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

as the overall hotel tax will have already been raised to similar levels as other local cities.

Thus, from a market perspective, the city won't be able to seek a TOT as a source of general fund revenue for the city.

Gary, I need you to wrap it up.

I will. Thank you.

I request that you table and withdraw the intent to move forward on a TBID increase

and instead have staff prepare a report for a TOT increase.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

By the way, you said you weren't aware it was on the agenda.

Do you get the city clerk's emails for what's going to be on the agenda?

No, I haven't signed up for that, but I look occasionally, but I was out of town.

All right.

I'm going to reach out to you and get your email address so we can get you on the distribution list.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Excuse me, Mayor.

Do you mind if I comment on that?

I really appreciate the comments that were shared about the TOT versus the TBIN.

One of the things that was considered from a staff perspective is there are pros and cons

related to either of those situations.

But what we did look at is the timing of this.

So if this was an in-perpetuity increase,

I think staff would have had some pause

or more of a pause in considering this option.

But the fact that it's going in alignment

with the current TBID term,

that the council would have another bite at the apple

in a few years when that expires.

Stacey, do you remember, is it 2032?

Do you remember?

I can't remember.

Gosh, that sounds right, but I'm not.

So in some sense, it would give us time that over the next few years,

if this were to move forward, the council would have the opportunity to revisit that.

So anyway, but I would also welcome the opportunity to meet with you

to kind of share more background and to learn more about what you're sharing.

All righty.

Thank you very much.

That takes us to our consent calendar.

Is there anything that anybody wants to pull,

or do we have any requests to speak from anyone?

No requests from the public to speak on consent items.

Was there anything that anybody wanted to pull?

I'll move the consent calendar in total.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary?

Yes.

Rathel?

Yes.

Rohrbaugh?

Yes.

Kozlowski?

Yes.

And Aquino?

Yes.

Thank you very much.

Call the next item, please.

Okay.

Your first public hearing this item is going to be ordinance number 1359.

This is an ordinance amending sections of chapter 17 point one zero four regarding inclusionary housing

for calculating inlou fees applicable to residential development and to incorporate non-substitut chain or cleanup revisions for clarity and consistency

in determining that the project is exempt from CEQA. This will be introduction and first reading of the ordinance.

Thank you. Good evening, Desmond. And I am going to ask my colleagues if we can all maybe agree tonight to do our best to hold our questions

until the end of every presentation just so we can get through this large agenda as expeditiously as possible.

Take it away, Desmond.

Mayor Aquino, members of the City Council, Desmond Parrington, Planning Manager in the Community Development Department.

I'm here before you tonight to talk about proposed changes to the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance

and the inclusionary housing residential in-lieu fee study that was prepared by economic and planning systems for the city.

Amy Lappin, who's a senior principal with economic and planning systems, is here tonight and will be joining me in this presentation.

in terms of the the presentation we're going to talk about the overall project context

why we opted to do a nexus-based fee methodology for this key findings and results from that as

well as some alternative approaches that were considered based on feedback that we received

and then next steps and staff's recommendations so in terms of the context the the city's housing

requirement required us in program H9 to update our inclusionary

ordinance, essentially to do a study of our inclusionary housing fees,

to evaluate the fee levels, look at funding gaps, and improve our overall

in-lieu fee methodology. So as I mentioned, we hired economic and planning

systems to do a comprehensive study of the ordinance and our fees.

One of the main drivers behind this was the significant amount of staff time that goes in to calculating the in-lieu fees.

They're based on 1% of the sales price.

Now, one would think that that's fairly straightforward, but the reality is when folks pay or pull their building permits, developers often don't yet know the price of the homes because they're just about to start construction on their model homes.

So as a result, we have to get a market study.

We have to evaluate that market study, make sure that the prices are consistent with what they should be for our area.

And then we have to manually enter those fees into each building permit because they vary by subdivision.

In addition, we have to annually check those fees every January to make sure they haven't gone,

or the sales prices every January, to make sure they haven't gone up or down by more than 10%,

resulting in a change to the inclusionary fee.

Right now, we currently have about 75 different inclusionary fees,

covering all the different subdivisions throughout the city.

So the proposed in-loop fee methodology uses a nexus study.

Now, we're not required to do a nexus study.

Those are for impact fees.

This is what's called an in-loop fee.

You're paying this fee in lieu of actually constructing the affordable and deed-restricted homes.

But it gives us a much stronger legal standing if we can point to a next study that we've done that analysis.

This approach simplifies significantly the administrative work that staff has to do

because it bases it on a per square foot.

It sets the fee on a per square foot basis.

And, you know, again, we are not proposing to significantly change the fee, but to really to reduce the administrative burden.

And we'll talk about how that fee is calculated in just a few moments.

We're also proposing some amendments to Title 17, specifically related to the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance.

And that's to remove outdated references.

There's references, for example, to our redevelopment agency to approve clarity and administrative consistency.

And then make sure that it's up to date with state law because we referenced density bonus.

Density bonus law has changed.

Things like that.

So, again, the idea here is to make this simplified both for staff but also very transparent for the development community

because they will know going into this exactly what their fee would be prior to even submitting for a building permit.

So it provides that kind of upfront clarity.

And then we're proposing to have it adjust with the market based on the construction cost index.

So if construction costs increase, which means it's going to be more expensive for us to help do gap financing on an affordable project,

then the fee goes up.

If construction costs go down, then the fee goes down.

We did a significant amount of public outreach on this effort.

We had a workshop with the Planning Commission on September 17th of 2025.

We also, of course, went back to them, and they made a unanimous recommendation recommending approval of this.

We also sent out hundreds of emails to Folsom developers, residents, and businesses.

We had three different separate meetings with the North State Building Industry Association, or BIA.

And then we had two meetings and offered a third with the Sacramento Housing Alliance and Legal Services of Northern California.

And then we've put all this information up on a dedicated web page on the city's website.

So I'm going to turn it over to Amy, and she's going to kind of walk you through how the results of the study and how the fee levels are calculated.

Amy?

good evening amy thank you desmond uh good evening mayor council members my name is amy lapin

and i'm a principal with economic and planning systems based out of sacramento so yeah um tonight

i'm going to walk through the methodology and key findings related to the recommended update

to the city's inclusionary housing in luffy as desmond mentioned the purpose of this effort was

to streamline the city's fee structure, improve transparency and consistency,

and create a more predictable, easier-to-administer system

that aligns with the city's long-term affordable housing goals.

So the methodology does follow a nexus-based assembly bill,

AB 1600, development impact fee methodology, as Desmond mentioned,

to provide a stronger legal backing to the fee structure.

There are three distinct steps,

the first being to determine the affordability gap,

quantifying affordability gaps,

or the difference between the cost to develop affordable units

and what income-qualified households can support.

The second step is to estimate worker households

generated by new market rate units

spending based on consumer spending patterns and employment patterns.

And three, combining these factors to calculate the maximum legally justifiable fee for each

identified housing prototype.

So I'm going to dive in a little bit and we'll be available after the presentation to answer

more detailed questions.

So for this study, we developed cost estimates for four representative prototypes active in Folsom today.

Low and medium density single family homes, attached ownership products such as condos and townhomes, and multifamily rental apartments.

For each, we estimated development costs and compared them to what very low, low, and moderate income households can afford under HCD, or the Department of Housing and Community Development, and HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines.

Across all prototypes, affordable purchase prices or rents fell significantly below development costs, establishing substantial affordability gaps.

and those are shown here on this slide.

You can see the gaps between the supportable unit value for each of the four prototypes

and the development costs to develop that particular housing prototype

under the household income standards for Sacramento County

under the very low and moderate income categories.

The next step is to determine affordable housing demand.

This step estimates the number of income-eligible worker households associated with new development.

So new residents support local employment in retail, services, restaurants, health care, and other industries.

Many of these workers fall into the income categories identified by affordable housing programs.

By linking typical household spending to local job creation, the analysis quantifies the number of very low to moderate income worker households attributable to each of the four housing prototypes.

And this forms the demand side of the nexus equation.

so this next slide provides a walkthrough between what the average sales price is

the household income required to purchase that and then based on spending patterns and employment

patterns how many total worker households are generated per 100 market rate units and then

those are then distributed by income category based on typical wage structures.

So then the final step is combining the affordability gaps from step one with the number of worker

households from step two to compute the maximum supportable in lieu fee. We calculated the

total subsidy required to support affordable units needed for each prototype and then divided by the

average prototype square footage to yield a maximum per square foot fee.

And this slide shows the existing example because the existing in lieu fee is not calculated

on a per square foot basis as Desmond discussed.

So we just used an example and calculated the per unit and per square foot basis for each of the four prototypes.

The updated maximum, which you can see is extremely high, both on a per square foot basis and if we were to translate that into a per unit example.

And then our recommended updated in-lieu fee, which is about 10% or less of the maximum justifiable fee.

And it equates to similar to or actually in some cases for these prototypes that we identified less than the average in-lieu fee currently being assessed by the city.

So you can see for single-family low and medium density, our recommended in lieu fee is $3 per square foot.

The multifamily attached product would be $2.50 a square foot.

And then you'll note that the multifamily apartments, although a maximum justifiable fee was calculated,

we recommend a continuation of exempting this product type as is consistent with the current approach in the city.

And I'll get to why in a second.

So a large part of this study was examining financial feasibility.

We wanted to make sure that we didn't inhibit the development of market rate housing,

but still generated revenue for the city's affordable housing goals.

So under the existing in Luffy, you can see that the single-family low-

and medium-density prototypes appear to be feasible.

The multifamily attached, so this is a multifamily ownership product,

is on the margins. It's showing as slightly negative, but that's essentially a break-even

finding. And then the multifamily apartments, even without an existing in-lieu fee,

so this feasibility analysis examined existing conditions, which as mentioned,

is multifamily rental apartments are currently exempt. So even without that, it's showing that

there are some feasibility challenges so clearly under the updated maximum in

luffy every single prototype would experience feasibility challenges so

based on that and based on discussions with staff about maintaining similar fee

thresholds our recommendation is to maintain a similar fee per square foot

um for the three prototypes in which the city currently applies an in lieu fee so the two

single family ownership products and the one multi-family ownership product and then to again

retain that exemption on multi-family rental products so you can see in the far right hand

column the feasibility findings are very similar to the feasibility findings under the existing

conditions so now I'm going to walk through some key findings and

considerations so the studies findings support a balanced approach that

advances the city's housing goals while maintaining development feasibility a

major benefit of the update is reduced administrative burden shifting to a

a simple per square foot fee eliminates subdivision specific pricing checks and creates a clearer

more predictable structure for applicants. The analysis also shows that a fee can function as

a policy tool. We have a section in the report where we look at peer jurisdictions and I'll show

you a summary of that in the next slide but we looked beyond this in the Sacramento region and

then beyond the Sacramento region. And in both geographic areas, we noted that several jurisdictions

tailor their fees to encourage certain product types or guide development patterns. For example,

Santa Rosa charges a lower fee for smaller units to support the production of those types of units.

city of sacramento offers reduced fees in its in housing incentive zone so instead of promoting or

incentivizing a specific housing type like smaller housing units they want to incentivize development

in a certain area so the city that's something that the city could consider in in future

iterations of this. The feasibility results, as mentioned, indicate that multifamily rental

housing should remain exempt. And then indexing the updated fee to the construction cost index

will help keep it aligned with construction trends, as well as periodic monitoring by the

city of the in-lieu fee program will help ensure that the fee continues to support policy goals

without unintentionally hindering market rate development.

