City Council - Regular Meeting

do it. But I mean, 12 months is too long. We've been waiting so long on this. We got to get moving.

So, you know, Mr. Mayor, what's that? The same thing.

Yeah. Well, uh, we're going to be your best friend if you move expeditiously and we're going to become a very dogged opponent and we're going to become an imposer of economic penalty. Uh, if we don't feel that you're moving rapidly on this, that's where we're at on this. Uh, We would love to be very friendly, and we would love for you to go, man, the city of Vista's great. The mayor said he'd throw out the red carpet and tear down all the obstacles. All we got to do is get the let out. So I'm here to help you. The city manager's here to help you. Mr. Vaca, our development director, is here to help you. Let it be heard by all tonight that... You know, we will put this on the skids for you, but you've got to put some muscle behind this and push. Please talk to your owner and please tell him the mayor's pissed and he wants this thing done. Okay? I appreciate that.

Action is where the rubber meets the road, Your Honor.

You have my cell phone number?

No, sir.

I'll give it to you. Everybody's got it. It's on the internet. It's 760-689-2220 or mayor at vista.gov. Okay? 760-689-2220. If you encounter an unreasonable delay, you call me and I'll call John Connolly and Joe Vacca and I'll ask, how can we move things forward expeditiously? Because your expeditious success is the expeditious success of this neighborhood. So we gotta get it done. I'm gonna ask Mr. Connolly that if he believes that you're acting in expeditious good faith, that he won't need to do anything. and he's gonna, I'm gonna ask that he give you reasonable allowance according to a mutually negotiated timeline to do what he's asking you to do. But if you don't meet deadlines, There's going to be very few opportunities from this point forward that we don't move forward to remediate with our contractors at our expense and that we add that to the property. We'll get paid back for it. We have no concern about that. And our people work a lot more expensive than yours do because they're all at prevailing wage. So big, big money if we have to. We don't want to do it. We want nothing to do with fixing your property or even having to bulldoze it. We don't want to do that. you need to take care of it so we don't have to. So we're going to do this just to light a fire, and your people got to know the fire has been lit, and we better get the people down there with the buckets of water. That's where I'm at.

Couldn't agree more.

Okay. I appreciate that, Council Member O'Donnell.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you for being here tonight. I know you and I have had many conversations in the last probably month and a half, two months. The last time I spoke to Sarah was actually about a month and a half ago when she was trying to facilitate a meeting between us. The reason I'm going to support this, I'm just going to give you some background on it and history of how we got to this point. It's not a failure of communication, it's a failure of action. And so when all of this began, so I was sworn in in December of 22. I reached out to Sarah a few months later once I was in this position. Between July of 2023 and February of 2026, we have over 200 text messages exchanged. That doesn't count emails or phone calls I had with her. We met at one point to discuss this, actually on numerous points to discuss it. And every time in the beginning it was the same proposal that they had already brought before the community and they had said no. And I explained at the time to Ms. Withers that the community didn't want this particular proposal and I don't think she believed me. And so I had another town hall just to show everybody what it was exactly and the feedback that I got I shared with her directly. I don't think she believed me then either. And so we hosted a joint town hall. I believe that was in August of 2024. And the overwhelming community feedback with the proposal that was brought forward was negative. People were concerned about parking, what it meant for neighboring streets and what it was gonna do to impact the neighborhood. There wasn't enough retail space there. So they were concerned of us rezoning it. And then all of a sudden it getting just condensed into only housing, but not benefiting the community in any way. And then on March 4th, I met with the leadership team as well as Sarah, I think Mr. Conley and Mr. Vaca were there. we met and had a very candid discussion with the entire leadership team from Charles Company. I mean, the CEO was there. Everybody was there because they wanted to figure out what we can do with this property. I shared my feedback from what we had seen at that town hall that we had that joint meeting. And we left on very good grounds. It was a good, candid conversation, what could possibly be done, what couldn't be done. And they brought back a concept drawing to us, which would have capped the creek on Sycamore, put retail right there with housing behind it. I was all on board with that, and that's when you all discovered that you sat in a floodplain and realized that it wouldn't pencil out, especially with the growing cost of materials, to cap the creek and do all the things that you wanted to do. If you want to talk to that really quickly, I'm happy to listen. So we went from there, and after that, because I felt like it was a good faith effort, I continued to speak with Sarah about what we can do with this property. then hadn't really heard anything in the timeframe, and then the roof collapsed on May 13th. And then on May 28th, she came before us and asked us to change the zoning over there with no proposal, no plan, nothing resubmitted, nothing brought forward to the council, wanted a zoning changed with the general plan without any of that. And of course, my response to her was no, and I had asked her a simple question. I'm like, how many community forums have you held since the building has been shut down? She said, one. And I said, well, you've held two because I facilitated the other one. So it's been about 2,000 days since that time frame of the building closing its doors to tonight. Might be a little bit over, might be a little under, give or take. There's only been two public forums from Charles Company or the owners of the property to even discuss with the community what they'd like to see there. Now, at this point, BECAUSE OF THE FAILURE OF ACTION, I'M WILLING TO SUPPORT THIS AND WANT TO, BUT I WANT TO SHOW GOOD FAITH TO YOU BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE YOU ARE THE PERSON AT THIS MOMENT DRIVING THIS FULL SPEED AHEAD FAR MORE THAN WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED IN THE PREVIOUS THREE YEARS. AND I KNOW THAT MEETING UP, WE MET FOR COFFEE A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, YOU HAD SHOWN ME CONCEPT DESIGNS OF WHAT YOU'D LIKE TO SUBMIT, AND I TOLD YOU THAT IF WE CAN GET THAT MOVED FORWARD, I'D BE HAPPY TO BRING IT BACK TO THE COMMUNITY AND TRY AND GET SUPPORT, WHICH I THINK WE COULD AT THIS POINT. But then even in December, all the light poles were knocked down. They laid on the ground for two weeks. I had to call Sarah. I know that the property manager was there, because I saw his car there. She had no idea that that had happened. And so that's a failure of communication on that point. But those are the continuous issues that we run into. Kathy, I don't know if you have the slide I sent you, if you could pull it up. But just so you have an understanding, and the mayor is correct. I mean, this has been the most consistent complaint I get as a council member. I mean, it is continuous as far as people reaching out to me to let me know the issues that they're seeing. And these are all dated, right? And so just between August of 2023 until recently, which was August 10th, and I put them in chronological order so you can follow them. These are what people have been sending me just to show me, you know, there are people on this property that shouldn't be there. There's graffiti on the property. You have a gentleman passed out right on the outline of the property or on the outlier of the property. Another one who's sitting there, you know, I'm assuming having consumed narcotics or something based on the way that they're standing. But regardless, this has been a consistent theme for this property. And I know you all have done some things that we've asked you to do as far as cleaning it up and clearing it. My only problem, and I believe that you are genuine when you say this, that you're willing to clean the creek bed and all those things. My problem that I've had in the past is that there's no proactive measure to do that it's always been reactive it's when they get a call from us when it's completely overgrown and and to back up the mayor on this i have asked our city staff within the legal limits that we can do so to find the properties across the street until they start doing it because it has been an issue over there as well with the overgrowth of plants and everything else i want you to know that this is not a singled out issue or singular issue to you because i've asked the same thing because it does it creates a hotbed for people to sit down there and hide in plain sight in order to create encampments. And then if you notice in the lower right-hand corner, and this is just from recently, these are just the most recent ones, but it has been an ongoing issue for a couple years, and that is that it's not just the property is in decay and creating this place for people to go and trespass and do all those things, but it's now putting a drain on our resources, right? You saw the calls to service over the past 12 months. That is just for a 12-month period. But the cleanups, our cops deputies, our deputies having to go down there, Our fire department happened to go down there. I had to call the ambulance one time because a gentleman had overdosed right on the sidewalk, which is city property, but nonetheless, it was right outside the building, right? And so that's how I've gotten to this point. And again, I do genuinely believe that you and I and the owners of this property want the same thing, and that is to create something that is successful for both you and the city, to put something and activate this space that is beneficial, where you all can make money and it benefits our community and our residents as well. So I am all for expediting whatever we need to expedite to get approval and a process in place, so long as it's not one-sided. And I think by the conversations that you and I have had, I don't think that this next proposal would be. But I do wanna ask, I saw a significant number of fines that were in the agenda report. What is the current outstanding balance of the fines? 7,250.

Okay, so this is what I would ask.

I'll include this in the motion. I feel at this point, if you are acting in good faith, we can stop the fines and hold off on collecting the $7,000. But what I would want to see is, I know that I've tried to connect you with SDG&E to get the letter you need for demo. I know you're waiting back on the report. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, there was a report from Mr. Walker that they were waiting on like a year ago. Has that come through? Was that the person that was identifying the floodplain?

I'm not sure about that one. The one study I ordered was for hazardous material. Okay. And that came in last week, but it's at the laboratories, and so the lab will give us their response in another week or two.

Okay. So I'm willing to hold off on any more fines if that's the will of this council and the city is agreeable to it. If you are going to move expeditiously, I'm going to support and vote for a nuisance abatement, but I don't want to do it in a manner that is going to sit here and say, If you don't, then this is what's going to happen, which is obviously what a nuisance abatement is. But I want to give you the opportunity. So I think in the past, we've done something where it was like a 60-day window. And I think that gives you plenty of time to get all the things that you need to move forward with a demo and get this property in the state that it needs to be. I'm going to cede to Walter because I see him raising his hand. What process would we need to follow?

So I think we would table this public nuisance hearing because I think we're getting off track. This agendizes to whether to declare it a public nuisance or not. If we are giving the developer ownership time to do something else between deciding whether it's a public nuisance or not.

So I don't want to change anything. So let's just, I'll move to approve staff recommendation. Yes, I would suggest that.

Okay, so that'll be my motion.

But I will work personally with you and our staff to make sure that anything that can be done to expedite, anything we can do to move forward, getting a plan in place, whatever demo's gonna take place, done, and the authority in our city manager's eyes to do that. If you are acting in good faith and based on our conversations, I genuinely believe that you are, then we can work within those parameters. Appreciate that.

So one other option the council has, the 30 days is a minimum amount that the council has to give to abate a public nuisance. So you do have leeway to give more time. So in tonight's motion or the resolutions, if you want to give, you know, 45 days, 60 days.

I'm willing to give 60 days if that'll give you a little bit more runway and you have these.

That would be better. We're still having a problem with SDG&E getting the confirmation because I can't find the correspondence. So I have to figure out some other way to skin that cat.

So I would give 60 days.

Can we leave it to the discretion of the city manager? In other words, the city manager could issue another 30 days if he feels it's appropriate to do so.

Can we do that? I don't, this is quasi-judicial, so it has to be the council's decision. Giving the authority to someone non-council would not be proper.

So I would do 60 days, and if we need to... Let's make it 45, and then we'll hear this issue again in 45 days if we need to before the council.

Okay, I can split the cost.

I want to continue to keep this on the front burner.

So that's my motion. I don't know if there's any comments you want to make in response to anything I had to say, but I appreciate the conversations we've had regarding this property, and I'm open to listen to...

Well, the only comment I guess I would have is I don't blame you one bit. I'd be just as frustrated and we are frustrated with the process that's going on. And, you know, there are reasons, but there are no excuses. COVID was a big problem and it takes a big bite out of everybody. Look at the office business these days. I mean, they're down 20%. They're tearing buildings down to build something else. So I fully believe that, and I don't blame you for holding our feet to the fire, and I welcome that. So we'll do the things that we can, and like I said, you'll have our plans in the next 30 days.

I look forward to them.

I'll second your motion. Council Member Contreras?

I would have been happier with less days, but they're being nice. You know, for me, it's just unacceptable where it's at. I know that we've had different rounds of looking at different proposals and whatnot, but at the end of the day, you know, it is... the property owner's responsibility. And I'm really proud of this council for being so proactive in ensuring that we can move forward and demolish buildings that really, there's not a lot of enhancement to that infrastructure of that building that's gonna be helpful, I think, for any tenant. So hopefully we can get some plans before us, we can have a review of what you're trying to utilize the property for. I've been very supportive and I will continue to wanna see something better here. So, you know, I was gonna second the motion, but sounds like mayor already did that and I'm ready to vote. Thank you.

One more important piece of advice that I gave Sarah on the phone. I don't know if she shared this with you. If you're waiting until you have no community opposition or until you think you have all five of these council members in agreement, then you're waiting for the cows to come home. It ain't gonna happen. So I'm gonna give you a piece of advice here. Get an idea and press it. We're all frustrated. We wanna see something better. As one member of the community, I forget who said it, you had a plan to build housing here. And I know everybody's asked, everybody thinks this is their Christmas tree because it's a prime property, and we all get to dictate what you're going to do here. You're in the driver's seat. Get a plan, bring it forward, and be willing to deal with the fact that a few people aren't going to be happy about it. And there's going to be 15 people here who say, I don't like it, and there's parking and there's traffic. But trust me, all of us would rather have this property back in a first-class condition and have some complaints about traffic or parking then we would have the problem that we have there now so please i i i'm big concerned that this has been one of your holdups in fact i said this to some of my colleagues i said they're just gonna wait i literally thought that it was the position of your ownership i have come to believe this that it was the position of your ownership to do nothing, let the problem fester, and such that when your ownership decided to come back, the council would beg you, and we are at this point begging, please do something productive with the property. You know, you've got us in a position where we want to solve these problems as badly as we hope you do, but please do not look for the, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Let's find something that's good, that as long as we don't have 500 people here complaining about it, I can deal with the fact that 15 people aren't gonna be happy. We've not approved anything where 15 people aren't happy about it. That's never gonna happen. But there's a lot more people in this neighborhood that are very unhappy about the current condition of the property. And I think Council Member O'Donnell and I both would like to deliver the victory of getting this thing developed, having some families who add to our community living there, who find a quality of life there When people get off the highway at Sycamore, we'd like them to go, wow, what a beautiful place is Vista, rather than, ugh, what a dump, you know, because this is the gateway to our city. So, I mean, you got a prime piece of real estate that impacts how people judge our community. So we are really, really motivated here. So thank you. Council Member Melendez.

Yes, thank you for being here tonight. Thank you to all the speakers. The comments from my council members I support, but I also want to speak to the applicant that as one of the council members that has been curious and open about some of the proposals that have come forward, we really are hoping to partner with the developer that can deliver a fine product on this property. I tend to believe that housing is an asset for our community. I am not against good development happening in our community. And we do have an obligation to preserve the rights of property owners to develop on their properties. And so I think that this is a fine example of When we do have community input, the responsibility of the elected officials to provide civic education and understand that the process for development does require us working with a developer and your goals are not antithesis to the City of Vista's goals and to the public goals. I really do think that we can have some great family housing here. some you know wonderful retail or service based businesses here as well and you know I just you know as much as I would have to wait for those decisions come before me and review them fully I'm very interested in seeing this area be activated so I just wanted to reflect on some of the mayor's comments as well. Building consensus is important, right, to meet the public need to the greatest extent that we possibly can. You know, but because of how development occurs and because of the way we have situated our property rights in this country and in this city, we do depend on you to make something good of this land here. And I appreciate your effort to do so. Thank you.

Thank you. As I said before, our goals are aligned.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate it and we're looking forward to working cooperatively with you.

Believe me, we share your frustration.

Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Please cast your votes.

To clarify, are we holding off on collecting fines at this time?

Can we do that? We cannot at this time. Okay. Is that something that we can bring back?

You know, Frank Shahidi wants us to not collect the fines on him. We could have issued hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines. $7,200 is a pittance. You know, Frank's lost his mind over $2,000 with the fines, which makes me say we should have issued $5,000 with the fines. I'd like to give you the $7,200, but it's a hardship for us because we can't give it to you if we don't give it back to him. And the fines, apparently, I mean, these are incredibly, for a business, very small amount of money. And apparently, actually do get these people's attention. So I think we need to get the $7,200. We don't need the $7,200, but we got a problem if we give it back to you and we don't take it from this other guy. And we got his attention. Trust me, you think you're being treated differently than the guy across the street? You're not. We're putting the screws to him, and rightfully so. And, you know, I appreciate the staff because I asked them several years ago, because you're not the only negligent, you know, commercial property owner. We got a lot of people don't live in Vista-owned property here, and they're not doing right by us. and none of them have my favor. I want to, I'm begging code enforcement and the city manager, when these people are not taking care of their property, let us not wait so long. Let us bring more of these public, you know, we got the coffee shop in, you know, what is it, Black Rock, because we put the screws to the property owner over there. They had the fence around it forever. Let's get more of these derelict properties into development. Let's be the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Let's get the owner's attention and go, you know, if two grand or seven grand worth of fines gets these people hair on fire, let's issue more fines, okay? Katie, did you, Council Member Melendez, did you have one more remark? Okay, okay, we have a motion, a second, please cast. So we're gonna collect the fines, to answer your question. Do you want to talk? Okay. All right, please cast your votes. I don't have a voting screen, but that item passes with my vote in favor unanimously. I don't know why it didn't give me the option to vote yes on that, but try that again. There we go. I must have hit the wrong button at the wrong time. Okay, there we go. Now we have a unanimous vote. Okay. That will bring us to our next public hearing, PH2. regarding the appeal of Planning Case P24-0164 at 552 West Beaubier. The public hearing is now open. If any members of the public wish to speak on this item, they may indicate so by using the raise their hand feature by pressing star nine or submitting a request to speak. Card speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Our Community Development Director, Joe Vacca, will introduce the item.

