Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Recording in progress.

I think we have everyone here.

Are we uh online?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Good evening, everyone.

This is the regular meeting of the Pacific Grove City Council.

Uh, this is Wednesday, July sixteenth, twenty twenty five at six PM.

It's six oh nine.

We had some work uh in closed session that we had to complete.

Uh we're here in Council Chambers at Three Hundred Forest Avenue in Pacific Grove, and I'm calling this meeting to order.

For the record, uh the record shall reflect that we have all seven council members present tonight.

And at this time, I will ask my colleague, Councilmember McDonald, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, but that's it all.

Thank you very much.

And um we'll move on to item number one on this agenda and it's approval of the agenda.

I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda, but I'm going to ask that we um as part of the motion, we move to continue item eleven A regarding AB two five six one.

We have a staff absence on the matter, and we're gonna need to hear that at the next council meeting.

So, do I have such a motion?

Motion on that particular item.

Move it to the following um council.

Okay, we have a motion to approve and move item eleven A to the next meeting.

Do I have a section?

Second by Raoul to Mayor Proton Emilio and Rao.

Any further discussion of this?

Seeing none, uh, take a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none passes unanimously.

And that will bring us to, we'll go ahead and uh go forward with that agenda, and that'll bring us to item two, which is presentations.

We have one such item.

That is the uh certificate of recognition for the walk every street Pacific Grove group.

And if uh you can't see them right now on the video, but they're here in large numbers in the uh for the record tonight.

Um and so I'm checking to see if my microphone is on here so I can walk and talk.

Um, okay.

So let me give you present you your certificates, Amy and Ashley.

Please come and join me.

So I have I'm gonna mind holding this for me.

Let me just I'm gonna open this up.

So this is a certificate of recognition for walk every street PG in recognition of your inspiring commitment to fostering community connection and well-being through the encouragement of walking every street in our city.

Your efforts have sparked movement strength, strengthened neighborhood bonds, and promoted a culture of health, inclusion, and shared purpose.

With deep appreciation, we honor your meaningful contribution to building a more vibrant, active, and united community.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And so uh would would either of you like to make make any statements before we invite your colleagues up for a photograph.

Thank you so much for this.

Um it means a lot, and thank you to all of our walkers.

This has just been an incredible experience.

Um our hearts are really full with every step we've taken, and uh we've made such amazing connections, and we look forward to walking every street again September 3rd.

We'll start.

Please join us.

Thank you very much.

So, um let's have the group come up and we're gonna get a photograph with all of the walkers.

If we can fit.

Come on up, just line there.

Yeah, line in the back here.

I think you need to complete your circle.

I do, I need to join you guys.

That's for sure.

There's no day debate on that one.

Let's go.

Here, why don't you get in front of me?

Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we're gonna need some people to get down.

Yeah.

There we go.

I'll go about it.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so um Joyce is gonna take the photograph and the council's standing up, so everybody get ready.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Of course, well done.

I'll be joining you on September 3rd, I was over here.

I need to be.

I definitely need to be, that's for sure.

Thank you for recognizing them.

That's even such a lot of these.

Yeah, that was a good one.

All right.

Awesome.

Okay.

Well, that was a fun one.

All right.

We don't do that often.

Um, so we'll now move on to item three, council and staff announcements, and I will recognize our city attorney for a report on closed session.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, there is no reportable action out of closed session tonight.

Thank you very much.

Um, and now we'll have council and staff announcements.

Do we have any um council member announcements?

Uh councilmember Amelia, I mean Mayor Pro Town.

I went to uh the aquatic center on first street.

Um they're uh reopening uh location.

They uh much much larger, but they will uh work with uh special needs students, and uh it was real amazing to talk to a couple of the instructors there, and I just wanted to mention that that's a great program they have going on uh first street.

They're right across from um well the where the changing place is, is just up from there.

So that's about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh council member walking stick.

I just wanted to let the community know that as of yesterday, the George Washington Park fire mitigation maintenance began.

It should only take a uh a couple more days, but uh they are hard at work clearing the uh uh the fuel right now, as per the um uh the project plan that was circulated, and I gotta say it looks like they're doing exactly what they said they would do, exactly how they said they would do it.

So everything's proceeding well.

Thank you.

That's great to hear anyone else on the council wishing to comment.

And we'll go recognize staff for uh Mr.

Mogenson for staff announcements.

Thank you, Mr.

Mary.

The couple tonight.

First, on behalf of the uh community development department.

Want to make sure that everybody's aware that the draft environmental impact report for the housing element was uh was made available on June 30th, 2025.

That's for public review and comment right now.

The public has until August 15th to submit comments on this EIR and comments to what we become part of the final environmental impact report.

Uh, you can find copies available online on our city's website at our community development offices or also at our Pacific Grove Public Library.

Um, I'd also like to ask uh we have uh Katie Clark, our recreation program managers make an announcement, and right behind her will be Joyce Halliday, deputy city manager.

Excellent.

Uh good evening.

I have an announcement on behalf of the recreation board.

The recreation board invites the community to join them this Friday, July 18th for Parks Day.

This is an opportunity to explore local parks and recreation facilities and engage in meaningful community connection.

The recreation board members will be at select locations to meet community members and receive feedback on these parks and facilities.

The event kicks off at 3 p.m.

And full details for the event are available on the main page of the city website and the city Facebook page.

Thank you.

I don't know if you said that, but I didn't hear it.

Uh yes, there's they've done nine locations and they're all listed on the city website on the scrolling marquee, and then also on the city Facebook page, the full schedule are listed.

All of our parks, basically.

Um it's like the main parks and a couple of the recreation facilities.

They focused in on some of the bigger ones.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council.

I'm just here to highlight the City of Pacific Grove website, cityofpg.org news section.

We've been placing a lot of emphasis and energy in putting up new information for our residents.

So if you are not subscribed for notifications to new news segments, please do so.

You'll get an email or a text notification when we post something new.

And I'm gonna quickly just highlight a few.

One really exciting one is that the city was named one of the top 15 small towns to visit in the US by Smithsonian Magazine.

So it's a very exciting honor.

Um so we've posted the link to that article on our website.

PGE also has several new programs that they've launched to help customers pay past you bills or to compare and save on existing rates.

Uh, we also have information about parks day and a community meeting with Supervisor Daniels uh on July 22nd that will be hosted here in Pacific Grove.

So, highly encourage folks to take a look at the new section of the website.

Thank you very much.

Any further announcements?

Okay.

So that concludes our announcements portion.

We're gonna go ahead and go to general public comment.

Uh general public comment must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the city and the council uh and the council that are not on the regular agenda tonight.

So at this time, is there anyone in chambers wishing to make a general public comment?

If so, please come forward.

We'll take those first.

Pacific Grove Care is a nonprofit 5013 volunteer organization dedicated to restoring, improving, and maintaining the town's planted public landscape.

Our administration project management and maintenance are performed by our incredible volunteers.

We hire professional contractors to do the heavy lifting on tests that require specific expertise.

We purchase the plants, materials, and tools needed to do our work in landscaping projects.

Thank you for your confidence and unanimous support.

We appreciate your trust in our ability to do this work.

And as a supporting organization now of the city, we have your official agreement to be the um have the ability to work on your city property to do landscaping.

We also want to thank the Beautification and Natural Resources Commission for their support, approving us with our landscaping plans and the native and pollinator plants that were selected.

We're well underway, but that wouldn't have happened if it weren't through lots of people that made this possible.

I want to thank Matt Mogeson as City Manager for even encouraging the idea.

And for our public works director, Dan Gh and staff who are very instrumental in helping us put together the original plans.

All that was important.

So now we're underway at Chase Park West.

I hope you'll come by and see it.

Um we're much further than these pictures now even show.

If you go by tonight, you'll see that mulch has been added and um everything is looking pretty great.

We'll be done by the end of Friday at Chase Park.

So be sure to come by and see that.

We'll be doing Caledonia Park simultaneously, but that may take until Monday to finish, in order to get both done on time.

We are having a ribbon cutting on July 22nd, Tuesday, at Chase Park, which for those that don't know where Chase Park West is.

It is Jewel Avenue and Ocean Avenue, right at the entrance to Lovers Point.

Please come.

It's at 10 30 a.m.

You're all invited.

I hope that you will come and help us celebrate this first project being ready.

And you've been seeing a few of these photos that go by to show you where we were.

Actually, early this morning, and it's now much further.

In conclusion, I want to thank the very many individuals, businesses, and organizations that have donated to get us this far.

It wouldn't have been possible without all of that support to be raised to pay for all of the landscaping work that made it possible, the plants and materials that you are going to see in place.

And they are really enjoying it.

I hope that you will come by, see the native plants, and visit Pacific Grove.

Pacific GroveCares.org for more information.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, please.

Hello, my name is Susan Goldbeth, and I've lived in Pacific Grove more than 30 years.

I've been on the planning commission and the city council, and I used to run the town newspaper called The Beacon.

And I'm here tonight to announce that we're going to reinvent the week the beacon online in a shortened version.

Being involved in an issue before the city council for the last year or so, I've realized that you really can't have a dynamic city if you don't have information to the voters and the residents and the businesses.

And I people all the time come up to me and say, Well, when did this happen?

I didn't know about this.

So what the main focus of the beacon is going to be twofold.

One is to report what the city council did, who voted on what's just simply factual.

What's happening on things like the roundabout or various the cannabis, various different things that you're considering over a period of time, the redistrict redistricting.

Most people have never even heard of it because they don't have a newspaper, it's not doesn't appear in the pine cone much.

So this is going to be really good for the citizens of Pacific Row.

But right now I'm it's gonna the first issue is going to be next Monday night after 6, PG Beacon.com, B E A C O N.

But right now I'm doing this by myself except with a tech friend, because I'm technical technologically challenged, and I need help.

So if you find a good picture, send it in.

If you want to write an editorial, write it in.

And that is especially directed to our elected representatives.

If something's in the beacon or there's an issue that you want to be heard on, I'm gonna have a section called Beside the Point with a picture of Lover Point, Lovers Point, so that you can be heard, and the public will have a chance to hold forth too.

And you know the Grovians tend to do that.

So I'm really excited about it and um I hope you'll participate.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

One more person in chambers.

Good evening, City Council.

My name is Carol Markworth, and I live in Pacific Grove.

Um, I'm not gonna do this through any item that you have on the agenda.

So uh I would like to pull it though for further discussion.

Um I attended DEI meetings for two or three years.

Uh I think the last one was in April, and there were two people in the public, and there were there's no city manager.

There was no, I'm not being critical, but the chair wasn't there, the city council liaison wasn't there.

There were two people in the audience, and the agenda took us 40 minutes, okay, or 35.

And I just wonder how relevant this really is.

DEI is kind of going, it seemed like the right thing to do for a long time, and now because of the current political atmosphere we have, it seems like the wrong thing to do.

There's a lot of criticism of DEI.

And I'm not going to make um recommendations for the land acknowledgement, which I'm not going to talk about.

But I just want to mention to you some of the things that have been on the DEI cultural calendar.

