whatever it is. But yeah, it'd be nice to figure out how to get the kids activated and using it if we're going to do it. So, uh, you'll, uh, you'll think of some proposals that will help, uh, make it cheaper for the kids and you'll bring those back to us. Okay. Very good. Uh, I see council member Melendez.

Thank you for bringing this forward. I do see that the, uh, you know, majority of people coming between 9 and 1 p.m. are probably going to be adults. So, I would say, you know, for grown-ups, paying $5 to use the gym is totally appropriate. But just to add to the consensus here, I think we should have some family pricing or um at least free and reduced costs for children. Thanks. Is the uh is the gym programmed seven nights a week? Do we know? I believe it is programmed almost almost every night. Almost every night.

I'm not sure about Sundays. Um but we do get facility rentals on weekends. Um but yes there is a lot of contracted classes in the evenings on weekdays. Okay very good. Think we can move on to the next item.

All right. Thank you. The second recommendation for this evening is to reinstate lap swimming. staff has researched lap swimming fees in San Diego County, but particularly North County, and has noticed the trend that a drop in to drop in the visit is a $5. Um, and there are typically multi- vvisit options, whether it's a 10 visit punch card or a 10-day punch card, it can range from $36 to $40. So with that in mind, to maintain competitive yet reasonable costs, staff recommend uh increasing the daily drop in from $3 a day to $5 a day to be consistent. And then also having a 12day or uh punch card or pass. Um in the past, the wave has had 30 days. Um and of course these don't expire. However, a 12-day pass, the cost for that is a lot more digestible than a 30-day pass. And so, it's recommended that the 12-day pass be at $45 for a resident and $55 for a non-resident. Lap swimming would commence at 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You might be wondering how we came up with the 12-day pass as opposed to like a 10 or 15 day pass. If someone were to attend lab swimming Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three days a week, four weeks in the month, 12 days, if they attended every single day, it would cover the month. And then while the fee would be effective March 1st, um as far as operations, it would to make things seamless, uh lab swim would be implemented concurrent with the start of swimming lessons, which is in April. So that's at the same time that we already have staff at the wave.

Yes. So it's uh that's pretty pretty expensive for 30 days. What about offering a 30-day option that's uh you know somebody knows they're going to come three times a week for the next year. Could we offer an option? Sure, we could offer that as well. Do do we need to charge that much money in order to uh to limit uh the number of people using the lane because there's only so many. How many lanes are we going to have? Is it eight of them or two of them?

Staff will set up based on the attendance of how many people come. We anticipate it will be slow. Like when they ended lap swimming, it was not highly attended. So our hope is a slow progression and growing it. Um, I can have our staff member Angela speak on behalf of how many lanes can be set up during that time. Yeah. I'm just curious because uh what is that? I'm I'm not a great mathematician. Is that 135 for the month if you do three three passes? Well, I guess you don't need I don't know. I have to get my calculator out and do the math on that. But it's basically 100 bucks a month, right? A little bit more.

And being open just three days a week, the month would be longer than a month. It would go into like a month and a half to two months potentially if you do a 30-day pass. Do you think if we don't make it that expensive, we'll have too many people participate? I don't foresee that happening. Yeah. We were kind of curious how the 12-day pass would as a trial run when we launch a program. Yeah. Uh I'd like to see us offer a lower cost uh pass. Now, this is this is for all adults, but what about for what about for seniors? Do they get a better deal? We don't currently have that p or that structure for the fees structures. um just a flat rate across the board for most facilities is how it's typically done.

Talk to me about your staff burden for uh lifeguarding based on uh how many people are swimming laps in the pool. So we're required particularly when we're talking about competent swimmers who are lap swimming, right? We're required at any time whether it's one person or 50 people in the pool, we have to have a minimum of two lifeguards on deck. Um so we always have to have a minimum of two. If we see capacities become greater, then we'll add more lifeguards as needed. So if and how many lanes when we set the pool up, how many lanes can we have? We can have eight lanes. Each lane can potentially have two to three swimmers and we have the shallow end for anyone that maybe wants to do aquaf. So if you have 24 swimmers in the pool and they're all adults and they're all competent swimmers swimming laps, how many would be the safe number of lifeguards to have?

Two. Two. Okay. So we don't increase expense based on um based on the number of of people we have using it. What I like to see is bring the cost down a lot lower and fill the pool up with 24 people and put us in the position of having to raise the price to limit the number or something else. But I mean, basically, we have a facility. Uh so you're definitely having to add those two people. And uh and what's the cost uh for these two individuals? What what's the what's the labor cost to the city for because it's it's consistent no matter how many people you have. So

where So one's at minimum wage typically and one's at a dollar or two more of the minimum wage. They're working for about three hours about 17 17 or $18. Average 19 per or 18. They work three hours.

I have to sharpen up my calculator there to figure out what you got. But I just think you're going to get more pe that's it's that's big money. I mean, because you can join a gym for 15 or 20 bucks a month um in Vista. I know cuz uh I'm one of the gym's best customers. I tell them, you know, I pay all year long and this is the day I came to use it. So, I'm your best customer. Um but I I it's it's a it's a really big uh it's a really big number. I think it's going to really limit participation. I'd like to hear from the rest of the council on that. Deputy Mayor,

there's definitely a delay on the mic. Um, thank you again for this information. I I I see where the mayor is going with this and I don't disagree with him. Um, Walter, I just had a quick question because if if we're this is we're under the assumption that these are the numbers we were going to approve tonight. Um, can we make a motion to give discretion to city manager in order to adjust fees as necessary while approving this item? You could. if we would interlace that with the current resolution, we wouldn't have to reagendize it. Uh but yes, that would be possible. Okay. So, that would be my motion uh to accept staff recommendation but also grant the authority to our city manager uh to adjust fees as necessary.

Those are my only questions just for just for clarification. So, for adult swim, it's 18 plus is because I know there's some competent swimmers at uh at some of the schools, but uh that's good. Okay, those are all my questions. I I I think the mayor made all the comments I would consider making as far as cost adjustments might be concerned. Council member Contrarus.

Yeah, thank you for um putting all this information together. Like I said at the beginning, you know, I think that we should look at different um pricing models and I really appreciate the work that went into it because one of the things that we talked about prior um especially when we were discussing the wave is that listen, we have to have you know the gener generators going like 24/7. We have staff there you know at certain times um that you know the public isn't able to utilize. So, um, and and I love that you brought it for, um, the gym as well. So, that's great. Um, I definitely, uh, you know, support the comments that were said, um, in regards to, you know, just trying maybe to get the price point just a little bit lower. Uh and and but I am curious um are these uh added activities uh does the youth scholarship uh cover would that cover these fees as well?

I would imagine youth scholarship has a lot of flexibility on what people want to apply for. So we would be honored if they applied for a youth scholarship. I'll let yeah so they they can apply for some we already um do a lot of swim classes and also passes for the wave. So again that would more likely being based on the time of this right you would typically do those other two things but it certainly would qualify. Yeah because it's like it we do 24 and under right for the scholarships. That is correct. Yes.

Yeah. So some might be out of class. Now, the reason that I bring that up is um I you know, and Margaret and in a separate discussion that we had um you touched upon senior scholarships and so I bring up the youth scholarship which is really like youth and young adult scholarship 24 and under, but I'm wondering, you know, I feel like there might be an appetite from this council to look at, you know, senior scholarships for recreational activities as well. And I feel like um there might be an opportunity to bring that conversation into this conversation that we're having now. So, you know, um I I don't know if the rest of the council is amendable to that. Um but I would, you know, love to see if if if we need to clarify that in the motion, if the maker of the motion would like to amend that. Um or if there's just consensus on the council and and staff has, you know, proper direction. I don't see an issue with that. But would that have to be reagendized if we wanted to approve a scholarship for seniors or how would that work?

I'm I'm looking to the attorney, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. We have to reagendize that. We'd also have to identify funding for that scholarship so we can bring that back and have discuss. What I will do is support having that discussion at a later date then. Yeah. And this has to with the original motion on the floor anyways. It still has to come back to council. Is the original the original motion was to provide me direction on adjusting the fees, but if you want to bring it back, that would be fine with me.

Okay. Yeah. No, I mean, I just think it's important. I know it's it's good to give you discretion, but it's also important for us to see what that price is, I think, at the end of the day. So, I I don't know if you were intending that um Deputy Mayor O'Donnell, but I think it's it would be a good practice for whatever, you know, discretion the city manager has um for us to to take a look at what staff came up um with for this price uh structure and and for us to just okay it at the end. Um yeah, I have no problem with I mean, my intention was to not have it come back just because we

I think we've all kind of shared where our thoughts are on it, but if we want to have another discussion on it once pricing and and new information comes forward, I'm Yeah. And maybe it could be a consent calendar. Yeah. Is what I'm thinking. So, okay. Awesome. Thanks, Council Member Fox.

All right. Thank you very much for the for the presentation, for all the hard work on this. Uh I know that uh lap swim has been something that I know a lot of residents have been reaching out to me about for a really long time. So to see it on the um actually coming to fruition is really exciting. So uh I agree with the the rest of my council that you know obviously I'd like to be as competitive as I can pricing wise especially for a new program coming out the gate just to make sure it's it's uh highly utilized and everything as well. Um but yeah that's that's pretty much it. So thank you. Are we are we bringing people in uh from 6:00 to 8 just for that shift?

Yes we are. Yeah. Okay. Well, at at $25 an hour, which should cover insurance and employers taxes, uh we're at about $15,000 of labor for the year. And we divide that out on a 30-day basis. It's like $560 $520 a month. So, if you get 20 customers a month, that'd be worth $26 a piece to cover the labor, right? So, if you if you can get $26 times 20 people for the month, then you've covered your cost. And then from there, you know, you can sharpen up the the math on this. But I don't really want a revenue on this. I just want to cover costs. I would like to cover costs cuz every time we create a new amenity if we can't cover the cost for it. But um you know we got massive public investment in this pool and and in the wave and being able to open up the swimming pool uh at a relatively costneutral uh price I think would be great and it's just not going to generate enough revenue for us to you know gel coat the slides or anything like that. So uh it not being a great potential for revenue I don't see the reason to charge so much for it. Um, and do we have a a recurring charge mechanism for the credit card? This is a real revenue opportunity. Let me tell you, uh, you know, I I paid my membership at the gym $25 a month for 10 years. And I worked out there multiple times. And, uh, you know, and I never would call him and say, "Hey, stop charging me that $25." cuz I thought, you know, uh, today's the day, maybe tomorrow, but if I cancel it, then I'm admitting I'm not going to go. Okay. So, I mean, for people who can afford and want to have a membership and want to have the privilege to walk in the front door during these times, why not offer them that recurring charge model? And,

you know, the gyms have figured out it's a great way to make money. Uh, I think we should really look into that. Yeah. Since we need to bring this back and we will have to bring it back for public hearing because it is setting fees. We will we will look into that. Okay. Very good. As well as all the other recommendations we've heard so far. We have one more fee we have to cover for the cabanas. Good. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. So currently we have uh what are referred to as the small cabana and the large cabana and the daily rental rates are $75 and $95 respectively. However, staff have identified um a cozier cabana called the Cove Cabana uh which could be offered at $40 a day to rent. um purchasing four of them a onetime expense of about $4,200, but with our average 82% utilization rate, we anticipate having an additional $12,000 in revenue. Um it is worth noting that Cabana rental rates vary greatly uh between private and publiclyowned facilities. So this table here demonstrates at the top tier end a privately owned facility is going to be around $200. Um whereas a municipality it might be hourly such as in El Centro or um the city of Palmdale their small uh cabana rental rates are around $83. Um therefore, uh 95,75 and $40 rental rates are um more digestible and accessible and fairly competitive and reasonable all things considered. So that's also on the uh agenda for you guys to approve.

I think I have some questions. Council member Contrarus, did you have a question on that? Did you want to start? Oh, no, no. I don't I don't have anything on the cabanas. No, I think this is great. Um, and so you're you're looking at doing a onetime purchase of four. Um, and is the locations that I'm seeing in front of me, was this just like the most advantageous location or is there the capacity to have more? Is this just like maybe if this goes well, it's a phase one? Just kind of curious to see what the thought process is.

Yeah. So, it's kind of a thought of we have that area. We we used to have louners there that were very highly utilized. If we offer shade with them, then they'll be a revenue source for us. And if it works out well around the pool where a lot of people have their small children and they want to be within arms reach or close by to them, around the pool is a good location um that parents can be with with children.