Thank you, Mayor Franklin and City Council. So this evening, Chris Winters, our senior planner, has been the project manager and will provide the overview on the appeal request and hearing.

Thank you, Director Vaca.

This should be a relatively quick presentation. I'll try. It's only about six slides, so we'll get going. This is the project site in question, and this is the appeal of the project approval of a tentative subdivision map of 552 West Beaubier Drive. The project site is currently vacant. It is on the south side of West Beaubier, shown here outlined in yellow. It is zoned R1B, and it is designated as medium density under the general plan. Surrounding uses to the north and the west include multifamily development. To the east and south is single-family residential. This slide shows the overall site plan. There are 15 attached homes on single family lots. The project would have, it is 1.67 acres in size. The density proposed is nine units per acre, which is consistent with the general plan. Parking would provide a two-car enclosed garage for each unit, as well as the driveway parking spaces. In total, there's 65 stalls. Five of those are included along the private roadway. The roadway would comply with fire access requirements, and it's 24 foot wide private road that would be maintained by the HOA. This is the home design. This shows the longer sequence of five attached homes. Features include the asphalt roof tiles, wood tiling on the facade, stonework, and hardy board siding in multiple colors. Under environmental review and planning commission hearing, a mitigated negative declaration was circulated for public review from April 3rd to May 4th of this year that determined the project would not result in any unmitigated significant environmental impacts. No comment letters were received during that period. On June 16th, the planning commission discussed the site design and architecture, fire truck access, parking, the open space, and rock outcropping, and the preservation of what's known as Frog Rock. The Planning Commission approved the project with a vote of six to zero. An appeal was filed June 26th with the reason given to ensure the preservation of sensitive artifacts in perpetuity by amending conditions to include information relevant for the proper stewardship and preservation of sensitive artifacts. Relevant project information to the appeal, a cultural resources report included mitigation measures to ensure that there would be archeological and Native American monitoring during grading activities, protocols for the treatment of any cultural items discovered and preservation and perpetuity of an environmentally sensitive area, open space easement to limit any potential impacts to cultural resources from ground disturbing activities. THAT AREA IS LOCATED IN THE NORTH AND CENTRAL PORTION OF THE PROJECT SITE WHERE THERE ARE THE LARGE ROCK OUTCROPPINGS. THE PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVAL OF PROJECT INCLUDED AN ADDED CONDITION THAT THE CCNR'S FOR THE SUBDIVISION SHALL REQUIRE THE HOA TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF THE PAINTED FROG ROCK LOCATED WITHIN THE ESA OPEN SPACE EASEMENT ON SITE INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO AS NEEDED PAINT APPLICATION. THE DEVELOPER MICHAEL SCHWEITZER AGREED TO THIS CONDITION. This slide shows that open space easement area which would be preserved from any further development. There are photos provided by the applicant that show the Frog Rock in question. That concludes staff's presentation. Our recommendation would be to adopt the mitigated negative declaration for the project, as well as a resolution of approval for the tenant subdivision map and site development plan to construct 15 single family homes. And the applicant is here to answer any questions. Thank you.

Council Member Contreras.

Yes, thank you very much. So what I didn't see in this presentation just to show to the public is exhibit one of the communication that I had with the city to provide the applicant information as to this is what Frog Rock is and it shows the color scheme because I think that that's one of the things that was missing. So that's gonna be critical to ensure that we have in the record.

So the applicant's letter in response to the appeal does include Exhibit 1 that shows the Frog Rock in its painted condition.

OK, we just don't have that in the presentation for the public to see.

Oh, if you go back one slide, Chris. I saw it in here.

Yeah, but we don't have the letter itself.

No, correct, the letter itself is in the agenda report, it's just not in the presentation.

Okay, so, because I just want to make sure that the public understands that, one, I'm really happy with the Planning Commission. Frog Rock is just an incredibly important icon for the City of Vista, it's been there for a long time. And I'm really pleased with what I saw come out of the Planning Commission, making sure that there was instructions that the HOA is going to comply with the preservation of Frog Rock. including painting it. However, there wasn't an exhibit showing the Frog Rock. So for me, I just want to make sure that all our I's are dotted and all our T's are crossed because what I don't want to happen is there to be some other interpretation and for the future HOA to just say, oh, well, we painted it. So by having this exhibit, we can ensure the public that Frog Rock will continue to stay painted and look like a frog. And so there's no issue on the applicant's side. It looks like they're totally okay with adding that amendment. The second thing that I wanted to make sure, and this is maybe where if the applicant is present, we can have a little bit of a dialogue. Kathy, if you can put up the photos that I submitted. I just wanna make sure that we can still see the frog because there's no sense in having it painted and then it be completely covered up. And right now you can see the frog from a little bit before you get to that stoplight at Sports Park Way. So what is not clear to me is if what the fencing around Frog Rock is gonna look like. Because I want to make sure that we're still able to, as the public, see this. And also, you know, for folks that play Pokemon Go, this is like a stop on there. So that's how popular this is. Is the applicant here?

Yes, he is. Mr. Schweitzer is available to answer questions.

Thank you, sir. I just have a question about the fencing. in this area and if we're still going to be able to see the frog as we see it now.

I mean, the intent to keep Frog Rock was there from the very beginning. Right. We were never touching it. First of all, it's iconic, and it's also those rocks are big and expensive to move. So we kind of designed the site around it. So that area is going to be an open space. There's no intent to do anything in front of it except for a white, four-foot-high white picket fence to kind of keep people from being able to just kind of casually walk in on there.

And... are we still, even with that picket fence, depending on where it's at, are we, is the public still gonna be able to see that the frog is there?

Yeah, I mean, when I say picket fence, it looks like a horse fence. I mean, it's four feet high and there's just, you know, I mean, there's a top rail, bottom rail, and then just every six feet closed.

Okay, perfect. And I really appreciate that you did have the intent to preserve this. And I just wanted to make sure, because in the future, interpretations can change? You're not gonna be in charge of the HOA?

We did a little bit of research when it was brought up to say, hey, can you track down who did the painting? So it's been a successive group of people who have done it over the years. Originally it was, I guess the family was the McKenzie's. They lived around the property. They have since moved. The last person who painted it was in last, I think June or July. And he mentioned that over the years that Frog Rock has been painted a different series of colors and a different interpretations by whoever was doing it.

Yeah.

So I'm not, I mean, for me, it was my suggestion to have the HOA could be kind of a community bonding event for the HOA every year they can go out there and paint it.

Yeah, I think it's going to be great. And I appreciate you accepting the exhibit to be part of the record.

For me, you know, I mean, we want to get this project moving. It's been on the shelf now for two months. Whatever you want us to paint the frog, we'll paint the frog.

Just two things, right? Thank you again for accepting the exhibit and for making sure that this rock is going to be maintained in perpetuity. And two... just making sure that the public still has access to the view. And it sounds like with the type of fencing that you're gonna put in, we're okay. So I'm good with it. I would like to move that we close this public hearing and move forward with the conditions set. which is to include exhibit one of Frog Rock and for the fencing to be, for the Frog Rock to be viewable with the fencing around it. Thank you so much. I appreciate your work. Thank you.

Council Member O'Donnell. Sounds like everybody's hoppy about it, so I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Oh, everybody's hoppy. Motion to second, please cast your votes. That item passes unanimously. That'll bring us to our third public hearing regarding a plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance. The public hearing is now open and members of the public wish to speak on this item. They may indicate so by using the raise your hand feature by pressing star nine or submitting a request to speak card. Speakers will be called upon after the presentation. And let's see here. Our assistant city manager Mel DeHuerta will introduce this item.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council Members. My name is Imelda Huerta, Assistant City Manager, and with me is our Climate Action Plan Program Administrator, Cassidy McCarthy, who will provide the report.

Good evening. So tonight I'm presenting on the Plastic Beverage Bottle Reduction Ordinance for your consideration. The plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance first came to the council as a recommendation from the Environmental Commission to ban the sale and distribution of plastic beverage bottles one liter or smaller at city facilities, city-affiliated events, and include the ban of city funds being spent to purchase plastic beverage bottles of one liter or smaller in size. A draft ordinance with these stipulations was presented to council in March of 2026 and council provided feedback. The main points of feedback were the exception for youth sporting events, expanding upon the waiver process and adjusting the enforcement section of the ordinance. The ordinance in tonight's agenda report presents the findings that the primary problem with single-use plastic beverage bottles is that they do not biodegrade, are easily transported into the environment, and cause significant plastic waste with negative environmental impacts. The intent of the ordinance is to reduce the use of single-use plastic beverage bottles, to reduce litter, conserve natural resources, encourage reusable items, and improve the cleanliness of city public areas. This ordinance will ban the sale and distribution of plastic beverage bottles that are one liter or less in size at city facilities and city affiliated events and will ban the use of city funds to purchase plastic beverage bottles that are one liter or less in size. This will affect city facility rentals as well as special events held within the city or on city property and will affect those applying to rent a city facility or host a special event through the special event application process. Given the restrictions of the ordinance, there have been exceptions and waiver processes built in. The unaffected operations are that this ordinance would not ban plastic beverage bottles over one liter in size, it would not ban individuals from bringing their own plastic beverage bottles for their individual use, no matter the size, to city facilities or events, and it would not affect current rentals, contracts, or licenses until renewed. The exemptions written into the code language give the city manager or designee the power to deem the use or purchase of plastic beverage bottles necessary to protect public health, safety and welfare, or for example, during emergencies or natural disasters. In addition, there's an exemption for scenarios where specific hydration requirements exist for employees working outside and there's no reasonable alternative as well as for the youth sporting events. The waiver process would be created, handled and organized by the cap administrator and would require a written request or application to be submitted to the city. Waivers would be approved in a one year period for either no reasonable alternatives to plastic beverage bottles for reasons that are unique to the person or entity, or if the person seeking the waiver demonstrates that compliance is unreasonably financially prohibitive. There is also allowance for city council to pass a resolution to establish a fee for waiver applications. However, staff do not recommend pursuing that currently. While enforcement is written into the code, staff plan to lead with vigorous education and outreach prior to or in place of administering a violation to the person or entity. Staff plan to work closely with the Recreation and Community Services Department as well as the Economic Development Division to edit the facility rental and special event permit applications and agreements. Staff will also develop resources like flyers and brochures for applicants and ensure that the waiver process will be simple and streamlined. Lastly, staff want to emphasize that the intention of this ordinance is not to enforce administrative citations or penalties, but to provide education and outreach to hopefully incite behavior change and a cleaner, more beautiful Vista. With that, staff are available to answer questions. Thank you.

Okay, we have a lot of public speakers on this item. So when you hear your name called, please come forward and sit in the front row so you're ready to speak. Joe Hood, Fernando Hernandez, Gail Martin, Vicki Conlin. Mr. Hood, you're first.

Good evening again. I urge you to adopt the single-use plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance and to continue pursuing stronger policies that reduce our community's dependence on single-use plastics. The health impacts of plastic pollution are significant and occur at every stage of a plastic product's life cycle. From production to disposal, plastic manufacturing and incineration contribute to air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, increased risks of cancer, and other diseases. Research published by The Lancet estimates that continuing current plastic production trends could result in millions of years of healthy life lost worldwide due to plastic-related health impacts. Emerging research has found microplastics accumulating in human organs, including the brain. You know this plastic in your brain now? These findings should concern all of us, particularly when considering the long-term health of our children and future generations. We should be doing everything possible to reduce unnecessary plastic exposure, not continuing business as usual. Last week, I attended the transportation workshop in the Vance room and was offered water and a single-use plastic bottle. Tonight, I walked into the lobby of this building, saw a vending machine with plastic water bottles in it. These experiences highlight how much work remains to be done. If we're serious about reducing plastic waste, city facilities should lead by example rather than distributing bottled water. The city should invest in hydration stations and water bottle refill fountains, similar to those at the Carlsbad Senior Center and other public facilities throughout the region. While I support this ordinance, my concern is that it does not go far enough. Many California cities have adopted broader policies to reduce pollution and protect public health. I encourage you to direct the Environmental Commission to research additional measures, including more comprehensive plastic reduction ordinances, expanded refill infrastructure, and other practical strategies to reduce plastic waste at its source. This ordinance is an important step. Let's make sure it's not the last. Thank you.

Fernando Hernandez.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council members. I'm pleased to share Senator Catherine Blake's support for VISTA's Plastic Beverage Bottle Reduction Ordinance. Single-use plastic bottles do not simply disappear when we throw them away. Too often they become litter in our neighborhoods, pollution in our waterways, and harmful debris in the natural places we all value. In fact, packaging waste accounts for more than half of the materials California sends to landfills by volume. In the legislature, Senator Blakespeare has worked to reduce plastic pollution, including helping to close a loophole in California's plastic bag ban and encouraging greater use of reusable alternatives. This ordinance focuses on areas where the city has clear authority, including its facilities, events, and purchasing decisions. VISTA is showing how local government can make a meaningful environmental impact by using the tools thoughtfully. This ordinance is an important step towards reducing waste, protecting wildlife, and building a cleaner, more sustainable community for everyone. Senator Blakespeare encourages the City of Vista to continue identifying practical opportunities to reduce single-use plastics across its operations and public events. Senator Blakespeare strongly encourages your support. Thank you very much. Gail Martin.

Good evening. I heartily encourage you to adapt this ordinance. I heartily encourage you to support the CEA's Solar Plus program. I heartily support expanding VISTA's ban on Styrofoam. I heartily support approving the agreement with Interfaith to administer the Senior Tenant Assistance Program, helping people and protecting our planet go hand to hand together. because a healthy environment is necessary for human well-being. Caring for both the planet and the people creates safer communities and a stable future for everyone. Thank you very much.

Okay, and our next set of speakers, Vicki Conlin, Carlos Lopez, Kevin Lee, Wendy Schramm. If you heard your name called, would you please come forward and be ready to speak when your name is called? Vicki Conlin.

Thank you. My name is Vicki Conlin and I serve as the Vice Chair on the Executive Committee for Surfrider San Diego County Chapter. Surfrider is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's ocean, beaches, and waves for all people through a powerful activist network. On behalf of over 50,000 members nationwide and 3,000 in San Diego County, I'm here to ask Mayor Franklin and VISTA council members to vote yes on the plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance. The San Diego County Chapter recognizes the City of Vista as a regional leader in sustainability. Vista was the first inland city to adopt a ban on polystyrene foam for restaurants. We also commend the City of Vista for installing two public water refill stations in the historic village of Vista. further demonstrating your commitment to reducing single-use plastics and promoting environmental stewardship. In 2025, volunteers picked up 21,393 single-use plastic water bottles at 214 San Diego County cleanups. This last summer, I watched our youth around the county partake in summer camps and outdoor activities. It was impressive and reassuring to see so many of them carrying reusable water bottles. Single use water bottles used by our youth seems to now be the exception rather than the norm. Let's all do our part to support their efforts. Please vote yes on PH3 and continue demonstrating VISTA's commitment to protecting the environment for current and future generations. Surfrider San Diego County Chapter also supports moving forward with expanding the polystyrene ban beyond restaurants. Thank you very much.

Carlos Lopez.

Hello, my name is Carlos and I'm a local high school student and intern for Youth for Climate. I urge the Business City Council to adopt the single-use plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance to help reduce plastic pollution and protect our environment and public health. Plastic beverage bottles and bottle caps are consistently among the most common items during community and beach cleanups. By reducing unnecessary single-use plastic bottles at city facilities and events, Vista can help keep plastic out of our storm drains, waterways, and ultimately in the ocean. In addition, the city can serve as a model for sustainability and simple solutions. Thank you for your leadership and your consideration.

Kevin Lee, followed by Wendy Schramm. Kevin Lee.

Good evening, Mayor Franklin and city council members. My name is Kevin Lee, and I'm speaking on behalf of Dr. Bronner's tonight in support of the single-use plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance. Dr. Bronner's is a family-owned, family-run California benefit corporation, proudly based here in Vista since 2009, and we employ over 450 employees, many of whom live here in Vista and North County San Diego. We're also a proud Vista Green business. Our company is guided by the commitment to treat the earth like home, and we support policies that reduce unnecessary plastic at the source, cut waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and protect our local community and shared environment. And this issue actually hits really close to home for Dr. Bronner's because plastic beverage bottles are made of the same PET plastic material used in our soap bottles. And our PET bottles are highly recyclable plastic, and they're made from 100% post-consumer recycled content, but nonetheless, they're still single-use plastic. And we have heard directly from our customers on how much they care about plastics. In 2019, our customers told us on our social media pages that while they believed we made some of the best soaps on the market, in good conscience, they could not continue buying our soaps until we found refill and reuse packaging options. And that feedback became one of the most visible and recurring topics in our social media comments section. And for Dr. Bronner's, it represented an existential challenge for the future of our business operations. It pushed us to take source reduction, refill, reuse, and limiting plastics seriously. Not as a side issue, but central to how a growing business like ours must operate in a plastic pollution crisis. As we adopt options that move away from single-use plastic, we need the support of policymakers to build, incentivize, and support an ecosystem with better packaging and refill options. Our business growth will depend on these solutions. And this is why this ordinance matters. The City of Vista has an opportunity to model the same kind of practical leadership by reducing disposable plastic beverage bottles in its own operations and purchasing choices. We have heard from some public comments already, and I'm sure we'll hear more about how visible and persistent plastic beverage bottles are litter in our streets and waterways. There's a lot of microplastics as well. By adopting this ordinance, VISTA can model and affirm the direction we all need to move toward, reusable, refillable, and non-single-use options at public facilities and civic events. We ask the City Council to vote yes on agenda item PH3 and adopt the single-use plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance. Thank you for your leadership on this matter.