It might have been changed because I haven't been around for since last April.

But some of them, I read just some of my friends.

So we had the celebrate in April, celebrate diversity movements, and we have me, the homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, walk of movements, and then June was Pride Month, celebrations, flag raising parades in Moore, St.

La Cruz Holly Show, that was the entire month of June.

And then uh the Pride Month was in July this month.

And there's something called the Pacific Grove Peace Lantern ceremony.

I'm not familiar with that, of course.

We know that DEI eliminated the Feast of Lanterns, which some of us haven't forgotten.

And then we have in October the Global Diversity Awareness Month, and then we have the National Disability Employment Awareness, and that was in October, and then we have in October the International Pronoun Day, uh, international pronoun day, and then we have in November the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

So I'm just saying this is on their cultural calendar.

Does this represent the majority, the customs, and the values of this kind of this city now in the past 150 years?

If not, let's take a look at the recommendation recommendations of the DEI.

Thank you.

Well, I have a few items I wanted to talk to you about.

Hi, Cynthia.

How are you doing?

Tina, how are you doing?

Hi, everybody, nice to see you.

Um thanks for serving.

And uh I just wanted to start off talking about uh some I was a little disturbed to hear that at one of the last meetings, uh somebody from the financial department, maybe the director pointed out that the city had a 55 million dollar debt, and uh I I've always been one who fostered the idea that the city should be run like a business.

You know, if this was a business, if you were the uh board of directors, you would want the business to be successful to make a profit, have good employees, and all of the things that would go along about running a good building, a good business would be things like uh fair salaries, you know, so on and so forth, right?

So the city, and if you had a business and you were 55 million dollars in debt, you you would be in big trouble.

So, but I think the only thing you can count on, and maybe you do this under the covers is that well, we could always raise taxes or build a few more hotels.

You know, maybe that will bail us out in the future.

Otherwise, all of that debt's gonna fall in the lap of the residents, property owners, renters alike, will wind up suffering from having to carry the burden of that debt sometime in the future.

And I don't even know if that includes the unfunded pension liability, which I heard was even more or even separate.

So you would know more about it than I do.

So I want to encourage you to be more on the ball in how much money you spend and how you look at the potential resources for that money, being not always leaning on the taxpayers, you know, residents, um renters, and property owners.

Now, you know, PG is supposed to be a town of homes, so that's one of my concerns.

It's supposed to be a town of homes.

That's in our charter.

If you read the charter, it says Pacific Grove is a town of homes.

Okay.

Now, now the last thing I want to finish it off with was that nice lady that just spoke.

She gave an excellent presentation about something which I think is totally out of date and totally unnecessary in this town.

And that is having a DEI task force, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I mean, some of you may feel that you've been uh you know underserved in the past or maybe not respected in the past, but I'll tell you the truth.

I haven't seen very much of that.

In fact, I haven't seen any of that, but maybe sometimes other people do.

So I want to encourage you to take another look at this really a necessary worthwhile functioning task force that serves the majority and all of the residents of Pacific Grove fairly honestly and equally.

So thank you so much, and thank that lady who just spoke before me, and uh carry on.

Thank you very much.

We'll go online comment or actually Mr.

Gibbs first.

Mayor City Council, thank you.

My name is Mike Gibbs.

Um attached to Peggy Gibbs here.

Peggy is the CEO of Pacific Grove of Cares.

We were out looking a week ago Monday at the two spots that are uh being worked on, and we were talking about dirt, how important the dirt is and proving the dirt and turning the dirt and fertilizing the dirt the right way.

And so she turned to me because I didn't have a job and said, Mike, you're my CDO, chief dirt officer.

So I took that on, and now almost uh two weeks later, we're uh pretty far down the road.

If you remember Chase Park West, uh it's historic, uh iconic spot, but it was barren, dusty, and neglected for quite a long time.

Uh since we took this over in the last year or so and in the last few days, it is now looking for June for juror.

It's a French word, which I just learned the other day.

I took I took French.

That's how good I am.

And it simply means a spot of freshness or healthy growth for juror.

Uh we Peggy and I have been out there every day, five, six, seven hours a day, and people walk by and they look and they point and they talk about it, and sometimes they point and they discuss, and sometimes they argue.

Uh, but sometimes they donate, right?

We've had uh four or five people walk by with some pretty interesting observations.

98.76% of the people, that would be 71 people walking by, are awed by what's been going on.

They just uh, you know, and the interesting thing is most people understand what a pollinator garden is.

They know what a pollinator is, they know what the plants are, so you engage them and they're up to date on all of this stuff.

Um, so uh a couple people who walked by they were pretty interesting yesterday or the day before the civic uh head civic engineer for San Luis Obispo came by with his wife.

And the first thing he says, you know, mounds are out.

We have that mounded spot down there.

He goes, Mounds are out.

So I handed him a uh liability release and a shovel.

And he says, Oh, Mike, we gotta go, we gotta go have dinner.

So I thought, okay, good.

But he would, they're very nice, and they would like now to do something in SLO too.

A guy across the street ran over on the very first day and talked to us.

It was right across the street, and it actually has improved his view because there was a piece right there in the corner that obstructed traffic, and he got so excited he ran home, and after I left, he came back with $300 and gave it to Peggy for fundraising.

We had a grandmother come by with two kids explaining what a pollinator garden was.

Uh so you know that kind of stuff is a lot of fun.

Uh so I'd like to also tell you that Canary Row uh Corporation is now a sponsor of Pacific Grove Cares.

Mail Mayor Dale Byrne was out there today at the site uh paying attention and he hosted us at a uh reading uh a celebration last Sunday for about 150 people.

It wasn't about us, but they introduced us.

And um the thing that we're really focused on is fundraising.

We don't quite have enough money to finish the job, but we're doing good.

Kevin Phillips at the beach house got us started, and we're looking for you know, maybe 500, 600 a week to keep going.

So thank you for your support.

Thank you for stopping by.

If you would like a tour, if you'd like a tour, just give us a call and we'll do that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

All right, we'll go online.

Thank you, Mayor.

Jane Haynes.

Oh, good evening.

Yesterday I submitted comments on the draft EIR for the housing element.

Uh, they were about a matter that is too serious to leave to written comments alone.

The current housing element would convert multiple downtown parking lots into housing, including the large lot behind the former Bank of America, the theater parking lot, and other parking lots near Peppers Restaurant.

That means that patrons of Lighthouse Avenue businesses will be forced to hunt for street parking.

And if they can't find it, they will go elsewhere.

This could cripple our downtown.

Without accessible parking, how can small businesses survive?

I urge you to review appendix A of the housing element and see for yourself what is planned.

This is not an abstract concern.

This is about the future viability of Pacific Crow's downtown.

If the council doesn't intervene, I fear the city is about to make a devastating and irreversible mistake.

Please look at the proposed sites and ask yourselves.

Will our downtown be able to survive this?

Thank you.

We have the floor.

Hello, Ken.

Thank you.

I would like to thank the BNRC.

We had an incredibly successful puppy season at the Harbor Seal Beach this year.

And it was in thanks to the signs that we got through them.

Also, we want to thank Public Works for the traffic sign.

These along with BayNet made a huge difference for our harbor seals this year.

So definitely come down and see these babies who are still there playing.

We had a lot of visitors come to enjoy them.

And again, we want to thank especially the BNRC for moving forward, getting us the extra really cute signs.

Thank you.

Yes.

Hello, thank you for taking my call.

I was just on a um a call that was uh for resisting fascism, and I would like to um ask my fellow community members to join me in a pledge to uh not to comply in advance.

Um, I will not abide by this administration's objective and directive to turn my back on my community members because of the color of their skin, their immigration status, their chosen pronouns, or who they love.

And I thank you, the city, for standing up with your community members and your DEI task force by not um standing on their necks and standing by them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, this is Beth Walker.

Um I wanted to, on behalf of Monterey Peninsula Pride, thank um council members walking stick, McDonnell, Garfield, and Rao for marching in the parade with us.

Um hopefully you have a really good and fun day, and also um regarding the DEI committee as someone who um has been persecuted due to diversity, equity, and/or inclusion.

Um, I think that the committee is 100% still needed.

I think that we are doing it to protect our children and um that this community has not come full circle enough to have it abolished.

Thank you.

No further hands are raised, Mayor.

Thank you very much.

We'll go ahead and close uh general public comment at this time, move on to the consent agenda.

Now the consent agenda deals with routine and non-controversial matters and mainly include action on resolutions, ordinances, or other uh public hearings for which testimony is not anticipated.

My own notes covered that language, but no, I read through.

So um in would anyone on the council uh like to pull an item this evening?

Seeing none.

Uh would anyone in the audience or online wish to pull an item?

I miss Marquar has pulled 9E and she just raised her hand.

You'd like to pull 9E, correct?

Yeah, okay.

So we'll go ahead and do that.

We're gonna hear that one right after uh after the consent agenda is voted upon.

Mr.

Kubica.

Is employee?

Okay, that's the engineering.

Okay, change of plans.

We're gonna go ahead and hear 9B, then 9E, and then the balance of the agenda.

Do I have a motion to approve consent?

I'll make a motion to approve consent.

So, okay, thank you.

Motion by mayor for Portal Emilio, second by Paduri.

So the motion is to approve the entire consent agenda, exception of 9B and 9E to be heard directly after the vote.

Uh any further discussion on the motion.

Seeing none we'll take a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none passes unanimously, and we will now go to 9B, and I'll recognize uh Mr.

Go, our public works director, deputy city manager.

Thank you, Mayor Smith.

Members of the city council.

This item before you tonight is to allocate funding for NEL engineering to perform engineering services for the identified CIP projects that are listed in the staff report that have also been included in the budget.

Um, Neil Engineering's been under our city engineer for over 30 years.

They routinely perform this type of work for us, and um, this item is on consent.

We've been authorizing this dollar value and this type of work for multiple years.

I'm available for any questions.

All right, thank you very much.

That's uh our staff report, and now at this point we'll go out to public comment.

Um Mr.

Kubica, would you like to comment on the item?

This is item nine B for the public.

Thank you.

My name is Andy Kubica.

I'm a resident.

Um speaking as a resident, not a member of the planning commission.

Uh thank you, honorable mayor and the city council for allowing me to speak.

Um, the item here is is for consultants for engineering for surveying and planning, review and public hearing for street rehabilitation for clerk uh crack and slowly work and ADA improvements.

Uh, this item before you that's the way it was listed.

There was eight items that need to be worked, and four or five of these are past due.

They're like several years ago.

That work was not performed, and then it said there was going to be additional work for 25 uh 26-27.

Again, these items are not listed, so we don't know what they're actually going to do.

It's at the top of the second page.

It says the fiscal year 2526 work will be performed, but it's not listed as being performed, or what items are being performed.

The presentation, um, there's not a part of cover of certain engineering or other contract worked.

In fiscal year seven and eight, there were 25 21 public, almost 22 uh public works employees, and today from page 66 of the fiscal year budget 2526.