Okay. Um so is there the potential to add more then you're saying? Okay. Um yeah, no, I think this is a great idea. I think these um prices are, you know, I I like the the price spread between um the large, small, and Cove. Um and it's just a super cute idea. Thank you so much. Like, this is exactly what we've been asking for. You know, trying to see what we can do at the wave to increase um some of the revenue coming in so we can cut our subsidy and ensure that it stays uh under the public domain uh in perpetuity. Uh so, I I just really really thank you. um for this uh creative um utilization of this space. So, I'm all for it.

Is that a motion? Yeah. Do we need a separate motion for this one? Since we're bringing it back, I think we can just defer that and we'll bring back to come back. Okay. Gotcha. Unless Walter, are we able to drop the cabana fee? We could, but I think it'd be best if we all brought it back. res. Sounds good. The fees. Yeah. Yeah. Now, are we still going to have sufficient number of loungers to accommodate our daily guests? Yes. So, the loungers that are over there, we can relocate to a different area that's not being utilized. That's just for the size of the Cove Cabanas. We just wanted to be able to have enough space that people had personal space, but we can move the seating.

As long as we're not losing those, we have enough to accommodate guests. Good. Council member Melendez.

Thank you. Um, this is great. I am so pleased that we are adding more shade, more cabanas. Um, I've advocated for this for a long time and I think it's important for us to, you know, since we uh have control over the park, build the type of uh accommodations and infrastructure that will allow us to uh have more utilization. So, uh, seeing that there's going to be potentially a $12,000 revenue from this is excellent. Um, I absolutely support it and I've been saying for a long time that we need um the wave after dark, right? We need some sort of uh adult recreation with our wave facility. Um, many of us think that that would be very fun. So, adding more infrastructure is just going to make it uh more feasible for us to do that. Um, and of course for the daytime as well. Um, I believe uh there is a need for this. It's a public hearing, right? So, we do have to have at least some motion to uh accept staff's recommendations and close the public hearing or

can I clarify on that? Since we're going to bring it back for a public hearing to adjust the fees based on the direction we got tonight, we do not have to take any action on this item. Okay. So, this is a public hearing where we don't have to formally close the public hearing. It will be continued. Do we have to have a date specific? We'll be Yeah, we'll be continuing the public. Okay, those are my comments. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I was going to ask about the lounges as well, just to make sure that or loungers as well, just to make sure that there's proper accommodation because anybody who's ever been to a swimming pool on a very, very hot day, there's nothing more frustrating than having to throw all your stuff next to a chain link fence. Um, but with that being said, I really like the concept of this. uh perhaps the the revenue we generate can purchase additional cabanas and and other amenities that can go into the wave and and make it an even uh more special place to be. Um I just want to say thank you for all your hard work on this. I know that it's been a long time that uh we've been discussing a lot of these items. So I really do appreciate everything that's gone into it. Um with that being said, I'm going to withdraw my motion uh so we can continue this conversation at a later date. And I appreciate all the comments from the council.

Okay. Any other items on this presentation? No, thank you.

Very good. Okay, then we will continue this uh item to a time uh set by the city manager on a future agenda. And that will bring us to our first discussion item this evening. We have a discussion regarding movable tiny homes proposed development requirements. If there are any members of the public that wish to speak on this item, they may indicate so by using the raise their hand feature by pressing star9 or by submitting a request to speak card. Speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Our community development director, Joe Vaka, will introduce the item.

Thank you very much, Mayor. So, we've been doing a significant amount of research behind the scenes on movable tiny homes and how it's been regulated in other jurisdictions in California. And Paty Chow's been doing the heavy lifting, our assistant community development director. So, she's prepared a presentation on this item. And we also have our building official, Nabil Shahadi, who's the manager of our building and safety division available if we have any questions. So, with that, I'll turn it.

Thank you, Joel. Good evening, Mayor Franklin, council members. Paty Chowo, assistant director of community development department. Uh, pleased to be here this evening to present item D1, which is a discussion item on movable tiny homes. So, moving on to our first slide here. The purpose of this particular meeting and this discussion is first is obviously to obtain direction from the city council uh and to receive public input as far as movable tiny homes and proposed requirements. Uh they'll be part of the uh following slides that I'll be talking about. So the staff's goal tonight is to present the options after having had uh time to do do some research on the topic of mobile tiny homes and to present the staff's recommendations tonight for your consideration. The last time that the city council had a discussion on this item was last year on October 28th. Uh at that time the council provided direction to staff to go investigate this item, this topic and then bring the item back for further discussion tonight. and that's why we're here. So, since the meeting on October 28th, um steps that staff took in order to take a look at this particular topic, uh did some research obviously on the topic of movable tiny home regulations, adopted regulations that have been put in effect uh throughout California uh major cities and counties. Uh we also had meetings with the interested parties u Miss Ellen Stone and Mr. Bill Kavanaaugh both attended the last meeting in October uh provided testimony regarding the topic of movable uh tiny homes. So we had meetings with them and we also were able to uh conduct a field visit with staff uh for a movable tiny home that actually got built in the county of San Diego. I made also contacts uh with the city of Los Angeles building and safety division staff um

really trying to obtain um their opinions and experiences and more understanding of their code um as far as tiny homes is concerned since they their regulations came in effect in 2019. We also prepared a notice that got eblasted to interest list of folks that subscribe to receiving notices about meetings with the uh that will be held here at city council. In terms of research findings uh for movable tiny home staff looked at or reviewed requirements for city of LA, San Diego, San Jose, counties of San Diego and Santa Clara. Uh, as I mentioned, City of Los Angeles has had their uh, movable tiny home regulations in effect since 2019. And since that time, 23 permits have been applied for, of which 11 have actually been permitted since that time. The adoption dates for County Santa Clara, San Jose, and San Diego were the same year of 2020. Most recently, the county of San Diego adopted their regulations last year, September 2025. So, it's fairly new. staff's goal as looking at these particular requirements regulations uh when putting together a matrix uh that was included in the agenda report for your consideration was to really focus on regulations founding two or more of these jurisdictions so as to indicate some sort of a common practice and obviously we're not trying to reinvent the wheel as there are regulations in place out there uh that have been tested and so we try to focus on some of these requirements that already exist out there. So with that, the potential requirements for movable tiny homes um as far as uh the research done so far is that in terms of the zone where potentially a movable tiny home could be located uh would be concentrated in citywide residential zones where single family and accessory dwelling units already

allowed. So for instance, the R1 zone uh which is a minimum 10,000T lot size, the R1B at a minimum 6,000 ft², A1 1 acre and E1 half acre uh would be the particular zones where this could potentially uh occur. Uh however, there will be a limitation of one movable tiny home per legal lot. So whether it was considered to be a primary dwelling unit, uh that would be your one consideration for legal lot or it could be as a statemandated ADU or an accessory dwelling unit. The type of license that would be applicable here will be a a DMV registration because it would be a portable it would be a movable um uh unit uh as we know it and the size floor area will be between 150 and 430 ft. The height will be maximum two stories with a maximum height of 16 ft. The rental term would be not less than 30 days. the location of the lot. We would uh recommend following the same setback requirements as the accessory dwelling units, which is basically 4 feet on side and rear lot uh from the uh lot lines. And then the wheels would have to be placed on a paved surface or a proof pad that would prevent movement. uh any kind of undercarriage uh items such as obviously the wheels, axles, the uh tongue and hitch, they would have to be hidden from view uh provided with the skirting around it. In terms of the building code, they would have to apply for a building permit, electrical and plumbing permits. Uh the fire code were recommended that automatic fire sprinkler system be provided as part of the movable tiny home. In terms of materials, uh cladding as far as uh exterior layer acting more of as a decorative feature, but obviously concealing uh the building frame, uh the sheathing and then tree materials. All of that would be uh

accounted for and we would actually identify materials that would not be acceptable and all of that would be required obviously for weather protection uh you know resistance. In terms of windows, there'll be at least double pane glass. Uh no rounded corners for windows and doors. And I have an example of a picture why we said that. Um and so that it doesn't look like an RV, a trailer basically. And as far as mechanical equipment, uh definitely not located on the roof. Uh they would have to be concealed or be part of the structure. So they would not be visible the roof. uh from conversations that we also I also during the conversation last time with the the council uh the importance of having a minimum pitch so it's not flat uh a 2x2 uh appears to be reasonable looking at other jurisdictions a 2-in rise two 12in horizontal span uh will be seems to be appropriate so that it'll be properly sloped to drain over the roof edge as far as parking requirements will be exempt from parking uh development impact fee um not applicable. However, if you were to allow it as a primary dwelling unit, uh it would be like any other single family zone uh single family unit where in fact uh development impact fees would be collected. However, uh if we are to uh consider that as an ADU or a statemandated ADU, anything less than 750 square ft per state law uh is not allowed to be uh charged development impact fees. So the same idea would apply here because obviously these tiny homes be less than 750 or actually between 150 and 430 as uh staff's recommendation. The certification process uh basically would ensure that the park model uh recreational vehicle standards would be met for uh the American National

Standards Institute rags and also the National Fire Protection Association. So, in fact, a third-party inspection agency much like City of LA has uh follows HCD's uh list of certified inspectors uh for quality control to make sure that the standards are in fact being met before the applicant decides to submit for an application uh before the local jurisdiction before the city for an actual permit that all of that would have been uh vetted through. So the process would be a building permit application would be ministerial so not discretionary not through a public hearing um and there will be obviously collection of applicable fees for plan checking and permitting uh the review will be done by planning and building staff at that point. So the applicable uh zones where citywide zones where the this particular mobile tiny homes could take place would be where single family units and accessory dwelling units are already currently allowed. So again the R1 uh R1B A1 and E1 zones. So the very light uh yellow is the R1. Uh then you have the R1B. The uh kind of orangey colors the A1 and E1 is in green. All the white areas are areas where they would not be allowed. It would be prohibited as staff is recommending in specific plan areas. However, um up to the city council where there are particular areas that you might want to consider in other specific plan areas, but right now staff thinking about the special unique characteristics of specific planning areas. We didn't want to recommend uh for movable tiny homes to be in those areas because of the uniqueness and the particular regulations that come into play to address the uniqueness of these areas. Uh just some pictures of examples, movable tiny homes, uh you know,

different peach roasts, uh variations, all on wheels, obviously, and then uh you know, they all include the middle picture. Actually, I thought it was interesting because obviously you you have the kitchen, you have the bathroom, a full bath, a living area, a bedroom. In the case of the lower left, it's even two uh you know areas for sleeping areas and in a loft situation. So there's a whole host of different variations that one can have uh on movable tiny homes. Uh this one is actually a movable tiny home that got built in the county of San Diego. So we went out there uh staff did a site visit. It has a full bath, a kitchen, uh a loft for uh you know sleeping up there. And I just noted in circled red uh the actual sticker which identifies the certification for ANIE uh to make sure that the standards are being met. So that's on the the door there on door jammed. And what's not acceptable as I was mentioning earlier is the the windows with the round corners because then it resembles an RV trailer and we definitely don't want that to be part of a movable tiny home. Uh that's a different character altogether. That's not what is being tried to be achieved uh for the design of a Bville tiny home as well as the tip outs, the slide outs, which are the pictures of the uh to the right of the rounded corner windows uh where you normally see that in recreational vehicles that would not be part of a movable tiny home concept or the idea uh for the design of a movable tiny home.

