The West Sacramento City Council met on October 1, 2025, to address a public hearing on a variance appeal, adopt a parks and recreation fee policy, and recognize National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The meeting included public comments, staff presentations, and council deliberations.
Present, I call to order the October first meeting of the City of West Sacramento City Council, the West Sacramento Redevelopment Agency, and Finance Authority. We will begin with the land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land on which we live, work, learn, and commune is the original homelands of the indigenous people of West Sacramento, who have stewarded this land throughout the generations. We acknowledge and we thank the original inhabitants who have occupied, maintained, and secured this place, and who still exist on this land. We respect and celebrate the many diverse indigenous people still connected to this land on which we gather. We accept the request to speak cards up to the conclusion of the reading of the staff report on any particular agenda item. And you will also be given specific instructions on the appeal today. Now, in front of the clerk, there is a timer to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be heard. So we request that there be no applause or booze, cut calls, or other demonstrations. Furthermore, so that we may maintain a civil discourse here in the chambers. We ask that those in attendance and those who address the city council abide by the code of conduct posted and not speak in loud threatening offensive abusive or other disrespectful language that disrupts disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting. Now this brings us to item one. Presentations by the public on matters not in the agenda within the jurisdiction of the council, and each person has three minutes to speak. Madam Clerk, are there any of your customers speak? Yes, ma'am. Guy Stevenson. Ladies, Mayor, how are you doing? I have a question. But this issue with VIA. You guys think it's such a spectacular service. Not so much. You've had three managers with that company. Now they got a lady named Lisa. She came from a booze distribution company. And she doesn't know anything about that service. It's terrible. It may save the city money and the city the city may dump money into it, and that's fine because it's your it's your city, you can do what you want. Just personal observation. As you know, I wear a body cam, probably 80% of the time when I deal with people and I talk to people. I'm not saying Dante that you're not doing a good job, you're doing a wonderful job. But because you oversee, now we've had an issue. I told you that I don't agree with the way uh via runs. They're a poor service. They're in it, it starts with management. I've checked other cities where a via is and they run smoothly, but if you don't have the right people running it, the management, it it doesn't it doesn't function right. A lot of drivers say that they send emails, passengers see emails to Lisa, that she never gets back. This is the third one they've had in a year. So what does that tell you? That tells you that the people either don't like what they're doing or they don't know what they're doing. So if you had a meeting with them or you had somebody to do accountability checks on this company, maybe you'd find out what's really going on with them. I'm not trying to be a jerk towards any of you about VI. I'm just bringing it to your attention. It's just observation, it's who I people that I talk to. And they said, Oh, yeah, I've been waiting an hour and a half for a ride. You shouldn't have to. This city isn't like the Bay Area. It's not like Sacramento. And then I thought it was funny when Stephanie Chan said, Well, we need to raise the rates on the past, like Pale Alto. Do you know how much it costs to live in Palaeto? About 300 and something thousand dollars a year.