There's a pie chart that says we have 30 public works employees.

These are not rec department employees, these are public works employees.

In the job descriptions that are in the bud city budget, it says we have two program managers, a senior program manager, and a director.

So we have people here that are program managers who should be doing this kind of work.

I think the uh city manager brought that he was gonna hire a civil engineer.

I don't know what the status it is.

I think I looked online and that job rec is still out.

I don't know why it wasn't done in the last six months.

And here we're going to spend another six hundred and one thousand dollars.

In previous city managers, the raises were given to uh people because we had to have best quality employees, but we seem to be then double dipping by having to go out and hire a consultant.

Consultants are usually hired if there's lack of staff.

We have staff.

We go from 21 when we had 200,000 uh 200 employees to where we have 114 employees, and we have 30 public works employees.

Consultants who use it for something that's extremely complex and expertise, putting slurry work down, does not appear to be very complex that we need a consultant.

I would seriously uh ask you to consider you city you city um council are responsible for the budget.

Do we really need to spend another six hundred thousand dollars for somebody to watch somebody else do work?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any further comment on 9B?

This is the uh engineering services contract.

Let's see another.

Oh, I came back.

Is this on?

Yeah, okay.

Well, I just heard a very well respected, knowledgeable member of the community, Mr.

Kubica, someone who knows what he's talking about.

He's even on the planning commission, which is a very responsible job.

And he read you some numbers, which just being a resident, not preparing for this, not studying this, just go on what he said.

He really impressed me with his knowledge of the situation, gave some historical data, and it all makes sense to me.

You go from 22 employees to over 30 employees.

You have a director, you have enough staff, you have people appropriately trained, working for the city for years, and yet you want to bring in some outside people and pay them a total, the project's gonna cost $600,000.

Do we have that kind of money?

Or do we need to act more like a business and find how we can get the job done from within with existing personnel who are all very competent?

You know, I mean, I've watched many of the people from public works from the director on down doing work in Pacific Rover.

They seem very efficient, very competent to handle this.

I mean, sure, it would be a lot nicer for them if we bring in some outside people, let them do the work.

They can do, you know, some of the other lighter work, maybe, or maybe not much of the other work at all.

I don't really know.

I'm not inside the public works, but I would say that I've respected them over the years.

I've respect you over the years, and I think you're making a big mistake here.

And I want to speak up, and I hope Mrs.

Kolbeck, hope Susan Goldbeck is listening, because this is a great article for one of her early editions in the Beacon newspaper.

PG Beacon.com, I believe it was.

So we got to get this kind of information circulated.

We have to be more transparent, we have to be more budget-minded.

So I want to thank you for letting me speak.

Thanks a lot.

And I hope I'll hope you take what he had to say seriously.

All right, thank you.

Any uh one else wishing to speak on 9B.

We'll see.

I'll send it online, sir.

Okay.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and close public comment on this item.

Uh, and uh we'll bring it back to the council for discussion.

And I have do have one question for Mr.

Go.

Um, so we were talking about the the commenters were kind of mentioning the amount.

Um, and it seems to me we've been using this group for many years.

Uh, in your opinion, are the services required to complete the projects that you've listed on your report.

Absolutely.

These are survey crews that go out.

For example, when we're doing, I'll use the slurry seal, for example.

There's our survey crews are going out, they're surveying every square foot of that roadway, they're measuring it, so then they can prepare the bid packets that have the exact square footage, the roadways where the intersections are, the streets striping, and everything else that's associated with that project is mapped on a plan set.

Public works doesn't have the capability to do that.

We don't have licensed surveyors within our organization, um, to be able to do that.

Most of the employees that Mr.

Kubica is discussing are maintenance employees that are mowing parks, taking care of stuff like that, picking up trash, janitorial, custodial employees, those type of employees that are out there doing the daily services.

This engineering firm prepares our long-term CIP projects for us.

The budgets that you've allocated within the fiscal year budget incorporates the 15% already for these engineering services within those allocated funds.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any council members have any comment?

Councilmember Perderi.

Yes, uh, thank you.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Go for this item.

Uh, thank you for the questions too.

Uh, just uh then a reminder or or indication for me to um the civil engineer position.

I know we've been after it for a while.

Uh what range are we at uh today for that civil engineer position, and how long have we sought uh that position to be filled?

Councilmember Paduri, we've launched the civil engineer position probably about five to six months ago.

We had one applicant that was um significantly underqualified.

We've relaunched it as now a CIP manager, civil engineer.

I'm not sure of the status of how many applicants we've had, but nothing is layering out to us as a qualified candidate.

Regardless of that position, we're still gonna need Neal Engineering Services.

That person will be overseeing the CIP process, they'll be managing Neal Engineering, they'll be managing the hired contractors and overseeing and reviewing the plan sets that Neal Engineer has provided to the city to make sure we're putting out a quality product that is in line with the council direction for the CIP projects.

That's gonna be that CIP civil engineer manager's role.

Thank you for that.

And is it fair to say like the the range is at least 150,000 a year?

Or or more, between it's for the C civil engineer, yes.

I would say that's probably a ballpark average.

Yes, and it that's yes.

Okay, and I can tell you that uh generally speaking, civil engineers are tough to come by.

I've seen this in other uh rural agencies too.

So that one fifty thousand living in PG for a civil engineer is going to be a tough ask, but uh I want to see how how that goes.

And I would like to point out that even after hiring the civil engineer, we will need somebody like Neil Engineers to be here helping us with other things because the civil engineer is ultimately gonna give direction.

He's not going to be on the ground doing maintenance work.

Okay, thank you.

And McDonald was next.

Okay, then you'll be next, Joe.

Okay, thank you, Mayor.

Um, and I just wanted to confirm whether it's be the city uh manager or um Mr.

Goh.

So to clarify, the project, um, the small amount, the one thousand per month is just for the ongoing services and consulting for the smaller tasks that are either outside the scope of our staff or are work beyond what our staff capacity is, but then in addition, the 546,718 is for engineering projects that we've already approved and budgeted for as council.

They'll just be the ones executing that for us, correct?

That is correct, and I'd also like to clarify you're correct on the 12,000 dollar retainer.

That's for if I call up needle engineer, I need a plan set from 15 years ago, or we need to look at this private development and how it um is going to encroach and ease on to our right-of-ways.

They'll look at that, they're part of the plan site um committee review team.

So they do that type of stuff for us.

If we need um maybe uh concept plan with some costs associated with maybe like a potential bullbout on the sidewalk downtown, that's what the 12,000 retainer gets us.

They work with our community development department on zoning.

That's what the 12,000 retainer gets to us.

I do want to clarify that the five hundred and forty-six thousand dollars isn't just general fund, a small portion of that's general fund.

This is also allocated out of the sewer fund, it's allocated out of Measure X SB1 and all of our other funds that we utilize uh for capital improvement funding.

So general funds just a minute amount of this um cost.

Thanks so much for that.

And we're just doing the one year for now, but we usually do that on an annual basis based on what projects we have in each fiscal year, based on what's been completed so far and what's continuing into the next year of our two-year budget, correct?

You're correct, and we did it out, or we did move forward with the two-year budget this year, but I haven't really identified like those road segments that we'll be moving forward with in 26-27, and some of those other projects for it for this year.

I opted to just move forward with a one-year, as we have one-year agreement with Neil to get these projects rolling for this current fiscal year, but to also finalize up the projects that were carried over from the previous year.

We don't have any other outstanding projects that are in limbo besides the projects that were um initiated and are already underway from fiscal year 24-25.

Okay, great.

Thanks so much.

Uh Mayor Pro Tem Amelia.

Yes, thank you.

Uh, before I make a motion here, um, we had a city Pacific goes citywide organizational diagnosis done approximately uh several months ago or so.

And um one item here is many departments appear to be understaffed, and as a result, staff are stretched very thin.

While staff was able to complete those day-to-day tests, they are not able to address special projects or confirm perform long-range goals.

And I would like to make a motion also to authorize an agreement with Neil Engineers.

Thank you very much.

Um motion to recommend one by Mayor Berton Emilia.

Do I have a second?

And um, council member will second.

Any further discussion?

Yes.

Councilmember Walking Stick, yes.

Uh, first of all, I wanted to thank, I wanted to thank everybody for uh uh speaking on this.

Um you bring up a classic question of whether or not to uh handle something in-house or outsource.

Uh when you have regular recurring maintenance and work to be done, um that that does lend itself to uh serious consideration for doing something in-house, trying to bring bring that uh uh or uh grow that ability and get the equipment to do it.

Uh right now at this point, we lack the uh the training, we lack the equipment, and we lack the bandwidth, which is why we're having to go this direction now.

What we're doing right now, also and and in parallel to this, is uh the city's in the process of examining uh our the cost and cadence of maintaining and replacing our infrastructure, and that's going to be a uh uh that's gonna take a while to figure out.

Um so while we're working on that, this is kind of a stop gap for where we're at right now.

Or that's my my opinion on it.

That's my thought on it.

Uh I would very much like to, as uh we've already discussed, uh, focus on training for city employees and try and train up that capacity, what capacities we can within the city, especially in public works, um, so that we can handle some of these things that we are currently outsourcing.

I think that would be valuable to the city.

I think the uh the question that's brought been brought up is is valid and valuable.

Uh, although we can't act, I don't believe personally that we can act on it right now.

I think that's a very legitimate long-term goal.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh more discussion, Councilmember uh Garfield.

Thank you, Ronor.

I just want to remind us all that when we look at these projects, these are multi-year projects, and our budgeting is artificially set year by year, or in this case a two-year budget.

So the misalignment of what hasn't been done yet doesn't indicate that it's neglect, it's just that it's in process over a period of time.

Um, and that the calendar year, the financial year, and the project uh cope span span doesn't always line up real well.

So um I would just like to remind us all about.

Okay, we'll go ahead and uh if there's no further discussion.

Okay, we'll go ahead and take take the vote voice vote on this.

Um, this is a motion to approve recommendation number one with the first and a second.

Um all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none passes unanimously.

Please go and do that work on this list.

I know we've been talking about some of these for many years, so hopefully we can get them done uh in this two-year period.

Uh now we'll move on to item nine E, which was also pulled, and this relates to uh the land use acknowledgement, and I'll recognize my colleague, Councilmember Paduri here.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, uh, thank you.

Uh being unconcerned, I wasn't prepared for uh a presentation here, so I don't have a presentation.

Uh I also believe this is going to come back to the council because that is the way the agenda item was written, uh, which is that uh we have several boards and commissions, uh, one of those boards and commissions being the DEI task force.

And the intent of this uh agenda item is to uh have the task force direct the task force essentially to come up with the land use acknowledgement.

Uh that uh once they prepare that land use acknowledgement, uh it'll come back to council.

The council will then decide the policy framework, meaning uh is the language uh first of all sufficient or good enough?

Uh and secondly, uh how how should that um kind of land use acknowledgement be uh presented moving forward?

Uh it could be just uh part of the meeting package, it could be written by some, it could be uh kind of read out by somebody, all those aspects essentially.

