Visalia City Council Meeting - November 20, 2023
Visalia City Council Meeting - November 20, 2023
The Visalia City Council met on Monday, November 20, 2023, for a work session that began at 5:30 PM, followed by a closed session at 5:52 PM, and the regular session convened at 7:00 PM. The meeting was adjourned at 9:06 PM. All five council members were present: Mayor Brian Poochigian, Vice Mayor Brett Taylor, and Council Members Steve Nelsen, Emmanuel Hernandez Soto, and Liz Wynn. The council considered a wide range of routine matters, two major public hearings, and several consent calendar items. The meeting featured extensive public comment from Barry Caplan repeatedly arguing that agenda item summaries were too long and violated the Brown Act, and a proposal for a new clean-up initiative, among other important decisions.
Consent Calendar
- Item 1: Authorization to read ordinances by title only was approved unanimously without discussion.
- Items 2-12: These were individually pulled from the Consent Calendar by Barry Caplan, who used each item as a platform to argue that the agenda descriptions were excessively detailed, violating the Brown Act. Each item was nonetheless approved with 5-0 votes after separate discussion. Key approvals included: a Notice of Completion for the Greenway Trail Phase 2 pedestrian bridge (with $n $n10,000 from Measure R Trailways); a $334,250 construction contract to JT2 Inc. for pathway improvements from Main Street to the Transit Center; second reading and adoption of Ordinance No. 2023-13 for state-mandated medical marijuana delivery rules (SB 1186); an annual street sweeping contract of $1,868,741 with SCA of CA, LLC; a $317,600 playground structure replacement at Riverway Sports Park; a $128,965 Arbor replacement at Whitendale Park; a $142,000 transfer from AT&T Mobility for water feature repair; nomination of Council Member Liz Wynn to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District Governing Board; appointments of Council Members to the Tulare County Task Force on Homelessness and the merits of groundwater board; a $285,000 contract for vegetation removal at Eastside Regional Park along with grant acceptance; and a $202,573 animal shelter service agreement with the City of Dinuba. Despite the pull requests, each item passed unanimously.
Work Session Action Item
- Solid Waste Environment Enhancement Program (SWEEP): Presented by Public Works Director Nick Bartsch and Manager Jason Serpa. The program is designed to clean up blight, illegal dumping, and windblow debris across the city. The initiative would split the city into four quadrants, assign five full-time employees (all along), and use the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for the initial equipment and first year's operation. The annual cost is estimated at $558,690, and the initial capital outlay is $327,550. ARPA covers most of the first year, but there is a shortfall of $25,350 in the first year, which the council was asked to appropriate from the reserve. $25,350 from the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund. Discussion included strong support from the mayor, council members, and the public, but also concerns about permanent funding. Vice Mayor Taylor proposed a year-long pilot program to test desirability. The motion passed 5-0. Public comment from Jim Reeves expressed support for the program.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Barry Caplan: The Barry Caplan gave the most extensive and repeated public comment, speaking at nearly every agenda item. He argued that the agenda item descriptions for consent and regular items were "verbatim" and not compliant with the Brown Act. He provided handouts with shorter wording suggested by ChatGPT. He asked the council to direct staff to write 20-word summaries. The city attorney stated the Brown Act requirements, but Caplan was not satisfied. Other speakers including Matthew Box and his friend Noemi also expressed the views on agenda length and neighborhood representation, and Damian Lopez from the cemetery district spoke in favor of his item.
- Winter Irrigation schedule: Barry Caplan, Water Conservation Manager, noted in public comment that starting December 1st, the winter irrigation schedule would ban overhead sprinklers on turf grass for three months (December 1 to end of February). This exempts trees, shrubs, and gardens.
- Procedural Comments: While public comment items were on the agenda, there was additional public testimony on the agenda items and the length of the meeting, but most of the scheduled public hearing items were dominated again by Barry Caplan's along with a few others.
Discussion Items
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East Side Regional Park Project (Public Hearing): The council considered certification of the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the East Side Regional Park, annexation of approximately 128 acres, and a General Plan Amendment to redesignate 41 acres from residential to parks/open space. Principal Planner Brandon Smith and Dawn Marple from the consultant firm provided details. Key components included noise mitigation (an 8-foot sound wall along Tower Street), lighting mitigation, and traffic impacts. Some intersections exceed congestion standards, but the statement of overriding considerations was adopted. The council approved all three actions both. The attached action with corresponding resolutions (2023-54, 55, 56) was moved by Council Member Nelsen and seconded by Vice Mayor Taylor. The motion carried 5-0.
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Visalia Maallee Cemetery District public hearing: The city conducted a public hearing for the cemetery to change its designation from residential to public and rezone to Q-P (Quasi-Public). The district had removed the eminent domain policy, provided 90 days rent-free to any tenants, and withdrew encroachment area is 12 properties. Associate Planner Cristobal Carrillo presented the outreach from May 2023, where the community had input. Council member Hernandez-Soto opposed, noting that only four affected residents showed up at the community meeting were opposed, and that they preferred a location away from the existing neighborhood. Council member Wynn listened to the leadership's communications. Council member Nelsen and Taylor voted for the change, citing the cemetery district's due diligence. The motion passed 4-1, with Council member Hernandez Soto voting no.