So here is the local jurisdiction fee comparison that I was just mentioning.

Compared to nearby jurisdictions, and I'll note that the first row in red is the recommended fee.

So the Folsom's recommended fee falls within a reasonable middle range among jurisdictions in the region,

somewhat lower than Sacramento in Sacramento County and somewhat higher than Rancho Cordova

and Elk Grove, although I will also note that EPS is assisting Elk Grove in reviewing and

potentially updating their existing fee. These differences reflect program design choices in

local housing market conditions, and Folsom's structure should remain competitive in the region.

And thanks. Happy to answer questions at the end of the presentation. Thank you. I'll hand it back over to Desmond.

One thing I just wanted to point out as part of Amy's presentation is that while it looks like the fee is going down slightly,

the difference is because we're looking at a 2,600-square-foot home.

So the larger the home, the fee goes up.

The smaller the home, the fee goes down.

So we did a calculation, and based on the last kind of five years, this would result, if we had the new per square fee approach in place, this would result in a slight increase in the revenue coming into the housing fund.

so based on the the the feedback that we got from both the um the housing alliance sacramento

housing alliance and legal services in northern california as well as input from the bia and the

development community we looked at a couple different approaches most of those were geared

towards some of the issues that the bia had raised the housing advocates main concern was ensuring

that there wasn't an overall decrease in the amount collected for the city's housing fund,

since they saw that as critical for gap financing.

So we looked at three options.

One was basically to outsource the administrative tasks, but to keep everything the same.

We did explore that.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a lot of other jurisdictions that did that,

nor were we able to find many consultants that were all that interested in doing that for us, given the complexity.

The other option was to retain the current fee structure, but collect the fees, all of the fees at the first certificate of occupancy.

While that would eliminate the administrative burden, it was understandably not particularly attracted to the development community

because at their first certificate of occupancy, everything would be due in terms of all their inclusionary fees or their end-lose fees.

And then the other option, and this came from a concern about how the concern over home prices in that a 1,500-square-foot home or a 3,000-square-foot home is not double the price of a 1,500-square-foot home.

So why should the fee per square foot be doubled going from the fee would increase substantially?

substantially because in that example at three dollars a square foot for a

three thousand square foot home you're looking at nine thousand nine thousand

dollars in it for an in-lieu fee versus a smaller home that's fifteen hundred

square feet you'd be looking at you know forty five hundred dollars or less so the

concern was well our sales prices aren't double so why should your your in-lieu

fees double. And we looked at, so we looked at kind of doing a reverse sliding scale

that would make adjustments for those larger homes. The issue that we found with that is that

larger homes actually generate more in the way of the need for low, generate more low-wage jobs

and more need for affordable housing.

So it would actually contradict the findings that were in the NEXIS study.

So based on that, we ultimately decided to stick with our current recommendation,

our current approach, because it eliminates the administrative burden.

It moves with the market in terms of the construction cost indexing mechanism.

and it's predictable and it's something that the development community can know in advance

before submitting their building permit applications.

And then we have it backed by a nexus study which shores up the legal standing of it

and provides additional protection for the city.

In terms of next steps, obviously this is before you tonight.

This is the first reading.

The second reading would go on January 13th.

At that time, we would also bring forward a resolution setting the fees.

And as you saw in the example, we will be recommending $3 a square foot for everything but homes less than 1,500 square feet.

Those would be charged at $2.50 a square foot.

And the reason for that is based on the feedback we've gotten from council that kind of first-time homebuyers, smaller homes, and condos and townhomes, which kind of better meet the needs of first-time homebuyers, would be something that we would incentivize.

As Amy explained, we're not proposing to put it onto multifamily rental products because of the fact that there's almost a $40,000 gap right now between what they can get in rent and what it costs to construct those units.

The reason we did propose putting it forward on multifamily attached projects like your townhomes, condos, is because the ones that are being built in the city, primarily down in the Folsom Plan area, are selling for a price that's only affordable to upper income households.

So the folks that are earning a moderate income, you know, over like around $120,000, they still cannot afford these types of homes.

The max they can afford is about $400,000, but the prices that we're seeing are $550 and up in the Folsom Plan area.

So assuming that you approve this item tonight and on the 13th, then if that was the case, then this ordinance would go into effect on February 12th of 2026.

we would of course communicate that out to the BIA and the rest of the

development community so they're aware of the changes in the fees.

That concludes my presentation and the recommended action

is before you tonight. Myself and Amy and Stephanie are here to answer any

questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you Desmond. Questions for

Desmond, Amy or Stephanie? I'll start with you Vice Mayor Rachel.

Yeah I think my questions are probably for Amy but I can just get started and

to let you guys figure that out.

My first question is really the prototypes,

the 1,000-square-foot multifamily rental versus the 1,500-square-foot condo.

When I read the report, based on what you're presenting,

most of your differences come down to the size of that unit.

Did those come from any averages of what we're actually building?

because I'm not sure we're building too many thousand square foot apartments here in Folsom.

They did.

We have a list of comparable projects, I think both in Folsom and maybe in the broader region,

but primarily in Folsom.

That helped inform, and we also had multiple conversations with staff to make sure that,

and with stakeholders.

We conducted our own stakeholder outreach with both market rate and affordable developers and ran those assumptions by them as well.

If somebody, and I'm just looking at, if somebody lived in a 1,500 square foot rental unit or bought a 1,500 square foot condo, would they need substantially different income?

Or am I looking at a very equivalent type of person?

And is there a big difference between the rental market and the for sale market on what my disposable income is at the end of the day?

Because I look at the impacts and it's like within a dollar, right?

So if you go back, maybe go back to that slide, because I think you're calculating the impact to not be any different.

Let's go back a little further here.

And maybe I'm misunderstanding what the numbers are.

Let's go back a little further.

That was it.

oh sorry there was one about those like 34 a square foot was the maximum calculated in luffy

that was the impact uh there it is okay is that it yeah yes yeah so 36 multifamily attached

i'm looking at your report i've got 34 for single family attached that updated maximum in luffy is

kind of like a corollary to what the impact is right that's why it's much higher it is okay so

it's pretty similar it steps up for multi-family attached but there's not a differentiation between

rental here and for sale right well you need a down payment and and you need um a certain

monthly income in order to qualify for the owner occupied multi-family product versus

the cap the capital outlay on a monthly basis for the rental product it's much less

okay but my am i reading that that's the m3401 would be is that for a rental family it is that's

for a rental family that's yes okay and it's also for the for sale family that's the impact that we

would expect them to have on the need for affordable housing yes that's what that number

represented yes and again it's based on these these three steps which is the

affordability gap for those for those particular prototypes and the number of

worker households generated by the spending of the households in those

particular prototypes okay and then the neighboring jurisdictions that we have

from what I can tell from the part it looks like most of them are charging

their square foot fee for your rental products also some are yes but some are not okay do we

know which ones do we have that i i know the ones way outside of our area i'm not too interested in

right but the ones that are close to here it looked like our neighboring jurisdictions are

charging for a rental multi-family product you're saying some of them are not i will say that

Folsom is one of the few that has an in-lieu fee program.

And when the in-lieu fee program was established,

multifamily rental was not allowed to be charged.

Understood.

The peer jurisdictions that we looked at have a development impact fee,

and there was no such limitation for that.

So they did adopt a fee.

Some of them did adopt a fee assessed on multifamily rental products.

Okay. I think that's, and these changes, I guess one other question, these changes are not just for the Folsom plan area. These changes are throughout Folsom.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. That's all my questions.

Council Member Koslowski?

Yeah, my question is kind of about the edge case on the requirement to charge these fees at all.

I know that we have an interesting history of how we arrived here in the first place.

But is there, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, serving at SACOG,

that we're coming up on arena cycle sooner rather than later.

We have these requirements to stimulate or create the opportunity for low-income housing of various stripes.

but is there actually a mandate that we have a in-lieu fee program at all and to what extent

yeah i know that's kind of a broad question but i'm just i just i feel like that might be an

interesting underpinning for the public to understand so the the current inclusionary

housing ordinance which includes the in-lieu fee was the result of a settlement agreement from a

lawsuit back in the early 2000s that the city lost, and then we were required to put that in

place. Jurisdictions are not required to have inclusionary ordinances, but they have become,

particularly with the housing element cycle, a critical tool in terms of providing gap financing

on affordable projects or buying land to develop affordable housing or other things like that.

It's one of the few mechanisms that we have to help support the construction of a deed-restricted

affordable housing in Folsom.

And this has become even more important with the decline in federal funding and then the

limitations that the state has given the state's budget problems. Gotcha. Maybe this question is

for the city attorney. Have we satisfied that settlement agreement in other respects? And is

this a perpetual requirement that we will live under for all time? It depends on how one reads

the settlement agreement. I would say it's ongoing until something changes. This is something that

the city council has. There wasn't a target number of units or conditions to reach. No, no, no. There was a

timeframe. So the city council has already

satisfied the timeframe requirement and the city council

has continued over the years by

implementing the general plan, including updates to include

inclusionary for practical reasons.

Practical reasons. Because it's not

just a certain agreement that's part of the consideration.

It's the arena in our ability

to meet the state's repeated mandates

over years. If we were a jurisdiction that hadn't started down this road because there had been no

settlement, we in some ways wouldn't have any hook from the state to force us to meet the arena

requirements in terms of subsidizing construction rather than creating conditions. Yes, sir. And it

could actually take the money out of the general fund to help the city head off any enforcement

action from the state.

We always have the option to spend our general fund in a lot of ways.

Are you saying that the state would mandate that we do that?

I'm not saying that.

I'm saying the trend is concerning.

The state has established, I don't think this is recent, I think it's a year or two ago,

enforcement units.

So this is something that the state is hammering local jurisdictions to make sure that we or they exert as much pressure as possible on local jurisdictions to allow affordable housings to be produced.