Uh I also believe that this is also a great uh avenue for us to recognize uh the indigenous peoples that have occupied uh that have actually been on our land uh but well before time, and the fact that uh uh we have essentially like these are ceded territories and and we're occupying their land.

This is a way the great way to uh essentially uh build trust, uh, generate respect uh and honor uh the people and acknowledge them as we move forward.

So to me it's it's a powerful um I would say statement of truth, uh the land use itself uh and the statement that it conveys.

So but the intent of this uh agenda item really is to debate and kind of kind of review all those matters once we have the land use acknowledgement language back to the council.

At this point in time, it's just to direct the DEA uh task force to to work on that item.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That's very accurate uh as to what's going on with this uh agenda item, and I'll go ahead and take it out to the public.

Ms.

Marco, would you like to speak to this item and any anyone else to speak to item 9e?

Now is your chance.

Thank you for listening to my statement and letting me pull the item.

Um I've land acknowledgement's been around a long time.

I I go to a play at Western Stage and they always begin the play with the land acknowledgement.

In the state of California, I I work at Point Logos, I'm a volunteer, and they were thinking about do we every time we begin a school walk, do we do the land acknowledgement?

No, they decided it's too much like a prayer.

And it's too, you know, they're gonna make a statement honoring the indigenous people.

I have nothing against that at all.

But what the some of the statements I've heard suggest to me that we are invaders.

We somehow we've taken away the land that belonged to somebody else, and we have no respect for the land, but they did.

You know, and what that suggests is a kind of blame and shame of certain people who or certain groups and certain groups aren't guilty.

Um, so uh I I would like to have some kind of public input.

Now you've got the DEI group, what is four, maybe four people, five people, I don't know.

But maybe they could uh, you know, if we go, they couldn't have some kind of public input about it.

Um, but I don't want it to be a prayer, a statement that has to be said every time you start a city council meeting.

And my attitude is we all belong here, and nobody owns the land more than anybody else.

And if you feel the land you're on belongs to someone else, you should give it back.

I'm sorry, thank you.

Anyone else wishing to speak on 90?

I see one person in coming forward and one online.

Hello again.

Um again, I really wasn't prepared to speak on that, but when I hear something makes that make sense, I think that's a wonderful idea that that lady just shared with you.

That um, you know, who was the first people here?

Was it the caveman?

Was it Neanderthal man?

Was it some people that came from Russia across the border who didn't really become Native American Indians?

So on and so forth.

Was it Polynesian people?

Anyway, I think this this acknowledgement of of the land and uh making little statements.

The other one I think is ridiculous is why you don't start off with your city council meeting and tell everybody your pronouns.

Shouldn't I hear everybody's pronouns before we start the meeting, wouldn't that?

Where does this end?

You know, we know the history of the country, we're all educated, we grew up here.

And as far as inviting the DEI to take part in this, I want to tell you something.

Maybe you're not aware of this.

Maybe Joe Emilio will know what I'm talking about.

Growing up on the East Coast, is everything okay?

Can I continue?

Is it all right?

No, okay, okay, thank you.

I thought maybe something was going on.

So uh growing up on the East Coast, you know, I was defamed.

I was made fun of, I was ridiculed, and why?

Because people use the G word, the five-letter G word that ends with a Y, or the acronym for without papers, the word that begins with a W, and ends with a P.

You know, there was another one, two words.

One was began with a G and one and one, the other word started with a B.

You know, everybody didn't get along forever in every part of the country, no matter what your race, creed, ethnic background, nationality, sexual orientation, or whatever goes.

But you know, something you grow up.

You know, I don't hold it against anybody that they're from a different country, different background, different religion, sexual orientation than me.

And I don't think many people in Pacific Grove do.

This is the United States of America.

We're united here.

We're not at each other's throats.

And if somebody uses it, which sometimes happen, somebody makes a little stupid derogatory comment about my ancestral background, that my grandparents my grandparents came from Italy, and they have to throw in some little diggy word about it.

I feel sorry for them.

I go home and pray for them.

I don't come to the city council and say we need a DEI task force and we need them to do land acknowledgement.

Please.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor.

We have two hands raised online.

Uh Lisa Ciani.

Thank you.

Uh I want to express my appreciation to uh council member Peturi uh for bringing this issue forward.

Um I appreciate his commitment to respect and his what he said that an indigenous land acknowledgement is a statement of um of truth.

And um I'm sorry, I can't even go on because I went to the DEI meetings from the very beginning, and I can't go anymore because I can't listen to those people who go and just tear those people down, those people who are willing to take this on because diversity, equity, and inclusion is so important recognizing diversity and that some people don't have equity or inclusion.

And the people who serve on DEI are amazing to me.

I'm I I s in such dis in such respect of them because they carry on despite having to listen over and over at every meeting about why they shouldn't be there doing that.

It's not important, and uh, you know, why don't you just go away, kind of thing?

So I'm sorry, I I guess I had to get that off my chest.

But thank you, uh Councilmember Paduri for bringing this forward, and I know that it will be handled just the way you described, where uh DEI members will put time in to researching and talking to Native Americans, local uh people here, local indigenous people, and doing the best they can.

They will take public uh comment and it'll come back to you, as you said, and council will take public comment, but it's really time for this to be addressed.

The um this land, there's evidence.

There are archaeological sites throughout PG that show how long the indigenous people have been here.

Thank you.

Sharon Miller.

Yes, I would like to support the indigenous land acknowledgement.

It's something that's been normalized in our communities in the last few years, and I think it's a good thing.

I've gotten used to having my church and other organizations I belong to start out with that short acknowledgement that this land that we are meeting on that we are living on was first um inhabited by the native peoples whose history and culture have been forgotten or have been distorted over the years.

That only seems seems right and kind.

That's not any disrespect to all of our other people and cultures that make this a rich community, and I I guess think it's the right thing to do.

I'm glad that the DEI committee has brought things like this to my attention and to those of others.

Thank you very much.

Uh no further online callers, Mayor.

Thank you very much for going to close public comment on item 90.

And I'm gonna just, this is um actually appropriately done directing uh subordinate body, which the BC all the boards and commissions and committees are subordinate to the council, and so we are sending them uh work to do on this, which is an appropriate use of our power within all of our policies.

So I would prefer that we vote on that.

We're not debate this tonight, we debate it when the language comes back to us.

Uh I am completely supportive of sending this to the DEI task force to develop the language for us to weigh.

Uh, and so at this point, I would entertain a motion on the recommended action.

You can make a comment, a motion or comment, that's fine.

First, so having uh grown up in a Native American family and the Native American community, I I uh would hope I bring a certain perspective.

Um what this is asking the DEI task force to do, and let's let's even put DEI aside because this is uh I don't want to say bigger, but this has been an issue that uh uh that that goes back a very long time before our our modern concept of a DEI program.

Um asking the DEI task force to come up with um with the words to try and acknowledge just to just acknowledge Pacific Groups Pacific Rose feelings on um uh a recognition of the territory that they had here, the home that they had here, uh, I think is a very important move on our part.

Um, not just to recognize someone who feels besmirched or or that there were uh racial epithets at one point.

Um this is this is a step towards what we can do here for intercultural healing.

Um it wasn't just epithets, it's not just simple.

I don't even want to say racism is simple, but it's it's not as simple as that, and that's complex.

These are people who were the target of of genocide, and who still live with the consequences of that genocide today.

Uh, these are people who carry uh uh uh indescribable grief.

Uh, it's it's epigenetically imprinted on them.

They actually inherit the grief of those before them.

The the millions lost are still felt today.

Those are family members that they they still miss today, so it's it's very hard to uh describe to somebody who uh might not have a great deal of uh involvement or exposure to any of the Native American tribes, and they're all dramatically different from one another.

They're they're they're there's miles of difference between their their various cultures, so each handle it in different ways, each communicate it in different ways.

Um, but what we can do here with our local tribe is at least express that we can acknowledge uh uh they are a part of this land and as such still recognized as a part of our community, uh still accepted, they are uh um uh they are respected.

Again, we're asking for something that's supposed to promote reconciliation, cultural recognition, and fostering respect, respectful relationships.

That's that's it.

Fostering respectful relationships.

It's nothing extreme, there's no extreme political agenda with that.

That is simply trying to be a good human being to the person next to you who is experiencing grief, and I would hope we could do that as a community.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember uh Garfield.

Thank you, Your Honor.

And I want to thank Councilmember Walking Stick for a really important perspective that you share.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Um I want to speak to the actual um motion that's the question of the agenda.

Um, and I think that this is clearly an important issue to many people.

We are not unanimous on our viewpoint, and I'm so I'm counting on the DEI task force to make sure they're doing robust outreach, that they themselves are being inclusive of points of view that are have been voiced here because that's the point.

Um, and I want to be sure that we're that as the DEI task force goes out, they see this as an opportunity to educate all of us.

There's a lot we don't know.

Um, a lot we can learn, and there's a lot of information that they can bring back as a an educational part that lets us understand better, because understanding it needs to be our motivation for how we see things.

So I'm I'm counting on them.

I'm hoping they do that.

Um, and I I want to be absolutely sure that that people understand we are not asking the DEI task force as one of our BCCs to develop policy.

They are going to come up with a sample of a statement that the council would then see as input for future policy, and I think that's an important differentiation.

This the wording can allow you to see that perhaps they will be setting policy.

Um, and to the mayor's point about the relationship between BCCs and council, they will not be.

Um, so I gave this particular item any a lot of thought.

I had some concerns, um, but I am uh heartened by the discussion that we will be understand this better um when this comes back.

I think I'm still, yes, okay.

Uh Councilmember.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Walking Stick and Garfield for your and uh McDonald for your words, and uh Councilmember Padori for bringing this forward.

Um, you know, this is commonplace, it's it is a sign of respect, and I think it's probably overdue.

And I would like to make a motion to direct the task force on diversity, equity, and inclusion to develop language for land and ancestral peoples acknowledgement, and to bring that work back to the council um for formal consideration and adoption.

That's a recommended motion by Council Member Rao on the recommended action.

Do I have a second?

Second by Emilio.

Uh further discussion, Councilmember McDonnell.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I want to thank uh fellow council members for their comments as well.

I really see this as an opportunity to actually bring the community together more.

I think anything we do that acknowledges more members of our community who may feel like they're not as welcome.

And either way, even if that's not the case, it really is about showing we have respect, we have care, we have honor for each other.

And I think it's really a win-win situation when we come together as a community to do this.

So I I'm happy to um support the DEI working on this on our behalf because they have the capacity to go out and spend the time to actually get those resources, find out where other members of the community might have suggestions, concerns, or things that would help with healing and help with fostering a further sense of community.

So I think it's it's really beneficial for all of us as a part of the community.

Thank you.

And I'll just make one final comment uh for myself.

I really appreciate the words that were shared tonight by my colleagues on this matter.

I appreciate that, and I will look for opportunities to learn more about this as we uh send it out to the DEI and have it come back to us.

So on that, I will take a voice vote.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye, any opposed.

