So I will adjourn the special meeting at 6.19 p.m. and that takes us to a regular meeting.

At this time I would like to call to order the outgrow city council regular meeting.

Today is Wednesday, February 12, 2025 and the time is 6.20 p.m. clerk.

Thank you mayor.

This meeting of the outgrow city council is recorded with closed captioning.

The recording will be cable cast on Metro, cable channel 14, the local government affairs

channel on the concast and direct TV, UverseCableSystems.

The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.saccounty.gov.

Tonight's meeting replays will be on Friday, February 14, 1 p.m. and Tuesday, February 18,

9 a.m. on Metro Channel 14, once posted the recordings of this and previous meetings

can be viewed on demand at the 3w's.elgrovecity.org or youtube.com slash MetroCable 14.

For members of the participating audience who may have personal electronic devices, please

place them on silent mode during the meeting or on mute when you are not speaking.

The Elgrove City Council welcomes, appreciates and encourages participation in the city council

meeting.

City council requests that you limit your presentation to three minutes per person,

so that all president will have time to participate.

City council reserves the right to reasonably limit the total time for public con on any

particular notice agenda item as it may be necessary.

Pursuant to resolution number 2010-24, no individual speaker concerning public comment may

address the city council for more than three minutes.

If you wish to address the council during the meeting, please complete one of the blue

speaker cards which can be found at the back of the chamber and provided to assistant

city clerk, Brenda Haggard, prior to consideration of the agenda item.

With that mayor, I will move into the roll call.

And for the roll call, I will start out with council member spes.

Present.

Council member Brewer.

Present.

Council member suen.

I smell roblas and mayor sing Allen.

Here.

Thank you.

All right.

Next up is our land acknowledgement.

What are vice mayor please assist.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

We honor respect and acknowledge Elgrove's first and happenance, the plain me walk, who live

a sovereign caretakers of this land in these waterways since the time in memory.

We commend and advocate for their descendants, the Wilton Rancheria tribe, the only federalized

recognized tribe in Sacramento County who have endured because of the braverty resilience,

determination of their ancestors, tribal members and leaders.

All right.

Thank you.

Next up is our pledge of allegiance.

I would like to invite up our fire chief, Felipe Rodriguez to help lead us this evening.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Please place your right hand and repeat after me.

Ready?

Begin.

Please, to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands

one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice are all.

Thank you.

At this time, please join us for a brief moment of silence.

Thank you.

All right.

Next up is our approval of the agenda.

So move.

Second.

Second.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Next item, please clerk.

Under section three, there are no closed session items on the regular agenda, which will

advance us to section four, our presentations and announcements and the first being item

4.1, which is a proclamation and recognition of Black History Month.

Excellent.

Well, at this time, I would like to call up Ms. Judy Covington to the podium.

All right.

Black History Month February 2025, whereas since 1976, February has been designated Black History

Month as a time in which especially memorable events are recognized and celebrated, honoring

and affirming the importance of African American history and culture as an essential element

to the foundation of American history.

And whereas the theme for Black History Month, African Americans and labor recognizes the

vital role that African Americans have played in the American workforce from the early days

of slavery to the present day.

And whereas Judy Covington, an Elk Grove resident and community leader, serves on the measure

E, Citizens Oversight Committee, an advisory body to the Elk Grove City Council that reviews

the revenue and expenditures of the funds generated by general transactions and use our sales

tax measure.

And whereas Judy, a highly accomplished realtor with Keller Williams, Realty, has been

a passionate advocate for home ownership and the real estate profession for over two decades.

As a former president of the Sacramento Association of Realtors, she has served at the local,

state and national levels, championing housing policies and community service initiatives.

And whereas for Judy, real estate is more than just a transaction.

It's a personal journey that revolves around helping people achieve their dreams and improve

their lives as she works to improve the lives of residents on a daily basis.

Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of the City of Elk Grove hereby affirms

and proclaims February 2025 as Black History Month in the City of Elk Grove.

And we thank you, Ms. Judy Covington, for your commitment to our city.

Thank you and congratulations.

Thank you.

The floor is yours.

I don't know which mic, but I just want to say thank you very much.

I am a proud Elk Grove California resident.

I will protect Elk Grove at every chance that I get.

Some people seem to think we were a cow town and we are no longer.

And though we do like the feel of the cow town, the intimacy of it.

So I thank all of you on the City Council for giving me this honor.

And I want to say that I will never stop advocating for home ownership and I will never stop

advocating for the city of Elk Grove.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

I just wanted to say, Judy, this has been a long time coming.

I believe this since 2025 has to be your year because you've been getting awards nonstop

since last month.

Thank you.

And it's a true testament of just everything you've done for this region, for the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Judy.

Thank you, Judy.

Oh, we only have one.

I had a picture with you guys.

Absolutely.

We can.

You give me my regular, my actual brushes.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

You got the power right on.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah?

Yeah.

So we have our prize now.

In fact, that's the uh, uh, um, one pound is more expensive than a few

ones said in 2005, I think.

All right.

Next up is item 4.2, a presentation by the Elk Grove Police Department and

the community services district fire department regarding emergency readiness.

Good evening Honorable Madam Mayor Singalen, Vice Mayor Robles and members of the City Council.

I'm Felipe Rodriguez, your fire chief. It's my privilege this evening to present to you in partnership with our police department specifically Andrea Cortez from the

real time information center. That's your manager and we'll be presenting this in partnership. So I'm going to cover the first part and then she's going to take over for the second part will be here to answer any questions you may have.

I need to start off by saying that I feel that as your fire chief that we are very prepared this community is well prepared.

We have a great partnership with our police department, a great partnership with our water agencies and based on what occurred in Los Angeles and which was part of the purpose of this evening's presentation that we need to look into what we're doing well and what we need to improve upon and that's the part of this presentation tonight.

I'm going to cover a few different topics and then we're going to go right into the emergency preparedness for the city.

But the first item is our fire departments overview the risk of wildfire here in Elk Grove. Of course we have floods and other hazards that we face but the main one is the risk of wildfire, which is at the forefront.

We have resources to mitigate the fires. Access to sufficient water supply and hydrogen inspections and fire prevention readiness will conclude with emergency preparedness, the plans and evacuation of the city.

First is a little overview of our department. We do cover a lot more score mileage than what's here in Elk Grove. We actually cover 157 score miles, a lot of the unincorporated area of South Sacramento County and the city of Gulf.

Along in the 42 score miles that we have here in Elk Grove, we cover a population of about 210,000 people, 178,000 are so we're here in Elk Grove.

And we respond to about 24,000 just under 25,000 calls per year. Our staffing is 53 personnel on duty every single day 365.

In responding out of nine fire engines, eight ambulances, a truck company. We have 10 cross-staffed wild land firefighting units and we thanks to measure e we added two squads. So thank you very much to the voters.

And we added another battalion chief. We now have two battalion chiefs on duty every day.

The coverage areas you see there in the border line outlining the two cities and the South Sacramento County unincorporated area is our 157 score miles.

As I mentioned, 42 score miles are at the top there in the outline with the dash blue line within Elk Grove itself. The remainder is galt and South Sacramento County.

The fire station locations are nine fire stations. We have the seven at the top there in Elk Grove and then we have two down in galt.

But we work together to protect the entire area, the entire district and we partner with our neighboring agencies.

The risk of wildfire in Elk Grove. So if you look at the map there on the left, you see that the colored areas there that are the heat maps of where the fires would likely occur or have more potential.

The box area in the center is Sacramento County. We do have some orange yellow areas around us. But if you move down to Southern California, you see the red areas.

And if you look at the area there that I put a circle around that there that's exactly where Pacific Palisades is located where the really dark red spot is.

And that's the threat that occurs in the state of California. This map is created by Cal Fire and these are your high fire hazard severity zone areas throughout the state of California.

A wildfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in grasslands, prairies or forests Elk Grove does have a few influence areas. Those areas as you look at the map on the right are at the Stone Lake Refuge,

real East Elk Grove and near seasonal water areas on the left is the Stone Lake Refuge in the circle and on the right is East Elk Grove. Those would be our influence areas that we have a higher potential for a fire to grow.

You can see that they are either in the low or moderate areas or the couple high areas. We have no very high areas, but we are very prepared for any of the areas that we do have.

In addition to that, there is potential risk as anywhere in the state of California or throughout the nation. If we were to have a very high wind event, there is a risk for a large residential fire that could occur anywhere in Los Angeles.

They had a hundred mile an hour winds. We will reach between 50 to 70 here in this area, but that in combination with the depletion of resources is what creates that situation to happen where the fire just gets completely out of control.

to do with the fire works to do with the fire works, and we have a lot of work to do with the fire works추

We also, it may ensure that the construction of the buildings in partnership with many are to the highest standards, all the latest building codes and fire code standards in the residential occupancies since 2010 have been sprinklered.

So that's a very important thing for all of us.

We do have a great vegetation management program or we debatement program that's ran by our fire prevention division.

And we do collaborate with Sacramento County Industry Working Group.

We have two members from our department or from our Summars Community Services District that attend the meetings regularly and that includes new housing that's built and the safety of that housing.

Addiquate water supply and hydrant inspections and testing.

We've been working with our water partners to improve the quantity of times that they actually inspect hydrants.

We ask for once per year and we're working closely with them to get to that point.

I will say proudly that Elk Grove Water District and I know that their general managers here tonight, they have moved their inspection schedule to once per year, which is in line with all of the standards.

Community preparedness. That's a very important one and the police department will cover the community preparedness for this evening.

Regarding the deployment of resources to mitigate fires, that is the 911, the resources that you see out there, the fire engines truck, our new squads, all the personnel that would come together to combat any emergency that we have here in our city.

We've invested over $11 million over the last three years into fire apparatus, brand new fire apparatus to make sure we have enough reserves, frontline apparatus in place.

We've used measure funds for some of the new staff vehicles that we've purchased. We have an apparatus replacement plan as part of our department strategic plan.

So we replace them after probably about 12 years and they go into reserve.

So for a total length of 20 years, depending upon the resource, but we have fire engines, a truck, of course, our dual role ambulance as they have paramedics on them, command vehicles, wild land fire engines, our water tenders have the extra water.

We have a lot of emergency staff vehicles, other auxiliary vehicles. We have plenty that get replaced apparatus.

And I apologize that the logo is right in the center, but it moved on us due to the formatting, but the vehicles are replaced on a schedule based on mileage usage and safety of the vehicle.

We've also added 30 new firefighters since 2020. And that's a really important thing. We added station 77, including engine 77 and Maddick 77, 15 personnel there.

We have a 15 additional personnel through measure E and that was for our squad 71 74 in our new additional battalion chief.

And lastly, it's not just kind of covered there, but we do have a standards of covered document that we completed in 2023. And that tells you where your resources should be, how it should be deployed to meet the response times.

Do we have a high wind potential? Do we have low relative humidity? So when it comes to a red flag warning, the little chart there on the bottom has the relative humidity on the left and the wind on the right and depending upon which where it lands, that would be a red flag warning.

And we have a red flag warning. If we have a grass fire, we said additional resources will send three wild land fire engines, a battalion chief and water tenders, depending upon location on the east side of town. Most definitely will have the water tenders respond to that location for the water.

And they were there for two weeks. We can pre deploy resources in partnership with Cal OES. And those are paid for by the state. And we have requested those fourth of July. We requested pre deployment of resources. We had the floods in January of 2023.

So we actually just in the county had some pre deployed resources last week. So we could put them in place down in LA. They did have pre deployed resources prior to that fire starting. They just too much wind and the fire just moved too fast for them. They did run out of water.

We can request for additional resources that are outside of Sacramento County. If it gets too large, they will reach out to the other counties here in Northern California. Or we can move to Southern California and get resources just as they did for the Palisades fire in in Altadena.

And that little tiny area there in East Elgrove has four million gallons of water in Pacific Palisades. They have three million gallons of water. So they did run out. That was the original report. Of course, there's still conducting their investigation. But that's what we believe that they had down there. The Santa Reservoir had 170 million gallons, but it was under construction or repair down in golf. We do have another water district under an irrigation district.

The big question has been posed to me as your fire chief is what happened down there could it happen here. It can happen anywhere. View have more resources pumping water out of the hydrants than what's available and you have very high winds like they had there. It could happen anywhere.

Not likely to happen though. That's what I can't tell you, especially for those who are watching from home. Have the confidence that it's not likely to happen. We do have high wind events here. We do get fires that occur here in Altgrove.

We normally are able to handle them and mitigate them with some good preparedness and enough resources and personnel will be able to take care of the fires a lot easier. But yes, it can happen.

If you run out of water or and or you don't have enough resources in the winds or 100 miles per hour. So, but not very likely. A fire engine can pump. Flow about 1500 gallons per minute. So the water goes quick.

Insurance service office we we go through a survey every five years and the fire full requirements are 3500 gallons per minute for three hours and speaking to the general manager from Alcrow water they could pump that for eight hours without a problem. That's what they test them to so more than double.

Our water supply system received the score of 28.49 out of 30 almost perfect. So we are very confident in our water system here for the entire district.

Hydrant placement and quantity of hydrants received 2.98 out of three almost a perfect score. Where we can do a little bit of work is on a hydrant inspections and flow testing that received one at 1.04 out of seven. So that's the area that we want to prove upon.

Regarding the strategy for water supply just continue to collaborate with our water agency partners conduct those inspections we believe we have plenty of water and we have a very robust municipal water system within the district and definitely here in the city.

And just continue to meet with them to try to meet that ISO standard and seek reassessment for ISO standard.

Our classification for the city we're currently class two I believe we can reach class one in 2027 when we're when we ask for reassessment.

The last section I have is our fire prevention readiness we do conduct inspections on a regular basis every throughout the year we last year we conduct the 1865 plan reviews and 5100 construction inspections a lot of housing.

100% compliance with our state mandated inspections all the schools apartments and other things that are mandated and operational permits are your more high hazard occupancies we were able to do about 80% of those those aren't required but we do them because we want to ensure that the community is safe vegetation management program we have 900 plus properties that we inspect we sent out 367 issued correction notices and 97% of them corrected them and we correct we corrected the other 11% as a district.

And the last thing is pretty much what can our community do what can you do as well to be fire ready and the first thing is to repair your home yourself for potential fire emergency ensure you have working smoke detectors on every floor outside of your sleeping areas create a fire escape plan including a meeting place away from your home assemble emergency go back for 72 hours have important documents readily available.

No two ways out of your neighborhood a lot of people know only one way out no two ways out of your neighborhood create defensible space around your home for 30 feet if you have it up to 100 feet in the role areas and make sure you clean out the rubbish and anything that's dry around your house so those are the main areas I'll be happy to answer any questions probably after the presentation from the police department so that some of them may already be answered by Andrea so thank you.

Good evening Madam Mayor members of the city council my name is Andrea Cortez and I am the real time information center manager and I also serve as the city's emergency management coordinator and watch our presentation.

And tonight I'm going to provide a high level overview of the city's emergency readiness.

And when we discuss emergency readiness it's important to define what that is for the purposes of this presentation emergency readiness refers to being adequately prepared to respond effectively to emergencies disasters or crises.

We're going to focus on for key areas for readiness streamline communications preparedness planning training and awareness and resource allocation.

We'll get into the first topic of communication so you're seeing a few things on the screen here I'll call your attention to the middle of the screen.

This is the evacuation map for the city of Elk Grove you can find this on Sacramento County's preparedness website under Sacramento ready and a brief later on in the presentation.

There'll be a brief demo as to how to access this map through their website.

But it shows the major thoroughfares throughout the city and we would want all residents to be aware of at least two ways to exit their neighborhood in the event that one is compromised they can use the other exit route and then there would be direction to a major thoroughfare to get them out away from the disaster.

Just below the map you will see that sacri-alert Sacramento alert icon that is our communication system that's our public mass notification system through Sacramento County.

It is how we would alert community members of an emergency event and we have predetermined templates available that would allow us to quickly send out the messaging in the event that we needed to send out messaging we would also use news media social media and radio broadcasting.

We also ask anybody at home are listening to opt in to Sacramento alert there will be a QR code in a moment for folks to sign up to receive those local alerts to be aware of emergencies developing within the city or within the county.

Some of you may receive them regarding missing persons or roadblocks any sort of emergency event.

Another piece to consider when we talk about readiness is our internal communications and how well we are communicating as an organization and so we also use the sacri-alert for callouts so if we needed to activate any OC we would do that through sacri-alert.

We have again templates and a distribution list established so we could quickly send out that messaging.

We also have our established networking groups that allow us to be sure that we have the correct context we have correct email addresses so we can make that process seamless.

Then we have our emergency communications to ensure that our first responders can communicate effectively so we are a part of this Sacramento regional radio system and through that system we have the ability to patch channels meaning that if there's something developing on a school channel and we to ensure that Elk Grove first responders can talk on the same channel we can do that through proper protocol.