They know and we know.

We do not build.

But they want us to incentivize.

And this is how we incentivize affordable housing construction.

Okay.

All right. I'm not sure that fully answered my question because I'm trying to just get down to the base level of if we feel like we've met the settlement agreement at some time and we recognize that the bulk of the responsibility to the RHNA process is to make sure that there is land available for the type of development that's desired.

is there a state mandate for us to also act as a tax collector and financier of construction on that land?

No.

The answer is no.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I was trying to say.

The answer is no, but practically speaking, it's not so simple because the pressure is from elsewhere.

Yeah, I get that.

I get that.

Listen, the work that was done here is excellent.

I just wanted to back up a couple of steps and make sure we understand the base case for why we're doing this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Roarbaugh, any questions?

Council Member Leary.

Oh, I just have one question.

And that was when you put up the slide showing the average cost, you know, the cost for the various municipalities.

Were all of those an average as well?

um well uh or is that a hard question to answer given that so no the the um it's it's based on

the prototype so there's a 2600 square foot prototype um and and so that's why it was used

what i was trying to point out and maybe didn't do a good job of it but is is that since we have

$3 a square foot, it's not going to mean that every house pays $7,800 in an in-lieu fee.

It will depend on whether it's 2,600 square feet or whether it's 3,000 square feet or whether it's 1,600 square feet.

So the fee level will vary based on.

So that's just a representative snapshot based on the 2,600 square foot prototype.

So homes in Rancho Cordova that are 2,600 square feet have a significantly lower fee.

So this was from some time ago, and it was negotiated, and it's one specific plan.

There are multiple specific plans in Rancho Cordova.

It's the Rio de Orles specific plan, and it was done quite some time ago.

So that's the explanation for that situation.

And then Davis, of course, is quite the outlier here with the 21,000 square foot.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

This is a public hearing, so I will open the public hearing.

We do have a request to speak.

Yeah, we have one request from Martin Nowinski.

Martin, while you're making your way down, we have two requests from you, but both identify item 15.

Did you just want to speak on one item?

No, two items.

What was the other one?

I don't remember the other one.

Well, you can let me know afterwards.

Okay.

Yeah, it's the minor administrative modification for the school district.

Got it.

Okay, thank you very much, so I can call you back up again.

Thank you.

Mayor Aquino, Councilmembers, thank you for having me tonight.

I'm here to talk about the inclusionary housing ordinance. I walked in a little bit late

Maybe I missed this but the whole reason in my opinion that this is going on is I think the city has been making some

Fiscal policy changes recently to become more efficient to live within your means a little bit better

And I think this is a staff's opportunity to try to make themselves more efficient

I think the staff has done a good job explaining how

burdensome it is for them to administer this program we're part of this program

it works for us but it is administratively burdensome it is for us as

well I heard Desmond say that it's sometimes difficult to even collect

information from the builders except for one I believe that you will get

reinforcement from them that that there is one builder that does participate

pretty well so from a practicality standpoint I think that becoming more

efficient is a good thing and I think your staff's done a great job of being

very transparent and doing outreach and keeping the development community

informed of this process and what they're going through and listening to

our concerns and everything basically there's three options that you have

before you option one keep it the same but outsource to some other company to

administer that's a fee increase we pay the same amount of fee but then we'll

also have to pay for the outsourcing administration fee so that increases our

fees. The second option was to collect all of the money at their certificate of occupancy,

which is the first closing, if you will, in a subdivision. And the reason we don't like

that, if we had a 100 lot subdivision and we had a 3,000 square foot house, it's $9,000

per house. So you would collect $900,000 before we closed escrow on our first home. That's

fiscally very burdensome. And what I would envision is that I wouldn't come in with 100

lot subdivisions anymore. I'd come in with 10

lot subdivisions 10 times in a row.

And as your

public works director and city engineer can attest,

there's quite a bit of work that goes into a final map and that would

I think increase the administrative

burden on your staff again by tenfold.

So the second option doesn't

really work for us either. The third option is going to a flat

square foot fee of $3 per square foot. And I think the city's done a really good job of trying to

keep the fee about the same of where it is. The city's collected quite a bit of money.

We're in favor of lessening the burden on staff, which helps us. It helps us for

forecasting what our fee will be before we step into it. And if a city's going to consider one

of the three. Full Brothers would support option number three, the square foot, $3 per

square foot price. And thanks for your time. Thanks so much. Any other requests to speak?

We have no further requests to speak on this item. All right, then we will close the public hearing

and I will entertain a motion. Just a quick clarification. Option number three was not the

staff recommendation. That was to have a caveat of changing the sliding scale for large enough.

Yeah, that's correct. But yeah, the recommendation before you is to go with the per square foot basis, which we expect to be about a $3 fee.

Got it. Perfect.

I'll kick us off. I've said it multiple times from the dais. I don't think it will come as a surprise to any of my colleagues.

I'm not in favor of these fees for for sale condominiums and townhomes.

I think we need more starter homes out there.

And I think although the study might show that all of these prototypes are financially kind of at the cusp,

our experience has been a little bit different here in Folsom.

We've had a lot of units that were built here.

And I understand there's a lot of moving pieces that go into these studies.

But when I look at it, I think of what are we trying to incentivize?

And I don't think disincentivizing or incentivizing rental units above for sale units is what I want to see for our city.

If it is a 1,500 square foot attached multifamily project, whether it is a luxury apartment or whether it's a condo,

I don't want to encourage that builder or that developer to make it a rental project versus making it a for sale project.

And so I'm totally fine with transitioning to a per square foot fee.

But my real challenge is how do we how do we lessen the impact?

And I'm fine with them for single family homes that's been there.

We're staying within that same rate.

But really that section in the middle of the multifamily projects is where I'd like to see what you guys' thoughts are on just removing the fee entirely for those tranche of projects.

Or alternatively, and this is maybe a little tougher with EPS's analysis, making the rental projects pay that fee like our other neighboring jurisdictions.

So I think my first preference would be to go with the multifamilies not being charged our inclusionary housing fee

and try to make some more of this naturally attainable housing attainable here in Folsom.

So you're saying that you would agree with staff's recommendation except take out the multifamily?

So right now they're saying $3 a square foot for single family, and correct me if I'm wrong, Desmond and Pam,

But 250 per square foot there was a little bit of discount given to the multi-family projects and in recognition that council

Mostly me. I'll take I'll take the blame if anybody wants to throw blame mostly me and said hey

We really want to incentivize more of the count condo and townhome projects to go forward

So I would take that 250 and bring it to zero

Desmond or Pam you want to

respond in any way

Yeah, so a couple things with regard to that.

So as we explained with the rental product, we didn't want to put the burden on it because it's not financially feasible with about a $40,000 gap between what they can get in rents and what they can get in or what it actually costs to build.

So with the multifamily for sale product, when we look at the townhomes and we look at the duplexes or the halfplexes that are being sold in the plan area,

those are, even with the $250 fee per square foot fee, they are financially feasible.

They're right at that break-even point, as Amy pointed out.

And they're also selling at considerably more than what a moderate income household can afford.

So that's why we elected to keep the fee in place because if they're selling for $550,000, as an example, that's considerably more than what a moderate income household can afford, which is about $415,000.

dollars so um because it's yet another product that caters to higher income folks we are able

to use you know we're we're proposing to put that money or collect that money and put the

in-lieu fee on that project because it doesn't impact the financial viability of that of that

project but it does then give us money that we can then use to whether it's um you know buy land

for affordable housing or do gap financing on affordable projects

or support a project like the Habitat for Humanity project.

So that's kind of the reasoning behind where we went with that approach.

Madam Mayor?

Yes.

So when I reviewed this with the staff last week,

I made the suggestion because I hadn't really thought it all the way through

that, and honestly, I might be chasing a product ghost a little bit, but the thing that seems

apparent is that nobody builds a house detached that is anything less than probably 1,600 or 1,800

square feet nowadays. And that is not going to be affordable to the group that you're talking about.

So in days gone by, there were brand new tract homes built on small lots that were

1,000 or 1,200 square feet, and people sort of grew into them and expanded them over time.

That may not be a feasible product, but I think if we were going to put a floor where

we eliminated the fee, perhaps it's just for any product that meets this moderate income

price range.

So if somebody does come forward with a product that they can sell at that moderate sales

price. And again, it may never happen, but if they can hit that, let's at that point eliminate the

fee on those projects or on that product to help it along. Because if they're teetering just on the

edge of doing it, maybe we can incentivize it without having to transfer the money all around

and track it in the same way. It might meet both of our objectives. Yeah. And I think that's an

approach to take, right? I don't think these are that far out of the range of your moderate income

folks, right? Maybe we're talking about 130% of AMI instead of 120% of AMI. To me, why are we

disincentivizing them, right? That's just my view on it is I don't think we need to add an extra

five grand. It looks like all the projects are marginal, and we really have to take into account,

I'm trying to take into account our lived experience, right?

Like, hey, here we are.

We've had a really hard time in the city building condos and townhomes.

You know what we haven't had a hard time building?

Luxury apartments.

The EPS study can say, you know, here's what the conditions are right now.

That is a snapshot in time where we're living with really high interest rates.

And these projects are quite pricey.

And they're probably suffering from this temporary period of really high interest rates.

That's my guess.

I don't know.

I'm not the economic consultant, but that's my guess, right?

We're just looking at a single snapshot in time.

And I think we're now making policy for the next five to 10 years based on that little

snapshot in time.

OK.

Well, we can debate what interest rate effect is on the price of housing in the United States.

I think it's opposite of what you're suggesting.

But I guess my just recommendation is based on a couple of things.

One is that I'm looking to try and incentivize people to build market rate housing that can meet that middle that's missing.

But also recognizing that the credit that we get for it in the RENA activity is different if it misses by $10,000.

If it actually is moderate income, we get to take credit for it.

If it's moderate plus $10,000, we don't get to take credit for it.

So if we can help that along, it saves us the trouble of finding other projects that do in fact meet that moderate price range.

So that's my suggestion.

Would someone like to make a motion for us to consider?

I have another question, please.

Thank you.

So it seems to me that there are some things that need to be worked out here before we vote on this, the way that it's set up.

and does staff have any ideas about how to implement what Vice Mayor Rathal and Council Member Kozlowski are saying that we're,

I'm having trouble putting all of those pieces together plus these three options that have been presented into something that is workable,

that would incentivize people to build the smaller housing products as well,

because other areas are building them.

And there's state laws that are also impacting the ability for people to build condos

and attach housing for sale.

So that's another piece of that puzzle that we can't solve with this.

I do have a suggestion for making a motion on this that could serve both purposes.

