The Folsom City Council held a regular meeting on Tuesday, September 26, 2023, at 6:30 PM in the City Council Chambers, 50 Natoma Street. The meeting included a joint session with the Redevelopment Successor Agency, Public Financing Authority, Folsom Ranch Financing Authority, and South of 50 Parking Authority. All council members were present: Mayor Rosario Rodriguez, Vice Mayor YK Chalamcherla, Councilmembers Sarah Aquino, Mike Kozlowski, and Anna Rohrbough. The meeting featured two scheduled presentations, unanimous approval of consent calendars, and council requests for future agenda items.
All right. We will now call to order the city council regular and joint city council redevelopment successor agency, public financing authority, Folsom Ranch Financing Authority, South the 50 Parking Authority meeting on Tuesday, September 26th. Will the clerk please call the roll? Council members Chalam Chirla. Here Koslowski. Roarbah here, Aquino here. And Rodriguez. Here, let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. For which it stands. Our nation. Intervisible with Lemacy and Justice Raw. All right. Are there any agenda updates? Good evening, Madam Mayor. No update for tonight. All right. We will now will the clerk please call the next item. Your next item is business from the floor, and you have no request to speak under that item. Okay, so we just move on. Yep. All right. Will the clerk please call the next item? Yeah, that takes us to scheduled presentations. And your first item this evening is a presentation from the Folsom Tourism and Economic Development Corporation. This will be their quarterly report. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, Joe Galliotti with Choose Folsom. We thought we'd uh take the opportunity at this particular quarterly report to share with you a little bit about the study mission trip that we recently took to Austin, Texas. You might ask uh why do we do study missions? This is the 15th year that we have done a study mission trip. We skipped one during COVID, but otherwise we started in 2008, and every year we have taken one. Um the purpose of uh of a study mission is really to uh gauge, you know, kind of what our city is doing and what other cities are doing so we can compare ourselves. It's also an opportunity for our leaders to collaborate together. Um this year we're pleased to have uh the mayor and council member Mike Kozelowski along with us, along with the community development director, Pam Johns and Communications Director Christine Brainerd. But also with us was uh Siri Pulapati, uh, the uh council member from Rancho Cordova, and we had two supervisors from El Dorado County, John Heidel and Wendy Thomas along with us. But in addition, we have staff people, we had the economic development and tourism directors from those communities. So as we continue to look at uh collaborating with those along the corridor, it was great to have all of them in addition to the people that work for the chambers. So it really was um, you know, I think this particular year we hit every subject matter that we could ever have wished to uh embark upon. Um to bring back these ideas on economic development and tourism is really incredible. So why did we choose Austin, Texas? So Austin, Texas, uh what you may or may not know sits on two lakes similar to Folsom, uh, one passive, one active. One's Lake Austin, the other one is Ladybird Lake. Um we also look because of our partners in El Dorado County, we look to urban and rural connectivity. So we not only look at a larger city, but we also look like a city that's a ways away, similar to how we are to Sacramento to a metropolitan area. This particular year we went to Cedar Park, uh, Texas, as the outbound city along with Georgetown, Texas, and each one had something that was a little bit different. We had the opportunity in Cedar Park to look at some athletic facilities, um, and similar to what's being proposed south of 50. But you know, really it's about they're a high-tech hub, they're a fast-growing city, all of those things contribute to what makes them an ideal place for us to go and study and see what they do. I will tell you that when when we do this, sometimes we come back and say we're actually doing it better than that particular entity that we're going to visit. But in any case, uh, I think it's we're really wealth worthwhile. Um Austin has branded itself, and you'll learn a little bit more as our team uh presents their portion.