Recommendation passes unanimously, 7-0.

So now we will we're now to our regular agenda here.

And we are we are going to skip 11A.

It's been continued and move on to 11B.

Uh this is the ordinance to amend the 2526 capital improvement budget, which has to deal with one item.

And I will uh recognize Mr.

Marsh.

Thank you, Mayor and fellow council members.

Um, so this is basically relating to a prior item that was previously approved by council several years ago basically.

Um it was for some sidewalk work uh along Prescott Avenue, which is kind of on the border between Monterey and Pacific Grove.

Um so recently we got a bill for the from the city of Monterey basically requesting reimbursement for this amount.

Um so this item basically is requesting a budget adjustment.

So after basically the second hearing on this item, we can pay the city of Monterey for this amount.

So with that, um, we'd request the state attorney to read the title of the ordinance, um, to have a motion to waive further reading of the ordinance to introduce and hold the reading of an ordinance amending the operating and capital budget for fiscal year 25-26, and to direct that the publication of the ordinance will be satisfied by publication of a summary approved by the city attorney, and these funds are proposed to be used out of our capital improvement fund to pay for the amount.

So, be happy to answer any questions.

Just for one little thing before we take it to the public.

Um, this is an old bill for work done that just kind of slipped through the cracks essentially.

That's exactly it, right?

Okay, yeah.

We um what happened is we've had turnover in both our staff and Monterey staff, and as part of their kind of year-end closing, they kind of came upon this item and they said basically they're basically working with us to kind of get it resolved.

So, thank you.

Um check it out to the public.

Real quick.

Well, yeah, okay.

My name is Andy Kimka, and my my question on this item is how did we miss a miss a bill for over fifty almost 15 years?

It was due in the first 10 years, and then all of a sudden, due to staff turnover.

And okay, Monterey found it.

Did we go back and look that maybe we paid it?

Mount away, Monterey didn't cash the check and didn't get it.

Did we double check that?

That's the kind of question I have.

And uh the term falling through the cracks.

Uh, I've got no problem with that.

We're paying this if this is really a bill that we owe.

But the idea that how many others are there that are falling through the cracks, both on our side or anybody else's side?

Do we owe other people other money or do other people owe us money?

Thank you very much.

Sorry, Mayor, I see no hands raised on mine.

Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment.

Count Mayor Pertoma Milio, thank you.

Uh Mr.

Marsh, is it somewhere around 13,000?

It's 113,000.

And just to clarify from the previous speaker, uh basically we did thoroughly research all of our records, and basically there was no payment made of that.

So anything else?

Okay.

Councilmember Collins.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to note from so this this has this been going on for four years then since 2021, then.

So what to kind of give a little background?

I mean, and I'm kind of having to follow up on this because obviously I wasn't here during that time, but council approved this sharing kind of sharing cost agreement in 2008.

The work was completed in 2011.

So at that time, apparently Monterey and Pacific Grove entered into a tenure agreement, which is pretty unusual.

Normally you would just kind of reimbursed, you know, for the projects, you know, on a fairly quick turnaround basis.

I know Pacific Grove was kind of um having some financial challenges at the time, so that may have been just agreed upon agreement between probably the two city managers at that point.

Um, like I said, we have had turnover in both staffs, so I think this just kind of fell through the cracks.

Um, but obviously we want to get it resolved, you know, and to pay the city as well, too.

Okay, yeah, committers to the Monterey folks for digging this out.

No, this all right, thank you.

Yeah, anyone else?

Make a motion, okay.

Okay.

I go ahead and make a motion to approve.

Well, hold on.

Before do you do that?

You want me to read it?

That's right.

Request the city attorney, read the uh title of the ordinance.

Okay, it's an ordinance of the city council of the city of Pacific Grove, amending the operating and capital projects budget for fiscal year 2025 to 2026, and then you can just make one motion for the balance of the recommended actions.

That I'll go and make a motion for the balance of the recommendation actions.

So I have a motion on the balance.

Second, second by McDonnell.

Um, any further discussion?

Yes, Councilmember Garfield.

Just want to underscore that um this is the kind of thing that happens when you have a lot of staff turnover.

It's real easy for things to it's an unusual agreement in the first place that it took took place over a very long period of time.

I appreciate the diligence you've shown um in researching it to reassure us that that it was in fact not paid for, that there wasn't a dispute of some sort that it we just owe it.

Um so thank you for doing that.

But it does in indicate that if you don't have the same people in place for a long period of time, you lose the history.

Yeah, one of just a quick follow-up on this.

One thing we're gonna look to do in the future, too.

Um, in our audit report, we typically have disclosures on a lot of our long-term debt agreements.

So this is something definitely going forward.

If we had ever such an agreement like this in the future, we would definitely look to put it and note disclosure.

So people don't forget about it.

Because we want to make sure people are paid on a timely basis.

That's important to me.

So thank you.

Councilmember Rao.

And just to clarify, the city of Monterey, although they could have started asking for interest to be accrued four years ago, they have not.

This is just the price of the bill, and they're waiving the interest.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that that is correct.

The interest, um, for the agreement was actually due in 2011 or uh 2021, basically, but they are giving us kind of like a one-time extension, yes.

And I'll just say, you know, obviously we don't want this to happen a lot, and I don't think it will.

I I have a lot of faith in our staff, and I have uh a lot of faith in our new accounting practices, and if this is noted noted on on our audits and noted in places where that we owe this money, we're we're not gonna have this stuff happening anymore.

So um, yeah, we definitely this is not the standard for the city of PG, and we've gotten a lot of rewards for our finance department.

So we're gonna just chalk this one up as a mistake, and we're all human and everybody makes mistakes.

But uh at this point, unless there's other discussion, I'll go ahead and take it to a vote.

Yes, my walk is there.

Actually, I was wondering if uh to the point of reconciling, basically reconciling the checkbook, being able to go back in uh in history retroactively and reconcile uh our past finances.

With modernizing our our um uh our accounting and uh and our finance uh management systems here in Pacific Grove.

At least we're planning on doing that.

Uh is there an opportunity in there to kind of do postmortems and be able to uh do reconciliations against uh uh past informations, kind of like how this came up.

Um I guess I'm not exactly sure.

I mean, you know, we basically maybe I'll answer it, but it may not be exactly in direct way.

You know, whenever we come across something that you know we're just not aware upon, that's actually one of the first things that we do.

Our system, it's not the most current, but we do have pretty good capabilities in the system to kind of go back and kind of see by vendor and over history of time, you know, if things were paid, and I have to give a lot of credit to my staff because they spent quite a bit of effort to determine that basically this wasn't paid.

So it is definitely something we have to some extent in our system, and we'll definitely look in future systems to see if there's more capabilities as well, too.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you.

Okay, we'll go ahead and uh take a voice vote on this.

Uh all in favor of the recommended action say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none passes unanimously, 7-0.

Thank you very much for the report, Mr.

Marsh.

Thank you for catching the error and taking care of it.

In a timely manner.

Uh we'll move on to item 11c.

This is our amendment to employment agreement with our city manager, and I'll recognize our city attorney.

Thank you, Mayor.

So, as you've said, this is an item to consider a first amendment to the employment agreement with the city manager, Matthew Mogison, uh, to increase salary and deferred compensation.

By way of background, um, the city and uh Mr.

Moginson entered into an employment agreement in uh April of 2024, pursuant to which Mr.

Moginson was appointed to the position of city manager with an annual salary of 251,680, and then also deferred compensation with a city contribution of 2600.

At this time, the council, if it determines appropriate, may consider a salary increase from Mr.

Moginson and an increase in the city contribution to his deferred compensation.

So attachment one uh to the uh agenda report is a draft of First Amendment uh to the employment agreement.

Uh this would uh result in an increase in salary from the current amount uh to 266,469 dollars.

That's an annual increase of fourteen thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine dollars.

The First Amendment also includes an additional annual employer contribution of thirteen hundred dollars to the employees' deferred compensation plan.

This amount is in addition to the 2600 annual employer match, and as a result, the total employer-funded deferred compensation inclusive use of both match and contribution will increase from 2600 to 3900.

Uh in addition, the First Amendment also includes an increase in paid time off, uh referred to as PTO, with the rules from uh currently 192 hours to 216 hours.

Uh, these amendments will be effective if the amendment is approved by council uh July 6, 2025, to coincide with the pay period.

So attachment two to the uh agenda report is a resolution uh authorizing the mayor to execute the first amendment, and um attachment three is an ordinance uh to amend the classification schedule.

The options are to approve a first amendment in some other amount or to uh to take no action or some other action related to this.

Um in terms of the fiscal impact, as I've indicated the amount of the salary increase and the amount of deferred compensation, there would also be some uh fiscal impacts due to the salary increase which are set forth in the staff report, which total nineteen hundred and seven dollars.

So when you add all that together, the total fiscal impact is seventeen thousand nine hundred and ninety-six dollars.

So at this time, the uh item uh will for you to um consider the first amendment um as I've indicated, and if you uh do feel it appropriate, then there's remaining recommended actions.

I'm available to answer questions.

Thank you very much.

Go ahead and take it out to the public for public comment.

There's nobody virtual, um, or in person there.

Okay, go ahead and bring this item, close public comment on this item, bring it back to the council for action discussion.

Um there are a few different elements to the recommended actions, so we would like to explore this first.

Councilmember Walkingston.

Uh, I see we have all the financials on here that were uh that were discussed, but uh how are we indicating the um the verbiage that was actually struck from the contract uh that we had uh agreed upon before?

There was uh some language which uh bound uh Mr.

Moganson to or the city manager to be in the office during certain uh office hours, and we wanted to allow more flexibility uh in his schedule so that he could go about town taking care of various errands, taking care of various city business, and uh uh uh wasn't as anchored to one spot necessarily.

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Councilmember Walking Stick.

And um that language may be stricken uh from the agreement, so we would need to add that um to the operative provisions of the resolution.

I don't have the exact language in front of me, but I think you've summarized it very accurately.

So we would add that uh as the fourth operative provision, and then the uh after the fourth operative provision, and then the one that uh talks about except as amended, that would become number six.

So the one you just said will be five, and the existing five would become six.

Okay, and so at the time that we approve this, then we will just on recommendation number two, we will uh make that statement.

Yeah, yes.

Okay, so if you want, well, you proceed.

Yeah, and I I do, and I'm I just want to recognize Mr.

Councilmember Walkingstick to if he has any further comment.

No, thank you.

All right, I appreciate that.

Thanks for bringing that to light.

Uh Councilmember.

Yes, and I would just like uh to mention to Mr.

Mogenson that uh you didn't hear any public comment, and that's actually a great thing.

In this case, uh, because uh what what we usually hear is uh typically people voicing their concerns about a certain item and the fact that there are none is a fantastic thing here.

So I appreciate what you have done over the course of the year uh to uh I would say um make the ship like whole completely.

And I'm glad that uh you're here and you're working with us in tandem and respecting each and every council member's opinions and thoughts and taking the city forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember McDonald.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I was actually gonna say something similar.