We also have backup mutual aid channels that would allow us to dedicate a channel to a specific event for seamless communication and then this all just speaks to the vital communication that's needed for stakeholders.

We'll move into preparedness and so these are our plans.

These are what we would reference in the event of a disaster they're established and they provide guidance recommendations they establish authority there's roles or responsibilities are already outlined in there.

So you're not having to figure that out in the midst of a crisis.

So we have the Sacramento County plans which is the emergency operations plans the evacuation functional annex extreme weather annex and hazard mitigation.

Those are at the county level and then at the city level we have the emergency operations plans are local hazard mitigation plans and the safety element of the general plan and this is in addition to the evacuation analysis scenario report.

So if we did have to move into an evacuation we would reference the evacuation the evacuation functional annex and the it would be an accordance with that with the Sacramento County.

These which are seen in the middle of your screen now is the evacuation zones which do align with our police beats and so our first responders would be very familiar with the the areas that we need to evacuate.

Evacuations are incident dependent so it's really there's so many variables that develop as far as what situation we're dealing with.

And so we'd have to take into account all the the different elements that are taking place assessing the the disaster how fast is it moving do we have time to prepare or do we need to evacuate now.

And so those are things that are just dependent upon the incident there would be significant coordination between law enforcement law enforcement and consumers fire.

And then if needed if it was a serious incident we would definitely activate the EOC the emergency operations center.

And then we would do all the same coordination with Sacramento County LES and we could rely on them to send any sort of notifications if needed if we were occupied at the local level.

And just for educational purposes will discuss evacuation warning so evacuation warning means there is a danger to life and property and people should use this warning to get ready to evacuate.

Those who need additional time should leave when the warning is given rather than wait for an evacuation order so anytime there's a warning issued we want folks to start gathering their personal effects and be prepared to evacuate.

And evacuation order is just that it means you need to evacuate now staying could result in the last of life or slow the work of first responders.

And unfortunately sometimes the evacuation order is the only notice that folks get so that's not ideal but due to the nature of disasters that's just unfortunately how it is sometimes the what you're seeing right here is the five piece of evacuation so we always want people to remember these that people pets their price of items personal effects papers and prescriptions.

And so here's the information regarding Sacramento County's ready website and if anybody you can scan that QR code and you'll be taken to this website.

It's a great website that has lots of information so to know your evacuation zone you would go to this website and click on that preparedness link.

And then it will load here and what's nice about this is an is an interactive map so you can select the zone where you work or you reside and it brings you brings up some information regarding that particular zone and provides a QR code that allows you to link to these to the maps that I was referencing earlier.

So it is interactive it does provide a great deal of information there's information about the neighborhoods within the zones in addition to parks and other features of the zone.

Once they select the link to the evacuations a map then they will be taken to those maps so that's great for reference and then if anyone in the gallery or watching at home you can scan this QR code and to be taken to the Sack Alerts website to opt in for emergency messaging.

The third component of emergency readiness is training and awareness so we do have coordinating meetings at the county level where we go and meet with everyone in the operational area.

We discuss any plan that need to be updated we stay connected as far as anything that's developing for awareness within the within the county.

So first responders receive training they're consistently training for any sort of mass casualty event some of those while they're not natural natural disasters those skillsets can be easily transferred to working a disaster incident.

So they're familiar with that process and they do have periodic update update classes for emergency response.

And then the city of Elgro our own personnel will be going through the spring a EOC training which will highlight the roles and functions of an emergency operation center so there'll be a clear understanding of the expectations and what's to take place and the event we did have to activate a center moving forward we're also going to look to have biannual training exercises where we can really test these plans and these processes and go through the full motions to identify any gaps and then refine our processes to be more effective the next time.

And the final component is resource allocation through the city of Elgro's ability to leverage technology the city's well position to maximize response and deploy resources appropriately.

So some of those programs are the real time information center and the drone as a first responder program in addition we we also have a robust UAS program.

So what you're seeing here is some footage from 2022 when the atmospheric river came through when we had some flooding and we joined we collaborated with consumers fire and some other special districts to get a good aerial view of some compromises in the levy and so they were able to use this to enhance their situational awareness rather than trying to navigate through that terrain until it worked out really nicely.

Our DFR program also drone as a first responder program assist in providing real time updates to first responders to enhance situational awareness and assist in maximizing resources.

So this is these are the kinds of right here you're seeing a structure fire this drone was able to be there within 40 seconds it was on the east side of town and so we do have multiple launch locations throughout the city so we can be on scene fairly quickly this is an example of a car fire.

That we were able to respond to and provide that situational awareness for responders so we could easily transition this to flooding or natural disaster to be able to better allocate resources and be a little bit more strategic with our response.

Another point of resource allocation is an adequate number of personnel and equipment we do believe we have sufficient staffing levels for with the Alcourt Police Department city of Elgrove and consumers fire for day to day operations.

However, should an event go longer we would likely have to lean on our county partners and some of this will be identified as we go through those training exercises to see about sufficient staffing levels and through regional partnerships we would be able to lean on the county for assistance if needed if the event went longer than a 12 hour operational period.

So again, just to highlight the four sections streamline communications preparedness planning training and awareness and resource allocation that concludes my presentation.

Are there any questions.

Wow, thank you for that amazing presentation to both of you.

Sure, there's a few questions or comments so we'll start to the left here with council members.

Thank you mayor actually it was very informative so thank you both for doing this.

I don't I think all our residents and the public were unaware of all the work that you do to organize and prepare in the event we have these natural disasters or emergency so thank you very much.

Vice mayor.

Thank you chief for being here and thank you as well for presenting as councilman soon said.

Sorry.

This is something that's kind of people don't want to talk about it but it's very much needed especially in the time of disaster when there's a lot of chaos going on in the military always use the term terminology controlled chaos right how do we control what's in our it's in our three feet ahead three feet behind and three feet to the side so thank you for that and thank you for speaking to the evacuation map I don't think I mean by show of hands how many of you guys have actually looked at the evacuation map.

All right so not not much of the general public other than other than police and fire right so we need to continue looking at that map and continue like to have go bags ready to go in case of an emergency so thank you so much because you're highlighting something that we don't talk about that often only when something occurs but thank you really appreciate it.

Council member brewer.

I want to thank Andrea and chief Rodriguez for the presentation making sure that the county community is prepared and making sure that you're prepared has always been on top of mind I've always been aware of that for many years.

One of the things that I've that I've always wondered about in the situation where you have these large events like this there used to be something called the golden guardian that was done every year.

And it was something that we would each do as separate communities and then we would do it as a part of a larger effort do we still practice that on an annual basis because that's definitely a good way as part of like getting your reps getting your practice and in the event something real happens.

Over the last few years we've had a couple of real events happen so you get your real time reps and but is that something that we still practice and still do on a yearly basis or every two years.

So thanks for the question the golden guardian was that the exercise that was conducted here in Sacramento County a regular basis there's still drills that occur.

I will say that that sometimes it's put on the on the side on the side burner for an annual exercise a real functional exercise some of these disasters bring those things to light so there are exercises that are regularly conducted the county office of emergency services takes the lead on for dating.

It's important that we as a local community also conduct those annual exercises some very happy here that there's going to be one here in the spring time and then every couple of times a year at least a table top but a nice functional exercise where your emergency operation center is exercise the like the officials are part of it and and we run a real scenario like what would we actually have to do.

And it takes some time to plan that and takes resources to plan that those are so important to have once a year at least every other year to conduct a nice big one that you'll be able to find out your strengths and your weaknesses so yeah they still are conducted throughout the area but bringing one locally here is very very important.

Now I think I thank you for for that answer chief because it's always a situation where you always want to be ready so you don't have to get ready and that's something that both the police and fire here in Elk Grove has always pride itself on and has always done for many many years so very happy to hear that and I concur with with with with vice mayor Robla's in terms of having to go back and having that ready and that's something that we should all have something that has all of our essentials all year I your personal experience.

And I think that's the personal identification any like your vial of life where you have your prescriptions or whatever your needs are which are health limitations are those things are always important because you never know when you have to like evacuate because when someone's knocking on the door and saying we need you out of the house now you don't want to have to hurry up and try and get all that together you always want to have that with you and so so thank you for this presentation this is very very helpful especially.

Given the situation that we're seeing down something California.

Parts and prayers go out to everyone affected by by that because that's something that we definitely want to get back on track on but we know it's going to take years for us to get back on track so thank you very much.

Council member space.

Thank you Madam Mayor first thank you chief Rodriguez and Andrea for being here this evening I really appreciate the presentations I think in Elk Grove here we should be very proud of you.

And I think that's a very proud of our public safety partnership between our Elk Grove Police Department and of course with our CSD fire.

That said I think I also want to thank Mr. Camilo's for being here today because you're very much an important part of not just it's just not about drinking water it's about having water that's ready at the moment of need and that's a very critical part of our public safety and so thank you for being here tonight.

So not much more to add to then what my cohorts have said but I definitely appreciate I think in in Elk Grove we should consider ourselves extremely lucky that we are in the position that we're in both geographically and as well as the professionalism that we have from our partnership here so thank you very much for being here.

Madam Mayor if I just a quick question for the EOC training I know people usually get weird when elected stop by but can we incognito stop by the scene.

Absolutely.

Yeah we'll get you those dates.

Well I want to thank you both for the fabulous presentation you know what's what really started this was I was getting a number of calls and emails from the residents wanting a safety update.

Because we saw all of those images on the TV and it was alarming it was frightening and so this presentation it's very reassuring and to my colleagues comments about the strong partnership between police and fire is invaluable.

We love we value our partnership and what I would love to see is this present these presentations shared with our community via the newsletter or however we want to get the information out.

I think it's very important for our residents to know that they're safe they're in good hands and we have safety measures in place in the event something terrible should happen.

So thank you both for being here this evening.

Thank you.

Thanks.

All right with that we will go on to public comment.

I have a few people sign up to speak.

I do see two that are listed twice so I don't know if the part of it's for the name we were giving some cues that some folks are dropping off photos for the council to see this evening so that's just so you have a cue that they'll have photos but we'll pull up their name and we'll clean up the board as we move along.

Okay.

Now we will start with Dustin Noble and after Dustin is Bob Turner.

Good evening Madam Mayor and council members.

I'm Dustin Noble and I live in the Ellen Fiker neighborhood.

This is Buds.

He is a five year old assy poodle excuse me I get a little emotional.

He was the best most wonderful dog in the world and he was a member of my family and he was my autistic son's best friend in the whole world.

I was a little bit more than I was in the last year.

January 21st he was quite literally taken from us being pulled under and through my neighboring fence by a very dangerous and violent German shepherd.

And for several minutes I had to bear witness to the mauling of buzz.

I will spare you the details what I witnessed because their children in the room.

I was able to gain access to the yard to get to buzz.

The damage was catastrophic.

He would succumb to those wounds later that day.

And this was quite literally a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.

This dog has traumatized my family for two years causing hundreds of dollars of damage and repairs to our fence that we share with them.

And this was just waiting to happen and it finally did and it was horrible.

I reached out to animal control that day.

A report was filed and investigation was done.

I was told the city would look into it.

And the best the city could do was slap a dangerous dog label on this animal which is nowhere near sufficient but I understand it's what could be done.

I was later informed that the city decided not to move forward with this label that there was nothing that could be done.

I don't accept this answer at all.

I'm telling you that this because if it was my son my autistic son playing near that fence and he was pulled through the fence and mauled by this dog we would not be having this conversation.

I mean it would be no gray area and that's the answer that I received that this was a gray area basically that the attack happened in my neighbor's yard there was a fence involved.

It doesn't matter to me buzz didn't want to be in that yard he want to be in my yard he was pulled from my property to that property.

All I'm asking for is follow up on this I'm asking for my city to do right by buzz and protect my family because right now that dog is still there terrorizing us.

And I expect to follow up on this please give me some justice for us thank you.

Sorry for your loss or is there someone that can follow up with Mr. Noble.

Yes, Mayor will take care of it.

All right next up is Bob Turner followed by Ron Wyman.

I get two microphones.

Good evening my name is Bob Turner Mayor council members I'd like to I'm here just for a suggestion only I read in the outgrowth citizen that they're wanting to make a name for the new zoo.

I'm going to be two or three years down the road or maybe even five but anyway I came up with an idea as you notice I have Ohio State equipment on while the university is now called the Ohio State University.

And I'd like to make a suggestion for the counselor anybody wants to listen for the new zoo called the El Grove City Zoo in Sacramento County that way you cover the city of El Grove you cover Sacramento and you also cover the county.

That's all.

Thank you sir so we'll be discussing that an item 9.1 but thank you.

Oh you're very welcome.

Okay.

Next up is Ron Wyman followed by Mr. Morris.

Good evening my name is Ron Wyman I was here a little over a year ago on behalf of my mother La Jean lot and she was forced to live in an unlivable conditions I believe you guys have the pictures of the conditions she was forced to live in.

And then I got involved with the enforcement and after I left here last year I left kind of warm and fuzzy because I thought we're making some headway and then nothing ever happened will she passed away in March of last year.

I was not in her home where we were trying to get her back to because we didn't get any support from the city or county APS.

And I was promised by Miss Lease that they were going to make entry I spent a lot of time in Ohio and so I was back and forth and she promised me they're going to make entry with without support from that county.

And then when I was in Ohio she called and stated that they weren't going to do it they backed out it kind of almost sounded like they were intimidated by my brother in law who forced my mother not living these conditions.

And since then I've tried to get reports and there's no meat on the bones on these reports of police come out and there's nothing there and to support my case.

And and then I officer Lopez the other day stated that if my wife and children were so afraid of my brother in law that maybe they shouldn't come visit their mother and grandmother in her dying days.

You can't you can't say that to people I mean you all have a mom or grandma if you're afraid of your uncle or brother you're not going to go visit your family member and they're dying days I mean who who says that.

It's just been an ongoing and then officer also my brother in law had a battery assault and battery on my daughter at at the care home.

And he he called her in to give a report and then he the officer Lopez told her that a she filed charges he scared her to not file charges because he said he could come after you for for.

Well for her assman he said her assman is so you can't come after somebody for for doing the right thing and saying the right stuff there's he had no no business.

Scaring my daughter like that to not fall follow through with that and then we had one instance where I had my Bluetooth on speaking to 911 I never said a word my brother in law over at Windsor and so the 911 operator could listen to this conversation in the hallway.

And for it took him an hour and a half to get there as the staffs yelling at him to back off and leave it took an hour and a half.

I know every every agency's stretched to the max but an hour and a half when you're in a facility at eight o'clock at night with elderly folks we need to do more for our elderly people and there's some out there right now tonight and if you're not getting help from the city you contact me I'll come help you.

Thank you thank you next up is Philip followed by Bruce.

I'm sorry this is who are you.

Hello I'm Philip Morris yes that Philip Morris Madam Mayor the guy who gave two thousand dollars to your political campaign last year I'm here to ask for the money back.

You see you and your boys on the podium are just too goody two shoes for my liking I have to perpetuate a bad boy persona one which I cannot allow you all to sell you your intent to incarcerate as many bad guys as possible your maniacal support for proposition 36 has crossed the line you see I am evil incarnate.

Perhaps you can't be a man because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me but it's not just about brand loyalty you see that's okay because he's hooked on nicotine anyway and that's all that matters in my our business which generates 750 billion every year three quarters of a trillion dollars me and my brothers and cousins make up the 19th largest national record.

I'm a revenue system on the planet ahead of 180 other countries that's what big tobacco is baby I'd rather you return the money than pretend to be a punk rogue thug like me in the United States alone 480 thousand people die every year from my products and 50 thousand of them never even touched the stuff I am the merchant of death.

I'm going to tell you this how still the police chief is riveted to his seat I don't fear arrest so just return the money and I'll give it to one of your more deserving future rivals meanwhile I'm on call for Philip Morris.

Thank you for that I was fabulous next up is Bruce Camilo's.

Good evening I'm Bruce Camilo's general manager of the Okor water district and I knew chief Roger Riggus is going to be presenting tonight on preparedness and I wanted to support the fire chief's effort there wanted to let the council know in the public here that Okor water district is taking the business of fire protection very seriously so at the end of average street we cover the old town area we are west of our service areas west of 99 east of Grant line.

South of the Sheldon and the heart of our system is the railroad water treatment plant at the end of railroad street the railroad water treatment plant was built in 2005 for two reasons to improve water quality improve fire protection for the community we have two two million gallon tanks is achieved described those tanks with storage alone can provide fire flow at 35 hundred gpm for eight hours we also have four deep wells that are feeding that railroad water treatment.

That railroad water treatment plant that can provide up to 7,000 gallons permit to replenish the water in those tanks.

All of those wells are going to be on emergency generator power if they're not already and the railroad water treatment it also has emergency generator power that's diesel driven that can last for 48 hours of continuous operation and run the full load of the treatment plant.