How about round windows, circular? Uh same idea. We could make that very clear as far as the rounded corners or just being round windows that that would not be unless it's specific characteristic or design or architecture I guess like a round uh window above a door above an you know at the top of an arch or something but a circle window a decor window I think wouldn't be the same as these rounded sure corners. Sure. So

if you said yes to circle but no to rounded corner I think you get the job done. we can definitely account for that and make sure that we uh identify what what actually would be acceptable or not acceptable. Um as far as the tongue and hitch and as I mentioned earlier with the wheels and the axles um they would have to be uh properly skirted so there will be uh no visibility whatsoever uh from public view at that point. So the objectives in staff's mind is basically providing another option for more affordable more attainable housing. Um the one positive thing that I can mention is obviously when we think about ADUs and we think about the primary dwelling whether it's the movable tiny home situation in this particular discussion is that would be a contribution towards reena uh for regional housing needs allocation uh and our obligation for our 8-year cycle. So or for future cycles uh if the council decides to move forward with this but as a primary dwelling or as a statemandated ADU type it certainly provides that ability for that to be considered uh which I believe or in step's opinion to be a positive and and of course it is another tool where we're trying to provide housing opportunities for those that are seeking ownership opportunities in Vista where currently might not be uh possible for them whether it's a condominium you know in the price range uh that it might be above uh their financial ability to do that whether it's the 800,000 or a million or what have you. Um it certainly could promote um as another tool for that to be considered for uh creating housing opportunities. So in summary, uh a movable tiny home can be allowed as a primary residence. Uh so staff is suggesting at this point that perhaps considering a minimum 10,000 square foot lot in an R1 zone as a starting point uh if the primary residence were to be uh uh accounted for

or considered or as an ADU uh as a statemandated ADU type in the citywide residential zones. And when I say statemandated uh because uh we have an allowance of a detached ADU, an attached ADU and a junior ADU on a single family zone. If we did not uh identify that as being as a statemandated ADU, then potentially if the movable tiny home were to be allowed, it would be an additional on top of those three additional uh the three units plus the primary home uh putting more pressure in the system uh from a standpoint whether it's utilities, population, and whatnot. But as a statemandated ADU, it also allows us to regulate the movable tiny home per the ADU standards per state law. Uh that way again we're not reinventing the wheel and it's all accounted for. Uh again we're not suggesting for this to be allowed in specific plan areas but obviously interested in learning from the council as to what your thoughts are. Uh and we uh requiring the automatic fire sprinklers. Uh that's obviously a strong recommendation from staff and tonight we're seeking direction from city council on whether we should continue this effort and drafting regulations for mobile tiny homes and interested in obviously getting your comments on the information that's been shared here tonight. So thank you very much uh for your attention on this. And the next point I just wanted to make is that if you decide to move forward uh we would draft regulations uh for consideration for future discussion before city council in the upcoming months and subsequent to that we would obviously take it forward for planning commission city council for public hearings. And I believe that was my last slide and that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Did those uh tiny homes that you visited being built here in the county were they already equipped with fire sprinklers? that particular one was not and I did ask about um the possibilities of adding fire sprinkler uh and in terms of cost you know the difference uh it was shared with the staff that it could be in the order of $5,000 $6,000 to add the fire sprinkler system. So, it's not impossible. Um, definitely something that can be uh accounted for. And would that system be uh attached to the uh the public water so it's pressurized from the street?

It would have to be. Yeah. And we would have to work with fire department just like we do right now with fire sprinkler systems for our single family homes. So, if there's a fire that uh melts the the the sensor or whatever you if you will. I think it's a mercury switch in the uh in the fire sprinkler, right? The mercury explodes and breaks the glass in the be activated. So, be automatically activated. It's not like the fire department has to hook up to it or anything like that. You don't have to maintain a reservoir. Correct. We would have to talk Yes, we would have to coordinate on that. Yeah.

Okay. Uh yeah, I think that's important because not only for safety, but also to make sure that the units that would be allowed would be uh professionally constructed to a a safety standard. And then here's my other question. So, you looked a little bit into LA. Do you have any idea why they only in the giant city of Los Angeles only have 11 permits that are being utilized right now?

Yeah, I was scratching my head, too. I mean, you know, a city of 3.3 million or so around there or 3.88 88 million. Uh why do they only have 11 in the past five or six years? Uh the staff did not really expand much on that even though it was curious about that. Um they pretty much just kept, you know, very factual in terms of what they disclosed in an email to me. You uh you said all parking requirements would be waved for these. Explain to me what parking requirements would apply to such a vehicle today without changing any of our existing regulations. Um, so the mayor you are asking in terms of if we were to actually require parking requirements and what could that be?

You No, you said um we would be basically exempting them from parking requirements. You you said you're exempting them from parking. Do we know which parking requirements we're exempting them from? So, in our citywide uh parking requirements, if we are considering this as a primary dwelling unit, uh just like a regular traditional single family home, it's basically two uh parking spaces that would be in a traditional garage plus two on the driveway. So, four altogether, but this is a movable tiny home. So, when you say parking requirements, you're not talking about where it can be parked. You're talking about the uh availability of parking or the requirement to make parking available

and requiring actual parking spaces and such and etc. or a garage or anything like that. Okay. So, uh wherever it gets parked the uh the owner either of the parcel or of the uh movable tiny home wouldn't have to create parking for it. Okay. Correct.

That's interesting. Um, and uh I mean are we going to let people park these in the driveway of their 6,000 foot R1B lot? Well, the the the way that looking at the other jurisdictions, it says on a pave surface, it doesn't say that it doesn't preclude or the ones that I read anyways, it didn't preclude them on a driveway. Uh, but I guess an interesting point that you're raising is if you have an existing single family home, long driveway, uh, what's to preclude from that tiny home being parked on that driveway? Uh, and if it meets the paved surface, uh, as far as the standards, uh, and it's, let's for all intents purposes, it's not in the public, uh, not in public, not in the front yard setback, for instance. So it's far removed from the adjacency to the street. Uh I guess there would be nothing that would precluded.

What would the uh set back from the street requirement be? Uh um in terms of if we were to follow the ADU standards, uh the ADU standards uh for sight and rare are 4 feet for uh uh so as long as the the they met those requirements as long as it's 4 feet from the street

from the side and from the rear from the front typically uh you would follow the uh the setbacks from the primary zone. So that varies from the R1 R1B. So, for instance, on an R1 zone, we're talking um uh 50 ft from the center line. So, typically, it's 20 ft from the back of the property line. It's the length of a driveway essentially. So, you wouldn't be necessarily parking the movable tiny home within that 20 ft area, which is the length of a driveway. And that's normally a front yard setback.

Okay. So, I'm going to put this in plain speak. If I have a 40ft driveway and I can get this thing 20 ft from the from the edge of the curb, then I might be able to park it there. But if I only have a 20ft driveway and I couldn't get it 20 ft from the curb, then I couldn't park it. Is that what you're saying? Correct. There's also some other complications though. We wouldn't allow if this were to move forward, we'd write the code so that they could not preclude access to the existing garage and parking for the primary home. So they come obstruct that. Furthermore, it has to be on a level surface.

So many of the driveways in town are sloped. Yeah. So probably in the R1 and R1B, there would be significant challenges with sighting one of these in the front yard. Yeah, for sure. Especially in the R could be in the R1B zone because of the sizes of the lots. But if you had a sideyard that would accommodate and you could get the set back,

uh, I'd be interested to know more about the setback because, you know, whether your neighbors have to look at it is a pretty important consideration because people invest their life savings into their homes and they're very proud of their neighborhoods. So, uh, the street appeal of these is something that's of great concern to me. I see Mr. Connley has a thought. I can clarify this is an item that's at our discretion to decide how we want to allow for it. So if the council does not want to see these located in the front yard, that can be written into the rules when it's brought back.

Okay. So we're uh what what Mr. Vaka is describing as sort of what the current setback requirements would be for an ADU, right? Yes, that's right. So, in that case, and and what he would envision uh if if we gave it to him to write right now with the direction he has at the moment, that's what he would write it with. Yeah. If it's determined to be an ADU, we're stuck with state rules. So, it could be located at different parts of the lot that we wouldn't be able to control. If we did not determine it is an ADU, we would have more discretion in where it could be located on the lot, but we would lose the opportunity to count it towards our arena and what was stated before in terms of the benefit. Adu does count towards arena. Correct. Yes.

But we lose the ability. And if it's an ADU, how close can I get it to the front of the property? So, we're supposed to be able to preserve our front yard setback requirements in the side and rear for accessory dwelling units attached or detached. It's a minimum 4 foot setback. And I just wanted to add to what Joe said is that if the lot perhaps there was not a huge lot where there was a constraint in sight, you know, sighting the ADU, um it it's possible that the ADU could end up and the front yard set back and the state does allow for that to occur. So if it's an ADU, I get a 4ft setback. The sidewalk ends at about 4 feet. The sidewalk edge nearest to my home uh is about 4T from the curb. So basically, if I have enough front yard to park this thing, which is how wide is the maximum width?

The maximum width of uh of the MTH, the mo movable tiny element. Oh. Uh, is it 12 feet or something? Yeah, around there. I It depends if we're talking of 400 square foot or 300. Well, let's just say it's 12 feet for uh the sake of conversation. So, if I have 16 ft of front yard, uh then I could park one of these things long ways right in front of my house, right? If we call it an ADU, possible. Yeah, that that's concerning. I would want to preclude that cuz some people might do it. Uh let's hear from the council. Council member Confers,

thank you so much. Uh, I have a few questions. So, um, for an ADU and, um, new homes that are being built, when does the need for sprinklers kick in? for an ADU. Uh essentially, if the primary dwelling has sprinklers and you're bringing an ADU on site, uh then that particular ADU uh would have to meet the fire sprinkler requirements. Just follow the primary dwelling unit. And when would the primary dwelling unit need to have sprinklers? So, new homes uh that are being built to my knowledge. And Mr. Shahad is here. He's the building official. He can probably expand on that. But new homes uh built in Vista do have to come in with the fire sprinkler.

Okay. Regardless of where they're located regardless.

Okay. Um, you know, I I know that the cost of you quoted um like5 to $6,000 to add a sprinkler system uh to some may not seem like a big deal, but when we start adding all these different fees, I do have a concern that it does limit the amount um and we already saw you and we had a little bit of a discussion of how um few uh in in such a large city like a Los Angeles. Um, how few of these there are. Now, I I think if it's located within a,000 ft of a Calire designated, you know, fire severity zone, I think 100%. They should have to have sprinklers. But I think outside of that, uh, I'm not in favor of the additional burden for sprinklers. Um, and then when it comes to, you know, we're talking about, uh, these movable tiny homes, um, and referencing them to ADUs and kind of comparing and utilizing a lot of the ADU language, um, to create the parameters um, for the movable tiny homes. Um, ADUs are allowed in specific plans. Is that right?

Uh, correct. Adus cannot be precluded. Yes.

Uh, I so I understand where some of the council members may not want to have the ability for a movable tiny home in particular HOAs. Um but if you look at my district, a huge portion of it is under the town site um specific plan and that really takes a lot. You know, I really believe in property rights and I will always stand firm that folks, you know, have purchased this property and they also deserve to have free market uh options. Um, and seeing that the market has provided such limited amount of options, I would hate that government comes and kind of overreaches and says, you know, I'm sorry, but you're not going to be able to have the same option that your neighbor across the street has simply because you are within an artificial boundary of a specific zone. So, I would want to exclude the town site um specific plan uh from uh movable uh from being prohibited to have movable tiny homes. There's already a ton of restrictions where um along with the setbacks and where, you know, the discussion prior to me commenting was going uh to potentially limit uh where we could have movable tiny homes. So, you know, I I want the folks in my district to have the same opportunity to build generational wealth and have uh potentially even a newer primary home eventually that is a movable tiny home because, you know, some of the the homes that we're talking about, you know, north of Vista are are really old um and they require sometimes a lot of rehab, right? And so there could be the potential that someone could, you know, have a longer project timeline um for remodeling their

existing home um and then be able to still live on site, right? And then for that home to either be for them or for their children or grandparents. Bless you. Um so I just I want to keep that flexibility in mind. I think, you know, uh, since these can be used as a primary residence, like I understand the 10,000 square ft, um, but I I just I have a hard time excluding half of my district um, from the opportunity to have a movable tiny home. So, I'm just not I'm not for that. So, those are the two things that I'm really concerned about. Um 100% again if it's within 1,000 ft of a Calire designated fire severity zone yes sprinklers if it's not uh you know I just don't want to add this additional barrier this additional cost and I want to exclude the towns site specific plan from the prohibi prohibition um as well. So those are my only comments for now. Uh, I'll look to the rest of my council for for some more conversation on this.

Deputy mayor, thank you. Um, when we were looking at the uh the amount of these that ended up in LA, do we know how many ADU permits were submitted to build ADUs throughout LA or LA County? Unfortunately, I did not go into that discussion with them. It was mainly on the tiny homes. So I anecdotally though it's significantly many many many more.

I I would imagine it would be because if I were going to build something it would probably be an ADU versus one of these. Um but uh I I think that's why you're seeing such a small number in a city of 3.8 million people is because this is probably not the most popular uh item for what people are looking to build. But to the point that council member Contraras is making that not everybody has the ability or the finances to build a5 $600,000 ADU in their in their home. Um, as far as the sprinklers, you know, I'm I just envelope math. I mean, it's an additional like 50 bucks a month depending on how expensive the AD or the mobile tiny home you're building is. So, uh, I don't want to rule those out entirely. I'm open to more discussion about it, but I think it's a neglig negligible cost over time. Um, and that's at about a $50,000 purchase. Uh, the other question I have, uh, I know we said 30-day minimum rental. Mhm.

It's great to have that policy in place, but if these things do start popping up, are we going to have a digital uh list so we can run it against uh any STR sites that are out there so we can make sure that these aren't being utilized improperly uh over the course of time. So, our current contract with the uh consultant that helps us permitting the STRs does that now. Perfect. Degradation and maintenance over time. What what is so if somebody does put one of these in the front of their home and they just don't maintain it, you know, there's a lot of growth around it, they just they don't upkeep the roof or whatever it is, what what what ability do we have then to say you have to remove this

once it's permitted through the city? Then we would be able to utilize the public nuisance ordinances. Perfect.