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Measure N Spending Plan Amendment: This was the second of two public hearings to amend the spending plan for police vehicles. The council approved advancing purchase of one marked patrol vehicle for FY 2024/2024 and allocating $30,000 to address budget shortfall for FY 2023/2024 vehicle purchases. Dan Ford presented the request. The motion by Vice Mayor Taylor and Nelsen carried 5-0.
Key Outcomes
- Approved: SWEEP Clean-up Program, all consent calendar items (8-16), certification of the East Side Park EIR, initiated annexation and general plan amendment, and the Cemetery District and related policy changes and resolutions for the police vehicle purchase.
- Votes: All items passed with 5-0 except the cemetery item which was 4-1.
- Next Council Meetings: Monday, December 4 & December 18, 2023 at 7:00 PM.
- Direction to Staff: The council expressed support for some of the procedural changes but made no official directive to change the template. Staff were thanked for the thorough summary—contrary to public comments—and encouraged to continue a balanced approach.
Meeting Transcript
Comments concise and positive creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes and a timer will notify you when your time is expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. All right. Well, good evening, Council. Nick Barch, Public Works Director. I'm joined by Jason Serpa, our public works manager over Solid Waste. We're excited tonight to bring you uh the solid waste environment enhancement program known as SWEEP. This has been a long time coming, I know. Um so we're gonna just kind of give you an overview of what the program looks like and and kind of what it consists of. So jumping in, um I'm gonna highlight just kind of a quick outline of what what's gonna what we're gonna talk about tonight, and then also um hand it over to Jason to talk about the logistics and the specifics of how the program is um intended to operate. So again, uh this is um being funded initially by the American Rescue Plan Act ARPA um, and we'll talk about the program purpose, the benefits of the citywide improvement, and then finally the proposed program approach. So again, as uh just to recap a little bit um the RP what ARPA program purpose was. So the funding was provided through the the ARPA program created um and it creates a unique opportunity after COVID 19 for the city to make strategic investments um in programs and assets that will lead towards the uh to to rebuild reserves and enhance financial stability. Um it'll also cover temporary operating shortfalls until economic conditions and operations normalize. So then um looking at specifically at this project. Um so back in December of 21, uh City Council appropriated the total uh ARPA funds in the amount of 29.4 million to various projects throughout the city. Uh the ARPA funds can be used for expenditures um dating back to March of 21 through December 31st of 2024. So that's when the funds need to be committed uh by that date and spent um by December of uh 26. However, uh these funds um because they are being spent internally need to be uh completely spent by uh 24. Uh so at that time 450,000 was earmarked for the sweep program um as a CIP. So then identifying the benefits um of the proposed sweep program. So it will help promote public health, um, the maintenance of ecosystems um as far as reducing and preventing contaminated waterways. It will promote overall well-being of others, um, it'll clean up ISOs on public property, and then um will be a mitigation of fire hazards, and uh ultimately will be less impact to other city budgets by allowing this program to conduct um a lot of the cleanup efforts and identification of uh some of the issues throughout the city. Um it'll also benefit as a downtown enhancement. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Jason and he can talk about the specifics of what the implementation of the program will look like. Good evening, council. Jason Serpa, public works manager. Um the details uh will be um we'll get into the financial details, but at first I'm gonna talk about the overall program approach and uh what uh staff uh set out to do was establish what the sweep program was, and we want to wanted to make sure we were equipped to to deal with it successfully and be proactive in the future. Uh what the SWEEP program in uh initially is intended for is to pick up waste that should have been collected but wasn't. Uh illegal dumping's always been a problem around Tilary County and wind wind blown debris, and we're hoping to improve public areas in this regard. Um if we look forward to the proactive uh approach there, uh we are gonna be the eyes and ears of the city. So we're hoping that uh we can we can uh keep our public areas clean by by being active and being visible in the community. Uh we want to make sure that our teams can be equipped. So hopefully with our uh the when we're out there in the public, we're able to be able to educate our public at the same time. The proposed program approach is gonna split the uh city into four quadrants. And uh we're gonna have five FTE that we uh that staff staff is recommending here. One of the FTE is going to be a lead, the four FTE uh that are gonna be uh patrolling the quadrants and cleaning up right away debris will be will be split up so like so. Uh the debris that's picked up will be deposited in a 40-yard bin that will be located at the city corp yard. We estimate that uh one 40 yard bin should be filled up per week. Um that's the cost that we've put into our projections. And we also intend because they are the eyes and ears of the city, that these um these FTE will be reporting to code enforcement or wastewater, any any members of the community that would get caught illegally dumping or over using water. Uh they can also report uh other things like um downstop signs, uh it could be anything that treat that treating that that needs tripping that might be in the in the right of way, those types of things. The recommended staffing level, uh, like I stated before, it's gonna be one lead and four FTE. Um staffing coverage is recommended to be Monday through Saturday. We were hoping for an almost full week of coverage. It's kind of nice to have when somebody calls on a weekend. Um, if Nick were to call me and say, hey, I got a call from a member of the public. There's a there's a nice large tree branch in the right-of-way. If we can have somebody that's actually on the clock that's able to go pick that up, so we don't have to call our streets crews.
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