Okay, Wendy Schramm, Diane Nygaard, Janice Jones, Mark Wall, please come forward, take a seat in the front row if you're ready to speak when it's your turn. Wendy Schramm.

Good evening, Mayor Franklin, city council members. As a longtime resident of Vista, I cannot speak loudly enough about the detrimental effects of single-use plastics, both on our own bodies and on the environment of the only earth that we will ever have. Now is the city's chance to set a good and inspiring example. I'm not sure exactly when the boom in bottled water began, I know it wasn't always there, but I do remember George Carlin asking one of his comedy routines, when did everyone get so thirsty? So obviously there's nothing wrong with thirst, but there are so many things wrong with single-use bottles of water. The litter from these bottles is astonishingly broad and destructive, and the caps washing to shore and then out to sea pose an existential threat to marine life and seafaring birds. I'm a teacher. This past school year, several of my students spoke eloquently and with great passion on this very subject in front of the Encinitas City Council. So I'd like to read a couple quotations from what they presented. From George. This is our world and I do not want it to be seen as a giant garbage can. So I urge you to help save our home before the chance slips away from us all. and from Jackson. Every time I go to the beach, it seems like there's more trash than people. You may be wondering how we can reduce microplastics when we often can't even see them. The answer, he said, is simple. Stop using single-use plastics. These are words from 12-year-olds. who want to see positive change and they want to be part of that change. They themselves bring reusable water bottles to school every day. One of the most disturbing facts about the bottled water habit is just how unnecessary it is. It would not be difficult and would certainly make a statement for the City of Vista to ban the use of single-use water bottles at all events and city facilities. We humans all once lived and thrived without small bottles of water. With the city leading the way, we can do that again. So I'd like to thank you for working on this, showing leadership, and please pass this ordinance.

Diane Nygaarden.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and I got representing Preserve Calavera. Plastics is kind of like cigarettes were 40 years ago. We didn't realize how much damage they were doing to our world and to our health. But today we do know. When we know these things, we need to change the way we've been doing things. And somebody has to be first. We appreciate very much that you are stepping up to the plate to do this tonight. When the city sets an example, others will follow. So thank you for passing this tonight and showing others how you can do it. Thank you.

Janice Jones.

Good evening. Janice Jones, a VISTA resident and vice chair of the Environmental Commission. The Environmental Commission voted unanimously to move this forward, but I'm not representing them tonight. I'm here to support this ordinance. Others have already expressed the environmental and health concerns. I'm going to focus on some practical ideas that could help with the implementation of this plan. Several North County communities have shown that additional changes are feasible. Carlsbad has prohibited single-use plastic beverage bottles at city facilities and city-sponsored events since June 2022. This includes the Carlsbad Village Fair, which is one of the largest festivals in the state. I think their chamber claims it's the largest festival in the United States. For beverages, reusable containers are the best option, and I very, very much appreciate the installation of the water refill stations downtown, and I also appreciate the other steps the city has already taken to reduce single-use plastic beverage bottles. I've noticed a change here and at other facilities in the city. These efforts demonstrate your commitment to reducing single-use plastics, and I thank you for that. For large events, in addition to the permanent refill stations, temporary hydration stations, cheap temporary hydration stations with igloo-style dispensers could provide ice-cold water, and reusable aluminum recyclable or compostable cups could be provided to people who don't bring their own bottles. Local businesses like Water Shack could potentially sponsor these stations, and VISTA could pursue grants for additional water infrastructure, such as trailers with water dispensers, which the City of Oceanside has and uses at their events. To address concerns about private events at city facilities, the city could offer a borrow and return program providing reusable dispensers and cups through their rental agreements. Similar reusable foodware programs are already in existence through North County nonprofits for low cost or for free. I do encourage the city to provide a reasonable implementation period. I believe vendors need time to use their existing inventory, identify alternatives, and prepare. Carlsbad enforcement didn't come into enforcement until a year. VISTA's timeline could also be extended and structured in phases. Initial transition for city purchases, a longer rollout for city facility rentals, and for large public events and even longer on-ramp due to their size, number of vendors and advanced planning requirements. So I respectfully ask you to vote yes on this ordinance and thank you for all that you do.

Mark Wall and then Rachel Belden.

Good evening. I encourage passage of this as well. I work with the Vista Farmers Market. We banned plastic beverage bottles a couple of years ago. And it was difficult before we banned them because it was hard to find small containers that weren't plastic. Now there's quite a few choices of small containers that are not plastic. They're widely available, which we try not to require things that aren't possible. So this is very possible. Single-use plastic for food is... silly. I think we need it for, you know, new knee joints and cars and houses, but we don't need it for food. So I think I encourage this, passing this measure. If somebody's brought up at one of the last meetings, we had this discussion that some of these things have plastic in them. Some paper cups have a layer of plastic. Some have wax. Some don't have anything but paper. And I looked it up. So the plastic percentage of a thin layer of plastic on a plastic cup is less than 1%. I think if someone said we could take 99% of the plastic out of your body, but not 100%, I think you'd say, okay, let's do that. Not, oh, you can't do 100%, let's not do it. So... We're not after perfection. We're just after progress. So people want it. You know it's coming. The vendors are ready. One of your concerns is vendors at events. They know it's coming. Some of them at the market have done it already. At other markets, they've done it as well, other events. So people are ready. I would make a note that you've made an exception for student athletes. And I think if you ask the student athletes, They would say they would prefer not to have plastic. So it's a fine exception, but I think you might want to revisit it because I think student athletes are more aware of plastic than people of my generation or your generation. So that's a worthwhile thing to go back to and take a look at. Two benefits that we've found with eliminating plastic bottles, plastic beverage bottles and lots of other plastic as well, is that our sales went up. Lots of people will look at a plastic container and go, gosh, I really want that juice or I want that water. I'm just not going to buy it in plastic. When they couldn't get it in plastic, they bought it. So sales went up. The other thing is we have a lot less trash because this is recyclable and recycled. A lot of plastic is recyclable but not actually recycled. It's cheaper to make a plastic water bottle out of new plastic than it is to recycle an old one. So it's recyclable but not recycled. These things are cheaper to recycle than they are to not recycle. That's my two things. One last weird mention, and that is I think we need more drinking fountains in the world, and that would solve a lot of these troubles. When I was young, there were drinking fountains in downtowns and in parks, and I know that drinking fountains have their issues, but that would solve a lot of this trouble, too, because people have their own containers. I know the city council seems to have containers. Refilling a container is much better than any other container. So that's my two cents.

Rachel Belden.

Good evening, Mayor Franklin and Council Members. My name's Rachel Bell. I'm the CEO of the Vista Chamber of Commerce. And before anything else, I want to recognize Cassidy McCarthy, who's done a genuinely great job navigating a lot of different stakeholders while moving the city's climate goals forward, and she's been fair and open with us throughout this process. The Chamber takes waste reduction seriously. Our trash management team at the Strawberry Festival works our organics and recycling hard and meets the goals that we set. At the Strawberry Run, we serve water from bulk containers into paper cups. Nobody required that, we just do. But my ask tonight is narrow. I'm asking you to exclude large-scale community events from this ordinance, events that require a special event permit and draw more than 30,000 people. You've already done this exactly for youth sporting events, and I'm asking you to apply the same reasoning to the largest gatherings in the city where it matters most, and here's why. The Strawberry Festival brings approximately 80,000 people to Downtown Vista in late May when it can be very hot. Under this ordinance, no vendor could sell water. And because distribute is defined to also giving water or giving, our first aid tent couldn't hand a bottle of water to someone who's overheating. We will encourage reusable bottles, of course, we mean that, but most attendees ride a shuttle, take a sprinter, or walk in carrying nothing. The two filling stations on the footprint of the festival are the city's existing public units, and at about 20 seconds per fill, they serve about 3,000 people across a day. That's about 3% of our attendance. And bulk water isn't a clean substitute. It means potable water sourcing, health permitting, ice staffing, and servicing across a footprint that size, and it generates its own waste stream in cups. So this isn't a problem we can budget our way out of right away. At this scale, on closed streets, in the heat, bottled water is really the only reliable way to get water into our attendees' hands. Second, this ordinance doesn't reduce plastic trash, it just moves it. It restricts the distribution, not the possession. Our vendors couldn't sell water, but the brick and mortar stores inside the festival footprint could. Every store outside of it could, and people could carry those same bottles onto Main Street either way, and the same plastic arrives downtown. The only difference is whether it lands in the waste stream our team manages and sorts or somewhere else. And that makes it harder for us to control and not easier. So third, the exemption process doesn't work at our scale. Staff told me that each vendor would have to apply individually for a waiver. And we already have hundreds of vendors signed up for next year's event. So we respectfully ask that large-scale community events be excluded just as youth sports events already are. If the council won't go for that tonight, I have three suggestions. Allow an event-wide exemption held by the event permit holder. Delay the effective date for large events. Or at minimum, exempt water only. We could require cans for everything else, but canned water runs more than three times the cost of plastic. And at festival volume, that's out of reach for our vendors. We want to help you meet these goals.

Thank you. Now we're going to go to Zoom. We'll hear from Kathy Rawlings, and then we're going to hear from Nancy Oshley, and then we will hear from Elizabeth Mosley. Kathy Rawlings, it's your turn to speak.

Hi, and thank you for having me, counsel. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak on Zoom, and I also represent, I am representing the North County San Diego 350 Council. team and I agree with the things that have already been said so I don't want to repeat the item it happens in Vista it doesn't stay in Vista so if you have allow for these single-use plastic bottles They make the Carlsbad's done it. Other cities have done it within North County, and I do believe that Vista has the ability to ban plastic bottles. And I do think we should do it at a local level. You don't want the state of California banning it for you. I think that you all are very responsible council members and can make the decision for yourself to ban these bottles. Also, it creates a culture of reusing instead of this consistent throwaway culture. And by creating that culture within Vista, I think that you're not only helping to reduce plastic as far as microplastics and fossil fuel use, but you're also creating that culture of saving money and hydrating through water instead of juices and sodas and those types of things. So I highly encourage you to pass this ordinance as well as continue to work these efforts and ban all plastic in Vista and all throughout North County. Thank you.

Nancy Oshley.

There we go.

Hi, this is Nancy Oshley. I represent Vista Climate Action Planners, VCAP. And I just want to say that I support this ordinance. It's a really good step forward. And I know it might be hard for our first couple of years to enforce this, but I will get there. We'll look back in five, six years and be like, wow, we really did need those tiny little water bottles. So please pass this and thank you very much.

Next, we're going to hear from Elizabeth Mosley, followed by Rashika Varma and Melissa Morris. Elizabeth Mosley, it's your turn.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth Mosley, a resident in Vista for five years and Oceanside for three years. I am for on the agenda PH3 single use plastic beverage bottle reduction audience and D3 expand VISTA's phone band to retail establishments and would like this to go on record. I also followed this up with a detailed email to Mayor Franklin and city council members. Please vote yes. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Rishika Varma.

Good evening. My name is Rashika Varma. I'm a high school student and a member of Youth for Climate. I urge the City Council to vote yes on the item PH3. The single-use plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance is extremely important for preserving the planet. The creation of plastic bottles begins with fossil fuels like crude oil and natural gas. The extraction process for these materials already causes habitat destruction, water pollution, and increases greenhouse And plastic is not biodegradable. Landfills do not have the space for these plastic bottles. And plastic buried in groundwater and soil can contaminate water sources and threaten human and animal health. We have the golden opportunity to use less plastic and it is vital that it is taken for the sake of future and current generations. Plastic pollution impacts everything and everyone, whether they may realize it or not. By supporting the single-use plastic beverage bottle reduction ordinance, I hope that we can move a step forward into a healthier environment. Thank you for taking initiative and for your commitment to the environment.

Melissa Morris.

GOOD EVENING, HONORABLE MAYOR FRANKLIN AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO SUBMIT PUBLIC COMMENT REGARDING AGENDA ITEM PH3. THE FIVE GYRES INSTITUTE SUPPORTS COUNCIL VOTING YES ON THIS ITEM. MY NAME IS MELISSA MORRIS AND I'M THE STATE ADVOCACY MANAGER AT THE FIVE GYRES INSTITUTE, WHICH WAS FOUNDED IN 2010. the five gyres institute is a non-profit conducting applied microplastics research and advancing science-based policy solutions our microplastic free us campaign addresses the growing body of evidence linking plastic pollution including single-use plastic items to environmental and human health harms over the last few months the cities of both san clemente and laguna beach in orange county have adopted a microplastic prevention resolution singling a growing movement from local municipalities to reduce harm from mycoplastics in southern california and across the globe we are confronting pervasive microplastic pollution with single-use plastic items ranging from utensils to bottles as major contributors As single-use plastics break down, they do not disappear. They just become smaller pieces known as microplastics. They are defined as plastic particles smaller than five millimeters and can be thinner than a human hair and invisible to the naked eye. Because of their size, they are nearly impossible to remove once they enter the environment. Today, microplastics are found in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. And microplastics come from a broad array of products on the market, including bottled water. With more than 170 trillion plastic particles currently estimated to be floating in our oceans, the solution must begin here on land by reducing unnecessary plastic production and consumption at the source. Public concern is clear and action is needed. Reducing demand for single-use plastics decreases exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly found in plastics, including BPA and phthalates. By limiting plastic use in city operations, the City of Vista will also help reduce potential exposure and pathways for the community. Studies have found that microplastics do often carry endocrine-disrupting chemicals that interfere with hormonal development and potentially triggering early puberty, especially in females, and heighten the risks of obesity, infertility, and hormone-related cancers. The City of Vista has an opportunity to lead by example. I respectfully urge that you vote yes tonight on item PH3. Thank you for your consideration.

I'd like to offer my thoughts on this. While the science is inconclusive about the effects of microplastics on the body, certainly as Mr. Hood points out, I don't think any of us want plastic in our brain. Frightening indeed. The problem is that this could actually be dangerous, this ban, because you see all of the aluminum bottles and all the paper containers for water are all lined with plastic, which is an absolute fact that's incontrovertible. So the same surface area exposure of the water in an aluminum can uh... that disposable aluminum can is in you you might even have an aluminum are plastic uh... spray-coating inside of your reusable can very concerning you should have that looked at so we still have the replacement can it containers still have the exact same amount of plastic in contact with the water. Yes, true, because literally the thin piece of plastic that's sprayed inside of an aluminum can is actually the vessel carrying your water inside of your paper box. It just has a paper box to reinforce the plastic. uh... but in fact it is the plastic that contains the water not the paper because as we all know if you put water inside of a paper box eventually will lead to the sides uh... and if you put water in direct contact with aluminum it uh... taste bad and so these industrial processes use plastic as a coding for the inside of the bottle so for that reason part of the motive of this ordinance would be to protect us from micro plastics while again the science is yet inconclusive about its effect on our bodies, I would be concerned that this would cause some people to believe that we had solved the problem while in fact what we would really be doing is making it out of sight and out of mind. So I think better we had focused on the plastic contact in all of these containers and not sweep the problem under the rug. uh... the other issue uh... i think and i think uh... miss bald made some very good points about unintentional consequences i salute the farmers market somebody was here is represented the farmers market i think it's great when consumers are drive action and as he mentioned uh... more beverages are being sold now in these other bottles and containers because consumers are driving change I wonder also, I remember when we banned plastic bags, disposable plastic bags, the industry responded by making plastic bags much thicker. And we had the reusable plastic bag. We still use them for kitty litter in our house. But now we use the paper bags because there's no more plastic bags at the store. If I manufacture a thicker bottle, And it is, in fact, reusable. I have reused many a plastic bottle, not the single-use plastic bottles, but like the bottle where a Gatorade comes in, a harder plastic bottle. I've often filled those with water or maybe some other beverage. If I'm a manufacturer and I advertise that as a reusable container, it certainly is a reusable container. If I label it as reusable, do you have a definition of what a reusable container is and is not?

So this ordinance bans plastic beverage bottles that are one liter or less in size. What if it's a reusable container? It doesn't matter if it's reusable per the ordinance.

Okay, so even a reusable bottle that's made of plastic is not allowable?

For vendors to sell?

Like a Nalgene bottle? analogy in bottle you're familiar with those they're very popular yeah so I mean this is a plastic bottle right right reusable but but that couldn't be sold under this ordinance is what you're telling me or it could be um well this is over a liter in size so it would be able to be sold but a smaller one under one liter in size could not be sold of the same style and type of bottle

at, if it's filled with water, at city facilities or events, correct, it would not be able to be sold.