Reena numbers. Uh, I'm not overly concerned with them and I say that I understand the purpose of that. But if we're going to have 15 of these put in our city, I don't really think that that puts a large enough dent in the arena numbers to not have certain regulations or restrictions on these it on these dwelling units. So, um, I'd be open to making sure that these don't end up in a bunch of front yards all over the city. Uh, I think that's it defeats the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish with these. So, I I' I'd like to hear more about that at some point and maybe we can meet and have a discussion about it, what that looks like or what we can do legally uh to ensure that we're getting the product that we want out into our communities. Um, but beyond that, uh, you know, I my my largest concern is these ending up on short-term rental sites, uh, and just maintenance over time. But, uh, I agree that there we need to be exploring every option. So, I I believe uh Council Member Melendez had brought this forward originally. So, I thank you for doing that and I appreciate the comments of all the council members. I'm uh looking forward to hearing what the rest of you have to say. Uh but those are my thoughts on it for the moment.

Council member Fox.

Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, I think I mean I don't think I'm fully against them in principle, but I think how we go about this I have a decent number of concerns on the implementation on how this could turn out because like like the deputy mayor said is, you know, if we classify them incorrectly, then they end up maybe some places that we didn't intend. And I know with a lot of the California state ADU laws, you know, we're talking about not allowing them in specific zones and a lot of that kind of stuff. And I don't know, I'm not super in in like in-depth knowledge on some of those, you know, SB9 and some of those rules, but I'm I'm concerned that we're going to lose a lot of control over where these end up, how they are used, and how they're utilized and any future state California laws that that me that are about ADUs could directly impact this. So, you know, we can say that, you know, they're not allowed in these specific zones and things like that and then, you know, it could be pushed on us that that's not true anymore and, you know, we're kind of locked in. However, the the flip side, if we don't consider them as ADUs, would that mean that they could still build an ADU? Like, you know, because they're mandated by law to be able to build, you know, to be able to build an ADU as well. If we let them be a primary residence, then are they able to then add add a second unit as an ADU because now they, you know, because they have a primary residence and now they can use, you know, SP9 to to create an ADU as well and then potentially lot split and then double it again and so you end up with four

correct movable tiny homes on a single kind of medium to smallsiz lot. So that was one of our concerns why we wanted to say allowed as one primary on there. Oh, excuse me. That's was one of our primary concerns that it would either be allowed on one vacant lot of 10,000 square feet or greater as a primary unit. In the future, if a primary unit was built there, then it would have to be converted to an ADU. Otherwise, it would be permitted as one of the three ADUs currently permitted so that there wasn't a proliferation of a bunch of tiny homes on a property.

So, that was that's it's good thinking. And then but it's also true that we would then be subject to ADU standards which would cuff us to a certain degree, right?

Drafting unique regulations. Well, and there's there's a few like I mean I have kind of a a long list of you know kind of concerns that I've I've been thinking of that I've talked to community about and some people that know a decent amount about ADUs and you know um like you know some of these because they're movable and they're considered chatt which means they're not like actually part of the property and so you you know can't technically take loans against them like that that would kind of probably do a lot when it comes to raising property value and creating generational wealth. if you're putting a movable trailer on your property that's depreciating, you're actually, you know, having kind of the opposite effect on your wealth, which is kind of an interesting um conundrum there. Um, and then so I think I think what I there's enough concerns and enough complications on this where I think what I'd really like to see is is maybe to have our planning uh commission look at this people that, you know, are a little bit more knowledgeable than maybe myself on some of these and and some of these potential externalities that could happen with this. um you know before I really made any really strong recommendations on it because there's just a there's a lot of things that I could see you know it's a good intention and then things be just because we don't think about everything it could go terribly terribly wrong and so that's that that's kind of what I'm worried about what I want to make sure it does not happen. So, um, again, open to the concept and the idea. And so, thank you, uh, Council Member Melendez. I almost called you Deputy Mayor again because I'm still in the habit of that. Um, and, uh, for bringing it up and for having this discussion and and I'm really grateful to the city for making sure that this I mean, this is coming this is the second time for discussion for us, planning commission, and another time. So there it looks like we are trying to get in front of this and make sure that you know nothing uh that we we take a really good hard look at it. But you know that's something that I would like to see is having our plan planning commission talk about it as quickly as possible um so that we can maybe have some of their concerns when we're

talking about it as well and making some of these decisions. Council member Melendez.

Thank you. Thank you for um providing us with the language that we could use to regulate these structures. Um, I know a lot of people are interested in um creating more uh livable spaces with within their properties and um more and more our community is um you know developing a you know really going back to some of our traditional values of multi-generational living. And we find that families are uh coming together. Um you know, grandparents are wanting to stay close by. Um and these types of units are um not only um a housing opportunity, but they are a way of connecting our community. And so I'm a bit discouraged to hear from the council this idea that these are, you know, blighted structures. You know, I'm really not um uh surveilling my neighbors so much to be looking at what they've got going on. I'm really more so focused on, you know, my own uh you know, quality of life and success. And so I think that um you know when it comes to uh independent property owners in the city of Vista that they should have a right to um build structures on their property. There's already a lot of limits regarding what a property owner can do on their on their property. And so what we're trying to offer to them is another option. Right. the state has come in and said that um you know we have to be more permissible when it comes to ADUs. And I actually think a movable tiny home uh is

less intrusive and you know u a more streamlined uh product than uh some of these larger ADU products. So I I think that there's been some um interesting dialogue. I'm not sure exactly where um we stand on the the policy tonight. Would you be able to provide a reflection as to, you know, we haven't had a motion or anything? Um I brought this item forward just because I do support property owners ability to uh create structures on their property. Uh are we still moving forward with that? What type of direction do you need from us tonight? It'd be good to get um some direction on, for instance, fire sprinklers um whether or not if we move forward with this, we should go down the direction of allowing them as ADUs. And I heard uh Council Member Fox recommend sending this to the planning commission. So, it'd be very helpful for staff if you guys want to direct this to the planning commission to prepare some regulations and give us some really pointed input if you guys could um come together and agree on some important points for us to move forward or not. I mean, if the majority of the council feels like we shouldn't move forward with this, then I think we would be done at this point.

Well, you know, a lot of times, um, we are able to move things forward, but with government, it just takes a long time. So, um I'm willing to take more time if it means that the item can move forward, but I do understand that the planning commission has reviewed this item already and I do see um Alisa De Jesus, our chair of our planning commission uh here tonight and um so could could you clarify, have they reviewed this at all? No. No. This was discussed by the city council in concept. Okay. And then the direction was for staff to do more research and prepare a menu of items for consideration that could be drafted into regulations. Okay.

Yeah. I'm not seeing the planning commission on the history of the the topic. And so I do uh support empowering our commissions to at least review the item because there's a lot of expertise there. They can get their minds together and help us come up with uh common sense um regulations for these. Um, so I can give some of my feedback and then I would support batting it back over to the planning commission. Um, I am supportive of um, most everything that staff brought forward. I think this is largely driven by aesthetics, right? Um, uh, ensuring that there's proper set packs, um, appropriate heights and, uh, you know, proper building materials. Um, the location has been contested by the council. Um, I can understand why we would want these in a backyard versus a front yard. Um, I think the the biggest contested area it sounds like is the sprinkler system. Um, I think that uh it makes sense to require sprinkler system in um areas that are designated a fire severity zone. Um I'm not sure how these structures would differ from any older home that doesn't have a sprinkler system, right? It just seems kind of like an additional burden. Meanwhile, the unit itself, you know, I would kind of need to hear more from the fire department. Does the unit in and of itself cause a greater fire risk that would require it to need sprinklers? Right? Is this is the logic following? Right? Is because it is a movable tiny home, does it pose a greater fire risk? If if it did, then I would say absolutely we should require sprinklers. Otherwise, if it's just, you know, um as a way of uh further regulating the

structure, I I would say it would be an overregulation. Um that said, that's probably something I need more information on. So, when this comes back to us, maybe we can have a little bit more information from the fire department. Um, but largely, like I said, I support um uh the the boundaries and and and constraints that the uh city staff has put on it so far. I really appreciated the example that you brought up um of the unit that was built in the the county of San Diego. Actually thought that that was really quite lovely. it it showed that you know it is uh very much a home there and I think you can see you know everything I was saying about that type of multi-generational living that um this is really a place for family right where people can um have more enjoyment of their property so I'm very excited for us to be able to regulate this as an option for folks um it sounds like we're not quite there yet but um perhaps with a little more information, we'll be able to make a confident decision. Um, and we'll we'll feel even more confident after we hear from our planning commission because we have many experts on on that commission as well. So, appreciate you guys bringing this forward. Thank you so much.

I see we've got our fire chief and our fire marshall here. I wonder if uh they were consulted in the requirement for fire sprinklers. Did we get an opinion from any of our experts in our Vista Fire Rescue Department? No, we did not. We did not. And we certainly can't have that. And uh with the time that was given, we I we researched as much as we could on these other topics, but we're certainly we're looking into that.

Sure. Very good. Uh I'm just going to uh if you have relevant information uh to add on this chief or uh fire marshall if you have some uh thoughts on this that you want to share otherwise we'll invite you to share them with staff and maybe present it the next time we uh Okay. Yeah. would love to, you know, I I was doing a little bit of reading uh on the uh the Google uh you know, and it it seems there are a lot of fires in recreational vehicles and you know, we can only compare those to um movable tiny home because the same concept of living, though they may be technically classified differently. uh you have a particular use of of space heaters and smaller heating mechanisms that are particular to small dwellings uh or mobile recreational dwellings and uh do those types of heaters have a higher fire risk than others? Uh you not only have the risk of death by fire but also noxious gases created by a small fire in such a unit. Um, and a small space can fill with noxious gases faster than a large space. So, a small kitchen fire could be deadly based on uh emission of deadly gases from the fire that where it wouldn't kill you in your house if you had a small fire in the kitchen of your tiny home. Uh, it could fill that space with noxious gas quickly and exfixiate you. Uh, you know, and if you're not awake to put it out, that's a problem. The other issue that I saw is these movable tiny homes tend to have fewer uh places for ingress and egress or escape in a fire. Uh and so that's also a big issue is you know what's the survivability in a fire, the ability to

get out? Uh and that made me think, are we going to require that some of these windows be uh you know a fire escape? That seems like it would be a reasonable thing that at least one or two alternative windows would be big enough for a human being to escape from. That way people could have a way to get out. Um I I agree with Council Member O'Donnell. It wouldn't be a significant enough addition to our uh arena numbers to forego the options, which we can, you know, we can always look at at loosening them. What I would want to do if we did this, and I have significant reservations about it, particularly uh in the R1B and uh and R1 zones, um you know, if the city of Los Angeles only has 11 of these, then I would say if we do move forward, what I think we should do is have an automatic review from council uh after the 11th permit. In other words, there would be a uh 11 permits up for grabs and no more until it automatically comes to council after the issuance of the 11th permit. And then at that moment, staff would presumably have had several years of experience with it. Uh maybe it's only 6 months in. Whatever it is, it would give us the opportunity to have learned from those first 11. Uh and you know, maybe provide us the opportunity to throttle up or throttle down at that point. But I think it would be good to just have an automatic review once we get to that 11th permit and then say number 12 doesn't issue until the council has had an opportunity to talk about this again. And at that point I would expect you to bring us photographs of all the installations that have happened in Vista uh and discuss with us some of the you know I'm I'm sure we'll have heard complaints from the neighbors or not complaints from the neighbors that would be relevant to our thinking about expanding it from there. Uh, let's hear from Council Member Contrarus.

Yeah, you know what? I don't I don't think there has been a motion. I mean, I'll just make a motion to um send this to the planning commission for review uh and provide um uh the planning commission a list of the topics that council discussed during this meeting so that they can further review some of the concerns that we have. I think there's you all probably have enough notes and this is being recorded uh to be able to draft that type of a list. Um you know when when it comes to sprinklers, it's to me it's like not the hill that I'm going to die on, but I it's when you just start adding a bunch of additional cost that it makes it hard. And and the reason that folks are even interested in this is that they may only be able to purchase something um you know between 40 and and $65,000, right? Um because just even adding you know the foundation and anything like that could be uh a substantial cost. Um, also when it comes to um, and so that's the end of my motion, but just just a question when it comes to the materials used um, for these, do we have um, a list of specific materials? Um, and is this something I'm I'm just thinking about, you know, green building initiatives. Um, I don't think the city has any Do we have an expedited process for sustainable buildings? I mean, because some of these could be made extremely sustainable and I would like to see a streamlined expedited process for anything that is sustainable. and the fact that this can be two stories. I'm just like kind of curious if this is probably going to sound wild, but if it would be permissible to do like straw bale or hemprete or, you know, some

other alternative. I mean, those are fire uh resistant like hemprete is the most fireresistant building material outside of like concrete.