It's a reflection of uh basically council's confidence and the way the city manager is really representing the full citizenship.

We've really noticed that the public is telling us how much they appreciate your openness and your communication and everything.

So I feel like a lot of there's a lot of public trust and a lot of appreciation for all that's been accomplished in such a short time.

So thank you very much.

Uh Councilmember.

I know we've we've spoken in private, but also I think it's important to acknowledge.

I think Councilmember Padori makes a great point.

But you know, we have all noticed um your willingness to dig in and to uh to take on some tough jobs.

And I think your communication with the public is outstanding.

And I think the way that you've treated and valued the staff is probably the biggest impact that you could have made in riding the ship and keeping us balanced.

So I just personally wanted to say thank you to Mr.

Mogenson for the job that you've done so far.

And uh I look forward to the next year.

I think uh I think it's gonna be great.

Thank you very much.

Anything uh everybody else is right.

No, um I was gonna say uh Mr.

Morgenson, when you first took uh the job, uh it was uh probably feel like you're treading water because there's a lot of vacancies, but you do have done an outstanding job hiring the right people uh to um someone mentioned writing the ship and uh for this it was the best thing we've done for the city of Pacific Road is to hire you.

Thank you very much.

So um I see the city attorney seems to be engaged, but I would um ask.

Should we take these Mr.

Peric?

Should we take these uh a motion on one, a motion on two, and then a motion on four?

Yeah, we can do all that, but um I wanted to make sure that we were uh in agreement about what the language is that is proposed to be stricken from the employment agreement with respect to the hours of work.

Um I'm not sure if um I know that I don't have this capacity to share this screen.

Uh that I'm looking at front of my computer, but maybe I'll just read it and that way we can all benefit from that.

So this is section five, talks about hours of work and it says the employee is an exempt employee but is expected to engage in those hours of work that are necessary to fulfill the obligation of the city manager's position.

So I assume we're keeping that.

The next sentence is uh employee does not have set hours of work as employee is expected to be available at all times, assuming we're keeping that.

Um, then the employee shall maintain regular office hours at City Hall between the hours of 8 a.m.

and 5 p.m.

Monday through Friday, with flexibility based on work demand, accepting holidays and furlongs, except when absent in the proper performance of the employees' duties and responsibilities as city manager, um, or when utilizing leave.

Sorry if I may um I so I have this uh section five uh over here exhibit uh uh here and really what we had agreed upon was the the last sentence, which is the one that you're about to state, is the only one that needs to be stricken.

Okay, I thought I would get there eventually.

So, thanks for bringing that up.

So uh with that um prelude, um let me read the last sentence, um, which is uh employee may with councils express written approval, flex their working hours from something other than eight a.m.

to five p.m.

on specific days of the week, and or change their work location from city hall to a permissible remote work location for a specified period of time.

So it is it that sentence that I just read is the one that uh is proposed to be stricken, yes.

Okay, yes, understood.

And um that would be that wouldn't be part of the motion on one, though.

That would just be this amendment that we're considering tonight or Mr.

Perick.

Yeah, let me let me take a look at this.

Well, item one is to consider the first amendment.

If you want to proceed with the first amendment, then item two is the motion to adopt a resolution uh authorizing the mayor to execute a First Amendment to the employment agreement with the city manager with the addition to the resolution that the sentence that I read a moment ago would uh be deleted from the employment agreement, and that would be added to the resolution.

So that would be added to the findings number five and and then numbers.

Okay, I got it.

Okay, so can I entertain a motion on uh recommendation one to start with?

Well, the motion it's actually it's number two in the agenda, but it's the motion to adopt the resolution.

Oh, okay.

So number one doesn't need to be a motion.

No, okay.

That was just for the discussion.

Okay.

Um recommended action.

We move a motion on two then second action in regard to the resolution.

Yes.

Okay.

Do you have a motion on a second?

Any further discussion?

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to clarify.

Are we are we wanting to strike the entire sense?

Because part of the intention is to have the flexibility, or is it just to remove that it requires written council approval?

So do we do we lose the whole intent of being able to have flexibility if we remove the entire sentence versus just that it requires written council approval?

So just want to clarify that point before we strike the whole thing.

Earlier in the paragraph that I read, it said that the hours would be Monday through Friday with flexibility based on work demand.

So if you're concerned about flexibility, I think that's already in here.

No.

Okay.

Um any further discussion?

So okay, we'll take a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Passes unanimously.

Okay, just a second.

I had uh Emilio a second.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And now I'll ask the city attorney to read the title of the ordinance.

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

This is an ordinance of the city council of the City of Pacific Grove, amending the classification schedule to set a salary for the city manager.

And I should mention, excuse me, mention that the ordinance uh includes the name of Mayor Bill Peak, but obviously that's gonna need to be changed to next myth.

So I've read the title.

So now you can go on to make a motion uh to approve uh recommendations uh four and five.

Oh, I will move those four and five the second second by Emilio.

Further discussion.

I'll just um I will join in my colleagues in thanking Mr.

Mogenson for a great first year and looking forward to the future.

Thank you so much.

Um, okay, we'll take a voice vote on this.

All in favor say aye.

Aye, any opposed, hearing none passes unanimously.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Mogenson.

We're looking forward to working with you the next year and continuing the progress.

And we are now.

We're at 11D.

This is uh adoption of a resolution approving cannabis regulatory fees.

Thank you, Mr.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor and Council.

And first of all, I didn't anticipate having a you know any kind of a speech or anything, but I just do want to say that I I have really enjoyed working here at the City of Pacific Road with all the council as well, getting to know the community.

So I do look forward to the next year.

So thank you, and now let's move on to more important stuff.

Um cannabis fees.

So uh this is the final item in the approval of the implementation of our cannabis commercial cannabis regulatory program.

So the council previously authorized staff to work with HGL to assist with developing application process, uh performing on-site inspections and regulatory fee schedule settings.

So this is the final part of that contract that we're working on.

Cannabis regulatory fees uh must take into account the staff time involved in developing the program, the time and resources needed to review application packages, on-site regulatory inspections, annual audits, background checks, and appeals.

In addition, um these fees should capture both the direct costs of city staff time, uh, the soft costs involved through various other methods, overhead costs, and also some of the fees that we will be charged by HDL in order to do to uh review this the applications that come in and permit these businesses.

So these fees have been designed to be 100% cost recovery, so no cost to the city.

Um and will be a um we'll see we we feel probably about $50,000 this year approximately in um revenue just from the fees alone.

That's not the cannabis taxes, that'll be down the line for there.

So with that, um, I'm sorry, we skip the slide.

Let me show the fees really quickly.

So these are the fees that will be adopted into the citywide fee schedule.

Um the application fee is the fee that applicants will pay just to enter the the process in the very beginning.

Um you can skip the annual regulatory fee for a second because that'll be annually.

Um appeal process fee will be if somebody feels that they need to appeal a decision in the application process.

Zoning confirmation fee will be each um applicant will be required to go to the planning department, get a zoning verification that the site that they pick meets all the criteria within the ordinance.

So that's a that's a uh process and application.

We will charge use permit fee is after they achieve a business permit, they will then be passed to the uh community development department and the community development department will process a regular conditional use permit.

So that's the fee for that.

Site plan evaluation will be once we go into the building phase of actually constructing the the storefront.

Um that will be a fee that can't will probably be a pass through pretty much 100% to HDL for their review of the security plans and all the plans that go into that.

Um, so the I guess pre-license site inspection is self-explanatory.

Background fee is a fee that HDL will also capture.

They will do all of the background um processing for us and then share it with the police department for their review as well.

So once we we permit a business annually, we will also have fees involved with we talked about the annual regulatory fee.

That's gonna be a fee for the staff time.

Again, HDL and everybody being involved to go back and to inspect the facilities and to make sure that they're in compliance.

Also look at their annual um financial audit, which will be a fee a little bit lower down the line there, to make sure that they're in compliance with all state laws and our local laws.

Um and then we'll also do an annual inspection.

So those are the fees.

If you have any questions, um available.

All right, and I'll go ahead and take it out to the public for comment on the cannabis uh regulatory fees.

11D.

I don't know if we have any hands uh raised online or anybody in person, Mayor.

Okay, we will bring it back to the council, close public comment on item 11D, and I will recognize council member Garfield.

Thank you, Honor.

I think the one word that sums this up is finally.

Um, this has been in the works for a really long time.

It's been restricted, it's been abused, it's been delayed, and I think we're finally getting um a good start for something that's been a long time coming.

So I'm ready to roll.

You sounded up correctly, you're ready to roll.

Um, but um the um I said should we make it explicit that this is a conditional use permit?

Or is it does use permit imply like a conditional use permit?

That language mirrors our existing fee schedule.

So we're just trying to point out that it is the same fee.

Okay.

Use permit.

So we if we were to change it, be a cannabis conditional use permit, that could be more confusing, I guess, down the road when we're okay charging the fee.

Yeah, and so thanks for putting this together.

Uh, a couple of other just uh routine questions here.

Um this obviously we we have this annual, right?

Like so, so does this mean on an annual basis, just reading through this table only, uh the owner will pay for the background investigation annually.

Uh the only time they'll need a new background investigation is when you have a new person into the ownership.

Um, but other than that, if it's constant in the same people, we won't need to.

Once you're in the system, if I typically if somebody were to commit a crime or something, it'll be flagged and we'll get a report of that.

Okay.

Um also just from uh um this is at the end of the day, somebody could appeal, right?

The decision that has been made.

There's yeah, I probably should clarify a little more.

There's there's a couple of steps of appeal.

The first step will be um we we talked about our regulatory process.

Uh, applicants are gonna have 30 days to submit applications, and we'll start that uh, I believe on September 15th, will be the goal right now to start on September 15th.

So 30 days from then, we'll close the application period.

First step is HDL is gonna review all its packages and they're gonna then give a report to the city to say that these application packages meet all the standards and they can be a quality business.

Um, all those that's come back to us as that will then go into a lottery and the and they'll get pulled.

Before we do the lottery, though, will be the opportunity for somebody to appeal, should they be somebody who wasn't indicated to be a quality enough business.

Um so if they file an appeal, then we'll probably send it back to HDL, discuss the re-review the package and see if they have any good points, um, and then we'll decide whether or not they should be in the lottery.

So that that's the that appeal fee.

The second appeal fee that would would happen would be at the uh conditional use permit level, and that's just your typical use permit um appeal fee.

So that would be the planning commission decides on the on the conditional use permit.

If they were to say deny it, um the appeal would come to the city council, and the city council would review it.

And at any given point, um, just because this is an annual event, I just want to make sure that when we project these fees, it covers like inspection, re-inspection, background, re-background check.

So everything is technically there on this, yeah, right.

So these are these are somewhat a la carte, if you will, you know, depending on what the service is.

Okay.

So annually they'll have the regulatory fee that they will pay.

They'll also have a reinspection fee.

So that's that's time for all staff and everybody have to walk through the the building and make sure that they're meeting all the code requirements and and all the uh other stipulations of state law.