I'll see if you guys care to take it.

So my proposal would be that we do, in fact, approve the staff recommendation,

but ask them, because we have the luxury of being able to change this again,

and nobody is going to come complain if we reduce fees,

that we ask the staff to take one more look at a floor of some sort

to try and incentivize that missing middle type development

that hits the RENA mark for, you know,

moderate income at a later date.

Yeah.

That would be my proposal.

Now the mayor and members of the council,

so what we can probably do is exactly what Councilmember Kostowski

indicated, adopt, I'm sorry, introduce,

and kind of first reading of this ordinance,

and direct staff to come back with a formula

or some kind of exemption provision to be inserted into this new ordinance.

At some future date.

Because you talk about exempting certain products.

Yes.

So it will be exemption section.

It could be exempted or it could just right now staff is already recommending a lower fee for these products, right?

So that's the recommendation that staff is giving.

I'm just saying a 50 cent discount on a 1,000 or say 1,500 square foot.

We're talking about a $750 discount on your $5,000 fee, right?

Am I roughly in the ballpark there?

So I'm saying instead of staff's recommended $750 discount to incentivize this project,

we give them a $5,000 discount to incentivize that project.

But the other way we could look at it is what's the maximum square feet, right?

My only concern around doing like a, hey, you're exempt up to 1,500 square feet is then we have this like kind of cliff, right?

Whatever we calculate the moderate rate to be, all of a sudden we don't see any more 1,500 to 1,700 square foot.

I'm suggesting that we tie it to sale price rather than – so we kind of do both things.

Right now we have it tied to sale price.

Okay.

I'm saying that for that particular product, we tie it to sale price.

And if a developer comes forward and can demonstrate that they're going to meet that sale price range

that gives us credit for moderate income housing,

that we then provide a discount of up to 100% on the fee.

I want to, can I make a comment in here?

Yes.

I think it's clear that, I know that Sarah has also articulated this,

I have as well, and you too did as well.

And Barbara, you highlighted it, that we want to encourage condos.

And I think staff knows that that's a priority of this council.

So maybe coming back next time with how can we do that?

How can we incentivize it?

If it's tied to the fees or not, I won't know how to do that, but you will.

That is something I think that we need to prioritize this next year.

And so we've heard a lot about this particular agenda item, or I have.

I'm sure everyone every other council member has as well but one of my priorities consistently since the beginning was to

Deliver our portion of any development process or product in a timely and obviously accurate but timely manner

and something that we've talked about in the last several years so

I guess I'm I'm inclined to vote for this because I think that this will

Help us deliver exactly what we've been what our community has been asking for developers have been asking for and

And also this council has been asking for a more timely matter.

So this falls in a line with one of my priorities, and that's why I think I'm going to support this.

But I also agree with what you guys are saying.

How can we get better at incentivizing condos and homeownership in that way?

All right.

Would you like to make a motion?

So my motion is to approve the staff recommendation and to ask the staff to look at other incentives for moderate income housing that we can institute at a later date.

All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second?

I have one more question to ask here.

So would you be okay with still allowing some kind of a fee structure,

even for those smaller units, rather than eliminating a $5,000 contribution to the funding?

I'm looking for the staff to come back with a recommendation,

because as I started my comments, we may be chasing a ghost.

Toll Brothers may not be interested at any point in building that particular product,

and it will come to nothing, but I want the staff to take a look at that.

well yeah and I would hope there are other developers that may be looking at

that kind of product there may or may not be yeah no I understand that and it's a

real struggle so I just want to make sure that we're being fair to ourselves in

terms of being able to have money to purchase land and and support other

projects like the Habitat for Humanity all right we have a motion we have a

second we have motion and second please call the roll is the intention to bring

the changes back for the second reading no oh a later date my motion is to

approve the first reading got it have it come back on its regular schedule so we

can do the final reading and then at some point over the next few months to

get a new presentation of tinkering all right we have a motion in a second

please call the roll councilmember Leary yes Rachel no Rorba yes Kozlowski yes

And Aquino yes, okay motion passes we do have some folks from the school district in the audience

I'm going to move things out of order a little bit

And I'm clerk would you please call item number 20, please?

So we're going to jump to new business item number 20. This is resolution number one one five one two

approving a minor administrative

Modification request from the Folsom Cordova Unified School District to modify the Folsom plan area specific plan land use

designations and residential unit allocation for designated parcels to

accommodate the relocation of a planned middle school site to a location adjacent

to a high school site

Okay.

Bear with me. Sorry, I'm just...

Okay. Sorry.

My apologies.

There's some technical difficulties with opening one of the...

Okay.

we're having an issue with the school district's PowerPoint.

Yeah, I know. It's, it's, it's this computer, I think.

Sorry, Jessica. I didn't mean to catch you off guard.

Maybe I'll just describe it.

Yeah, we'll do staff's presentation. And then in the meantime,

I'll try and get this issue fixed so I'll turn it over to Jessica Brandt

principal planner with the community development department I'll go behind

this I'll go behind the scenes and see if I can get it fixed on my computer the

superintendent can present through interpretive dance

Here we go.

I think you got it.

Okay.

Just a suggestion.

I've actually never had an item moved on me like that before.

Oh, sorry.

I thought I was just being nice to our friends from Folsom Cordova.

Yeah, no, it's great.

Okay, so good evening.

Jessica Brandt with Community Development.

And I'm here to present the request from Folsom Cordova Unified School District.

for a minor administrative modification

to the Folsom Plan Area specific plan

to relocate a planned middle school site.

And as you heard, we do have a representative

from Folsom Cordova here,

and they will have, hopefully,

an applicant presentation as well.

So Folsom Cordova's request

is to relocate the middle school site

in the Folsom Plan Area,

And that requires a change to the specific plan land use designations for the two subject sites

And a transfer of development rights between the parcels

Both of which can be accommodated for a public quasi public use like this through a minor administrative modification

And so kind of to get it on record the specific changes

To the specific plan are as follows

The existing middle school site, which is about 22 acres, would be changed from public quasi-public to single-family high-density land use.

The proposed middle school site, which is about 15 acres, would be changed from single-family high-density land use to a split of 11.75 acres of public quasi-public and about 3.93 acres of single-family high-density.

In addition to accommodate the request 85 residential dwelling units that were allocated to the proposed middle school site and four residential dwelling units from another residential site would be transferred to the existing middle school site to retain consistency with land use residential density requirements and the overall unit count allowed.

the Folsom plan area specific plan includes policy language and criteria for considering a minor administrative modification

just to highlight policy 4.24

states that all public quasi public sites may be relocated or abandoned with the minor administrative modification process

the land use designation of the vacated site or sites will revert to the lowest density adjacent

and in no event shall the maximum number of plan area dwelling units allocated in the specific plan

be exceeded section 13.3 which is administrative procedures states that administrative modification

that are consistent with and do not substantially change the overall intent of the specific plan

such as minor adjustments to land use, parcel boundaries, land use acreages may be approved

provided seven specific criteria are met.

I'm not going to go through all seven.

The main one here is that the general plan land use pattern remains consistent with the

intent of the specific plan, that the backbone infrastructure network is not substantially

altered, and that the proposed modification doesn't increase environmental impacts beyond

those identified in the plan area EIR the proposed modification also needs to

offer equal or better development capacity and then specific to this

request relocated school parcels must continue to meet standards for the type

of school proposed and remain within walking distance of residents that they

serve there are also additional criteria for transferring dwelling units that

mirror these ones I discussed so Folsom Cordova will provide additional detail

in their presentation but this slide provides a summary of their vision for

the combined campus that would result from the move of the middle school site

their vision includes improving communication for staff articulation of

instruction across grade levels sharing facilities that may not otherwise be

available to middle school students maintaining a safe and cohesive campus

and then meeting the district school to provide a timely and cost-efficient

school complex staff reviewed Folsom Cordova's request and have determined

that it meets all applicable plan area policies and the required and minor

administrative modification findings briefly the proposed relocation is

consistent with plan area policies in that the middle school remains near

residential neighborhoods and because Folsom Cordova will provide campus

facilities that meet state law the needs of plan area residents and that will not

burden Folsom residents outside of the plan area financially the relocation

does not modify the general land use pattern of the specific plan and again

Folsom Cordova may talk about this but a combined high school middle school

campus was actually originally proposed for the Folsom Plan area and so this goes back to that

model further Folsom Cordova provided a study that demonstrated that the request would not require

significant alteration to the roadway network or result in any additional significant traffic or

other environmental issues finally the relocated site remains within a residential area and reduces

the acreage needed for the middle school from 22 acres to 12 increasing service efficiency

so with that staff is recommending that the council move to adopt resolution number 11512

approving fulsome cordova unified school district's request to modify the land use designations

and residential unit allocations for the designated parcels through a minor administrative

modification to accommodate the relocation of the planned middle school site.

This completes my presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions now that I've got my breath.

As mentioned at the beginning, Craig Rouse, Director of Facilities, Finance, and Planning

with Folsom Cordova, is also here as the applicant representative and has prepared remarks as

well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica.

You're going to get to go home earlier.

That's the good news.

Come on up, Craig.

Are you able to get it?

Okay.

It's a PDF issue with this thing.

Any questions for staff before we bring up Cordova?

Super.

Good evening.

Craig Rouse, Executive Director for Facilities Development from the Folsom Cordova Unified School District.

I apologize for that.

New to the job.

Oh boy, that's not a good start.

We really appreciate the opportunity to come speak tonight regarding relocating this middle school site.

And we have a few slides here to kind of add on to what was just presented by staff.

We'll be talking about the new middle school Folsom planning area and relocation of the middle school site.

Go that way, okay.

In this presentation, we'll be talking about the relocation need, identify the purpose,

adjacent high school, middle school sites, easing the grade level transitions as they

move from 6th, 7th, and 8th into the high school, the holistic student development,

and then the status of where we are and the design development and moving into construction.

in 2017 that's when this first started the original school site really had some limitations

with the accessibility and the topography that really made the site too expensive to explore to

go forward and based on that you know assessment that came back the district had to look at

splitting this the sites and look at a new location for the middle school and we had the support from

the landowners and the city to try and look at another location and a minor administrative

modification a man was approved by the city for this purpose and then in 2025 moving forward

an effort to achieve the original vision of the combined high school middle school site

the district went back and started talking to the city and the landowners to see if there was an

opportunity, as we saw earlier about combining the two sites and moving it over to have the

additional 15 acres to have them on one site.

And this is why we're here tonight, is to see if we can get approval for the MAM, and

that's what we're being presented.

So the site's initiative design maintains a distinct physical separation between the

two campuses.

So even though they're combined, they're really set up so that they're separated.