Okay, I'm confused by the level of detail in this. And, you know, I'll always remember, and it'll always be a guiding star for me, that the Continental Congress, as so eloquently put by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, accused King George of sending hither swarms of bureaucrats to eat out their substance. And in my estimation and fear, that's exactly what this is. This is the bureaucracy eating out its substance. And this is one of the bright reasons that I decided to run for public office. I am tired of the nanny state. I am tired of a ridiculous quantity of bureaucrats to lord over every detail of what kind of container uh... the fact is in if you haven't discovered it by now i plainly object uh... to this level of regulation of every aspect of our lives but i delight in the idea that consumers would drive their own decision making and industry as well of about the free market as was pointed out by the man who speak about the farmers market people are buying more you know i see the the liquid death i took me a long time to figure out what was in their cans apparently it's just water uh... but they figured out that people want to buy water in a long can and i say good on them as entrepreneurs they are meeting the demands of their consumers the desires are consumers as our doctor bronner's representative pointed out they're receiving feedback from consumers and it's going to drive their packaging uh... decisions i think consumers should make these decisions uh... but having you know uh... we're gonna have you know eight hundred uh... license applications from strawberry festival people and i mean You know, who's gonna process all of this? Do we really have time? I think we have more important problems to solve as a city than all of this. I mean, we haven't been able to make the level of progress on the most vexing problems that we are hearing from our constituents about that we know are affecting quality of life. We have done too little to address those problems. and they still vex us, yet we have time to hire infinite quantities of new personnel to lord over this minutiae regulation. And for that reason, I fundamentally don't support it and won't be voting for it. Council Member O'Donnell.

If we may, I'm sorry to interrupt. We do have a definition of the plastic beverage bottle in the ordinance, which means drinking water, sparkling water, enhanced water, soda, sports drink juice, or other similar products in a rigid plastic bottle having a capacity of one liter or less and intended primarily as a single service container. So to the question earlier, if a smaller container such as this one could be served, it could.

So if I design my bottle to be reused, and it's still less than one liter, then I could sell it?

If it meets this definition, correct.

If it meets it. So perhaps we'd be inadvertently, as we were with the bag bin, driving the use of even more plastic that we are now it's i mean uh... you know it could be code red for humanity it's very concerning also concerning is the fact that uh... the production of aluminum bottles actually uses far more greenhouse gas emissions emits more greenhouse gases than plastic bottles, which is one of the things I learned in my research on this. So we have to choose between being poisoned by the microplastics and breathing in and dying of the global warming. It's deeply concerning no matter what way you go, and I think there's good reason to say the science isn't settled and consumers should drive the decision-making. So, yeah, I'm still opposed to it. Council Member O'Donnell.

Thank you. Yeah. So I'm less concerned about microplastics in our bodies. I'm more concerned about the 11 million metric tons of plastic that end up in our oceans every year. And it's directly due to reusable plastics, our non-reusable plastics, single-use plastic, that has created literally an ocean of plastic that is killing sea creatures. It's getting into our bodies, obviously, and destroying our planet. And that's my larger concern than it is not being able to sell a piece of plastic at... Through a vendor or whatever it might be at a city-sanctioned event. However, I actually do agree with Ms. Beld who spoke relative to the Chamber, and that is at this time, with that many vendors, the amount of... time it would take to go through every single application. And the reality is we have the Strawberry Festival coming up in less than a year. So to go through all of this process and do all of that, I don't think is enough runway. However, I agree with 30,000, but I also agree with the runway on that. And so what I would be making my proposal as and my motion as is that adopt staff recommendation as is, but put a five-year sunset on 30,000 or more events or 30,000 people or more events in the city of Vista. So that way you have five years to figure this problem out. And it's not just slammed upon you because I agree with you that would do nothing but hurt the festival as well as all those vendors that attend the festival. And it would also put a huge undue burden on our staff. The other question I have related, because I was the one that was a huge proponent for student sporting events, and that is only for city properties. Is that correct? That's not going to be like at RBV or Vista High.

That's going to be... As long as it's not a city-affiliated event, correct. Only city facility youth sporting events.

Okay. Okay. I would apply the same five-year sunset period to that rule as well for that exemption. And the reason being is I think that that is a sufficient time to get people ready to move away from this. Now, I'm happy, assuming I am still on this council in five years, to revisit it because my intention with the youth sports is not for plastic bottles as far as water. It's for Gatorade and other hydration for electrolytes and those type of things. So if that becomes an issue to where they can't sufficiently get those in an alternative way, bottle that's not made of plastic, then I would want to further I would want to extend the sunset on that or just remove it altogether for the youth sports. So my motion would be to adopt staff recommendations, as is with the exception of large events over 30,000 people, give them five years before that sun sets, and then it will become mandatory at those events as well, and then put the same five-year application to the youth sporting events that we have.

Councilmember Contreras.

I'm trying to think of the five-year extension. Is there any way that you would be amendable to three years? Five years is a long time.

I'll tell you what we can do. Why don't we revisit it in three years? Can we do that? So I'll do three years, but what I'd like to do is before we solidify a date for the Strawberry Festival or just have the Chamber come back and let us know if it's feasible to do in three years from now. Do you think that would work? Yeah, so I would do three years. Okay, for both. Yeah, I'll take a friendly amendment to that.

Okay, awesome. Okay. Yeah, I think three years gives us a good amount of time to work with the public, for the Chamber to work with vendors, and for us to come back and try to ensure compliance in a collaborative way. So there's a lot that I can say about this. I am 100% in favor of reducing as much as we can single use plastics. One of the things that I wish we could have shown on this is how much money we spend just picking up trash. And the fact that there is an extraordinary amount of trash still left, even after the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and the thousands of volunteer hours that go into picking up trash and beautifying our community. You know, I wish that there was a way to have a unanimous vote, seeing as how there's been such a push from some folks on this council for a cleaner, more beautiful vista. It seems that those are just empty words when it comes to actually implementing an ordinance that would do something about that. So I wholeheartedly second, and I look forward to reducing the toxicity for future generations and for our current vistas here. Thank you. Thank you to the Environmental Commission for all the hard work. Thank you to all the organizations coming together and really pushing for us to be better stewards. I sincerely appreciate your efforts. Thanks.

Council Member Fox.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think... I mean, I really do like the idea of leading by example on a lot of this, and I think that a lot of the community members, when they came up and spoke, were excited about us leading on this as well. There was a few things in it, however, that, you know, the more and more I read about what dictated a city-affiliated event, the more and more broad, I couldn't think of really anything that might not qualify as a city-affiliated event with the definition as it is. So I was kind of wondering if there was any way that we could rein that in a little bit because, you know, there was – Sponsored or co-sponsored, so that's basically if we're willing to put our name on it, basically, then that would be part of it. Paid for in part, so if they received a small grant from the CVBID, something like that. On city property, that sounded interesting, and then I started thinking about public right-of-way, like streets or just public parking lots and things like that that not necessarily something like a city hall or something like that that maybe could be covered under that on a random street closure or something like that, even if they paid the full permit price and got nothing from, no affiliation with the city, promoted by. I drove by and saw a summer grass banner across Fistaway. I don't know if that was something that we provided or if they paid for it. But again, we promoted it. So does that mean that now on the Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum, we're going to go in there and look and see if they're using single-use plastic water bottles? So there was a lot of things that originally when I thought we were leading, but when it came to us originally, that was my understanding is that we'd be leading by example. But from what it looks like, the few events we do are just a small, small portion of what this would actually affect. And so I was hoping that we could potentially work on the terminology bit there and maybe city run, city organized, city something like that where it's, if it's one of our events, then that's how we lead by example. If it's a public event, if it's an organization that is looking to come to Vista and do something cool and they basically, if they ask us for a grant or anything like that, it puts a different kind of burden on them than if they did not. if they want to do something on a street versus right inside a private business or something like that. There's a lot of things that I think are unintended outcomes potentially with the current definition. So that would be my recommendation is that we modify the ordinance, the 11-06-03-A and B to say city run or city organized events. Because that is us leading by example. And I think if we're paying for the water bottles, if we're having our own booth at an event, I think it's completely reasonable for us to supply non-single use because we're we're there saying that other people should do the same and we're trying to lead by example so that would be my recommendation and i i think that's probably different enough to would that be a friendly amendment kind of thing or would you want me to make a substitute motion for that what was the verbiage you want to use i wanted to use city city run or city organized events mayor

We're gonna have to bring this back to make these changes. We can't do this on the fly tonight, so we're gonna take your direction and we'll bring it back and have another public hearing or continue it to date certain to bring back the revised language.

Even with the motion as it stands?

Yeah, because we don't have anything in there to address the three-year phase-in that was asked for or the, I mean, if it was a simple language change like you're asking, it's possible, but it would have to be done with respect to what's on the table in front of you tonight.

Okay, I was hoping that a single word change would be,

Yeah, that's possible, but the three-year phase-in would be difficult.

You could adopt the language that's been brought tonight and give direction to staff to bring a corrective. We could do a corrective on a consent agenda. Would that be...

You can't do a public hearing on a consent agenda.

We couldn't modify the ordinance on a consent agenda? No. Because it's a new ordinance, it has to be public hearing.

I mean, just for clarity, just what Council Member Fox is asking for, I think if section 11.06030 city affiliated events was removed, that would meet, I think, what he is asking for. I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying that if that was the only change, that could be done tonight because it's just striking something. But adding something in, as the city manager has noted, is we need to bring it back because the public hasn't received notice of that.

Could we give, because really you're talking about a three-year sunset, which is really we could just give direction outside of the ordinance to staff to agendize this in three years, and then we'd be good to go, right?

Yes, that would be fine.

Problem solved?

That way we don't have to do this? Can we add an educational piece in this of saying to just make sure we educate and so people understand that three years is coming up? There is education. There's an education component already. Specific to that is what I'm asking.

That's really staff direction that we can get tonight with the expectation that you're going to bring it back in three years, of course.

Yes, okay. Yeah. So do you want to submit, do you want me to amend my motion then?

If you're open to it.

I'll make those changes then. So then it would be accept staff recommendation, understanding we're going to bring it back in three years to sunset it, and then change the language

I wanted to change the definition or the ordinance that says city-affiliated events to city-run or city-organized, whatever is recommended.

You good with all that?

I am thinking the easiest is just to remove section 11.06030 city affiliated events. So 11.06040 city facilities and funds would still remain. And that says no person shall distribute plastic beverage bottles at any city facilities, including use of city facilities through a rental lease or other agreement. and B, city funds utilized in any manner, including purchase orders, purchasing cards, grant money, reimbursements, or other expenditures shall not be used to purchase plastic beverage bottles, except as otherwise permitted under this chapter. So if I'm hearing Council Member Fox correct, I think that would cover what he is looking for. So you just, and then, so removing the section above it, city affiliate events, would take everything else out.

Yeah, I think that would do it as well.

Deputy Mayor, are you good with that? I tell you what, why don't you take a look at that for a second while we allow Councilmember Melendez to speak, and then we can come back to you after you've had a chance to review that. Councilmember Melendez?

I have a question for the Deputy Mayor as well. In your three-year phase-in recommendation, Is this a recommendation to not implement this single-use plastic ordinance for any of the events or entities for three years or, you know, hearing from Ms. Beld?

Only that above 30,000. So any event that draws 30,000 or more people.

Okay, well I support that. I think it's important to have a reasonable run up and enforcement and when discussing this with the city manager before tonight's meeting, I did talk about the Strawberry Festival And I, you know, recognize that this would be a beast to enforce and honestly, you know, silly for the city to enforce. You know, if we were to go into 2027 Strawberry Festival timeline and just, you know, Foolishly expect compliance from every single vendor and I know the Chamber of Commerce is a great job They're going to be communicating with all of their vendors. They're going to be putting instructions in all of their emails, but That's a lot of information for these folks to sift through It's not uniform city to city with all of the events these vendors are participating in it's just You know logistically unrealistic to expect compliance from the vendors of such a large event to get on board within the next few months. So that's the first thing. So I'm totally supportive of a run up for those large scale events. I don't like the neutering language that says only if it's city run or organized. This should be a more sweeping ordinance that responds to the massive amount of waste that occurs at these events. And I'm not comfortable with just striking city affiliated and replacing that with city organized because the city of Vista is not in the business of just organizing community events and handing out water bottles and we really need to police ourselves and check ourselves about that. No, we see an ecological and public health problem with the overuse of single use plastic water bottles that we're trying to address. And I think that this ordinance, as it is, addresses it quite well. So I would be concerned that we are going to basically render this ordinance ineffective if we were to only apply it to city programming. I would be a member here not voting for it tonight if that's what we would be voting on. I remember sitting on this dais a couple years ago when we were discussing another environmental policy, and this was brought forward by Councilmember Contreras, and it was a single-use plastic ban for our restaurants where they had to be compliant with reducing the overuse of single-use plastic forks, utensils and such, as well as the eventual ban on styrofoam. And everything's fine. Everything is okay. You know, we still have a thriving local restaurant community that is able to adapt to that ordinance. We don't have 100% compliance, right? And our environmental advocacy community is understanding of that. We enforce the best that we can. And people do, you know. support with education. We did a lot of education with our previous policy related to restaurants. We did a lot of education and a lot of ramp up. So we were able to get it done. But I don't buy the everything is gonna fall apart if we pass this ordinance. I'm a realist. I understand we're not gonna get 100% compliance in the next few months, but I also don't believe that everything's gonna fall apart if we require an alternative to these single-use plastic water bottles. So part of leading by example as government is how we write our laws. It's not just about what I do in my own personal world, right? But we get to define what is acceptable. And the amount of destruction caused by the fossil fuel industry and the overconsumption of plastics, and then the outcomes, our public health outcomes that have impacted our community, that is not acceptable. And so part of how we can lead by example for other cities, for our state, and for our nation is to say that these are not instruments that are necessary for life. We can certainly have a good quality of life without the dependency on fossil fuels. That's what we're saying here. We're saying it at a very local level that we want our events to be promoting public health and sustainability. And it's going to be okay. We've had similar ordinances that have impacted restaurants. And I think that they've done quite well with the rollout. We probably have some improvements in review that we need to do there. And, you know, things change in government all the time, right? A new council could come through and just, you know, slash up all of these ordinances. But I don't think that that's going to happen because we have an incredible showing from the public tonight that has said, we want to see our local government take action on this because we find it unacceptable, the state of how things are. It is unacceptable. And for me, this is a cleanup item. This is how we make our city better. We keep things nice and tidy and clean and healthy. So I'm open to a three-year phase-in. I do not want to neuter this ordinance by saying it's only city events. I think that everybody should be moving in this direction, and I'm going to use my leadership to vote for that type of change moving forward, but would love to hear how we can build consensus and maybe develop a more measured approach similar to past ordinances so that the rollout is full of education and promise for how this is going to be an effective policy overall.

Okay, and the city manager and city attorney are telling me that if we do the three-year phase-in, we're definitely going to have to have another public hearing on this. I would want to encourage the council to express its will, adopt this, even though I won't be voting for it. If you choose to adopt this, adopt it in the form that's been presented this evening. And then if you would like to bring another ordinance which modifies this one for large events, I think that one would draw less fanfare. I certainly will not give my wordy thoughts. I will vote with you to approve it. rather than going through this entire exercise again, which has been several hours of the council's time, could you consider adopting this item as it's been presented? And then you can bring back, we can direct staff right now to bring back these corrections, which can be considered. I have a feeling there's probably majority support of the council for that. And then when we discuss that subject, it will just be for the large of an exception and the three-year, and I don't think it'll be the big fanfare that we've had tonight and it'll be a much more efficient use of the people's time. Would you consider that? And I'll let you, I'm gonna recognize you next and you can say whether you would, but I'm very concerned about the plastic in the ocean. I mean, we're all concerned about that. I mean, I have asked this council, you know, council member Contreras asked me if a cleaner, more beautiful vista was just empty words. I've asked this council, I want the sheriff's department to conduct a sting operation for litter. I strongly dislike, I'm not going to say hate because I don't hate anybody, but I strongly dislike people who throw their trash on the ground. I do not do this. I think it's a barbaric thing to do. I don't know what would motivate somebody to throw their trash on the ground, whether it's plastic, paper, or animal, vegetable, or mineral. I mean, I think it's the most base thing you could do. You're finished with an item, you throw it. I mean, I just, I'm apoplectic. And I mean that quite sincerely. So the state law provides for a $1,000 fine. I've asked this council for a sting operation. I would like, do I want our deputies to be finding people all day, every day and do nothing and say, you know, we'll worry about the murders next year. We're just, no. But I would like to find one person, one person, $1,000. And I'm sure that if we set out to do it, that we could find one or two people to find guilty and issue them. And the way the acoustics in this chamber work is that everything on that back circle just comes right up here to the, have you ever been to the listening spot in the U.S. Capitol? It's a concave ceiling. And so the sound just travels right over it. And I can hear like you're standing right next to me having this conversation. It's an acoustic property of the room. So even though it seems like I wouldn't be able to hear you, it's like you're right up here talking and I can't concentrate. So I apologize, but I'm going to have to interrupt and ask if you wouldn't mind. And then I'll be even more succinct in my remarks if I can hear myself. So I'm very deeply concerned about the plastic in the ocean. Now, Ms. Huerta, does the City of Vista issue a monopoly, a franchise to an organization to collect all the trash in the City of Vista?

Are you referring to EDCO?

