The Monterey City Council met on September 15, 2026, in a combined afternoon and evening session to recognize city employees, discuss fee adjustments, approve a sidewalk repair pilot program, and authorize funding for an affordable housing project. Key actions included adopting reduced encroachment permit fees with a future study session, approving a 50-50 cost-sharing plan for major sidewalk repairs, dissolving the Ocean View Community Services District, and committing $1.5 million from the low- and moderate-income housing fund to the Madison Street affordable housing project.
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call the meeting to order. Welcome, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our afternoon session of today's council meeting at September 15th, 2026. With that, we're gonna pass it to Clementine for roll call and to share announcements of the public. Councilmember Barber, present councilmember Garcia? Here. Councilmember Rash here. Councilmember Smith? Here. And Mayor Williamson. Here. And public comment and participation information is provided on this meeting's agenda, which is online at Monterey.gov slash agendas. In-person attendees, please keep your electronic devices muted to prevent audio interference with our meeting. Consistent with the First Amendment and the Brown Act individuals have the right to speak at public meetings, including the right to criticize or support city policies or actions. The city encourages your uninhibited and robust feedback on public issues affecting the city. Thank you for participating. Awesome. Thank you, Clementine. And with that, we're going to start with our presentation for today. Item one of the agenda is to recognize city employees for milestone anniversaries and retirements in 2026. Before I pass it off to Dante, I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of our city employees. You all do amazing work every single day. It's common, you know, that you see employees who've been here twenty years or or more. And so I say I think that says a lot for dedication and just showing ownership and what they do. Uh so with that, um, I'm going to invite up the departments first. We'll have our police department um present, and then after that, we have some members of our parts and rec department to present. Thank you, Dante. Good afternoon, mayor, city council, assistant chief Mike Bruno. Uh Chief Hover is actually in Spain, so he couldn't be here today. So I'm in his place. Um, so first one up here, Paul. So first, we're gonna uh acknowledge three employees that we've had that uh reached 20 years of service, and uh we actually have five employees that will be retiring in the next three months. And so, first we have Officer Paul Elfkey. He started at the uh Monterey Police Department in February of 2006. He served in several key roles, including school resource officer, hostage crisis negotiator with our SWAT team, an active shooter instructor, drone operator, and patrol officer. Paul holds a master's degree in psychology and a bachelor's degree in sociology. He's also one of the nicest guys that you'll ever meet. He's from Minnesota, as they say, Minnesota nice. That's actually true with Paul. He's a very nice guy, uh, very very loved by the community, and uh congratulations on 20 years, Paul. And you'll get a uh 20-year pin and a letter signed by the city manager. So congratulations. All right, next we have Sergeant Greg Gallon. So Greg started uh with the uh Monterey Police Department in September of 2006. Before that, he worked for the Monrovia Police Department for two years. That's in Southern California. He's worked as a patrol officer, a traffic officer, a hostage negotiator, a detective, a school resource officer, a field training officer, and administrative sergeant. He's currently our detective sergeant. He's also a member of our Rise Peer Support Team. Greg holds a master's degree in law enforcement and public safety leadership.