Um, so are those per permissible materials for these? probably not because they're actually licensed as vehicles and they have a certain standard they need to meet the licensing criteria of the agencies. So those unique construction methods wouldn't wouldn't be something that would be licensed. We don't actually plan check them from a sustainability or green building code standard. We'll only be issuing permits on the electrical connections and the utility connections for plumbing. So, we don't really do a structural plan check or we don't actually review architectural plans.

It goes through a licensing process through the state and then it's there's a third party verification because they're basically vehicles. Just to add to Joe's uh comment, um Council Member Contras, in terms of the materials, I think in the planning world, we try to identify things that would not be acceptable as opposed to what could be acceptable because then the list is much longer. Yeah. I mean, to simplify things. And did I did I miss that as part of this discussion?

No. Uh I can actually just um uh reiterate a part of it in the staff report in the agenda report um under the the second page under materials. It it basically um the ability to exclude certain materials for instance like uh laminates or interlocked metal sheathing something that would make it look not so attractive basically. So we can certainly and again this is as a result of learning from the other jurisdictions but we can certainly add to it uh and make it you know expand the list of things that probably would not be acceptable to the city. I think that would be a great exercise for the planning commission to go through.

Yeah. Um you know I think it would be it's interesting um whether or not a hemprete structure would be permissible or not. And I just use that as a test to see, you know, what is permissible. Um, but I do think that materials are a critical component. And, you know, Mayor Franklin highlighted the um the toxic uh possibility of some of these materials. So, I think that's a really good exercise for the CL planning commission to to review. Um, outside of that, I don't have any additional questions and I know that this is going to take some additional time to work its way through the planning commission and come back to council. Um, oh, and then I just would definitely want to consult um our fire department uh as part of this as well. Thank you.

If I may, would you want to see if there's any public testimony as well? Yeah, I don't think we had any public uh that wanted to speak on this, but certainly we want to hear from the public on this and if they I just wanted to clarify with regard to your motion because staff's recommendation was uh to draft these uh with city and then return to city council and then send what basically our input tonight they would put together a written proposal. They would come back to us with it and then we would send that to planning.

No. Uh so the way that I anticipated is that um I don't know if there's enough clarity and consensus on the council at this point to move forward with that um exact direction that our staff initially thought we might be able to get to tonight. Uh so you know I would like to send it so the motion that I have is to send it this information including what we've talked about today um back to the planning commission. They'll review it at whatever meeting is agendaized for the future. Um then they will come up with recommendations that will come back to the council. the council will then review that and then we'll probably just have another 10 meetings about it before we pass it. So, or whatever the case might be. U hopefully not. Uh but

So, you're seeking uh the same kind of input that we're giving tonight. You're seeking that input from the planning commission. I'm seeking uh additional um input on the input that we're receiving that we're giving providing today because we've listed some very specific concerns and it seems like our staff has enough um notation about what the council is kind of looking for. Um if we had a little bit more consensus on the council, I think we could probably package it a different way. Uh but I just don't think that we have enough consensus andor enough information at this point. Um so I think the planning commission could probably review um this discussion in a more thorough fashion and utilize their uh professional um expertise to kind of help us craft something that maybe would have more consensus once it comes back.

Very good. Council member O'Donnell. Deputy Mayor O'Donnell. Yeah, I I agree. I would love to see us go back to planning commission or to planning commission just based on all the feedback that we've given. I think that there's a lot of insight that we can gain from having that conversation and getting that input and feedback from them. Uh I I appreciate the work that you all have done on this. Um for me, I would love to see renderings of what it would look like with a 4ft setback off the street. Uh I I think that it's very important from a visual standpoint, not just for this council, but for the public to understand what that really looks like. Uh and and the different options we have when it comes to that and trying to avoid that or whether or not we want to accept it. You know, I don't know what the appetite of the public is. I have my own opinions, but uh that's just where I'm at on that. Um definitely definitely need to hear from fire on this one. Uh you know, I I think the mayor brought up a good point as far as a secondary exit uh with a window. I was thinking the same thing because my parents have block windows in their entire basement and so they can't sell their home with the square footage in their basement because nobody can gain access to the outside with the windows the way they are. Uh so that's important. Uh and this is not for your own research. I'll do this one on my own, but if uh the closer that a a dwelling unit is to the street, is it more prone to uh criminal activity as far as somebody trying to break in uh when it's when it's right off the the sidewalk? So, I'll look into that one on my own, but I I believe that you've had or received plenty of feedback on this and what we can look to. I'll look forward to the findings of the planning commission and Lisa, I appreciate you being here this evening for this discussion. So, I yeah, I'll look forward I believe you need a second on this. So, I will I will second your motion and I look forward to future conversations.

Council member Fox. Oh, I basically just put myself in Q1 to make sure that I knew what the direction was, but now that we have a motion, a second, I'm I'm good. Very good. All right, we're going to give her just a second. See if she's going to come back for the vote.

Very good. Okay, we have a motion to second. Please cast your votes. Okay, that uh motion passes unanimously. So, the planning commission will have a discussion. That'll bring us to our second discussion item tonight. Thank you very much uh Paty and Joe. And thank you. Appreciate you.

Okay. Uh our second discussion item is regarding sewer rates proposed for fiscal years 26 and 27 and 28 and 29. If any members of the public wish to speak on this item, they may indicate so by using the raise their hand feature, pressing star 9, or submitting a request to speak card here at the dice. Speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Our sewer engineering manager, Ken Nats, will introduce the item. Good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, council members. I'm Ken Nats, the sewer that microphone even closer to your mouth there.

Good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, council members. My name is Ken Nats. I'm the sewer engineering manager and I'm here with Sanjay Gar of water resources economics to present the city of Vista and Buena sanitation district sewer cost of service rate study. Staff recommends to provide direction on the proposed sewer rates for fiscal years 2026 27 through 2028 2029. Also that the city council and the district adopt resolutions approving collection of all future sewer service charges on the San Diego County property tax role. So before I turn it over to Sanjay, I'd like to take a few minutes just to uh explain to the council as well as our customers what the sewer utility is, what our responsibilities are, and why we're here tonight to discuss proposed rate increases. So the sewer system is made up of a vast network of underground pipelines and uh utilities uh that convey and treat waste water to meet current regulatory standards. We convey approximately 8.5 million gallons a day of flow through 315 miles of pipeline and four pump stations to the Encina wastewater for treatment. City of Vista and Buena Sanitation's combined asset valuation is approximately $238 million.

By the way, that pipe's three miles long, the one that goes onto the ocean.

Yes. Uh uh we discharge Thank you very much, Mayor. we discharge uh our treated waste water out in the Pacific Ocean. So we have many responsibilities. First and foremost to protect public health and the environmental uh safety of the general public. Uh we do that through regulatory compliance. Uh maintaining permits with the state water regional quality control board which regulate how we operate our system. uh through that if we're not compliant, we uh could be levied with heavy fines as well as lose um you know uh confidence from the general public. We have a robust capital improvement program uh that helps us expand and maintain that system to allow for growth. Uh folks can think of this as being a homeowner having to replace a 30-year-old roof. We have crews maintaining the system constantly, day in day out, either videoing, cleaning, and/or providing asset repairs throughout the system. Uh we also respond to emergencies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We leverage uh technology to make data driven decisions and to make sure that our resources are directed to priority work. We support development and growth uh for businesses and private property owners so they can realize the highest best use of their property. And then we also conduct budgeting, planning, financial reporting, uh to ensure we're in compliance with laws, uh best practices, financial practices, as well as uh levy annual bills to collect revenues to operate our system year in and year out. So, why are we here tonight and what's driving the need? In May of 2025, staff completed the 2025 sewer master

plan update. That update identified numerous system deficiencies that required capacity upsizing. This map shows a skeletonized version of our sewer system. The blue represents all of the sewer pipelines and the red pipelines were flagged by the master plan for updating. In June of 2025, we included the recommended capital projects for the existing deficiencies as part of the mid-year CIP adjustment. Uh that was approved and we incorporated that into our capital outlay. Additionally, Buena and Vista own about 32% in the Encina Wastewater Authority. There's been a lot of increasing treatment costs because it's a commoditydriven process. We've seen energy significant increases in energy, chemicals, and bioolids transportation. And Cena also has a robust capital improvement program. Similar to the city and the district, uh they are constantly maintaining their treatment processes and rehabilitating them to ensure that they can meet permit discharge compliance standards outside into the ocean when we discharge our treated wastewater. And it's important to note that Encena's uh program and what they do for the city of Vist in the district is approximately 40% of our sewer billing cost. The city and district also have a lot of aging infrastructure. We have programmatic year-over-year repair and rehabilitation. In addition to that, uh we save for rainy days. Uh we have a few reserve policies and those policies are in place for emergencies andor catastrophic events such as earthquakes or flooding. Our pump stations and our pipelines have a high valuation and so therefore the reserves are in place in the event of these emergencies. And lastly, like

every uh homeowner in the country, the program is experiencing high inflationary pressures. Uh we're seeing year-over-year uh increases in San Diego County since we've raised rates from uh that we haven't raised rates uh of over 19% over the last three years. Ken, what are we looking at right there?

That is the inside of a pipeline that needs to be rehabilitated. By the way, it has um but uh this is a an example of what our sewer CTCTV crews are inspecting on a day-to-day basis. As I mentioned, we have 315 miles of pipe. Um, and so that pipe requires constant monitoring and maintenance. Uh, it's similar, you know, an analogy would be, you know, you've got to go get your, you know, your car oils changed. And so this is somewhat what we do for the infrastructure. If you have any more photos like this, explain what they are so the public knows.

Yes. Uh, uh, we will be presenting a little bit more information here. And I wanted to talk about community impact. So, that's a perfect segue. Uh, as part of tonight's agenda, we're proposing a sewer billing process change. Uh, currently staff sends out bills in April for billing in the next fiscal year. Only 2,000 of our 24,000 customers pay those bills directly back to the city. So staff is proposing that we direct all billing to the San Diego County Troperty Tax RO because it will basically save some administrative overhead, our mailing costs, as well as it's more in line with the way our customers are customarily paying their bills. As part of this process, we're going to do a lot of public outreach and engagement. um this presentation, videos, um the reports, um you know, the notices to our billing about the changes in billing to our customers, our master plan, our capital outlays, uh our information about our lifeline rebate programs will all be put on a web page and we will be be providing that information to the public when we send out our Proposition 218 notices through a URL and that way the public can see that the methodologies that were used by water resources economics um are transparent and fair to apply these rates to our customers. Um and through the public uh the public hearing process uh that we forecast to be in uh the end of May, May 26th, uh all of the public input that's provided in writing to the city will be made part of the public record and we will come back and present that information as part of that agenda package uh and request that the city codify the rates that are proposed here tonight. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Sanjay to talk about the details of the cost of service.

Thank you, Ken. Honorary mayor, deputy mayor, city council, staff, and public, it's my pleasure to be here to talk about this important subject. Our agenda today is to go over the steps of how we do a rate study, what are the integral parts of that. Then I want to talk about the financial plan. As Ken mentioned, funding the CIP is the critical aspect of the study, how do we fund it, and what kind of revenue increases do we need? Then I want to talk a little bit briefly about cost of service. What that means and then how that will translate into the proposed rates, customer impacts to our customers, what that does that mean, a survey of other neighboring agencies and then the next steps and our of course our recommendations. So whenever we do a rate study, we take a step back and ask ourselves what are the goals and objectives of this rate study? What do we want to achieve? What are the policies in place? In this case, it's administrative ease. Putting the the sewer bills on the property roll, help with staff and administrative costs, and ultimately save rateayers. The next step is the financial plan. The financial plan is really about funding capital improvement. As we know, sewer is a capital intensive product. We really are paying for all the assets in the ground to make sure that service, disposing of waste in an environmentally sound manner, is treated well. And so what we're looking at is the cost associated with that. How do we fund that? The next step is called cost of service. Cost of service is to make sure that everyone pays their fair share. So when we look at wastewater systems, there are a couple of components. One is the flow. How much people dispose into their treatment. Now we don't have meters, right? But we know water and we know estimates of flows. The other one is strength. And there's two components of strength. Um suspended solids and dissolved oxygens. We look at all those different factors. We ask ourselves how much does it cost and CNS gives us a bill so we can estimate that cost and we translate that into everyone's bill so everyone pays their fair share.

It's our commercial customers that are measured on turbidity and dissolved oxygen. Right. Correct. That are residential.