We had the fire department come out and do walk through make sure we had good defensible space throughout the water treatment plant they gave us an A so we're looking good there and so even in the event of a disaster where we have a major power outage our emergency generators will kick on our wells will be pumping into the railroad water treatment plant our pumps will be pushing water out into the distribution system so that the fire department can do their job that's on the supply side on the distribution side we have 1,701 fire.

These are not the type of fire hydrants that we're in the article the Sarachman will be about a week ago these are not these little worth hydrants that populate about 25% of the hydrants in specific policies.

These are large hydrants that are compliant with modern standards and they push out a lot of water they have two three nozzles on them four and a half inch that hooks to the fire pump on the trucks and two for host connections so we are well equipped.

well equipped. We inspect those hydrants every year as Chief Rodriguez said. So I just wanted to

report out to you that we're on good shape at the water district. Thank you very much.

Thank you for providing that information. Very helpful. Did you have a comment?

No, I was going to say thank you, Mr. Premier.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next stop is our final speaker. We have Lynn Wheat.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight I have my friend who's also a nurse and we're going to do

little health education presentation for you because we care about our community.

The American Heart Association has declared February as American Heart Month.

Cardiovascular disease kills one in four individuals with smoking a major cause.

40,000 adults die each year in California from their own smoking. The health consequences of

smoking go beyond cardiovascular disease. 22.3% of the cancer deaths in California are attributed

to smoking and even for non-smokers. Second-hand smoke exposure is a risk factor for asthma and

children. Despite this, tobacco companies have been come determined in their efforts to keep their

dangerous harmful products being sold by aggressive campaigning, aggressive marketing, and campaign

contributions. Unfortunately, 90% of smokers first tried a tobacco product by age 18.

Nicotine is highly addictive and 5.9% of high schoolers used e-cigarettes. Recognizing the

detrimental health impacts on society and our youth in particular came the passage of SB-793

banning flavored tobacco vaping products and most recently the passage of AB-3218 which strengthened

enforcement and increased and clarified banned tobacco products. However, influencers were to

include exceptions into the bill permitting the sale of Huka, tobacco, and flavored cigars and

loose leaf tobacco selling for more than $12. Huka smoking is no less toxic than cigarettes. Huka

smoke has high levels of harmful chemicals. Huka smoked is linked to cancers, lung disease,

and carbon monoxide poisoning. However, as the trend rate towards greater public health increases,

148 cities in California have adopted more restrictive smoking standards than the state law

permits. Elk Grove is not one of them and the tobacco lobby hopes we do not become number 149.

I am not surprised, however, I am disappointed that tobacco money is flowing into the campaign

offer of our mayor to ensure that Elk Grove does not become number 149. I had hoped that our mayor

as a former school board member would resist tobacco money knowing how harmful and addictive it

is to our young people. I believe she cared about the health of all of our residents. Mayor,

you could do right by our community and donate these campaign contributions this month to the American

Heart Association, American Cancer Society, or even the Elk Grove School District tobacco education

program. Thank you. Thank you. And that concludes our public comment. We will move on to our next item.

And that is our City Manager's report. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council,

Jason Braminger City Manager, just a few items report on this evening. First is we have a City

Council special meeting. So, at Biannual Strategic Planning Retreat, it will be this next Thursday,

February 20th at District 56 in the Ernst Hall from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. During this time,

council members and staff will discuss key issues at gold prior to the next two fiscal years,

looking forward to the opportunity to discuss those things with the City Council.

Elk Grove Youth Commission will host the Path to Positive Event on Saturday, February 22nd,

from 10 to 2 at the Wackford Community Center. The free event is designed to connect teens with

valuable resources engaging activities and the supportive community through interactive activities

and guest speakers. Space is limited to the first 100 participants and registration is required.

The Stars of Service volunteer award nomination period is open now. It closes on Friday,

February 28th. This is an annual award program to celebrate some of Elk Grove's outstanding

community volunteers more information and to make a nomination, please visit the City's website.

Elk Grove proudly displays banners along Elk Grove Boulevard and Civic Center Drive,

honoring retired or honorably discharged members of the United States Armed Forces from Elk Grove.

To include a veteran in the next round of installations, apply before Monday, March 3rd.

And finally, in accordance with the City's holiday schedule, City Hall will be closed on Monday,

February 17th in observance of President's Day. Animal Shelter and Special Ways Collection Center

will also be closed and that concludes my report, happy answering questions the council might have.

Thank you for your report. Any questions or comments? All right, seeing none,

we will move on to our next item and that is our consent calendar.

At this time, I will open up public comment. I don't have anyone signed up for consent.

So I'll close public comment opportunity and look for a motion to approve the consent calendar.

So move second. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Thank you. Next up is item 8.1.

8.1 is a public hearing that was continued from November 13th, 2024 to consider an ordinance

mending the Old Town Special Planning Area.

Good evening, Mayor Sing Allen, members of the Elk Grove City Council,

Antonio Ablog, Planning Manager, Community Development Department.

Here to present to you tonight the Old Town Special Planning Area Amendment for

conditional use permits related to bars, breweries, brew pubs and wine tasting.

Again, as the clerk mentioned, this is an item that was continued from last November.

This request is an request to adopt an ordinance approving an amendment to the Old Town Special

Planning Area. This requested amendment would increase the allowed CUP capacity for CUPs for

those bars, breweries, brew pubs and wineries from the current cap of three to six.

This would only affect one footnote in the current Old Town Special Planning Area.

That's footnote 12 to the land use chart. You can see the language on the screen before you.

This does limit the amount of conditional use permits for those alcohol serving uses to three.

The request tonight is to increase those to six. If you call from staff's presentation

last time, the Planning Commission issued its third CUP for a bar brewery or winery use last

August. That means there are no more CUPs available for these types of uses. Therefore,

the request tonight to increase that capacity to six.

At the last meeting that we presented this to the Council in November, the primary concerns raised

during the public comments were related to safety and security within the Old Town Special Planning

Area. That additional outreach should be conducted with both the Elk Grove Historic Preservation

Committee and the Old Town Elk Grove Foundation. With those concerns raised, the item was

continued to February 12, 2025 this evening's meeting. Staff did conduct the additional outreach

as recommended. Staff presented the item to the Historic Preservation Committee on December 9,

2024. A majority of the committee members were not in support of this land use change due to

potential safety concerns and their position that additional alcohol serving businesses. We're

not in line with the committee's vision for the Old Town area. The committee did express the

desire to review the full range of allowed uses holistically as part of the upcoming Old Town Special

Planning Area update, which will be forthcoming over the next few months.

Further more, staff did present the amendment to the Old Town Elk Grove Foundation on

at its meeting on January 21, earlier this year. The foundation did not express opposition

generally to increasing the amount of available CUPs, but they did express concern about all of those

conditional use permits going to alcohol only serving businesses like a bar.

As far as public safety, community development department did coordinate with both the police

department and public works to formulate safety and security recommendations based on the police

department's review of calls for service and the anticipated increase in activity. Should the

CUP uses the increase also if the public events are increased in Old Town, they've

made a recommendation to assign two patrol officers to cover the Old Town area.

During these peak periods of activity, likely Friday and Saturday nights,

and they also recommended to evaluate the feasibility of expanding the drone's first responder

program. Those operational hours to provide weekend coverage to monitor the Old Town area.

Further more, the police department recommended

investigating the feasibility of installing pan tilt zoom cameras throughout the Old Town special

planning area and automatic license plate reader cameras throughout Old Town, the Old Town area.

Some of the recommended locations that would provide the necessary coverage are highlighted on the

map. These are kind of the more active areas and some of those areas such as alleys which

could have used utilized increased eyes in those areas and conjunction with those cameras.

We would look to install solar operated lights to address some of those lighting concerns.

Again, if the limit on the CUP is increased, that limit would not approve any specific project.

Those projects would still have to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis as they come in for review.

Staff would continue to coordinate with the police department on each CUP request as they come in

to evaluate the calls for service at that time and whether it would be appropriate based on the

operational program of that request or whether it would be appropriate to make a positive recommendation.

Should any of those CUP's come in in the future? We would also continue to coordinate with public

works on any infrastructure necessary to install additional cameras or lighting that would be necessary

to augment the safety efforts throughout the all-town area.

As far as the California Environmental Quality Act, staff finds no further environmental

review is necessary. The approval of bars, brewers, and wineries, and brew pubs through increased

cap on CUPs would not increase the density or intensity of development within all-town.

And the approval of any CUPs must comply with existing development standards and go through

the CUP process with findings and conditions of approval.

With that staff does continue to recommend increased to the

allowed CUPs within the all-town special planning area, requesting an increase of those

CUPs from the existing three-limit capacity to six. That concludes my presentation.

I'd be happy to answer any questions. Should you have any?

All right. Thank you for your presentation. At this time, I will declare that the public hearing

is now open and open up public comment opportunity. We have two people signed up to speak on this item.

A Michael Manaski followed by Randy Becker.

Hi. I wondered why I didn't get a notice about this because I'm right. I mean, like,

three doors away from getting notification about this project, about this change.

It seems to me that given that the police department has said that it wants to assign officers

and wants and is concerned actually about putting in surveillance of equipment

near existing bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. I'm opposed to this. The idea of

increasing the number of bars and exclusively alcoholic establishments. This area is

frequently used by families. The most robust use of old town is really

demographically heterogeneous. There's a lot of different kinds of people that go through old town.

There's children, there's elderly people. The Windsor place that was just mentioned down

in that area is not far away. We're elderly people who cared for nursing home. Anyway,

I'm opposed to increasing the number. There's plenty of access to alcohol everywhere.

It's not like you can't get it in a restaurant or a grocery store nearby. I oppose the increase

of the number from three to six. Thank you. And I live in the area.

Next up is Randy Becker. That will be our final speaker unless I get another blue card.

David Mayer, vice mayor, council, staff. I think moving, first of all, we only have one bar.

And that needs to be identified by staff. Just one, the rest of them must have eateries.

Period. Full stop. So if we're going to move to three, I would expect that be the same

that these would be locations that would serve alcohol, but also food, or have food available.

I'm not opposed to the expansion to six. However, I think we need to look at the overall

progress through Old Town on each application. The safety of the community, the lighting,

what the hours of service is going to be, what kind of establishment is it? Is it just wine? Is it

just beer? Do they have a full bar? Is it a dinner house? I'm absolutely opposed to any city money

being spent on any further restaurant bar locations. We need to clear up the situation we're

currently in. That's maybe not any fault of our own, but we need to make sure that we don't go

back again for that. As far as adding officers, I think it's a great idea. Put boots on the ground,

have them walk around, get to know the people. That's exactly why we brought in measuring,

meaning it was part of it. What can we do to make things better? What can we offer in services?

What do we need to do and do we need to expand certain things at certain times? So,

measure E is a good program for that if we need to do that. But I think we need to look at this at

one application at a time. Where is it located? What are the needs? Make a checklist. That checklist

should have everything. Should be the safety of the community, safety of the parents, safety of the

automobiles in the area, the lighting, pedestrian, cross streets, walkways and all that.

So, I think it's a great idea, but we need to be cautious that we move forward to make sure that

it's done correctly. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Becker. That is our final speaker on this item.

So, I will close the public comment opportunity and open it up for discussion here. I'll start

to the right. Councillor Spears. Okay. Couple questions first. We don't have any actual pending

applications right now for any additional... No, there's no existing pending applications for any

of these uses. Okay, however, there are folks who have expressed

design. Correct. Okay. All right. So, and the Old Town SPA is going to start being revisited in a few

months. What is the timeline of that Old Town SPA for its full review? Yeah, we're getting back

on that. We'll work... staff's working on just restarting the effort to rescoping what the

outreach engagement plan is going to look like. What questions are going to have? So, you'll see

more coming in the next few months around that. Okay, but how long do you expect that project

to take? Once you start it, you think it'll be done within... We're planning on having it back

to the Council for adoption in calendar 26. There's some outreach engagement we feel is appropriate

to do. So, we're scoping that now and then getting into the revisions of the document and then

there'll be an environmental review process associated with it. Okay. So, where I am with it is

I'm not opposed to six. I am concerned that if it is not regulated, it could get to six bars.

And I think that's something that would be oversaturation. Now, I think what also has to be

recognized in this is in a conditional use permit, we do have the ability to determine or to

determine specifically what type of establishment it will be. Now, we would need to provide some

sort of guardrails to help staff because they don't want to have to say, I don't think staff will

approve that. We would need to do help them and kind of put some guardrails around it. I think

the other thing, but we need to recognize that the land use or see me the conditional use permit

and I may say it wrong. So, those who are better lawyerly go ahead and explain it, but you know,

the conditional use permit lives with the parcel. So, if that property, if a wine tasting room is sold

to someone else, it has a conditional use permit for a wine tasting room forever. Now, if they say,

I want to turn this into a bar, that's a different conversation, right? And further, if you,

further, you also have to get a state license for the alcohol as well. And that is something that does

not transfer with the property, right? Okay. So, if someone was to come in and say, I'm going to do a

wine tasting room and I'm going to turn it into a bar, not only would they have to get a new CUP,

correct, or an amendment to their CUP, but they would also have to get a different state license

for the liquor, right? So, it's a couple hurdles to jump. So, I guess what I'm asking to do, or I,

you know, ask for a little bit of discussion around it, is to be able to control these a little bit

more granularly so that we can keep it such that it's not going to eventually be six bars, right?

So, I don't know that we need to get to six today. It could be five. Maybe we don't have any,

we don't, be clear, we don't have anybody sitting and waiting. We've had questions. We've had people

asking. We also want to be set up so that we're nimble. And when a good opportunity comes, we don't

have to do, you know, we don't have to come back and have another policy conversation. But, you know,

maybe, maybe four to five is good enough until after the old town special planning review.

So, I'll park it there.

Council Member Brurr. Thank you, Mayor. So, one of the questions that I have on this specific issue,

really revolves around not just the size of old town right now, but the number of facilities or

number of restaurants, bars that we have right now. How many are coming down the pipeline?

Is there enough space? Those are all things that I think Council Member Spice have mentioned that

that I definitely understand. But as we do this, this is really flexibility of

adjusting the ordinance up to six, correct? And so with that, that gives us the flexibility

and the discretion of awarding CUPs as they come. And that's definitely something that we should

all be aware of in that case. Since the discussion took place in November, I know there were several

concerns raised by, say, the Old Town Foundation and neighbors in and around the corridor of

Elgro Boulevard of public safety concerns, public drunkenness, cleanliness,

since that initial discussion that we had here, what discussions have taken place since

with those stakeholders and with those neighbors to address their concerns to make them feel more

at ease, because I saw table one and I see the designations where the cameras are going to be

placed. And that is very helpful. One of the things that I'm wondering is that are we looking at

or are perceived to be the blind spots, the alleyways, the back spaces of public parking spots?

Can anything be done, if anything can be done with the help of these cameras,

there will be installed to help maintain safety in those locations.

So I think and Chief can chime in here. So I think the cameras with the additional lighting

gives us that additional presence in addition to the staffing recommendations that they gave around

having boots on the ground. Certainly we've not dialed in the specific exact location where each

of those cameras or lights would be, we're giving approximate locations in that graphic this evening.

And so there will be additional field review we would have to do. So should you so direct?

Lighting is an example. There's a full photometric study we'd want to do to see what the correct

coverage is. It could be a circumstance where we get out in the field and because of a tree

canopy issue or a building location, we decided instead of one pole we want to do two or three.

And so there's more analysis we'll need to do. It's just a general concept at this point.

Okay Chief. Yeah and I would agree. I think a lot of that's going to be the technology we have

at the time as well. It's not necessary for us to put or say we need the bodies until we have a

full plan in place because I think that the idea of the technology that we have here in our city

really puts us ahead of the game when it comes to a force multiplier. So that would be my approach

as well as let's get a full outline of what needs to be done. But until we actually need that,

we have the electronic or technology in place to provide the security we need.

Good deal. And into the into the question of of talking to the folks in the in the community

they're right there see everything on the day-to-day basis. And those merchants who

will be sharing space with these places in some of them are the merchants that are the owners of

those places themselves. How those conversations gone since November. So we did again as I explained

in the presentation and provided the report. We did do additional outreach back to the historic

preservation committee and the Old Town Foundation. And as you know the Old Town Foundation

that group is made up of a good slice of business operators in Old Town. Again the feedback they

provided was that similar to what I'm hearing from the council this evening is not necessarily

opposed to increasing the cap to six but did have concerns and wanted to make sure there was some

guard rails in place to prevent all those six spots from becoming bars. And in addition to the

Old Town Foundation we did take this to the historic preservation committee. Even though that

committee represents all of Elk Grove their focus is Old Town. And again they shared a different

vision for what what old the future of Old Town could be. And they were they were not in favor of

increasing the cap to six just because of that overarching vision of the holistic

amount of and range of uses within the Old Town special planning area.

