On Monday, February 5, 2024, the Visalia City Council held a work session at 4:00 p.m. and a regular session at 7:00 p.m. at City Council Chambers, 707 W. Acequia. Mayor Brian Poochigian, Vice Mayor Brett Taylor, and Council Members Emmanuel Hernandez Soto and Liz Wynn were present; Council Member Steve Nelsen was absent. The work session covered the state legislative forecast, FY 2022-23 audits, and the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR). The regular session included ceremonial swearing-ins, public comment, and approval of the consent calendar. The meeting adjourned at 7:18 p.m.
City Council. We're gonna begin with public comments. This is the time for our citizens to provide public comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Vicella City Council and items listed on the closed session portion of the meeting. The council asked that you keep your 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. This comments right now your chance to make a comments on anything that you would like at this time. So no no opportunity at the time each one comes up. We will have public comment at each time of each item. Okay. All right, that's what I'll speak at that time then for thank you. Right, seeing a little more public uh comment or take to work session. Um number one, slate legislative presentation. We see presentation from Nielsen, Marksmer, and Pornello Grosso Leone on 2023 state legislative activity and forecastle state legislative activity for 2024. Uh thank you, Mayor, Council, uh Devin Jones, economic development manager. Um, here uh tonight you have uh John Moffat and Michelle Rubikava from Nielsen Merksmare, our state lobbyist group. And they're gonna give an update on the year and kind of some forecasting of the year uh in front of us, and then we would like any kind of direction. There's no action item tonight, but if there's any direction for the year ahead or platform amendments, we would welcome those comments from council. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, John Moffat from Nielsen Merksimer. Uh, as Devin said, we represent you in the city of Sacramento and in the state legislature and all the uh regulatory agencies up there. We uh appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight, give you a little bit of a rundown on uh the activities and bills and issues we dealt with on bit on the city's behalf in 2023, and then uh give you a little bit of a look ahead based on what we know so far. We're about a month into the 2024 legislative year, but give you an idea of what we're hearing and seeing and and thinking might be big issues this year, and then as Devin said, uh happy to answer any questions and and take any input from the council and direction on uh where you'd like us to put our efforts in the year ahead. So uh as was already said, um, we actually have one other member of our team, Jeff Neal, who uh started with our firm two years ago. Two years ago, came to us from CSAC, has a great background in local government and the intersection of of state issues, county government, city government. Um we thought maybe bringing three down today might be a little bit of overkill. So but if you want, we're more than happy to bring Jeff next year. He's a very nice man. Uh two main areas of of advocate advocacy on your behalf in the legislative branch in this assembly and Senate, and then over in the executive branch, helping the city from time to time on issues as they arise at the airboard, the water board, DWR, etc. etc. Uh a little bit of a rundown there on some of those additional regulatory issues over the last couple of years, obviously, Sigma and implementation of that program has been uh a big issue for the city as well as others. So you know, assisting where we can and guiding through the various issues, whether it's at DWR or the state water board on sort of their authority, which kind of bounces back and forth depending on what what part of that issue you're talking about, outdoor water conservation and the threatened pending um used to be in existence, then kind of went away for a little bit uh once we got some good precipitation on outdoor water conservation. So something that we're keeping our eye on on a going forward basis. Uh homeless shelters and funding. We're gonna talk more about that in the industrial park energy needs there. Uh got a great tour from Devin today on all the great things that are happening happening out at the industrial park, and so keeping an eye on those things, and then you know, some upcoming issues that we're gonna see this year, uh climate bond, and then also artificial intelligence and some other uh issues that we think are gonna be hot topics this year. So looking back a little bit in 2023, you'll recall you know, California operates in a two-year legislative session. 2023 was the first year of this legislative session. Uh last year, around 2,662 bills were introduced, the bulk of those in the assembly. Um when those bills are introduced, we review all of them on your behalf and identify the ones that we think that may impact the city or are uh related to issues that that the city and the council may care about. Um of those 2,662 bills, a little over a thousand of them uh made it through the entire legislative process and got down to the governor, and then he signed about 890 of them. Uh so about a 15% veto rate uh for Governor Newsom, which is actually historically high for Governor Newsom. In the past couple years, um, you know, he has not he has not vetoed that many bills, but he actually vetoed quite a few last year, largely under the um under the idea of the state budget uh issue that uh folks could see was coming, and and we're gonna talk more about that here in a couple minutes, and is obviously upon us now with um the governor's may rebuy or uh may excuse me, the governor's original budget proposal, which he released about two and a half, three weeks ago for the city of Visalia of those two thousand six hundred and sixty-two bills. We identified 545 of them as ones that may uh have the city may have an interest in. Um again, just part of the funneling process. We we look at all those bills, we identify the ones the city may care about, they go through Leslie, they go through Devon. I'm sure this year John will be a part of that process as well. They go to the department heads, and then we take our direction on what are those bills that you want us to engage on uh in the legislative process. We ended up with 26 bills with uh with with positions in this last year.