Exactly. There's um low, medium, high strength customers and we take that into account. Exactly. Then we take into account the rate structure. How do we how do we charge for that? And then the last step is that or the second almost the second last step is the documentation. Documentation is a critical part of the study. That's your first it helps with transparency. It tells the customers that we're not arbitrary. We're not making up numbers. There is logic, rationality about how we came up with these numbers. It's very clear. People can see the math and and follow the logic. Also, it helps with in case you hopefully you never get sued, but if you do get sued, it's that legal defense. It provides a defense. It shows a justification of the rates. Um after today's discussion and direction, we're hoping to start working on the report and then and the next step would be for city council to receive that report, make it publicly available so people can ask questions and we can answer them. So what sewer follows under Prop 218 and the challenge with Prop 218 is that the interpretation of that has changed through C court rulings. Um, so we're very acute with about the different court rulings of sewer associated with Prop 218. The main thing here is that there needs to be a nexus between the cost of providing service and the rates. And there's that proportionality and that documentation is a key document in the study. The main thing is that we can't subsidize one group of customers over another even though there may be political or economic reasons to do so. It's recommended to do these studies every 5 years. And every time we do a cost of service analysis, think of it as a tuneup of the car, your car may be misaligned, we tune it up, it now going to drive straight. So with the rate structures, there may be a little bit of adjustment. Some customers may see a little bit more of increase or a slight decrease in the first year and then after that it's a percentage increase. Um once the pro the documentation is received by city council, then we can set the next stage where they're setting

the public hearing. We can send out the notice. Um, and then customers have the right to protest. Customers even have the right to question the report and we would like to be able to respond to their questions um, during that process so that we hear what their concerns are. You said recommended, but is it required to accompany a rate increase the rate the rate study? It's it's um, it's recommended and most attorneys would say you should do it. Theoretically, you could do one without a rate study. Mhm. But then if you got sued, then Right. then that's the problem. What's the uh cost of our rate study going to be?

The cost of the rate study is going to be um I'm trying to remember the It's about 100,000. Okay. For both um Vista and Buena. Perfect. We have about 42,000 customers. 24,000 We only have 24,000. Is that just in the Vista system? So, we have more residences than that. We have about 40,000 structures in Vista. Yeah, we'll double check. Be in the Vista. I will double check that. Obviously, that will be in the cost of service rate report. You You probably have a point. It probably is Vista. Thank you. Very good.

So, the LA just like to figure out how much it cost each dwelling per year for those studies, but I agree. We need a study. Unfortunately, this is the legal um No, no, I understand latigious environment that we're in. Absolutely. The last rate study was completed in August 2017 and the last increase was in 2020. Um since then, we've all know inflation has been a significant increase specifically here in San Diego. Um, in besides a significant inflationary increase, we also have a future CIP need, capital improvement need as mentioned by Ken, $50 million for Vista and $23.5 million for Gwenna over the next five years. It's only 48 cents per residents or customer per year for your rate study.

Okay. I just like to break things out like that so we can all understand them. Thank you for breaking it down.

You're welcome. Um sorry you you threw me off there. So the primary rate study driver is the revenue adjustments to fund the operating needs. Um specifically besides the city also in Cena Incena's cost has increased significantly with the treatment cost. We need to make sure that it's also to make sure we have reserves in place. Reserves are important. Um most people don't think about the sewer system but a sewer system has actually a lot of liability. um if a pipeline breaks, if there's a spill, we need to be able to fix that quickly. We need to have that money in the bank. So that's why we have reserves. So for instance, we have 50% of operating. That's a cash flow because you put most of your money is collected from the property role. You receive that twice a year, but you pay your staff, you pay your cost on a monthly or um bi-weekly um period, bimonthly period. We have rate stabilization just in case cost increases much more significantly than we anticipate. Historically that has occurred. Um and then we have emergency 2.9 for Vista, 1 million for Bua and that's for those emergencies, unfortunate situations we hope never occurs, but we have the money in the bank. Even if a emergency occurs, FEMA will come in or if we even have insurance, we still have to cash fund that. We'll get reimbursed, but we need to have the money in the bank to be able to fund it. Next, I would like to start talking about the financial plan. We've developed an Excel model, nonproprietary staff has a copy of it. Um, in where we look at different scenarios associated with the health of these enterprises. Um, the top left corner the bars are the expenditures. We have operating costs O andM. We have debt service and we have the green bars which is the rate funded CIP. In addition, we have lines there. a dotted line, the black line, excuse me, is the current revenues and the dotted

line would be a proposed revenue adjustments. Um, the now the bottom left corner is the capital projects. These shows you the capital expenditures we anticipate each year to fund, how much of it's funded by rates and how much would be funded by debt. In this example here in 2030, we do have a $15 million debt issuance. Then now I want to talk to the top right corner. That's the ending fund balance. Um so basically after we spend all our money on our capital projects operating cost um with the revenues coming in what's the ending fund balance in this chart we see we're slowly eating into our reserves which is what reserves are for. We're still meeting our reserve target which is the dotted line. Explain that debt again.

So the ending balance is sort of like your c savings account. Who who what what who who did we borrow money from and for what? Uh this Go ahead, Ken. Yeah. This was a state revolving fund loan for the Auad Deion pump station uh that conveys uh that's split with uh Carl'sbad 67 to 33%. Uh it's uh right off Avenue Cena uh off of the Auadona Lagoon. Um and it conveys sewage directly to the Encina treatment plant. It's the last pump station in the system. And how much do we owe on that debt right now? That's okay. You can off the top.

That's all right. That's all right. Just throwing curve balls. Just I just like to understand stuff like that. That makes sense. Um in the bottom graph now shows the coverage ratio associated with that debt. Um we want to make sure we meet above the covenants requirement. And as you can see, we're very healthy here in this scenario. So now I want to actually go into scenarios. So this is for Vista and this is without any increase in rates over the next three years. What would occur? The first thing the main thing here that you see is is that the fund balance in 2029 is below the reserve target and in 2030 and 31 we are s we are negative in fund balance. So in of course this scenario would not play out if city council decide not to increase rates. What would play out is that you would cut your capital improvement plan significantly. You would be at detriment of having asset failure and a potential um break in a main.

Yeah, we don't want that. What What was the last year that we did our rate study? It was about eight years ago. It was in 2017. Yeah, almost 10 years ago. Yeah. And we we had a meeting about this and that was my that was my only observation is we probably uh for the 47 cents per customer per year we probably should not let 10 years go by next time. Uh but uh that for five years from now let's put this on the calendar. Duly noted and we'll be back here in three years. Thank you. Well make it four.

And so the first scenario I'm going to show you two financial plan scenarios. The first one is where we do a 5.5% in the first three years. Um we are showing you five years out. Um the la last two years there's some uncertainty about the CIP needs. It's always a challenge when we project out what the capital improvement needs are. We do have forecast there. We also have forecasted out in ceness cost. Again those are projections out. But by doing 5.5 over the next three years we meet our reserve targets and our coverage ratios. Another potential scenario would be to defer a rate increase this fiscal year and then do two 8% in 28 and 29. That would be popular. I wouldn't recommend that. No.

No. But we're showing you two scenarios. Why are we only looking at a three-year number? Why would we not have a level increase over five years? So, we we we have in the past done that. The challenge with doing five years is that year four and five there's a lot of uncertainty with the capital improvement plans. How much expenditures what would we when we adopt it would we not adopt the increase for years four and five or or are we planning to adopt a zero increase for four and five? No, we would come back in year three. Okay.

To basically recommend more rates and part of that has to do with the execution rate of the CIP, any volatility at Encena. Uh there's also potentially an opportunity to explore combining the utilities with regard to a uh San Diego Laughco Municipal Service uh review that's going to go on this year and it eventually when Buena was created it was intended that Vista would absorb Buena and so as part of the municipal service review that will be reviewed and we want to come back and use all those factors with regards to looking at the rates further on. Also, if you'd note on the graph, you know, we show some debt service in Vista. Um, so the CIP execution rate is a big deal. We don't want to take on more debt service, Mayor. Um, and so I think it'd be prudent for us.

What's the rate on that debt service? It's $15 million is the debt issuing. What's the interest rate we're paying? We're assuming because it's projected out in 2030. What's the current interest rate? Current interest rate of the one that you have on the books or when would you the one we're paying? I mean, it's really low. It's probably around 2%. I don't know off the top of my head, but I'd be happy to provide you that information. We took advantage of a state revolving fund for our last super. I like I like borrowing money at 2%. Uh that's free money, correct?

Uh I don't like raising uh you know, sup I don't like superinflationary increases. And I and I I said this in our uh private meeting, but I just I really really really do not like superinflationary increases because the public doesn't understand why our costs are going up faster than inflation. We had four uh% inflation for the last 12 months here in San Diego according to BLS. So, uh I like to try and figure out how we do this frequently enough that we stay within what the public understands is the current level of inflation. Anyway, uh obviously we got to proceed with this.

The next step of a finan of a rate study is a cost of service. The cost of service looks at the revenues that we need to collect and we want to ask ourselves how do we collect that by each customer class. Um in order to do that we do a snapshot. We look at the flows that are occurring for each customers. We know what the cost is for Inena. We know how much flow goes into Cena. We know the strength that's going into Incena and we start mapping those out together. We work with Ken and his staff to determine what's a reasonable number for the strength and flow for the different customer class and then based on that we get the proposed rates. Um the report the administrative report will show the math and the details behind that. Um the strength that we're using for commercial and industrial is the same as the last study is we believe that's the best data available. On the commercial side you do have a fixed component. um and a variable component we're recommending to maintain that 30% fixed of revenues um that will help with revenue stability. Um one of the most significant change in the cost of service is the capacity rental charge. That is the one that sees the biggest proposed increase. Just to remind ourselves, the capacity rental charge is when somebody bought some edus for growth. Let's say I bought five edus and I'm a property owner and then my usually it's a tenant. They may be using eight edus based on their flows. So they need to rent out three and that's that rental fee for that asset.

Equivalent dwelling unit as compared to the accessory dwelling unit. See all the things you learn here.

Yes. The So this is the proposed rates here for Vista. Um this is our recommended 5.5%. Um as you can see um the rates for single family and multifamily. You can see the in industrial rates um the fixed charge you see the strength proportion and then you see the rent um capacity rental charge where you see the more of the increase I am going to show you the customer impact the first year and a rate survey later on in my presentation so that is associated with Vista similar presentation for Buena with Buena if we don't do any increase we would be dipping into reserves and by 2030 and 31 we would be below our reserve um target there is no debt associated with Benna currently.

So if we did 4.9% increase for each of the next five years and came back and addressed it in year three, we still would if we don't if we don't raise rates at all, we still we don't dip into reserves until 2030. That's what you just said, right? That's what you That's what you just said. I would Yeah. You would um you wouldn't be you would be below your reserve target in 2030. But you you said if we don't raise rates at all, we would begin to dip in reserves by 2030. Is that what you just said? Yes. So if instead of 5.5, if we were to do 4.9 for the next five years, Buena is recommended at 4%. And Sanji's going to show you that on the next Oh, 4% for Buena. So the 5.5 was for Vista. Yes.

Okay. Oh, so that that so when when would we get into reserves if we don't raise rates for Vista? 2029, I believe. Okay. So a year difference. So, I mean, this is one of the things we talked to about is can we level that out as a small I mean, I like something with a four in front of it instead of a five. Five is an ugly number. That's a big number. Uh, and we certainly have reserves. I mean, we're we're not sitting here without a million dollars in our in our hip pocket uh that we couldn't lend. Can we lend money from the general fund to the sewer fund and then repay it? Is that lawful? I think it is. Yeah, it is. It is.

Yeah. So, we're not sitting here without the ability to solve an emergency problem. Uh, and if we didn't raise rates at all, we don't. So, we really could level these increases out just a little bit. Just, you know, we could go 4.9 4.8, you know, and plan for it over a longer period of time. And, uh, we just what we messed ourselves up here is by not doing this for 10 years. Uh, and we would have been looking at a lot lesser increases that wouldn't have bothered the public uh, as much. I I don't like bothering people with these big increases. So, I like to do it every year. We keep coming back and looking at just people don't mind a little increase because they know everything gets more expensive, but I'm real frustrated by the, you know, we shouldn't have waited 10 years is all I'm saying. Okay, keep going. I apologize. Um, with Vista, just as an example, if we delayed the rate increase, we would have to do two. Oopsie. Um, let me go over here. Sorry. So, Buena it was 4% and if we didn't do any rate increase the first year would be 6.5 which um is not a recommendation. Um cost of service um the main difference between in Buena is the city and the county the storm water there's a storm water cost that um the city provides in the city limits and we calculated what that cost is based on the budget. That's $61 per equivalent dwelling unit. Um, we used the same strength factors between the two because they're both very similar. Again, we're looking at the fixed cost, 30% fixed. Um, and then we updated the capacity rental charge based on the current assets. And basically, there shouldn't be any difference between city and the county in the capacity charge since the um connection fees are the same. Here are the proposed rates at 4% for Buena. And here it is for the county side. That was the city side the prior slide. And then this is the customer impact I

want to show you now. So we're now we're showing for Vista that the single family customer will see a $36 increase annually. Multif family will see $26 annually. Buena city limits will see $53 annually. Um and multif family will see $38 annually. And then the county will see $29 and $21. So these are the annual charges because you know percentages are good to look at but as I always say we don't pay in percentages we pay in dollars. So remind me why it's cheaper to live in the county than it is inside the city limits for the Buena system. The storm water costs. Oh okay. So the city we're allowed to pass it on to our residents but not theirs. I understand that you're responsible for the storm water for your city.