Yeah, do we sanction a franchise, a monopoly for the collection of trash in the City of Vista? We use EDCO. But do we sanction their monopoly over the collection of trash? I mean, the answer is yes. This is not a trick question. Yes.

Okay.

So would you say that the city has governance over the disposal of solid waste?

I would say yes.

Okay. Are we a member of the Regional Solid Waste Alliance?

We are.

Isn't that what it is, Solid Waste Alliance, right? Association. Yes. Maybe you will know this. Does EDCO dump the plastic bottles directly into the ocean, or do they give them to another organization who then puts them into the ocean? And where, because I've been on the coastline from Tijuana all the way to Los Angeles, and I don't see where the trucks are dumping the plastic from the American people into the ocean. So could you help me to better understand how the plastic from our events is being dumped into the ocean? Because I am unaware. What is the cycle of custody? Because to my mind, they either are recycled... or they go into a landfill. But how is the plastic getting, this is very concerning. Millions of pounds of plastic are being dumped into our oceans, polluting our waterways. They're finding it in the fish, it's in the water. How are our plastic bottles making their way into the ocean?

I would say, yeah, folks littering.

Well, but this couldn't be littering because Mr. Conley brought me a very expensive proposal that I was forced to approve under state law to collect in stormwater runoff. We collect all of the trash that goes into our stormwater runoff. And in fact, we filtered all out. And at Encina Wastewater, we filter out all the solids in our effluent discharge. We filter out all of the solids in our stormwater runoff. So, again, does EDCO dump the plastic directly into the... Okay, it's a trick question. EDCO does not put plastic in the ocean. The American people, let me be very clear about this, the American people are not putting plastic in the ocean. That is not happening. Developing nations are putting their plastic in the ocean. Much of our recycled plastic is being sent to China and Southeast Asia, where it is in fact being illegally dumped into rivers and waterways, making its way into the ocean. Yeah, it is our plastic. If you would like to be recognized to speak, I would be—you're here— It is, but you know, you want to, you know, the people to suffer this question, so let's, you want to have this question. And you don't want to be respectful. No, you may not, because you're not recognized. You're not recognized. This is my time to speak. Why have you no decorum to allow your, just because you disagree with what's being said, you can't be polite enough. Somebody who was elected by all the people of the city, you can't have the respect to listen because you disagree. I mean, that's unacceptable. Make an argument. Have an intelligent thing to say. No, I'm not inviting you to speak right now. I am saying rather than interrupt people, have an intelligent thing to say. Counteract my argument with your superior intellect, with your better ideas. Because that's what I'm doing right now is demonstrating the lunacy of your arguments. It is lunacy. What we should be doing is we should be stopping people from littering because it is a low and base activity. It destroys our environment. It destroys our neighborhoods. It absolutely angers all of us. There's universal agreement about stopping littering. We should be focused on that. We should be focused on teaching people to recycle. There's universal agreement on not, you know, but saying that if we put something in a landfill, it leaches into our water supply is not true. We know that modern landfills are lined and inspected by the EPA regularly, and anybody who knows anything about this knows that the fluids are being collected by a giant plastic liner, and nothing is leaching below, and they sample. And you're not allowed to build new landfills that leach effluent into the groundwater supply. And this is very strenuously regulated. So the idea that a bottle thrown on the ground is going into the ocean, I mean, I just, this is not true. No, it's not. It is not. How is it getting to the ocean? Yes, there is. Okay, and you had your opportunity to speak. I get to speak longer because I got elected by everybody in Vista. There absolutely is. I was rhetorical. I wasn't inviting you to give a response.

Remember, he's giving a very intelligent response. You might want to listen.

You know, if you're going to interrupt me, then should I bring lasagna? I'm sorry, that was a point of information. Should I just bring lasagna? Should we have a food fight? Or should we have some decorum and rules? I don't want any lasagna from you. Why can you not conduct yourself as an adult? Why do you have to yell? Why can you not give the respect to your fellow electeds to say their piece?

Why do you have to yell in general?

I am speaking my piece. I was elected to do so. You disagree with the substance of my thoughts, and therefore you want to interrupt me. You're just provoking me.

I think you provoked yourself, but whatever.

So am I to interrupt you ad nauseum and ad infinitum when you speak?

You do all the time, yes.

That is not true.

We can roll back the tapes.

Perhaps going forward, I should just interrupt you whenever I feel the pleasure. Go ahead. Because you do it to me. Why are you incapable of behaving as an adult? A child cannot follow basic decorum rules. You're behaving as a child. A child can't follow basic rules of decorum. Why do you not conduct yourself as a professional? Why do you not afford a level of respect to your colleagues that they afford to you?

Stop interrupting.

You are not recognized to speak. Stop it. It is so disrespectful. You're the one who took the pot shot at me of saying that my words about a cleaner, more beautiful Vista were empty. They are not empty. And no, you can push your button and I'll recognize you, but this is not an invitation again.

I'm on the list to be recognized.

Again, again. Yeah, I mean, we could be done with this sooner if you would stop interrupting. Yeah, we could. No, honestly, we could. Because then I would stop delaying the proceedings to point out the fact that you're interrupting. Yes, please stop. Please. We could be done with this and I'll go home. If you would simply let me say my piece. I mean, this is ridiculous. No, no, you know what? If you don't stop interrupting... then you're forcing my hand here. What would we do with a council member who continues to delay and disrupt the proceedings? What shall we do? What shall we do? What would you have us do?

I'd like to call the question.

Okay, when it is your turn to be recognized, you can make a motion. You are not recognized, and therefore you have not made a motion.

I'd like to make a... You don't make a motion. You're not recognized to speak. You're not recognized to speak. I have the floor.

I have the floor. You do not have the right to cut off my speech. No, you don't have the right to... She's not recognized. You do not have the right to cut off my speech. I am speaking... You do not have the right. You are not recognized. You have no right to make a motion.

You're not recognized to speak. No. I am not finished speaking.

You will have the right when you are recognized to call the question. You will have the right to do that. You do not have the right to do that because you are not recognized. You are not recognized for any purpose. And you do not have the right to disrupt the proceedings to call the question. That is not how it works. When it is your turn to speak, you may make a motion to call the question. But you do not have the right to interrupt just because you disagree with and a cut-off debate. You do not have that right.

May I be recognized?

No, you may not be recognized. If I may finish my remarks, then you and everybody else who has requested an order. The deputy mayor is next, and then you, and then... I know.

Even before you were interrupted, you kept going.

This is absurd that you persist.

It's pretty absurd that you won't recognize me.

How am I supposed to recognize you? It's not your turn. You're the chair. You haven't allowed me to finish my remarks without interruption. I cannot say my piece that I was elected by the entire city because of your continued and persistent interruptions. It is disrespectful. It is a violation of the decorum of the ordinances of the city of Vista. And frankly, I should ask the body to expel you from the room for your interruption of the meeting.

You should vote. You should make that a motion. You know what?

If you're going to force my hand, because at some point, if the rules are going to break down and we're not going to enforce them, then what, are you going to expel me for interrupting you, but they're not going to expel you for interrupting me? Is that how we're going to do this? No, you're behaving as a child because you refuse to observe the rules of the quorum and did not interrupt your fellow colleagues. It is completely unacceptable. And we are here 15 minutes longer with this nonsense because of your repeated interruptions. Thank you very much. That was all I had to say. Deputy Mayor O'Donnell.

It's really good to be back, everyone. Seven weeks off was not, it was too long. Okay, I actually like the idea of withdrawing the motion, adopting this as is, and bringing back the changes that we've asked for with staff, I can't even talk right now. It all got me like all jumbled in my head. With staff direction, so we can put in the three-year sunset on the two of them. If there are options to try and bring Council Member Fox's idea to light, I would like to see those as well. I'd like to get a little bit more thought process in granular on concerns you have, because maybe we can find a minimum financial threshold that we meet for city contribution for, something along those lines. I don't think we're going to hash it out tonight. And in fact, I think with what we want to do, we can't even do that tonight. So instead of going in circles on it, I would adopt this as is with the understanding that we want it brought back to make amendments to it if that's reasonable.

city attorney yeah what we would do is staff would bring back proposed amendments uh... and they would be inclusive of all the ideas on that it's been made from the dais and at that time the council could adopt or subtract you know some of these uh... proposed amendments so just for clarity minor only to have the thirty thousand threshold

three-year window to sunset and same goes to youth sporting events correct and then whatever uh direction councilmember fox wants to provide as far as what you're looking for to bring those amendments back as well uh to consider at a later date um so that is the motion i don't know if you will give a friendly second to that so we can end this discussion yes

Am I recognized?

I am recognizing you, but the mic and floor are still mine.

Fantastic. Thank you for recognizing me. Yes, I wholeheartedly support and second the motion on the floor. Thank you.

Perfect. And for the record, Mayor, I will, if you want to bring it back, support a litter sting in the City of Vista, because I agree with you, that is a huge problem. So those are all my comments. I would like to call for a vote, but I will

You should, I'm fine.

Then let's call for a vote.

Oh, I was sorry.

Very good. The question has been called.

Without objection?

Oh, no, I object because I'm on the queue. So I'll be voting no.

Okay, this is a motion to call the question. I'll second it, by the way. I can't remember if it needed to be seconded, but I'll second it. Yeah, I think it did, right?

It's four-fifths.

Yeah, but this is a motion to call the question.

I'm being censored.

I mean, I didn't make the motion. But I did second it.

I didn't say who's doing it, but I'm being censored.

Well, when you endeavor to censor, perhaps you're the one who's censored next, aren't you?

I think I'm going to obstruct by not pressing my vote button.

All those in favor, raise their hand. Okay, I see three in favor and two, all those opposed? All those opposed?

Nay. Okay.

Okay, no, no, that's not necessary. The vote is three in favor and two opposed, so the motion is failed. And we'll now recognize, who was next in the queue?

Council Member Melendez.

Council Member Melendez is recognized. I thought it was Council Member Contreras was recognized next.

I think she...

I don't have... Can you take the vote away, Kathy? Can you take the vote away?

She rescinded her time. My only comment that I wanted to share... She refused to vote, so we had to do it verbally. TO WAS IN RESPONSE TO THE MAYOR'S COMMENT SAYING THAT DURING THE NEXT READING OF THIS ITEM THAT THERE WOULDN'T BE AS MUCH FANFARE AND I JUST WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO THE MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY THAT CAME OUT TONIGHT AND I ENCOURAGE YOU TO CONTINUE THE FANFARE BECAUSE I THINK IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT WORK THAT YOU'VE DONE. THERE'S BEEN A LOT MORE WORK THAT HAS GONE INTO IT THAN WHAT MYSELF OR ANY OF MY FELLOW COLLEAGUES MIGHT HAVE CONTRIBUTED AND SO, YOU KNOW, WHEN THERE'S STATEMENTS MADE LIKE you know, we might have, you know, a majority to make certain changes, right, and ultimately reduce the effectiveness of this ordinance. You know, be watchdogs for the environment and continue to participate in these discussions and show up and use your voice in your full three minutes while you still can at the public meeting and yeah, just continue the fanfare and I just appreciate you and would encourage you to continue to participate because we will have further discussions.

Okay, I'm not seeing anybody else requesting recognition. So with that, who seconded Council Member O'Donnell's motion, Deputy Mayor's motion? Okay, we have a motion to second, please cast your votes. Okay, that item is approved with four in favor and one opposed. That will bring us to our first discussion item this evening regarding an agreement with Interfaith Community Services for administration of VISTA Senior Tenant Advice for Balanced Living and Expense Program. If any members of the public wish to speak on this item, they may indicate so by using the raise your hand feature by pressing star nine or submitting a request to speak. Hard speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Housing and Homeless Services Division Manager, Jonathan Lung, will introduce the item.

Thank you, good evening, Mayor, city council members. This item recommends an agreement with Interfaith Community Services for administration of the VISTA Senior Tenant Assistance for Balanced Living and Expenses Program, also known as the VISTA Stable Program. With me tonight is Management Analyst Catalina Langan, who will also provide portions of the staff presentation. Since the adoption of the strategic plan to address homelessness in 2020, four rental assistance programs have provided approximately $1.4 million to prevent 820 Vista residents from losing their housing. On November 12th, 2025, the city council appropriated $500,000 from a year end fund balance to continue rental assistance for housing and stable Vista seniors in support of the strategic plan. On February 24th, 2026, staff provided recommendations for parameters of a senior rental subsidy program with city council recommending modifications and directing staff to solicit feedback from the senior citizens affairs commission for their input. On April 28th, 2026, the city council approved the recommendations from the senior commission and further lowered the eligible age of applicants to 65 years or better, priority for seniors on the housing choice voucher wait list, limiting the disability requirement to the head of household only, and directed staff to publish an RFP to solicit an administrator of the VISTA stable program. Tonight, staff is recommending an agreement with Interfaith Community Services to administer the program.

The VISTA stable program provides financial assistance to support low income rent burden seniors living in VISTA who are at risk of housing instability. Key components include monthly rental subsidies of $250, $500, $750 or $1,000 depending on household need. Awards are designed to reduce rent burden to below 60% of gross income. Assistance may include rent and utilities including arrears. Subsidies may be provided for up to 24 months tailored to the participant's housing stabilization plan. All payments are issued directly to landlords or service providers. The program's long-term goal is to help households achieve stability after subsidy completion in part by increasing household income and decreasing expenses. Eligibility requirements include residency within Vista City limits, leaseholder status or legal tenancy, not receiving other rental assistance, a head of a household who is a senior, and a person with a disability. The household is spending more than 60% of its gross income on housing, where the subsidy would reduce that burden below 60%. Household income is at 30% area median income or less, and assets are totaling less than $2,000 or $3,000 for families aligned with SSI limits. Examples of assets included in this calculation are bank accounts or retirement savings, and things like primary vehicles or regular household items would not be included. Priority consideration may be given to individuals waitlisted for public benefits and highest need households as defined by rent burden acuity. Interfaith Community Services is proposed to administer the Vista Stable program. Interfaith is an established nonprofit serving North County since 1979 and assisting 23,000 individuals last year, including 4,370 seniors. Interfaith offers a person-centered case management model that includes individual service plans, stabilization phase, monitoring phase, transition and step down phase, and program exit and follow up. Interfaith will also leverage additional resources including Project CARE co-enrollment and senior support services. Project CARE is a safety net program for older persons and persons with disabilities and operates by maintaining effective contact and empowering individuals to remain as independent as possible in a safe environment. Individuals receive a care plan, support to reach their care plan goals, support in case of an emergency and referrals to community resources such as minor home repair. VISTA seniors are already enrolled in Project CARE and can be easily referred between Project CARE and the STABLE program. Interfaith is also the contracted provider of minor home modification services in North Coastal Region of San Diego County, which provides no-cost modification services to eligible caregivers to manage daily activities for older adults who need assistance to remain safe and secure in their home. The STABLE case manager will also be specialized in support for seniors. As part of case management, Interfaith will support participants through developing and updating housing stability plans, assistance in increasing household income through employment support, benefits enrollment, and adding additional household members when appropriate, assistance decreasing household expenses through budgeting, utility discounts, insurance adjustments, and lower cost service referrals. landlord advocacy, including managing rent increases, working with our partnership with townspeople for shared housing exploration, and family reunification where appropriate. The program will consist of several funding tranches with the opportunity to review and make needed changes based on evaluation from the previous tranche. Program evaluation will occur at each tranche level and will include application volume and approval rates, reasons for denial, demographic and income trends, rent burden and financial vulnerability, use of stabilization services, housing retention outcomes, financial assistance utilization, and referrals to higher intensity supports. Findings will inform potential refinements to eligibility, prioritization, outreach, case management, subsidy levels, duration, and program procedures. Applications will be accepted during designated periods and reviewed in four tranches, each within a one week application window. The program budget allocates $100,000 for program staffing to deliver that case management and program oversight functions, $360,000 to direct client assistance consisting of four cohorts with an estimate of 10 households per cohort and an average assistance anticipated of 750 a month for 12 months. and also allocates $39,000 for other program costs including supplies, mileage, and other program expenses. Interfaith operates accessible service centers locally, including the Carlsbad Service Center and the Inland Service Center in Escondido. Both are accessible by public transportation and offer onsite parking, and they are available over the phone during regular business hours. The proposed agreement with Interfaith includes a 12-month term with options to renew for up to 36 additional months, continued operation contingent on available funding, participation and reporting to the City Council, Standing Committee on Homelessness, the Homelessness Commission, and the Senior Citizens Affairs Commission. This concludes staff's presentation. We are prepared to receive Council direction and are available to respond to any questions.

Very good. We have Filippo Rios who would like to speak on this item.

Good evening, Mayor Franklin and members of the City Council. My name is Philippa Rios, and I am the Chief Operating Officer for Interfaith Community Services. And I came up here to tell you a little bit about Interfaith, but your staff did such a wonderful job. They made my life easier. But I do want to thank the City Council for putting forth this proposal to help vulnerable seniors in your community. This is, and city staff, they did a really good job on this proposal. We're proud to have applied for it. In our work, we know that once a senior becomes homeless, it's harder to get them out of homelessness. And they effectively use a lot of services, including our emergency services, which cost our city a lot of extra dollars that we could be putting into helping them stay housed and stable. So I just wanted to thank you for your work on this proposal, and we're honored to have applied for it. Thank you.

Council Member Melendez.