Um, whether or not we have a background fee will be if they're gonna have to also report to us their existing ownership, we'll match it up with like the state records and make sure that on the state licenses meet our licenses, and if there's new people involved, that's when those people have to be background check.

So they won't have to pay that fee if there's not new people involved.

Um other fees, the annual audit fee though, would be one that we'll want to do because what we're trying to do is make sure that the reporting that they're giving us on the taxes match their actual receipts, and also that whether reporting to the state is correct.

And sorry to belabor this, but what if something happens in that audit process and now we have to dedicate more staff time towards that effort?

So is that is that technically covered here within that 2500?

This is a rough, this is an average of what we feel will be the time.

If one were to take you know, double the time, that that wouldn't necessarily be captured here.

Um, but we we feel kind of confident in the time that we'll take, and it builds in a little bit of time where it's like in if there's there's an audit done and there's findings, it would be it would have enough money built in so that we could receive the report again and review review the findings just okay on those specific things.

Oh, very good.

I and we'll always uh reinspect the fees anyway.

We have that opportunity to do it.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Uh, Melia.

Thank you for the report.

Um, Mr.

Murizen.

What um back that uh I've never visited a cannabis shop, so I'll move that clearly.

Um what uh what if it is a cash business?

Exactly.

I'm just curious, how do you monitor the receipts on a cash business?

Yeah, um council member um today they can take alternative forms of payment, um, but most of it is audited through their POS system.

You know, so they have to have certain systems that are again regulated by state law that have to track um their sales, so that's all matched up and inventoried and stuff and cross-checked, and that's why it's a little bit more extensive of audits to make sure everything because the other part of the audit is also they have to make sure that they're keeping their inventory stuff correctly, which is also another highly regulated area of it.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else?

If not, a motion.

I'll move recommended action.

Okay, we want a motion by jury, second by Rao.

Any other any discussion on the motion?

Seeing none, we'll go ahead and take a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, passes unanimously taking another step on that.

That's great.

And now we're going to item 12a.

This is the uh city subcommittee item, and I'll recognize our city manager.

Thank you again, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, this item we're bringing to you tonight for your just consideration of um an alternative approach to what we took on a couple years ago.

So on February 7th of 24, the council discussed a need to establish uh a better communication platform with the Pacific Grove Unified School District to discuss topics of interest to to both party entities and the better build a partnership with them.

So um the school district and the city have held two joint meetings in 2024.

Um the committee currently was existing of it was the mayor, the mayor pro Tim, the chair of the school district board, and the vice chair, and then um staff that needed to be involved as well.

So we had a couple of those meetings there.

Um let's see.

Where are we at today?

Then the so city staff and in and the school district staff, we've been discussing the effectiveness of how it's really been working and how difficult it's been at times to schedule meetings when you've got two different boards, two different schedules, different people working, different schedules.

It's it's not been easy to set these meetings.

We've also observed that over time they've they've become I'm not sure that they were ever meant to be as formal as they've kind of adapted to be.

You know, they've kind of fallen in more of a brown act type board, and it's what it's done is inhibited a lot of conversation with the school district and ongoing working relationships.

So I'm speaking again with the superintendent and discussing more.

We thought that it'd make sense at this point in time to come back and discuss a more of a structure that we never really did in the first place.

So there's kind of two levels to what the proposal is tonight.

The first one is that uh the council consider appointing the or or delegating the mayor pro tem and the mayor to attend uh the meetings for the rest of this year.

This joint structure, as we can just outlined, and then starting next year in 2026, we would go to a more informal structure.

Um so the first thing we would be doing is as staff members, and again, that would include myself, the superintendent, I'll be public works director, assistant superintendent, other staff members that make sense from time to time.

We would get together more at least quarterly and and work on problems that we're currently facing that we need to work out a little bit better.

Certainly, um, you know, um it's gonna probably also involve the police department.

I should have mentioned that because some dynamics have changed at the at the school district regarding the police department as well.

So we will have these meetings informally, and then we'll hold meetings with um on a little bit more of an informal basis, and we're thinking the committee to make it more simple would just consist of the mayor, the chair of the board, and then staff.

And what we would do at these meetings if we would report on the work that we're working on as staff again, uh we would get some feedback that may need to we may need at that point in time, uh, continue to work a problem, and then we bring it to the full boards to inform you and to keep you involved in the bigger again projects that we're working on.

But ultimately, what we don't want to do is inhabit inhibit um the ability for the school district and city staff to to ongoing work together because we have lots of common issues that we we would like to consider to continue to build momentum on.

So um, with that, we do I do have you know, there are motions within the staff report that for your consideration tonight.

Um, we feel that this is a less formal structure starting in 2026, and it'll facilitate better collaboration.

But we're bringing it to you.

Thank you very much.

I'll go ahead and take it out to the public on item 12a.

This is the subscribing formation item or subcommittee item 12A.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh no public uh comment online or in person.

Okay, we'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for uh discussion and action.

And who would like to speak?

Councilmember Jerry.

Um, thank you for bringing this as well.

I I would say anytime you want to make things efficient, I'm all for it.

And it looks like uh there's uh more time spent in like just scheduling a meeting than actually achieving what we want to do from the meeting.

Uh I also think that once you make things official, they take a structured route, and I don't know how much of we actually get accomplished in that structured manner.

So I'm all in for um the recommended action items as they are.

And also I think uh right now, being that it's structured, I don't have maybe perhaps others do, but I I certainly don't have visibility into what is going on as much.

And I think having some kind of like uh dialogue like this with uh you or and or whoever else it is bringing back a report saying this is what we did.

Uh I think we'll actually make more enrollments uh than how it is right now.

So thank you for bringing this, and I'm supportive.

Thank you.

Councilmember Donald.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was just gonna say thank you for for assessing the situation, recognizing that maybe it was time for a course correction because so often we kind of go along in something because it's the way it's always been.

So thank you for really looking out for what's gonna give us the desired outcome.

Um, so I'm happy to make a motion if you'd like when you're ready.

Anyone else wishing to go ahead?

Okay, so I will let's see what the item is.

I will go ahead and make um uh can I just say motions number one and number two?

Exactly.

Yeah, so you can just say you move the recommended actions.

So moving recommended actions.

Motion by McDonnell on both actions.

Second.

Second by Milio.

Any further discussion?

Okay, we'll go ahead and take a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, another unanimous vote.

Thank you so much, everybody.

Thank you, Mr.

Mogenson again.

And uh, if I could just ask you a quick question or suggestion.

Um, I see it's eight o'clock and you sometimes take a break at this point.

I think the chief's presentation, he was feeling pressured to get done quickly, but if you wanted to take a break, you'd maybe feel less pressure.

I I'm actually gonna we'll push through unless the chief wants a break, unless anyone up here needs a break.

Okay, we'll just do it.

I'm not gonna rush you at all.

So just do what you gotta do.

Okay, I'll go ahead and uh recognize the chief.

He's gonna give us our annual report on item 14A, right?

That's where we are.

And that'll be the last item of the night.

Go ahead, uh, Chief Jay.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Smith and honorable city council.

It's my distinct privilege to present the department's 2024 end of your report this evening.

Uh just uh kind of a disclaimer.

Uh, my analyst who put the report together and did a very great job, uh, was actually scheduled to present tonight.

He fell ill.

So I'm gonna jump in and take command and get this knocked out.

So um what I have is a link that I'm gonna share.

It's gonna be a little bit different format than a PowerPoint.

So this should be coming up on your screen momentarily.

So as I reflect on 2024 and the work the department is doing, I'm constantly reminded of some of my guiding principles as the chief of police, and part of that is the commander's intent.

And with that commander's intent, that's only part of what contributes to accomplishing our mission and serving the community uh with excellence.

And so the other part of that is our people, right?

Um, and so we really open the report with uh kind of a quote that addresses our people.

It says the badge doesn't define us, our people do, it's their character, judgment, and commitment that shape the department and build the trust we're proud to stand on.

And so as I said, you know, this kind of stands as our ethos to the delivery of professional police services.

And so we thought it fitting to essentially follow that up with our mission, vision, and values.

And so this is really the cornerstone of the exceptional public safety that we deliver to the community, and so it's always kind of the backbone that you know really speaks to what our mission, our vision, and our values are.

And so that is something that has become ingrained as a part of our culture in the department and what we fall back on when we're serving the community, all right.

So we'll jump in here.

So the first section of the annual report deals with the organizational chart.

Uh, as many of you already know, the organizational chart is currently org for 23 sworn positions and 11 professional staff.

Of those 23 sworn, three are uh dedicated to the command staff or the overall executive management of the department with the chief of police and two commanders, one overseeing our operations division, which is more of the patrol investigation side of the house, and the other overseeing the administrative uh division, which is our professional staff, our records division, uh all of the things that support operations.

The report this year also talks to uh the vacancies, the totality of the vacancies for the department or the uh calendar year of 2024.

So we had uh essentially four vacancies among the sworn ranks and then one vacancy within the professional staff.

Transitioning to special service highlights this year we highlighted the school resource officer.

Um it as the city manager alluded to a little bit earlier, is a program that is going away, at least in the uh immediate future.

Uh, but our school resource officer did a great job collaborating and serving the school campuses and the uh the school district here in Pacific Grove.

Um Andrea Hill up to a few weeks ago was serving as our SRO.

Uh, you know, and really her main her main responsibility was to ensure safety on the campuses uh to address crime prevention efforts and really to serve as a guardian and a good role model for our students.

So um we included in the report this year with the SRO just kind of uh a background with some data that covered you know the time that she spent on different campuses and what she was involved in.

And so as a result of our data uh Officer Hill spent the majority of her time at the Pacific Grove High School.

But any member of the community can kind of reference this chart to uh look at the different amounts of time or time allocations that she spent on each of the nine campuses.

And we had a retirement.

So starting off with Commander Delfino who oversees our patrol division Officer Alicia Lavarado, Officer Vivian Valero, Officer Robert Rutledge, and CSO Brian Morales, and PST Chelsea Hardy and PST Selena Way Garcia.

The single retirement as you all know was uh the chief of police Kathy Madeline retired on October 12 2024.

So just kind of speaking to the department's uh proactive kind of initiative towards professional development and training uh we celebrated three internal promotions to the rank of sergeant during 2024 featuring uh Paul Nagamini Wiley Griffin and Dan Dice who are all promoted to sergeant all three have really hit the ground running and are doing a great job in operations we also had two officers uh that were appointed uh through competitive selection process to the billet of field training officer this is kind of a natural progression uh for leadership going from the officer ranks into more of a position that speaks to coaching and mentoring uh training new officers and so both Hanks and Acevito are doing a great job as as current FTOs within the department unfortunately uh Michael Minnie uh who was also promoted to corporal is actually on his way out so the department in the city got to benefit uh for a little over a year uh with uh corporal mini's kind of efforts and uh his leadership uh assisting the sergeants uh during times of staff shortages and you know actually running some of those those shifts on graveyard uh we benefited from that for a little over a year but he is now moving on to Sunnyville so jumping jumping right into some of the crime stats so Civic Grove police department uh received just under 8,000 total calls for service as the report indicates here on the page uh we took about 1700 offense reports a little over 4,000 citations were issued and about 176 arrests were made for the year.