Good. So with so thank you for those questions because it looks like as long as you have the

flexibility of expanding that's always helpful. But one of the things that I've seen and current

and still seeing is that the number of restaurants that we have and the number of

bought compared to the number of bars it feels like we have a lot more bars that are

being that are part of restaurants. That's always a good thing in my opinion.

But as we look at the bigger picture as we make room for for new places to come in it's just

looking at the capacity the size of of Old Town itself and just seeing the space the size that

can actually fit. This is kind of we want to make sure we're making sure we put in the facilities

in that will that doesn't make Old Town look oversaturated. But I guess that's part of the evolution

and part of the Old Towns SPA as that gets amended those are things that we can really dive into

and discuss. But as far as the amending the and creating this ordinance tonight I'm okay with it.

It's just as long as we have the flexibility as long as we're still talking and still treating

it as a living breathing document that is always subject to be fixed amended down the road.

Especially as we're looking at the Old Town SPA I think it's definitely something to keep in

front of mind. Thank you. We'll go to council members soon. Thank you Mayor.

So I don't really think three is a huge amount to and this is a potential three doesn't mean

everybody will rush in and buy it. I mean apply for it. But at the risk of staying in the

obvious Christopher Jordan or Antonio we can always say no to the application that comes in.

Is that correct? Yes we have discretion over the type of use that comes in the their operations

and again going back to reviewing it in light of if they do have food service or if it's strictly

a bar we can review it through those lenses. But even if it was strictly a bar it's by definition

a conditionally use permit we have latitude. Yes it's to revoke and yes we we can make a

discretion it's our discretion to either make a recommendation for approval or denial or place any

number of conditions that we feel would be appropriate that they operate in a safe manner and

are a positive addition to the community. And then to address some issues that were raised by

one of the speakers. In that review process of your recommendation you would review this

application for a number of things. I would affect safety and what they were doing good.

Safety security operations even who the operator is what their experience is in operating such a

business. And we do the same public outreach as we did for this amendment tonight outreach to

historic preservation committee the O'town Foundation and any other groups that want a

presentation. Absolutely thank you. Yeah and I always and weary about trying to anticipate

the future and when we talk about these things is this for me it was a lesson that I learned

a long time ago on the on the county's community planning advisory council when a Walgreens

application came in we approved it it was on Laguna and Franklin and then another Walgreens

application came in on Bruceville and Laguna and I was thinking why should we allow another

Walgreens it's just so close to one another and then came a gas station Chevron on on Harbor Point

and then came a Shell gas station and then came an ARCO now don't we have enough gas stations here

so you know the lesson for me was the market takes care of a lot of these things you know people

businesses whether it's a restaurant gas station grocery store they take a risk they do analyses

they take a risk and whether that they want to set up shop and so it isn't always a you know

incumbent upon us to to dictate the winners and losers because who's to say maybe I

prefer Chevron and you prefer Shell so why should we allow Chevron and not Shell or vice versa

I mean the so those are the kinds of things I it just gets tricky so you know to the

the I think the decision here is whether we want to allow old town to revitalize and what the

original intent was for for the city when at least you know for dating myself now but I think

it was it's a long time ago you know for the senior here yeah or mine I don't know but the

um but you know that the discussion around all is why we bought the railroad property why we

partnered with the indistublement to bring in Dust Bowl uh what was to uh in in in another venture

which you know the Sloan didn't didn't work out but we took a chance the whole point of it was

to revitalize old town to turn into a place uh that was more lively and so um what we're doing here is

we're doing a modest increase a modest increase right talking about going from three to six potential

and the the safety measures I think are still in place the reviews from staff the reviews from

planning commission and and and others so I think uh all of that those safeguards still remain

and it's not uh and there's no guarantee it it it's gonna you know get overrun with just with just bars

you know I think Councilmember Spice brought up the you know the wine too we had a wine tasting

establishment that just opened up in our city already and so I think there's

also potential for new things that we have we haven't even thought of because that's not our

Bailey Wick that the the the creatives and the and the people who want to bring something unique to

our community they're still out there and so I think providing them an opportunity to do that to show

us that they are worthy of this conditional use permit and being in old town and being part of this

community uh I think um you know they will come and and it's up to them to prove to us that they're

they're you know they're appropriate for for this area so it's not about necessarily the number

it's about how we influence uh what we want we want coming in so for those reasons I do support

this and I don't want to credit um Chief Davis and your analysis and put in additional officers officers

on the street and adding these camera locations here to make everybody feel safer as it stands

today and in the future so thank you thank you Vice Mayor thank you Madam Mayor thank you for

the presentation truly appreciate it for letting us know what's occurring what's happening Chief I

believe for that photo Andrea showed um that the the drone was activated in 45 seconds it got to

yes actually on that particular call that I think you're talking about it it went from

launch point to location in under 40 seconds awesome that's it was about 37 seconds to be

exact but yes so I'm assuming from launch point from here to old town uh it'll be within that

timeline we we'll be on scene at most calls especially critical ones in our city within a minute

and then able to office the deploy resources based on what the pilot is seen whether it's

CFD fire or for police services okay thank you Chief appreciate it um and I agree with my council

colleagues uh councilman species and councilman Sue and um the we the guardrails and the guidelines

are already there um the reality is we can't we can't say what the markets gonna look like there's

restaurants that are closing left and right within the Sacramento region um and I know we're

looking at particularly in old town uh I believe and I agree with with our city staff that we want to

create an economic activity down in that area um and with that I'm full support of it and I'm willing

to make the motion all right my turn to talk to them you can make the motion though

so thank you to my colleagues um great comments um great presentation I to support going

from three to six I think the biggest concerns that I heard from folks was really centered around

safety and lighting and those two central issues have been addressed um in terms of economic

development and driving um the you know visitors to old town and revitalizing that that has been

something that you know as we've all been very passionate about and I think we do have many guard

rails already in place that as we go through the process as we see the applications if they're not

the right fit we have opportunities to to raise those concerns but having that flexibility now so

that we don't have to revisit it again which um can be challenging sometimes so I definitely

am in full support and I appreciate the attention to the safety concerns and the lighting those two

go hand in hand so more patrols more eyes and ears and then of course the lighting

will make a big difference and those meet really the central concerns from the people that I heard

most they weren't opposed to having you know going from three to six they were just mostly concern

about the safety um of the area because we do want a mix we do want families to go there and if

there's restaurants not everyone's going to be drinking obviously but if there's restaurants

then the age is is different it's not just over 21 so we want to have that flexibility and those

opportunities exist so that we can help revitalize this beautiful part of our city so with that

now I will look for a motion did you make that motion mr. vice mayor second all right um all

those in favor we gotta give him a little bit of it all those in favor please say hi hi thank you

all right we will move on to our next item eight point two

you

good evening mayor Sarah Kirch-Gessner Elk Grove Planning Department

the project consists of a general plan amendment both text and map a rezone attend a subdivision

map and subdivision design review the project also includes a tree permit and a determination of

consistency with the general plan for the abandonment of existing right away the project site is

located the southwest corner of the intersection of west octinum boulevard and danish road the site is

currently undeveloped the site is bounded by west octinum boulevard to the east and danish road to

the north surrounding existing land uses include single family residents to the north across

danish road the laguna gateway shopping center to the south and east across west octinum boulevard

state route 99 further to the east and large lot single family residences and the elk

Grove laguna creek to the west the planning committee the planning commission excuse me reviewed the

project on january 16th earlier this year one resident spoke in opposition to the development project

generally and questioned if the project proposed apartments in response staff did note that the

project consists of single family residential and does not include apartments and the planning

commission recommended city council approve the project 5 to 0 the applicant is requesting a general

plan amendment to modify the land use designation of the site from regional commercial to medium density

residential and parks open space the project proposes to reason the project site accordingly from

shopping center to rd 10 as well as open space the project proposes medium density residential

development which is consistent with policies of the general plan policies LU 2-3 and LU 2-4

which includes infill development in areas identified on the general plan as well as compatibility

with the surrounding area and increases housing diversity the project also includes the general

plan amendment to modify table 8-4 to be discussed later on in this presentation

the tenant a sub vision map would subdivide the project site into 111 single family lots as well as

two landscape lots including a pedestrian peseo the project's density is nine dwelling units per acre

and the map is consistent with the general plan municipal code design guidelines with the proposed

general plan amendment and rezone the south side of dynish road is proposed to be constructed with

a separated sidewalk and the lots fronting onto dynish road pedestrian connectivity is provided

to dynish road through the end of court three as well as a peseo to west doctinble of art at the

southeast corner of the site the project also includes an off-site improvement which would extend the

sidewalk from the project site along the south side of dynish road to the west the project site is

adjacent to existing transportation and non-transportation noise sources specifically highway and

you nine to the east and home depots loading dock at the south west corner of the site a noise study

was completed for the project to verify compliance with the general plan policies and standards

the general plan table eight dash four identifies the maximum noise level for new projects affected by

non-transportation noise sources such as the home depot loading area the daytime standard is 55

decibels and the nighttime standard is 45 decibels the applicant is proposing to modify footnote d to

give the city flexibility when there are site specific conditions or considerations as determined a

clickable by impliquable by the designated approving authority in this case the city council for new

projects affected by existing non-transportation noise sources and the proposed text amendment is

shown here in underlying and strike through the proposed general plan amendment would provide the

city flexibility and applying increased noise level standards for new developments including this

project due to existing conditions near a project site this flexibility would be beneficial

beneficial for infill development projects similar to this the projects on site conditions and

considerations include the infrequency location and timing of the noise exceedances construction

measures and disclosure statements recorded on the property the construction of a 12 foot sound wall

along the affected portion of the project boundary as shown here in this exhibit would reduce

noise levels by 15 decibels which would reduce the nighttime noise levels on the project site to 45

decibels for the majority of the time any exceedances would be minor infrequent and would occur during

periods when backyard usage is at a minimum the recommended mitigation measures include construction

of the sound wall ranging from six to 12 feet sound rated windows as i mentioned disclosure

statements that would notify future residences of the potential for elevated noise levels during home

depot operations and air conditioning units on the site with implementation of the measures described

the project is consistent with the revised general plan noise standard as proposed

the project also includes a tree permit for the removal of three trees of local importance and

these were recommended for removal for public safety reasons by the project arborist the project

includes the abandonment of eight feet of right of way on the south side of dynash road that is

no longer needed dynash road was previously dedicated as a 50 foot right right of way and the

current standard only requires 42 feet the proposed abandonment is consistent with the general plan

as well as the city's improvement standards an initial study mitigated negative declaration was

prepared for the project which determined that the project would not result in a significant

environmental impact that could not be mitigated and mitigation measures were incorporated to reduce

potential impacts to a less than significant level the city received six common letters total for

during the public review period and two after the close of the comment period and the comments

do not alter the conclusions of the initial study as described in the staff report

the planning commission recommends approval of the project and i am available for any questions

as well as the environmental consultant on the project and the applicant team is also available

to answer questions tonight all right thank you very much for your presentation at this time i

will declare that the public hearing is now open does the applicant wish to speak

good evening madam mayor council just want to thank staff for getting us to this point it's been

a long road for us we're very happy that we're here in front of you for consideration this evening

any questions like like Sarah mentioned we're here to answer so feel free to shoot once we get to

that point thank you very much thank you at this time i'll open up public comment opportunity nobody

signed up to speak on this i will close public comment opportunity and declare the public hearing

is not closed any questions or comments yes just one question thank you mayor

Sarah is that for the sound walls on the areas that are are indesible i think up to 12 but

is it is there is it six foot on the from the house side and then 12 it on the on the home

depot side or i didn't see a section in here so i just curious i'll put up the exhibit that shows it

okay

so this exhibit on the right shows the sound wall starting at the southern boundary at the southwest

boundary it's 12 feet and then it steps down towards dynastroids so it would be 12 feet on both sides

of oh oh okay so it's it's even ground on both yes yes yes thank you that's how i was wondering thank you

thank you any other questions from colleagues seeing none i will look for emotion one through three

so moved second all those in favor please say aye

hi thank you next item 9.1

and 9.1 has received an update on establishing the name of the new zoo at the Elgrove project

consider a resolution establishing the name of the facility

could you may or members of the city council my name is careretic deputy city manager

i'm going to be providing an update on establishing the name of the new zoo at Elgrove project

on January 22nd a potential name was presented to the city council for the new zoo that was the

greater Sacramento zoo at Elgrove the city council provided comments back regarding elk

growth should be more prominent given the city's financial contribution the location of the zoo

as well as the opportunity to strengthen the city's brand two names that were discussed at that

median on January 22nd was the Elgrove zoo of greater Sacramento and the Elgrove zoo of Sacramento

i'd like to talk for a minute about the project's economic impacts as you know this is a

transformative opportunity for the city as well as the region there are short term as well as long

term economic benefits over five years it is estimated that the zoo will bring in 249 million

dollars in economic impact and produce 395 jobs

regarding the zoo funding sources sources are both legal local as well as regional if you look

at the bottom of this table the city share is 61.4% of the project and the society in regional share

is 38.6 so this just underscores the local and regional nature of this project

sorry carer can you go back for a second i know i just want to clarify we're talking for

this is phase one this is phase one a and one b one b there's a whole second phase

right yes so there's phase one c which is the balance of africa right zone two california

zone three is an office building that makes room then for phase four which is australia

right and just want to click because my recollection was the entire project is double that

is 600 million we don't have a full cost estimate for build out of all four phases we've focused

on getting to opening day of the phase one a one b complex when we approve this project

how many minutes ago may may last year that's total estimate was 600 million as i remember

i have to go back and confirm if we had a number in there we had a number in there that's that's

why i just want to clarify because i i i see this all the time and i feel like we keep talking

about 300 million and we're we're not in it to build one or two phases we're in this to build

the whole thing and that's to me like in my mind that's what we are obligating our residents to

that that's the decision i'm not saying i'm you know there's it's a good decision but i'm saying that

is it is the decision and so i just wanted to clarify because it is only it doesn't say one

phase one a or whatever i did that i just want to clarify this is only part of the project

right so that's all thank you yeah thank you so feedback that we received on January 22nd from

the society as well as after the city council meeting was that it's very important to the

Sacramento Zoological Society that the name is included in Sacramento Zoo and its entirety

so this is to honor the long legacy and history in the region of the zoo recognize the societies

in the region's contributions to the project preserve brand identity and support fund raising

efforts and attendance particularly outside of the region so given the city council feedback on

January 22nd as well as feedback from the society staff is recommending the name outro of Sacramento Zoo

depending on final branding and marketing the dash may or may not remain and the branding would complement

both names so why Elgro of Sacramento Zoo this name recognizes both parties concerns and priorities

the city's financial contribution the location of the zoo the historical Sacramento Zoo brand

broad regional economic impacts and regional funding components so it is staff's recommendation

that the city council adopt a resolution authorizing the naming of the new zoo at Elgrove

has Elgrove Sacramento Zoo that's the conclusion on my presentation all right thank you thank you

for your presentation at this time i'll open up public comment i have ray gym rentals followed by

Robert Churchill

yes madam air i'm rj rebels welcome back yeah yeah i'm i'm really pleased to be here however i'm

going to do the same thing my cousin uh merchant of death did earlier and asked for the $2,500

contribution back for all the reasons he gave however i'm here to speak to what happened at the

last meeting on January 22nd when the city manager said that the zoological society will be required

to hand over 50 million in cash uh by you know January of 2027 however page three of the staff

report and by the way it's page seven and the current report seeing look out of there it says

officially posted that cash commitment can be met with written pletches so um

there's cut there's a contradiction here and what you say and what's in writing seem to contradict

and mr. spes and mr. soon both said at the last meeting oh yeah you know like uh

or well first of all you mr. i don't want to mischaracterize what was said but mr.

spes you i recall you saying that you were concerned about uh getting that cash in hand and

mr. soon you were concerned about the the line share being paid not 60 percent or anything but

probably closer than 90 percent of this being paid for by the uh the taxpayers here me and others

the folks that live here and uh so and if you look at the the the uh the the numbers uh that

at least are online regarding the zoological society and its assets so it has 24 million

in assets and uh their net income is at 100 there's a million dollars a year and so based on that

those numbers uh the without inflation adjustments the uh the Sacramento zoological society if it

did it on its own would be able to afford this project in the year 2425 and if in fact it's going to

cost 600 or 800 or a billion dollars uh we're talking about a thousand years so it's absurd uh this

is crazy and uh you know the only name i can come up with is exotic animal prison really because

to lock up beautiful uh animals like oh you know maybe we ought to have Kevin Bell show up that's

the problem Kevin Bell hasn't shown up you know the guy from the Lincoln Park Zoo that uh that the

that the zoological society touted and i realize them up against the clock here but where's Kevin Bell

who is Kevin Bell why is Kevin Bell saying good things about this zoo and he doesn't even live here

thank you thank you next up is Robert Churchill followed by Lin-Weeb

good evening madam mayor city council my name is Robert Churchill i am the interim CEO of the