Schools will be structured in a way that there are clear lines of supervision from the principal and vice principal's offices in the joint administrative building to the respective middle school and high school campuses.

The middle school students and high school students will be housed in separate areas of the campus, but still have a period of time to be sheltered from other students while transitioning into their new environment.

some of the advantages of having the adjacent high school and middle school site combined

one is cost the cost to build a school is about a thousand dollars a square foot it's really

escalated and cost escalation it's just gone through the roof by combining the sites having

joint use buildings really helps with the overall budget of a project of that size

It provides the students more flexibility.

Younger students can take upper-level courses.

Students get comfortable with their surroundings being on one campus.

Better articulation between the staff and different grade levels.

Ability to maintain connections as they move from middle school to high school.

And then the collaboration between the two staffs as they share the admin building opportunity for them to work.

together and share information as the middle school students transition into the high school.

Resources, by having the combined middle school and high school site, they have more access to

fields and campus resources. And then student safety and security is maintained in all areas

of the campus. The middle school and high school students will have no common areas where they mix

and very limited opportunities to interact. And they won't be unsupervised as they go throughout

their day. So as we ease into the grade level transitions, each grade level transition creates

exposure to and interaction with more students, different teachers, and new surroundings. The goal

is to streamline and ease the minute of the transition to minimize anxiety and reduce

isolation for the students by fostering a more positive educational experience.

Students will strive to adapt and recreate their identities and their new surroundings,

There is a need to establish environments where students feel comfortable and safe, and then provide services and spaces that connect to students and engage them in the education process.

So as our architects design these canvases, they really implement these talking points here into the design so that students do not feel isolated and threatened if they're crossing over the canvases.

so the status of the high school and middle school project and this is all dependent on the home sales

and development of the build out where we're at and funding availability we're currently

in the design development we have completed the schematic design phase and then the proposed high

school start date is in 2027 that's phase one of the high school and then based on funding and

availability of the home sales phase one of the middle school is scheduled to start in 2029

any questions thank you Craig I actually do have a question um if one of the advantages of doing a

combined middle school high school campus is cost savings why does your schematic show double the

athletic facilities it seems like that is a natural area where you just have one set of

athletic facilities that both schools could share you got to think about the size of the schools

oh yeah i can answer that one we have a single set of athletic facilities at vista del lago and

there is almost no time when they are not in use already so having a complimentary set is

almost essential to run regular sports programs at the high school level nowadays

thank you you're welcome because i was i was about to make a suggestion that you actually

if the opportunity presents itself actually flip the two tracks the stadium and the middle school

track so that they're adjacent to each other because there are no facilities at a high school

where there's an opportunity to have a track meet in a stadium and a warm-up facility as good as

what you're showing adjacent to it the only place where that exists is at Sac State so that would be

a fantastic place to host a track meet if you were to put those a little closer to each other

We'll take that into consideration.

Absolutely.

Any other questions?

Questions over here?

Yeah.

My one question is, is there still the 6, 7, 8 combo for the middle schools?

You know, that's gone back and forth where, you know, sometimes middle school is 7th and 8th, sometimes 6th, 7th, and 8th.

Yes, there are.

So is that the current status for most students, or is that still an option, you know, that some kids stay in elementary?

All middle schools are 6th, 7th, 8th.

Do any of the elementary schools have 6th grade anymore?

Yeah.

Okay.

And you also had mentioned something about sheltered from other students,

and I wasn't sure what that referred to.

You mean that there's no interaction between the high school and middle school?

I was really focusing on the interaction between the high school students

and the middle school students and have that separation in the campus.

and is that basically a fence or how no it's a line of vision where the students will not cross

across that there is a main pathway that they can it's a learning pathway that goes throughout both

campuses but right there at the admin building it's split where the middle school students will

stay on this side of the campus and then the high school students will stay over here and it's going

to be basically supervision keep them separated and and one other question is about the pick up

and drop off, which is always a challenge at every school from elementary through high school.

Is that going to be shared or will that be a split site?

It'll be split.

Both campuses will have their own pick up and drop off.

On different streets?

Same street.

Same street.

Different times.

So there'll be different times, you know, dropping off, picking up.

That'll have to be worked out.

But there's two separate areas where they're dropping off and picking up.

Because traffic safety and management are really difficult around the obviously and we have been working with the city on that

On the how that's gonna the traffic flow and if there's gonna be lights or roundabouts

We're still in that design phase on how that's gonna impact drop-off and pick up

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. We do have one request to speak from the public on this item. Okay, Martin Davinsky come on down

hello again

we have a ownership and controlling interest in the properties immediately adjacent

to the east and immediately adjacent to the north of this proposed site the combo site

and we have been working with the school district to do some alignment of infrastructure and help

them out with a little bit of their design and just for the record want the council to know that

Toll Brothers is in full support of the minor administrative modification and combining the two

schools together for, you know, there's a lot of things that they said, but I think that cost

difference, putting the two schools together makes a lot of sense and we're in full support and I

just wanted the council to know that Toll Brothers is in full support of it. Thank you. Thank you very

much, Martin. No other requests to speak? All right, then we will entertain a motion, please.

I'll move resolution number 11512. Second. We have a motion and a second.

please call the roll council members larry yes rathal yes rorbaugh yes koslowski and aquino yes

thank you all for coming next item please okay that takes you back to old business item 16 that

is you have 10 more items to go madam mayor so item 16 is going to be a resolution number 11522

this is a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with romo studios for the

fabrication installation and construction of the Johnny cash trail art experience project and this includes acceptance of grant funds and

appropriation of those funds

Good evening Tom

Good evening, madam mayor council members see manager Tom Hellman with the Parks and Recreation Department

So tonight I'm going to give you some background to the Johnny cash trail art experience project

That's worked a spanned over a decade

I think as staff has come and gone council members commissioners have come and gone

This project can get lost with where we've come from to where we are today

So the next slides will give you some information

But at the end I will be requesting action from the City Council to authorize the city manager to execute an agreement to add another art experience on the Johnny

cash trail

So tonight this resolution before you is to authorize the city manager to go into a professional services and consultant agreement with Romo studios

for a not-to-exceed amount of $279,730, which will be used by grant funding, which I'll explain a little bit later,

for the fabrication, installation, and construction of Hello, I'm Johnny Cash on the Johnny Cash Trail Art Experience

from California Department of Parks and Recreation Budget Act of 2023 grant funds

and acceptance of those grant funds and appropriation of funds this evening.

so on November 30th the Arts and Culture Commission met shared this information with

them and they are providing a recommendation to you this evening to move forward with accepting

of the California State Park grant funds as well as to develop that professional services agreement

with Romo Studios LLC for the fabrication of the second art experience on the Johnny Cash Trail

hello I'm Johnny Cash and I'll explain a little bit more about this art experience in a later slide

a couple things related to this project as it relates to the city of Folsom strategic plan

identified in economic and community development we did a 2024-25 priority update to it where we

developed the funding and sponsorship plan for the Johnny Cash Trail part of this planning also

identified that 15 percent of all traffic related to the Johnny Cash Trail website and information

about this project this stem from outside of the United States where 55 percent of the traffic is

domestic traffic wanting to find out more information that is stemming from outside of

California. So there is both a national and an international draw

to this project and what is going on with it. In addition,

our 2024 Parks and Recreation Department annual report

shared that we had over 173,000 visitors

on the Johnny Cash Trail, and those are your walkers, your bikers, your

cyclists, and those types of folks that do use that trail on a regular basis.

so this map is uh shown in our master plan which was approved back on september 11 2018

the master plan identifies the art experience of the selected artist that is provided on their

proposal these art experiences that you see are their concept pieces that they does that they

included within their proposal the trail is roughly 2.4 miles stemming east to west

It has one park site, two beautiful pedestrian bridges,

Robbers Ravine Bridge, Johnny Cash Trail Bridge.

It also has trail easements through the California State Prison property,

as well as Bureau of Reclamation property and City of Folsom property.

Of the eight experiences you see there,

two of them are not on the City of Folsom property.

That would be the one to the far east, Cassius Pick, up by Folsom Lake,

and also the Ring of Fire, which would be on the Folsom Prison easement.

property the other remaining project sites are on the city of Folsom property

so dating back all the way to 2013 we the city released an RFQ that garnered 32 internet

interested national artists in 2014 the council passed the resolution adopting the art design

concepts that were selected from the artists and then in 2018 the Arts and Culture Commission

passed and made a recommendation for approval for the city council to move forward for the two

guitar picks that will indicate the entrance and end of the trail. And then also we executed an

agreement with Romo Studios for the casting of Cassius Pick No. 1. A few years later, we came

back and passed another resolution to increase that compensation for the casting of Cassius

Pick No. 1. And then most notably on November 21st, that first pick was installed on the Johnny

Cache Trail. In July of 2023, Assemblyman Hoover

Office notified staff of a selection

of a $425,000 specified grant for the art

experience project on the Johnny Cache Trail. And then in January, we completed

that strategic funding plan that we talked about, and we presented that to the city manager

and the Parks and Recreation Commission in April.

Then in April, we had the city council approve the submission of the

grant funding for the second art experience on the Johnny Cash Trail.

And in September, we began meeting with Don Romo, the artist,

to discuss the next art experience. Throughout all of this, we were

in communication with the Bureau of Reclamation about that second PIC site

in which they notified us in October that they would be denying that site license

because they do not allow monuments on federal land.

We since then looked to move to a new art experience site, and so we

modified our project awareness with California State Parks for that granting, and we received

approval in November to move that project from Cash's pick on over to Hello, I'm Johnny Cash

as the second art experience site. So the funding for this project for Hello, I'm Johnny Cash, again,

was identified in the California Budget Act of 2023, thanks to Assemblyman Josh Hoover for that

submission for the specified grant funds. We have until December 31st, 2026 to spend the $425,000.

We have an art fabrication and installation cost of not to exceed $279,730. The remaining $145,000

of that grant money would be used for the site work that we will work with our landscape design

team to look at what we can provide at that site. And I'll explain the site in a little bit.

So this is the proposed art sculpture, Hello I'm Johnny Cash, that Romo Studios would be fabricating.

This is a six foot tall sculpture of Johnny Cash sitting on a stool with his guitar,

reminiscent and symbolic of his historic Folsom Prison concert that he performed here in 1968.

It is made of bronze, roughly four feet wide.

It would be a realistic look and image of him, but again as a concept piece that you're looking at,

the artist does have some creative abilities as he's beginning this process to make some changes

to that and all of that would be defined within his professional services and consultant agreement

scope. The art experience site itself sits just to the west of the Johnny Cash Bridge so it is on

City of Folsom property. What's also nice to note is the area here is already paved in concrete.