Fortunately uh the city of Pacific Grove has enjoyed uh historically low uh nonviolent or sorry historically low violent uh crime numbers and so it really speaks to the city being a safe place to live and work most of the things that we deal with with the PD that are the majority are property crime type issues and uh warrant arrests uh that are issued you know all over the state of California that you know if we do have contact with a person who has a warrant will affect that arrest and book them at the jail or side them out but the report um the way that Kyle designed this this year was to be a little more interactive so you can actually um see the top 10 ranked uh violations that the PD is dealing with uh statistically speaking and so you just kind of click on the number and it will show you that one of the number one things we deal with are misdemeanor warrants so uh I did give me a second chief analysis and IT tonight I guess we're Okay, we're there.

So continuing with some of our stats as far as the citation breakdown, you see a nice little pie graph right here.

Most of our citations were issued for parking violations, followed by criminal violations, which would include include traffic, and then 13 of those sites were administrated.

So as far as traffic collisions, we the city had 127 non-injury collisions during 2024, 18 injuries, and there were no fatals during this reporting period for a total of about 145.

Looking back at the top five primary collision factors, we see the unsafe turning movements made up the majority of the collision factors for our collisions, followed by improper starts and backing, unsafe speed for prevailing conditions, a failure to yield the right-of-way, and stop sign violations, all in that order.

Also during a five-year study, um, actually 2024 was you know pretty decent as far as the total number of collisions that we had.

Uh I think the if I remember correctly, the during that five-year, four-year period since 2020, we had the most amount at 166 collisions in 2021, and then it fell in or 2020 and fell in 2021.

Also of some interest, uh, maybe some data that was analyzed to kind of determine where the problematic intersections are within the city.

And so there was kind of a three-way tie between Forest AV and David Ave, Presidio Boulevard, and Sunset Drive at Congress Avenue, all reported four collisions uh per intersection.

So it was kind of a three-way tie there.

And then Lighthouse at Fountain and Ocean View Boulevard at First Street, also tied with two collisions apiece.

So switching to some of the internal highlights as far as internal operations.

Most of those were found property or lost property, 41 firearms were seized, 33 packages of illicit drugs, and 38 items of drug paraphernalia.

That's pipes, syringes, toot straws, things of that nature.

Essentially, paraphernalia is classified as items that are used to ingest the drugs.

This ongoing training ensured the department personnel were well were well trained to serve the community at the highest level, and also in compliance with state training mandates and best practices.

The 2024 monthly monthly budget focused on supporting essential services, staff, and operational needs.

Overall, the department budget spoke to a balanced approach to sustaining personnel operations and infrastructure.

About 8.5 million supported salaries and benefits, 1.4 million supported services and supplies, approximately 85,000 supporting ongoing professional development and training, and about 8,500 went towards supporting building management management and maintenance.

So one of the most significant action items for 2024 was actually the establishment of a professional services conduct or contract for officer wellness and resiliency.

So the city has partnered with an organization, Restoration First Responder Network, who provide services for first responders and their families in areas like mental health support, early intervention, suicide prevention, longevity and performance, thus helping to create a plan for returning healthy officers back to their families after a career.

Also in 2024, a 22-month strategic plan was adopted by the department focusing on but not limited to areas such as improving on wellness for police personnel, recruitment and retention, increasing visibility and community outreach efforts, tightening down on property crimes, those were one of uh the big 10 that is actually featured uh early on in our in our crime stats and improving traffic safety.

So uh in closing, in the past year, the Pacific Grove Police Department has made meaningful strides in creating a positive and lasting impact on our community.

Uh these efforts, grounded in transparency, collaboration, and service reflect our department's dedication to fostering trust and building partnerships that enhance the well-being and safety of our entire community.

There are a few more areas of the report that I won't spend a lot of time in, but uh for members of the public or the community who want to go on and kind of uh look at some of these areas that we've covered in summary tonight.

It is quite interactive.

Uh there's little, you know, pie graphs and different charts and little clicks that you can kind of go into to see more in-depth detailed information that goes a little bit further than the presentation tonight.

Also, we feature some of our excellent staff and some of the annual awards that uh were they were recognized regionally.

Uh so through the Monterey County Peace Officers Association, we had uh recipients for officer of the year, professional staffer of the year, uh investigation of the year, and things like top recruiter.

So really that concludes my report this evening.

I'm happy to take any questions.

I would like to give a shout out and a personal thank you to Kyle Baum, the analyst for the police department.

He did a really great job with the report this year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Council.

Any comments?

Yes, of course.

Um, please thank Kyle on behalf of all of us.

Uh, the um this I've not seen a report uh like with all these like fancy items, etc.

So thank you.

Uh it's it's actually very useful for us to review what is going on overall on an annual basis.

Uh my question is uh obviously things are not panning out with the SRO uh with the school district.

Um, what happens now?

Like with the from a city standpoint, what happens to the SRO position, uh, what happens to the person behind that position.

Uh, is that could you just give some mechanics behind the process and and also uh my understanding, at least this is please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it part of the decision for not going with the SRO was uh the cost involved with it?

Um, and so is there anything there that the city council should be aware of uh from a cost standpoint moving forward?

Yeah, it's a great question.

What I can say and and report to the council is that I have been heavily involved with attending all school board meetings since my appointment at the end of March, and also in collaborating with uh and between the city manager's office and the district superintendent.

And so, you know, I feel that the relationship is there.

I feel like staff from both the city, police department, and the school administration were kind of you know co-joined, if you will, or or proceeding with kind of the same mindset and goals in mind, ultimately, you know, through my experience with watching kind of the evolution of the decision that was made was that that was strictly made uh by you know the elected officials on the school board.

And so one of the, you know, essentially the questions I was asking over and over to school staff had more to do with, you know, hey, I need to explain to the city manager and the council at some point what the what the reason, you know, thinking singularly.

And it just wasn't a singular reason.

Uh, there were many issues that were brought up in the contract.

Those issues uh were negotiated.

Most of them were issues where um I immediately recommended some fixes to uh one of them was uh the receipt of you know data throughout the year.

Uh they were receiving that once a year.

They wanted de-aggregated data, they wanted to know how the SRO was spending her time on campuses, what she was dealing with.

There was another uh issue that was brought up that the SRO during 2024 wasn't engaged in what the contract called out as the educational component.

Um essentially it boiled down to I think some ideological differences or some ideological principles that some of the board members had that armed officers didn't belong on PG school campuses, and so because all of the other issues that were kind of brought to light uh could have been negated.

I mean, I was very vocal and out front with several presentations regarding the fact that the city was not proposing a cost increase and that we could leverage technology and increase the amounts of time during the school year that we delivered uh the aggregate data, you know, for their review, and so um there wasn't really much of anything that was being asked for uh by the board from the police department or the city uh that we couldn't try to find accommodation for.

And so those accommodations were offered up.

Essentially, that SRO process ended with the board not choosing to uh renew that contract.

But you know, I will say that it, you know, I I continue to appear uh at the board meetings even after the decision was made.

And to your point and your question, you know, the the police department really does uh kind of operate on that community-centric, community-oriented policing platform, which means you know, we extend as much service to all members of the community, regardless of whether they're a citizen here, a tourist, a visitor, uh, a business owner, uh, a school district, whatever the entity or the person, uh the police department is here to provide service for that entity or person.

And so, you know, that is really what I tried to stress uh at the last board meeting that I attended, I believe it was the last week of June.

And so, you know, essentially there were questions still at the end because I wanted to make it clear that the police department prioritizes those calls for service, uh, that it some of the service services that we provide are dependent on what our staffing levels are, and you know, right now we are prioritizing the worst calls, and those are the ones we respond to first.

Certainly the school is a high priority because uh that is a location or a place where we have many young people, and so that is obviously always a consideration operationally for the department.

Um, but you know, at the end or the totality of that conversation, there were still questions by certain board members about well, maybe we need this in writing.

Um I explained to them as professionally as I could that they had a contract and now they were electing not to have a contract.

Um, you know, replacing a program that was in place without having a plan going forward, and so uh I was outspoken about that, that it wasn't advisable, uh, that I didn't think it was a great decision going forward.

And so, you know, essentially what it looks like going forward is you know, again, I'll report to the council.

We provide the highest level of service that we can to any person or entity dependent on what our staffing levels are and what the priority of our calls for service are.

In other words, for example, if we have a trespasser at a business on a school, and that's the totality of the circumstances, no weapons, no other reports, it's just a a misdemeanor trespassing.

But we also have at the same time a domestic violence situation going on or an injury traffic collision.

Those two calls are gonna take precedence and they're gonna eat up our manpower, and that's gonna require staffing for those calls.

So hopefully that answered your question.

Yes, thank you.

That background is helpful.

I think uh ultimately, if there are as you put it, ideological differences.

I think no matter what you do, it's it's gonna go a certain direction.

Um so I appreciate you sharing that dialogue and uh about what is going on behind the scenes and and uh looking forward to the safety of the community, which is the fundamental foremost of what we think.

Um thank you for the presentation again, and I'm looking forward to move uh with the next year here.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Uh thank you so much.

Um, yes.

Um, first of all, thanks um, Chief for the presentation.

Um I actually have a couple of things.

Um I recognize many of the uh officers and sergeants and stuff on the I think you sent this out before uh to us.

It was uh they're great.

You got a great uh police department.

There's there's no doubt about it.

But the officers involved.

Um, the so the SRO is is no longer uh the school district doesn't want to help with the situation.

Am I correct?

They have not removed their SRO contract, they have elected not to.

They elected not to.

Then the SRO goes back to the beat.

So traditional arrests that person would flow back from the specialty assignment back to patrol.

Okay.

Thank you.

Excellent report.

Thank you.

Anyone else wishing a comment?

Councilman Morale.

But that SRO didn't go back to patrol, correct?

No.

Uh actually the school resource officer Andrea Hill, she resigned.

Okay.

So another vacancy.

Yes.

Any anyone else any further?

Thank you, Chief, for the Mr.

Moginson.

Can I make a shameless slide really?

So I'm looking at the title here of Top Recruiter.

Um, you know, one of the things we hope we inspired some people tonight to think about being a police officer in the future as well.

So if anybody's interested, post it on our website, right?

Is where we have our yeah, or over our website on my LinkedIn.

Uh yeah, we are um actually looking for uh people that want to make a difference.

This is still very uh very notable and honorable fashion.

And so um, you know, we're looking for good people at all specific growth.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate the report.

Excellent job.

Uh appreciate everything that the department does for us for the community, keeping us safe.

Um, and congratulate all the officers that received uh motions and um continue to do the great work they do in the community um and then the law enforcement community uh also.

Thank you so much.

I think we're at the end of the meeting.

Any does anyone see any reason why we shouldn't adjourn?

Okay, the meeting's adjourned.

Thank you very much.