Yes, well thank you for the presentation and thank you for speaking and sharing a little bit of background from Interfaith. This project is very important to me. Last year when we experienced, again, a budget surplus and we had funds in our year-end fund balance, it was important to me to advocate that some portion of those funds be allocated to rental assistance for seniors. We know that seniors are a growing population of people experiencing homelessness. And since elected in 2020, I have really pushed for a three-prong approach, which is prevention, intervention, and resolution. And we really have focused on that prevention piece. As much as we can to prevent homelessness, we will save costs down the line and reduce human suffering overall. I'm very pleased that we were able to have a successful bid for this program to be administered by Interfaith. And the work doesn't stop there, right? We were able to allocate funding. Myself and the mayor have reviewed this topic in our Homelessness Standing Committee. Our Homelessness Commission has reviewed this topic. And now we have the opportunity to approve an administrator for these funds. But the real work begins. and I really thank Interfaith for being a part of this. You do an excellent job in providing services, and I think there's so much to say about how valuable these services are, but something I just wanna highlight that I've thought about when it comes to this program is that we wanna see seniors that are integrated into a multi-generational household. We know that that improves everybody's quality of life when families can be close-knit and stay together, reduce costs and builds resilience. But we do have seniors that are isolated. We have seniors that do not have family support. We have seniors that have, you know, it's beyond just a limited income. It is an environment that they are never going to be able to sustain on their own. So the City of Vista can come in and recognize the value of those seniors, how they have worked their entire lives and they deserve to have support and a safety net in the case where they are not able to pay rent if they have an emergency situation, they now have a specialized program to assist them. So just in support of all the work that has been done and all the work that is going to come from this, I would go ahead and make a motion to approve the contract with Interfaith for the stable program. Thank you.

I'm not gonna vote in favor of this because as I said when you originally proposed the idea, so this is a half a million dollars, $1,000 per month maximum award, that's $12,000 per person. The criteria to be eligible to receive these funds would make more than 10,000 residents of the City of Vista eligible. and my concern is how do we decide who's going to receive this substantial twelve thousand dollar a year uh... maximum stipend and then what will we do if future budget years don't allow us to continue the stipend and we've created a need or dependency and a reliance upon the stipend and we look to this as a place to cut which invariably it will be one of the things that will be cut in a budget downturn Furthermore, this is a plan of absolute socialism. The idea that we're going to provide direct payments for people's housing, I can't support it on those grounds. You don't have enough resources here at the city to provide this to all the people who would be eligible, who would apply, who would benefit from it under the conditions you've set forth. So you're going to have a very, very limited number of people who effectively win a government lottery. And while I know that's enticing to some people to say we can help a few people, the problem is we do not have the financial resources to help all the people who would qualify. Vista is a city that has an area median income that is 25% lower than the rest of the county. We are a poorer city than most of our neighbors by mathematical measurement. We have many impoverished individuals, many seniors who are impoverished, and there's no way to fairly distribute this benefit among them. I've strongly supported several senior housing projects like the Grove and our National Core project is a lot of seniors also. What was the other senior project that we approved? We're working on one right now. I strongly support those and I've always been and I will remain vocally supportive of HUD subsidized because the federal government has about 15 times more revenues per capita than the City of Vista does. This is a completely new expansion of municipal government. The City of Vista has never provided direct housing subsidies to individuals. We got into the business of providing emergency, you know, homelessness prevention. You're going to get thrown out and we're going to give you some money to prevent that from happening. But this, you know, and what happens? Do we have a long-term plan to get this person? How long were they eligible? Up to 24 months. What happens when the 24 months runs out?

Ideally, the idea is that the case management will allow them to stabilize to a point where they will become self-sufficient. That will be the measure of success for this program, is whether or not we can end the subsidy and they can subsidize. They will no longer rely on the subsidy.

Well, you know, it's a massive expansion of socialism in the city of Vista. I cannot support it. You know, this could easily balloon to many millions of dollars. There's no subsidy from the state of California to support this. I just can't get behind this open advance of socialism in our city government. Deputy Mayor O'Donnell.

FORGIVE ME IF I MISSED IT DURING THE CONVERSATION, BUT I GUESS TWO THINGS. THE $40,000 IN THERE FOR ADDITIONAL FEES OF THE 100,000 FOR THE CONTRACT, 40,000 FOR ADDITIONAL FEES OR WHATEVER IT IS, WHAT IS THAT $40,000 COMPRISE OF? I'M JUST LOOKING AT A BUDGET OF $500,000 ALLOCATED AND 28% OF IT IS NOT GOING TO THE INTENDED INDIVIDUALS.

Yeah, so that's a combination of other program costs, so mileage, phone, supplies, licenses, occupancy, and indirect costs, and staffing.

So mileage, phones, license? Yeah, that's right, so all the- Is that not provided under the contract?

That is provided in the contract via that appropriation.

So really the contract's 140,000, not 100,000. But I wanna ask the other program costs. Program costs total. I'm talking about the $39,555 for other program costs on top of the $100,445 for personnel. Personnel then.

Yep, 39,535. So that's a 50% indirect admin plus those additional line items for the direct program costs. It's a pretty standard set of direct program costs we see with most of our contracts.

Over a four-year period, it doesn't seem like a lot, but when you only have $500,000 allocated, it is a tremendous chunk of the funding source that we've created. I don't entirely disagree with some of the points that the Mayor made. I am going to support this, but I DO HAVE A CONCERN AT THE END OF THIS. HOWEVER WE TRACK THE SUCCESS OF THIS PROGRAM I THINK IS VERY, VERY IMPORTANT. I'VE STATED MANY, MANY TIMES I THINK THAT WE ARE COMING UP TO A FINANCIAL ISSUE AND I THINK THAT IT WAS CONFIRMED IN CONVERSATIONS I'VE HAD WITH OUR STAFF ABOUT WHERE WE SIT AS A CITY AND WHAT OUR FINANCIAL OUTLOOK LOOKS LIKE IN THE NEXT THREE TO FOUR YEARS. NOT THAT IT'S TERRIBLE BUT WE DEFINITELY WILL BE NEEDING TO MAKE SOME CUTS AND I THINK THAT THIS IS PROBABLY ONE OF THOSE UNFORTUNATE THINGS THAT MAY GET CUT. But as it is right now, it's only a pilot program from my understanding. So just the tracking and success of the program, I mean, if you can show us that after 24 months people are finding stable homes or stable housing and they don't need the subsidy anymore, then that's good. But if we find that people at 24 months are relying still on more subsidy or can now, they've relied on it, so now they've allocated funding that they have to some other area of their life, And now they don't have the money to do anything. And now they're going to get kicked out on the street anyway. I think that's an unfortunate circumstance that can also happen. So those are my comments on it. But I don't know if there's anything that you wanted to add.

Yeah, we can do Yvonne better. So the idea is with each tranche, we'll follow up with the city council on the accomplishments, how well each individual has been stabilized as we're rolling out the next tranche. So ideally, we're gonna gauge their ability to remain housed without subsidy over a six and 12 month period. If they do remain stably housed, we can count that as success. With the number of seniors we would be funded to assist, it wouldn't be a great number, so it'd be pretty easy calculation.

Yeah. SO WE'LL HAVE THAT EVERY SIX MONTHS ROUGHLY?

ROUGHLY. THAT'S THE HOPE AND EXPECTATION THAT WE'LL BE READY FOR THE NEXT LAUNCH EVERY SIX MONTHS OR SO WITH RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE LAST.

YOU'VE MADE THE MOTION, COUNCILMEMBER? YES. I WILL SECOND IT. COUNCILMEMBER CONTRERAS.

YEAH, I JUST APPRECIATE ALL THE WORK THAT WENT INTO TRYING TO PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER FROM ALL THE COUNCIL DIRECTION THAT WAS GIVEN PREVIOUSLY. You know, I understand that we may be in a position in the future where we are not able to allocate as many resources to our community. I think we have an obligation to do so when we have those resources available, and right now we do. And that happens to me at a time where folks are just not understanding how they're gonna make it. And you know, for me, our senior population, We're talking about a population that can't just go and find more work. So I hope that we are able to stabilize folks. I think we have to at least try. I think when we have the ability financially to try to help where it doesn't become a detriment to the city and the other services that we have, we absolutely have to try. And I happen to think that's the role of government at all levels is to help protect our people here in the United States. And I wish that we had a system where everybody had healthcare. I wish that we had a system where everybody was treated with dignity and had a house because housing is a human right. And we have so much money in this country for wars for billionaire tax breaks, for creating new colonial powers across the world. And so I'll be damned if I don't do everything I can at this local level to help everybody who needs it, because we can certainly afford it. And when it comes time, hopefully this doesn't happen, but If we cross a bridge where financially we cannot afford these services, then we will have that discussion. But we are not there yet. So thank you so much for putting this together. Thank you to Councilmember Melendez for bringing this forward. And I wholeheartedly support this. Thank you.

Councilmember Fox.

Thank you. Just to be clear, for the public, this is something that this council's already approved, and we're specifically just allocating who's going to be administering the program, correct? Right. So, I mean, I share the mayor's skepticism towards large programs of just giving people money, and I think that it's also true that this will only be able to help a small portion. But I do think that, but I also agree with the Deputy Mayor's assessment of, I think the success of this program can be measured on the success of how many people at the end of it are able to get off of these subsidies and are able to support themselves. And the fact that this is already something that we approved as a council, I WILL SUPPORT THE MOTION ON THE FLOOR BECAUSE IT'S PICKING WHO'S ADMINISTERING THAT. I DON'T WANT TO HAVE THAT REFLECT ON INTERFAITH. SO THANKS.

One more comment, just hearing some of the comments from my colleagues, Council Member Fox and Deputy Mayor O'Donnell. I believe that the merit of this program stands on its own, that being able to provide people with a public benefit and assistance for their basic needs is a duty that we have to But I really appreciate the point of view that the merit of this program is also that these folks are going to be entered into services to build resiliency and support and skills for their overall well-being. I wish that we could go to every single vulnerable senior and say, hey, enroll in this program, learn how to manage your costs, do a room share program, and ultimately be able to sustain yourself. But maybe the entry point for some of these folks is going to be applying for city funds. right applying for a city program and the outcome could be that since they did engage in these services and they did receive a public benefit that they find other parts of their lives are enhanced as well so i just want to share that i see that merit as well very good i think we have a motion a second please cast your votes

That item is approved with four in favor and one opposed. That'll bring us to our next item.

Where did I put my agenda here?

Item D2, regarding the CEA and Luminia Solar Plus Program at Vista Facilities. If any member of the public wishes to speak on this item, they may indicate so by using the raise your hand feature, by pressing star nine, or by submitting a request to speak card. Speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Assistant City Manager Mala Huerta will introduce the item.

Thank you. Good evening again, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the City Council, Melda Huerta, Assistant City Manager. With me is Cassidy McCarthy, our Climate Action Plan Program Administrator, who will introduce our presenters tonight.

Good evening. So with us tonight, we have Rob Howard with CEA and Paul DeCleermecker from Luminea, and they'll be giving tonight's presentation.

Great. Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council, staff. Rob Howard, I'm the External Affairs Manager for Clean Energy Alliance. I also want to acknowledge Clean Energy Alliance's Board Chair, Council Member Melendez, and our alternate, Council Member Fox. Real quickly, I want to just give you some background. We've done presentations about Clean Energy Alliance in the past. We've talked about that we have programs available for VISTA constituents for savings, but I'll really focus tonight on our solar plus business program. In 2024, Clean Energy Alliance launched the original Solar Plus program, and it was to expand access for locally generated solar and better energy storage for our residential customers. Now we're building on that. Our board approved in 2025 our Solar Plus business program to extend these opportunities to the commercial, industrial, municipal, and school district properties within Clean Energy Alliance's service territory. The program was developed in partnership with Luminia, who you're going to hear from in just a moment, to provide qualifying customers with solar paired with battery storage or standalone battery storage without any upfront cost. Solar Plus Business is designed to help participating organizations reduce long-term energy cost and peak demand, increase energy resiliency, and support CEA's broader goal of expanding local clean energy resources and investing in the communities we serve. And we believe this is a program that is something that will help the city of Vista take advantage of the program at some of your municipal facilities. And at this time, I'd like to turn it over to Paul DeClairmaker from Luminea to tell you more information about the program. Paul.

Thank you, Rob. Mayor, deputy mayor and council, good evening. Let me change my slide here. So at staff request, we reviewed the electric consumption of 34 meters. Hold on a second here. 34 meters at 31 sites within city-owned properties. We tried to identify the properties that were appropriate for the solar plus business program, which meant they had appropriate annual energy consumption of 250,000 kilowatt hours. We identified which properties of those currently had solar that might be an eligible candidate for adding energy storage. And then we looked at sites that did qualify if we could use rooftops. They had to have sufficient square footage on the rooftop, at least 10,000 square feet. And the rooftop age needed to be within 15 years or younger. After doing that, we identified a small batch of properties that would work. Then what we did, we ran economic analysis to see would they add a benefit to the city? In other words, would there be savings and financial benefit if they incorporated a program beginning year one? We also worked with a city consultant that's working on your EV charging needs. We gathered from them future electric consumption based on the adoption of EV charging throughout your portfolio of properties to see if we could add that load into the calculation and expand the qualified properties for the program. What I'll share with you is the sites that show initial eligibility for the program and what the economic benefits are. So the Wave Water Park was the leader. It could be a host for a 200 kW solar system and a battery storage system. BASED ON INDICATIVE ECONOMICS, WE THINK THAT WOULD YIELD THE CITY AROUND $118,000 IN YEAR ONE BENEFIT, AND OVER THE 25-YEAR TERM, ALMOST $6 MILLION. MOONLINE APRIL THEATER WAS THE SECOND LOCATION. AGAIN, THAT WOULD BE FOR ADDING SOLAR AND STORAGE TO THAT SITE. THAT WOULD BE A 25-YEAR TERM. It's a smaller solar system, it's under 100 kilowatt solar system with a battery, and that would yield around $5,500 in year one benefit and term benefit around a million dollars. The third site is a civic center, this property here which currently has solar, and we looked at can we add battery storage to that. And that when we can, the benefit is less. It's around $8,000 in year one benefit and term benefits just shy of $100 million. And that would be under a 10-year term. Those were the three sites that did qualify. At staff's request, we looked at some additional sites to have a second look. It was Public Works, Jim Porter Rec Center, the Senior Center, and the Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, none of them would work. A few of them did meet the program criteria for load. However, the economic benefit wasn't possible, either because the meters were too far apart. and the cost to combine them so we had sufficient load would be too great. Or they did not meet the load even with added EV charging expectation. So we move forward and I'll take you through the individual economics of each. From a very high level, as Rob indicated, this program can deliver either carports or rooftop solar. On all these sites, it's a carport system that we're recommending because the rooftop size was not sufficient. So we're looking at potentially adding carports to the northeast side parking lot of the Wave Water Park. Again, it's a 25-year program. Under the program, we're a contract with CEA to maintain, finance, design, and operate these systems for the full term. The requirement for the city would be a site lease, so we can install, operate, and maintain these systems for the term. and an agreement to buy the power on your current SDG&E bill under the solar plus business tariff for that term.

Let me go to the next one here.

This is a 25-year financial analysis. I won't bore you with the details. The key summaries here are the savings are based off SDG&E increasing at 4% a year. Historically, since 2018, SDG&E has gone up almost 80%, which is a 7.6% annual compounded growth. We're being conservative at 4%, and so the savings, should SDG&E rates continue to be where they are at, would be greater than what we see here, but we wanted to be conservative in our estimates. The next site is Moonlight Amphitheater. Again, you can see we're installing carports at the northern part of the property in the parking lot. Location of the carports is flexible based on city feedback and staff feedback, but that represents approximately the size of the system to service that facility and do an offset and deliver those savings. Again, here is the economic analysis for the 25-year cash flows. If there's any questions, I can take those after the presentation. Third is a civic center for storage. It's 10 years only. For solar and storage, it's 25 years. That has to do with the life of the battery. Again, it's a year one benefit of around $8,000 between lease income to the city and energy savings. and term savings of just shy of $100,000. Here is the cash flows, 10-year cash flows for that. And a little summary of the program itself. It's a 10 year, 25 year site lease that we would require from the city. And then you would opt in to the solar plus business rate. Again, that rate would be added to your existing SUG&E bill. The timeline from the time the city says go until this time that these systems are operational is anywhere from eight to 14 months, depending on permitting. and scheduling of construction and in coordinating construction around site needs and site restrictions for summertime use for the wave park for example or other constraints. Next steps as a summary is identify which if any or all of the projects that the Council would like to pursue. The Upon that, what we would do is we would issue a site walk to local contractors. We would get real pricing from them of what the cost would be. We use indicative pricing based on a database that we have of eligible similar projects. installed in San Diego County, and we'd like to get exact installation costs based on site specific needs, where the storage needs to be located, where you want the carports, and any other constraints that we have based on your electrical infrastructure at those sites. We would come back then to staff with the updated economics, And then if that is acceptable to staff and the council and the mayor, then what we would do is execute site lease subject to legal review. That is it for the presentation. Any questions?

Do we want to ask questions right now or do we want to hear from public speakers? Okay, we're going to hear from our public commenters and then we may call you back up for some questions, okay? Okay, our first speaker is Joe Hood, followed by Diane Nygaard, followed by Janice Jones. Mr. Hood.