Sacramento zoological society i'm also a 30 year resident of Elk Grove uh but here on behalf of

the society tonight to state that we support the proposed name uh and we appreciate the

responsiveness and the spirit of collaborative effort over the past couple of weeks to bring

this name forward today so thank you thank you next up is Lin-Weeb followed by Randy Becker

well i think that the zoo should be the Elk Grove taxpayer mellow ruse slash sacramino zoo

but i want to talk about something else that's related to this and a previous meeting council member

species requested that the city manager clearly state that no on-site construction of the zoo

would begin unless the city had received the full 50 million cash on deposit from the zoological

society while the city manager confirmed this i feel that his response may have been a little misleading

and i wanted to clarify for the record as far back as the city council staff report of June 26

2024 page four it has been stated that the zoological society may utilize debt financing to satisfy

any portion of the 50 million owed to the city the city has also gone so far as to facilitate this

by offering to wrap this into their own bond issue tax perish so while the city manager is

technically correct that the city would have the 50 million on deposit it needs to be clarified

that a portion of this could be in the form of debt that the zoological society would be required

to pay back with interest ultimately however the bond will be issued in the city's name

and if the zoological society fails to meet their full obligation the elk grove tax payers

and their general fund are the payees of the last resort i just wanted to have this on the record

to help fully understand fully answer council member species questions from a few meetings back

thank you thank you our final speaker is randy becker

mayor vice mayor council we're no longer a cow town as we were told earlier

we're city and therefore since we are city as i've stated a number of times

i do support the zoo as a taxpayer and someone who's representing taxpayers because we've had three

appeared tonight on the third and i and i hate to put it in this context but sacramental

council mayors business deserted the zoo they chose a different path they had plenty of

opportunities for decades to save the zoo and we had an opportunity or at least put our handout

to give them an opportunity to save the zoo sacramental didn't care less because if they did we

wouldn't be talking here tonight it would be in it would be an atomas in the aspie area

not a potential hospital that may never be built they don't want the zoo so you know when our

coreena was built names were changed but no matter if you talk to somebody where you're going

we're going to our coreena now it's golden one because it's downtown but i'm sure if it names change

in the future it'll still still be known as the golden one arena now back to a name

i've lived most my life in elk grove and i've seen a lot of changes and i would be surprised

if i live long enough to see the zoo built but i'll tell you one thing the zoo needs to be called the

elk grove zoo now if you want to add sacramental region in the sacramental area that's fine

but it needs to be called the elk grove zoo because it's moving delk Grove sacramental deserted the zoo

if they did they would have already had the money they'd have had the money in the bank and you

would have been dig and dirt because the money would have been there but it's not it's not because

those politicians up north don't care if they did the money would be there the name needs to be

to represent our city we're paying for it if they want the name sacramental they need to increase

their their fund period and you're going to find that all over elk grove thank you thank you

thank you that concludes our speaker list so i will go ahead and close the public comment

opportunity and open it up for discussions we'll start to our left with the council members

thank you thank you thank you i i mean look i i all i all i wanted to do earlier was was

mentioned that we're building a whole zoo right that's all i'm saying and and so

i'm not i'm not taking away what the zoological society they are great partners great people who

are passionate about the the facility and you know please no disrespect intended and i know i

think what they want is and i'm just going to reiterate what a little bit what i said last time

because of new meeting and all look i i totally appreciate the sacramental zoo with my family

in that area for a hundred years nearly a hundred years me growing up there me bringing my kids

there i totally appreciate the the zoo and and all it had to offer and the memories that me and my

kids will always have we are transitioning we're transitioning and it will be something amazing it

will be something amazing when it gets done and so i don't mind having a collaborative you know

collaborative name and we know we started all i did was switch around the the name to

ill-grow zoo of greater sacramental right so but i you know we're partners so i'm willing to

compromise i think what staff are posed is is a good compromise has it does have ill-grow first

which i think a lot of ill-grow residents would would appreciate keep sacramental the name to

for the nostalgia and i like the idea of getting rid of the dash and putting you know what

what whichever cherished you know animal we choose it could be an elk for that matter or you know

any animal lion whatever but i think that would be kind of a neat marketing thing to to have

ill-grow a great and nice animal whether you know the rhino would be a good one to sacramental

and then zoo so i i would be fine with that i thank you thank you uh vice mayor thank you

metamere um i'm in agreement with the name and that's just where i'll leave it

short and sweet cast member broor no i like the uh the name of ill-grow sacramental zoo and

but if if we go a little further it should be a picture with j-gragory top hat monocle

that makes it cool cleat good night council members fees i must have missed that reference somewhere

but j-gragory is the rhino you should come meet him you speak you oh got you

be right there um okay so um at first uh i thought about okay ill-grow california zoo all right um

um and i thought it's a little bit awkward right um and i think eventually it might become

truncated right but my belief is that it becomes truncated then it'll likely be elk roe zoo right um

although i do i do give um you know deference of course and risk back to the history of the

sacramental zoo and i think it's important to recognize that it isn't necessarily about the city

of sacramental it is about the brand of sacramental zoo right there's there's there's kind of two

separate pieces there i think i think we could all agree that if sacramental wanted to keep it

they could have right um but it isn't about that the other thing that i look at is that

ill-grow is about i mean i guess one fourth the size of sacramental right but together i think in

maybe less than 20 years sacramental and ill-grow may be known as a metropolis right or a

a metropolis i should say much like miniapolis st. Paul or Dallas Fort Worth right and so um i think

that that's actually the the ill-grow sacramental zoo um actually works out pretty well so

something we can work with i think that it gives respect to both parties i think it's a little

bit long it may not be the best name from a branding perspective um but i i can support it so

thank you um i agree i i actually love the name and it's a great compromise and i really want to

thank and appreciate the sacramental zooological society's partnership in this i trust that you have

reserved all of those necessary domains so that um you know when the time comes we have all of those

saved i think that that's going to be important but you know i do agree with what councilman

was busy saying as we grow as a region it's very likely going to be blended so this you know i

haven't even thought about this but this actually does lend itself to that blend in the future as

this great metropolis but this is a an excellent compromise and it's a lot shorter than it was so

we have four words and last time it was it was a lot longer so um you know i'm playing all of the

wordsmithing i think at the end of the day we have a nice name we have a good brand we're able to

market that and that's really key um most importantly we finally have a name yeah so i absolutely

support this so with that i'll take a motion one one quick comment yes i just want to be sure

for clarity sake that folks don't get it twisted i am not suggesting that sacramental and elgrove

will become one city that is certainly that is certainly not in the conversation i'm simply stating

that like there are cities that have two cities like Dallas and Fort Worth and Minneapolis and

St. Paul of course they're often referred to together yes we're not purchasing sacramental like

i want to be sure that nobody got my words but i i like to make the motion to adopt the

resolution for the elgrove sacramental zoo all seconded all those in favor say hi hi all right

congratulations we have a name thank you all right so we will move on to our next item 9.2

let's receive the oh sorry i will not jump on there go ahead okay um mayor members of the

city council i'm inviting um measure e oversight committee chair hallus herb to present

the measure e annual report from the measure e citizens oh psych committee

could you open my sides for me i'm i'll get that sorry my system was just cycling so

it's not like i think i've got it perfect thank you very much

necessary here we go good to see hallus great to see you too dear well

madameer and city councilman my name is hallus herb i chair the measure e citizens oversight committee

and i'm here tonight to give you the required annual report of the committee to

city council let's see if i get this all right them quick overview of measure e it's a 1%

sales tax that would that the community self-imposed it can the revenues can only be spent

in elgrove the proceeds are shared between the city and the communities the

cussunis community services district the funds

spending are prioritized through community identified needs and priorities and i have been

extremely grateful that the staffs of both the city and csd have been very careful to present

all requests with great care to explain how that particular request aligns with one of the at

least one of the particular priorities the funding priorities were found by many interactions

with the community and the top priorities were pulled out of that a few of them were bundled

together under what is generally considered crime reduction and rapid response

the city established a sub fund within their general fund for a measure e revenues

and csd itself

who do you advance for me

established a separate funding stream so that they can they can tell what is going on with it

the next

backup one thank you the committee has four obligations four charges one is to review the revenues

and the expenditures of funds one is to review the annual independent financial audits both of the

city and of csd very important to the review of the allocation of funding though is to identify

that the funding requests are consistent with the priorities as identified by the community

this is we consider to be extremely important and then our fourth charge is annually we then come

to city council to give our report and this is our first ever annual report to city council

the members of the committee are myself we have two other committee members still here tonight

Judy Judy Covington and Brett you still here stand up Brett and Brett far follow me

the other members are Valerie Irwin who serves as the vice chair Helena Medira Silmi

Harmon Dar Singh Kengra and Alan Vito the third and we represent I don't know how the mayor

managed this but there is a great background variety here with all of these people and it's been

an extremely interesting committee the committee accomplishments are we attended four meetings so far

and the very first meeting ever was in May just before the very first major program fiscal year

in February of 2024 we met to receive progress reports and at that time requests for additional

allocations in line with the community identified priorities what had happened was in May if you

think about it before the next fiscal year we don't really know for sure what's going to be spent

as a tax measure as a sales tax and the best guess in May of 23 was I'm rounding about 22 million

dollars and the allocations were consistent with that by the February 24 meeting it had turned out

that we were told now it looks like we can spend up to we will receive up to 28 million dollars

go ahead with additional allocations we received numerous requests that primarily extended the

existing programs especially those that involved a lot of staff then we had our third meeting

just before the next fiscal year the 24 25 fiscal year and we were told at that time that the first

year major e-tax monies actually come closer to 34 million dollars so it's been an amazing thing

to see for the city right now we just came off a few weeks ago from our January 25 meeting

where we reviewed the annual independent fiscal audits of both the city and of CSD so we

fulfilled that charge because it was lovely seeing that both audits got clean reviews

and me being here tonight supported by other committee members and by the staff that has been

so helpful and big kudos please to brand new practically brand new assistant city manager Jackie

Guzman because she got sort of thrown into this very very rapidly and has just been aces in setting

all of these up for me even if the little remote didn't work at the end okay

one more we're going to go on to what sort of revenues we had in a little bit more detail in some

of the allocations thanks very much Jason for being here the allocation by sort of agreements

and contracts between the city and csd are the city takes off 20% for reserves of whatever

these tax revenues represent in a fiscal year and the city of elk grove has 50%

and the consumer community services district has 30% which by I think it's a formal contract with

the city provides 20% of the total take leap he's not here any longer to the

there he is back there the elk grove fire department huge public safety issues

the elk grove fire department gets 20% of the total mazure revenue and then parks and recreation

under csd get the remaining 10% the actual that are on here are a little bit confusing

and I would like to move on to the next slide please and then I'll get back to the actual

spending okay the first thing to notice on the slide is on the left hand side you will see the

community priorities under which we are operating right now and the top one here is placed on the top

for a reason if you look across any lines into any one of the monetary columns and compare

what's in the adopted budget for crime reduction and rapid response and then look at the total at

the bottom of that same column you'll see that a major portion of the funding has gone to what the

community has indicated is the biggest deal within this project but the others are

easy to read here I hope and you will see that in every type of budgetary category every one

of the community priorities has been addressed with at least some of the mazure e funding that is

an indication of how well the staffs of both organizations have worked on this

additional source of funding I call you attention to the adopted budget which is the first monetary

column that budget was created at the time when we didn't have any experience whatsoever yet

I mean it's before the revenues actually began and so that budget was modified

eight or nine months later with the fiscal year 2324 revised budget again what happened primarily

was within the same priority categories we were able to add more money because what had been

forecast to be try it at the beginning for 22 million became 28 million then there is the

final column on this page and that column looks very different right now and I think that there's

a couple easy explanations for that our startup here was indeed a startup here new programs were

planned pilot studies were begun and a mazure hiring campaign went on for both the Elkrow

fire department and the Elkrow police department and by the time the right personnel could be identified

hired and then put together at the same time in police and fire academies it took a long time

there's a great deal of other spending that went to specialized equipment for below for both the

police and fire departments but I have been led to to believe that both organizations are very

carefully monitoring especially their special vehicles and all the special equipment and have plans

for the replacement cycle it's not going to be that we're buying almost three dozen vehicles

for the almost three dozen new hires every year and of course some of the new hires like the

dispatchers don't need that kind of that kind of equipment the next slide is going to have the

exact same community priority column and the exact same total column with a little bit more

detail in between if you'd help me please now this sorts out how the city and cst explicitly

did their spendings you'll see that the city spent in seven of the eight priority categories you

left parks to cst cst picked up parks plus three other of the categories so there's been a real

dedication to trying to address what the community said they wanted Jason please

the community's cumulative year and totals at the beginning of the first fiscal year in the

and then into this into the next fiscal year seem very different but it's just it's just the way

it happened you don't get the revenues back immediately from the state and the spending wasn't done

at the very beginning of the fiscal year

please

a quick slide just saying again we have done our charge for the 2324 fiscal year in our happily

able to tell you that both the city and cst got clean financial audits then I'd like to go to

the next slide please we have now several major e highlights in terms of the spending

please the first one talks explicitly about the fact that there are 32 additional public safety

positions between the police and fire departments and that is the extraordinary commitment and

chief Rodriguez referred to some of this earlier in his talk with you tonight then there are some

really cool additional one-offs for now I like to call them where modern technology that enhances

public safety is being addressed with some of the major refunds homelessness has been addressed

we're proud to report that from Sarah Bond-Tragor and her people that there was indeed a 24-hour

winter shelter that could manage at least 30 individuals at a time there's been groundwork laid

for other forms of of shelters there are motel vouchers and new homeless navigator you folks

can read this a lot has been done towards homelessness for enhancing the prevention of youth crime

and youth gangs both the city and cst have hired new people and added additional programs

for maintaining streets and parks and traffic conditions and this is three three of the eight

community priorities all bundled together on one slide there have been several projects begun at

least one of them's already completed economic development had a portion of these funds

some of these will be ongoing and I would like to especially note that I felt it was really lovely

to see that there were some initial requests for funding especially under economic development

that didn't pan out for certain reasons and the staffs just said this isn't going to work for such

and such a reason and so we're not going to waste the funds and I think that that is great

fiscal responsibility clean and safe public air public areas is being addressed especially with

targeting graffiti and trash and the authority for cst to hire a fourth full-time park ranger

the next steps as I am told are that new folks with cst will be having a retreat

to consider issues including measure e then you will tell your staffs what to what to ask us for

for next for the next fiscal years continued funding we have met in January of this year

and we've already begun seeing some funding sources but I don't can't tell you what the

what the actual amounts are going to be for the 24 25 year this is the 23 24 report

nevertheless what I am assured of and will say to you is that for all the funds that were not

spent out of that wonderful 34 million they simply came over into the 24 25 fiscal year

and they came over and basically the same categories according to the staff requests

with the same priorities and they will be augmenting whatever 24 25 funding comes in

as it slowly trickles in we get a good start on 24 25 to report to you also

our next step for the committee now that we will have done our annual report to you our first

one ever is that we are meeting again in May and we will be reviewing the 25 26 reports

get the updates on the 24 25 see whether there's anything to augment the early

sessions or timings of 25 26 and the chair and the vice chair are considered to your terms so we

will have new elections and as for that my final slide is to thank you and my willingness

to answer any questions that you have I will point out that you have a 24 page packet

that includes in great detail the different kinds of programs that were funded in the 23 24

fiscal year and I will urge you to remember again that sometimes when it looks awkward that the

funding doesn't line up it's because there are changes in what's coming in and what we are told

to expect and let ourselves go ahead and allocate but also a key on some of the columns will be

this is the money spent in this fiscal year that was generated in the fiscal year and that's

a very different issue from the total monies that did get spent from generation in the fiscal year

I think that our rhythm is going to be May meetings and then something around a January meeting

henceforth it takes a while for the boards to meet set the priorities for staff the staff to decide

what the wish lists are and then come back in time for us to agree to the allocations meeting the

community priorities just in time to begin the possibility of spending in the newest fiscal year

and then we will have an update early each calendar year so that we can review both the progress

reports any additional funding requests but also the annual budget audits which are part of our

requirement so again Mayor Shingel and thank you for my appointment to this committee and thank you

for also appointing such wonderful people and I would like to say again my great appreciation for

the efforts of the staff of both the city and CSD wherever Amanda might be and she fraud there's

Amanda and Hugh Rodriguez they have taken it to heart it's a new thing for all of us and everything

we get has the community priority sort of labeled on it so that we know what we should look for

it fitting to and every time we have made a request for some help in how the presentations from