Y um next I'd like to show you a survey of Vista compared to neighboring agencies. Right over here we have all the different um um agencies that we looked at. Loia, Powe, Escado, Oceanside, uh Insanas, Fallbrook, and Carlsbad. And as you can see, you fall right in the middle of the pack with the current. And with the proposal, it's just a slight increase. You're still in the middle of the pack. So our recommendation is to use um our scenarios that we presented here if if city council would like to proceed with that based on today's direction. We'll develop the report and the report will be basically the administrative record that shows all the math. It shows the increase in revenues that we're doing over the next three years, what the associated rates are. So, we definitely need direction today to how to proceed with writing that report. Um, and that the report will be received and filed on March 24th. Then we'll send out the Prop 218 um right away after that on March 26. And then the public hearing will be May 26 with the rates implemented um June 25th.

Very good. Do we have any public speakers on this item? Okay. Oh, okay. Uh, Deputy Mayor O'Donnell will be up first, but I'll just go ahead and offer the motion uh that we're going to need to uh adopt staff's recommendation here. So, uh, Deputy Mayor Donald. He did and I will second it. Uh,

all right. Um, there's just a couple questions and a lot of them were already answered, so uh, if any of them are redundant, I apologize. Is my math right? $129 increase overall in the over the three-year period for for Vista. For Vista, it will Oh, sorry. This is Bueno. Sorry. So, for Vista, it will be um 20 $2121

121. So, it's what like 3 five what is it like 35 cents a day? Not even. No, it's way less than that. My math is wrong on that one. Maybe it's not. My my point is it's a very negligible amount to make sure that your toilets flush and that our sewer system is not failing uh throughout our community. I do agree that uh this should not have waited as long as it did. Uh to have a three-year high ramp up on these I know will not sit well with the public, but I I appreciate all the uh thorough questions and answers that you've provided because it's important for them to understand why this is necessary. I would like to see you back in three years though with another rate study because at the cost that it is what I mean do we know three years from now what we're anticipating if there's going to be additional increases uh on this 5 and a half%. Um we anticipate it'll be similar and right now our projections is that it's going to be around similar on both sides. Um but there's a lot of uncertainty. I mean the one of them is the capital improvement. The other one's Encena, their cost and the regulatory standards with discharge

and Incena is doing a lot of work just so the public knows which is very expensive to make sure that they're operational uh and and efficient for generations and decades to come which is where a lot of the cost is coming from on this. So I'm aware of that. Uh what have other cities done? I just recently heard of a very high water uh increase or sewage increase uh in a neighboring city. And could you uh do you care to shed some light on what the percentage was? Yes. Uh in 2025, the city of Carlsbad raised their rates uh 50% over three years. Is that a 5-0? Yes. So it was a significant increase. 50%.

As you can saw, as you saw on the slide there, they are the highest ones of the survey. Um we were happy. Obviously, we'd love to be on the left side of the survey, but we were happy. We were somewhat, you know, below average. Actually, the line that was drawn there on the slide was an average line and we were right below the average.

Yeah, I bring it up. I know it was on the slide. I just think it's very important so people can see that it's almost a 10 times increase from what we're doing on these over that time frame. So, um you know, I would have liked this again seen it spread out. I think the mayor brought up a lot of good points and that is if we could have done something, you know, 4.5 or 49 over four or five years, it's much more palatable and understandable. uh but when we don't increase rates for three years, this is a situation we find ourselves in, which I think is why it's so important that we review this uh in a more immediate future so we don't run into this issue again. But I also understand that you need the legal requirement of a rate study in order to increase fees. So you couldn't have done that in the last 3 years without getting some push back on it and possible legal issues that would would come with it. So, um it's unfortunate we find ourselves in this position, but it's also understandable as to why why we're there. Um yeah, I mean, for less than a cup of coffee, uh per month, I'm I understand the the rates, and I don't think it's too much, but uh in the future, let's definitely bring this back a little bit quicker. But I appreciate the presentation, all the work you did on this. Uh and if I I believe I already seconded, but just for clarification, I will second the motion.

Council member Contrarus. Okay. Um, and the motion right now includes all the recommendations. Well, so what we've got here, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Nat's recommendation to proceed with the rate study and then after the rate study, you're going to come back with a final recommendation on the numbers for the increases. Is that right?

Water resources economics would basically take the recommended increase of 5 and a half for Vista and 4% for Buena. they would um prepare all of the backstory and the report that's necessary to to to go on public record and provide to the public with this recommendation here tonight. I'm not going to say it sounds like you made uh the price up before you studied what the price should be, but it sounds a lot like that.

If I could just reclaim the mic, please. Um, so I just wanted to clarify because part of it part of the staff recommendation is also um for sewer service charges to go onto the San Diego County property tax role. So that's part of the the current motion. Um, and that provides um, you know, right now we're mailing out. So what is the the I think it was about $25,000 um, in savings. And I I just want to see if the maker of the motion would be amendable to this um potentially as a friendly amendment, but you know, I uh I'm really concerned about our seniors and folks that are on low incomes. Um, I would love to uh utilize like a sewer fee affordability fund that we can kickstart with the $25,000 savings that we're going to have um by not mailing things out and just going straight to the property tax rule. Um, but in our discussions um when we discussed this offline, I think there was already a certain amount of funding set aside. Um, and I'm I'm remembering like a h 100,000 or something. I can't remember what it was. If you could remind me.

My pleasure. It is called the city's lifeline rebate program. It provides for 30% reduction in uh the charge sewer service. Uh, and the eligibility is that applicants must meet the low income limits as defined by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development within San Diego County. Uh currently I we looked at the five-year average. Uh the city general fund has contributed about $63,000 a year. Staff currently budgets $72,000 a year in that line item just for uh as some additional contingencies contingency sake.

Yeah. Um and I think that because we're seeing our fees go up, it it would be important for us to uh increase that. I don't know if, you know, the council at this point wants to set a a certain dollar amount increase to it. Um, but I definitely want to ensure that folks are not impacted um as the price is going to go up. Um, so folks that are at lower incomes, if we're looking at 63,000 per year, uh, a lifeline affordability program might need to increase beyond the 72,000 that we have earmarked because there's going to be, you know, potentially more need. Uh, so I would I would love at this moment, you know, to be able to amend the motion um to add the savings from um mailing things out, which is about $25,000 a year, and add that into the lifeline program. Um, if that's not something that the maker of the motion is um going to accept at this point, I'm going to keep fighting for it. So, is that um something that you would be open to? The problem is that the rebate program is only legal because it doesn't come out of the sewer fund. It comes out of the general fund because this is the reason you have to have the rate survey is because we're not allowed to charge different people different pricing for a utility service because it's regulated by the CPU and the public utilities act. So, if we want to uh add to the program, see, they're in separate funds and we're paying for the postage and the mailing out of the sewer fund. Uh but the uh the subsidy is paid for out of our general fund. Uh so, it's it's just a legal thing. Uh we're dealing here in this measure only with the sewer fund and we can't legally give that money.

I hear your point. Um, but we could certainly come back. I mean, I don't I don't have I don't I don't oppose your idea. Uh, it's just that uh it would I think we'd have to agendaize that separately because it's a general fund expenditure instead of a a sewer fund uh rate issue. Do you see what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. I just want to get clarification. I mean, if that's if that's what's necessary, then we can do that and I would love to agendaize that for a future discussion. If it's not necessary, then potentially there's, you know, council consensus that we want to do that just because we know this is going to hurt people. So, uh, if you could shed light on that.

So, we currently, as Ken noted, budget about $72,000. We we intended to budget that this year. Um, we could take council direction tonight if you want to vote on that to increase that amount. Um, and we could bring it back as part of the budget discussion in I believe May when we come back to you for approval of the budget. So we would lawfully be able in this motion amend it to give council direction or no? It would be better to be a separate motion. It would be general fund money not tied to the enterprise fund that we're talking about but we would still it would still be gerine to this discussion. Correct. So we could have a bifurcated motion and the direction could be to bring it back as part of the budget. Okay. So there still be a public opportunity to discuss it.

Would you be in favor of that? I'd be perfectly happy to support that. Okay. Um, so it looks like we're going to have two motions. The motion that you made and then a separate motion um for us to increase the subsidy for the lifeline uh program to ensure sewer fee affordability for our low-income residents. Um, and okay, with that, uh, well, I guess someone would have to second the the motion that I just made. Yeah, it's fine. Technically, I think we should dispense with the motion that's on the floor before we proceed, but just for the keep us consistent with uh however you want to do it as long as we can get a vote on it tonight.

100% right after we dispense with this motion. Sounds good. Uh Deputy Mayor O'Donnell. I was just going to second so we can

I think we already have a a second on the motion that's on the floor and then we'll proceed immediately to consider the next motion. That's what I was Don't worry, we're not going to we're not going to get away. Um, okay. Is there any other discussion on the motion on the table? Seeing none, please cast your votes. Okay. And Council Member O'Donnell is that motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much for your great report. Uh, oh, I I didn't I I didn't get answer to my question and I I I'm putting you on the hot seat here, but uh now uh have you already conducted this rate study or did we just authorize you to do it?

You authorized me. Have you already conducted it? That's a yes or no. Author, have you already conducted the rate uh the rate study? We just talked about authorizing you to conduct. No question. No. If you were going to ask that my No, we have not. We haven't completed the rate study. How much work have you done on it? We have done I would say 70% or Oh, you've done 70% of it. Okay. So, that's why you already know what the number is. Yes. Okay. Well, now the the the the next big part is the report. Gotcha. You did the research, but you haven't written the report. Yes. Now, we have to write the report. And the report I apologize. I stand corrected. You already have the data and that's how you came up with the number.

Okay. I I forgive me. I apologize. I was trying to understand how you already knew how much before you did the study and I didn't understand that. But you've already done 70% of the research and work. Now you just have to put the thoughts down on paper and finalize it. I appreciate that. See, I learned something tonight. We appreciate your comments and feedback, Mayor. I I just I just want to see because you said that we don't uh spend into reserves until 2030 if we do nothing. Yes. So, we really could go at 4.9%. The unfortunate part of that scenario would be when we come back later, it might be a much larger increase for the public.

Well, that sounds scary. Okay. Uh well, can we can we look at that before we because we're not adopting the rates tonight. No. So, can we can we have a proposal at at what you think? I mean, you you've done a lot of research here. So, so there's a couple of scenarios. Um what I recommend we do is proceed with the report at what we re what the study shows. Yeah. But if you don't bring it back as an option, then it's going to be off the table. So either you can present it as an option of what what you think the impact will be after visiting with finance staff and city manager or we're never going to get to discuss it

or what I was going to say is that once the city council can always implement a lower rate I I'm I'm asking are you forgive me can you uh as city manager can you uh can we look at the uh the the alternative and could you explain explain to council when we come back to this what uh a a 4.9% would do uh based on your best understanding can we look at that and if the council decides to go with 5.5 then we'll go with 5.5 yes we can provide that is that is do I have support to just look at an option in this is that well I

I would say yes but I believe it should fall onto the experts that are in the field not our city manager well I'm I'm only asking that the option be presented. I'm not asking for him to do the analysis. That's that that was my concern. But yes, I'm support I'm getting I'm I love my engineers, but they want to get very technical and I'm not trying to be technical. I'm just wanting a recommendation based on a different number cuz I I'll bet it probably wouldn't be fire and brimstone if we did that. If I can clarify, the study will come back with the rates that were recommended tonight. We will provide a separate financial analysis to show you what it would be at 4.9% moving forward.