We did paving up there already of concrete that's there. So there's no need to come in with additional flat work

We would be looking at the site to see what would be needed because there is quite a drop-off here

So we would need to put some sort of wall or what's proposed here is a small concrete bench with a small

riser wall there

For that but we will work with our landscape design team to kind of figure out

What's the best use of the available funding in order to streamline this project and provide that?

Much like it cash is picked number one

We would we would also look to include the bike racks as part of all of our art experience

Installation since we have a large cycling community and use of this park or sorry trail

And then we would look at what other materials could be done or added there based upon the cost available and the available funds available to us

For that so that would be something we would be looking to in addition to

Separate from what I'm asking of the council this evening

Again, I want to take this moment just to give thanks to Assemblyman Josh Hoover, who

has been instrumental from the beginning in securing these grant funds for us, but also

in support as we work through the processes and a little bit of the hurdles to get to

where we are today.

He provided this wonderful letter of the importance of this project and wanting to see it come

to completion, so I just wanted to give him thanks for all of his support for that.

And then finally, just to ask you for the recommendation of authorizing the city manager

to execute a professional service agreement.

Again, this is not to exceed $279,730 in grant funding

for the fabrication and installation of Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.

In addition, the acceptance of the grant

and the appropriation of funds.

With that, I'll answer any questions that you might have.

Any questions for Tom?

Tom, I'll start this side.

Council Member Rohrbaugh?

No.

Council Member Leary?

No.

Council Member Kozlowski?

Is the what's depicted on there

the similar sort of record imprint paving around immediately around the statue do you imagine doing

that again no yeah good question though so no that is related just to cash's pick number one

as a pick that sits on the guitar this is just concrete that he would be fastened to as he stands

there or sits there is that circular pad that he's sitting on going to be new uh the the pad that is

there uh right here this concrete pad it does have a little circular formation as it's shown here

it comes down to another circular formation so he would we are expecting that we would place him

up in this area of that circle formation of that pad okay for what it's worth one of the very

coolest features of the pick is the surface that it's sitting or sitting on and um we maybe don't

need to replicate that exactly but similar to my comments about the school district if the

opportunity presents itself grooving that pavement so that it looks like he's sitting on a record

would be pretty awesome okay thank you I have no other questions thank you Vice Mayor Rathel

I do have a question Tom you mentioned that he has some sort of you know kind of artistic license

to make changes or whatever the final product may not look like what's in there the in the master

plan where it shows a picture of the pick you know there is some etching or something that was

depicted that did not happen um with the final product which i think is a bit disappointing

in many people's eyes um was that kind of a similar thing did we think that there was going

to be etching on the pick and then it didn't it was the artist's decision not to do it or

i'm a little bit concerned you know um knowing that it may not come out looking like that

Good question. I think the two pieces are distinctly different where there would not be that situation.

I think there's a couple things in this concept piece that you're looking at here that Adon is looking to create where it's very life-sized.

It's like a moment of you standing next to Johnny Cash as he's sitting on there.

So he really wants to capture that embraces of him and Folsom in 1968 as he sat on a stool as he did with many of his performances.

So I don't see that being where the guitar is going to disappear.

No.

The stool may have some modifications to it.

We don't know yet, but that's stuff that we build into the contract.

We work with the artist, and he keeps us regularly involved as to what his progress is of the art sculpture as he's moving forward.

As it relates to Cassius Pick number one, in discussion with the artist about the concerns that you just brought up

and some of the concerns that we've heard within the community

to see what our available options are.

As of right now, he hasn't provided me with what those could be, if any.

One of the things that at the staff level we're looking at

is identifying a little bit more with the signage that is out there.

Right now we have the large square signs that say Johnny Cash Trail

and then what the art experience is,

and maybe looking to modify those signage

to include a little bit more of the story of the art experience itself,

what the sculpture is sharing or showing as part of this story a little bit.

But if I have more, when I get more information about what the artist may or may propose,

then that's where I would bring that forth to staff and you, of course.

Got it.

Okay.

Americano, if I may, I did ask staff about that because I had been on that committee

and that was the vision all along that would be writing on it.

and it did I believe it went back to the Arts Commission when he requested to

make that change and it was approved correct you are correct councilmember

Leary so we did read the staff report and there was a visual without the

lettering on that that went to Commission and then also there was a

staff report and a rendering without the lettering that went to City Council

thank you because I was surprised as everybody when I came for the grand

unveiling of the sculpture to see that was not what we had initially approved

okay we don't have any requests to speak on this item so we will entertain a

motion I'd like to make a motion to approve this and with thanks to the

latest in a long line of excellent assemblymen that have represented the

city of Folsom so thanks to Josh Hoover and I recommend approval of this second

we have motion in a second please call the roll councilmember leary yes

rathal yes yes yes yes and aquino yes next item please that takes you to new

business item number 17 this is appointment of at-large members to the

Folsom Historic District Commission okay I think we can dispense with our normal

ballot because we only have a handful of applications here so for the category

business owner within the setter sub street setter street sub area we only

have one applicant which is lisa gomez um i will entertain a motion to appoint her to the historic

district commission so moved second we have motion in a second please call the roll council member

leary yes rathel yes rorbaugh yes kozlowski yes and akino yes um then for resident of the historic

district we have two applicants one is kathleen cole the incumbent the other is rosa vias i hope

if I'm saying that correctly.

So I would entertain a motion to appoint one of them,

either Kathleen Cole or Rosa Vias

to the Historic District Commission.

I'll move to appoint Kathleen Cole.

Second.

We have a motion in a second.

Please call the roll.

Council Member Leary.

Yes.

Rathel.

Yes.

Warbaugh.

Yes.

Kozlowski.

Yes.

And Aquino.

Yes.

And we did not receive any applicants

for the Historic Preservation category.

So I would suggest that we direct staff

to reopen that item, accept applications.

And if Ms. Baez thinks that she can satisfy that, she could certainly apply for that.

Yeah, can you explain, just so I know too, who qualifies for that?

This one's a little bit tricky because there are very few people that actually have some kind of a degree and formal certification.

And so it's really the experience.

When we talked about how this membership was initially identified with Candy Miller and others,

I think there was just agreement that someone could demonstrate through their resume that they had qualifications and interest,

but there's no set criteria for this category.

So pretty much anyone could apply and just in their notes say, this is my passion.

Okay.

That's correct.

maybe we could put it back out there well with that kind of opening of but

yeah anyone can apply because it would be nice to have the seat filled yep for

sure do you need anything else official on that other than just direction to

we'll reopen that and give it a probably a month just with the holidays for

people to apply and then we'll find a closing date and bring it back to the

council okay thank you very much next item please okay next item will be item

number 18 this is resolution number one one five two five establishing the

2026 ad hoc charter review committee great thank you mayor members of the

council this item is to consider creating a new ad hoc committee for a

charter review the city charter was adopted on June 5th 1990 and then on

On July 11, 2000, the city council established an ad hoc charter advisory committee.

And so in some ways, we're recommending following similar pattern and forming a committee for this go around.

We think it's appropriate being the time that has passed.

And then also a recent court case pointed out that we have some language that could utilize some cleanup as it relates to commissions and their advisory capacity.

in relationship with the council.

And there may be other items that the committee may want to recommend

that the city council consider.

So just as a reminder, the ad hoc charter advisory committee

that was established in 2000 was made up of two council members at the time.

It was former Mayor Robert Holderness and former Mayor Glenn Fait.

Then there were seven additional voting members.

Each council member selected one member,

and two additional members were appointed on the recommendation of city staff.

Then serving mayor and city manager served as non-voting members of the committee,

and then the city attorney served as a legal advisor to the committee.

City staff is recommending that the council create this ad hoc charter review committee

and approve Resolution 11-525 with one modification.

We're recommending, although we appreciate the opportunity,

as mentioned in the previous one,

to have staff recommend some members for appointing for that.

If the council decides two council members

and then they appoint another five

and then we have staff support related to that,

we think that would be sufficient.

So that concludes my report.

um well actually as far as timeline um so if the council were to move forward with this it would

be my expectation that we'd have to move pretty expeditiously after you know the holiday season

where we form the committee and uh uh staff meets with the committee and presents different options

and we have discussions and dialogue and um in in order to to make this worthwhile to be able to get

to a decision point whether or not the city council wants to place something on the November

2026 ballot. And so in order to do that, our recommendation would be to complete the review

of the committee and to have a final recommendation from the committee to the city council in May of

2026 so that it would give the city time to communicate with the Sacramento County Elections

Office to properly place this on the ballot for November 2026. So that concludes my report and

I'd be happy to answer any questions any questions for the city manager so if this passes this evening

Are you anticipating that the appointments for the committee would be made at the first January meeting?

Yeah, that would be the goal. Yes. Okay, so

So you're recommending two council members and then five

Others appointed members by each council member and then it would be two to three staff members is that yeah

so that the staff members wouldn't be voting voting members we're just there to assist and so

i would anticipate that the uh final recommendation would be you know supported by staff but authored

by the committee which would be made up the of the two council members and the five appointed

representatives by the council one other question sorry uh so in the interim um we have a little

bit more time and not a long agenda if we have time to submit some questions about the charter

things that we think should probably be addressed um who would we address those to would it be the

city attorney or you well i guess uh what i would um suggest and obviously the council can decide

differently is that once the committee is formed uh that the council if they had any particular

ideas they could submit it to the committee to review and explore if that would be something

that would be worthwhile or not.

And then they could include kind of a response in the report, whether they were recommending

that this is the way to go or if they should modify it or come up with some other alternative.

Okay.

And I guess that might include public that was interested in well-being.

I would expect as much, right?

I mean, as we publicize this, I mean, I think we would welcome, I mean, the charter isn't

particularly lengthy.

It's not like a 500-page document of some sort.

So the variety of options for change isn't super significant,

but just things such as the change in state law related to elections of our council members have changed.

So cleanup language to coincide with current law may be appropriate.

Great. Thank you.

Okay. We have no request to speak on this item, so I will entertain a motion.

I will move approval of Resolution No. 11525.

Second.

Just as a clarification, the modification of the resolution that was included in the packet had two additional members,

if it's okay to exclude those that were recommended by staff.

So it would be two council members and then five members appointed by each.

One member appointed by each council member in the resolution.

It also included language that staff would recommend two additional members.

We're suggesting that that be excluded.

Okay.

With the modification described by the city manager, an ad hoc committee of two city council members and five others, one each appointed by the council members.

I just got a point of clarification.

Sorry.

Now, you said two council members, but then we also have the mayor and city manager serving on there, according to the staff report.

So we're going to have three.

That was the old version.

Well, I did.

No.

We're going to have three council members there.

I did say that.