Stafford Gole these have been incorporated and when to my delight I discovered the staff had

already begun creating a back a two-sided color flyer which is in your packets also and we made a

few change requests they showed up it's just been a wonderful thing so thank you I wish to address

any of your questions thank you chair I'm just going to add a couple of things I wanted to

specifically call out that there is the ending fund balance for measure E has been growing

and so we have not allocated all of the funding that has been coming in besides the reserve there

is a pot of money of unrestricted funding that is available to program and so those that's one

of the thing that we will talk in more detail when we go to the council retreat is opportunities

for using these one-time dollars that we know are sitting there in that restricted fund balance

so we'll we'll continue we'll give you an update using the estimates from fiscal year

2425 and have that discussion at the council retreat tonight what we're asking you is to of course

receive the measure E annual report but also to review and provide feedback on the draft annual

measure E community report which is the the flyer that chair Hollis was referring to that is

something that will go out in the outgrow newsletter to community members I'm sorry I don't

I we don't have a slide for that but it it is in your 24 page packet excellent well at this time I

will open up public comment I don't have anyone signed up I'll close public comment and really thank

you and all of the committee members for your dedication and service having this oversight committee

was very important to this council and our residents as we passed this very important sales

tax measure and hearing that's it's 34 million dollars wow that's quite remarkable that's not

something we anticipated when we initially forecasted so this is great great news questions

comments I'll start to the right this time mr. Spees anything thank you chair Hollis I appreciate

that that you all of your all of your work it's it's good to see that we've got you in the right

place right after after many after many different times in different places I'm glad to see I'm

glad to see that happening thank you and I also want to thank the rest of the members it's

it takes time out of your lives and it's not always the most exciting to look at these numbers

and go through them all but the the members of the of the public asked for this tax increase and they

asked for citizen oversight and so you're you're conducting a very important job and so I appreciate

the time that you and the rest of the committee have placed into it as well as we're very happy to

have you miss Guzman taking taking the reins and and leading this from staff perspective I also

know that it's also a big lift for our finance that are you know preparing all of these reports

behind so to all my finance peeps out there thank you for doing what you do so thank you very much

you have anything yeah thank you Hollis you're welcome right it's like all the years we've worked

together on different things the one thing I've noticed is your passion your focus and your leadership

thank you and the work that the people on your committee do they have that same commitment that same

passion at same focus I want to thank you miss Judy I want to thank you Brett for for being a

part of that process along with the other members because measure E as we know was designed to make

sure that the city and CSD had resources available in lieu of hard times and to see the the funds

going through there and also notice the focus that as committee members the seriousness that you

took into it is exemplary because it is making a difference good and we see it every and we see it in

everything we do up and down the board throughout the city and the work with our finance team and to

make sure that the audits were clean also matters because it shows the accountability that was built

into this measure when it came about so this was this was a great first report really appreciate it

and really appreciate that measure E is working but it's working because we have an oversight committee

that is looking at this and looking at it with with a degree of seriousness and passion that it

deserves doing on behalf of the entire growth community so thank you so much.

Council Member Suen. Thank you Mayor hi Alice. I also want to echo my thanks to you and the

entire committee for all your work and keeping us on track making sure that how we spend the money

is how we said we're going to spend the money and so echoing those sentiments my colleagues

before me by adding on to Council Member Brewer you know this money will also intended to allow us

to set ourselves up for the future whether it was economic opportunity or also to address our

homeless situate homelessness here in the city so this you know you can see the expenditures here

and then with our shelter that we've since set up and so it's our having this

additional resources really enabling us to service our residents for today but also preparing

for the future and again thank you for making sure that we are expanding the money as we

committed to thank you. Welcome Vice Mayor. Thank you Madam Mayor. Madam Chair thank you for your

hard work things to everyone for their hard work on measuring you know you don't have to go too far

you can just go to the Costco and start seeing all the cars over there right everyone's buying in

our city and because of that we get to reinvest which is one of the main things that we're doing

this and it's obviously for our public safety as well and we're we're helpful to be working

in conjunction with CSD and and our police so thank you for everything you've done. Thank you

and I'll just restake thank you everyone for their service we're very appreciative. Have a good

evening. Great. Okay. Thank you for your help. Thank you. All right next item.

Inside of 9.3 to receive an update on the workforce readiness certification program.

Good evening Council members and thank you for having me today. I'm Sarah Audrey is your

economic development analyst and I'm here today to talk to you about our workforce readiness

certification program also known as our work program. So our recommendation tonight is that

you receive an update on the workforce readiness certification program and provides some direction

to staff. So to start it off let's give you some background information regarding the program. So

in 2015 the city began offering workforce development services to businesses upon request. So

this looked like anything from market analysis to local and regional workforce to connecting people

to our partners in workforce development hosting job fairs things of that sort. So we've been in

the workforce development game for some time now. But then in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic negatively

impacted our residents and our businesses. So in response the American Rescue Plan Act also known

as ARPA a 1.9 trillion dollar federal stimulus bill was signed into law on March 11 2021. The city

received 21,944,605 of those dollars and then the city's COVID-19 economic recovery task force

identified funding workforce development programs specifically training programs as a priority

response to the pandemic. So on August 11 2021 Council adopted the ARPA expenditure allocation plan

which did include 2 million for workforce development specifically to assist residents that were

unemployed and under employed. So in 2022 staff prepared an RFP for workforce development training

and certification services that were we did this for healthcare information technology and

manufacturing but ultimately we received favorable proposals from information technology and

manufacturing. So on February 22nd 2023 Council authorized 353,158 dollars to have a contract with

Cyber Proud Inc and this was to train our residents in information technology and those types of fields.

There was so much interest that we actually amended the contract in September 23 if you remember.

We add an additional 750,000, 350 dollars to total it to about 1.1 million dollars

and we also extended the contract to the end of 2025 so this contract is still active.

On March 8th of 2023 Council authorized another contract 304,261 dollars

to Sacramento City Unified School Districts Charles A. Jones Career and Education Center

and this was to train our Elk Grove residents in the fields of manufacturing. That contract did

expire in January 31st 2025 so earlier this year both contracts with Cyber Proud for the

information technology fields and with Charles A. Jones in the manufacturing fields totals to

about 1.4 million dollars. So now that I've given you some background on the program let's now

talk about the results of those two contracts starting with our technology programs.

So currently we have 68 graduated, sorry 68 residents have graduated from the Cyber Proud

Training with another 48 that are currently enrolled and those 48 will graduate this week.

So happy graduation to you all. Enrollment is divided among these categories so we have 38

and Cyber Security 18 and Infrastructure Support 12 and Software Development 19 and a broader

future ready program and 29 and data analytics. To date 12 graduates have secure technology

specific employment in the region so that equates to 17% of our graduates. Graduates some of those

employers include Volts which is a TEMP agency, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

that is an Elk Grove business, PDC technology, California Department of Public Health just to name a

couple of them. Two days, $665,609 of the contract has been paid equating to that $60,510 per

job placement as of now. This can obviously change with those graduates going into the field,

into the market and we anticipate spending the full amount of the 1.1 approximately for that contract.

Now shifting gears towards manufacturing to date 73 residents have graduated from Charles A.

Jones training programs and this is seven from the manufacturing technician program that's an

eight-month program. One from introduction to manufacturing that's a three-week program, one in

material handling and logistics that's a one-week program and then 64 from fork lifting and the

reason I kind of mentioned that the duration of those programs is for this next slide. So these

numbers are not including fork lifting the reason why the vast majority of those happen in the

last two months so they haven't really had that time to see if they're going to gain employment

based on that training. So six graduates not including fork lifting have secured manufacturing

specific employment in the region so that equates to 55% of the non-forklift graduates.

And some of their employers include GNB which is a Elk Grove business, Siemens mobility and

insight manufacturing services to name a couple. Our final expenditure is expected to be

$217,985 so of this amount, $207,000 has been for non-forklifting training and so that equates

to that $23,083 per job placement for non-forklifting.

All right so the city was required to obligate ARPA funding by the end of 2024 and that funding

must be spent by the end of 2026 and no additional ARPA funds are available or forthcoming.

So the key question for you all is with the pending conclusion of ARPA and the recent

expiration of the Charles A. Jones contract are we continuing with the current form of the work

program or are we pivoting or ending it. So in summary both are cyber proud and Charles A. Jones

partners have done a tremendous job in upskilling our residents they're here today and they've

done so at no cost to our city. So a small portion of that subset has found related employment

but an even smaller portion has found Elk Grove specific employment. So the current approach

and our service providers will agree hasn't proved to be the most efficient to help with the

hiring needs of our businesses. Obviously has done a lot for our residents and it would be even less

a cost effective way if we were to use general funds and not just the ARPA funds that we no longer have.

So for these reasons staff is recommending that Council provide direction to reconstitute

the work program so to be more of a flexible on-demand business driven program so similar to that

2015 model that we had to meet the specific needs of our Elk Grove businesses and we could do that

in a variety of ways I have there. So creating kind of more of a pipeline and providing targeted

training for residents that are tailored to our businesses needs. So asking our businesses what

is it that you need and really targeting that training for them for our residents. Facilitating

partnerships between our businesses and local and regional workforce organizations there are many

out there that we can connect the two and they can provide low cost or no cost services. We can

incentivize our businesses to higher Elk Grove residents. That's another strategy. Provide regional

employment market analysis. We could help with walking our businesses through the state

hiring incentive programs. We can amplify key job postings. Let's say a business comes in a town.

They need 30 software developers. We can amplify those job postings. We could have job fairs

and then we could also refer our residents to our partners as well. So these are some of the strategies

we can use but ultimately it's really to build that connection between our workforce development

program and the specific needs of our Elk Grove businesses is what we're recommending.

And if council decides to move forward with this it would be a cost, very minimal cost would

be what you would use our own budgeted economic development general funds to do this and existing staff.

The alternative is that council could direct us to maintain the workforce development program

the way it is now as a more resident training focused program rather than reconstituted as a

business needs focus program. And if council decides to do that there's a number of steps that

would need to happen. We would need to issue an RFP using analytics so looking into those job

openings saying what makes sense what areas we should really be training folks in. We would get

new service providers. Obviously our service providers could reapply if they choose to answer

that RFP. And we would contract with those new service providers using again general funds because

there are no more RFP that we can utilize. That cost is unknown. We assume that would be around

one to two million to start off and we would return to council and get those contracts authorized.

So that concludes my presentation. Staff is here to answer any questions you might have. Thank

you so much for having me. Thank you. At this time I'll open up public comment. We have Marla Clayton Johnson.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. So my name is Dr. Marla Clayton Johnson. I'm the new

director of adult education at Charles A. Jones Career and Education Center in Sacramento City Unified

School District. And I'm really just here to kind of thank Sarah and her team and the partnership

that was created in the work program. We were one of the service providers and about six weeks

were able to train 64 Elk Grove residents and prepare them for the workforce in our

Forklift training certification program. So my comment is to really just thank them and to continue

the partnership hopefully and prepare Elk Grove residents for the workforce. Thank you.

All right, thank you for your comments. I will close the public comment opportunity.

And let's see we'll turn to the right. Questions, comments?

Oh yeah, okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So to start with, I feel this was a very appropriate

use of the ARPA funds and we won't go back through it but we all remember ARPA was on the heels of

of COVID crisis and there was opportunity for the money was provided for a number of reasons but

one of which was to provide assistance to under employed residents, right? And so I think it was a

very, very appropriate use for the city's money for ARPA. Further, the question then becomes,

I start thinking about is is workforce development within the scope of a city or is that a

responsibility for the county? And that's a question I think that many people would take

might differ with. We could probably have five different answers on that up here.

I personally believe that right now the county essentially has a charter to do

that workforce development. Typically cities don't do that, right?

So I was very happy to see all of the training that happened both with the warehousing

forklifting as well as cybersecurity and information technology. I think our providers did

very, very well. People were able to get trained. It was slightly disappointing that the

placement was lower than we would expect. So while they, I believe they did a great job,

I think we, I think you can't, if something doesn't work we can't continue to do it. We have to

figure something different, right? And so I think that staff recommendations, my personal opinion,

I think staff recommendation is appropriate and yeah, I would support staff's recommendation.

Councillor Weber-Burrer?

No, I'm in concurrence with recommending this staff recommendation. I think it's really good that we're seeing

these types of results despite not having enough in getting people into the workforce.

At least the retraining of people and getting them prepared is a worthy endeavor because

because as we saw the need, the need was there, it's still there. And that's why I'm, it's good to see

that the cyber proud contract is still active. Now with this extending to December 31st,

we will need to start thinking now on whether to continue the mission or let it sunset.

But these are the types of conversations that we need to have now, especially in light of

the contract that we had through the Charles Jones Career Center,

expiring just a couple of weeks ago. And so, no, I definitely am supportive of the staff

recommendation to that extent. I think I could just speak a little bit on that point. So the ending

of the contract is really, we've hit all of the number that's put and put aside of folks to train

for cyber proud. They've done a great job at marketing it and folks going through. So really,

the ongoing funds that are in the contract would be going towards the getting them prepared

into the job market and those like ongoing funds. The bonus is that are built into the program

and things of that sort. So it's not really going to be going towards the training of folks further

on. So we've done a couple of pivots based on like things we were saying. We're always looking at,

okay, that's why you saw kind of a list of different types of tech-related things. We were really

trying to figure out what makes the most sense for the market. And then we pivoted a couple times

for doing more evening classes to accommodate folks that couldn't make daytime classes and things

like that. So, yeah, so always looking at what makes the most sense. And at this point, ending the

contract would just be ending those career services that are built in and those bonuses that we've

kind of promised folks that they would receive going through the program if they did get that

employment. Okay. Now, are people still applying and coming through the program or has that window

closed? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The window is closed for the actual, so the last 48 are being

trained right now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Councillor Osborne. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Sarah, for the presentation. I support

Staff's recommendation. I just have a question. Do you have any idea, some general idea of the

needs of the Elco businesses right now? Yeah. So we are actually conducting a launch today,

a business survey for our businesses. We worked really hard on listing out all of the key areas

of concern that they might have so that we can create programs that would meet their needs the best.

And so part of that questioning is about talent. Like, are you finding that people are underskilled?

Are you finding that people that are applying are overqualified? Are you like very extensive?

We would love to provide that link to you all if you do coming onto our businesses. Obviously,

we're doing outreach to our businesses. Also collaborating with our chamber to get those in

front of our businesses as well as part of the plan. But we know that you guys are out in the community.

So if you'd love that link, I would be happy to share it with you. And yeah, so hopefully after

that survey, we'll get that quality data that would really allow us to move forward in the right

direction. Great. Thank you. Vice mayor? Thank you, Madam Mayor. And thank you, Sarah, for bringing

this presentation before us. I just want to just to be correct. So the staff recommendation is

that council provide direction on reconstituting the work program from flexible and demand to business

driven programs. So we're just switching the name of it. No, the name could stay the same for

marketing purposes. It's just really a shift from being focused on the top bottom up approach,

trying to train residents and hoping they're going to get jobs to a top down approach, really

focusing on the businesses needs and then adjusting accordingly to meet those needs. Perfect. Thank

you. And then also saw that there's 116 people who graduated through the program. Correct.

For cyber proud. I thought what you're saying. Yes. Let me get that. Yeah, there's

116 from cyber proud and 72, I believe from 73 from Charles E Jones. And then

okay, I just want to I know that's always hard when we're talking about funding, especially from

general funds. But these are lives that we've changed and that we've promised that we're going

to be there with them, walking with them. And I know it's only one time, ARPA funding, which a

lot of cities are still trying to figure all that out. Or I kind of

is just a difficult one because I think we for me at least I truly care about people,

we're about helping our residents who for no fault of their own don't have that career path.

We want to make a difference in their lives. And for folks to take time out of their evenings,

out of their weeks to go and get this training and get retrained up. You know, I saw

some of the manufacturers like Siemens that are hiring. That is amazing story. I don't know,

as you said, that there's a graduation, I believe coming up pretty soon. First time in a row.

Is there any way that we could also attend or I mean just putting names to faces and seeing them walk

around? If you'd like to meet some of them, they're actually doing a final presentation at our office.

I'm saying you're more than welcome. Sit on tape. Please, please do pass that information on.

And just to be clear, sorry, we're not abandoning the strategy of

not training, Algrave residents. So that's still part of like a potential again, like more of a case by case basis.

But the needs of the businesses would be what it's striving the training. Absolutely. Thank you.

Great comments from my colleagues. What I will just say is that obviously the one time

monies are gone. And so we do need to pivot towards the needs of the businesses. I think that's

a great strategy and you have outlined some excellent recommendations. So I look forward to seeing

this and I know that this has been very meaningful to those that have gone through our programs.

So we have changed lives and that's something that we can all be very proud of. And we'll continue

to help and serve. And to the extent there are numerous programs that we aren't necessarily a

part of, but they're out there. And so if we can start compiling those lists and at least provide

those opportunities that even if it's not as, you know, through the city, there are many others

through other businesses and the county and so forth. Absolutely. What would be great. So thank

you, great part. Great job. Thank you. All right. Next item.

