The Folsom City Council convened the regular meeting early on Tuesday, December 9, 2025 (following adjournment of a special meeting). Council handled multiple governance and policy items, including updates to the inclusionary housing in-lieu fee program (first reading), a Folsom Plan Area middle school site relocation (minor administrative modification), Johnny Cash Trail public art contracting funded by a state grant, appointments to the Historic District Commission, creation of two ad hoc committees (Charter Review and an American River Canyon school district boundary committee), approval of four labor MOUs through 2028, adoption of a CalPERS-compliant pay schedule with new executive step tables, and selection of the 2026 Mayor and Vice Mayor. The meeting adjourned at 7:46 p.m. in memory of longtime resident Barbara Baker.
We will adjourn the special meeting and call to order the regular meeting a little early tonight For Tuesday December 9th 2025 with the clerk please call the roll. Yeah council members Larry here rathel here Roerbaugh here Kozlowski Is not here momentarily and a keynote Kozlowski will be joining us here if you'd all please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice of all. All right, obviously we're having a little bit of issue with the heater tonight, so go ahead and snuggle up with your neighbor if you get cold. Mr. City Attorney, any agenda updates? Good evening, Madam Mayor. We have additional information transmittable for items 5, 16, and 17 on tonight's agenda. A copy have been previously provided to you and they are also available on the table in the back Okay, great that takes us to business from the floor This is the public's opportunity to address the council items that are not on the agenda. Please remember we are not allowed to Take action or deliberate on items that are not on the agenda, but we're happy to Hear your comments if you would like to speak at this time or on any item on the agenda If you please fill out a blue speaker card on the back table hand it over here to officer McCullough We will call you up at the appropriate time. We do have a very very long meeting ahead of us So if we could please respect the three-minute time limit We would greatly appreciate that any requests to speak from business from the floor We do have one request to speak this evening from Gary quals it carry come on down Good evening Gary hi good evening Hello honorable City Council members I'm here to speak to you about the city doing a transient occupancy tax or t ot increase rather than a tourism business improvement district tax or tbid increase my name is gary qualsett i'm a cpa and i was an officer of the no on g fight against the sales tax increase measure and before you hold out that all of that against me i sure wish i had known about a tbid increase proposal that was going to be on the last city council meeting agenda i sure would have liked to partner with the person that spoke in opposition to the tbid increase at the last meeting that being mr Finnegan, also a CPA. How ironic. And he was a supporter of Yes on G. On this one, I think that we can make a great team to get a TOT rather than a TBID increase on the hotel room bills that visitors to our great city pay for us. Here's a few points on why a TOT assessment increase is better. It's not paid by the residents of Folsom. It generates direct revenue to offset the projected budget deficit of the city. With a deficit of over $3 million per the last budget presentation in June, a TOT would cover 42% of that shortfall, with a projection of $1.275 million in annual revenue. People seem to say that a TOT increase is small, but it wouldn't have a small impact on reducing the city's budget deficit a tot is not a special money interest grab a TB ID is a tot is a city revenue that goes to the general fund for broad-based use and can be a focus where needed from year to year by the city rather than to a specific restricted special interest purpose to benefit the hoteliers in Folsom any use the special district would propose for a TB ID the city can already also do with a TOT increase. TOT funds are directly city controlled and don't have to be negotiated for use with a certain business industry. A vote on a TOT increase would pass in a landslide on a ballot, as it has in every other jurisdiction that votes on one. It's an easy sell to the public. We pay it in every other city that our Folsom residents visit a hotel in. Why not have our visitors pay it here? The Folsom T bid rate is already on par with other local jurisdictions. The TOT is not. The Folsom TOT hasn't been raised in over 40 years and is significantly lower than other jurisdictions in the area and in the state. If a TID is increased, the city is then tying its hands on doing a TOT