So what you're saying is once we complete the 30% of the work cuz that's to support the 5.5. And what you're what you're telling me I'm going to read between the lines. You're saying mayor, no, we can't present an option. We got to pick a number tonight because we're going to do the next 30% of the work to to bolster the legal case for that number. So if we go looking at another one, we'd have to do the 30% of the work over again. Correct? So the answer is no. We can't. This is right now tonight. We got to decide and we haven't been presented with the option. I'm a little I we we discussed this in our meeting having a little bit lower number and and now it's coming for the council and we're not getting that opportunity. So, you know, I I really I really hate

I'm sorry, mayor. Are you contesting the vote that just occurred? because we did take a vote to approve this item. No, I'm I'm I'm making a comment about the item that's still on the table. The one the second item on the table for us to vote for is the relief program. We we have uh we have an item for discussion regarding the sewer rates and I am making a comment relevant to the item that is agendaized right now.

Okay. I was just hearing maybe a contention around the vote that just occurred. I I'm I'm not con I'm not contending it, but the answer is that before we dispense with this item, and yes, we did just vote to move forward with the 5.5. The reality is if we don't change our mind right here and now, and I don't think we're going to, uh, but if we don't, then we're locked in at the 55. I just I I I wasn't I wasn't I'm sure you were understanding. I was not because I was understanding we were gonna do this rate survey. I thought that we had yet to do it and because we're authorizing the work tonight, but it's already 70% complete. That much uh forgive me, I wasn't understanding that you had already done 70% of this. So, I I was thinking we were going to have an opportunity to discuss the amount. We really are not. We've we've that was our only opportunity for discussion. I'm sure you understood that. I apologize. it escaped my awareness. So, I just wanted to make sure that that was clear for everybody that though we're going to come back with a public hearing later, which is supposed to be the public opportunity, the reality is our only meaningful opportunity to make a decision is right here and right now. So, uh with that, uh we had a a motion in a second on this idea, uh uh to

Can can I just get clarity on on that because I understand what the mayor is saying. So, it's not feasible or possible for you to bring me back one of these little bar graphs with 4.9% without completely blowing up and deflating your own work and study. Is that correct? Yes. But let me give you one caveat. But I know that we can say, "Hey, this is great that you want 5.5, but we want 4.9." Correct.

So, so is it possible? Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but is it possible without having to redo all of the work that you've done just to get a bar graph which would show what it potentially would look like at 4.9 or would that create a deflation of the work you've done which would then say, hey, if the public decides that they're going to contest this, we've just given them the offramp to contest it down to 4.9. the the issue is leg is time is that we're we're trying to put this on the property roll and in order to put on the property role we need to have this hearing before July 1st. In order to have the hearing before July 1, we have to meet this schedule. But with that said, um city council what a lot of agencies have done in the past especially with uncertainties of the future is they have adopted rates and then later on potentially implemented slightly lower rates. So the first year I would recommend that we do adopt the 5.5, but the other two years you could based on expenditures of CIP implement a potentially lower increase.

So we're setting a a ceiling here. Exactly. Not a floor. Yes. Without without having to do 70% of the work all over again. Correct. Maybe I'll rely on Ken on this one. Either one of you. Yeah. So, uh, can I can I see without any of the deep diving that went into this study what a 49 looks like potentially or just even talk about it? You don't have to put it into an Excel sheet or whatever and just see what that would look like from a financial standpoint over the next three years. Doesn't have to be tonight. Don't have to discuss it right now, but I I I would like to know those numbers just for my own sanity.

We would be happy to show you. And uh just to Sanjay's point, the logistics of the way we bill forward for the new fiscal year with the April billing, it does cause a lot of difficulties with the process. So,

you know, from from and I I appreciate the mayor's concern about the timing uh not coming here with the studies. Um you know, the one thing to note is, you know, the timing of the master plan landing um and the timing of, you know, bringing on board a consultant to review this. We're rushing as fast as we possibly can to get to basically the you know something that we think is uh is you know is a good recommendation and we think it's the responsible thing to do. Um so but I do understand and and take your you know take your points and and um there's you know we did delay the master plan with regards to trying to dovetail it with the general plan. Now although the CIP is for existing deficiencies, it also provides projections for the buildouts, right? And so the capital improvement program and the dollars that Sanjay showed in his model, those don't have to do with buildout projections. We're just dealing right now with existing deficiencies. um with but regards to the timing of how all the documents landed, bringing on uh the consultant for the cost of rate study, this is this is the best we could do with regards to putting this in front of you and I and I'm sorry for you know your your points are well taken. I wish we could.

It's not entirely your fault that we didn't uh do this for 10 years. Uh it's not entirely anybody's fault up here. Um but it is what it is. is frustrating, but it's a it's got to be a bright reminder for everybody in management at the city that everything that we are charging residents needs to be re-examined for the correctness of the rate because you know what we're we're going to get no credit as a council for the fact that we didn't increase rates for 10 years in a row. We will get zero credit for that. We will only, and trust me, whenever the rates go up and we send the notices out, you will hear from your residents about this and they will not be happy about it. It's just the way it is. People on fixed income, they're not going to be happy about it. I'm not going to be happy about it. But it is what it is. We got to pay for the sewer system to work efficiently and function. I wish that we had the 5-year projection so that we knew what's going to happen in year four and five. Uh I I I don't like getting the three-year projection because this is a five-year uh rate study, but we we are where we're at. Uh we're a little bit behind the eightball. The longer we delay action, the worse it gets. I think we understand that. We appreciate that you've done a good job bringing a where we're at right now proposal. I I think Deputy Mayor probably we got to move forward with this as it is even though it's a little bit of heartburn. Um, and and frankly, I'm just, you know, I love you, but I'm beating you up over it because I don't want to be in, you know, I'm not going to be here in a year, but I don't want the council to be in this position again. Uh, there's no reason for it. You know, we uh it's it's just frustrating. It's it's frustrating. So,

understood, mayor, just just a point of clarification, uh, the rate study was conducted in 2017, but the last time we raised rates was in fiscal year 23. So, we haven't raised rates for three years. I just wanted to make sure you knew that. Yeah, with

those three years cost us easily another point point and a half two you know points caused us to have super inflationary rather than uh increases consistent with inflation. That's that's the frustration is that we we let even three years go by because then we have to give people these outsized increases and they don't understand why. They don't understand why the city's costs are going up and and they just think we're revenueing on them and there's a lot of misunderstanding and it is what it is. You know, it it goes with the territory of being the mayor and council member. Uh we'll have to explain it to people. Uh we're doing the right thing. We're managing the system well. It's it's a very effectively run. Uh we do a great job with it. It is an enormous expense like $30 million a year, right? Uh so it's a big part uh of what we spend as a city and you know we don't ever think about it this the end of my comment on this but a functional sewer system that works really well is an unseen and unappreciated part of the city but it is an enormous part of the service we provide our residents. So it is incredibly important. We really appreciate your uh your work on this. Thank you.

Sorry to sorry to have to beat you up over it. Okay. Uh okay. Now, on to the next item, which is we have a motion in a second, and I believe just to restate that it was to uh give direction to staff to bring back in the budget conversation uh a $25,000 addition to the lifeline program for sewer rates. Do I have that correctly? I'll ask the maker of the motion. Yeah, I worded it different. I can't remember how I said it, but that's exactly the intent. Okay, very good. Uh any other discussion on that motion? Uh, you want you want to say something? I don't I don't officially have a second because I the deputy mayor second. Okay, we're we're good. I wasn't sure if we had a reset.

I don't I don't know if you're blacked out. I'm not seeing any other requests for comments. So, with that, uh, we have a motion in a second, please cast your votes. And will you uh at the time of notifying uh of these newer rates, will we be in a position to include uh notice about this lowinccome assistance program on the exact same notice? Yes, I was thinking that as you were speaking

and council, will it be our direction that on the notice to the customer increase, you know, informing them of the rate increase that we will include on the same piece of paper, not the next sheet of paper, the same sheet of paper. You're going to work in there uh the lifeline information so that low-inccome PE is it? Can we do Nobody's got a problem with that? Yes, possible. You put the legal language on the next paper, but we want and I apologize. I was having a sidebar, but can we also if you might have already said this, so I apologize. Uh, make sure that they know that we did not increase the rates for three years. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's an important piece of it as well. Yeah,

of course. We will have a web page dedicated to this as I mentioned and we'll have all of the background and information to educate the public on, you know, where we were and where we're going uh with regards to, you know, this topic. So, really, and we can definitely include the lifeline rebate information. Uh, let's let's do our level best to make it more cognizable than the uh last postcards that we sent out, please. I promise. Okay, let's uh we're going to we're going to get some I promise.

I love our engineers, but we're going to get some plain English people to try and translate what the engineers have said for the uh for the rest of us. Okay. All right. Very good. Mayor, would would you be like totally down to have a QR code that goes to the lifeline program? Phenomenal idea. I think we should have a QR code. Great idea.

Um, you know, maybe somebody like uh Aaron or London or somebody could do a video where they try and explain some of these things. Uh, and and wouldn't it be cool too if there was a link that people could go and watch a a plain English video with somebody trying to explain a few of these things in a nice way? That would be great. Okay, I think we're done. That item passed unanimously on the $25,000. I think that that is the end of our agenda and uh do we have any other requests for oral communications? I don't think I closed the opportunity earlier.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right. Uh with that, we will go to comments from staff. Anything from our city clerk? Oh, happy birthday, Kathy. Is it today is your birthday? Oh, congratulations. All right, de deputy mayor is going to begin the uh the singing. Uh are we singing to Kathy? Yeah. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Kathy. Happy birthday to you

and many more. Okay, city attorney, can you top that? All right. Uh, city manager, just a reminder that the Civic Center, the Mlen Senior Center, and the Jim Porter Rec Center will be closed on Monday, February 16th in observance of President's Day holiday. Thank you. Very good, Council Member Fox.

Perfect. Tomorrow, I believe, is the annual all member, even non-members free uh chamber mixer at the film hub. So, if anyone's interested in uh in coming by and uh meeting other I think it's free for members and I think they're they allow other people as well. So, um make sure you check that out. It's a really fun event. Um they do it every year and this is like kind of one of the big special ones. So um other than that it's taco Tuesday and it's still a reasonable hour so go get some tacos and I love my wife me very much and that is it. Council member Melendez.

All right. Thank you council members. um updates for you uh to on Thursday uh February 12th, we have a local artist, Kelly Clark, who will be um having her exhibit here in uh city hall and uh she's a great photographer and artist and I welcome everybody to come by. Um and I hope everybody has a wonderful night and thank you so much for the discussions. Council member Contrus.

All right. Tomorrow's Wednesday. So if you want to participate in Guerrera Pon Vista Olympio's trash pickup, you can communicate with founder and team captain Hovita Sarafhin. If you can't reach anybody, you can always reach out to me and I'll connect you. Um, and other than that, I hope everybody has a really good night. Thank you,

Deputy Mayor. Happy birthday again, Kathy. Um, just a quick Cal's update. Uh, a really, really good presentation by uh, District Attorney Summer Stefen yesterday, uh, talking about Prop 36 and all of the work that's gone into it and the success that's come out of it. Uh, completely unfunded by the state. And so, I'm going to bring a resolution forward uh, encouraging the state to fund Prop 36 so we can continue working on the services that we have. I'm not going to go into all the different things and programming that's worked, but uh we'll have that discussion at a later date. And then uh 211 are services for essential health resources, community resources. Uh they can connect you with housing and uh and food banks and everything else. Vista gets that service provided for free or at no cost, I should say. So, uh if you ever need anything, make sure you reach out to them. It's a great resource. And then aside from that, I just want to thank my wife Ally as well, who's home with our two boys tonight, uh for all that she does. I love you very much and I will see you in a little bit. Have a good night.

Okay. Our uh Vista Jail, which is a county facility that uh is uh part of our Vista community, is quite old and we need a new one. And the sheriff is going to be hosting a conversation on February 17th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. right here at the city hall in the Morris Vance community room. and we hope you will join us to discuss how this going to impact the city of Vista, which uh I think generally is going to be great for our region to have a safer jail that better needs meets the needs of detainees and law enforcement. Uh we really want our deputies and police officers here in the region to have a facility that honors their work because when they don't have available jail beds, it's a problem. So, we want to solve that. Um, we're inviting everybody to attend the Mlen Senior Center's Love Your Heart event tomorrow from 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 to receive free blood pressure screenings from the Vista Fire Rescue Department. Screenings will also be held from 1 to 3:00 p.m. at the Vista Library tomorrow. The city of Vista welcomes residents aged 18 and above to apply for a seat on the city's environmental commission. The term will run through March 31, 2027. For more information to apply, visit vista.gov/commissions. And I too want to thank my wife who I think is still tuned in to tonight's meeting. Thank you, sweetheart, for letting me serve. I appreciate you and I'll see you in a few minutes.