Well, good evening one more time. I'm VISTA's representative to the Clean Energy Alliance's Citizen Advisory Committee. I must say this event, this proposal is absolutely amazing to me. I've stood at this podium advocating for a project like this since 2020, and I'm thrilled to see it moving forward finally. Whoever pushed it, yay.

Rob, great job.

There's strong evidence that solar and battery investments can deliver substantial savings for public agencies. In June, 2022, the Poway Unified School District Board approved a solar parking structure project at 13 schools through a power purchase agreement with Forefront Power. The district reported expected savings of approximately $500,000 in the first year and 22 million over 20 years. It's on their website. 22 million, well, maybe we'll get eight million. If anything, I wonder if we could take one further look at are there ways to include other city parking lots and structures This is a rare opportunity to deliver multiple benefits at once, lowering costs, greater energy independence, environmental leadership, and long-term value for VISTA's residents. Let's reduce emissions, save money, and provide even greater benefit to VISTAs. That's a win for the environment, a win for taxpayers, and a win for VISTA. Please, please endorse this.

Diane Nygaarden.

It's so great to see this kind of partnership between the city and CEA. This is exactly the kind of programs that we would hope we would see coming to benefit our cities when CEA got started a few years ago. There are probably infinite ways the city can use to reduce their greenhouse gases. But with this way, you eliminate upfront city costs. You get the savings for 10, 25 years, depending on the project. And of course, Mother Earth gets the benefit of the reduced greenhouse gas emissions. As Joe said, it's a win-win for everybody. Thank you very much.

Janice Jones.

Just simply, I support this 100% and agree with Joe and Diane that this is a win-win-win. And thank you for bringing this forward and hope we can expand upon it in the future.

Now we'll hear from Kathy Rawlings on Zoom.

Thank you, and thank you again for offering a Zoom alternative to being there in person. And on behalf of the San Diego 350 North County team, I would like to extend our support for this measure. What's already been said, I won't repeat again. One thing that is, I think, important that city governments continue to do line their roofs and line their parking lots with solar and battery storage because we can become, you can become generators of clean energy for the community when you are not in session on weekends and other holidays. You could generate a lot of clean energy for the community and during peak times, the residents of your community can benefit as well. So I do hope that you will support this measure.

Now going over the basics of this again, do we have to invest cash up front? No. Okay, do we get any contractual guarantee of production of power over the life of the contract? Because I know we don't know what's going to happen with the rates, but are we guaranteed that your equipment is going to produce a minimum amount?

Yes, so we have a contract with the Clean Energy Alliance. Under that contract, there's performance guarantees and obligations.

Okay. So who pays the bill? The city pays the bill? We pay a lease to you?

Correct.

Okay. And you're going to guarantee us the production of a certain number of megawatts over the life of the equipment?

Correct.

Okay. And we'll be entitled to recover or default the contract if we don't get the production of energy?

CEA will. Yeah. So we have to go through CEA to get... CEA is a power provider under the agreement.

So our agreement is with CEA.

CEA is selling the power to you, correct?

Okay, so the city has an agreement with CEA. Does CEA's contract with the city of Vista guarantee us power production in exchange for our payments?

Yeah, we'll defer to CEA.

Thank you, Mayor. The way the arrangement is, you will simply be paying an electric bill. You will be paying for the energy. And the program allows the system to do it in a green, sustainable manner. You'll have storage. And that's how we're able to come up with the savings because we're able to produce energy. And what you don't use, we're storing in the battery. And then you can discharge later, typically during the four to nine high cost time.

But the city of Vista is going to make an additional payment to CEA? I mean, right now we're all paying our bill to SDG&E, and I understand that money is passed through SDG&E, goes to CEA.

And as a part of this program, that arrangement continues. Again, your payments to CEA will be on your bill. You will pay your utility bill to SDG&E. On the bill, you'll have the Clean Energy Alliance payment for the generation, and that gets passed through the CEA.

Okay.

So all CapEx and OpEx is funded by Lumina and you are charged for the generation that that system has. We are contractually obligated as program administrator to CEA to make sure that we meet production and availability.

I just want to make sure we're not on the hook to pay for something unless you're on the hook to produce a guaranteed minimum kilowatt hours, because we don't know what's going to happen with electric rates, but if we can guarantee production, then we should be okay to guarantee payment at today's rates.

And Mayor and Council, I also want to add that I did not emphasize this, but for your agreement, in your participation in the program for that 25-year period, the escalator on the cost for generation is just 1%. And so you also have the stability of knowing what your rates will be over that time period.

Well, 1% sounds pretty good. Did we have Mike Sylvia take a look at this?

Yeah. We're going to have an independent analysis.

Oh, good. Yeah, okay. That's very helpful to know that we're going to have an independent analysis of the contract. I appreciate that. Council Member Contreras. Council Member Melendez, if she'd like to be recognized first.

Thank you, thank you. My button got messed up. Thank you so much for being here today. It's really exciting to see this partnership with CEA and Luminea, and now we're starting to implement it, hopefully not just the City of Vista, but other cities as well. We know that our parking lots can be more productive than they are and that they can harvest the power of the sun. And in recent years, we've advanced to understand that battery storage is essential to be combined with solar power. This is to respond to the fact that the sun's only out for a certain time of the day. And therefore, we do need to improve that resource adequacy by having storage on site. The only question that I had was that some of the sites looked like they could accommodate more storage or more solar, specifically the Moonlight site. So can you speak to that a little bit and why the footprint of the infrastructure is what it is?

Yes, absolutely. So there's sufficient space to expand the solar carports at that site. It's based on the production of that site. So we're looking, I'm sorry, based on the consumption of that site. So we're looking at what was the historical consumption of that site for the previous 12 months, as well as what would the EV charger load be with the new chargers that are planned to be at that site as well. Based on that, we are targeting a 60% offset, which is the sweet spot of savings under current net metering 3.0 construct. We could look at increasing that up to an 80% offset or 90% offset, if that would be the preference, and then come back and see if that improves the overall savings and benefits.

Okay, I'm understanding a little bit better now. I'm not sure how this would impact the site's infrastructure, but We do have adjacent public facilities there, Jim Porter Recreation Center, that I imagine would increase the energy need for that area. So is that included in this mapping at all? We looked at that.

The challenge there is those meters, based on how, in California, how we can interconnect a solar system and what meters get the benefit from that solar system. Today, based on the Public Utilities Commission and the current guidance from SDG, you can only offset that meter that we're connecting.

So we can't run a line to the neighborhood behind the park. We can't do anything. We can't be free in California.

I mean, we actually looked at, OK, what if we consolidated all of these meters into one? But the infrastructure cost of doing that made the project unequal.

I hear you. I think that these are some great sites. In addition to doing an independent review with our financial department, I would also like to have a review from our environmental commission and talk about the sites specifically and where we think the biggest impact will be. so we you have I just appreciate the work that's gone in because you've evaluated a number of sites here that you know not just the council but the public has said you know why aren't we doing more with these parking lots and so I really do appreciate the work and I think that you know I support it I would give you know staff feedback to bring this back to us for formal approval but you know I think that we can kind of all come around the table and enhance this program, make it fit, and be the right fit for Vista.

Thank you, Council Member. And regarding the sites, we're flexible as to where it needs to be based on feedback. Would you prefer a shade canopy on a grassy area? Do you prefer it in a parking lot? I mean, there's flexibility. The impact in cost or savings to the city would be how far we have to trench from the location of the solar array and the battery to your main service or your electrical services. and further distance more cost less savings so you're welcome councilmember corinne and contras

Yeah, I'm very supportive, actually. During a different meeting, council meeting, I asked, hey, when was the last time we tried to look at what the cost of battery storage is? And I was just thinking here. And so I'm glad to have this full analysis. I'm ready to go forward with it as quickly as possible while we have the opportunity to do so, especially at the wave. So, you know, I feel like I would want to move expeditiously on the wave water park. And I think for the, to have like a site review and a review by our environmental commission is great. I definitely support that. But I would want to fast track the wave water park. Because we already know that that has a substantial amount of savings and anything that we can do to save money there Saves money for the taxpayers and helps us you know, reduce the subsidy overall for the Wave Water Park, which is just gonna be financially helpful for us. So I don't know where the rest of my council stands on that, but I definitely wanna fast track the Wave Water Park. The other thing that I would want to be reviewed is, it's probably not beneficial yet, but I think reviewing downtown in the Avvo to see what we can do in downtown. Because we also have a downtown master plan that I was successful in leading and getting broad-based consensus on. And there's some additional features there. So I don't want to limit what we can do. I want to start looking at how potentially we can integrate this program into our downtown as well. And potentially, I don't know if there's a way to even bring this to the bid district or something to try and stabilize energy rates for our businesses. So I'm thinking, you know, how can we be small business friendly? You know, I saw that the chamber is going to be moving to a different location and all that. So I really want to figure this out, especially looking at how we can you know the the analysis and once we do an independent analysis i'm assuming it would probably be very very close if not the same and if all that comes to fruition i need my business owners to have the ability to get a reduced rate as well um so i don't know how we can work that out but i think the downtown is a great place to start especially at the historic downtown

Yeah, thank you for that. And I'd like to add that one of the concepts behind the program, which is really unique, I've been doing renewable energy development for a couple of decades nationwide. We're locally based in San Diego County. And a great attribute of the program is it doesn't require any capital up front from the business or from the city or a school district or a nonprofit. We're not basing the rates on their credit rating. We're not basing the rates on their working capital. Typically, the constraint for most entities to get solar is they either need capital or they need investment-grade credit rating, which eliminates most of the potential rooftops, carports, users of electricity. And with this program, we've eliminated that requirement because we're underwriting Clean Energy Alliance, which has 255,000 subscribers, versus underwriting an individual.

Right. Right. So economies of scale. It makes a big difference.

That cost of capital goes across the board to everybody.

Yeah. And it's great to be able to slash through red tape. and remove a lot of barriers for folks. And then come to think about it, in our downtown, we also have Vista Unified School District present there, too. So I would love to see what we can do in our historic downtown. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And then across from there, we have a fire station and Wildwood Park, and then another park that's coming. I'm ready to make sure that we reduce rates and costs for electricity and that we're able to just have a more sustainable defossilized energy. We severely need energy independence and I think the ISSUES THAT WE'RE SEEING GLOBALLY JUST UNDERSCORE THAT A LOT MORE. SO THANK YOU SO MUCH. AND I'M IN FULL SUPPORT. AND CAN WE FAST TRACK THE WAVE? THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER FOX. THANK YOU. YEAH. I ALSO LIKE SAVING MONEY. AND SO I REALLY APPRECIATE THIS PROPOSAL. I WAS HEARING A LOT OF DIFFERENT COMMENTS THAT I AGREED WITH. I THINK THAT IT WOULD BE AWESOME IF WE COULD HAVE THE WAVE UP AND RUNNING BY NEXT SEASON.

I accept the challenge.

Okay. Yeah. I also agreed with what Mr. Hood and Council Member Contreras mentioned, kind of put together into one thought about the downtown. We have that Citrus and Broadway parking lot that we're probably, in that downtown plan, probably has us spending a couple hundred thousand dollars on shade cloths, which are, they don't generate any electricity. And so that was something that was interesting. I was curious because the program is used to offset a specific meter and all of that. And so that was where I was like, oh, maybe it's not going to work there. But then I was reminded that there is the school, the Vista Magnet Middle School right next door with the big lights that they use for the ball fields and things like that. It is right across the street from the back of the Avvo Theater. in a lot of those different areas. So I was like, oh, maybe that is close enough. It's a lot closer than Jim Porter and Moonlight, of course. That was interesting. So I also agree with the idea of bringing it to the Environmental Commission to potentially have their input on it. Maybe they have even better ideas than me. And so I like that idea. And since we are going to get all the financials on it anyway and everything, then I would love to see them look at that and come up with some fun ideas for us. Yeah, I think that's about it. Thank you.

If I may, I just also wanted to note that I have already been working with CEA and with facilities and we've recognized a couple meters at the Broadway and Citrus parking lot. So they're doing an analysis right now on that one.

Deputy Maradona.

Thank you for being here this evening. I have a couple questions. I don't know if you've ever seen SDG&E come here, but I'm not always very nice to them. So I have some questions that I just need answers to before I'm going to be fully on board with this. And the concept, I absolutely support it. The first question I'm going to ask you is in the totality of all of this, because I understand you want to create a bunch of microgrids that you can then create energy, put it back onto the system. How does this benefit and lower the cost to rate payers over the long run? Because the objective for me when we join the CEA is to lower the cost to the average individual living in our city. So what I want to know is how and when we put this infrastructure in, over time, will it benefit?

Thank you, Council Member. The overall goal, excuse me, for Clean Energy Alliance is to get to 100% renewable by 2035, but at the same time do it in an affordable fashion. One of the things each time we have a microgrid or when we have solar and battery storage that is local, then the savings will start with those individual customers in the beginning, because now they're not paying that delivery charge. If you look at your bill, you have the cost of electricity, then you have the cost to deliver that electricity, And then you have other fees, the base service charge and other fees. And so overall, if when Clean Energy Alliance, when you're saving, that's less power we have to purchase. If you're looking at the big picture now, if we can continue to have our customers save. saving at a certain amount, we're purchasing less, and therefore we've got costs that we don't have to pass on to the customers in increased rates. And with these programs, you're locking in your rate over the period of time, the 25 year at 1%. Now, you say it's increasing, but the reality is if I'm, if my bill is only going up at 1%. Oh yeah.

You don't have to explain that part. Okay.

But overall it's about us having the, the power locally so that we are, cause we're constantly trying to, to put a portfolio together and I'd be happy to have our procurement manager, um, whose name is also Dan, to talk to you about how putting that portfolio together, we have to have a diversity of different sustainable energy sources, but we also want to get them as close to the user as possible. And when you're closer, you're not paying. The transportation is a lot cheaper. So overall, You now have contracts that are more affordable, and so we're not having to continue to raise the fees.

Which would make sense why municipalities and business centers are probably your key target individuals or markets, because then you have the largest infrastructure to go off of.

Right. And also, I want to just give a shout out to what you also gain, not just in the energy cost, In the event of an emergency and you have the batteries on site, you've got the solar on site, you have the potential to be a resource hub for your community in the case of some sort of power outage everywhere else. The wonderful thing about these microgrids is that You don't know the power's out because your system's still working. So there are several other benefits.

Battery on my house, just for that reason. I'll share one other element. So every what's called load serving entity in the state of California, including CCAs, and CEAs is a CCA, is required to have certain resource adequacy requirements. That has to do with how much power they deliver to all their customers. and they have to have enough resources available. They have to buy those allocations on the open market. Each individual battery storage system that we deploy as part of this program helps reduce that requirement and that impacts all repairs. Awesome.

That kind of answers my other question because I was going to ask you if, to put a battery when the infrastructure is in place on this building, And it saves us about $10,000 a year. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for us to do it. And I'm assuming you're going to make substantially more than that off of the energy going back onto the grid. But my question would be is, after 10 years, then what? So if we don't renew the lease, do you take the battery back? Or what happens?

Yeah, there's two five-year extensions within the base 10-year contract. If you choose not to elect to extend it, then we have to remove it at our cost, or the city can buy it at fair market value.

So within the renewal of the five-year lease... Is the battery under warranty still, or if it goes down, do we have to replace it?

After the 10-year period, if you do extend it for one or two five-year terms, we are still obligated to maintain it.

Awesome. Okay. I love the idea of moving into a shade structure at the Moonlight, if we're gonna go that route. Just one more thing, it provides daytime opportunity. I don't know if it's feasible though, because it is up on a huge slope and a hill, it may not be anywhere near a generator that you would need, so I would understand why it wouldn't be done, but I like the thought process in that and thinking outside the box. The other question I have, so I know it's a 25-year lease at the Wave. None of us are gonna be on that, well, I hope none of us are on this council in 25 years. We're talking right now about $15 million in investment in the infrastructure of the wave just to keep it operational over the next decade. What happens if the wave is no longer there?

So the power would still be available to whoever the new tenant is. In the agreement, if for some reason you dispose of that property, you want to transition out of your portfolio, the agreement can be reassigned to the new property owner. or the agreement could be early termination options. So there's early termination options beginning year six because we have tax equity investors that bring down the cost of the system that need to stay in for the first five years.

I'm aware of that because when I sold my home, I did not meet the criteria to maintain my tax credit and had to pay it back. Okay, I mean, those are all my questions. I love the program. I know, I mean... We've been working together for a long time. It's very nice to meet you. I've worked with Rod as well, tried to introduce him to different groups and organizations that might benefit from a program like this. I'd love to see this expansion. My end goal will always be to lower the rate for the individual homes. And so if we can find ways to do that, that's what my main objective is gonna be. But I think from a benefit from the city standpoint, I'm fine moving forward the wave after we do our own independent study. We'd like to see more concepts and ideas regarding the other two, if that's what we're looking for. And I know we're just giving direction to staff, but that's where I'm at at the moment. So appreciate the presentation and all the information. Thank you.

Okay, looks like we don't have any other speakers. We didn't have a motion on that, right? Okay, very good.

Just so I'm clear, Mayor, we have direction to move forward with the Wave Water Park.