That'll be item 9.4, which is a consider appointment of seven voting members to the arts and

creative economy commission. Leaving mayor vice-verned council members. I'm Jason on the green

new city clerk. We have an overrequirement for the reconstituted arts and creative economy

commission through your action back in December of 2024. We set a deadline for applications

for February 5th of 2025. We got over about three dozen applications to go through.

As listed out in the staff report in the packet, you'll find that there are a couple more

applications that didn't meet the qualifications that were established under the resolution.

And then we have a few applications to trickle in after the fact, but we have about just over a

dozen folks that would like to speak on behalf of their applications. So I'd like to stop talking

and turn it over to them. Excellent. Well, at this time, I will go ahead and open up the public

comment opportunity. And if you are here to speak on this item, if you're seeking an appointment

or supporting someone, this is your opportunity to fill out a blue card and submit that in case

you weren't aware. So just sharing that. We do have a numerous speakers. We typically have three

minutes. I will a lot the three minutes. But if we can, if we can, do two minutes or last would

be ideal so that we can get through the number of speakers as well as the appointments themselves.

So with that, we will start with Brian Rickle, followed by an I apologize if I say the name wrong.

It's Ray Apodaka. And I'm sure you'll correct me if I butchered it. So I apologize.

Madam Mayor councilmembers, thanks for having us here tonight and for working to create this.

My name is Brian Rickle. I currently serve as the Dean of Arts Meeting and Entertainment at

Cassumbria's River College, which is one of the largest arts organizations in the region. And

this is a subject matter that I think about constantly because I am working with young people

who are striving for our life and creativity and working with them on how to insert themselves

into their local communities to be a part of their economies and to have lives thriving in the arts.

I appreciate you considering my application. When I think about cities that have really incredible

creative economies in California and outside, I think about San Luis Biscoe, I think about Napa,

I think about Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara. I think about Asheville, North Carolina,

and Oregon, Nashville, Tennessee, Santa Fe, New Mexico. And they all have economies that are

rooted squarely in the Bohemian idea of creativity driving their financial success.

If you've ever visited or lived in any of these places, you know that it is very prevalent.

Art is everywhere in these places. But not just art for art's sake, it's art for purpose and meaning,

right? In 2021, the cultural and arts sector contributed $1.02 trillion to the US economy.

When the pandemic hit, we all turned to one thing commonly. We all turned to arts and creativity

because we were stuck in places where we needed that, right? I think about the soul and the economies

of these cities and their vibrant places. Cities that invest in creative industries see higher property

tax. They see increased tourism dollars and they see much stronger local economies, public art

projects and creative spaces, boost foot traffic and drive revenue upwards of 30% of what they're

currently experiencing when that hasn't existed before. Creative districts are famous for attracting

young professionals and entrepreneurs to the businesses that exist in those creative areas.

And they create really vibrant and inclusive neighborhoods. I use Boise Idaho as an example of this.

Idaho is, I don't know, maybe I would be wrong in not considering Idaho a massively inclusive place.

But when you go to Idaho, when you go to Boise, it's different. It feels different. They have murals

everywhere. There's music everywhere. It's a wildly different place than a lot of the state. And I

think that's important. Culturally and socially, when we invest in cultural diversity within the

creative economy, it promotes inclusive storytelling. I grew up in this county. I didn't spend a lot of

time in Elk Grove as a younger person. We moved here four years ago after coming back from San Diego.

I found a very vibrantly diverse community that I did not expect if I'm being honest.

And it's thrilling to me to live here. And I'll kind of leave it at this. If you've never been

in the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago or the San Diego Zoo, we have a zoo coming. Zoo's in those cities

are hubs of creative economy. And they're amazing to go to. So thank you for your time. I really look

forward to the possibility of being on the committee. Are the commission and good luck. Thanks.

Thank you. Next up is Ray Apidaca followed by Darcy Robertson.

Honorable Mayor of City Council members, thank you for your time and I appreciate your

consideration. My name is Ray Apidaca. They pronounce it perfectly. Thank you. And I'm proud

of President Elk Grove. I'm here to speak about your consideration for an appointment to the City of

Elk Grove Arts and Creative Economy Commission. Like many of you here, I'm invested member of the

Elk Grove Art Community in August of 2020. My wife and I, Gou Sheng, Zang, also known as

Fine Artists, Annie Piony, opened the Annie Piony Fine Art Gallery and Art Studio. I have to

admit to you that it has not been economically positive. However, we are still here and I am

committed and inspired to stay the course and continue to be involved and become an integral part

and member of the Fine Art Culture in Elk Grove along with local Elk Grove artists, art related

business, schools, art teachers, cultural events, and the entire Elk Grove community. Annie Piony,

Art Gallery has been involved in the art community and participates in all the local art events

and festivals. We're involved in bringing and exposing arts to all sectors, young and old. We have

six special needs students that are referred to us from Elk Grove California Regional Center.

We are in the process of becoming authorized vendors. So we are involved with bringing

the art culture to all, no matter the ability or situation. We are not an artistic island.

We are part of the whole art culture and we need to be inclusive of the complete art community

in order to prosper and building a more equitable art economy that provides opportunity for all

involved in the arts to reach their individual potential. Annie is inspired to create art for the

community and get recognition from other art organizations outside the city of Elk Grove and

directed back to the Elk Grove Fine Arts culture. Some highlights and examples from 2024 that have

encouraged us in our vision to be an ambassador for the Fine Arts culture in Elk Grove. I won't

mention them all because I'll run out of time but we participated in eight years, eight days and

exhibited a fine art and watercolor demonstration at the 2024 California State Fair Fine Art and

Photography exhibition. There Annie was awarded first prize in the Plain Air Commission that was

open to all artists in the state. I am proud to say that all of these achievements, even if they're

small, reflects positively back to our artistic home base in Elk Grove, defining arts and culture

and the creative economy. If appointed to the arts commission, one primary responsibility would be

to advise the city council and staff and make recommendations regarding the type and nature of arts

and creative economy services. There is not one single definition. There are four different aspects

and according to the Americans for the arts, they use four different aspects to describe the creative

economy and the aspiration of an inclusive creative economy. I will focus on one creative

economy practices. The creative economy is an economic ecosystem of for profit and non-profit

creative industries, artists, art, workforce, educators, entrepreneurs, vendors, policy makers,

and funders. Thank you very much in conclusion. Thank you for your time. Appreciate you.

Next up is Darcy Robertson, followed by Amy Lavowicz.

Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Darcy Robertson and I'm an artist. I'm a ceramic artist

and I work at the Elk Grove Fine Arts Center as the gallery manager and curator. I've been doing that

job for about 15 years now with being paid for it for the last three years. My passion is art and I

have spearheaded quite a few events in the city. I'm in charge and the lead of the

Festival of the Arts that happens every year. This is our fourth year in Old Town Elk Grove.

I also spearheaded the studio art tour that benefited everybody in Elk Grove who appreciates art.

It brought in, excuse me, I'm trying to go too fast here. As art gallery manager and a curator

of an art center, I'm in charge of 20 different show competitions or events that happen in the center.

So therefore, what I do is I do research, figure out what artists I'd like to bring into the gallery

and I curate the show and I hire judges and we hang the show in the art center. So

a lot of our competitions and shows bringing people outside of Elk Grove that come here and people

from Lodai, Stockton, Placerville, Turlock and Walnut Grove to name a few. I've lived in Elk Grove

since 1990 and one of the reasons I thought I would be good for this commission committee is because

I've always felt that there's a divide between the East Side of Elk Grove and the West Side of Elk Grove

and I think that arts could bring the two together.

I'm thinking that art in all forms can unify the city in a very creative way that it economically could

benefit those creative people and those who live in the city. My desire would be to promote all the

talent that lives within our city and the city boundaries. So many of us creatives and those that

enjoy the arts go into Sacramento to either enjoy a play, musical, poetry or readings or

visual arts. It's time for that to end. Let's tap into our local talents and grow the two sides

together to unify and benefit our economy through the arts. I believe my skills and experience

and enthusiasm for the arts within Elk Grove qualifies me for this committee. Thank you for your

consideration. Thank you. Next up is Amy Lavowicz followed by Doug Winter.

Good evening.

I know that all the applicants have passion for the arts. That's obvious as our first gentleman.

I did owe him and a commitment to improving our community. My passion stemmed from being an art

major at CSUS in Sacramento in the early 80s and then changing the major to communication degree with

a concentration in marketing. So that is where my passion started for the arts. But then my

commitment to my community can be seen in my newest position as the chair of the Chamber of Commerce.

I think I offer an additional perspective because of my 40 years in marketing. I understand the

importance of ROI, which is going to be very important for this committee and this commission.

So not only a financial return for the city itself, but an investment for the city,

but an inspirational return on the investment for our community itself.

So I know the impact and I will offer decades of experience in guiding the city on how we take

this investment to the next step. So we can put in the art, but what do we do with the art? How do

we connect the art and how do we market that art? So I think I can offer some experience in that

and so marketing them as part of making our city an arts and creative destination, which is what we

want. We're creating a destination with the zoo with other pieces of our puzzle. So art in our community

needs to embrace the history and needs to embrace the presence and then also, but we all need to

look to the future. So I'm here for that. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Next up is Doug Winter, followed by Cheryl Grace.

Good evening, council members and Mayor. I'm Doug Winter and I'm so happy to be here tonight. I've

lived in Elgro for nine years now and in Sacramento County for 30 years. This region has been my home

for most of my life and I love it so much and especially why I love Elgro are the people and the

strong sense of community. Even as the city of Elgro has grown, it's kept its small town feel,

where neighbors support each other, local businesses thrive and the arts are becoming bigger,

a bigger part of its identity. That's something worth protecting and I'd love to help keep that

momentum going as part of the arts creative economy commission. I really appreciate the council's

decision to expand the commission's role because the arts aren't just about culture. It's not just

about culture. They drive economy, they drive economic growth, bring people together, they make a

city more livable. As an artist educator and curator, I've seen firsthand how creative spaces, public

art and community driven projects can revitalize neighborhoods and create real opportunities, not just

for artists, but for business and residents as well. My work is rooted in photography,

experimental storyteller, I'm a curator and I explore perception, memory and inclusion.

And as someone who has who is neurodivergent, I know how important it is to create artistic

spaces that welcome different ways of thinking, seeing and experiencing the world, whether it's

through public art, accessible programming or supporting local creatives, I believe that the

art should reflect and serve everyone in the community, not just those already connected to the

art world. And I think that's what other people have already echoed that sentiment.

Elgrove already has a strong creative foundation. I'd like to help build on that. And one way we could

do this by expanding the city's maker markets into a larger maker fair, not just for artisans

and crafters, but also for digital artists, tech innovators and experimental creators.

If we partner with local businesses and corporations, we can bring in resources, sponsorships,

and funding opportunity support artists and making this economically impactful events.

At its core, the commission is about investing in creativity and not just artists,

but for Elk Grove as a whole. Art can bring energy, innovation, and a strong sense of identity

to its city. I'd love to help Elk Grove harness that potential while keeping its community spirit

alive. That's what drives me. I believe in bringing people together through art, creating

opportunities where they didn't exist before and finding ways to create more accessibility in this

area. And I've seen art can shape community. And I'd love the chance to help Elk Grove harness that

potential. Thank you for your time. I hope I've earned your vote. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up is Cheryl Grace, followed by Mike Manganon.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Cheryl Grace. My involvement on the

arts commission during the past 22 years, including vice chair demonstrates my commitment

to the arts and culture in this area. I am a charter member, past president and current board member

of the Elk Grove Fine Arts Center, which Darcy referred to. And my interest is in the visual arts

appreciating and promoting them. And I personally create abstract impressionistics and mixed media

artwork. My involvement in other local organizations include past president and member of the Elk Grove

Artists Organization, board member and secretary and chair of the poster, excuse me, the poster

contest that we provide. We invite local high school junior and seniors for the

art students for the Elk Grove Western Festival organization, which has been

has quite a history in this area. So this shows for my speech, flexibility and variety of

interest in the community. And being part of this new commission would give me the opportunity

to have input regarding programs and activities designed to develop, sustain and expand a thriving

arts and creative economic, ecless system for the city of Elk Grove. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, Cheryl. Next up is Mike Manganon, followed by Julie Cooper.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the city council, staff. My name is Mike Manganon,

and proud resident of Elk Grove. I live across the street from Elk Grove High School. And I thank you

for the opportunity to introduce myself and have my name be considered for the commission.

You have my resume. I put that into the application. One of the things I did want to highlight was

a 25 plus years in arts education, mostly music education, long time band director,

because some of the folks high school just three years ago, I moved over into the central office

to be part of the arts education team under Jennifer Wilbanks, Vapa Creek and Specialist. One of

the things that we've learned and we've been advocating from the inside and got a little bit of the

pipeline knowledge with students coming up and into the industry. You probably already know us

because you're what you're amazing decision to put this commission and expand it together. But

I've been told that arts and creative economy is second now, largest in California,

as actually surpassed agriculture. So that's one of the things I'm really excited about to be part

of that. One of the things you might not notice on the resume is I think one of the things I've

really grown in and excelled in is to the ability to work collaboratively with others to find out

what the needs are of the community to look forward to develop and implement a shared vision

among people and to move forward with that. One of the things I get a chance to do other than

working with the Elk Grove University School District is also to be part of our professional

organization, the California Music Educators Association. I'm president-elect for that and I get

a chance to meet with people all over the state on things that are cutting edge and finding out what

else is new and in the industry because they're very, very interested in making sure that those

our students get moved forward on that. So, and one last thing I just want to leave you with a story.

I moved here like so many people for a job and I found a home. It must have been 20 years ago

and I got this hair-brained idea and I worked with Zach Jones at the CISD at the time and we

put the we wanted to beat the Guinness World Record of a number of carolers one year. I don't

know if you guys remember that it was 0304. We actually won four two days until some place in

Indiana they I don't know they they compose jingle bells whatever. Anyway, so they won but it's been

my heart to be able to put Elk Grove on the map to be a destination for the arts. I hope I get a

chance to do that as well on this commission. Thank you for your time. Consideration.

Thank you, sir. Next up is Julie Cooper, followed by Susan Otto.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I am Julie Cooper. Everyone is stating the resume.

I have no art degree. I just know that art comes from within for me and I have been a resident of

Elk Grove since 1989. So, I actually had to do the math and I don't even want to say what it came

out to. But I have seen a tremendous growth in diversity and even looking around this room,

there are murals and pictures here that you would not have seen 36 years ago. Art is a passion

of mine. I travel around and support local artists. I don't have the funds to just always give

support like I would like to and I hope that Elk Grove comes up with an art initiative.

And so I would love to be a part of this committee. And I think that art starts at a very early age.

And if we can weave it throughout our community for our seniors, that would be a positive for

this community. So thank you. Thank you. And next up is Susan Otto, followed by Marcus Beguiri.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. I'm Susan Otto. As a resident of Elk Grove, I have to tell you,

I am so impressed that you're going ahead and making a commission of this sort. I think it's going

to be incredible for the community. Also, I'm incredibly impressed by the people who are here,

who are speaking to you for potential members of the community. As a applicant for a member of the

community of the commission, I want to tell you, I am arts adjacent. I am not an artist. When you come

to do Pictionary, I will not be the one who draws and gets you to answer the question, but I'm the

one who, when you draw, I can understand what you're doing and get to the answer quickly. With my

background in my job, I have worked on strategic plans, worked with elected boards and executives

to make recommendations on strategic plans and also as a resident. The fact that one of the first

things that you're going to do is develop a strategic plan for this commission is the greatest

foundation I think you could have. So I look forward to the commission and what it's going to be

able to do. Again, I'm excited by the city's attention to this matter and I appreciate the

consideration for the commission. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Marcos, followed by Dr. Manfan.

Hello, Mayor. Vice Mayor, Councilman. My name is Marcos Saguiri. And while I'm here, I believe I'm

a great candidate for the Arts and Creative Economy Commission. I'm experienced with longevity.

I'm an artist always, artist's first believer, but also a businessman. In 1996,

29 years ago, I painted my first commission titled Togetherness, a multicultural diversity

scene of children playing in a park. I have 28 years of creative business in design and creative

paintings titled West Coast images. With 27 of those years consistently painting murals in the

greater Sacramento region. I own and operate a progressive 501c3 nonprofit

artners based in Sacramento with ongoing projects here in Sacramento as well.

I believe I'm a fair, open-minded individual with the ability to address, comprehend,

updated, creative information, process, and concern. I've worked and managed over 100 artists

in visual, performing in digital practices. I offer an annual Artners Award Scholarship for

High School Seniors in the Visual Arts students. I'm also a chair of another High School Award

program, Massa Sacramento, the sponsorship arm for the Mexican American Hall of Fame Sports Association.

