The Visalia City Council held a work session starting at 4:00 PM and a regular session at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, February 20, 2024, in the City Council Chambers. The work session covered new employee introductions, a review of the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) for FY2024/25 and 2025/26, proposed updates to the Municipal Code Title 6 regarding animal regulation, a condition assessment and facility plan update for the Water Reclamation Facility (WRF), and a discussion on short-term rental (STR) regulation. The regular session included a resolution authorizing a Homekey grant application for the Majestic Gardens Project, a public hearing on business regulations amendments, and a consent calendar with 13 routine items. All votes were unanimous (5–0) except where noted.
The work session of the Viselia City Council. We're gonna begin with public comments. This is time for people to provide public comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visalia City Council and items listed on the closed session. The council asks 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. Seeing no one running to the microphone, we're gonna move into our work session items. Number one new employee introductions will begin with finance department. Good afternoon, Council at Melody March from your finance department here to welcome a couple employees that are new to our department. Uh we want to welcome Gladys Ruiz. You may recognize her as an administrative analyst to the finance department in the purchasing division. Gladys has been with the city for 17 years. She started at the police department as a police record specialist and was in that department for about two years. She then accepted a position in administration as an office assistant and promoted a few times until her most recent assignment as senior administrative assistant. She was in administration for 15 years. Gladys and her husband Ross, who also works for the City of Iselia, have two children and they live here in Viselia. Please welcome Gladys to the purchasing division. She'd like to say just a few words. Thank you, Council. Lastly, Michelle and Allison. It was a one it was a lot of wonderful years working in administration. And I enjoyed working closely with you and with counsel. And I'm very grateful that I was able to gain the knowledge and the skills necessary to help grow my career within the city. And I am very grateful and excited for the opportunity to work with purchasing and with the purchasing staff. Thank you. Thank you. We're only slightly better. We're very excited. We would also like to welcome Roxana Placentia to the finance department. Roxana started work as an office assistant in transit in May of 22 and operated the first floor ticket counter until she recently was chosen for promotion to an accounting assistant position with our business tax division. She lives here in Viselia with her longtime partner. And we'd like to welcome Roxana to Business Tax. And the two of them will come up and receive a welcome from you all. Maybe spot. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations, Miss Month. Is that okay? Yes. All right, we're gonna move into parks and recreation now. Good evening, Mayor, fellow counsel. I'm here to introduce uh two of our um new employees in the recreation department. First is Daniel Scott Ray. Uh he comes to us with uh many many years of government uh background, uh, started off as a custodian, worked for several years as a parks maintenance person, and most recently he was a parks um ranger for the city of Tulary and came over and now he's our uh landscape inspector. Um Scott likes to enjoy watching movies, uh, 3D movies, things like that. Um I've worked actually worked with Scott for several years in Hanford, so it's good to have him here. He has a lot of knowledge and hopefully we'll work to keep our um L's up to par and keep the contractors in line.