After Independence.

we'll do an independent study, but we will bring the rest of the sites outside the way back to the Environmental Commission for review.

Okay, thank you.

Very good, very good. Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. We look forward to that independent review. Sounds like a good program. If we can save a dollar on it, I'm for it.

No cost.

I like that.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, you got residential programs? Good, all right, I might, I wouldn't qualify? That's too bad. All right, our final discussion item tonight is about expanding Vista's foam ban onto retail establishments. If any members of the public wish to speak on this item, they may indicate so, but using the raise your hand feature by pressing star nine or submitting a request to speak card, speakers will be called upon after the presentation. Our assistant city manager, Imelda Huerta, will introduce the item.

Yes, thank you. Good evening again, Mayor, Deputy Mayor and City Council, Mel DeWerth, Assistant City Manager, and Cassidy McCarthy, our Climate Action Plan Program Administrator, will provide the report on expanding VISTA's phone ban to retail establishments.

Oh, sorry.

Hello again, so for some background in April of 2026, the environmental commission research discussed and recommended that city council enact an ordinance to prohibit the retail sales of polystyrene or foam, food service wear, ice chest, shipping and packing materials, pool and beach toys, dock floats and egg cartons, which would include the exception that coolers and ice chest, pools and beach toys and dock floats and buoys would be allowable if they were fully encased in another material. Some of the key findings and reasoning for this ban from the commission are that polystyrene recycling has a low market value and tends to be contaminated which makes it non-recyclable. Polystyrene can release chemicals that are harmful to human health over time and polystyrene is primarily made from fossil fuels and it is also lightweight, fragments into small pieces, doesn't biodegrade and is not easy to clean up. It can easily be carried by the wind or water to end up in our creeks, roadways and parks. Just very quickly, here are some photos the commissioners provided from the Creek Walk Park of foam litter in our waterways. And here are some other photos from an I Love a Clean San Diego cleanup at the Buena Vista Creek Trail, also provided by our commissioners. The city currently has an ordinance restricting food service providers like restaurants or cafes from providing their customers with foam food service ware like cups and takeout containers with prepared food. The ordinance includes a waiver option for businesses that gross under $1 million a year, which can be utilized for either six months or a year and is a complaint-based ordinance. Since the ordinance became enforceable, 29 businesses have been reported as out of compliance by the public, and staff have worked with each of these businesses individually to get them into compliance through education and outreach. None of the 29 businesses have received a fee or citation through the compliance process, and 11 of them utilized the waiver to help them prepare to get into compliance. The Environmental Commission based their recommendation on the City of Oceanside Ordinance, which bans all businesses from selling or distributing foam egg cartons, food service ware, food trays, shipping boxes, packing peanuts or packing materials. It also bans businesses from selling or distributing foam coolers, ice chests, pool or beach toys, dock floats or buoys unless they are encapsulated or encased in another non-polystyrene foam material. Oceanside does make exceptions for items that are prepared outside of the city and items provided to customers as originally packaged, medical packaging and any other products that are pre-packaged outside of the city and use foam as part of their packing material. VISTA staff spoke with Oceanside staff about the implementation and the implementation of their ordinance and Oceanside staff did mention that the retail portion of their ordinance had minimal resistance in comparison to the food service component. Oceanside also worked with their chamber and downtown organization to provide information and resources to their local business community regarding the ordinance. In addition to the local example of Oceanside, other North County San Diego cities have foam bans in place as well, like Encinitas has a ban similar to Oceanside's, but does not include pool, beach, toys, or dock floats, while Carlsbad and San Marcos have a ban similar to what Vista currently has in place, banning food facilities from selling or distributing foam food service ware with their products. State regulation on foam products is most recently addressed in the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, or SB54, which restricts producers of expanded polystyrene, EPS, or foam, food service wear from selling, so the producers of foam food service wear from selling, offering for sale, or distributing or importing EPS food service wear in California unless they demonstrate that the materials has achieved a specific recycling rate. This includes single-use food service items such as takeout containers, plates, bowls, cups, and trays. To date, the required 25% recycling rate has not been achieved. Therefore, EPS food service wear products or producers are currently prohibited from selling, offering, for sale, distributing, or importing these products into California. While SB 54 applies to foam food service where it does not regulate other foam products such as protective packaging materials, egg cartons, ice chests, or sporting and pool equipment. Additionally, the law regulates producers rather than retailers and does not prohibit retailers from obtaining these products from outside of California. Based on the initial assessment through our business licensing software, staff identified approximately 100 retail businesses that would be affected by an expanded ordinance on foam products. Staff consulted with the city's economic development manager regarding the potential impacts of expanding the ordinance. And based on current band experience and state regulations, no significant concerns were identified for internal operations and implementation. Staff also worked with VISTA's Chamber of Commerce for additional input from business community. The Chamber's board has not reviewed these results, and at this time, they have not taken a position on the ordinance. The Chamber was able to host a quick five-day poll, and they had 20 respondents. Seven of the 20 respondents reported using polystyrene. None of them reported zero impact, and the products they named were mostly shipping and packing materials rather than food service wear. In addition, difficulty finding substitutes came up more often than concerns about cost of substitutions. Sorry, I went through that very quickly, but with that, staff are ready to take questions and receive feedback on the potential ordinance expansion. Thank you.

Okay, we have some public speakers on this. We'll start with Joe Hood, then hear from Fernando Hernandez, then Carlos Lopez.

This seems to be environmental night. I urge you to expand Vista's foam ban to include retail establishments and to continue pursuing stronger policies that reduce our community's dependence on harmful and unnecessary plastics. The impacts of plastic foam pollution begin long before a product reaches the store shelf and continue long after it is discarded. The production and disposal of plastics contribute to air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and serious health risks. Research published in the Lancet warns that continuing current plastic production trends will result in substantial global health harms measured in millions of years of healthy life lost. Expanded polystyrene foam is a particularly problematic material. It is approximately 95% air, making it lightweight, easily broken apart, and readily transported by wind into our streets, storm drains, waterways, and ultimately the ocean. Foam presents several well-documented problems. It is rarely accepted in curbside recycling programs. It does not biodegrade and persists in the environment for decades. Wildlife frequently mistakes foam fragments for food, leading to injury, starvation, and even death. Styrene, the primary component of polystyrene, has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as, quote, probably carcinogenic to humans. Prevention is far more effective and less costly than cleanup. Affordable reusable and compostable alternatives are readily available. I support this ordinance, but I believe it should be viewed as one step in a larger effort. Many California cities have adopted broader policies to reduce plastic pollution and protect public health. I encourage the Council to direct the Environmental Commission to evaluate additional measures including comprehensive plastic reduction ordinances expanded refill infrastructure, and other practical strategies that reduce waste at source rather than attempting to manage it after it becomes pollution. This ordinance is an important step forward. Let's make sure it's not the last. Thank you again.

Fernando Hernandez, followed by Carlos Lopez, followed by Kevin Lee.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. I'm pleased to share Senator Catherine Blakespeare's support for this effort as well. Foam may be convenient for a moment, but it creates the lasting problem. It breaks apart rather than biodegrading, moves easily through our streets and storm drains, and can harm wildlife and pollute our waterways and coastline. California's plastic pollution policy recognizes that local governments and rate payers have carried too much of the cost of managing disposable packaging. By reducing foam products that are difficult to recycle and easy to litter, VISTA can help address that burden at its source. VISTA has already shown leadership by successfully phasing out foam foodware at food service businesses. Expanding this policy is the next sensible step. The Senator encourages the City Council to direct staff to move this policy forward and continue identifying ways to reduce harmful single-use products in our community. Thank you very much.

Is Carlos Lopez still here? Okay. Is Kevin Lee still here? I don't think so. Wendy Schramm, followed by Janice Jones.

So I've lived in Vista for nearly half a century. I've watched the city grow and I felt proud of how it has progressed. I'm equally proud of the steps that the city has already taken and will continue to take to protect our home on a micro level, Vista, and a macro one, our beautiful but beleaguered planet. Polystyrene is not a product that needs to be used as there are many more environmentally friendly products that can take its place. No doubt harmful to humans, polystyrene definitely poses great risks to marine animals. Brittle and as light as a feather, styrofoam breaks up easily but never actually breaks down. One only has to take a stroll on the beach to see broken shards of polystyrene foam on the sand, blowing in the wind, and floating on the surface of the ocean. It takes little imagination to understand that these forever bits of toxic trash can easily find their way from urban runoff into the ocean and with devastating effect into the stomachs of unknowing sea creatures. But we humans are knowing. We know the negative effects of polystyrene on both a biological level and an aesthetic one. VISTA could set such a fine example by putting that understanding to work in practical and far-reaching ways in expanding the band on polystyrene foam in our fair city. Thanks.

Janice Jones. Then we'll hear from Kathy Rawlings on Zoom, followed by Elizabeth Mosley.

I want to start by thanking you for passing the polystyrene foam ban for restaurants, and thank you, Mayor Franklin, for voting in favor of that. We know that it creates significant environmental problems due to its lightweight qualities. It's easily carried by wind and water. The photos that were shared, I personally took. I've seen that foam debris and plastic bottles in our and I'd like to read you something from the city's website. When it rains, many of the pollutants that lurk on our streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and gutters wash down storm drains and into the nearest body of water. Vista is home to three main watersheds, Agua Hidionda Creek, Buena Vista Creek, and the San Luis Rey River. Unfortunately, storm drains do not filter water or debris. nor are they connected to the sanitary sewer system. Any pollutant that flows into a storm drain ends up in our creeks and rivers then ultimately out to the ocean. That's from the city's website. So it makes perfect sense to me to extend the phone ban for restaurants to retail sales. It doesn't make sense to prohibit it in restaurants and not retail. Cassidy mentioned that Oceanside has the Marine Debris Reduction Ordinance that does this. And we share the same watersheds as Oceanside. So it makes sense that in protecting our watershed, we're also protecting theirs. Cassidy mentioned SB 54. The state law restricted the sale and distribution of foam foodware when the required statewide recycling rate of 25% was not met, and it wasn't met. And in spite of that, on Sunday, I visited the Smart and Final in Vista, and the shelves in that department were stocked with foam foodware. produced by their house brand, First Street I think it's called. So this raises important questions about compliance and demonstrates why local action is necessary. I did review the Chamber survey results and I believe that any concerns that were brought up could be addressed when the ordinance is drafted. I believe those questions could be answered. and that they would find that their concerns are not going to be addressed in the ordinance. For example, I think one of them was about their phone packaging for some specific medical purpose, that would not be included in the ordinance. So I ask you to support expanding the foam ban to retail sales and include foam coolers. I would feel pretty strongly about that. They're taken to parks and beaches and they break apart and those little balls are everywhere.

Now we'll go to Zoom. We'll hear from Kathy Rawlings followed by Elizabeth Mosley. Kathy Rawlings.

Thank you. And I agree. It seems like it's environmental night. I, again, would like to thank you for offering the opportunity to speak on Zoom. And I do support a expansion. There's no reason to have these fossil fuel filled items in our communities. And there's no reason to... allow them for retail sales and not allow them for restaurants. So again, it makes perfect sense that you would have a ban. And I'm not just speaking for myself. I'm speaking on behalf of San Diego 350 North County team. Thank you.

And finally, we'll hear from Elizabeth Mosley.

Mayor Franklin and City Council members, please, please vote yes on D3 to expand VISTA's phone ban to Reedsdale establishments. And so well explained by everyone that just spoke. Thank you.

Council Member Contreras.

Thank you to everybody who got together to try to review this, our Environmental Commission, our concerned citizens, our staff. I'm ready to move forward and direct staff to create an ordinance prohibiting the retail sale of foam foodware. and to prohibit the sale and distribution of additional foam products as listed in option three in the Environmental Commission Agenda Report, which is looking at coolers, ice chests, shipping, packaging materials, pool, beach, toys, dock floats, buoys, egg cartons, and there's a lot of exceptions in there. So I'll go ahead and move that forward, thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Do we sell a lot of dock floats and buoys here in Vista? Thank you all for your comments and for showing up. Joe, I do feel like this is your Super Bowl tonight. It's all the hard work I feel like it's paying off. You got me on all of these. The only one that I've had a pool noodle for nine years at my mother-in-law's house. I will vote yes right now if we can just remove the pool and beach toys portion of this. I just don't. I don't think that the purpose of this should be towards that. I think everything else, like the styrofoam coolers, I can a million percent agree with need to go. But if we can pull the pool and beach toys, you have a yes right now.

Okay, I accept the amendment. We will continue to review this as it will, you know, there's more information that comes forward. But I accept the amendment to remove pool toys. and beach toys.

But I will say this, if there is substantial evidence that Vista is providing a tremendous amount of pollution from, and this is not me being callous or joking, if we have the evidence that it's happening, let me know and we can bring it back, I'm happy to have that discussion.

Can you remind me how it was that the medical device manufacturer wasn't, this was not applicable to them?

So it's just in the Oceanside's ordinance that it's an exemption. So it's something that was written in Oceanside's ordinance to exempt medical supplies or things that are needed specifically for medical supplies. And that's what would be written in our ordinance.

Okay. I'm not going to vote for this because for the same reasons I articulated before, this is overreach. We're regulating literally everything and there's no end to it. So I'm not for it. Council Member Fox.

Um, I'm, I'm going to recommend to, I think that the pool noodles and a lot of that stuff was in the same, the same, it didn't feel like it was in the same category. A lot of the other stuff was single use and a lot of those were meant for, again, like also I've had, I probably still have pool noodles from my childhood at my parents' house, you know? Um, so it did seem like it was like, if it's aimed more towards single use disposable things versus something that is, um, meant to be used for years and years and years, you know, I thought that was, you know, maybe could be not in it. So and I think a lot of this would mirror a lot of the same state of California regulations, if I remember correctly, right. So it's just they're not allowed to produce it. And we're saying, you know, you can't ship it here. So like, my big concern up front was things like if a new grocery store opened up or something like that, we're trying to obviously fill fresh and easy, Vons, a bunch of these vacant grocery store places, and I wouldn't want to put undue burden on organizations that... to have them follow specific rules to be here versus somewhere else, then it messes up supply chains and all that. But it seems like a lot of our surrounding cities have similar ordinances, so they're already kind of setting up these supply chains. And it's kind of illegal in the state of California already, it sounds like, for the most part.

Yeah, producers aren't supposed to be able to sell them here to the retailers, so realistically the retailers shouldn't be able to sell them to their customers because people who are making it shouldn't be able to give it to the retailers.

Right. Yeah. So it was like kind of just like just closing up basically making it so we can do something about it locally rather than the, you know, state trying to come down here and do it, which would probably be inefficient. So, you know, I share a lot of the same concerns of the mayor, but I think as long as we try to be tactful in this and have it mirror closely to like the California state ordinances and close some of those, you know, then those are my concerns. So.

So if I want to sell a cooler that's not a one-time use cooler, but in between the layers of plastic styrofoam is used, am I allowed to sell that under this ordinance?

So in Oceanside's ordinance, which we would probably mirror, if it was encapsulated, so if it had foam as its center, but it was like wrapped in plastic, like hard, rigid plastic, that would be fine. Or cloth even, because it's encapsulated in another non-polystyrene, maybe not plastic, I'd have to double check. We'd work on the ordinance, but yeah.

And, I mean, you asked about selling marine products. You know, we have in your district, we have people that sell marine products. We have boat dealers. So, I mean, we are seven miles from the ocean. It's not a hypothetical. I just... The endless potential to put manufacturers in our business park into an out-of-compliance situation, and then we're going to have some code enforcement person show up at a business that's producing millions of dollars of revenue, employing hundreds of people, and we're going to interfere with their manufacturing process? Absolutely not. Deputy Mayor?

I guess my question is how do we regulate this to that extent? Because when I look at the Oceanside Walmart website, I can have a pool toy here or a buoy here or whatever in three days. Go to Amazon, same thing. So are we really just beating our heads against the wall to try and regulate something that if somebody really wants to get a hold of, they can't, or they can get a hold of it right away?

Yeah, realistically, they could if they were ordering from out of state or something like that.

in point to what the mayor just said because I completely forgot about that and I do not want to hurt a small business in my community so I would like to review the type of products that they sell if they are fully foam if they're encapsulated just to make sure because I'm not going to put a small business or business in my district or any district out of business if that is their sole livelihood so that would be my recommendation on that

We will do that. We'll also do a more thorough analysis of the business park area and those manufacturers as well.

That would be fantastic, thank you.

Council Member Belandes.

Appreciate the discussion. And I think we can all agree that the prominence of foam cups and trays and paper plates or foam plates are probably the most prominent problem that we've identified. I do think that there should be a number of exemptions since it's a material that's used in manufacturing. One area, and although this might not be the most sustainable type of products, but a number of makers, whether that be florists or craftspeople, they do use foam products. So we might be looking at craft stores to discontinue some of those products, single-use products that end up being used for even permanent arrangements. So I think that we need to look at a couple of areas where we would want to have exemptions. Thanks.

No, I don't. I don't think this is just direction to staff, so this is going to come back. So, okay, it's 1021. We got nine minutes to go. I think that's the end of our agenda. Could we have unanimous consent to adjourn the meeting and go home to our families? It's 1019. Would that be okay?

Because I love my wife so much, yes.

Very good. Dan loves his wife. I love mine, too. We're adjourned. Thank you.