I'm community-oriented. I have Artners, non-profit, participation in regular community events,

creating actions and creative ongoing. Since 2001, we've hosted art growth community events

with our 14th Art Grove action occurring in two months, all while building a new creative

cultural heritage movement in Elgrove. I and the Artners non-profit are part of Elgrove's Chamber

of Commerce. I personally have completed Elgrove 101 Inception Class. In 2018, the Artners hosted

two mural scholarship fundraiser festivals in South Sacramento, recognizing the displacement

of local creatives strategically overlooked for out of the region-imported artists. I'm also an

advocate for the artist. I personally experience being targeted from unsavory business practices

in the revamped creative industry. I can offer professional guidance, protection, and wisdom to

the city of creatives for non-artif investors. I've also will continue to be a public speaker

against the Smoking Mirror's actions sacrificing the creatives along the way. I'm a practicing

professional artist, painting murals, graphic design, grant writing, and public event hosting.

The development of Future, I'm the developer of the Future WXM, mural museum in downtown Sacramento,

a Sacramento hospitality zone under the IADU as freeway, paralleling the 21st Street corridor.

My current creative actions are murals at Luther Burbank High School, the Dale LaGonja,

the VFW Hall Post-67 and the Surjourner Truth African American Museum. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up is Dr. Manfan, followed by Erin Val.

Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council,

I'm Manfan and I'm a resident of Elk Grove for the past 20 years and I would appreciate your

consideration of my application. I think I bring to the commission a myriad of experience that

would help enhance the economic vitality of our city through the arts and creativity.

Early in my career, I worked for five years in City Council and County Board of Supervisors

in San Diego where I advised my council member and county supervisor and policy relating to arts,

culture, and economic development. Afterwards, I went to the private sector and worked in architecture

for 10 years and then afterwards two colleagues of mine when I informed our own architecture

company generating about $2 million in revenue at that time. I then had to stop that as

work because Governor Brown appointed me to the California Board of Governors for the

Communicologists. So given my private sector job and my public sector job and especially in

the last 10 years where I teach college students at CRC and business and entrepreneurship.

So whether the students are in culinary arts or architecture or in photography and they take

my business classes and then I would merge their artistic ability with entrepreneurship and some would

transform those ideas into viable enterprise of their own. So blending both the private and public

sector as well as the artistic combined with the entrepreneurial spirit of individuals in our

outgrowth, I think I can be of help to the commission and would appreciate your consideration.

So I'll keep it short. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Erin Val followed by Pablo Espinoza.

Good evening Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council members. Thank you for having me this evening and

for considering my application for this commission. As a resident of Elgrove a dedicated volunteer

and apparent with children in the community, I'm invested in the city's cultural and economic growth.

As the executive director of Exploral Grove, our destination marketing organization, I have a

passion for leveraging arts and culture and driving visitation and economic impact into this community.

We see great potential expanding outgroves, Presence and Theatre film, digital media, live music,

galleries and special events and by investing in these areas we not only enhance the quality of life

for our residents but also create new revenue streams for tourism, business partnerships,

and job creation in Elgrove's creative economy. My experience combined with my background in

tourism, community engagement and strategic partnerships gives me a strong foundation to contribute

meaningfully to this commission. I'm eager to support initiatives to listen to foster creativity,

enhance accessibility and positive in position Elgrove as a vibrant destination for both visitors

and residents. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. I'm getting a network connection

disruption message on my computer. So live, that's why we keep our speaker sheets available over in

the corner. So I think our system went down. Yeah, I think I can grab those next. So I'm not sure who's

after I can't really see. Okay Nicole Hedot is after. Good evening Mayor Singalan,

Vice Mayor Robles, Council Member Spees, Brewer and Sue. My name is Pablo. It's been

no site as an honor to be here asking for your consideration for appointment for the Arts and

Creative Economy Commission. And before I want to thank Mr. Rickle. My beloved son Adrienne used

to be one of those kids at Consumers Arts, a river, Consumers' River College. One of those kids

with that saw that art and the performance of it or being a fashion designer was a vehicle

and an opportunity to fulfill not just his heart, his soul and also to make at least in living.

So it's incredibly important. And I think that we don't need to talk about the creation of this

commission. Clearly you guys have seen the value of it. The work of your staff has made that

very clear. I want to tell you about my experience and my passion. I spent about a decade, well,

almost 20 years as a television news journalist. Then I spent the following 20 years as a communicator

working in the public sector, bringing stories, being a storyteller, conveying ideas to the public

that oftentimes is skeptical about A, B or C idea as to why it is worthy. When I talk,

we're not talking about the worthiness of this project. It's it's clear as as day. I was also in

an nonprofit sector spent the last decade as a member of the board of directors of the California

Museum in Broadway Sacramento in other organizations that are focused in the development of young

minds and the encouragement of those minds. I am a resident of over a quarter of a century of

Elk Grove. When I came, the population was about 71,000 or so people were up to about 180. We're

doing so great in terms of the availability of arts, the Elk Grove Finds Art Center,

the Spears Gallery, the Annie Pinney Finars Gallery. Thank you for talking about them, Mr.

O'Pottaca. Combining all of this restaurant, coffee brewing, scenery with our creation

the opportunity to combine that with the development of an economic incentive, not just for those

minds and souls, but also for the pockets, buts of our community. We have the public display of art

at District 56, a rating 80 coming up to the library. Those are all things that are going to be

important for our community. What I'm hoping to do is bring all of that in putter and steroids

into actually bring about success into the pocket books, pocket books of our community. I want to

conclude by saying that the art started early with my grandfather who was a carpenter and he used to

work creating stages in Ecuador. My mother was a painter, a pianist. My father was, although he was

an accountant by trade, he was also a painter. And again, my son who took that to a whole

other level by being again a fashion designer, a music producer, a video producer, a filmmaker.

And I made it very clear in five seconds how important that is for all of us, not just for the

heart and soul, but for the pockets. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, sir. All right,

next up is Nicole Hadad, followed by Marie Thomas. And I think that's our final speaker.

Good evening, everyone. I do not have a speech prepared. So I'm going to try to make this short

and sweet. I grew up in Elk Grove. I went to folks ranch elementary and I feel I've been an artist

all my life and I feel like going, being a student in the Elk Grove Unified School District at the

time that I was really instilled the arts into me and being an artist my whole life. I look back

on where that came from and it was from being from Elk Grove. I left when I was 18 and for 20 years

of my adult life, I lived in other places around the United States. And two years ago, I moved back

to be try to become a professional artist. And I didn't find that there was enough art things

going on in Elk Grove to satisfy what I needed. And I find myself going to Midtown, to Sacramento,

and to even Rancho Cordova where I recently got a art studio to try to develop my artistic self right

now. And I think that it would be really cool to have people on the arts commission that are

from Elk Grove and kind of had their story, their artistic story woven into Elk Grove. So I appreciate

your consideration. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Next and our final speaker is Marie Thomas.

Hi, I had this great speech prepared. Thanks to, you know, AI helping me out, but I'm going to switch it up.

I did not grow up in Elk Grove. I was a military brat. I have spent most of my life in the Sacramento

area. My kids have gone to school in Elk Grove for 10, plus years. I teach at a monastery doing arts

and because art has always cut fun funding, I still teach art in my class. So they get a little

perk having me in the class. I have been a graphic designer. I have my own business for over 13 years.

So I know how to work with fundraising. I know how to help nonprofits get that money in working on

a limited budget. I see what else I'm going to say. I've been a dance mom for over 15 years. Very proud of

that. Never would have guessed that for my life. But that also taught me about the art of dance and

how that is also not put out there like it should be. And I want to be on this commission because I am

trying to bring art out into Elk Grove because like I said before, I'm going to Midtown to do art shows.

I'm going to San Francisco. I'm going to Ventura. I'm going everywhere else. And a couple times in

Elk Grove too. But there's not the opportunities for us to display our like in other places around here.

I have started an art kick it at the ever after Wine Bar in Elk Grove. So I am trying to get more

people out there to do things. And that's kind of helped out with myself and meeting other artists in

Elk Grove area. Let's see. Yeah. So I'm a working artist. I just want to bring art to Elk Grove. I

don't want to travel so far to do what I love. So yeah, thanks for the consideration.

Thank you. And that is our final speaker. Mayor, do you want to wave the 10 o'clock rule? Yes.

Thank you. Yeah, we're not going to wrap this up in five minutes. We might you never know.

First of all, just wow. The sheer number of applicants. This is since I've been mayor, this is the

largest volume of residents that have expressed an interest in serving on a commission.

And so I want to thank every single applicant whether you're watching online, those that are here,

those that could not make it. This just makes me really proud of our community that you were all

willing to step up and serve. So before I get into sort of the processes, what I do want to say

is every single applicant, whether you were selected or not, should absolutely be a part of this

commission. Unfortunately, I only have seven slots for a voting member, but you should all

be active participants in helping shape this new commission. So I want to share some of this burden

with my colleagues. Make it easier for me. So similarly, as you recall, with our diversity and

inclusion commission, I asked for your top pick and we just move them forward. So what I would like

to do is move your top pick forward. And if there's duplicates, go to your second or third.

And then that will leave two spots that we can have a discussion on. So this way, it's not all on

me and I don't get I don't have to be the bad guy for the whole thing, but I probably still be.

But I want to share this with everyone. So I will start with you, Council Member Suen.

And so the goal is, if there's any objection, we can discuss it, but the goal is to move the

five forward and then we'll discuss the other two. Okay, thank you, Mayor. I do want to take a moment

to echo the word you said. I mean, this is the largest pool of candidates I've seen also in my

10 years on this Council for any commission. So I was just going to say the same thing, which is

it really shows how passionate and interested people are in the arts, which is kind of making me

rethink that performing arts center. We have kind of on the shelf over here, you know. So

but anyway, that's. We got a little extra misery money I heard from Jackie, so you know,

100 million is pretty close. Okay, all right. So anyway, there's so many different directions

you can go as in the arts is that things we're talking about here, right? And so there's,

you know, I see a lot of experience in all different forms and how as all of you are coming up

and speaking and you only represented a portion of who is applying, but just how everyone can

integrate in the different ways onto this commission. And I'm so glad the mayor mentioned

that even if you're not chosen, please, please stay involved because you do have something to add.

And for, you know, life happens, people change out. And so there's always going to be

opportunities. So this isn't a one in debt. Having said that, look, I'm going to, there's just so

many, but I'm going to go with an individual who brought me back to my own kids and that was

the VAPA program when they were doing VAPA and how special it was for them. And I thought we were

one of the few schools, elementary schools in the school district to continue with VAPA.

And so I'm going to push for Michael Magnon on this for partly big part of that reason,

but also all the other different forms of art that he transcends and what he can bring into this

commission. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Spies. Our

Spies. Sorry, Suen, it's starting to get to 10 o'clock. It's starting to get to 10 o'clock.

Done a clock, girl, right? No, but thank you to everyone for applying. This is, this is a fun,

going to be a fun creative commission. This is definitely going to be something exciting.

I wish we could take everyone, but unfortunately because of the number of limited commission seats.

But one of the stories that really resonated a lot was Mr. Spinoza. You brought something,

the experience that you were tying in with businesses and bringing in with the economy and

wanting to advance and further bringing that to our city, something that really, truly resonated

with me and the level of experience that you have as board of directors on the California Museum,

as well as the Broadway Sacramento, which can eventually be tied into Elk Grove, Broadway Elk Grove.

I'm not trying to start anything, just saying. But truly, truly, I can see that you're going to

bring that passion on this commission too, so you're going to be the name that I'm pushing forward.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. So my top choice, because this feels like a fancy football draft.

You know, you bring a lot, you have a lot of talented people that bring passion, desire,

and a real strong urge to bring their skills to the table to help Elk Grove develop not only

its art scene, but also what we can do to make the economy work in tandem with it and marry it

together. You have to have a person with a lot with rich experience on several different levels

and the worldliness that comes with it. The person that comes to my mind on this has been a

person that I've been talking to about doing something of this nature for the past several years,

and that's Brian Rickle. And I really believe that having him on this commission,

can definitely bring a lot of these energies together and really make this commission really special.

So I definitely wholeheartedly like to bring Brian's name forward into this.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Spees.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, let's see. What was I going to go? The first thing was, oh,

the first thing was I wanted to remember Judy Tafoya, a gal who, 2017, put a group together

and wanted to develop something about the creative economy. And she passed away

2021, I think is when it was. And it was sad to kind of see her dream dissipate a bit

in those months during COVID. But I'm absolutely thrilled that the city is taking on the creative

economy. I'm glad to see her memory, her desire continues to move on. So I just wanted to

recognize that. It always feels like a cliche because every time we're doing these selections,

we say, oh my gosh, the candidate field is just amazing. I feel like we're a broken record when

we say it. But my gosh, if you were to read all of the applications, we have folks who studied

at the Sorbonne in France. We have people who have exhibited in Milan, Italy, in Mexico.

We have people who have been running our art center here in Elc Grove for a good number of years.

We have, you know, we even have folks from the previous commission, some of whom have been on,

you know, for 17 years. So when I say it again, like I say it every single time,

we have some absolutely stunning candidates. And it is very unfortunate that we can only pick seven.

So please, I don't know if we can get these folks on a list. So the one we actually get these

meetings started, we can involve them because we really have an extreme amount of talent in Elc Grove.

It always amazes me that when you go for a walk as most politicians have to do every two to four

years, the folks that you meet out there, and the folks that you meet in a community gathering,

it's just amazing. So for me, from my selection, and what spoke to me about this was the entrepreneurial

ship, the entrepreneurial aspect of the creative economy. And I would select Dr. Monfon.

Okay. Well, we have four men selected.

By the way, so I will be bringing forward three women. So I accept all of those. I think those are,

you know, the part of the challenge is, we all have probably had some of these other folks on our

top two, three lists. So that's always very, very difficult. So the three, I'm going to start with

a top person. And that's Erin Val. Erin brings that great perspective of balancing out

travel and tourism and what we're looking at for this commission. So she will be the name that I

want to move forward just on its, as my recommendation. But the other two, for consideration, I would like to

nominate Julie Cooper for discussion. And then, so that's one, one more there. And I,

this is hard. We have, like I said, just some amazing candidates. And it's very hard, but I really

do want to provide balance on this commission and all of the other perspectives. So in the different

mediums and the different backgrounds and, and so forth. I think the other, for the final slot,

I want to have a discussion on whether or not we would like to bring forward a name from the

no longer existing arts commission, because I believe four former arts commissioners applied,

one that came this evening. And there's three others that have applied.

I'm good with, with any of them for that final slot. If that's important for this council,

if not, I do have a solid substitute as well that has been active in this community for a long time.

And very, very much involved. So I'd like to have that as a discussion.

Well, I do think it would be appropriate, Madam Mayor to bring, to have at least one from the,

from previous commission. That would be helpful, I think. So I'd be supportive of one.

Of having? Yeah, I would too. I think, you know, that's a little bit of like that continuity of

leadership, you know, things that have happened in the past. So yes. Your thoughts?

It's not only how that bridge really is. And so I'm definitely supportive of that. Yes.

Support you? Okay. So now it comes out to whom. So we have four outstanding candidates

in looking at the different backgrounds, the area of interest,

and the area of interest, serving in the community, longevity in the community,

and all of those things matter to all of us. So with that, I would like to, for that final slot,

bring forth Sally Gutridge. To round out the seven member board. And then with that, I will say again,

everyone that's applied, please be a part of the commission. As you know, this was a very

difficult decision. And we only had seven voting slots, but all of you play an important role

shaping this, lending your voice, your experience. I'm thinking of Darcy Robertson with the fine

arts. I'm thinking of Annie Piony, who I would love to have brought forward. But in terms of the

criteria, unfortunately, did not meet all of the requisite requirements. Markos, your work is

tremendous and it speaks for itself. And but I see you on the other side as a possible vendor

and helping us get to that level. And so, you know, we want your input. We want all of your

inputs, including our former arts commissioners. Please be a part of this process. This is a first

time commission. So your value, your input, your voices are going to be needed now more than ever.

So thank you to everybody that applied. Thank you for everyone that showed up tonight. And

congratulations to the seven of our newly formed arts and creative economy commission.

We want to thank you all. Thanks for staying late. Yeah, sorry about that.

So you have all the names, clerked. Okay, very good. With that, we will move on to our item 10.

Anybody have a report, future agenda item or comment that you would like to make at this time?

I'll wait my report. Thank you. Anybody have a report? I just wanted to announce that council

number Suin is going to be having a job fair April fit Saturday. April fit. Yes. Yeah, job fair.

Oh, job fair. Yes. So there's a job fair. So yes, please share that. Nothing else to announce.

I just want to thank everybody. We will adjourn the meeting at 1010. Well, that was hard.