So we cannot do that.

Okay.

So it would be two council members and the city manager as staff support and then the makeup of one appointee per council member after that.

Got it.

My motion stands.

Somebody seconded it, right?

Second stands.

Okay.

We have a motion and a second.

Please call the roll.

Council Member Leary.

Yes.

Rathal.

Yes.

Rorbaugh.

Yes.

Kozlowski.

Yes.

And Aquino.

Yes.

Okay.

Item number 19.

This is resolution number one one five two six establishing the twenty twenty six American River Canyon School District boundary ad hoc committee

Okay, and I will take this one as you know there is a

Portion of American River Canyon, so I don't know if we need to modify the resolution in terms of that

It's not all of American River Canyon the portion of American River Canyon that is west of American River Canyon Drive and

south of

Right so I don't want to eat it south of Oak Avenue Parkway

is in the San Juan Unified School District.

There is currently an agreement that has recently been formalized

that allows students in that area to go either to their homeschools in San Juan

or to do an inter-district transfer to Folsom Cordova.

However, that motion passed 3-2.

Two school board members voted against it.

And with the enrollment issues, the impaction in Folsom Cordova,

there is a possibility in the future that those students living in Folsom but in the San Juan

District would not have room to go to a Folsom Cordova School there is a process by which the

city of Folsom could request to annex that area into the Folsom Cordova School District

we would like to appoint an ad hoc committee to explore that process to see if the residents in

that area even have an interest if they don't we're done but if they do then we can explore

the process so um uh the resolution talks about um council members i am proposing that it be

myself and council member koslowski it's his district i'm a former school board member

um i'm proposing that we get rid of b one appointee by each council member we don't need that

c instead of parents of students living in the american river canyon neighborhood i think it

should just be residents living in the american river canyon neighborhood and i am proposing um

tom scott kelly dudley and kendall gilmore kelly and kendall both have kids um in folsom cordova

schools and are interested in this process so do we need to appoint the individual members

we would not be doing that what's that do we need to appoint agree on the individual members right

now at this unlike the previous item forward i am putting forward five names myself council

member Kozlowski Tom Scott Kelly Dudley and Kendall Gilmore and then I'm

assuming you would have staff support from the district and the city as

needed but they wouldn't necessarily serve on the committee correct yeah

second okay thank you I don't have any questions I mean do you know where these

three members stand I mean I don't know anything about them so I'm not I mean I

could definitely approve you and and Mike but I don't so Tom a little bit Tom

scott does not have children but he is just like it's a wide range of um kelly and kendall both have

children in folsom cordova school districts but they and they are interested in their children

continuing in folsom cordova school districts and if that means that they need to be annexed

they are in support of that and then the one that doesn't have any kids just a different perspective

or he yeah he's just a long time folsom resident very you know politically experienced okay okay

And he happens to live randomly geographically at the absolute center of that area.

So do they all three live in that area?

They do.

Describing?

Yes.

Is there any potential for conflict of interest?

None of them work for the school district.

Either school district.

I'm just asking that question because usually when we're appointing people to something,

we get applications and a little bit of a history on them.

As was stated by the mayor, I think the purpose here is to explore whether there is a majority of the residents in that area that actually would like us to pursue a boundary change.

That remains to be seen.

And if that were to come to pass, we'd have to bring all of that back here for us all.

So that leads to one more question.

And that is, would there be a poll of all of the residents there with students in the district?

or of the district as a whole?

Well, first, the idea would be just to gauge

from those residents in that affected neighborhood,

do they have an interest in being annexed

into the Folsom Cordova School District?

If yes, then we can explore the process.

If no, then we're done.

But I mean, well, these three residents

probably already are leaning to that.

I just wonder if there's gonna be

sort of a broader outreach to get-

Yes, we would want to pull everyone

in that affected neighborhood.

No, we're gonna jam it down everybody's throat.

yeah kidding yeah that never happens yeah yeah so just a reminder that so the

charter says that the mayor can appoint an ad hoc committee with the concurrence

of the council which is why I'm putting forward five names and you can say yay

or nay okay okay so yeah so my motion is to approve resolution number one one

five two six with the change that council members council council member

koslowski myself get rid of section 1b and then change parents of students living in the american

river to residents and put that be tom scott kelly dudley and kendall gilmore and i seconded because

i'd have a hard time finding somebody in my district to serve on that ad hoc

we have a motion in a second please call the roll council members leary yes rathel yes

yes koslowski yes and akino yes thank you very much next item okay we're skipping over 20 because

we've already addressed that so takes us to item number 21 this will be

resolution number one one five one eight authorizing the city manager to execute

an MOU between the city and the Folsom middle management group are you doing

one presentation or four presentations Allison I'm doing one presentation

combining the four okay make it as distinct as possible tonight thank you

Okay, so just for the record then this will be items 21 22 23 and 24

Mayor members of the council Allison Garcia human resources director

Tonight I'll be providing an overview of the labor negotiations. We've completed over the last several months

This was a very involved process one that required a great deal of effort and collaboration

With the city and our employee bargaining groups our focus throughout was to maintain fiscal responsibility

responsibility while also ensuring the city remains competitive in the areas of recruitment

and retention. The negotiation team appreciates the council's thoughtful dialogue and support,

which played a key role in helping us reach agreements that responsibly balance the city's

financial realities with the needs of our employees. I'm pleased to share that we've

successfully concluded negotiations with four bargaining groups whose contracts are set to

expire at the end of 2025. These groups include Folsom Mid Management, Folsom Police Officers

Association, Folsom Police Management Association, and the Folsom Fire Department Middle Management

employees. Each agreement is grounded in objective data, particularly the market surveys conducted

to understand where compensation stands relative to similar agencies. To walk you through the

process, we began by reviewing existing contracts to identify areas that required updating or

clarification. This served as our baseline for the discussions ahead. Next, we completed

comprehensive market salary studies. This gave us clear understanding of how our total comp packages

compare across the region. That analysis became a critical foundation for determining whether

market adjustments were warranted and to what degree. Once we had that information, we began

meeting with the unions to exchange proposals. These proposals were shaped by both the data and

broader priorities of the city and its residents. Throughout these meetings, both sides of the table

clarified priorities, listened to concerns, and worked collaboratively through solutions.

After exploring options with each group, we were ultimately able to reach tentative agreements

that address organizational needs and employee priorities. For the Folsom Middle Management

Group, we reached a three-year deal covering January 1st, 2026 through December 31st,

2028. This agreement includes a 3% COLA in each year of the contract. In addition, positions that

were identified as being below market in our salary survey will receive a 5% market adjustment.

We also included an annual boot allowance of a maximum of $325 per eligible employee.

Another change was an increase to the health insurance cash-in-lieu payment,

which will increase from $250 to $300 per month. Beyond the financial components,

we worked with the group to finalize several non-economic language changes that help clarify

processes and improve consistency. With the Folsom Police Officers Association, we again reached a

three-year agreement covering 2026 through 2028. This contract includes a three percent COLA each

year as well as market adjustments for positions deemed below market. This results in a 19.1

percent compounded increase over three years. We also made enhancements to educational incentive

pay for professional staff, including records, communication, dispatch, and animal control

employees.

Detective pay was another area address.

Officers assigned to the detective division will now receive an additional 5% differential

for that assignment.

As with the other bargaining groups, we also completed a series of non-economic and clarifying

language updates.

The agreement with the Police Management Association is also a three-year contract spanning the

same period, January 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2028. This agreement mirrors several of

the themes in the previous contracts, a 3% COLA in each year, a total of 5% market adjustments

split across years one and two, and a set of non-economic language updates. For the Fire

Department's middle management group, we also reached a three-year agreement for 2026 through

2028. This group will receive a 2.5% COLA each year of the contract. The COLA is slightly lower

than some of the other groups due to factors specific to this unit and its marketing position.

One of the key financial changes in this agreement is an increase to the city's premium contribution

for dental and vision insurance from the current 80% to 100%. This group also worked with us to

finalize a variety of non-economic and clarification language updates that help support consistent

application of the agreement. With the completion of these negotiations, the city now has all six

bargaining groups under multi-year contracts until 2028. Having all groups under contract

provides important organizational stability. It also strengthens our ability to plan for the

coming years, both financially and operationally. With that, staff recommends approval of resolutions

number one one five one eight one one five one nine one one five two zero and one one five two

one authorizing the city manager to execute the memoranda of understanding between the city of

Folsom and each of the bargaining groups this concludes my presentation I'm happy to answer

any questions thank you allison and thank you to you and your team for all the work any questions

for Allison any questions over here okay we do need four separate motions please I'll move to

approve resolution number one one five one eight resolution no no just one at a time one at a time

okay yep do we have a second second we have motion and second please call the role council members

leary yes rathel yes rorba yes kozlowski yes and akino yes i'll move resolution number one one five

one nine second we have motion a second please call the role council members leary yes rathel

yes yes kozlowski yes and the keno yes whose turn mike's turn or either one i'll move resolution

number one one five two zero second we have motion a second please call the roll council member leary

yes rathel yes roberto yes kozlowski yes and a keno yes i'll move to approve resolution number

11521.

I'll second.

Before we end all these,

remember,

Rachel moves.

Before we end on all of these,

I know we haven't.

We've all spent a lot of hours there.

I just want to say thank you

for all the work.

You know,

what a treat that you're going to have

almost two years off.

But a lot of work went into this

and thank you to our city manager as well.

So I think we had a really great result.

Excellent work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second.

Please call the roll.

Council members Leary.

Yes.

Rathal yes we're Bob yes Kozlowski yes and Aquino yes and thank you for a

sister succinct presentation the award tonight well I have one more presentation

all right well next will be item number 25 this is resolution number one one

five two seven to approve and adopt a citywide pay schedule as required by

CalPERS and establish new salary tables for the city of Folsom executive

management team mayor members of the council Allison Garcia your human

resources director tonight's presentation is prompted by a CalPERS requirement

that all employers maintain an adopted pay schedule we are updating the city

council the city's schedule to reflect salary ranges previously approved by the

City Council through various collective bargaining agreements as shown in

attachment to of the staff report and to introduce a new step based structure for

the executive management team and contract employees the CalPERS

requirements are outlined in the staff report and on these two slides. If Council approves this pay

schedule tonight it will be posted on the City of Folsom's Human Resources website.

Over the past several months we have negotiated with our six bargaining groups all of whom have

step-based salary schedules. In contrast the executive management team and contract employees

have only minimum and maximum ranges without clearly defined steps. To promote transparency

and align with other classifications throughout the city,

we are introducing step-based salary tables for these positions,

bringing them into alignment with the citywide compensation framework.

The compensation process for the executive management team

followed the same approach to use for all bargaining groups.

We engaged Bryce Consulting to conduct a comprehensive total compensation survey,

collecting market data from comparable agencies and similarly situated positions.

Using this data, we evaluated each position for competitiveness, applied market adjustments

where salaries were below market, and incorporated cost of living adjustments largely applied

citywide.

Finally, we developed step-based salary ranges for all EMT and contract positions, aligning

with the structure already in place for bargaining groups to ensure consistency and transparency

across the organization.

As part of the proposed tables, a 3% cost of living adjustment is included in 2025, 2026, and 2027, consistent with most of our multi-year union contracts.

Market adjustments are recommended for positions identified in the survey as below market, ensuring that salaries remain competitive and support internal equity.

While this step-based structure may feel new or unusual for EMT and contract employees

It provides a clear transparent and consistent framework for setting salaries just as we do with bargaining groups

With that stuff recommends approval of resolution

11527 a resolution to approve and adopt a citywide pay schedule as required by CalPERS and establish new salary tables for the city of Folsom

executive management team

Thank you very much any questions for Allison

And over here all right this is Justin's turn them all move resolution number one one five two seven

Second we have a motion in a second please

I do want to make a comment just for the public because we haven't had we didn't have a discussion here

But we did have a good discussion and had lots of questions

So I think the whole council really thought through this is and then I thank you again to staff for presenting the reasons why and how to move how this will help us move forward.

I also appreciate these being on not on our consent calendar.

So thank you for giving a presentation.

So we air these to the public and make sure we're doing our due diligence.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second.

Please call the roll.

Okay.

Council members.

Leary.

Yes.

Rathal.

Yes.

Rorba.

Yes.

Kozlowski.

Yes.

and Aquino yes okay that takes us to our last item this evening this is selection of the mayor

and vice mayor for 2026 all right well thank you for the honor and privilege of allowing me to

serve as mayor for this past year for 2026 I would like to nominate vice mayor Justin Rathel to serve

as mayor second we have a motion and a second please call the roll council members Leary yes

rathal yes rorbaugh yes kozlowski yes and akino yes and i would like to nominate councilmember

anna rorbaugh to serve as vice mayor second we have motion and a second please call the roll

councilmembers leary yes rathal yes rorbaugh yes kozlowski yes and akino yes congratulations um we

have traditionally allowed um the former mayor to continue the meeting so with your um permission i

I will see this through to the end.

Absolutely.

Okay.

That takes us to city manager reports.

Okay.

Well, thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

First off, I would like to welcome our new police chief,

Chief Adam Green.

Welcome to the city of Folsom.

We're really excited to have him here.

He comes to the city with an abundance of experience in the law enforcement field, serving previously for 24 years with the Sacramento Police Department, most recently as their deputy chief.

So we're just really excited to have someone of Chief Green's caliber joining our team and, you know, combined with his leadership and the wonderful men and women of the Folsom Police Department.

I think we're just in really good hands.

As a reminder, we have night work scheduled at Oak Avenue Parkway in East Bidwell.

The City of Folsom Utilities Department will conduct night work on the sewer infrastructure project.

Work is underway and continuing through early Friday morning, December 12th.

Work hours are from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Crews will install a pipe liner on existing sewer mains located on Oak Avenue Parkway near East Bidwell Street.

And Basin 4 Sewer Phase 1 Project is a City of Folsom wastewater capital improvement project.

It focuses on rehabilitating and improving existing sewer lines where aging infrastructure needs upgrades to maintain reliable service.

We have a design reveal for the Benevento Family Park.

And so we encourage folks who are interested in that unveiling to come to the design reveal that will take place on Wednesday, December 10th at 5.30 p.m.

And it will be held in the library at Vista Del Lago High School, located at 1970 Broadstone Parkway.

And I want to congratulate our finance team, our finance director, Stacey Tamani.

They've earned a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for its fiscal year 2023-2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

This certificate is the highest honor in government accounting and financial reporting.

I appreciate their efforts that went into reaching that level.

Also, the Folsom Holiday Lights Contest.

there's still time to enter your home neighborhood or business in the annual

Folsom holiday lights contest you need to register by December 12th at our

website www.folsom.ca.us forward slash holiday lights contest and just as a way

of information our fire department will be conducting training hosting a

regional rescue training drill on the historic trust bridge this week so if

you see weird things hanging from the bridge it's training so that's please don't call it in

just a narrow pathway will remain open for bicyclists that may need to walk their bikes

through that activity area and then on another note the utility commission will be continuing

public discussions about water and sewer rates at the tuesday december 16th utility commission

meeting. The meeting begins at 6.30 p.m. in the city council chambers at City Hall at 15 Natoma

Street at this location. The water and sewer rate study will prepare five and ten year financial

models to evaluate operations and maintenance needs, capital improvements, and revenue requirements.

And that concludes my report. Thank you. Councilmember Kozlowski? Yeah, just a couple of quick

things. Congratulations to the Folsom Historic District Association for putting on an amazing

party two days in a row one for the Christmas tree lighting which was spectacular as always

and then the following Sunday for a arts and crafts show that was really very entertaining

and fun I want to thank the Folsom Police Department for getting the marathon off safely

that's one of the number one tourist attractions that we have here in Folsom every year 7,000

runners and their families come to town to run from here to the state capitol and it's a good

opportunity for us to put our best foot forward and the police department's the one that does it

for us so thank you welcome chief green uh congratulations to justin and anna you guys

are going to do a great job and um just last quick thing the vista del lago and fulsome

high school cross-country teams qualified for the state championship cross-country meet this year

and the girls and the boys from Vista and the boys from Folsom performed excellently on the Saturday right after Thanksgiving

and with young teams, which will be right back there next year.

So that's all. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor-elect Rathel.

Well, I have some good news.

I did get appointed by the Sac Valley Division for Cal Cities to the Revenue and Taxation Policy Committee,

So I'll be serving there for 2026, really focused on trying to get our fair share of sales tax revenues and advocating for smaller cities like Folsom.

I also wanted to take a moment and thank Mayor Aquino for her outstanding leadership and service to our community over the last year.

we've got a small token of appreciation that your council colleagues and city manager got you

it's maybe uh to your favorite restaurant uh down on sutter street right now

Bella Macy so we hope you enjoy it thank you very much you definitely deserve it uh Sarah's

represented our city with grace warmth and eloquence eloquence uh she's always speaking

from the heart and sharing personal stories that remind us of who we are as a community

She's been approachable and accessible, holding open office hours and welcoming conversations

with anyone who wanted to share an idea or concern, even when they wanted to share those

concerns on Folsom Chat.

Sarah builds relationships and works effectively across the Sacramento region, partnering and

advocating to improve regional, state, and even federal governance.

And here at home, she's fostered genuine collegiality amongst our council colleagues.

During a year of transition for our city's leadership team,

Sarah also served as Folsom's chief morale officer,

encouraging staff, steadying the ship,

and reminding everyone why we love serving this community.

So, Sarah, thank you for leading with heart, humor, and humanity.

It's been an honor to serve alongside you.

Thank you very much.

And thank you to my colleagues for trusting me for next year,

and thank you for serving Anna next year.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor, I'll act horrible.

Thank you.

Thank you for your service and your professionalism this year, Sarah.

I really appreciate it.

I look forward to serving with you, Justin, as well.

You've done a fine job as Vice Mayor.

And, you know, thank you for everyone else's vote and trust as well.

And I just want to say happy holidays to everyone.

We won't see you until the new year, well into the new year.

Might be happy about that.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Thank you.

Councilmember Larry.

Thank you and I want to also welcome Chief Green. I'm happy to see him here and looking forward to working with him in the future. I'd like to thank all of the staff for putting this agenda together, all the material and streamlining the presentations to make them very clear and move this what looked like an eight hour meeting along.

I'd also like to thank Sarah and Justin for serving this year and engaging all of us in participating in the decisions the city has been making.

We as a whole have had some input for.

I do want to make a little announcement about the Folsom City Zoo.

And if you haven't been to wild nights and holiday lights, there are two weekends left.

There's actually four days in a row.

So it's the Thursday through Sundays over the next two weekends, so the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th, the 18th, 19th, 21st, and 22nd.

This is one of the major fundraisers and one of the most fun things that happens at the zoo to take your families to.

They are currently also undertaking a project to raise the funds to replace the veterinary trailer,

and they were able to raise on Giving Tuesday around $28,000.

The project will cost somewhere around $120,000 to $150,000 to complete.

So you can find more information about those two zoo-related things

on the Friends of Folsom Zoo online

and sign up for attending the wild nights or donating to the zoo trailer.

Finally, I was also appointed to a League of California Cities

environmental quality policy program,

which is something that I've been passionate about for years,

and that's maintaining the open spaces,

a lot of the things that people come to Folsom for.

So I'm looking forward to serving on that this coming year as well.

So thanks again this evening.

Everybody have a happy holiday and stay safe.

Great. Thank you.

I also want to welcome Chief Green.

We're happy you're here.

I also want to welcome,

Looks like we have quite a few high school students in the audience today who I have a sneaking suspicion waited to the last minute to fulfill their American government requirement to attend an in-person meeting.

But you made it.

And this could have been a much, much longer meeting.

We made it go very fast so that you wouldn't have to be here all night on a school night.

So with that, I do want to adjourn in memory of a longtime fulsome resident who passed away, Barbara Baker.

We were joined by some of her family members back there in the corner.

and so I just want to read some of this obituary for you. Barbara Baker passed away in her home on

October 15th at the age of 99 and five months. She was born and raised in Folsom. She had fond

memories of old steam trains coming through town. As they passed, she waved to the conductor in the

caboose who threw candy to her. She lived during the Great Depression and recalled hobos showing up

at the back door of her home asking for work. Her mother made sandwiches for them and then sent them

on their way. She attended Granite Grammar School and remembered being taught in class to save money.

Each week, the children brought in their pennies or whatever change they had, which was then

deposited in the Bank of America on Sutter Street. Barbara attended the University of the Pacific and

then went on to nursing school at UCLA. She met her husband, Robert Baker, while attending a dance

between the nursing students and the law students from Loyola Law School. She married Robert in 1948

and they were married for 52 years until his death in 2000.

In the 1960s, she assisted her husband with his real estate business on Sutter Street.

After her husband's death, she continued to manage the family business for another 25 years.

She will be remembered as a strong, independent, and hardworking woman

who was savvy in the business world.

Her greatest legacy was to preserve the Muir House in Folsom.

She will be greatly missed by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

So to Barbara's family, we send you our deepest sympathies.

We thank your mom for her many contributions to the city of Folsom.

And we will adjourn in memory of Barbara Baker at 7.46 p.m.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.